Social Media Free Speech?

How free should public communications be?

General

Simple fact is that free-speech in a free-democracy does need regulation and, if we are serious about that regulation, we do have to be prepared to enforce it and sanction transgressions, ultimately backed with the power of the law. Inescapable.

What is appropriate in the rules of communications, and what is proportionate in their enforcement are hugely context dependent. Even accepting that basic fact, it gets worse. Perversely, the broader the context – as in global public social media – the tighter the controls need to be. Let that sink in.

Current State

X/Twitter, post Musk, has made the error of absolute freedom, limited only by criminality in the communications. This leads to degenerate, unhealthy, polarising, high-noise, counter-productive discourse, long before we get to the last resort of legality. X/Twitter is currently failing to control either content or behaviour, and the inevitable degeneration is driving many to leave – or consider leaving – for pastures blue.

BlueSky has started to enforce “content” controls, simply by deleting the content. This is far too crude long-term, degenerate in the “woke/PC” direction, blocking/erasing anyone or anything that anyone MIGHT claim to be offensive to anyone for any reason. Hopefully this a temporary response to sudden surge in numbers – but it is already generating a backlash. And what it’s effectively doing is drawing the polarisation battle lines physically between these two platforms, making them very distinct silos or echo-chambers, not just different factional interests within any one platform. Doubly unhealthy.

Blocking, erasing, deleting or cancelling are NOT moderation. But, either extreme of freedom vs moderation is unhealthy. What neither of the above is doing is regulating what matters, which is behaviour. Very little content need be absolutely taboo (see legal constraints). Generally, it’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it. Anyone who has ever moderated any serious online discussion group knows this is non-trivial philosophically and linguistically.

[Facebook / Threads is in a different game. Nothing to recommend it here?]

Mastodon, so far, has exhibited very little of the degeneration, although ad-hominem behaviour is already creeping in, despite much lower numbers and traffic than any of the above. What is different however is that whilst X/Twitter, BlueSky and Threads are centralised, Mastodon is distributed and federated.

Practical Possibilities

The question is always asked when controls are suggested – however sensible the rules themselves – “Who decides, who does the controlling and moderating?”. With centralised systems – especially one like the Musk / Trump alliance – this question has enormous authoritarian implications. With multiple federated systems with distributed moderation arrangements, people can experience and cluster around environments that suit their needs, and we can let market forces drive the distribution between Mastodon instances.

X/Twitter already has the hooks for distributed moderation in its “Community Note” mechanism, though even that is already gamed and abused. Ultimately it really is about behaviour. What none of them have yet is individual tuning of the dreaded algorithms. Personally I’m an “all / latest” user, in order to minimise the effect of feed algorithms, and is only practical if you keep numbers down. At this point it’s about commercial / monetisation interests of the platforms and the users. Personally, it’s the reason I’ve paid for my “Pro” X/Twitter instance, no-one need advertise anything I don’t follow. But much more configurable experience – including the moderation “style” – is needed.

Behaviour? See Rules of Engagement.

[END]

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Previously “Freeze Peach – an earlier draft to edit the rules of engagement to fit the social-media behaviour / moderation model.

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Post Notes:

All the people “announcing” their X/Twitter departures to their “new” BlueSky accounts are quite comical if sad. I signed-up to both BlueSky and Mastodon as soon as they became available, immediately after the Musk / Trump takeover which completed over 2 years ago, and have been monitoring activity and behaviour there ever since. (Links top right here and in my X/Twitter bio.) It’s about behaviour NOT about the technology.

I’ve several times labelled people like Colin Wright @SwipeWright and James Esses @JamesEsses and Matt Goodwin www.mattgoodwin.org as “trolls” in this game. On the specific content of their “anti-woke” agendas and statements I’m on the same side and mostly agree. It’s their extreme rhetoric I reject as #PartOfTheProblem – like their wishful yearning for  Christopher Hitchens . Sure enough it grabs the attention of low-attention span men of few coherent words, like Musk / Trump, but it’s a dangerous game – cutting off noses to spite faces. I too have been “warning” the liberal-left @UKLabour @USDems @HumanistsUK they were missing the important message in the woke / anti-woke “culture war since I first read Alice Dreger on sex/gender politics in 2015 and more generally since I started this blog in 2001 and joined Twitter on SMS before it became an App in 2007. Warning continuously that if the liberal-left didn’t get a grip on the science / dialectic / facts vs subjective-identity / rhetorical / rights&freedoms balance, then the opposing right / libertarian press and politics were going to wipe the floor with them on the emotional issues. Let’s be clear, like broken clocks, people like Musk / Trump / Badenoch can be right twice a day on the woke / DEI agenda but still be wholly reprehensible, dangerous and unfit for office. They remain so. Retweeting without qualification? Careful what you wish for. You can have too much #CreativeDestruction

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Bergson – Herald of a Restless World

I mentioned in a “note to self” post back in 2021 that I was looking forward to the publication of Emily Herring’s biography of Henri Bergson

Herald of a Restless World
– How Henri Bergson brought philosophy to the people

Emily Herring (2024)

Posted a review on Goodreads:

I already had some appreciation of the significance of Henri Bergson’s philosophy from its take-up by US pragmatists (eg James and later Pirsig readers) as well as by Whitehead and most recently by Iain McGilchrist’s extensive use of Bergson references in his (2023) magnum opus “The Matter With Things”. Emily Herring I had noticed write an (2017) article on Julian Huxley’s use of Bergson, have been since then anticipating the biography she has now produced. It does not disappoint.

Her writing style is a major attraction. Here in one sentence describing Bergson’s experience of the run-up to the first world war: “Even for those more attuned to recent developments in international relations, the threat of war had not felt real until the news broke that it was.” Neat turn of phrase.

Many spoilers about the the Bergson biographical content have already been shared in the media, and perhaps his role in wartime politics is one of the more surprising. Less surprising is the fact that prejudices against his being a French Jew and his work attracting a massive female(!) following explain why a backlash against his undoubted initial superstar success led unfairly to his fall from favour and visibility thereafter.

