A collage of images, featuring most prominently a person holding a sign reading "no justice no peace"

Author: Mark Satta

AI / Democracy / Technology

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The First Week I Fell for Political Deepfakes Twice (That I Know Of)

For the past decade or so, social epistemologists, among others, have been warning and theorizing about the impending risks of political deepfake images and videos. Thus, I expected the day would come when I would fall for such things.

But I suppose I always vaguely envisioned that I would first be fooled by, or at least unsure about, something of great importance. Perhaps voice cloning technology would be used to release a fake speech from a world leader. Or maybe deepfake video technology would be used to falsely depict a candidate for high political office in a career-ending compromising situation.

I was, in some sense, prepared for such a day. What I wasn’t prepared for was the utter banality of the first political deepfakes that I would discover I had fallen for. Nor was I prepared for the happenstance way in which I (belatedly) managed to figure out they were deepfakes. As someone who works in social epistemology and the philosophy of free speech, I think it is worth reflecting on how deepfakes are actually being deployed and what the upshots might be for the dissemination of knowledge and the future of public discourse.

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Democracy / Governance / Liberty / Public Philosophy

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Free Speech for Political Campaign Lies?

On Tuesday, November 5, citizens of the United States will vote for who they want to serve as their president for the next four years. They will also vote for federal congressional representatives as well as a host of other state and local government officials.

U.S. political campaigns—especially presidential campaigns—are exhausting. This is in part because they are much longer and more expensive than the political campaigns in many other nations.

Another reason why many seem to have found the last three presidential campaigns exhausting is the sheer volume and brazenness of the lies told by Donald Trump and many other Republicans who have come to mimic his campaign style. Trump’s lies have reinforced partisan epistemology while simultaneously creating epistemic chaos that he seeks to use to his advantage.

He has successfully used lies to undermine public trust in U.S. elections. This is starkly exhibited by the fact that nearly 30% of Americans—including roughly two thirds of Republicans—say they believe that the 2020 U.S. Presidential election was stolen.

At least part of the reason that so many Americans believe this patent falsehood is because Trump and his allies have told this lie repeatedly. However, it seems that Trump and his allies don’t really believe it because they have been unwilling to make these same claims in court or in other contexts in which they could face legal sanctions for lying.

In the United States, freedom of speech protects one’s right to lie on the campaign trail but not in the courtroom. In the latter context, liars can be convicted of perjury.

This helps explain the truth-revealing power of courts. The best explanation for why Trump and his co-conspirators refuse to make these false claims about the 2020 election in court where they realize that lying can have significant legal consequences is that they know they are lying.

If significant legal consequences for lying are enough to stop Trump and his co-conspirators from lying in court, one might naturally conclude that the best course of action might be to create similarly significant legal consequences for lying as part of political campaigning. This is a reasonable thought, but it’s not that simple—at least not in the United States. This is because such a course of action conflicts with contemporary social and legal understandings of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution’s protection of free speech.

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Democracy / Liberty / Moral values

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Intellectually Humble Free Speech Law

Scholars familiar with the philosophical arguments in favor of robust free speech protections commonly identify three kinds of arguments given in favor of such protections:

1. Free speech helps us discover truth,
2. Free speech is required for democratic self-governance,
3. Free speech is an important part of autonomy.

Contemporary social and political circumstances—including the persistent spread of viral misinformation via social media—have called these traditional arguments into question.

Can we really claim that free speech helps us discover truth when the data suggest that falsehoods travel, on average, much faster and farther than truthful corrections? Does free speech, on balance, help preserve democracy when the integrity of elections is being undermined by orchestrated viral disinformation campaigns?

Such questions prompted by social, political, and material reality ought to be taken seriously. Taking such questions seriously may require us to reconsider what kinds of arguments best ground free speech rights. This may, in turn, require us to reconsider what good free speech law and policy should look like.

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Duties / Moral values

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A Social Ethics of Belief: Two Lessons from W. K. Clifford

Photo Credit of Sinking Boat to Pok Rie

The nineteenth century British philosopher, W. K. Clifford, is one of a small handful of individuals who titled an essay so effectively that it became the name of an entire philosophical literature: the ethics of belief.

