I believe part of “Soviet-style” is that nothing is “objectively” true. The measure is whether it fits the political/religious narrative locally in favor. Not that the Soviets invented this or had a monopoly on it. Until quite recently in historical terms, that was just how it worked pretty much everywhere. We’ve even managed to swing the pendulum back that direction recently.
Really, even with the most modern approaches, nothing is “objectively” true. The best you can get is “the available evidence is extremely convincingly explained by this model of what the reality is”. Which is obviously a pretty effective approach. However, “objectively” false is achievable.
Soviet-style international propaganda goes further. It's not merely subjectiveand biased. Its goal is to make truth unknowable, so that lie and truth are on equal footing, and decisions makers are blind.
The foundational purpose of the Flat Earth movement was not to disinform or to pursue misguided science. It was to demonstrate that 100% objective proof is impossible, because all evidence is weighed by subjective humans.
"Disinformation" is a matter of opinion.
Truth is a matter of probability, and everyone gets their own priors.
>It was to demonstrate that 100% objective proof is impossible, because all evidence is weighed by subjective humans.
Everyone, everywhere, already knew that. Scientists and scholars already knew that. The inevitable result of this point of view is solipsism. Nothing is provable, not even one's own existence. OK. So what?
Truth may be a matter of probability but that doesn't make it arbitrary. When we can be 99.9% certain the Earth is more correctly described as "round" than "flat" then some probabilities can be more valid as models for truth than others. We can do experiments to prove the Earth is round. Flat Earthers have often accidentally proven it themselves, despite their priors to the contrary. We can see the curvature of the Earth. We can see ships disappear over the horizon. We can take a plane around the planet. At some point, it becomes true enough, and one has to accept that in some cases consensus reality is sufficient even when imperfect.
No model is real, but some models are useful, and some models are more useful than others. Newtonian physics isn't "real" but it works well enough at some scales. Einstein's relativity is also not "real" but it also works well enough when Newton no longer applies. But only a fool would call either model "disinformation."
And besides, rather than leading people to question their priors and exercise critical thinking, the Flat Earth movement has just bred conspiracy theorists who literally believe the Earth is a flat disk and the moon is a CIA hologram. Let's not give these people credit as if they've done any good for the world.
> The foundational purpose of the Flat Earth movement was not to disinform or to pursue misguided science. It was to demonstrate that 100% objective proof is impossible, because all evidence is weighed by subjective humans.
Wait, in addition to convincing people that the earth was flat? Or did they intentionally pick something they thought was so absurd that people couldn't also accidentally take their example as true, and instead just learn the lesson about 100% objective proof being impossible?
> How would you label information that is objectively false? i.e. someone claiming the Earth is flat?
As being "false".
"misinformation"/"disinformation" labels aren't about things that are false - they're about things that are true, but the propagandist wants to portray them in a bad light, e.g. by claiming that "there are more details that you need to know" or "true but misleading" or "not true in all cases".