“Bergson is back” and deservedly so on the subtle reading of his ideas on integration of the recurring philosophical division between the explicit / objective / classical and the intuitive / implicit / romantic. Biography is an excellent medium to get to grips with human ideas. Herring will deserve our future gratitude, if her efforts are taken up by enough new readers in our troubled and confusing present. Highly recommended as a biography of what were interesting times, whether you’re interested in Bergson or philosophy or not.

Herring spoke about her work and about Bergson at Collected Books in Durham last Monday 4th Nov.

(Above) In the foreground Emily Thomas (Durham Uni, Philosophy) and Simon Oliver (Durham Uni, Divinity) and, middle distance on the right, me in the rusty-red top awaiting the start of the event.

(Above) Emily Herring (L) being interviewed by Emily Thomas (R).

Reading Herring, and previously Bergson (Creative Evolution), I remained intrigued, given that focus on “the recurring philosophical division between the explicit / objective / classical and the intuitive / implicit / romantic” that I could see no references to the German & British romantics and transcendentals who had been expressing similar thoughts with similar concerns against the seeming dehumanising trend in the progress of science and technology. So I asked. She confirmed  there was little if any sign of any such engagement in Bergson.

My previous references:

First attempt at reading Bergson’s Creative Evolution  back in 2007 as recommended by other Pirsig scholars on “MoQ-Discuss” (See now the Robert Pirsig Association). Herring advises there is a newer, better translation now available.

That “note to self” above, where the significance of Bergson to McGilchrist’s “Matter with Things” is also acknowledged and where I had completed my read of Creative Evolution. (My summary of Matter With Things.)

Reading Emily Herring’s 2017 piece on Julian Huxley’s “Great is Darwin and Bergson his Poet” which had whetted my appetite for her upcoming biography.

Also relevant, as well as the question above – biographies of the positivists (Mach Society / Vienna Circle) and the German transcendentals (around Humboldt and Jena)

The connections never end.
And neither does the work of organising the writing.

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Deliverance From Evil

Watched the film Deliverance last night. It’s a film I’ve been looking out for since the world switched from DVD to streaming, but have never found it free of commercial strings until BBC2 TV broadcast it yesterday.

I saw it only once a long time ago, when watching a film was about entertainment, but since 2001 – the start of my quest here on Psybertron – every time I see and/or hear the duelling banjos meme it sets off the thought “I really must watch Deliverance properly”. Mission accomplished.

I riffed on it on X/Twitter whilst watching:

Me:
Well done @BBC2TV
#Deliverance is a film for our times.
How will humanity find our place in the world?

Quote:
This is our last chance.
I’ve never been lost in my life.

Me:
I’d forgotten the “famous scene” is just 5 minutes in.
Makes me suspect most people have never actually watched the whole thing?
#DuelingBanjos

Quote:
You’re missing the point Ed!
Sometimes you have to lose yourself
before you can find anything.

Me:
#Deliverance is surely the template for #ApocalypseNow every bit as much as #Conrad #HeartOfDarkness and/or #Fitzcarraldo and/or #Lila ? (All at sea, but on a river.)

Quote:
Things are gonna fail. The system’s gonna fail.
System’s done alright by me. I love my life.

Me:
Jeez @ZMMQuality guys.
John Voight in #Deliverance is surely Eugen Herrigel (The Zen archer duelling with the rifleman.)

Me:
OK, a fork in the thread.
Alex Cox introduced me to cultural cinema beyond entertainment back in 70’s/80’s. Paris Texas, Fitzcarraldo, Brazil, Walker, The Mission and probably Deliverance and later Devil Wears Prada and indeed Walter White & Saul Goodman. But I guess I was too young to get the full significance back then.

Me:
Trump is that narrowly informed bigot (and Musk the narrow autist) on the riverbank.
The whole #Deliverance story is surely also Dostoevsky “Crime and Punishment”.

Quote:
He was the best of us. (Me: The guitarist who duelled with the banjo. Robert Johnson at the Crossroads and/or the duelling fiddles / banjos / guitars – choose your weapon – bow / rifle) Amen.
They brought the cars.
You have a phone, a telephone?
Yes sir.
I don’t remember nothing.

Me:
Deliverance. Deliver us from evil?
Crime and Punishment?

Anyway, lots of connections as food for thought.

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Is Physics Dying?

I’ve been a follower of Sabine Hossenfelder since ~2008, mentioned here in 2014 and more including experiencing her appearances first-hand at HTLGI up to and beyond the publication of her “Lost in Math” in 2018.

She’s morphed in that time from being the typical scientist who would deny any “philosophy” as unscientific if not testable, to being philosophy-friendly (at least philosophy-of-science friendly) to her current phase of ranting against the ills of the scientific enterprise more generally.

Three of those recent rants below. The first I shared 6 months ago with local Sceptics / Humanists in which they (most seeing her for the first time, I was surprised to hear) misinterpreted her rant as hard-done-by sour-grapes at “her failure” to succeed as a practising academic physicist. Talk about missing the point. (I think she spoke at the recent QEDcon?) The other two videos are from the last few weeks.

I lost faith in scientists a long time ago – the reason I started this blog almost 25 years ago was science over-reaching into believing it was (or could be) the one true explanation of anything and everything, reinforced in the public mind by sexed-up popular science media and the educational fashion for critical thinking. Usual disclaimer – don’t get me wrong – science and critical-thinking are wonderful resources and as an engineer in the physical-electro-mechanical-built-environment, my career depended on it. My beef is with that arrogant over-reach. The meme that if something’s not scientific, it can’t be right or true, it can only be bullshit.

Her point – in the middle video – is about lack of empirical testability in theories that have been repeatedly theorised about for decades, and yet they still command attention and resources. The ontological commitment, as philosopher Rebecca Goldstein calls it, demands that rubber hasn’t hit the road until said scientists can say (and even mean) “and that’s how the world really works”. As per Hossenfelder’s book, mathematical beauty and logical coherence are not even science without the explanatory step into the real-word. That real-world step might not be science.

And again, I’m fan of Carlo Rovelli’s writing. In terms of his “QLG” competitor to string-theory – the archetype of failed scientific ideas, alongside multiverse bullshit – it has a feature I like, the loop of integration around inconvenient singularities, but I certainly don’t understand the theory, and am ultimately disappointed at the lack of any “so what” in the real-world.

