> Not sure you noticed - but your reply is to a new contributor to this discussion.

Yes, i hope you didnt thought this applied to yourself, far from it. I also jumped in a few posts ago on a conversation you had with somebody else.

I also didnt want to imply that missinformation spreading viraly wasnt a problem. Its just not fixable with authoritarian measures and the problem goes far deeper then "just" liberties. The problem is that any attempt to ban the sharing of information means you need a means to accurately determine what is wrong or incomplete information (jumping over the whole problem of miss-/diss/mal-information and true information without context to keep the post short) without the ability to challenge errors. By attempting to ban information you are interfering in your reality finding process. Doing this is extremely dangerous due to the inability to judge implications of errors and such errors being extremely profitable. Its a truly horrible idea, no matter how nice solving the problem of spreading missinformation (while actually being impossible) sounds. Its the patching out of a vital safety check without which you loose your ability to error-correct. As everywhere, without a means to error correct, all the problems such an approach allows for already exist, time just hasnt caught up.

I think this is a vital point people overlook. Its not a moral argument, totalitarianism isnt just horrible, it does not work. Its a process that leads to the creation of errors in thinking, dismantles the means to error correct and breeds corruption. Its groups of idiots moving forward while ignoring the consequences, encouraged by socio/psychopaths profiting off such movements temporarily at the cost of long term problems it creates.

>And my question prior... what do you think can be done to stop people like Trump rise to power

I mentioned it at the end of my first post, i think the solution is as old as time and as with everything technology makes them more solveable. You cant fix stupidity centrally, its a decentralized problem for which a centralized solution would require totalitarian perfection due to loosing the ability to error-correct.

So its down to everyone to have a honest conversation about how stupid they are on individual questions and whether they are emotionally mature enough to have that conversation without becoming cynical. So figuring out where your views are wrong, or incomplete, where you are acting ideologically or are just reacting to a frame. Instead of attempting to get rid of miss-information you focus on figuring out where you can say with a high degree of certainty, and strict requirements for falsifiability what is likely true. So what is non-missinfornation, approximating base-reality from which we then can have meaningful conversations. Since we make the effort to communicate, we clearly decided on cooperation instead of conflict. So lets work on making that more productive, after all there is a core question here. Are you actually interested in being right or do you just take pleasure from feeling right? If its the later, know that reality is a bitch that will win every time over your feelings. Clinging on regardless is how being stupid looks from the perspective of a stupid person. Which we all are sometimes. Which cognitive biases trick us into ignoring or brushing aside.

I think this is a task where tooling can help and where we can give a hand to other people in the process. Talk to people meaningfully, think steelmening instead of strawmaning. You might be missing a perspective somebody else overcorrected for. Almost none of the issues are one dimensional, its all spectrums you cant overcorrect on without being just as wrong as before. Understand how people came to a conclusion and show up errors instead of regurgitating your own views. As this is obviously difficult (take this from the experience of a seasoned idiot) its clear why we havent "solved" it yet. But i believe it is something technology can help us with. And cooperative decentralized solutions are still a lot more solvable then the insane idea of trying to dictate reality.

It would also help with the old star trek question of where technology will move towards. Will we manage to create a world in which technologies are useful tools or are we headed for becoming clogs in a malfunctioning machine we dont understand and cant control?

This problem is hard to fix because everyone believes they themselves are not an idiot, everyone else is. Thats an error caused by cognitive biases. But one were we can help each other and develop tooling to achieve better results all around. I suspect there will be massive payoffs once we just agree on trying to be less stupid and meaning well, even just for the benefit of a less shit future for yourself.