Category: indigena

One Significant Way Human Trust is Significantly Flawed

I had a discussion the other day that reminded of something I had noticed decades ago (and had also discussed with people back then).

The difference between then and now boils down to this: whereas decades ago I thought this was something that we could and should fix, today I am quite doubtful whether it is something that can be fixed at all. Anyone who has ever been foolishly speeding down a highway in (or on) some vehicle and who all of sudden encounters slippery road conditions would only strongly “hit the brakes” if they were severely inexperienced. In many cases, turning things around on a dime is simply nearly impossible. I now believe the issue I was reminded of a few days ago is one of those cases which simply cannot be changed, and can only be accepted as one of those well-known “laws of nature”.

The issue has to do with human trust. Maybe not exclusively, but quite certainly humans have developed some very particular trust mechanisms over the millions of years in which our species has evolved. One such mechanism is the way trust is based on visual information — I spoke with a friend today about the way (for example) facial recognition is important and he supported this notion (and I consider him to be quite a specialist on the topic). Our species has evolved to be very dependent on visual data.

There’s just something different about receiving information from a human being with a face rather than an avatar with a photo.

Josepha Haden-Chomposy, “WordPress — In Person!” (WordPress Briefing #12, ca. 10:15 [ https://wordpress.org/news/2021/07/episode-12-wordpress-in-person ] )

Since our brains are hardwired for being so strongly focused on visual data, many long-standing information technologies are also based on visual data. Although Josepha doesn’t quite put her finger on it, I believe what she is referring to is that whereas “in-the-flesh” humans are convincingly real and authentic, any visual representation can easily be manipulated and fake.

This divergence between things we perceive as trustworthy (yet which we perhaps ought to be skeptical of) and the technological manifestation of manipulative efforts (used in a wide variety of propaganda technologies to influence our thinking and behavior — and which perhaps ought to be considered distrustworthy because they are inherently meaningless and empty) seems to be a fundamental flaw in human beings.

This flaw is so deeply ingrained in our mental makeup, that perhaps we cannot even fight against it. If the fake is indiscernible from the real, then fooling naive people will continue and remain rampant, quick and easy as child’s play. Millions of years of evolution cannot simply be reversed overnight.

Any information technology strongly based on visual information ought to be interpreted as distrustworthy (which means “worthy of distrust“) — in sharp contrast (and completely opposite) to the way human trust mechanisms have developed through millions of years of evolutionary development. This should give any rational thinking person significant pause (to think about the current situation humanity is now in).

PS: yes, this has a LOT to do with “Social Business Regulation: Introduction & Socio BIZ Rule #1” [ https://socio.business.blog/2022/06/06/social-business-regulation-introduction-socio-biz-rule-1 ]

Choosing Authenticity Over Shame

I recently saw some headline mentioning Justine Musk, and I was reminded of how strongly I was interested in her words a while back (like maybe 5 or 10 years ago). I never actually lost interest. She simply stopped sharing her story.

Let me remind you of just a little piece of this:

We need to trust the deep yes so we can trust each other

“The art of the deep yes” Justine Musk at TEDxOlympicBlvdWomen @ 15:05

Her stories went far beyond that — I think she’s probably a wild and crazy gal.

I mention this one particular statement because it is really a good example of how indigena is preferable to propaganda.

When we affirm our own beliefs and reject beliefs others seek to impose upon us, then we affirm ourselves. We become true to ourselves. We trust ourselves. We realize that others can behave similarly, and this is a fundamental part of our capacity to believe in others, their stories, etc.

The image of Justine making eye contact with the camera is very telling — insofar as she presents herself as being aware of her audience (see also “One Remarkable Thing About Each & Every Audience is its Consumer Behavior” [ https://socio.business.blog/2022/07/02/one-remarkable-thing-about-each-every-audience-is-its-consumer-behavior ] ). It shows that she feels vulnerable and seeks the audience’s approval. She may be ashamed about something, yet she courageously confronts her own insecurities and courageously speaks her own truth.

And she wants to participate in a community of like-minded people — people who are willing to stand behind their own words. Such authentic devotion to language is thrilling, because it is not simply a matter of self-affirmation, it is also a matter of affirming our community’s language. We are sharing truths via a shared technology, which no single individual can control or manipulate. It is an act of “ubuntu” to participate in such communications.