Science needs its arrogance taking down a peg or two and a return to valuing the real world. It will surely die if the woke / anti-woke culture war doesn’t kill it first.

And I do still very much read books, despite sharing these short videos 🙂

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Post Note: Just capturing another of Sabine’s videos – “Entropy isn’t What You Think” which caught my eye in the side-bar when collecting links to the 3 above. It’s her more usual physicist educates non-physicists scope, but relevant to me because my information views of entropy are crucial to my own worldview, so I’d be interested to know if she disagrees with what I think I know 🙂

She doesn’t like the word order / ordered, but overall nothing contentious to me. Her link behind the information<>ignorance view of entropy is neat – the number of possible micro-states per macro-state … pretty standard textbook stuff as she says. BUT …  in my words … Yes, the preservation and creation of new order (low entropy) is driven locally by life and intelligence, any life, even if we expire in our corner of the universe, it is highly likely – inevitable – to evolve elsewhere. Universal heat death isn’t  very likely or inevitable. Our view is necessarily anthropic – macro-states are always a human (lack of) knowledge perspective – R.I.P. Rick Ryals.

Onward and upwards.
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Dichotomies, False or Otherwise?

Dave Snowden posted on his LinkedIn Feedtongue in cheek and with mischievous intent

“North Atlantic Buddhism, gurus & cybernetics on the one hand with Daoism (& its interaction with Confucianism), distributed intelligence & complexity on the other.”

Weirdly my last post, 2 days ago, mentioned Dave in the context of Cybernetics vs all the other available Systems Complexity views out there, but I’d not remembered that when I took the rise to his mischievous intent challenge:

Ian GLENDINNING
“Not quite sure where you’re going with the ‘on the one hand / on the other’ … given your distaste for dichotomies :-)”

Dave Snowden
“Two sets of associations Ian”

Ian GLENDINNING
“Dave Snowden But with more overlap than divergence / distinction?”

Dave Snowden
“Ian GLENDINNING Two roads diverged in a yellow wood”

Maritina Dimopoulou
“Dave Snowden ah, I first came across this poem when I watched Dead Poets Society in my teenage years…”

Ian GLENDINNING
“Dave Snowden Excellent.

So I guess I need to acknowledge that allusion to the Good-Fences / Gates-in-the-Forest metaphor I often use.

Mischief appreciated 🙂

(Robert Frost being the common source – and G K Chesterton – I shall have to write a longer piece myself. Weirdly I wrote a piece only yesterday referring to Dave and Cybernetics … in other concurrent parallel threads … https://www.psybertron.org/archives/18971 )”

Essentially this an ongoing dialogue with Dave on here as well as on LinkedIn and his own blog, several in parallel on related topics live on LinkedIn right now – will not link to all – but in summary:

Rather than get into debates about which Systems theories (inc Cybernetics) Dave emphasises his own (Cynefin) approach as using Complexity (and other) Sciences …

Partly, most of us would say that Systems Thinking (of all kinds) is a response to complexity (including the complexities of humanity itself), even if this wasn’t explicit in the way various Systems theories and sciences were framed. Complexity – as a science – came later or independently Dave would say?

My response is four-fold:

    • From the start Systems Thinking was always about the complexities of self-organising humanity, even if complexity per-se wasn’t the explicit topic and even if the early applications were more machine than human. (First & Second Cybernetics and Cybernetics as Feedback)
    • Secondly whatever it is we’re talking about, it’s more than science. We’re trading poetic Robert Frost and GK Chesterton quotes above ferchrissakes!

“With complex systems modelling doesn’t work.”

    • Thirdly, the above are long-running dialogue, but the (mischievous) Buddhist (also non-science?) topics are new in this dialogue, even if long-standing here (and Dave referencing “Zen” back in 2003). Obviously a lot more to discuss here on Eastern thinking, but for now,
    • Fourthly Dave first puts his forking Buddhist path in our way.

Although he says, he’s not positing a dichotomy he’s only pointing out “two sets of associations“. He’s making a distinction, the existence of two paths, two sides to a gate or fence, in time and/or space. “Two sides to every story”. The sets of associations he’s highlighting are:

    • between “North Atlantic” Buddhism and Cybernetics [bad?], and
    • between authentic Eastern Thinking and his Distributed Intelligence plus Complexity story [good?].

We can only wonder why?

I think we’re violently agreeing about #GoodFences and #Dichotomies.

The point of #GoodFences is that many distinctions of many kinds exist for all sorts of reasons, good and/or circumstantial. (Fences, gates or forking paths in forests.) But they are never dichotomous, between two entirely different things, never the twain shall meet, unless we actively choose to make them that way. They are things that are mostly the same, with shared histories, but with one or more selected distinguishing feature that is significant in some way(s). They have a purpose, but can move and evolve.

“Complex vs Complicated is a false dichotomy.”

Essentially what I’m struggling with is that when Dave points out a distinction he says he doesn’t mean it dichotomously even though the difference is significant, but when others (Iain McGilchrist’s left<>right-brain say, or myself) point out distinctions, we are accused of (false) dichotomies. Differences are real, dichotomies more often false.

Need to see what Dave is saying in his Third Eastern dialogue before we can see if and why his Fourth divergent views is relevant, even if not dichotomous. As is hopefully obvious above I’m sceptical with putting Cybernetics back in some simplistic mechanistic box it was never intended to occupy. Better to find common ground than to divide?

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Post Note:

Dave continues his raging against dichotomies here comments on LinkedIn again.

“There are a lot of dichotomies here, two many for my taste and some stereotyping which never helps. For example intellectual knowing is far from black and white and nothing I have encountered there would result in a quick fix, if anything it makes you more aware of the dangers of simply acting based on how you feel at the time. New materialism for example transforms our understanding of the physical reality of stories and allows us to scale. Just living in the moment can reinforce racism and other forms of prejudice, the intellectual knowledge that is coming from the field of epistemic justice allows us to better understand what is happening when people just tell stories without thinking. … [and more].”

