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Comment by _xnmw | Hacker News Reader

A lie is intentional. If a person legitimately believes the election was fraudulent, even if it was not, it's not a lie. It's a mistaken belief.

Calling the other side liars is precisely the kind of polarizing rhetoric that can undermine democracy. They are not liars if they legitimately believe what they are saying. 70% of Republican voters and some 10% of Democrat voters actually do believe there was election fraud [1].

The way to combat mistaken beliefs is to allow them to voice their views, then refute their arguments, not to call them liars and suppress their views. And even if they do not accept the refutation, the arguments should be left up for people to read and make their informed choice.

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/09/republicans-free-fa...

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> The way to combat mistaken beliefs is to allow them to voice their views, then refute their arguments, not to call them liars and suppress their views. And even if they do not accept the refutation, the arguments should be left up for people to read and make their informed choice.

I don’t think this a good approach.

It takes real effort to refute a bad faith untruthful claim, but just it takes a single breath of air to make one. Lies scale better than the truth. And the people making bad faith arguments know this.

Maybe ridicule isn’t the answer but it’s something more than just facts and truth. Perhaps shame?

Yes but this is true for any side, no? It would be a bit haughty to claim "the lies of others vs our truths".

Lies will always exist because they work. But at the end of the day, either there is the possibility for earnest discussion as well, or there isn't. You cannot fix what you cannot talk about.

But people generally want to believe in certain things. See confirmation bias. No amount of argument refutation works, because many beliefs are not rational. Many people hold on to existing beliefs until reality forces them to accept that they're wrong. Sure, they aren't intentionally lying to others. But in a way they are lying to themselves.

That doesn't mean I advocate suppression. But I definitely believe people need to be taught about cognitive biases in school.

Republicans have been voicing their views on the election since November, and countless refutations have been made for many if not all of their claims. I'm not arguing for suppression, but it's clear that many people are not interested in changing their minds.

Calling the average voter-fraud-believing American a liar is obviously counterproductive. But that's not the same as a politician who should know better and doesn't appear to be operating in good faith.

There's a difference between suppressing a different view, suppressing a lie, suppressing someone yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, and suppressing someone yelling "let's go light the theater on fire".

As for refuting arguments, I'm a big believer in that, but so many people cannot change their minds, regardless of the evidence, partly because people telling lies have told them that the only honest person is the liar.

What we've seen in the public eye is a classic example of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Attack the person does very little for you except in a purely emotional venue. It can actually make things much much worse, particularly when there are already strongly held beliefs involved. All it does is further polarize an issue in peoples minds and make it more likely that they will hold faster to their beliefs. (i.e. the attacker reinforces the mistaken belief in the attacked's mind and makes them even less likely to respond to a logical argument.) That's how you turn loud voices into a dangerous situation and do it fast. (In other terms, that's how you turn an argument/discussion into a fight). This is true in pretty much every context.

https://fs.blog/2014/10/the-ten-golden-rules-of-argument/#:~....)

Refuted claims are still repeated, and in many cases refuting evidence will not make people change their beliefs.

Suppressing their views doesn't change their beliefs either. It only increases their feeling of being oppressed.

It interferes with their ability to spread their beliefs (as well as plan violence).

> Suppressing their views doesn't change their beliefs either. It only increases their feeling of being oppressed.

Consider why every dictator strives to have complete control over the media, and you'll see that suppressing views does actually work on the majority of the populace unfortunately (not on the politically active, of course, but most people aren't)

> The way to combat mistaken beliefs is to allow them to voice their views, then refute their arguments, not to call them liars and suppress their views.

Facts have been shown not to change people's minds:

* https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/words-matter/201810/...

* https://www.apa.org/monitor/2017/05/alternative-facts

* https://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-say-they-ve-figured...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

I wish it were true. Its past that now. Folks believe things without evidence. Then they believe the court cases were thrown out, not for lack of evidence (which is ok with them) but because its fixed somehow.

There really is a threat of out-of-control baseless indignation, which won't be addressed by sober debate. That's not what happened this month, and I don't see a return to that any time soon.

And if you refute their arguments and they still repeat their same beliefs? If other people continue to join their cause, repeating the same statements?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related... uhidential_election?wprov=sfla1

If they call for, and plan violent action based on their beliefs? If they begin taking violent action based on their beliefs?

A lie is a lie, and at some point the responsibility falls on the person making the false statement, even if they truly believe it.

(One of the worst results of this situation is that many of the poor, rural people believing the lies have real problems and need help. But they aren't going to get it because of the politics. On the other hand, their actions have gone beyond debate and form a real threat to our society.)