When someone says “I care about X” and X is a shared concept, this affirms the community which maintains this concept: We share this language.

In contrast, any person or company or trademark which affirms only their own purpose, their own philosophy, their own story, their own language … is only affirming their own way of behaving in a very self-centered manner. There is no engagement with others. Simply take it or leave it.

I will usually leave it.

The WordPress Community: “Where we currently are, and where we are heading to”

That quote is from a talk Alain Schlesser [ https://www.alainschlesser.com ] gave at WordCamp Europe (WCEU) a few weeks ago in Porto (yet which I didn’t have a chance to attend “in the flesh”). I myself did not give a presentation, but I did ask Matt Mullenweg and Josepha Haden a question (see e.g. “Social Business Regulation: Introduction & Socio BIZ Rule #1” [ https://socio.business.blog/2022/06/06/social-business-regulation-introduction-socio-biz-rule-1 ] ). Alain’s talk can already be viewed at WordPress.TV [ https://wordpress.tv/2022/06/24/we-need-to-do-better-really ], but my question to Matt and Josepha is not available yet in video format at that site (however, you can see an image including an excerpt from my question here):

What do you believe WordPress should do in order to be among the world’s fittest marketplaces? [@ search.tech.blog]

I think I view the situation even more gravely than Alain. In my opinion, publishing — which has been one of the cornerstones of modern science for about half a millennium — is currently at risk of being subsumed among a very few very large companies. These global players (including Google, Amazon and perhaps a few more businesses involved in what I might refer to as “Spyware 2.0”) are now already able to manipulate the global population — which now show an extremely naive kind of blind faith (I myself have referred to Google as the “online Pope” for well over a decade).

Alain details many reasons why many people have become “unwilling or unable” to use the open Web (versus “native” Apps — and here, oddly, “native” refers to the hardware platforms of the smartphones they are using [1] ).

His entire talk is very informative and I feel it also simplifies very complex issues just enough to make it easily understandable for the wider community — and it is this issue, namely the wider community that I wish to focus on here.

He concludes with a rather simple (and at the same time important) question: There’s got to be a better way of turning the value you’re producing into the money you need to make it sustainable — what are some proposals for such a better way? [2]

I have such a proposal

I propose that WordPress should focus more attention towards the integration of “the wider community” as participants (and as contributors, in a wide variety of roles) than it currently does. I believe this would mean that the WordPress project should devote far more attention into turning “walled gardens” into more fluid marketplaces with more permeable membranes. I believe this is very much in line with the question I raised (which I have also written about quite extensively — a good starting point being the article I shared above [via socio.biz] ). Obviously, there are security issues involved — and I strongly believe WordPress needs to step up its game in order to provide the wider audience with a justifiably stronger sense of security.

As one example of this, let me consider the role of “administrators” — the people keeping a WordPress site up and running from a “technological” perspective. Perhaps site owners would have a (justifiably) greater sense of security if they could “hand over the keys” to their site towards trusted (and as I argued in “Socio Biz Rule #1”: authenticated) partners — even more-so if they had different key for each of the different administrator types — such as web-designers, graphic-designers, database specialists, etc. — and likewise differentiated roles (and capabilities).

Community and teamwork belong on the same page — and this is true from the top levels all the way down to a participant who can do little or nothing more than to read or click a like button. In order for this to work, there needs to be a reliable way to discriminate between human beings and bots (again, simply as an example). I don’t mean 100% reliability, but I do mean reliable enough to guarantee that if an error happens, then it can be fixed in some way … to the satisfaction of each and every community participant.

[1] when you view my question @ WordPress.TV (I will update with a link as soon as it becomes available [ https://wordpress.tv/2022/07/17/matt-mullenweg-josepha-haden-in-conversation ] ), you will perhaps note that our discussion (@ ca. 21:30) also involves references these “open” versus “closed” (i.e. proprietary) platforms — you might also associate this with the “marketplace” versus the “cathedral” (a now widespread metaphor)
[2] note that I do not think money is a requirement — see also “Markets Without Money“

Non-Artificial Intelligence

aka: Nature, natural stuff, life, etc.