Still intrigued by his reaction to these when calling various distinctions dichotomous – surely we all understand they are distinctions that matter, but which are always understood integrated and mutually. It’s not dichotomous to point out and refer to distinctions – even ones that come with stereotypical names – provided one goes on to address their true dynamic relationships thereafter?

In this particular example we’re getting very close to the central point in my current agenda in the recurring philosophical division between the explicit / objective / classical / intellectual and the intuitive / implicit / romantic / lived. The very reason to point out the (binary) distinction out is to warn against that particular (polarising) dichotomy – in terms of the choice of one side (of a good-fence) vs another. Proper account of both is required and required to be understood. That’s the point.

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Post Post Note; (19 Nov 2024)the dialogue continues:

Dave:
Confining science to formal cause is just a little 19th Century in nature.

Working with indigenous people you soon realise they have scientific knowledge they just don’t the same language. Letting go of irrelevant details may mean missing weak signals, focusing on the individual, as you implicitly do here creates multiple issues.

Wisdom lies in understanding not in creating dichotomies based on a culturally specific perspective.

Ian:
Thanks for elaborating your “it’s all science” position clearly and succinctly Dave. Appreciated. I still beg to differ:

Indigenous peoples – including us “Western” indigenous peoples – do have access to hi-quality / valuable knowledge beyond “formal science”. A knowledge or wisdom that is lived, intuitive, implicit, shared between people in rhetorical narrative, etc, but not formalised or formally causal and therefore not science in that formal sense. (That much we agree?)

A reason to maintain that science<>not-science distinction, is not to create any kind of dichotomy or polarisation nor a return to the 19thC – all real knowledge and communication is a tangled mix of the formal (dialectical) and the informal (rhetorical) – but to ensure that the different components are treated appropriately.

So for example, we need to recognise the informal / implicit / intuitive for what it is and not “accidentally” attempt to formalise it explicitly and analytically. Making the implicit explicit risks losing its value.

“We murder to dissect” as some old romantic once said 🙂

Dave:
I think I’ll stand by my original statement rather than you reframing it as ‘all science’. The oral tradition exists in different forms in various traditions, more pronounced in indigenous communities but it’s there in others. I think people should generally avoid the wisdom word in any comparison statement and I don’t think your idea of ‘formal science’ is helpful given the role of intuition, abduction etc in all types of human discovery.

Ian:
I think you’re misunderstanding or misrepresenting my point now – I agree with all of that. I used your word “formal science” precisely to leave space beyond that for (in your words) “the role of intuition, abduction etc in all types of human discovery”.

Attempts to formalise the latter … don’t help, indeed do damage? Calling the latter science (as you did) risks attempts to formalise it scientifically. Anyway …

In the ongoing dialogue I phrased it as a question “Why call the latter science? I agree that words like Wisdom and Rhetoric can be woolly and pejorative – why not just call it “knowledge”. [This post]

Knowledge comes in various forms. Why call it science? Why call all knowledge science?

Dave:
well then the feeling is mutual 🙂 Representing indigenous knowledge as ancient wisdom is to deny the scientific nature of the knowledge and the review process. Characterising knowledge which has been subject to third party validation in contrast to ‘I just believe this’ is important.

Ian:
I did no such thing. I’m calling it knowledge – the indigenous / lived / intuitive / radical-empirical kind – but real actual here & now knowledge. I am happy to call it “indigenous knowledge” if that’s your preference, though like any word, indigenous comes with its own baggage and risks of unintended meanings.

Obviously also, it is subject to validations beyond “I just believe it” – obviously, hopefully. What I am “denying” is that validation is (or can be or should be) scientific in any formal sense. If it’s not science in any formal sense, why insist on calling it science?

Mr. Bjørn Gustav Nielsen:
Hi (Ian) and interesting. Is democracy a scientific construction? And if the way we organise democracy today, you can actually hide yourself behind the party program, or by stating “It’s politics” kills the globe, what field of science can help us to avoid that?

Ian:
Applying this thinking to (free) democracy is another topic I take seriously in my writing. We are overwhelmed with working examples in these recent years 🙂

Founders of constitutional democracies certainly brought enlightened philosophy to their framing and justifications, Locke, Humboldt, Jefferson, Paine, you name them, but those included “inherent” freedoms and “self-evident” truths. Democracy is not, cannot be, and never was, entirely “scientific”. As scientific as possible, but not more so.

We definitely need to bring all forms of knowledge to bear and no one science holds all the answers – if that answers your question?

Calling all good / valuable knowledge “science” seems to be giving it credence by sprinkling it with scientific holy water, when the knowledge in question doesn’t actually meet any formal scientific criteria?

Dave:
So you are creating an either/or between the lived, intuitive and what you call ‘formal science’?

Ian:
A “good fence” – a distinction that matters (for reasons suggested). But not a “dichotomy”. Real life knowledge and communications has both intimately entangled and more or less integrated.
So either and/or both. We need both but we need to understand the different bits we’re dealing with differently, so we can understand their relationships and differences, whilst valuing both.
[ What you called “formal science” BTW 🙂 ]

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FeedBack?

In my quest for better Systems Thinking understanding of the world as a whole, I still hang on to the fact that Cybernetics was always about self-adaptive governance of complex human systems from the start; its association with machine control systems being circumstantial of its early successes. There are of course many specific / specialised theories and sciences of Systems and Complexity more generally, developed since Wiener (Cybernetics) and the 1946 Macy conference brought so many systems thinkers into one melting-pot. They emphasise different aspects, but to me they’re all variations on the same underlying theme, and I’m always sceptical when practitioners get too precious about which one is best, being critical of their competitors, even Dave Snowden of Cynefin, which may indeed be “the best” tends to focus on Complexity Science(s). Even Mike Jackson, whose “Critical” systems theory is essentially Pragmatism with a qualifying name to distinguish it from other branded offerings.

I often get the push-back that the distinguishing idea about using the word Cybernetics was always “feedback” and was always naturally more suited to that mechanistic electro-mechanical machine view. Sure, feedback is an important part of Cybernetics – and of Systems generally, since the ancient Greeks no doubt – but I already noted this when reviewing Maruyama’s (1963) “Second Cybernetics” back in 2018.

