[Fis] FW: On disinformation. Why disinformation survives

[Mark Johnson]

Hi Joe,

Regarding your "objective altruistic criteria" (I quite agree), is this in
Bob Ulanowicz's and Loet's territory, do you think? Bob - are you there?

Is this a trade-off between autocatalysis and mutual information in
communication ecosystems? That would provide some kind of metric -
particularly in the light of Loet's work.

Personally, I would expect distortions in anticipatory systems which might
be analysable through communication processes. Trump's tweets, and the
chilling dynamics unfolding around what is obviously a stand-off in
electoral trust are an excellent test-ground for some practical work.

What do you think?

Mark

On Tue, 8 Dec 2020 at 08:37, Joseph Brenner <joe.brenner at bluewin.ch> wrote:

> Dear All,
>
>
>
> Disinformation survives and flourishes in part because supported by
> statements such as those of Bloom. They are strictly equivalent in form to
> Trump’s saying that “there are good people on both
>
> sides”, when one of those sides is composed of people who kill peaceful
> protesters.
>
>
>
> In the United States, despite their uniformly good reaction to the
> current attacks on the electoral process, the courts will not be able to
> help in a catastrophically large number of cases in the future. Apart from
> the ideologue majority in the Supreme Court, the lower courts have been
> stuffed with young right wing reactionaries who will poison decisions for
> at least a generation.
>
>
>
> A new process is required, one that explicitly recognizes the existence of
> objective altruistic criteria in behavior, where economic or social
> self-interest can be shown to be absent. I order not to drown in pessimism,
> I repeat to myself the statement of the biologist E. O. Wilson: “Selfishness
> beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups.
> Everything else is commentary.”
>
>
>
> I like to think that this discussion, in a small way, is part of such a
> process, since the trans-categorial role of information is crucial.
>
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
>
>
> Joseph
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> *From:* Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] *On Behalf Of *Howard
> Bloom
> *Sent:* mardi, 8 décembre 2020 02:39
> *To:* dai.griffiths.1 at gmail.com; fis at listas.unizar.es
> *Subject:* Re: [Fis] On disinformation
>
>
>
> thanks, dai.
>
>
>
> one man's truth is another man's lie.  each subculture has its own truth
> and its own devil spilling disinformation.
>
>
>
> to trumpers, joe biden is part of a coup to take the white house
> fraudulently. to trumpers, the democrats are the liars.
>
>
>
> to anti-trumpers, trump is trying to pull off a coup to upend the
> election.  trump and his "army" are the liars.  the disinformation spewers.
>
>
>
> which group is right?  which truth is right?
>
>
>
> how do we judge?  especially if freedom of speech is one of our most basic
> values?
>
>
>
> so far, we are relying on the courts.
>
>
>
> with warmth and oomph--howard
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dai Griffiths <dai.griffiths.1 at gmail.com>
> To: fis at listas.unizar.es <fis at listas.unizar.es>
> Sent: Mon, Dec 7, 2020 9:05 am
> Subject: Re: [Fis] On disinformation
>
> That's all true, Howard.
>
> I think it is important to distinguish between compliance and consensus.
> Throwing dissidents to the lions does the trick for compliance, and
> preventing challenges to power (as per the shocking first chapter of
> Foucault's Discipline and Punish).
>
> As to consensus, the creation of a canon is partly a practical matter:
> given it takes so long to copy a book, which ones do we think are worth
> copying and sharing. Printing, and now information technology, have
> completely changed these decisions. But on top of these features of the
> medium, there is a political process. For example, it seems likely that
> leaders in early China saw how consensus through control of the canon
> could provide an alternative (or a useful addition) to lion feeding as a
> method for achieving authority, by promoting Confucian ideas. Both
> strategies are at work in Hong Kong today, it seems.
>
> The two strategies continue side by side in differing combinations. Some
> absolute rulers don't worry too much about consensus outside the group of
> those standing in line to assassinate them. Others focus more on control of
> the development of consensus through control of the communications ecology,
> and perhaps Russia has taken the lead in this. Neither of these two
> extremes is attractive, but both are widespread. Most of us on this list
> have been fortunate to live in a democratic space carved out between the
> rock of forced compliance, and the hard place of manipulated consensus. The
> configuration and maintenance of that space always involves hard work,
> compromise, and trade-offs that are never ideal for everybody (and maybe
> for nobody), but I am certainly grateful for it.
>
> If we want to say something sensible about all this, and if we want to
> make any practical step which might preserve both our discourses and
> democracy, then I think we need to address two quite different kinds of
> questions:
>
> 1) What is the impact of information technology, its accompanying
> regulatory framework and established patterns of use, on the ecology of
> communications? How might the patterns change if we altered this or that
> part of the system? These are cybernetic questions.
>
> 2) Who is benefiting from the emerging communications ecology, what are
> they doing to shape it's future, and why? What (if any) changes would we
> like to persuade legislators and organisations to make in response and how
> can this be achieved? These are political questions.
>
> Dai
>
> On 06/12/2020 02:16, Howard Bloom wrote:
>
> 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>
> <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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> --
>
> -------------------------------------------------
>
> Pedro C. Marijuán
>
> Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
>
>
>
> pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
>
> http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
>
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> -----------------------------------------
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> Professor David (Dai) Griffiths
>
>
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> Professor David (Dai) Griffiths
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-- 
Dr. Mark William Johnson
Institute of Learning and Teaching
Faculty of Health and Life Sciences
University of Liverpool

Phone: 07786 064505
Email: johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com
Blog: http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com
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