[Fis] Discommunication

Mon May 25 14:09:39 CEST 2020

Dear Colleagues,

We are well progressing towards achieving a shared concept, about the
framework in which we can meaningfully discuss the meaning of the term
‘information’. Let me discuss some points in your latest communications.

*Joseph wrote:*

*Discommunication should convey the additional idea of intent to mislead,
etc. *

*Discommunication seems to me to refer more directly than in the
disinformation case to the consequences for the sender as well as receiver.
In popular language, one talks about people who “can’t stop lying” or who
“lie so much they no longer can discern truth from falsehood”.*

In the *ideal case*, the communication is devoid of any properties that
would make it a *mis*- or *dis*- communication. Irrespective of the
content, *falsifications* can originate from drowning the recipient in
messages, or in denying communication, keeping a silence or avoiding the
topic.

We have an instinctive, inborn, *archetypical expectation* towards the
proportion of meaningful, true sentences among all communications that we
receive. We act subconsciously, as if there were *a range, provided by
Nature*, by mitigation of physiology and neurology, *for the truth among
the falsehoods*. If only we had a kaleidoscope, on which we could
demonstrate logic in reality, namely which pieces are presently visible –
being on their places – according to how many and which perspectives one
looks thru. Readings of a view thru a kaleidoscope can in many cases be
subject of differing assumptions; among these are surely enough which can
be used deceitfully. I’d respectfully add to your thoughts that the
proportions of the amounts in messaging suggest that *there is an inborn
expectation about the proportion of true sentences among all sentences that
become received by the brain*, translated by the sensory organs and
neurology. A model like a kaleidoscope or the ultimate Rubik cube would
offer a general proportion of true sentences among all sentences that can
be said about the kaleidoscope/cube.

*Gordana wrote:*

*analysis by leading UK statistician of miscommunications we are massively
exposed to in the form of “Number theatre”?*

Please allow me to expand the brilliant idea of seeing the numbers as
actors in a theatre. We observe an ancient Greek, Inca, Agyptian, Kabuki,
etc. ritual performed by the numbers. There are antagonists, choirs and
great drama. Let us get a trailer of the Number Theatre:

*The Chief (unifying principle) of Both Realms of Odd and Even Numbers:*

I declare unto you: The overwhelming majority of numbers do their duty with
courage, dedicated and professionally. That there are some bad apples among
them, cannot be denied. These individuals allow themselves to be used by
mischievous persons who spread lies. We of the traditional denomination of
numbers, reject the insinuation cast upon the whole class of us. We serve
dutifully, wherever Nature or our inventors have put us to, in any amounts
wished. It is not our fault, if we are used up like hypothesis-fodder
during investigations which make in hindsight no reason at all.

We do, however, show a resilience against being mistreated. We do have and
cherish our independence. Any deceitful use of members of our numberhood
will meet our resistance. Our resources being somewhat limited at first
glance, we express our displeasure of being treated wrongfully and in a
false, incorrect, sinister scheme, by disobedience to the principle of
everlasting harmony.

We will not keep peace with each other in such cases. Ending the peace
means that there are and keep remaining such parts of us that are not equal
to other parts of us: the ‘=’ sign is not valid. No comparison can be made
which results in three parts: those two that are compared and are found to
be = or not, and the third which is needed for the negation-background of
the statement: *“There are Two that are alike”  (“There is One which is
different to Two”). *Beware of our ability to unmask the treacherous!

*Voice of the Nonsettled:*

This is a timeless drama between us: the have-nots and you, the
Establishment. Those who have secured for themselves a stable place will
not have any interest in accommodating the needs and aspirations of their
less fortunate ancestors and descendants. Your whole edifice of truth is
only a momentary affair. You yourself brag that *a=a *is an everlasting
truth, because it exists in the moment, and specifically in each of the
moments, therefore always. How can you then create phantasies about
predecessors and successors? If, as you say, *a=a *is always true, in what
respects can a successor or a predecessor be any different? You avoid
seeing the obvious: that we are a multitude just like you, but somewhat
different. Your red meat, earth and clay existence we do not share with
you: we are less corporeal, but none the less natural.