It’s not just feedback. It’s mutual feedback, feed-back and feed-forward between any number of organisational levels of wholes and parts. Any parts of any systems. It’s about intra- and inter-system communications – of information. It’s always been about system evolution – self-adaptive organisational-learning – through parts and wholes mutually processing information.

Computation. Complex, many-layered computations on many different timescales.

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Critical Thinking has a lot to answer for …. distinctions and #GoodFences.

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Heretic or Mainstream?

[Holding post now updated(*)]

Philip Goff (oft referenced here for his attempt at panpsychism) has been quiet for a while. I thought he had actually been ill / injured a couple of months ago, but for whatever the reason, his deep thinking opportunity has led him to Christianity – a heretical form he says.

An interview with Capturing Christianity here:

And an Aeon paper here:
I Now Think a Heretical Form of Christianity Might be True

I’ve only skimmed both so far(*), but already seeing X/Twitter traffic.

He says it’s actually mainly what his last book “Why? The Purpose of the Universe” (2023) was really about, and I’ve not read that yet either. Anyway after that skim, I Tweeted:

I think a Spinozan pantheism, or panentheism as McGilchrist would say, is tenable. Odd you don’t mention Spinoza?

(Anyway, whatever we mean by god, it doesn’t “exist” or have causal powers in this world. Not a being but a source of being itself, a metaphysical position. Pretty much mainstream Christianity as a theologian @Elizaphanian told me when I discussed McGilchrist’s take on god.)

Unsurprisingly the X/Twitter dialogue has become about what we call it and whether it’s Christianity. But whatever it is it’s (a) real, and (b) basically a kind of metaphysical monotheism – I call it sacred naturalism– and only Christian in particular if we bring the ideas of Jesus, the resurrection and the trinity into it?

If this has legs I may have to come back to it?

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[Post Note: And for comparison
here he’s arguing the opposite, only a year ago.]

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(*) Having now read the whole article – but still finding it impossible to subject myself to the “CC” interview – I see he does mention panentheism, and does, as expected, focus on the Jesus mythology of Christianity specifically. Still feels a bit like metaphysical theology 101, but good that he has got there. Also talks about meditation in terms of engaging with nature. More pragmatic than heretic? Welcome to the sacred naturalism club.

Still feel I’m left with one difference. He talks about a god having limited power in this world, rather than none (other than the power of the mythological narratives of the monotheistic religions – choose your favourite prophet?) So for me, rather than the problems of good and evil and the miracle of intelligent life – in a cosmos where life is possible, the evolution of intelligent consciousness and purpose is indeed inevitable – my metaphysics is limited to the first-cause / something-rather-than-nothing-question. The miracle in this universe is simply the most basic version of the anthropic perspective – it’s the one we’re in, and we can never have any knowledge of any other anyway.

I realise now why I wasn’t drawn to his latest book “Why?”. I was already cool with the purposeful inevitabilities. Obviously if you’re not it might be a book worth reading?

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Marani & The Emptiness of Disembodied Language

I mentioned 3 posts and 5 or 6 weeks ago, that I’d taken-up reading “New Finish Grammar” (2000) by Diego Marani following a Tweeted recommendation from Anil Seth.

I read about a third of it the first night I received it, but read the middle third rather disjointedly over several weeks as I was distracted by another piece of work, and eventually finished the final third in a couple of sittings yesterday and today. In the flow of the final third I was as gripped as I was intrigued by the initial third. The twist(s) that resolve the layers of confusion become more certain as the end approaches, finally cleared-up in a classic murder-mystery dénouement, though it’s a long way from a murder-mystery, despite the fact it’s the first of a trilogy compared to the original Nordic noir “The Killing” which the original Italian writing pre-dates. Nordic noir mystery it clearly is, in its unsettlingly dark style and mostly Helsinki-region dark-winter and simmer-dim geography.

The simplest summary of the plot premise I quoted in my first mention.

“A wounded sailor is found on a Trieste quay -amnesiac, unable to speak and with nothing to identify him except a name tag pointing to Finnish origins.”

It’s set in WWII involving Italians, Germans, Finns and Russians and is really an exercise in how little language disconnected from lived experience can ever mean and how far from reality it can lead us, as our protagonist Sampo attempts to reconstruct his forgotten identity, memories and language, with the help of fallible friends along the way. The narrative is partly that of Sampo drafting the story of his own adventure and partly that of a medic tracking him down by researching his identity and the written evidence he and his correspondents leave behind.

“What we today regard as music would have been seen as noise a hundred years ago. Yesterday’s mistake is just today’s harmless oddity. The rule always succeeds the word: this is the great weakness of all grammar. The rule is not order, it is just a description of some form of disorder. Like everything peculiar to man, language changes too, and to strive for linguistic purity is as senseless as to strive for its racial equivalent. Linguists say that all languages tend towards simplification, aiming to express the maximum of possible meaning through the fewest possible sounds. So the shortest words are also the oldest, the most worn away by time …”

” I thought that I could master [feelings bigger than myself] simply because I was able to write them down. In fact here too I was behaving like a scientist. I described my state of mind just as I would the symptoms and course of a disease. I had not yet realised that nothing that concerns man ever happens the same way twice …”

Obvious linguistic and epistemological reasons why it fits my Psybertron agenda. Reminiscent of Eco to me? I will have to hold off the remainder of the trilogy, and the remainder of the 10 books Marani has written, until a later date.

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Remembering 9/11

9/11 was significant to my own thought journey, as I mention in various presentations I give, in quite different contexts. It turned nagging doubts about “western rationality” in my knowledge-modelling working life-to-date, into something globally real, awful, awe-full and urgent. A kick in the pants to actively research what was already making me uneasy. 23 years later I’m still at it.

Each year a number of remembrance pieces come up:

The Falling Man
The story of Richard Drew’s photo of Jonathan Briley,
By Tom Junod in Esquire

and

The Real Heroes are Dead
The story of Rick Rescola and Susan Greer,
By James B Stewart in The New Yorker

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The Rules of Freeze Peach

This is a version of my Rules of Engagement / Rules of Discourse page.

