[Fis] On disinformation

Sun Dec 6 07:58:33 CET 2020

dear all,

i’d like to draw your attention to michael tomasello’s intensive work on the phylogenesis and ontogenesis of the information capacities of humans for cognition, communication and co-operation. (tomasello had worked at the max planck institute for evolutionary anthropology in leipzig.) wrapping up, we can draw on evidence that the primordial step to humanness is owed to a change in co-operation that brought about a change from the co-operation type of our animal ancestors to the start of a human-specific social co-operation type that boosted over hundred thousands of years a new sociality and even began to be replicated by the individual dvelopment of children. these findings are most striking. that is, children up to the age of three show a kind of inborne inclination towards co-operative behaviour vis-á-vis adult persons and learn then through socialisation that there are rules that govern our co-operation. 

the important point i want to highlight here is that human cognition, communication and co-operation are dependent on each other. the phylogenetic change as to co-operation needed to be underpinned by an appropriate change in communication that, in turn, needed to be underpinned by an appropriate change in cognition. in short: in order to be able to co-operate successfully humans were forced not only to understand how nature seems to work but also to tell the other those findings about nature, because they are helpful for the common goal, in a truthful way. that is, we humans are set from the outset on being helpful for co-operation, being truthful in communication and being keen on true cognition. 

why then can we assume that disinformation has been for long there accompanying our civilisational existence? my answer is that in building these civilisations during the last 10.000 yrs we, finally, as is told by the story of odysseus, gave preponderance to rather self-interested intentions that today turn out to be detrimental to the continuation of civilisation on earth. there is a worldwide trend towards self-interestedness, which needs to be countered by the insight into what is needful globally to govern our world to continue our existence. hope is there because we have the anthropological setting for turning around. 

wolfgang

> Am 06.12.2020 um 02:16 schrieb Howard Bloom <howlbloom at aol.com>:
> 
> dai,
> 
> as an indication that your idea that disinformation is the norm and consensus the exception,
> 
> look how hard previous ages have worked to impose consensus.  spreading roman culture amongst tribal peoples in the days of the roman empire.  throwing dissidents to the lions. making sure that everyone's education was the same with the same roughly five books studied and the same alphabet used from roughly 200 bc onward in china.   hunting heretics once rome turned christian.  the inquisition.  the absolute rule of the tsar in russia, with all printing presses used for just one thing: printing the tsar's ukases.
> 
> howard
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dai Griffiths <dai.griffiths.1 at gmail.com>
> To: fis at listas.unizar.es
> Sent: Sat, Dec 5, 2020 9:41 am
> Subject: Re: [Fis] On disinformation
> 
> Dear all,
> We tend to think of 'surveillance capitalism' and other related trends as being a disruption of normality. But seen from a longer perspective, perhaps we are living in an unusual period (or the possibly the end of it) in which there has been relatively widespread social agreement about the nature of the world that we are living in. "Ask the priest" used to be the answer to questions of eschatology or social propriety (and often still is) but that doesn't help much in establishing who is giving the orders or why, and what is going on in the town over the hill. We have relied on newspapers for that, and, in the UK, the BBC. As a result, flat earthers haven't much traction recently compared with the conflict between Galileo and the church, and even McCarthyism was primarily about economic power and control, not as unhinged as the witchcraft hysteria that Miller (rightly) compared it to. If it is true that we have been living in an oasis of relative consensus, where did that consensus come from? 
> I would argue that it emerged from the inherent limitations in access to printing technology, and the editorial, commercial, political and social processes that developed to cope with that limited access. It is these processes that generated the authority of some ideas over others, the generalised trust in some media rather than others, and the ability to identify consistent biases in those that were trusted.
> I suggest that we should recognise that disinformation, fake news, and plain old gossip, are the default state for human social interactions. It is evolved and designed social structures and institutions that overcome this. Our challenge is then to disentangle the way that that informational authority was generated in the past, and the (perhaps disfunctional) way that it is generated at present. My suspicion is that we won't get far in improving the situation unless we question the central role of the recommender algorithms that have taken over much of the work of human editors in determining what is seen heard and read, and by whom. To have any chance of achieving political traction in the face of commercial interests and personal preferences, proposals for change in that area will have to tell and extremely clear story about how we got to where we are, where we should try to go next, and how we could get there.
> Best
> Dai
> On 04/12/2020 14:06, Pedro C. Marijuan wrote:
> 
> Dear Terry and FIS colleagues,
> 
> Thanks for the reflections--I will try to continue with rather disconnected ideas.
> 
> The term 'surveillance capitalism' introduced by Shoshana Zuboff (indeed complemented with a parallel 'surveillance authoritarianism') is  addressed to cover the new negative aspects of current technological developments. However, my opinion is that these phenomena are inherent in all human societies in all epochs, for there is always a tension, say, between the individual "fitness" and the whole social "commons", which can be set in quite many different dynamic equilibrium points, basically maintained via circulating or communicating info flows. It is easy to see that information, disinformation, surveillance, persuasion, and coercion travel together in the socialization-communication pack. Historically, every new means of communication (then we land on McLuhan) alters those social equilibria and somehow demands a social or cultural reaction to re-establish an acceptable collective situation. The problem now, you mentioned in the previous post, is the enormous concentration of power, of brute info flows,  around these new media--without appropriate social curation at the time being. I doubt that these technologies can bring the solution by themselves . Institutional, social intervention would be needed...  Scholarly analysis might be important, providing cues on the the influence on individual and collective moods/personalities, on the possible counteracting institutional alternatives and on the needed new cultural norms to abide along these new forms of communication (sort of 'traffic regulations'), even a personal hygiene of communication... 
> 
> The problems are far more serious, complex, and faster than in McLuhan's time. We have to reinvent his views... But how can we organize a collective, cumulative discussion? I was thinking that a feasible first step, apart of what we can do directly in the list, could be calling for a Special Issue in some interesting, multidisciplinary Journal. Well, at the time being, Terry, Joseph, and myself are promoting a sort of ad hoc group to move things--anyone else would join??
> 
> Best regards
> --Pedro
> 
> El 01/12/2020 a las 22:54, Terrence W. DEACON escribió:
> 
> Dear Pedro,
> 
> Great suggestions. I like the idea of an ongoing separate thread addressing disinformation.
> Of course I only addressed Western disinformation and didn't even touch on highly massaged information that is often disseminated with centralized governmental control.
> This disinforms by selective censorship and redundancy and is increasingly taking advantage of the myriad new forms of surveillance that can be used to shape the information made available to different targeted audiences.
> And Yes McLuhan is definitely relevant.
> I wonder how he would think about the effects of these new media.
> How do they reshape the nature of content?
> How they can be understood using his notions of hot and cool?
> What is now in the rear view mirror within the new media that once was in the foreground?
> On these matters Bob Logan might want to weigh in.
> 
> -- 
> Professor Terrence W. Deacon
> University of California, Berkeley
> 
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