*Choir:*

Many are the wonders of time. The ghosts of past are among us again. They
have never left us. A pitiful wrack is among the humans who hast lost the
inner ancestry of his now. Who knows no memory is like a small child and
must be cared for. The ghosts of things past guide us today.

Forebodings befall the infant as she hears the voice of her mother. The dog
of an old Russian salivates as the bell tolls. Anticipation is intelligence.

Memory of the past, perception of the present and anticipation of the
future interact.

*Master of Bondage: *

We have kept hidden the tragedies and blessings, which our unceasing labour
creates, from your eyes, but now we have been brought back to the singing
world by Swedish incantations, now we open our heart to you about or some
of our deepest secrets.

The secrets will not be understood by those unfortunate, who live in the
moment. It is necessary in order to understand bondage and predestination,
and within that, small islands of freedom and choices, to think oneself in
a changing world.

*Choir:*

Day follows night, spring follows winter. The changes are eternal. *a=a *is
a strong rule, but the rule *a1 → a2 → … → a1 *is even mightier. A period
is a well-ordered sequence of states.

*Master of Didactics:*

There is a revolution in the air. The oppressive tyranny of the seated
elite will come to an end. The dawn of a new era reddens the sky. This we
all agree on.

The task is however, to tell the unfortunate users that it is their own
limitations that hinder them to use us according to our full capacities.
Now that they have discovered our well-kept secret, that our society is
divided into the assigned and the less assigned, according to the simple
arithmetic translation rules depicted in oeis.org/A242615, they can build
up tools that enlighten them about periodic changes and the rules thereof.
They will discover how a number in a traditional sense translates into an
expectation or a realisation of a bondage. The dead and the yet-to-be-born
are related to us living, but they are no less numbers. They just have a
slightly different aggregational form. Those among the numbers, which the
unfortunate have been accustomed to, are just agglomerations. Like a
traffic map, where only the pileups appear as static, existing, visible
entities, the circulating cars which are too small to be resolved, are the
bondage.

*Choir:*

The stones were always there. It was human effort which made pyramids out
of them. Common sense and academia are sometimes not the best friends. We
live in a world of periodic changes. Will academia base its system of
axioms on principles of periodic changes? The ghosts of past say no, the
divinations of the future say yes.

The Number Theatre can entertain her aficionados, there is much to lament
and to boast about.

*Jose Javier wrote:*

*I believe that thinking theoretically consists, in some Wittgensteinian
vain, in designing language games and that scientific communication consist
in convincing others to speak our language (or being convinced by others to
speak their language) and phrase problems our way. *

The more public the words we use, the better we can expect to be
understood. In the extreme, we only use words that have a defined meaning
and have relations to other words of the vocabulary that are well defined.
This leaves us in practice with the natural numbers as symbols to employ if
we want to be sure that every reader of the sentence understands the same
meaning.

The concept was a dead end as long as the proceedings and machinations with
natural numbers had to be done by the human brain, using paper and pencil.
In Wittgenstein’s time it was unthinkable to imagine the finite set of
possible logically consistent sentences, as they lived in the era of
limitless progress and infinite number lines, while lacking mechanical and
electrical tools to manipulate large numbers of numbers. To industrially
generate logical sentences and hunt for patterns, discovering generative
grammar, was not in their reach.

Generations have since passed. Now we can, and indeed have, analysed
logical sentences in their natural habitat, among other logical sentences.
You need computers and a lot of time to continue what Wittgenstein did,
solving some of the problems he had pointed out. He never addressed the
numeric part of having told everything about an assembly that can be told,
without repeating oneself. That would have brought him into a conflict, as
he outlined correctly that the logical sentences are subject to laws of
combinatorics, but he was, alas, living in the age of the limitless,
therefore infinite society. Lacking computers, he could not point out the
basic duality of sequenced and contemporary descriptions of one and the
same assembly (state of the world).