Why would anyone want to remove living beings from our environment, and replace them with dead things? That consume vast amounts of energy? That contribute nothing (other than waste) to the environment?

Over the past few years, we have seen some quite significant changes in the global economy. Most of humanity has now come to the realization that machines are sometimes (in some respects) less efficient than nature, natural forces and organic life forms. This is not so much an argument in support of so-called “intelligent design” as it is in support of “evolutionary design”.

Many life forms evidence a great deal of intelligence — not just humans, but also humans. A human can in many respects be more efficient than a machine.

Some people seem to have forgotten that… but you still can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

Propaganda Information Technology vs. Indigena Information Technology — the Basic Idea

Let’s begin with information technology: All languages are infomation technologies, but not every information technology is a language. To qualify as a language, an information technology must be shared (in a free and open manner) among a community of users. Any and all aspirations to make an information technology proprietary immediately disqualifies it as a language. This is the case, for example, among registered trademarks, secret codes and such.

Now let’s turn to languages, in particular Latin. Indigena and propaganda are long-standing concepts based in the Latin language. They are basically opposites. Indigena (from “endo-” + “genus”) means inborn (either as adjective or as a noun). Propaganda is a term from the point of view of the propagandist — meaning essentially to propagate something (such as Christianity) in another environment (from its own native environment). In a zero-sum world, concepts are either native (indigena) or foreign (propaganda). That is all fine in a logical or mathematical manner, but reality is rarely so clear-cut.

Societies can be rather open or closed — and when they are more open, ideas can cross borders quite freely and easily. Such cross-pollination is generally seen as mutually beneficial, both in the natural world and also in the world of ideas. The expectation is that evolution will over time shape natural languages much in the same way it shapes species via the process referred to as “survival of the fittest”. Once you realize that since fittest refers to environmental conditions, and also that since nearly everything else is also evolving concurrently, the complexity of the systems involved increases dramatically as feedback loops upon feedback loops make for extremely loopy situations.

So while the indigena concept has rather fuzzy boundaries — starting right from the way “mother tongues” are not actually passed on in a genetic manner, but generally rather via involvement of close (but not fully identical) relatives … all the way to how languages are abstract and how they can transcend regional boundaries likewise freely and easily — the propaganda concept is nonetheless clearly different, insofar as it is a one-sided affair rather than mutually agreed upon. If done artfully, it may be successful in an enticing and seductive manner, fooling the sucker into believing they themselves choose to get on board.

All propaganda needs to be effective is a sufficient supply of suckers. Perhaps not every single one of Pavlov’s dogs behaved in the “Pavlovian” manner, but apparently enough did. And through the wonders of mesmerizing technology and ample amounts of legalese documentation and fine print, the trick of getting enough suckers to sign up for free offers is as easy as offering sweet candy to babes.

Among an out-of-sight-out-of-mind generation it is also a piece of cake to maintain propaganda communications at near-zero cost. The vast majority of suckers do not realize that they are being spied on around the clock, and that the communications they themselves believe to be clear and unadulterated are so adulterated that you would think it ought to be unlawful [ https://socio.business.blog/2022/05/07/the-law-one ].

Life Undrugged: Getting off online without all that greedy grid junk

So far, this is only an idea. Please feel free to contribute some comments and / or ideas of your own! 😀

The basic concept goes like this: We the people … don’t need no information pushed into our brains from any outside source. We already have everything we need. We just want to communicate with each other, in our own language, as natives, because we are made this way. We are humans, we use languages, we want to understand each other, we want to communicate.

Native communication doesn’t need any propaganda, ads, or similar BS technology. We just want to talk using regular language, thank you very much.

That said, there are indeed still some unresolved issues — such as:

  • is our community local or global?
  • do we use one language or many languages?
  • how do we respect diverse situations and contexts?

That is just a start. In general, this is a complex can of worms. Does that inspire you or intimidate you? Maybe both? Will you remain humble, or will you overcome any of your humility and be courageous enough to dare to know, dare to think, dare to believe, speculate, experiment, explore, whatever?

Yes? Start here & now! 😀