[Fis] [External Email] Re: Summary of the New Year LectureDiscussion. The coal mine
Joseph Brenner
joe.brenner at bluewin.ch
Fri Jan 31 09:25:10 CET 2020
Dear Stan, Pedro and All,
I own a coal mine and obtain a public subsidy to continue to operate it. I
claim that mining coal does not pollute and its use does not contribute to
global warming, and I support this view by referring to fake experts.
To what extent is this intention to disinform not built into my genome?
Would the biologists in the group please confirm that ‘I’ am still a member
of the human species, of a variety however characterized by the existence of
this built-in intent? Even if it learned, it must correspond to a capacity
for learning such things to the exclusion of others. Accordingly, such
humans have simply adapted and use the mechanisms used by lower (?) animals,
a “melancholy conclusion”.
Best wishes,
Joseph
_____
From: Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Stanley N
Salthe
Sent: jeudi, 30 janvier 2020 21:08
To: fis
Subject: Re: [Fis] [External Email] Re: Summary of the New Year
LectureDiscussion
Pedro -- Here’s a footnote that I did not think of during the discussion of
disinformation -- the fairly widespread phenomenon of protective coloration
of various species of animals. In some cases this mimics an aspect of the
natural world that serves as background for an animal, or it could mimic a
dangerous (like poisonous) other animal. This disinformation is built into
the ecological adventures of various kinds of animals, from fishes to
insects.
STAN
On Thu, Jan 30, 2020 at 2:53 PM Pedro C. Marijuan
<pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es> wrote:
Dear Joseph and FIS colleagues,
Thanks indeed for the work done. It has been a New Year Lecture that has
left a rich sediment of ideas and reflections that hopefully, as you
mention, might find continuity.
In my own view of the theme I was mostly focused on the biological
underpinning and also in some social-historical aspects. In particular, the
historical mixing (inseparability?) of information and disinformation is
fascinating. I had penned a short paragraph about that (in what follows).
>From the most abstract perspective, it is information the essential concept
that underlies the revolutionary changes of human societies--perhaps
accompanied by its inseparable companion: disinformation. For instance,
books ignited the Scientific Revolution, although it was accompanied by
national states wars and by religious wars. The outstanding developments of
steam engines, railways, electricity, telegraph, phones, cars, planes,
radio, TVs, electronics, etc., that propelled the first, second, and third
industrial revolutions, had attached a string of deep social conflicts and
political upheavals. The continuous clash of nationalistic and politic
ideologies contributed to create a blanket of disinformation that made very
difficult the sheer perception of the new conflicts and the means to solve
them. Nowadays it is computers, Internet, cell phones, robotics, and
genomics what are propelling the new revolutionary period. But once more,
along these crucial informational inventions a new wave of discord and
disinformation is menacing the promising outcomes of the new epoch
It looks
as if the “global brain” will always be victim of new viruses, more and more
sophisticate ones (sorry--an unfortunate metaphor in the current times).
Best wishes to everybody and, again, thanks Joseph.
--Pedro
El 30/01/2020 a las 9:11, Joseph Brenner escribió:
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
For people interested in information, the New Year Lecture on disinformation
and its discussion has taken place against an unbelievable background. It is
nightmarish, ubu-esque, Orwellian. Literally, the United States Minister of
Health stated last week that a woman’s freedom to have an abortion was
slavery. War is peace. The greatest short-term menace to humanity is coming
from entities that consist essentially of information plus a few bits of
protein and RNA. The not-so-long term menace is global warming whose
existence is considered disinformation by some people, themselves heavily
involved in disinformation.
In spite of everything, I think the key issues came out well:
1. Disinformation and Misinformation. Intent
There was general agreement on the fact of the existence of disinformation
and of misinformation as distinct from it. Disinformation is characterized
by the anti-social intent of the disinformer, although questions remain
about the detailed structure of intent as an operator.
2. Countering Disinformation
Faced with the pernicious phenomenon of disinformation, there
was a substantial consensus that ‘something should be done about it’. The
need for tools, perhaps at first computational ones, to identify
disinformation in documents was mentioned by several contributors. Others
suggested the inherent limitations of solely computational approaches and
the need to find and authenticate other criteria or ‘markers’ to identify
disinformation. I think there should be a working group on disinformation,
based on the willingness of FIS members to commit time to it.
3. The FIS Group (1)
I found a certain confusion between different perspectives.
Considering the diversity of our group, this is not surprising. There has
not been a consensus about what information and information science are. I
noted here a lack of consensus about what foundations or foundational
principles are or should be. The result was that many valid insights were
stated in the form of examples and anecdotal cases, rather than as
structures or principles. The, for me, basic principle that information is a
process, an ‘informing’ rather than a datum or data received little
attention. It should also be obvious that this Lecture could not cover all
related aspects of communication and behavioral science.
4. The FIS Group (2)
The above notwithstanding, I feel that many fascinating concepts related to
information/disinformation, just touched upon here, are well worth further
development; the following list is completely open for additions, including
significant points I may have missed. The order is not significant:
- grounding of disinformation in cognitive structures/the genome ;
- hypocrisy and other recursive disinformation processes
- public origins of disinformation
- the universe of discourse in informational terms
- art and its informational content
Thank you. It was a pleasure working with you.
Joseph
_______________________________________________
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
----------
--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
-------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________
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
----------
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listas.unizar.es/pipermail/fis/attachments/20200131/9627d0b1/attachment-0001.html>
More information about the Fis
mailing list