[Fis] FW: New Dialog on Social Systems. The Disinformation Society. Belief

Mon Nov 30 20:00:15 CET 2020

Dear Pedro, Joseph, and FIS colleagues.

I want to thank Joseph Brenner for keeping us focused on an information
science challenge that we ignore to our peril: disinformation. By blurring
the distinction between the statistical, referential, and normative aspects
of information, we have little chance of being able to confront this
pragmatically important existential challenge; whether politically,
medically, scientifically, or ecologically. I think that the disinformation
issue highlights the need to overcome disputes over whose definition of
information is best, and to dig deeper into these higher-order information
concepts. In this respect, continuing to challenge each other to rethink
the assumptions at the foundations of information science is more important
than ever. Understanding the information/disinformation distinction is a
foundational social evolution problem. So I am both receptive to Joseph’s
critique and also encouraged to see how Pedro has helped to facilitate an
exchange of ideas between information theorists and social-evolution
theorists.

The explosive and destructive “success” of the disinformation enterprise
has been generated both extrinsically and intrinsically. Extrinsically,
because of the geopolitical advantages gained by creating confusion and
discord in the ranks of potential competitors—the old divide and conquer
strategy. Intrinsically, it follows in the wake of radical postmodern
skepticism about knowledge. This has fueled uncertainties about what’s fact
and what’s opinion, blurred the science/belief distinction, and promulgated
a sense that truth is a property best assessed by analyzing the messenger,
not the message. I think that our work could address some of the intrinsic
problems, and thereby help us to better counter any extrinsic challenges.

Of course, disinformation is a social weapon with a long history. The
current augmented power of disinformation is a function of the way its
dissemination has been amplified by the runaway dynamic implicit in social
media platforms. This has been an unanticipated side-effect of the
capitalistic foundation of these communication systems as well as their
unprecedented global extent and ubiquity. Their economic success has been
based on algorithms that are structured so as to maximize the time that
users spend in a company’s virtual domain; thus increasing the time users
spend exposed to their content, clicking on their links, getting current
users to ensnare additional users, and in so doing providing data useful
for improving this same capacity. It’s a perfect disinformational
pyramid-scheme that no one anticipated, and will be quite difficult to rein
in.

This is the information challenge of our era. It is an existential
challenge, and not merely one of academic relevance. I applaud any effort
to bring the informational and social evolutionary discussions together in
the FIS forum and to continue to pay attention to these normative and
pragmatic challenges at the intersection of these fields.

— Terry

On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 12:29 AM Joseph Brenner <joe.brenner at bluewin.ch>
wrote:

> Dear FISers,
>
>
>
> Please excuse my failing to include one additional point in my previous
> note: there has been some discussion of the degree to which Trump believes
> the disinformation he spreads. The conclusion of one commentator is that it
> makes no difference. This is a question of his individual psychopathology.
> The latter is of scientific interest, but one needs to be more concerned
> with the damage to society and how that can be remediated.
>
>
>
> Thanks again,
>
>
>
> Joseph
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> *From:* Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] *On Behalf Of *Joseph
> Brenner
> *Sent:* lundi, 30 novembre 2020 09:01
> *To:* 'Pedro C. Marijuan'; fis at listas.unizar.es
> *Subject:* Re: [Fis] New Dialog on Social Systems. The Disinformation
> Society
>
>
>
> Dear Pedro,
>
>
>
> There is no disjunction between your information science ‘mill’ and our
> latest discussion of society. A little less than a year ago, we had a very
> good discussion of disinformation. In this period, we have had to
> experience, and are still experiencing in the United States, one of the
> most massive and vicious disinformation campaigns in history. This one
> comes complete with, and is served by, all the latest information and
> communications technologies. In the hands of right-wing ideologues and
> their Master Puppet, they are causing a catastrophic “retreat from
> reality”, as one U.S. journalist aptly named it, by poorly prepared
> segments of the population.
>
>
>
> Information science and philosophy thus must include the study of the
> susceptibility of information to this kind of distortion, misuse and
> instrumentalization. One technique, which I might call totalitarian, is to
> occupy as much as possible of the available multi-dimensional information
> space.
>
>
>
> To combat this, we should make, I think, a conscious effort to better
> understand the complex ecological knowledge systems in which we are
> embedded to see how they can be furthered for the common good.
>
>
>
> Thank you and best wishes,
>
>
>
> Joseph
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> *From:* Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] *On Behalf Of *Pedro C.
> Marijuan
> *Sent:* samedi, 28 novembre 2020 19:18
> *To:* fis at listas.unizar.es
> *Subject:* Re: [Fis] New Dialog on Social Systems
>
>
>
> Dear Joseph and colleagues,
>
>
>
> Let me first cordially thank to the contributors who have chimed in the
> list and expressed their appreciation. About your reflection, yes, it was a
> neat transdisciplinary exercise. It was an initial idea from Andrei that we
> two crystallized during the IS4SI venue in Berkeley. In some sense it is
> unusual business, given the compartmentalized structure of most research,
> but at the same time it may be the natural way to look at such "information
> objects" of extreme complexity as societies are. We need a bunch of the
> perspectives capable of saying anything interesting or relevant about them.
> For medieval thinker Raymond Lulli this handling of heterogeneous
> perspectives was the intellectual "Ars Magna".  It represents the continued
> recombination processes withing the "ecologies of knowledge" of our
> colleague Yixin. And it was one of fundamental information principles I
> presented last month.
>
>
>
> And to draw some more water to my own mill, quite many principles of those
> variegated disciplines might be put in connection with the principles of
> information science. Information science and information philosophy would
> appear as the "unofficial handlers" of that intuitive Art.
>
>
>
> Best regards
>
> --Pedro
>
>
>
> El 28/11/2020 a las 10:31, Joseph Brenner escribió
>
> Dear Pedro, Dear Andrei,
>
>
>
> Many thanks to you both for the opportunity to have participated in this
> remarkable project! I look forward to reading all the papers, especially
> those of some of the non-FIS contributors with whom I have lost contact. It
> just occurred to me that this *Special Issue *is an exemplary *Transdisciplinary
> *Project, of the kind that IS4SI is supposed also to help develop. We
> could either just say: *Nous faisons de la Transdisciplinarité sans le
> savoir *or we could use this concept in some way. I offer this thought
> for your consideration during the 3rd International Congress on
> Transdisciplinarity which is in progress essentially on-line for the next
> six months. Comments welcome.
>
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
>
>
> Joseph
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> *From:* Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es
> <fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es>] *On Behalf Of *Pedro C. Marijuan
> *Sent:* jeudi, 26 novembre 2020 20:20
> *To:* 'fis'
> *Subject:* [Fis] New Dialog on Social Systems
>
>
>
> Dear FIS Colleagues,
>
> You may remember the announcement that Andrei Igamberdiev and me
> circulated last year on a special issue in BioSystems on the "Evolutionary
> Dynamics of Social Systems--Looking for a New Dialog". We are glad to tell
> that the edition is finally over and the contributions (more than 20) of
> this special issue can be freely visited and downloaded during 50 days,
> until will 13 January 2021, in the link:
> https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/biosystems/special-issue/107DGX9V85V
>
> Quite a few contributors belong to our list: *Joseph Brenner & Andrei
> Igamberdiev* (reflexive transformation of reality), *Loet Leydesdorff *(codes
> in inter-human communications), *Howard Bloom* (biopolitics: bacterial
> roots of the new autocracies) , *Yagmur Denizhan *(from archaic to modern
> myths), *Wolfgang Hofkirchner *(the contemporary Great Bifurcation), *Pedro
> Marijuan & Jorge Navarro* (acceleration of cultural change).... There are
> also contributions from the *Cliodynamics school *(on political stability
> of societies), from *Adrian Bejan* (constructal nature of social
> evolution), from *Nicholas Christakis*' team (selective mating in human
> evolution), from *Andrei Khrennikov *(entropy and quantum effects in
> decision making), etc.
>
> You may have a previous glance on our editorial presenting the issue:
> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0303264720301489
>
> Hope you will find it an interesting and useful special issue.
>
> Best--Pedro
>
> -------------------------------------------------
>
> Pedro C. Marijuán
>
> Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
>
>
>
> pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
>
> http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
>
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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 Terrence W. Deacon
University of California, Berkeley
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