Being updated to make it more explicitly obvious that these are also the rules of free-speech, more generally than lip-service to “freeze peach”. The mantra being parroted by followers of Elon Musk – topical in 2024 because he made it his raisond’être for acquiring his wet-dream called X in 2023. And look where that’s got us, having one new, autistic, commercially-interested, kid on the block take charge of how we answer the question?

So,
How free should speech be?
Or, alternatively,
How should free-speech be?
Hat tip to Mark Hammond for the Tim Garton-Ash alternative reframing of the question … but either way the answer is of the form …

Free-speech should be … xxx

… followed by a list of criteria or defining rules that make it the kind of speech that underpins – supports, maintains, incentivises – free-democratic civilised society. (If you want to argue for a society that’s NOT civilised or NOT free and democratic, based on the imperfect and corrupted ones you’ve experienced so far, you’ve come to the wrong place. The thesis here is about making society less imperfect and less corruptible, more civilised, more free and more democratic. Making the least-worst better, to borrow from Churchill.)

The defining rule is more than the single word “Free”.
That would be free-speech 101 at best. Kindergarten stuff.
Muskian free-speech-absolutism

Yes, free-speech in a civilised society really should be constrained by rules – rules of civility – hat-tip to Mark again, for his summary of my existing rules below. If you can’t get your head around that basic assertion about rules, jump straight to the section on rules generally, then come back to the main article on free discourse below.

Although introduced in the context of argument in dialogue and discourse, the article below does in fact cover the cases of physical speech in public, media publication and social media exchanges and even artistic / comedic contexts – it’s all there.

Apart from re-wording some of the preamble and introductory sections, the main thing that is missing below is what I recommend as “moderation” – how the rules actually get applied and enforced (yes physical force is the valid last resource of legal rulings in a civilised society).

I’ve written about the moderation idea elsewhere, but think of moderation more in terms of the speed and rate of communication in any given context – like moderator rods slowing down neutrons in a nuclear reactor say – as opposed to either censorship at the one extreme, or an anything-goes free-for-all, anywhere, anytime, at-the-speed-of-light, at the other. (The reactor metaphor works well also for the downside of the dangerously explosive situation we find ourselves in without moderation? A powder keg as the Elizabethans or Jacobites might have had it, but a much more powerful explosive in the much smaller highly-connected global-village of our 21st C world.)

The exchange today that prompted this update was as follows:
(X/Twitter exchange copied and quoted, since the Musk fucked-up the API)

@spikedonline
Internet freedom is dying in Europe. The elites blame online free speech for almost every societal ill. The arrest of Telegram’s Pavel Durov in France is a sign of things to come, says Fraser Myers

@psybertron
The internet – social communication – is dying because the prevalent mindset is a dumb, primitive, divisive, polarising version of what freedom of thought and expression really are.
Communications need
BETTER moderation and
NEITHER MORE freedom
NOR MORE censorship.
Jeez! I blame lazy free communications for ALL our ills. Have been doing for two decades. @almalydan @TerenceWaites

@almalydan
Tim Garton-Ash reframed the question from ‘how free should speech be?’ to ‘how should free speech be?’. The former has been pretty exhaustively studied, but the latter is by far the more pressing. Part of the answer must be to do with the restraints imposed by civility.

@psybertron
Fair way to reframe, though with such a lot of communications (and meta-communications about communications) in the hands of ubiquitous / near-monopoly / big-technology (bigger than nation states) media platform providers not sure that reframing is the biggest issue.
The real issue is as you say “civility” – humanity as civilisation.
(See commercial undemocratic entities beyond states.)

@psybertron
In the context of our knowing each other pretty well, it goes without saying my suggested “rules of discourse” (pinned tweet) apply to “freeze peach” generally – how should free speech be – as you re-framed it. Those rules ARE how free speech should be – to re-re-frame it.
(I’m working on an update to make that more explicit.)
#RulesOfDiscourse

Currently this is a post with progressive updates. Will turn it into a permanent page when it feels mature enough. For now below is the original plus updates:

[Footnote: also recent exchanges – not just in free-speech debate, but in rights & freedoms more generally – planning development, gender debates, woke vs anti-woke, etc – the problem is nothing to do with left vs right and everything to do with ideological capture by rationality driving division and extremist activism on all sides socio-liberal vs authoritarian & libertarian / neo-lib, squeezing out free-democratic civilisation everywhere.]

[NOTE 2024:]

With Elon Musk taking a free-speech-absolutist approach to his takeover of X/Twitter, it is becoming ever more obvious that these good-faith rules of “civilised discourse” below, apply to open social media communications just as much as to any other limited discourse, dialogue, argument or debate between individuals and groups of individuals. More so, in fact.

Free-speech without moderating rules (beyond mere criminality of content) is degenerate, damaging to free-democracy, and exaggerated since globalised tech companies and their figure-heads have become bigger and more powerful than many states. There’s a lot wrong with states and their institutions needing fixing, but throwing democracy out with the bathwater, putting faith in a single powerful autistic voice, is no solution. A free-democracy isn’t an anything-goes free-for-all.

The rules below do already apply to “free speech” – and motivated / political-activist speech of any kind, including all electronic and social media formats and physical demonstrations – even though this wasn’t the focus as originally written. Ditto woke vs anti-woke & cancel-culture have all escalated since I first drafted these rules. I can’t believe it needs saying that mafioso protection-racket tactics of harassing people, their employers & hosts, and threatening people and livelihoods when you disagree or disapprove are totally unacceptable, the antithesis of good-faith discourse

There are many different kinds of rules in different contexts so, perversely, the more universal the context – like social media – the more constraining and more complex the set of rules needs to be.

It’s non-trivial. Here is where I’m consolidating an update to make it more obvious.

[FAQ’s
Who decides the rules and their enforcement?
If rules cannot be well-defined how can they work?
But, I’m too busy to consider my response – beyond like / retweet?]

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[START]

R.E.S.P.E.C.T is the only rule – Care, Good Faith and Honest Intentions.

