Re: <nettime> It's Time to Fight for Open Source Again (fwd)

[Brian Holmes via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Brilliant post Sean!

Cheers from the Mississippi River,  Brian

On Sat, Nov 11, 2023, 02:34 Sean Cubitt via nettime-l <
nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote:

>
> A small footnote to the Open Source discussion
> Daniel writes:
> > despite
> > some hindrances, the concept of 'scientific consensus' still exists and
> > there still is, in the majority of situations, ways to differentiate
> > facts from misinformation.
>
> A little care is needed here. A fact is not a thing (event, object, rule)
> existing in the world: it is a statement about it. There will always be a
> gap between things human techniques (language, maths, logic) can say and
> the things of the world. But it is also the case that the relation is not
> absolutely fluid.
> A reasonable example from the CRED 2022 report on weather-related
> disasters (https://cred.be/sites/default/files/2022_EMDAT_report.pdf)
> Quote: "In 2022, the Emergency Event Database EM-DAT recorded 387 natural
> hazards and disasters worldwide, resulting in the loss of 30,704 lives and
> affecting 185 million individuals".
> Clearly the number of disasters depends on the definition of disaster (and
> of weather-related); the word 'resulting' may be incomplete as days go by
> and more people die; and 30,704 is a precise number where 185 million is an
> approximation.
>
> Any well-organised scientific field compares and adjusts reported figures:
> instruments vary, reporting introduces various kinds of noise; cleaning
> numbers for compilation can introduce errors. The result is not an absolute
> statement but a statement of the probable state of affairs. Contemporary
> science (not just quantum mechanics) is probabilistic; but it hones its
> probabilities on large-scale debate and disagreement, constant refinement
> of data and reporting, and assymptotic approach to the greatest level of
> agreement possible under current conditions. Typically, when there is
> agreement that something is wrong with the result, it starts a new hunt for
> new phenomena (dark matter is a good example).
>
> I used to think the anarcho-capitalists and Right-situationists had stolen
> left critiques of science for their campain=gns; but no. The difference is
> that they DO assert that their statements are accurate accounts of the
> world. One way to recognise misonformation is the absolute certainty of
> those who broadcast it that it is indeed a truth about the world. Science
> on the other hand constitutes itself around a set of hypotheses that have
> been tested in as many ways as possible to make the most probable statement
> about how an aspect of the world functions - thatis what consensus means:
> openness, not the closed, not to say blinkered, blind faith in the identity
> of statements and things that characterises misinformation channels
>
> Where certainty does leak into techno-scientific policy and application
> (as it so often does since economics became a cyborg science), there is a
> specific danger that consensus is closed down and replaced by blind faith,
> and that faith is imposed on the global South as the victory of the
> epistemology of the North. Nuance is also a victim of misinformation
> campaigns and what they have done to their opponents' ways of thinking
>
> seán
>
>
> I acknowledge the Boonwurrong and Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin nation
> on whose unceded lands I live and work
>
> New publications:
> Seán Cubitt, Truth (Aesthetic Politics 1)<
> https://www.gold.ac.uk/goldsmiths-press/publications/truth/>. Goldsmiths
> Press 2023
>
>  Stephen Rust, Salma Monani and Sean Cubitt (eds), Ecocinema Theory and
> Practice 2, Routledge. 2023. Open access:
> https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003246602
>
>
>
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>
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