Month: November 2024

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. Guard rails in the current vernacular. 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]

=====

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

=====

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

Yogi Yaeger on Mastodon: https://mastodon.online/@yoginho@spore.social

If it’s elitist to think we should have the best people lead us instead of corrupt morons taking over everything then, yes, do count me as an elitist.

If it’s against free speech to want pathological liars censored then, yes, I’m against free speech.

If progress is the greediest bastards pushing the most dangerous technologies on us for nobody’s benefit but their own then, yes, call me a luddite.

An extreme statement of the crux of the problem.

And an essay on why decentralised social media is best from Oxford via Mastodon, naturally.

=====

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: (Slightly edited version below.)

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 published reviews, and perhaps his role in wartime politics is one of the more surprising. Intriguing too – and a recurring theme here – that he effectively converted to Catholicism, in all but name, late in life. Less surprising is the fact that prejudices against his being both French and a Jew, and with his work attracting a massive public and female(!) following explain the academic backlash against his undoubted initial superstar success. Einstein’s “put-down” of his philosophical time, and Russell’s awful mischaracterisation of his work generally, sealed his fall from favour and academic 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 in what were interesting times, whether you’re specifically interested in Bergson or philosophy generally, 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.

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.)

An introduction to Bergson and the revival of anglophone interest in Emily Herring’s essay from earlier this year.  My 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 Jena Set as Magnificent Rebels (Andrea Wulf)
    • The Vienna Circle as seen by the Brits (David Edmonds)
    • The Vienna Circle from their own Austro-German perspective (Karl Sigmund and Douglas Hofstadter)

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

=====

Post Notes:

New York Times review by Anthony Gottlieb.
Gottlieb is someone I’ve read and written very positively about before, and we note from the by-line in that review that his new book out soon is on Wittgenstein – see in contrast to the positivists above. Can’t wait.

“It is very difficult, if not impossible, to express in words something that goes against the very essence of language” Bergson

“Perhaps it’s also true that Bergson’s ideas were not substantial enough to endure.” Gottlieb

(Me: the stuff beyond “substantive science” is very hard to make stick, very Pirsigian “Quality”.)

And a recent Times Literary Supplement review “How the World’s Most Famous Thinker Fell Out of Fashion” by Mark Sinclair, who has written about Bergson before in their Footnotes to Plato series.

A nice interview of Emily Herring here in a German Idealist context:

(The whole section from ~36.40 to the end where she describes his metaphysics in her own words will resonate with Pirsigians – McGilchrist fans too – the evolution of intellect as we know it. Some new French references in there for me too.)

Another review from Science.Org – surprisingly positive despite the rather pejorative use of “fodder” to describe his relationship with science?

=====

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.

=====

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 true, right? it can only be bullshit.

Her point – in the middle video – is about lack of empirical testability in (would-be scientific) 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 as an engineer, the loop of integration around inconvenient singularities, but I certainly don’t understand the theory as a whole, 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 🙂

END

=====

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.

=====

And for balance a recent YouTube response from Professor Dave – that recognises her as a good sci-comm source, but is worried about her recent expressions of concern for where physical science is going. Not digested the whole, but his initial concern is that her expressions of concern attract attention from those with dubious anti-science agendas – an obvious risk – but what about her actual message? Doesn’t change the fact for me that science does need to learn from the expressed concerns I share with her, since long before she expressed them. It’s a lot more than good old “anti-establishment” that’s also behind the whole woke/anti-woke conspiracy-theory, culture wars. (In my language it’s actually the memetic problem, #Dysmemics )

=====