The fact that the terms “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “conspiracy theory” figure as prominently as they do in contemporary American political discourse—and within that context alone—indicates, at the very least, that they are of political value.

“Misinformation”: This refers to content that happens to be false but which is not understood to be untrue. The purveyors of misinformation do not intend to deceive.

If there is something especially noxious about this, and if those who espouse misinformation deserve to be morally condemned, then we all deserve such condemnation, for we have all been wrong about all sorts of things throughout our lives. This is the case for all individual human beings and every human society that has ever existed. If humans weren’t finite, if we had God’s omniscience, “misinformation” would never arise because we would never make mistakes.

But given the inherent limitations of the human condition, we learn by learning from our mistakes, i.e., by realizing, after the fact, in any number of ways, that what we had previously accepted as accurate was actually “misinformation.” Outside of our contemporary political universe, this process, far from being condemned, was recognized universally as the maturation process. The world’s great historical wisdom........

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