Submitted by Kyle Davis (not verified) on June 26, 2008 - 11:30am.
I disagree with the suggestion that the name gullible.info indicates that the website is a well-crafted ruse. The name could just as likely been meant ironically, being a website with true but hard to believe information. In truth, it is ironic, but not in the way I perceived.
The argument being made in the blog is that the implausible facts make the plausible facts somehow less credible. That, to me, is backwards. In fact, even most of the improbable facts that come across by iGoogle gadget still seem plausible. And, since quite a bit of the non-facts are sound not only plausible but probable, then we discount the rest as things that are probably true. At best, if we are not "in on the joke," we simply assume that gullible.info was taken in by someone else's lie.
The issue here is that the active, intentional spreading of disinformation is, in my opinion, a morally unsound course of action. I apologize for any offence that statement might elicit, but I do feel that "the truth is generally preferable to lies." There's simply no easy way to sugar-coat that.
What's in a name?
I disagree with the suggestion that the name gullible.info indicates that the website is a well-crafted ruse. The name could just as likely been meant ironically, being a website with true but hard to believe information. In truth, it is ironic, but not in the way I perceived.
The argument being made in the blog is that the implausible facts make the plausible facts somehow less credible. That, to me, is backwards. In fact, even most of the improbable facts that come across by iGoogle gadget still seem plausible. And, since quite a bit of the non-facts are sound not only plausible but probable, then we discount the rest as things that are probably true. At best, if we are not "in on the joke," we simply assume that gullible.info was taken in by someone else's lie.
The issue here is that the active, intentional spreading of disinformation is, in my opinion, a morally unsound course of action. I apologize for any offence that statement might elicit, but I do feel that "the truth is generally preferable to lies." There's simply no easy way to sugar-coat that.