Two possible counterpoints / additions to this:

1. I still believe that lies started the legitimate belief. E.g. republican leaders like Trump lied about election fraud, convincing many that a problem exists which does not. Perhaps we might call that propaganda, or disinformation. So if we are to address the source of this problem, we cannot avoid the root lies which started the whole thing.

2. I believe that many have found it exceedingly difficult to refute the arguments of some of these folk, simply because they often do not approach these conversations in good faith. There is certainly a personality cult around Trump which many have been sucked into. It's not as simple as just "convincing" a cult member that they are logically or empirically wrong.

Is it acceptable for someone to be a cult member? Sure, absolutely. One can believe whatever they wish, as is their right. The problem happens when these beliefs become mostly violent and criminal. From what I gather, many have been taking this propaganda and turning it into a campaign to execute political leaders.

My take on the current problem is that people and companies are distancing themselves from the violent aspect of the far-right movement. This includes websites which are radicalizing people (Parler), and the leaders who are incentivizing the behavior (Trump). I find this a good thing -- these are sources of the lies.

No one is throwing people in jail for believing the election could be more secure. This does not prevent someone from having questions about the election, or conversations about it with people around them. It's not going to get you banned from reddit, or hackernews. Maybe you'll get downvoted because the questions (from my point of view) have been very thoroughly answered and debunked at this point, so to not know that might demonstrate that you haven't done much research on the topic, or are just ignoring the answers.

> 1. I still believe that lies started the legitimate belief. E.g. republican leaders like Trump lied about election fraud, convincing many that a problem exists which does not.

I have kept coming back to this over the last five years:

> On Bullshit is a 2005 book (originally a 1986 essay) by philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt which presents a theory of bullshit that defines the concept and analyzes the applications of bullshit in the context of communication. Frankfurt determines that bullshit is speech intended to persuade without regard for truth. The liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it; the bullshitter doesn't care if what they say is true or false, but rather only cares whether their listener is persuaded.[1] Frankfurt's philosophical analysis of bullshit has been analysed, criticised and adopted by academics since its publication.[2]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit

IMHO this applies 100% to Trump (and many of his enablers). He will say different things days apart and cares not what was uttered before: he just spits out whatever he thinks will work in the moment, and if it sticks, he'll run with it until it stops working.

The lies in this case start at the top, and are clearly intentionally untrue.

That people farther away from the origin point come to believe these untrue things does not make the original lies anything other than lies.

On a small scale, it may be true that countering a mistaken belief with facts and reason is helpful--though a lot of research suggests that's not the case even one at a time--but on the large scale, lies must be called out as lies, and letting them stand leads only to repetition and widespread belief.

Had there been a better job done of calling out and suppressing the lies at the stage they were still only lies, it's possible we would have much less mistaken belief.

Also, the idea that most people are suffering from "mistaken belief" rather than being aware they are lies strikes me as naive, but that's a matter of opinion.

This is the most naiive take I have seen on this subject. What Trump has always done is deflect. You can't trust my opposition, I tell the real truth, as he frequently says, implies, and follows up with falsehoods, lies, misconceptions, alternate facts. Whatever you want to call it, its hard to define intent. However you can judge history. Trump does not recant his misconceptions. Often he stands by them, saying that he is partially right, being wrongfully accused, or was just joking.

This happening so frequently shows to me that he provides information in bad faith and when something seems like either a misconception or a lie, its looking pretty clearly that the intent is to manufacture a separate reality that is conveniently aligned with his goals. To put it simply, the intent is to deceive and that is the very definition of lies. Using lies to manipulate the media is propaganda.

Isn't this what has happened with Trump? He said the election was a fraud, he hasn't been able to provide any evidence at all, and no (IIRC) people responsible for election security have said that there was fraud. Yet Trump continues to say that there was election fraud. At that point it is a lie.

In fact, I'd say the opposite of your argument: calling lies "mistaken beliefs", specially when they came from politicians with an agenda, is what allowed to create different realities for different groups and what is undermining democracy. Giving attention and importance to inaccurate facts and then debating the reality of facts gives people the impression that both sides are actually reasonable, when in reality one's true and the other's false. Climate change is the best example of this: for some reason, politicians and other figures have been allowed to say that they "didn't believe in climate change" and managed to move a matter of scientific fact to a matter of opinion.

When you let lies go unaccounted and presented as "beliefs", you allow liars to create their own alternate realities. People don't have to know the truth, just believe whatever their group leaders say. And once the realities of different groups are separate enough, truths stop mattering and it just matters who do you follow.

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