We axiomatize that about a finite assembly only a finite number of
different sentences can be said.  This allows for lots of tralala. Among
the different sentences, some are consistent with each other. These we use
for communication with each other. Their being consistent refers to their
property of being concurrently referred to by means of a sequenced order
among the words, as well as a categorically structured order among the
words. The conjurer’s trick unifies sequenced and commutative attributes of
words by using the words as parts of bondages that bind the words in the
course of periodic changes. The periodic changes create a web of
expectations, where something would be when. The thing-ness and the
where-when-ness of the something are connected by their common attribute of
how-many-ness. The spectacle unfolds if the multitude consists of a few
dozen bondable elements. The main interplay (for us: reality) takes place
in assemblies of round 66 elements. Less than 32 or more than 97 elements,
and the match between the sequential and the structural descriptions gets
inexact. Above 135, counting the occurrences that the assembly can be
described both by sequentially and structurally ordered sentences, becomes
void.

Yes, playing with words of an ideal language is an entertaining business.
Ultimately, it is also an explanative, applicable, useful, practical,
rational and profitable business. The only question is: how far is
“ultimately”?

*Loet wrote:*

*… The codification takes place at the supra-individual level as a
development of the medium.*

* The construction only succeeds where it resonates into a kind of
eigenvector. The dynamics is one of the communication matrix and not of an
individual vector. *

This reinforces the archetype theory raised by Jung. There is an
instinctive pattern perception with children and animals. Some principles
of optical (auditive, etc.) perception are parts of the genetic package.
Nature has no problems transferring over generations some keys on how to
read a Great Table of Principles. The matrix you refer to surely exists.
Being subject to periodic changes since thousands of millions of years has
surely taught organisms to organise along the principles prevailing in a
world being based on periodic changes. Principles prevailing in assemblies
undergoing periodic changes can be observed by conducting suitable
experiments. It turns out there are indeed matrix-like *a priori *relations
among elements that together undergo periodic changes.

Taken all communications together, let me restate the hope that we shall
come to a common understanding after so many years of collaborative efforts.

Thank you for the interesting contributions.

Karl

Am Di., 12. Mai 2020 um 05:54 Uhr schrieb Francesco Rizzo <
13francesco.rizzo en gmail.com>:

