Its intent is to make the recipient appear artificially rational or correct before others, as long as they accede to it – so that the notion being passed, can spread more easily. Fact-checking therefore, is a favorite pretense of the disinformant – along with misdirection, appeal to ignorance or authority (debunking), or tag-line memorization. The disinformant of course does not want to be caught lying, and misinformation can be detected as a lie. Disinformation is chewing gum, which the consumer thinks is actual food. Not a syllogism or statement of inference in realityĭisinformation deals in ‘facts’ purposed to a state of one ‘being un-informed’ – as it gives one no actual salient or critical information at all. Incoherent/Not even wrong ( bedeutungslos) – Babble.Wrong ( sinnlos) – Factually incorrect (principally or ~100% wrong).Misinformation (Latin ‘Mis’ – bad/wrong) – a state of holding information which is bad/wrong (this can be the result of both intent or non-intent). Often it is fabricated so as to be detected at some point in the future when it will serve to discredit and harm the most. Its intent is to injure or make the recipient appear as if irrational or error prone to others. Misinformation deals in lies purposed to a state of one ‘being ill-informed’ – as it gives one wrong information.
Being ‘partly correct’ (more accurately, the four forms of Disinformation below) is a status of information, not person. Intent is the status of a person, not of the information. This ‘added intelligence’ is sometimes misinterpreted as ‘intent’ (apparent intent) – hence the obvious confusion. It is a status of the information therefore, and not of the person carrying it. This ‘added focus’ is not intent per se, but rather additional intelligence embedded inside the information itself. The former often identifies the focus of the propaganda and the latter most often does not. Once detected, a 10% lie (disinformation) is much more informative than a 100% lie (misinformation) – as the latter is merely incorrect. But before we outline these definition delineations to a Wittgenstein level however, let’s briefly examine a principle I learned in my intelligence days.
Each state is defined below, along with its Wittgenstein identifier in parenthesis. Information is qualified by its logical calculus – and not by one’s fantasy regarding their ability to ‘read’ their opponent.