Michael Morreau and Erik J. Olsson's Response to Commentaries

This chapter reports preliminary findings from a study of epistemic consequences of misinformation in social networks. It uses the methodology of computer simulation, constructing computer models of Bayesian learning in networks that include untrustworthy sources. Censorship and de-platforming take time and money, and they violate social and democratic norms of inclusiveness and free speech. Enquirers came to recognize false ranters as such, and to treat their testimony as evidence to the contrary. Gardiner in her commentary recognizes that there are “cases where assertions can be a reason to believe the opposite” but claims that these are “marginal, require significant background evidence and context, and are about limited domains of assertion”. Real-life sources of misinformation, Nguyen argues, are harder to identify than our reliably false ranters. They “provide a mixture of true claims and false claims” and “strategically clever misinformation specialists will work to ensure that their true claims are relatively easy to verify, and their false claims relatively hard to”.