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Knowing in Journalism

Despite the infinite problems knowing may bring to us, I have an plausible illusion of knowledge that is quite comforting. My senses may deceive me, an evil spirit may emulate a world in my consciousness, I may create a narrative that fits the facts, I still know something. The nature of such knowledge may be in dispute, but it is quite clear we either know or we don’t know our own thoughts are ours, that what we see is what we get, that I don’t know anything.

But if we outsource knowledge away from consciousness we encounter a much more complex network of ideas. And journalism have to deal with it, while it has to be swift on the deliver of information. And yes, information itself may be complicated, but we can deal with it as the smallest work unit of analogy. As I babbled on the beginning, information in the consciousness is independent of practices and institutions that are outside of the mind. Journalism tries to deliver new information within the infrastructure of social reality. While I will say very easily if I know something or not, journalistic knowledge lives in a state of uncertainty until it is confirmed by at least a couple of authorities of the institutions that sustain the infrastructure.

The transaction that happens on this category of knowledge is simple enough, but there aren’t any tool of accountability of authority. So the confirmation of knowledge rest in thin air, and it remains a place as long someone, or something, will it to stand. If we are not careful about authority, if we don’t find a way to create accountability of such practices, it is quite difficult to say we know anything at all in journalism. We can only say we create an story that has no care for appropriate structures.

I want to know through journalism, and through academia. But we must leave all these knowledge aside and work really hard to establish better practices and institutions to allow this knowledge to happen. Otherwise the only knowledge we have, is useless, because it is predicated to our consciousness. We deserve the best knowledge possible, all possible knowledge, and not the will of a few.

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Is it democratic or republican?

Your character in the new Fallout video game is recognized by name by non playable characters (NPCs)  in the world, if such grace is within the list of hundreds of words recorded by voice actors, anticipating all sorts of monikers your vault dweller would be called by. It doesn’t do much for game play, it doesn’t make you hit targets better nor it does allow to pickpocket without consequences. Nevertheless it is a detail that improves our immersion in this virtual analogous reality.

To choose a name is a long lived role playing games tradition. It allows us to imprint our own meaning for that character, that at first glance is just a bunch of numbers put together. You as the player is a meaning machine bringing it to life, and whatever you pick to call it helps you develop such meaning. At least this is expected. Most time player choose whatever nonsense they have at reach because those names won’t help them slay monsters faster.

You already feel lurking behind my demonstrations that I am going to state that names are far beyond important and should be taken seriously. And if you bet money on that yo would win. Of course I am saying that. But I won’t indulge in the philosophical problems of names, but I will just focus on only one problem presented mostly to Americans when it comes to politics. Are you a Democrat or are you a Republican?

The meaning of these two parties have changed throughout the centuries. No long ago their positions on policies were reversed. President Lincoln was a republican after all. What it is disingenuous about these names is that they let significant problems pass through as if they were just picked at random and don’t have any repercussions. We don’t have clear common sense parameters to determine what is democratic or what is republican. To vote is a democratic practice or is it a republican practice? The right to own arms under the constitution allows unrestricted purchases of guns, or it is only creating a conditional of whoever owns weapons should be exhaustively trained on the use of such tools?

I am currently developing a workshop on the design of cognitive tools. I thought of such workshop. I learned, but telling the idea of the workshop to a friend, Daniel Dannett wrote a book on intuition pumps a few years back. And reading the book it is quite clear we must find better ways to think about problems. While Dannett focus on quite complex intuition pumps to deal with meaning, consciousness, and other enduring questions of humanities, I rather to stick to very minimal tools. We need a tool to make a safe and workable distinction if something (institution, practice, action) is either republican or democratic. I am not excluding other modes of politics, but I rather stick with the distinction between these two because they are often interchangeable in Western countries.

Although it is less complex than the tools proposed by Dannett, these two concepts are way too powerful in the common sense to be consider lesser. And even if it is simpler, doesn’t mean the tool will be easier to come up with. The understanding of either democracy and republicanism are murky at best. But the design of such tool, given it is a plural effort to come up with something quite useful, will allow people to just think of them better.

My first insight that democracy is attached to choice, availability, and diversity. You may imagine a strong handed military junta dictatorship, that doesn’t allow anyone to vote but generals, but that allows universities to be independent, press to be free, religions to be practiced,etc. It is really weird to think about it because a dictatorship tend to be forceful about choice, but it doesn’t exclude the fact that could be democratic after all. Totalitarianism isn’t the antithesis of democracy, unity is.

Republicanism is representation by vote of the franchised. It doesn’t say anything about freedoms. It may as well be democratic, but not by its republican “essence” but because democratic institutions and practices were allowed to thrive. Yes the “opposite” of republicanism is any way of government that the decision of rulers is anything other than vote, like most monarchies and etc, but it could be as forceful as a dictatorship while a king may be as free as a anarchic commune.

We often rely on history. It is healthy enough practice but what happened before doesn’t discard what may happen in the future. The same way when we choose names, they don’t represent whatever they were named after. The democratic party may as well be democratic in several subjects, but it isn’t in others. The republicans may hold the banner of republicanism, but nowadays they have been mostly the horseman of conservationism.

As for my personal choice, I don’t care for republicanism. It doesn’t really matter. M hope is for democratic institutions and practices to be more apparent, become more numerous, and become stronger. Independent media and free universities are two that I know would move us toward the direction of democracy. But if it comes from a decree of a king, I could care less.

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"Episode 3: On Watching Internet Videos" by EdLabStudios

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"Episode 2: On Commuting by Train" by EdLabStudios

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"Big Love" by thosesiblings

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"Two Chord Tune" by thosesiblings

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"Episode 1: On Finding Books" by EdLabStudios

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"Ep 0: Welcome to An Audience of One" by EdLabStudios

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"From the Studio for Audio" by Disco Trash

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"Jael" by Joyce Wrice

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"Drew Howard & Birthday Boy - Benny & Lil' Ze" by Birthday Boy

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"Arcade Fighters - Exclusive Mixtape Phouse" by Phouse

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Cold into Hot

I am taking a very interesting class on the exploration of Ancient Chinese Thought when it comes to our contemporary thinking. It is ministered by professor Edward Slingerland, and it is quite neat. I came about this because one of his books I read as a recommendation by a previous professor and it has been quite the awakening for me.

Nonetheless, the course talking a bit about Confucius and his salvation through ancient rituals. Only by observing the rituals established by the Western Zhou we might find a way to be favored by heavens. It is a very powerful strategy. The more we practice, the less we have to think about it.

But what was considered to be close to heavens was a very strict version of living. Only one way was possible, and it was a solution that wouldn’t service women, foreigners, etc. The narrower it is thinking, easier it is but more exclusive as well.

In the class we call it cold into hot because of cognitive psychology. Cold cognition is what you do with your consciousness. It requires effort and energy. Hot cognition is what you do automatically, without the direction of the mind. Repeat something so many times and you will transform your action into reflexes. It is a very powerful cognitive function, that saves a lot of time and energy. The catch is that you cannot use this saved energy on anything else but the repeated actions. Quite the problem here.

It requires a lot of democratic institutions to choose the appropriated action to be repeated. A lot. Tons. Not enough. All these institution have to be working towards civil liberties 24/7 for centuries before we can find an action that resemble something that might be worthy  repeating. That discounting any contrary force that may be eroding democracy setting back the progress of finding our candidate for centuries.

Until we find this candidate we must remain vigilant and we will probably fail. Until we can use Confucius strategy, we must consider it not a viable option. Nothing that is narrow, despite isn’t utilitarian sensibility, should come any closer to education and other important pillars of diversity and pluralism. Those are NOT natural, nor intuitive, nor common sense although they should. But until then we cannot capitulate for purpose.

[apostr-blog]

Cold into Hot

I am taking a very interesting class on the exploration of Ancient Chinese Thought when it comes to our contemporary thinking. It is ministered by professor Edward Slingerland, and it is quite neat. I came about this because one of his books I read as a recommendation by a previous professor and it has been quite the awakening for me.

Nonetheless, the course talking a bit about Confucius and his salvation through ancient rituals. Only by observing the rituals established by the Western Zhou we might find a way to be favored by heavens. It is a very powerful strategy. The more we practice, the less we have to think about it.

But what was considered to be close to heavens was a very strict version of living. Only one way was possible, and it was a solution that wouldn’t service women, foreigners, etc. The narrower it is thinking, easier it is but more exclusive as well.

In the class we call it cold into hot because of cognitive psychology. Cold cognition is what you do with your consciousness. It requires effort and energy. Hot cognition is what you do automatically, without the direction of the mind. Repeat something so many times and you will transform your action into reflexes. It is a very powerful cognitive function, that saves a lot of time and energy. The catch is that you cannot use this saved energy on anything else but the repeated actions. Quite the problem here.

