[Fis] FW: The Age of Discord. Why it is possible?

Mon Nov 25 23:29:29 CET 2019

Dear FIS Colleagues,
I have read the current discussion about “The Age of Discord. & The Foundations of DIS-information Science” with a great interest.

After every letter I ask myself: Why it is possible?
Can we Dis-inform or tell a lie to the cells or to the cat, bee, fish, etc. ?
Can they (the cell, the cat, bee, fish, etc.) tell a lie to each other?
I think it is very important that only humans can tell a lie only to other humans.
Where is the proof that what we say is not a lie or dis-information.
We may believe that we do not tell a lie but who knows ... 
The sentence “This is a lie!” may be a lie!
etc.

Friendly greetings
Krassimir

From: Terrence W. DEACON 
Sent: Monday, November 25, 2019 7:55 PM
To: Joseph Brenner 
Cc: Foundations of Information Science Information Science ; Pedro C. Marijuan 
Subject: Re: [Fis] FW: The Age of Discord. The Foundations ofDIS-information Science

I applaud Joseph's identification of what I consider the most serious threat to modern civilization. 
As an organization that takes as its primary aim to be an understanding of information in its most complete sense,
what could be more valuable than for us to focus the goal of finding ways to mitigate the influence of IT-based disinformation.
This is far from a trivial issue, and it requires a full scientific conceptualization of information to succeed;
i.e. one that takes the referential (meaningful) and normative (pragmatic) aspects of information seriously.
Rather than bickering over our differing theoretical perspectives, we could spend our efforts exploring what each might contribute to this critical need.
We can add to these challenges the need to also counter the rapid development of surveillance technologies and AI-based manipulation of opinion and behavior.
In other words, there is so much that we collectively have to offer if we can just focus on what matters.

On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 7:38 AM Joseph Brenner <joe.brenner at bluewin.ch> wrote:

  Dear Pedro and All,

  Disinformation is produced and disseminated in four major domains: politics, science, communications and the operation of the current social system.

    1.. Politics 
    2.. Science 
    3.. Communications 
    4.. The Social System; Hypocrisy 

  The reason I refer to disinformation as a science is not to ennoble it, but to emphasize that combating it requires close attention to its scientific and philosophical properties and dynamics. Let us use the term narrative to refer to a ‘unit’ of the discourse in the domains, and I give just a few examples here.

    1.. Politics 
  Left-wing and right-wing politicians are equally bad. This doctrine pushed by the left-wing publicist Ralph Nader during his run for the U.S. Presidency in 2000 led to his gaining enough Democratic voters to result in the victory of the Republican Bush and the Iraq war. Despite the Obama interlude, it set the pre-conditions for the subsequent emergence of Trump.

    2.. Science 
  Driven by fundamentalist dogma, disinformation about the risks vs. the necessity of vaccination is increasingly common. Similarly, the number of people who believe (or claim to believe, see below) that the Earth is flat is increasing compared to the last Century. Many Americans still believe that global warming is a hoax, propagated by ‘Communists’, interested in destroying our economic system (see 4).

    3.. Communications 
  Disinformation about the Internet leads to resistance to control in the name of ‘Free Speech’. I defy anyone who has seen recent interviews of Zuckerberg on TV to claim that he does not deserve criminal prosecution.

    4.. The Social System; Hypocrisy 
  If people are forced to pretend publicly that they believe the disinformation they receive (to keep their jobs, etc.), hypocrisy becomes institutionalized and endemic. It is then possible to ask whether the current neo-capitalist system in fact depends on disinformation for its continued existence.

  Finally, it is very easy, IMHO, to distinguish between disinformation and misinformation, without becoming too ‘technical’: the latter is essentially accidental, although its consequences may be disastrous in individual cases. The former is intentional, and its consequences are becoming increasingly disastrous. Theories of Information Science that neglect or occult the role of intentionality in the transfer of information, that is, communications, leave the door open to further disinformation.

  I welcome both agreements and disagreements with the above, as well as possible themes for FIS and FDS discussion.

  Best wishes,

  Joseph

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  From: Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Pedro C. Marijuan
  Sent: lundi, 25 novembre 2019 14:22
  To: fis at listas.unizar.es
  Subject: Re: [Fis] FW: The Age of Discord

  Dear List,

  Am responding to Joseph and to Diego.

  To the former, I agree on the quantitative mirage when trying to formalize history. Perhaps the best contents in Turchin's books refer to qualitative aspects, for instance the development of "frontier" countries he discusses (the cases of Russia, Spain, and US and others). The main point on the emergence of those long term trends of progression/regression or oscillations is very intriguing and I think we cannot substantiate it easily. The organization of an ad hoc discussion session would be quite interesting (can someone help on that possibility?). The relationship with the historical acceleration an the emergence of new of information flows would also be intriguing. As I comment below, it can be a fertile new field and a necessity to be covered by information philosophy. We badly need to put the most relevant aspects in an integrative view.