It has been (correctly) observed that “Clifford’s essay is chiefly remembered for two things: a story and a principle.”

The story is that of the negligent shipowner who, by wishful thinking, convinces himself that an unsafe ship is seaworthy, and who thereby sends his passengers to their death when the ship sinks.

The principle is that “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence.”

As a result, Clifford is often viewed one-dimensionally as an (unreasonable) evidentialist, most interested in defending a stringent epistemic position. I think this is unfortunate.

It is unfortunate because such a view of Clifford overlooks what are probably the most relevant aspects of his essay for a “misinformation age” like ours.

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Moral values / Public Philosophy

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Virtue Signaling and Moral Discourse

*This is a co-written piece by A.K. Flowerree and Mark Satta.

Photo Credit to Volodymyr Hryshchenk

Recently, there has been philosophical debate about the moral significance of virtue signaling (i.e. using moral language to make oneself look good).

Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke—who prefer the term ‘moral grandstanding’—argue that virtue signaling corrodes moral discourse and impairs moral progress. Others, like Neil Levy and Evan Westra, argue that virtue signaling is not only morally benign but also sometimes morally beneficial.

Still, as Levy notes, accusations of virtue signaling are “typically understood as a serious charge.” Implicit in Levy’s comment is the observation that virtue signaling is something that people accuse others of doing. This is the fact that interests us here. We suspect that judging others as virtue signalers causes more harm than virtue signaling itself. And we think this is epistemically and ethically significant. (more…)

Democracy / Education / Public Philosophy

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The United States’ Perils of Presidentialism

Photo of the White House. Credit to René DeAnda.

In his seminal 1990 article “The Perils of Presidentialism,” political scientist Juan Linz pointed out that “the vast majority of the stable democracies in the world today are parliamentary regimes” and that, in contrast, “the only presidential democracy with a long history of constitutional continuity is the United States.” Based in part on this observation, Linz concluded that parliamentary democracies are more conducive to stable democracies that presidential democracies.

Linz thought the United States was the exception. What, according to Linz, made the United States exceptional? His answer was that it lacked political polarization and instead had a large moderate consensus that avoided catering to extremists. But this is no longer true.

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Democracy / General / Public Philosophy

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The Truth-Revealing Power of Courts

Image credit: David Veksler on Unsplash.

Lots of people in the United States (and elsewhere) are pessimistic about their ability to distinguish the truth from falsehoods. This is perhaps unsurprising given the relentless attack on truth that the United States experienced during the previous presidential administration.

As one observer recently put it: “There’s so much information that’s biased, that no one believes anything. There is so much out there and you don’t know what to believe, so it’s like there is nothing.”

Given all the uncertainty, polarization, and misinformation people have experience worldwide recently, this is an understandable reaction. Still, it’s troubling. It is hard for individuals or societies to function well without reliable access to truth.

No single solution will fix all of such epistemic challenges. Still, I think we can make meaningful progress by broadening our focus beyond just who or what to believe, to consider when we should believe.

Sometimes answering the question “When should I believe someone?” is enough to help dispel a fog of confusion. The reason why is rooted in common sense: people are more likely to be honest under some circumstances as opposed to others.  (more…)

Democracy / General

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Propagandists, Degrees of Reliability, and Epistemic Nihilism

Reliability is a quality that comes in degrees. For example, a bus that always arrives exactly on time is highly reliable. A bus that often but not always arrives on time is somewhat reliable. A bus that rarely arrives on time is unreliable. People living in areas with public transit commonly discuss which among the less-than-perfectly-reliable modes of transport available are more or less reliable. In doing so, these people show they understand that reliability comes in degrees. They readily acknowledge that some imperfect modes of transport are more reliable than others.

Propagandists prefer their audiences ignore this level of nuance when assessing sources of information. A propagandist prefers that you perceive the propagandist as totally reliable while perceiving all other sources of information as totally unreliable. If this cannot be achieved, the propagandist would prefer that you view all sources as completely unreliable. At least then your decisions about whose claims to trust will rest on grounds other than the reliability of the source.  (more…)