False Mis-, Dis- & Mal- Information Labels

Critical Thinking, General, Societal Division

In the immortal words of Popeye…

“That’s all I can stands,
I can’t stands no more!”

I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Whenever you see or hear someone labeling some piece of information they don’t like as misinformation, disinformation or malinformation your bull shit meters should be pegged off the scale.

MISINFORMATION
False information presented to deliberately deceive.

DISINFORMATION
False information purposely spread to influence public opinion and/or obscure the truth. 

MALINFORMATION
Information which might be based on fact but it’s removed from its original context specifically to mislead, harm, and manipulate.

Anyone, I do mean anyone, that uses any of these terms to describe a piece of information is willfully and intentionally inserting themselves into the topic as being the one and only arbiter of uncontestable truth, the keeper of all knowledge that is good and wise, a pompous knowledge God of sorts. The real truth is that these pompous ass, self designated, “arbiters of uncontestable truth” are quite likely biased hacks showing off their version of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which is a cognitive bias that occurs when people overestimate their knowledge or abilities in a specific area. I’ve seen this too many times for it not to be a fact based stereotype; the ones wielding these terms are almost always partisan attack dogs parroting the approved narrative and actually the ones engaging in misinformation, disinformation or malinformation, they think that you’re an ignorant rube and therefore too stupid to discern the actual truth.

There are statisticians that are supposedly identifying misinformation, disinformation or malinformation in their statistics and yet they can’t even tell you how they define those terms. The word salad reply you get back when you ask how these terms are being defined boils down to “I know it when I see it” which is pure unadulterated bias. These people aren’t self aware enough to know that their bias is tainting their statistics so badly that it’s turning them into unbelievable rubbish.

  • If something is false, then say so and explain why it’s false.
  • If someone is lying, then call it out and explain how it’s a lie.
  • If there is deliberate deception going on, then specifically identify it.
  • If someone is obscuring the truth, then present the fact based truth that is being obscured.
  • If someone is cherry picking specifics out of context then point out the intentional manipulation and present the whole context for all to see.

Remember these people are not the arbiter of truth and neither are you, but you can use verifiable fact based reality to correct fact less statements and labels made by others and make sure you use the correct phrases in your responses to these knowledge God hacks;

  • Self designated arbiter of uncontestable truth.
  • Keeper of all knowledge that is good and wise.
  • Pompous knowledge God.

I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.

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Published by Steve Witherspoon

A Character Is A Diamond That Scratches Every Stone! I'm just another person that's been around the block a few times offering their opinion about the observed world around us. I don't write every day so don't expect daily instant gratification, I write when I see or hear about something that is morphing society and the urge strikes me. If you find any links that don't work, typos, or serious grammar problems anywhere on my blog, send me a message using the contact form and I'll look into fixing the error.

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2 thoughts on “False Mis-, Dis- & Mal- Information Labels”

  1. ”Misinformation” has always been with us, necessitating the process the UW calls “sifting and winnowing”:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sifting_and_winnowing

    Somewhere along the way we as citizenry got lazy and abdicated this responsibility to the media. And it worked pretty well with people like Murrow and Cronkite at the helm. Back then the story was the star not the reporter.

    It’s all changed. The MSM no longer contains hard scrabble reporters in dogged determination of the truth. And the establishment authoritarians in all spheres took advantage of it. They correctly surmised that the rubes would believe anything they were told.

    That worked too until the younger generations became savier, more street smart. They were the ones to realize all these emperors had no clothes.

    We’ve reached the end game where the last gasp of the establishment is to scream misinformation. The only people falling for it are the elderly and easily manipulated who don’t have the spine to “sift and winnow” themselves.

    X is the media now; i.e., we are the media.

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  2. Stephen,
    I sent an email verification to the email address you used to post this comment, you must reply to that email or you can’t comment on Society’s Building Blocks, see Comment Policies. Also, I’d much appreciate a more direct email address to contact you with, the one you used doesn’t appear to be a valid email address.

    I’ll give you a few days to rectify this.
    Society’s Building Blocks

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