    • Rule #1 RESPECT – Understand & Question before Disagree & Criticize.
    • Rule #2 RESPECT – No Ad-Hominem attacks on Individuals & Tribes.
    • Rule #3 RESPECT – Careful use of Humour, Irony or emotions like Anger.

Whilst bearing in mind that:

Rules are for guidance of the wise,
and the obedience of fools.

That’s it. Full stop.
But, if you need elaboration, read on:

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Preamble: Several papers and posts here describe each of these aspects, but even when dealing with would-be factual knowledge, the content may not be entirely objective or logical and anyway, the process is always rhetorical, involving communication between human individuals and the tribes with which we identify. In simplest form:

“Tread softly, for you tread upon my dreams.
(W B Yeats)

“Reflect on what you hold sacred
and be gentle with what other people hold sacred.”
(Elizabeth Oldfield)

The rules of engagement below, first published in this page format in 2018, are collated from earlier collaborative forums as far back as 20th C bulletin boards and email exploders. They seem to apply equally to any correspondence, face-to-face debate, on-line commenting and/or social media, formally moderated or otherwise. In fact they apply to any argumentation in dialogue or debate in democratic, political, real life. And they really are about engagement generally. It’s more obvious when there really is an argument, a debate, a disagreement at issue, but they apply to any dialogue about any topic of interest to share or increase understanding and/or commitment to a decision or action.

In fact, “Why?” are we having this exchange at all is a good starting point. You might just be wasting each other’s time, unless “shooting the breeze” are your only mutual aspirations, which is fine of course. Social media will be all our downfall if we don’t respect the rules:

The Rules of Respect for Dialogue:

Well, there is really only one rule: R.E.S.P.E.C.T

(Or simply Good Faith
honest intentions and mutual respect for the rules,
the intent of the content and the participants,
but we can unpick these further below.)

Rule #1 RESPECT – Understand & Question before Disagree & Criticize.
Critical debate is essential to all our agendas and anyone voicing direct disagreement with or criticism of the arguments of another must be seen to have understood, or sincerely attempted to understand, the others’ argument and intentions and to have related their counter argument to it. Conversely, if someone disagrees with you directly, your first response, unless you see your own error, must be to establish that they do indeed understand your position and you theirs.
(See also Rappaport’s Rule(s) also known as Steelmanning, below).

There are many other tactical rules for resolving apparent disagreement. Evolving mutual understanding always beats attempting to prove yourself right and the other guy wrong, except in particular mutually-agreed, artificially-controlled “debate” and “critique” circumstances (see additional “Rules” below). Most of real life is neither of those. And remember, if it’s a new conversation with someone new to you, the early part of this “understand & question” phase may be as much about values you may or may not share as the content of the particular argument. If you jump too quickly to testing the others position by summarising it back to them in rhetorical questions you could be much wider of the mark than you realise, offending unspoken values held sacred. Until you know you’re both ready for a good-faith steel-man assume the principle of charity, that the other person is at least as virtuous as you are in terms of values and knowledge. “Surely you don’t mean X?” is effectively a strawman if it’s something you couldn’t already agree to yourself.

Rule #2 RESPECT – No “Ad Hominem” attacks on the Individual or their Tribe.
Absolute no-no. Anyone having trouble with an individual should resolve directly with that individual, involving a confidential and mutually-respected mediator if necessary, with public sanction and/or disengagement only as a last resort.

And again, remember a straw-man couched as a rhetorical question copied @ third parties may be received ad hominem, even if it is not intended as a direct insult.

Rule #3 RESPECT – Duty of Care when using Humour or Rhetorical Irony.
OK, but life (mine and yours) would be boring and sterile if we politely agreed with each other. So lively, critical, robust, intelligent discourse and argument in good faith is positively encouraged. Unless you are recognised as The Court Jester what will not be tolerated is any perceived intent to circumvent Rules #1 & #2 under cover of  rhetorical tricks or ironic humour – and never forget irony and downright sarcasm do not travel well in any electronic medium! Needless to say any actual intellectual dishonesty or deception is bad faith. You can never further objectify Rule #3 definitively, but example rules of thumb might help:

      • If you use rhetorical questions and/or (playful) straw-men and/or (attempted) humour to draw attention to your point, you must follow-through the dialogue to mutual understanding.
      • Without this follow-up, playing to the gallery, rhetorical zingers and mockery will be seen as ad-hominem of your target. Only mock someone who already knows you love and respect them. “Collapse of stout party” is merely a rhetorical move, not a conclusion.
      • If you share (or like or applaud or otherwise add to) someone else’s rhetorical move, or you game the levels of irony and sarcasm on top of theirs, you inherit the responsibility for the follow-up.
      • Seriously though, only The Court Jester (note below) is exempted from these rules and, fun though it is, we can’t all be court jester at any given time. That’s entertainment.
      • When all is said and done, it’s a game, games have rules (*) and creativity demands that the rules are there to be broken. Rules are for guidance of the wise and the obedience of fools. There is after all, only one rule; see Respect (**).

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[Post Notes: There are many possible examples, elaborations and exceptions – they’re only rules after all. These too are spread around many posts and pages here at Psybertron over the years. Some are captured or linked below others not, so I may need to consolidate an updated page sometime soon?]

[More on – Rappaport’s Rule(s) aka Steelmanning.]

[More on humour and mischief for The Court Jester.
And more complex reality of free-speech vs offensive humour. Free-speech vs offense whether humour or irony intended or not.]

[More on Intellectual Honesty & Good vs Bad Faith:

Intellectual Dishonesty (or potential intellectual inadequacy or stupidity) is in the mind of (you or) your interlocutor. If you start to suspect bad-faith, dishonesty or hidden agendas, frankly this is an interpersonal problem, not the topic of the dialogue (unless it is the topic of the dialogue?). This needs fixing person-to-person (see Ad Hominem above) before continuing any meaningful dialogue on the original topic (or deciding to pass on it). Agreeing to disagree, or parting (even muting or blocking) in disagreement is a suspension of hostilities, a matter of choosing which hill not to die on. For now. It’s a long game of many moves by many players. It’s why I have my own “three strikes and you’re out rule” in the more immediate social media like Twitter. Life’s too short – to argue the toss with every person on any and all points. And as with any rules – the game of repeated application is key – see more on Games (*) below.

