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This is literally a plot line from Metal Gear Solid 2 made real. I will quote below: Colonel : Raiden, you seem to think that our plan is one of censorship.

This is literally a plot line from Metal Gear Solid 2 made real. I will quote below: Colonel : Raiden, you seem to think that our plan is one of censorship. Raiden : Are you telling me it's not!? Rose : You're being silly! What we propose to do is not to control content, but to create context. Raiden : Create context? Colonel : The digital society furthers human flaws and selectively rewards the development of convenient half-truths. Just look at the strange juxtapositions of morality around you. ......[ Skipping ahead a bit, the game is very verbose. ] Raiden : And you think you're qualified to decide what's necessary and not? Colonel : Absolutely. Who else could wade through the sea of garbage you people produce, retrieve valuable truths and even interpret their meaning for later generations? Rose : That's what it means to create context.

anigbrowl 5y ago
It's true; sensemaking is now regarded as a key component of information warfare and organizational development in general, dating back to the 70s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensemaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensemaking). It seems like the ongoing anxiety is that external sources of authority (like press agencies) may be used to foreclose discussions and indirectly suppress unpopular ideas by equating their lack of popularity with lack of credibility - a basic problem for anyone making a novel proposal on its own merits. On the other hand, arguing against the validity/objectivity of any observer forecloses the possibility of trust and pushes every reader into a solipsistic position in which all external propositions have to be evaluated from scratch, a laborious process that hinders the propogation of true information. I do think we need strategies to address the issue of information pollution. Here's a recent example of people deliberately copying a tweet for the purposes of mockery and/or dilution of its original impact: https://theweek.com/coronavirus/1003095/the-making-of-a-vaccine-misinformation-meme https://theweek.com/coronavirus/1003095/the-making-of-a-vacc... Since there' no real cost to such strategies, and it's easy to poison social graphs with bots or teams of like-minded people, there' an incentive to employ such tactics to spread false information for purposes ranging from pure entertainment to financial fraud or political manipulation. It seems to me that one of the big problems we have is the lack of good instrumentation and systems for measuring information authenticity/ originality/ reliability that would make it easier for people to efficiently evaluate information flows.

anigbrowl 5y ago

It's true; sensemaking is now regarded as a key component of information warfare and organizational development in general, dating back to the 70s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensemaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensemaking). It seems like the ongoing anxiety is that external sources of authority (like press agencies) may be used to foreclose discussions and indirectly suppress unpopular ideas by equating their lack of popularity with lack of credibility - a basic problem for anyone making a novel proposal on its own merits. On the other hand, arguing against the validity/objectivity of any observer forecloses the possibility of trust and pushes every reader into a solipsistic position in which all external propositions have to be evaluated from scratch, a laborious process that hinders the propogation of true information. I do think we need strategies to address the issue of information pollution. Here's a recent example of people deliberately copying a tweet for the purposes of mockery and/or dilution of its original impact: https://theweek.com/coronavirus/1003095/the-making-of-a-vaccine-misinformation-meme https://theweek.com/coronavirus/1003095/the-making-of-a-vacc... Since there' no real cost to such strategies, and it's easy to poison social graphs with bots or teams of like-minded people, there' an incentive to employ such tactics to spread false information for purposes ranging from pure entertainment to financial fraud or political manipulation. It seems to me that one of the big problems we have is the lack of good instrumentation and systems for measuring information authenticity/ originality/ reliability that would make it easier for people to efficiently evaluate information flows.