If you know it’s false, it’s called disinformation.
You can state the information you believe to be correct with a disclaimer, that it may be incorrect.
Let me rephrase that: Is it better to lie or say nothing at all?
Oh man I feel this when people ask for directions. Because I know how to get somewhere, but I also forget a lot of steps along the way.
I think speculation and guesswork is perfectly fine. It’s part of a path towards an answer. However, that speculation and guesswork needs to have its uncertainty clearly indicated.
I'll give an example using football.
As “analytics” have emerged, everyone has their own model to give a guideline on decisions. This is done using things like “win probability” of all the possible choices and outcomes. You can do out the math, using a model, to say something like “going for it gives you a 35% chance to win, and kicking the field goal gives you a 33% chance”.
And that sounds great. But, all the numbers that go into that math are incredibly noisy, with very small sample sizes. A great kicker has a better chance of making a field goal than a bad kicker, and they can account for that, to a point. But they can’t really account for that, plus the specific weather conditions, plus the kicker is a little sore today, …
And the chances of a stop, and of scoring if you’re successful, etc, are even worse, because it’s specific to how your offense matches up to that defense, plus the context of the game, the context in the game/moment, etc.
It’s perfectly fine, and reasonable, to use a model as the best indicator you have and make a decision aided by that model. But what a model is supposed to do is provide some guidance on how uncertain it is. If you phrase that “35% +/- 10% if you go for it, 33% +/- 10% if you kick”, you realize that there’s a significant range where a better model might tell you to make the opposite decision, and it’s a lot closer to a toss up.
But despite the inherent uncertainty due to the limited sample sizes used to create the models, you see “analytics experts” all over the place calling coaches morons for decisions that are pretty ambiguous because their specific model gives one decision a small edge and it didn’t work out. If they had explicitly evaluated and acknowledged the uncertainty of their model given the factors it can’t account for, they would have a much clearer picture of what the decision actually was.
Make guesses. Speculate. But make it clear (to others, and yourself) what you’re doing so the guesses aren’t given more weight than they deserve.
That is situational. Preferably people don’t lie. However, nuance can make it inevitable.
I once watched an anime called Usagi Drop. In it, the oldest member in an enormous family, who was in his eighties, ends up, ahem, “going around”, and he dies having fathered a girl, who, in the big picture of the family’s family tree, is the great aunt of several of the characters who are well into adulthood. Japan is a nation that considers such matters highly controversial and stigmatized, and this was a major plot point in the show. The young adult characters decide it’s best to “adopt” her and not reveal her origins as a form of protection. Would totally recommend the anime nevertheless.
Can you imagine if the Allies were fighting the Axis powers, and while making the ghost army, the Allies were like “yeah, those tanks are inflatables, it’s Normandy we’ll be going after”?
Nothing wrong with saying “I don’t know”.
It is always better to admit when you don’t know something, than to make up bullshit. Always.
None.
When a man lies he murders some part of the world.
– Merlin (Excalibur, 1981)
If you know something to be false and try to pass it off as truth, that is lying. It doesn’t matter how you phrase it or try to hide behind symantics like “I’m just asking questions” or “it’s just a hypothetical”.
That being said, it does not mean that you cannot contribute to a conversations if you are not an authority on a subject. If you are not sure or cannot recall a credible source for your information you can preface your comment with something like “I never confirmed the validity of this, so I may be completely wrong, but…”.
Or just ask questions instead of trying to chime in. If you’re unfamiliar with a subject then you should be listening, not talking.
So true. If you are lacking knowledge on a topic, asking questions is always the best approach.
May I ask for some context to that question?
I mean, the answer should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of (self)respect: stay shut if you know… you don’t know. But maybe you were thinking about some very specific situation?
No information is the best option. How bad the misinformation is depends on intent. Is the misinformation a lie intentionally told to conceal a truth? Or is it bullshit, information intended to persuade regardless of truth?
Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.
From Harry Frankfurt’s essay On Bullshit
Depends.
Your fellows? None at all.
The State? MisinformationThe State? Misinformation
And that’s how you get Republicans saying that Haitians are eating pets in Ohio.
The Republicans who spread that rumor didn’t care whether it was true, and was looking for choice rumors to spread.
It’s blood libel for the 21st century.
Yeah it was the pets eating ohioans but they failed to fix that news
I think the state in this case needs to be divided into adversarial and non-adversarial departments (or subdepartments). It’s better to tell (for example) the water department you don’t know whether the pipes are lead if that’s the case, rather than forcing them to unearth copper pipes or letting them leave lead pipes.
But it is absolutely appropriate (assuming you believe in strong rights to privacy) to insert NSA keywords into benign communications, so that NSA wastes time on your false positives, but that’s because NSA isn’t supposed to be doing mass surveillance of the public, rather is supposed to be helping develop communication security that is impervious to surveillance.
If your local precinct actually works with the community, doesn’t harass minorities and doesn’t rob civilians via asset forfeiture, it might be worth giving them sound information (including saying you don’t know what you don’t know.) On the other hand if it behaves typically for law enforcement in the US, leading them to chase geese will save everyone else trouble.