The fact that proper good-faith dialogue is much harder than bad-faith discourse is related to the idea that “lies get half-way round the world before the truth gets its pants on“. Lies, half-truths, wise-cracks and bullshit are much easier to communicate. In complex dialogue there will be many topics tangled-up, but without good-faith on both sides Brandolini’s “bullshit asymmetry”  Law applies. It is simply impossible to progress a good-faith argument with a bad-faith party. Anyone arguing in bad-faith (check it’s not you) has endless opportunities for whataboutery, and another thing, straw-manning, changing the subject, moving the goal-posts, repeatedly demanding (objective) evidence not relevant to the (subjective) point (eg SeaLioning), logical non-sequiturs & false-metaphors, the child-like response “But why?” to every answer, and so on, ad-infinitum. A sure sign of such bad-faith dialogue frustrating any meaningful progress, is when ad-hominem adjectives start being bandied around, like bigoted, fascist, nazi, etc.

Go back to square one – establish “respect” and mutual good-faith before continuing any progress (or find better use of your time, or a more promising hill to die on.)]

[(*) More on Rules & Games generally?

In a climate where rights and freedoms are high on everyone’s agenda, there is a tendency to think of rules as constraints on those freedoms – censorship and policing of freedoms of speech etc. In the real world “Freedom runs on rails” – without standardised gauges, trains would get nowhere, there would be no railways. The hard bit is understanding and agreeing which and what kind of social imposed rules to value at the individual level. (There is a whole school of thought that says constraints and counter-factuals are essential for creative progress. Unconstrained freedom is the source of chaos only – which is fine if you’re intentions are anarchist.)

All rules are for guidance of the wise and the obedience of fools.
and therefore evolve by being broken – with care & respect.
However, Respect, Good Faith and Honest Intentions involve the evolution of trust over more than one interaction. In the short-run people need to understand the game to play it, in the long-run the players evolve the game and its rules by creatively discovering rule changes. We all benefit by seeking relationships over sufficient interactions and by ensuring the rules evolve to include increasingly valuable win-win outcomes. To appreciate this see Nicky Case’s visualisation of Axelrod 1984 on Game Theory. (And don’t skimp, really play through all the options several times. No trust without repetition).

What about Debate?

Finally on rules. Remember the rules above apply to general dialogue, discourse and argumentation, even informal social (media) exchanges. It’s not a debate unless mutually agreed in advance. Debate is something that comes with it’s own additional rules: neutral territory, neutral adjudicator, timings, interruptions, resolutions, voting and more. Real life is not “a debate”.] Back to MAIN article?

[(**) More on RESPECT, GOOD-FAITH & TOLERANCE.

It was a toss-up whether I chose respect or good-faith as my key word. I built these rules around the word respect – a summary of the intent of the “rules” suggested – because “R.E.S.P.E.C.T” is a meme / ear-worm to make it stick. Use – and intended use – beats a dictionary definition any day. (Anyone not now hearing Aretha Franklin, consult your therapist.)

However there was an important declaration around free-speech and unpopular speakers at (Cambridge) University, that made use of a distinction between respect and tolerance, so I need to clarify in that light. In fact Kenan Malik already made an excellent analysis here. And in his tweet he even points out it’s about “changing meanings”:

In my words. Respect is (obviously) about respecting freedom of (thought and) expression – that’s top of the UN hierarchy of rights. Respecting other humans and respecting their right to hold and express views counter to your own. But “terms and conditions apply” (respecting rest of the rules on this page if you want to engage in dialogue about those views). No rights and freedoms are absolute independent of the rights and freedoms of others. It’s your right to simply tolerate and leave in peace the thoughts of others. Respect for the humans, the rules and the process doesn’t mean you have to accept the truth, validity or quality of the opinion held or expressed, even if you must tolerate its expression. But if you do choose to question and contest, analyse and educate or learn from, those thoughts expressed, these rules – terms and conditions – still apply. Respect the expression (and any debate / dialogue), tolerate the content of the idea. You do not have to respect the idea itself.

With all due respect,
you’re still allowed to disagree,
but know what respect is “due”.]

[(***) More on tribal identities? See Identity Politics.]

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More resources, added since this page was created:

Timandra Harkness’ BBC R4 series “How to Disagree now on SoundCloud.

Rory Stewart’s “Long History of Argument” on BBC R4.
[#1 ThesisFocus on mutual clarification in dialogue. Lots on Trust & Good Faith, and the wisdom & moral stance of the participants, as well as the rhetorical skills. M.M.McCabe, Katherine Tempest and Iain McGilchrist (and Jeremy Corbyn) amongst the contributors. Ethos & Pathos as well as Logos.]
[#2 Antithesis – Focus on winning. Power and Manipulation. Backlash against Rhetoric, dropped from education. Whips override debate with PM’s agenda. Public media audience beyond the chamber and identity politics. Jon Haidt on extremes squeezing out any middle ground. Performative grandstanding but no real argument – not just social-media but also increasing stress of conflicts and differences, exaggerated by SM. Lozza Fox vs Ash Sarkar.]
[#3 SynthesisSaving “good argument” from the tensions above. After “coalition” politics > divisive Bolsonaro, Modi, Trump & Brexit. McGilchrist – Extremism specifically to provoke extreme responses by example – not actually mutual dialogue. Nigel Farage. Hobbes. Facts vs Ideology – do recognisable facts of the matter actually exist. M.M.McCabe – we all actually have our ideologies. A return to real dialogue – finding middle ground between Dogmatism and Relativism – and finding spaces to hold such dialogue. Jon Haidt again on social media rules (after Musk). Rules of the locked-in chamber. Reversing transparency – not televising debates in real time? Federalism – delegating consideration to more appropriate levels and locales – where people know each other, more respect and empathy. Yay! – more Citizens Assemblies. And yay! more education including rhetoric – including metaphor and poetry of beautiful language. Understanding false metaphor. The root of argument to shine – enlighten – the issues. LOVE!]

The “But Why?” Conundrum – interesting tweet/retweet pair:

And on False or Misleading Analogies or Similes: