Regarding the rest, I think you’ve just admitted that there were places where lies were used in service of a supposed greater truth, and that the claims used to promote Brexit were willfully inconsistent—but that’s exactly what we mean by dark arts, and no additional empirical data is needed to support the claim. Of course I agree that neither side was honest—but a policy of getting involved in (epistemic) mud fights isn’t about relative muddiness, it’s about actually staying clean. If we care about our epistemic health, there are lots of things we might want to avoid, and dishonesty in service of our prior (debatably effective / correct) ideas seems like a great candidate.
Thanks for the response. First, economists and experts seem pretty unified in thinking that Brexit will be bad for the UK, and somewhat less bad but still negative for the EU. That’s not proof, but it’s fairly convincing data, and I haven’t seen plausible claims to the contrary.
Regarding the rest, I think you’ve just admitted that there were places where lies were used in service of a supposed greater truth, and that the claims used to promote Brexit were willfully inconsistent—but that’s exactly what we mean by dark arts, and no additional empirical data is needed to support the claim. Of course I agree that neither side was honest—but a policy of getting involved in (epistemic) mud fights isn’t about relative muddiness, it’s about actually staying clean. If we care about our epistemic health, there are lots of things we might want to avoid, and dishonesty in service of our prior (debatably effective / correct) ideas seems like a great candidate.