Information and the Line

Information (and by extension knowledge) is a funny thing. The more one tries to suppress information, the more it tries to fight back and bounce out into the open. This has been true ever since humans came together to form collectives and eventually the societies that become the cosmopolitan world that is today.

But as information grew in its self-propagation, there has been a parallel track of growth on its nemesis---censorship.

To call the nemesis of information ``censorship'' feels a little too blunt. In an ideal world, all information should be made freely available, with the merits of the reality uncovered by each bit of information debated in public by educated citizens to come to some common form of understanding of what is in the best interests of everyone. In an ideal world, everyone makes their own decisions based on their rational understanding of the information presented before them.

However, we do not live in an ideal world. People are, through ignorance, laziness or sheer lack of time, unable to process all the information that is necessary to make an informed decision. Much of their knowledge is by proxy through synthesis by other people who have chosen to narrow their specialisation to generate the most value out of a small partition of the information present. These proxies have an innate sense of authority that is vested by the people.

Many of these proxies take their role in society seriously, maintaining excellence without compromising on ethics. But there are enough of these proxies who seek to confound, confuddle and conspire for their own benefit given the same information.

We do not easily know at times which category each particular proxy belongs to.

It is always a struggle between being completely open, and being conscientious. Favour openness over conscientiousness, and one runs the risk of erroneous conclusions drawn by the lay public who do not understand the sometimes intricate logical and statistical arguments needed to make sense of the information. Favour contrarily, and the lay public raises suspicions on some form of grand conspiracy by those-who-are-not-them against them.

Where do we draw the line then?