  To Diego, my focus was not only in the Latin American countries. If we contemplate recent months/years, we see many other mass explosions (Algeria, Tunisia, Thailand, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Ukraine, Jordania...) and I had already included other Arab countries, plus Spain, France, and other movements: Trumpism, Brexiterism, and also we could include Metooism, indignados, and all kinds of offendidisms & populisms... Everywhere there are deep causes around for mass-mobilization, some are different, some may be common. But it is not just the arrival of "conquistadores" scapegoat. By the way, they parted away two centuries ago, and some of those countries were not in bad shape 50-60 years ago (Argentina, Venezuela, Uruguay, Cuba.... The case of Argentina is amazing: after WWI she was the fourth richest country of the world. Venezuela's case, unfortunately, is more dramatic). Coincidentally, in discussions with Islamic-inclined parties, I was surprised to find another scapegoat widely argumented: the Crusades. Islamic societies failed to make the different modern transitions due to the cultural-political crisis brought forth by the crusades (seven-eight centuries ago!). Well, to escape from traditional cliches or from political preferences I think Acemoglu's views are quite balanced about these themes, particularly in his 2012 book, Why Nations Fail. Our colleague Howard Bloom has also written penetrating analyses on the historical evolution of Islamic societies versus the Western world.

  Summing up, that the new media are one of those deep causes contributing to irritated socio-political and cultural climates is an idea that can be found in quite a few analyses today. Coincidentally I could read this weekend an international analyst with very similar opinions to my own on the e-destabilization in the mentioned world regions. Widespread mass-additions to e-life are a fact: data on use of screens are outrageous. Adults in the US spend on average more that ten hours daily watching, reading, listening to or simply interacting with media. US adolescents spend an average of 9 hours daily in front of their cell phones screens. In parallel, a growing epidemics of adolescent medicalization and prescription of opioids and drug abuse is taking shape. That means a brave new style of life and a brave new mode of thinking are on the advance... 

  Best regards

  --Pedro

  El 22/11/2019 a las 12:54, Joseph Brenner escribió:

    Dear Pedro and All,

    I agree in general with Pedro on the importance of Turchin’s transdisciplinary approach, but feel that something is missing in his attempted synthesis in Cliodynamics. I say attempted for two reasons: for me, he overemphasizes the role of mathematics – historical databases and such, and the title of his journal is Quantitative History and Cultural Evolution. This is not to say that mathematical methods do not have a role, but if the objective is that history become an analytical, predictive science like others so described, I see the potential loss of its essential qualitative aspects. The statement that Trump is worse than Nixon is not analytical.

    The (clio)dynamics of Pedro’s 5 points are also non-analytical and non-mathematizable. However, he uses two, related terms that I think should be unpacked: 1) low progress 2) secular oscillation. I see decades-long trends of re-gress, such that only if the sinusoidal oscillation can also move backwards is it fair to call it an oscillation.

    If it is a fundamental irrationality that is underlying current cultural evolution –or perhaps better devolution, then the practice of Information Science and Philosophy must take this into account to be meaningful.

    I am not arguing for the sake of arguing, but the repetition of only the most commonly accepted usages of terms is not going to help.

    Thank you and best wishes,

    Joseph

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    From: Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Pedro C. Marijuan
    Sent: vendredi, 22 novembre 2019 12:14
    To: 'fis'
    Subject: [Fis] The Age of Discord

    Dear FIS & IS4SI Colleagues,

    "The Age of Discord" was the title of a lecture that the historian and sociologist Peter Turchin, founder of the Cliodynamics approach, gave recently in the Netherlands. The slides can be easily obtained in the web (in his blog). The content was mainly referring to a decades-long trend of low progress and rise of inequality, and as a consequence growing social unrest. It would form part of a secular oscillation in history... But I think there is a new potent factor: the hyperconnectivity we talked weeks ago.

    These days we are watching violent demonstrations in numerous countries: Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Nicaragua, Iran, Irak, Lebanon... plus Hongkong, Spain (Barcelona), France (gilets jaunes), and the rising polarization from Trumpism and Brexit. There is a contagion effect in some cases. But a common factor is the influence of social networks. In several aspects: 

    --How easy is to organize demonstrations and activist concentrations.

    --How easy is to disseminate information that efficiently counteracts governments' efforts to maintain social order. 

    --How easyly anger and hatred are shared among the masses, generating a collective climate of insults, physical violence, highest irritation.

    --How easily outright lies, disinformation, vitriolic attacks are jumping from screen to screen to the eyeballs of hypnotized watchers.

    --The proportion of "negative" to "positive" (say of emotional responses) has become the highest in the history of communication.

    My opinion is that the new media and new modalities of hyperconnection, still deprived of constraining cultural patterns, are the genuine movers of this "Age of Discord", without rejecting the other factors implied in Turchin secular views. This time there is something really new agitating history and the masses (like printing press, steam engines...). Is there hope that collective intelligence will domesticate this artificial information flow soon? Of course, without a loss of individual freedoms.

    Best wishes

    --Pedro

-- -------------------------------------------------Pedro C. MarijuánGrupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.eshttp://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/------------------------------------------------- 

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-- -------------------------------------------------Pedro C. MarijuánGrupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.eshttp://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________
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Professor Terrence W. Deacon
University of California, Berkeley

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