[Fis] The Exchange 'Value' of Information: Communication

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

Dear Joseph and FIS colleagues,

In response to your question below, the theme may have appeared 
partially in some sessions (some posts of John Collier, I think; ah, and 
we also had a session on morals by Robert Artigiani), but never centrally.
The list of discussion sessions to check is here 
(https://fis.sciforum.net/fis-discussion-sessions/). Sorry I know I have 
to actualize it...

For my taste, the discussion on disinformation has provided useful 
distinctions and related concepts, but somehow it has flown away, as 
usually happens, from the original aims.
It does not mean it is bad; probably it reflects our own thinking styles 
of approaching or re-approaching our favorite explanatory topics. I 
remember a distinguished biology professor who was unable to discuss 
anything without arriving to the Darwinian selection of the fittest, of 
the adapted phenotype. Then the theme, whatsoever, was solved for him. 
Curious.

Returning to our multifaceted, polyhedric topic, I think major 
explanatory fields needed may be: biology & ethology, psychology & 
psychopathology, anthropology & social science, politics, media studies, 
linguistics & logics & philosophy, computer science & technology. The 
fields could be put differently, of course... My contention is that the 
most "micro" approaches do not bring much useful results, except 
participating in a well-crafted synthesis. The epidemics of fake news, 
arguably one of the most ambitious aims herein, was confronted more or 
less successfully in the media of the past. The new wave, including the 
Deep Fake coming soon, will erode its own basis of gullibility and will 
promote I think authentication AI filters, perhaps similar to the Spam 
filters emerging in the 90s as I already said. The difference between 
the false narrative (finally all news are but micronarratives) and the 
true narrative can be "intuited" by the expert in the topic and this 
could be partially supported or somehow detected by future "open minded" 
Deep L systems... Couldn't it be?

In any event, as long as there be humans around, we will have truths, 
faithfulness, honor, lies, deception, etc. interspersed within the 
existing social means of communication--provided freedom is upheld.

Best wishes,
--Pedro


El 19/01/2020 a las 9:18, Joseph Brenner escribió:
>
> Dear All,
>
> The original intent of my Lecture was to discuss the structure of 
> /information/ as well as disinformation. Some recent postings have 
> suggested to me that there is much science to do in the area of the 
> positive value of true information as opposed to its absence in dis- 
> and mis-information. In particular, I am interested in the value of 
> the information exchanged between two or more individuals.
>
> Again, we are immediately confronted with issues, carefully studied by 
> Loet, of communication, and the difficulty of separating properties of 
> information and communication. For example, a dis-informer must choose 
> a information channel to disseminate his/her disinformation.
>
> I would just say now that I think the value of a good exchange of 
> information between people is moral/emotional, and one cannot get into 
> these issues without reference to psychology and ethics. In other 
> terms, we are here in an area of science to which standard logical and 
> computational approaches cannot apply, but in which we wish to be as 
> rigorous as possible. Any suggestions which are also relevant to the 
> major objective of the New Year Lecture will be included there, with 
> thanks.
>
> By copy of this note, I am asking Pedro to please tell us if this area 
> has been debated or not within FIS.
>
> Best,
>
> Joseph
>
>
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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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