Misinformation Is A Word We Use To Shut You Up

 What is being labeled and attacked as "Misinformation" is not a matter of true or false information, but of true or false knowledge-meaning that disagreement more commonly arises over interpretations and judgments as to which interpretations to take stock in or believe.

Interpretation takes us beyond the working interpretation.

It opens things up to the marvelous generation and multiplying of interpretations; you now face a portfolio or menu of interpretations, and it is a portfolio that can always grow yet another interpretation.

Usually, what people argue fervently over is not information, but interpretations and judgments as to which interpretations to act on.

In misrepresenting matters of interpretation and judgment as one of "Misinformation," they misrepresent the nature of their projects and dodge the responsibility to account for how they judge among vying interpretations.

The lying can be at the level of information, but it usually makes more sense to say that its lying is at the level of interpretation: The government promotes interpretations-for example, The Covid virus came from nature-, interpretations that it, the government, itself does not particularly believe.

Disagreement usually arises over interpretations and judgments as to which interpretations to take stock in or believe.

Each can then make a moment in the other's judgment into an object up for examination, an object for interpretation and estimation.

Facts are theory-laden is a useful saying, for it reminds us that what one person calls "Fact" can be opened up to examination and challenge by another person-or even by the same person, a moment later, after having called it "Fact." The simple truth is that we could, if we had cause to, dig interpretation and judgment out from underneath any of our facts.

We may more directly speak of multiple interpretations of the information, as opposed to multiple interpretations of the facts.

Thus, rather than interpretively pivoting off the "Fact"-level interpretation-that the line reads 678-3554-let's pivot interpretively off of what I have called "The working interpretation"-that 678-3554 is a phone number-a level up from the factual, and there the pivot then turns to open up the interpretation dimension: "Maybe the phone number is a secret encoded message?" Again, universal acceptance among the "We" is built into "The facts": None of us disputes that the line says 678-3554.

https://brownstone.org/articles/misinformation-a-word-used-to-shut-you-up/