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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Dear FISers,</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Thanks Terry. You are quite right about
the chilling dimensions of the problem. The struggles for power
have always corrupted human communication, from face to face
outright lies, to falsification of written messages. Even Julius
Caesar had to encrypt his military and political messages. The
printing press generated soon a wave of pamphlets and libels that
were very difficult to counteract. Classical journalism could
partially overcome that problem by means of competition and
reputation, plus severe laws arbitrating the defamation attempts.
Somehow the social countenance of defamation/disinformation has
been partially working; but nowadays the new technologies have
left obsolete that classical countenance. I remember in early
1980s a booklet by Michael Arbib stating the great improvements in
grass-roots democracy and communication that the nascent computer
world could generate: direct democracy, voting every afternoon,
fantastic collective management... I could hardly swallow that
very sweet candy, but kept in mind the capacity for self-delusion
of the new technology. Anyhow, two main alternatives can be seen
today: centralized censorship (as already practiced in some
countries) versus complete lack of control and overwhelming
disinformation. Paradoxically, the advancement of "deep fake"
tools, as described in Barstow's talk, may bring the future
discredit of those info sources that lack sufficient
authentication--like spam in mail systems. In my view, the quest
for technological tools that bring "reinforcements to truth" is
important and necessary, although it looks difficult in so fastly
evolving systems. In the meantime, I think, the information
pillars to be trusted are the remains of the traditional media
ecosystem, with all its limitations and biases...</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">A role for IS4SI? I think so. Maybe we
can promote a stable "reflection group" or special working group
and see what kind of theoretical/applied contributions are we able
to make.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Best--Pedro<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">counteract El 09/01/2020 a las 19:13,
Terrence W. DEACON escribió:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAOJbPRJQv99pTaEJNzPdvknDOqaQxQBTeu0RVK4A5aO6E5Hd6w@mail.gmail.com">
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<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"
moz-do-not-send="true">johnsonmwj1@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
</div>
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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"
moz-do-not-send="true">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" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://ucsd.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=35394</a></div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
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<br clear="all">
<div><br>
</div>
-- <br>
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature">Professor Terrence W.
Deacon<br>
University of California, Berkeley</div>
<br>
<fieldset class="mimeAttachmentHeader"></fieldset>
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</pre>
</blockquote>
<p><br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es">pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/">http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/</a>
------------------------------------------------- </pre>
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