<div dir="auto">Dear all,<div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I'd like to ask a supplementary question to the problem of disinformation, partly in response to Stan's video and Terry's response which probably most of us agree with. Going back to final point in Joseph's provocation, perhaps we should ask:</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">What is an institution? </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Disinformation is spread by institutions, truth is "reinforced" by institutions, we have permission to think about these question because many of us are employed by institutions (or once we're), and the institution of government appears to be the thing whose collapse we fear the most. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">So what are families, orchestras, academic societies, businesses, friendships (perhaps?), Governments? Each of them has some relation to information and disinformation (absolutely transparency is a recipe for system collapse as Bateson noted). Today each has a relation to information technology too.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I'm struck by Ashby's remark that "any system which categorises throws away information" Does the contribution of computer systems to institutions result in information loss? Is that why they've gone mad?</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Best wishes</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Mark</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, 9 Jan 2020, 18:13 Terrence W. DEACON, <<a href="mailto:deacon@berkeley.edu">deacon@berkeley.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div>Dear colleagues,</div><div><br></div><div>I am glad that we're having this conversation. It is not just timely, but urgent.</div><div dir="ltr">The video that Stan posted of David Barstow's talk at the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy is chilling.</div><div>Please take the time to watch it.</div><div>Whatever else you want to quibble about with respect to the words "truth" "reinforcement" "coherence" or whatever</div><div>the danger of not taking this problem seriously is monumental, existential, and deserving our serious attention. </div><div>It is the challenge of understanding referential error-correction as opposed to the mere rectification of signal corruption.</div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>— Terry</div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 7:09 AM Mark Johnson <<a href="mailto:johnsonmwj1@gmail.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">johnsonmwj1@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto">"the truth needs reinforcement" is slightly chilling don't you think? Isn't this an epistemological error?<div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Does beauty need reinforcement? Or goodness?</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">So what is this? An institution steps in to defends the grounds for its continued viability and claim to be the arbiter if 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. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Positive feedback isn't it?</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">What's lost is not truth, but coherence.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Mark</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, 9 Jan 2020, 14:44 Stanley N Salthe, <<a href="mailto:ssalthe@binghamton.edu" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">ssalthe@binghamton.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">STAN<div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default"><a href="https://ucsd.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=35394" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">https://ucsd.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=35394</a></div></div><div><br></div></div></div>
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</blockquote></div><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr">Professor Terrence W. Deacon<br>University of California, Berkeley</div>
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