Oddbean

Interesting question. Disinformation is most dangerous in the hands of political institutions, with a power motive as well as ideological motives. Totalitarian systems degenerate toward misinformation because the mechanisms of error-correction are hindered and even dismantled. If the chances for error-correction and control groups are eliminated, we can expect group think and extremism (imbalance) in some direction or other. If I want a robust information system with a chance to self-correct, I would always opt for millions of sovereign individuals pursuing their own conclusions to the best of their ability, with a right to speak up and criticize injustices, problems or concerns. They can individually be wrong but they have no power to force a bad idea upon other people. Since we can't know the future or access all relevant data points, or even always agree on interpretation, the safest system to promote error-correction is via a free exchange of ideas. Our conclusions are based on attempts at judging probability. Just as our probability assumptions can be incorrect, a fact checker is no less impacted by both ideological bias, funding bias and errors. I think there is no alternative but to embrace individual liberties, both because it is morally wrong to prevent individuals from voicing concerns and also because we benefit from having all possibilities examined. I view for example groups like the Amish as a valuable control group that we can compare ourselves with and evaluate how our lives differ from theirs and what the reasons may be. Control groups that follow beliefs that we don't share can end up being right on some matter that we have misunderstood.