  Many facts are learned through the intermediation of individuals with special
access to information, such as law enforcement officers, officials with a
security clearance, or experts with specific knowledge. This paper considers
whether societies can learn about such facts when information is cheap to
manipulate, produced sequentially, and these individuals are devoid of ethical
motive. The answer depends on an "information attrition" condition pertaining
to the amount of evidence available which distinguishes, for example, between
reproducible scientific evidence and the evidence generated in a crime.
Applications to institution enforcement, social cohesion, scientific progress,
and historical revisionism are discussed.
