[epgui]

I think framing it as a war is problematic. We’re not waging war against pollution and CO2, we’re trying to limit and manage it. Disinformation and misinformation can be conceptualized similarly as information pollution. Our brains don’t have magic powers: garbage in, garbage out. Just like AI.

[Applejinx]

Objective reality does exist, even if it's hotly denied. And brazen denial is one thing we do repeatedly see in all this, which has drawn my attention to the specific things that get the most brazen denial, with the most emphasis (and, where possible, the most brigading and reinforcing by mysterious upvotes/downvotes/manipulations)

I get that it's desirable and appealing to frame it as random noise and organically produced info pollution from dumb people who just want attention. It would be nice to think this.

There's also an argument that this is indeed war waged through other means… interestingly, with a death toll very comparable to the old-fashioned, less deniable forms of open warfare. If there were no pandemic, someone would've had to invent one… or make do with bombings, vehicular assaults, and other sorts of terrorist action. But since there is a pandemic, the war becomes essentially a matter of maximizing the performance of the pandemic by any means necessary.

Could be worse, could be nukes. That would be more obvious, mind you.

[epgui]

I'm not sure that I understand your point. I don't consider something worse just because it's called a war, and I don't mean to suggest in any way that this isn't a real and serious problem: in fact, I compared it to pollution, and I consider pollution to be a serious and urgent problem.

I just feel like the war metaphor is not great: it evokes unnecessary violence and connotes confrontation. We wage war against each other, but we can solve serious problems together. Neither war nor problem-solving are zero-sum games, arguably, but not everyone can win in war.

[Applejinx]

Yes, it does evoke unnecessary violence. If it's modern warfare and a guy is piloting a drone over a little screen and kills dozens of people, it's still war and violence even if he's not bayoneting them directly. If it's postmodern warfare and a guy is piloting a meme over a keyboard and kills hundreds of thousands of people, that's still war too. Ingenious war, but still war.