[Fis] Misinformation. 1. A Role for FIS 2. Terry's Strategy

Fri Jan 10 08:49:25 CET 2020

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I believe I am allowed to make comments ‘on my own’, not as coordinator.
“There will be recursion”.

Barstow would seem to need all the benefit of the presumption of innocence
of any intention of disinformation. Might FIS have a role to play in
bringing our collective view in this matter to Barstow’s attention? In
principle, if he is a scientist, he should be open to a critique. In this
connection I note the comments of both Terry and Mark, the latter referring
to my definition of an institution, the former to IS4SI.

I hope that Terry is right that the AI tools of disinformation may be used
to combat it, but this will not be sufficient. For me, the source and form
of an ‘informational immune system’ may be such that it cannot be
‘automated’. In encryptiam spes?  The problem is in ourselves, and
secondarily in our current economic system, and this is where the
intellectual effort is also needed. The corollary is that an ‘institutional
response’, if we were to make one, should not be cast in terms of truth, but
of science and meaning. “Battling over relativism and meaning” is an
inevitable part of a responsible human condition, but I still would rather
do so from inside FIS, IS4SI, ICPI (International Center for the Philosophy
of Information) and IGSIS (Institute for a Global Sustainable Information
Society) than from inside . . .    

Thank you and best wishes,

Joseph 

  _____  

From: Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Terrence W.
DEACON
Sent: jeudi, 9 janvier 2020 19:14
To: Mark Johnson
Cc: fis
Subject: Re: [Fis] misinformation, a lecture

Dear colleagues,

I am glad that we're having this conversation. It is not just timely, but
urgent.

The video that Stan posted of David Barstow's talk at the UC Berkeley
Goldman School of Public Policy is chilling.

Please take the time to watch it.

Whatever else you want to quibble about with respect to the words "truth"
"reinforcement" "coherence" or whatever

the danger of not taking this problem seriously is monumental, existential,
and deserving our serious attention. 

It is the challenge of understanding referential error-correction as opposed
to the mere rectification of signal corruption.

And although it is not merely an "academic" issue, it demands serious
intellectual effort by those of us who study the very nature of information.
But I fear that we are lagging behind in our theorizing and being
overwhelmed in the same way that journalists are being swamped by spin
factories and powerful demagogues. We are still arguing over the definitions
of information, battling over relativism and meaning, and still lack a
shared formal analysis of reference, interpretation, and informational
causality. I see some faint glimmer of hope in progress made in encryption
and decryption and in the way that blockchain systems help to provide a form
of encrypted transparency. So even as AI is making deep fakes possible and
social media enables disinformation to spread far more effectively than
carefully vetted information, it may also be possible to explore how these
same tools might be repurposed to provide a kind of informational immune
system or automated therapies to combat information pathogens and
information cancers. IS4SI has a role to play in this drama.

— Terry

On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 7:09 AM Mark Johnson <johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com> wrote:

"the truth needs reinforcement" is slightly chilling don't you think? Isn't
this an epistemological error?

Does beauty need reinforcement? Or goodness?

So what is this? An institution steps in to defends the grounds for its
continued viability and claim to be the arbiter of truth. Its defense is
amplified as the uncertainty of its environment increases and its judgements
questioned. And its defense if itself (and "truth") increases environmental
uncertainty, as (among other things) other institutions defend their
competing versions of truth. 

Positive feedback isn't it?

What's lost is not truth, but coherence.

Mark

On Thu, 9 Jan 2020, 14:44 Stanley N Salthe, <ssalthe at binghamton.edu> wrote:

STAN

https://ucsd.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=35394

_______________________________________________
Fis mailing list
Fis at listas.unizar.es
http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
----------
INFORMACIÓN SOBRE PROTECCIÓN DE DATOS DE CARÁCTER PERSONAL

Ud. recibe este correo por pertenecer a una lista de correo gestionada por
la Universidad de Zaragoza.
Puede encontrar toda la información sobre como tratamos sus datos en el
siguiente enlace:
https://sicuz.unizar.es/informacion-sobre-proteccion-de-datos-de-caracter-pe
rsonal-en-listas
Recuerde que si está suscrito a una lista voluntaria Ud. puede darse de baja
desde la propia aplicación en el momento en que lo desee.
http://listas.unizar.es
----------

_______________________________________________
Fis mailing list
Fis at listas.unizar.es
http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
----------
INFORMACIÓN SOBRE PROTECCIÓN DE DATOS DE CARÁCTER PERSONAL

Ud. recibe este correo por pertenecer a una lista de correo gestionada por
la Universidad de Zaragoza.
Puede encontrar toda la información sobre como tratamos sus datos en el
siguiente enlace:
https://sicuz.unizar.es/informacion-sobre-proteccion-de-datos-de-caracter-pe
rsonal-en-listas
Recuerde que si está suscrito a una lista voluntaria Ud. puede darse de baja
desde la propia aplicación en el momento en que lo desee.
http://listas.unizar.es
----------

-- 

Professor Terrence W. Deacon
University of California, Berkeley

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listas.unizar.es/pipermail/fis/attachments/20200110/1c75b893/attachment.html>