> Cari colleghi,
> a parte la distinzione tra dis-comunicazione  e mis-comunicazione, che
> dovrebbe tenere in maggiore conto la significazione e
> l'informazione, non bisogna dimenticare la triade o terna che caratterizza
> la scienza semiotica che accomuna le differenti lingue,
> facendole diventare una uguaglianza dis-uguale o una dis-uguaglianza
> uguale. In questa prospettiva epistemo-onto-logica, per
> non cadere nella fallacia referenziale, bisogna teorizzare e praticare la
> conoscenza della conoscenza dell'ARBITRARIETA'
>  DEI SEGNI, la cui significazione è CONVENZIONALE, CULTURALE E SOCIALE.
> Tante volte a me pare che si consideri
>  la semiotica o la semiologia qualcosa di cui non si possa parlare e si
> debba o possa tacere, mentre io ritengo che sia qualcosa
>  di cui non si debba o possa tacere, per cui si debba parlare. Altrimenti,
> gridano le pietre, dice il Vangelo della Bibbia o la Bibbia
> del Vangelo: Il libro dei libri.
> Un abbraccio affettuoso, più di sempre, a tutti a partire da Pedro. Grazie.
> Francesco
>
> Il giorno lun 11 mag 2020 alle ore 20:02 Loet Leydesdorff <
> loet en leydesdorff.net> ha scritto:
>
>> Dear Jose Javier and colleagues,
>>
>> I don't think that one can arbitrarily construct one's own language game
>> and still have the intended effect. The codification takes place at the
>> supra-individual level as a development of the medium. This
>> "self-organization" is thus beyond individual control.
>>
>> Attempts to construct purposefully will lead overwhelmingly to unintended
>> consequences; this is not input-> output. The construction only succeeds
>> where it resonates into a kind of eigenvector. The dynamics is one of the
>> communication matrix and not of an individual vector.
>>
>> Best,
>> Loet
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Loet Leydesdorff
>>
>> Professor emeritus, University of Amsterdam
>> Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)
>>
>> loet en leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/
>> Associate Faculty, SPRU, <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/>University of
>> Sussex;
>>
>> Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ. <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/>,
>> Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, ISTIC,
>> <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html>Beijing;
>>
>> Visiting Fellow, Birkbeck <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/>, University of London;
>> http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en
>> ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7835-3098;
>>
>> ------ Original Message ------
>> From: "Jose Javier Blanco Rivero" <javierweiss en gmail.com>
>> To: "Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic" <gordana.dodig-crnkovic en mdh.se>
>> Cc: "fis en listas.unizar.es" <fis en listas.unizar.es>; "Joseph Brenner" <
>> joe.brenner en bluewin.ch>
>> Sent: 5/11/2020 4:53:27 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Fis] Discommunication
>>
>> Dear Joseph & Gordana,
>>
>>   When looking for scientific soundness it seems often obvious to focus
>> on the precision and elaboration of singular concepts. However, concepts
>> rarely work alone; they are entangled in semantic fields, types of
>> discourse, common places (*tópos koinós*) and so on. Therefore, I would
>> suggest, why don't we focus on the vocabulary we would need in order to
>> clearly set the problems we are interested in and the reach our conceptual
>> abstractions should have?
>>   I believe that thinking theoretically consists, in some Wittgensteinian
>> vain, in designing language games and that scientific communication consist
>> in convincing others to speak our language (or being convinced by others to
>> speak their language) and phrase problems our way.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> JJ
>>
>> El lun., 11 may. 2020 a las 6:06, Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic (<
>> gordana.dodig-crnkovic en mdh.se>) escribió:
>>
>>> Thanks, Joseph for your interesting reflection.
>>>
>>> What would you say of this example of an analysis by leading UK
>>> statistician of miscommunications we are massively exposed to in the
>>> form of “Number theatre”?
>>>
>>> BBC One - The Andrew Marr Show, 10/05/2020, Professor Sir David
>>> Spiegelhalter: Here is the whole ten minutes of @d_spiegel
>>> <https://twitter.com/d_spiegel>  talking such refreshing sense about
>>> COVID19, numbers and risk: *https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08csg28
>>> <https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08csg28>*
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> All the best,
>>>
>>> Gordana
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From: *Fis <fis-bounces en listas.unizar.es> on behalf of Joseph Brenner <
>>> joe.brenner en bluewin.ch>
>>> *Date: *Monday, 11 May 2020 at 10:36
>>> *To: *"fis en listas.unizar.es" <fis en listas.unizar.es>
>>> *Subject: *[Fis] Discommunication
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Greetings and best wishes for the health and safety of all.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The subject of discommunication, defined as an attempt to pervert the
>>> process of communication of information itself, was implicit in our
>>> previous discussion. The term is not used rigorously. Miscommunication
>>> conveys the same idea as misinformation, failure in communication, for any
>>> reason. Discommunication should convey the additional idea of intent to
>>> mislead, *etc. *
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Discommunication seems to me to refer more directly than in the
>>> disinformation case to the consequences for the sender as well as receiver.
>>> In popular language, one talks about people who “can’t stop lying” or who
>>> “lie so much they no longer can discern truth from falsehood”.  One, of
>>> many, current examples of discommunication, *grandeur nature*, supports
>>> this interpretation.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Joseph
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>>
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>>>
>>>
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