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

[Sean Cubitt via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

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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