It requires a lot of democratic institutions to choose the appropriated action to be repeated. A lot. Tons. Not enough. All these institution have to be working towards civil liberties 24/7 for centuries before we can find an action that resemble something that might be worthy  repeating. That discounting any contrary force that may be eroding democracy setting back the progress of finding our candidate for centuries.

Until we find this candidate we must remain vigilant and we will probably fail. Until we can use Confucius strategy, we must consider it not a viable option. Nothing that is narrow, despite isn’t utilitarian sensibility, should come any closer to education and other important pillars of diversity and pluralism. Those are NOT natural, nor intuitive, nor common sense although they should. But until then we cannot capitulate for purpose.

[apostr-blog]

Bartlett for America

The West Wing is one of my favorite shows. It contains the right amount of ideology that makes me cry on most episodes. The structure of a government that we dream of having, amidst challenges and fuck ups, inspire me of thinking of a better future. And of course the centre piece is president Bartlett.

He is an unusual commander-in-chief. He is an academic from the London School of Economics from one of the families who were part of the American Revolution, but didn’t see himself working at the oval office. It was his long time friend Leo McGarry, then chief of staff,  who saw the presidential potential in him while he was the governor of New Hampshire. Leo is the tough voice inside Bartlett who encourages him to keep going.

All the central characters in the stories are aspects of Bartlett inner magnanimosity. Leo is this constant wave. His deputy, Josh Lyman, is the capacity of creating connections. He is a fantastic political operative because he links unseemly subjects to concise narratives. Sam Seaborn, deputy Communications Director, while staffing for the president when Lyman couldn’t, said he knew how brilliant was Josh, but only after wearing his shoes he understood how much more intelligent he was to himself.

Seaborn is no scrub though. He is the poesies in Bartlett. He manages to find the right voice for the right audience while lifting the president closer to divine. On the occasion of a bombing in a school this is what the president discoursed:

More than any time in recent history, America's destiny is not of our own choosing. We did not seek nor did we provoke an assault on our freedom and our way of life. We did not expect nor did we invite a confrontation with evil. Yet the true measure of a people's strength is how they rise to master that moment when it does arrive. 44 people were killed a couple of hours ago at Kennison State University. Three swimmers from the men's team were killed and two others are in critical condition. When, after having heard the explosion from their practice facility, they ran into the fire to help get people out. Ran *in* to the fire. The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels tonight. They're our students and our teachers and our parents and our friends. The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels, but every time we think we have measured our capacity to meet a challenge, we look up and we're reminded that that capacity may well be limitless. This is a time for American heroes. We will do what is hard. We will achieve what is great. This is a time for American heroes and we reach for the stars. God bless their memory, God bless you and God bless the United States of America. Thank you. 

After being question when he wrote he, without much thought he said: “In the car 15 minutes ago.” He was mocked as a freak for doing so.

Sam’s boss, the Communications Director, is Tobby Ziegler. He emphasizes the idealism in Josiah Bartlett. He is always challenging the president to do more, and do better, not because it will bring glory to them but because it is the moral imperative. It is not the neat flag raising in Iwo Jima idealism, but the grumpy the future is nebulous we are screwed type of rhetoric.

And last but not least there Claudia Jean Craig. CJ, She is the bridge between the brilliant mind of the absent economics professor Bartlett to the rest of reality. Josh and Tobby tried to to her job as Press Secretary to find out it was much more difficult to do than they ever imagine. And a few times they tried to leave CJ in the dark so she didn’t have to lie to the press, but that brought much more problems than their whammy solution. A magnificent self cannot live in the vacuum and that is what CJ makes sure it doesn’t happen.

They are like Greek heroes who are the best at expressing the public feelings that are the goods. And Bartlett are the Greek State Cities of the old.

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Learning is cooking

According to the IBM Watson Personality Insights service this text is: compulsive. Excitable.  Proud. Intermittent. Driven by the well being of others.

My dear friend navigatingmedia uses the vocabulary of nutrition to talk about media and journalism. It is very scatological to travel together with the news traveling through our guts but is exactly this approximation to our body that makes this analogy so special. If the information we hear is detached from ourselves, it bears little influence in our thoughts. Or at least we don’t feel it as part of us. But to make it go through us, it becomes our responsibility to know exactly what we are eating.

The theories that borrow the analogy of nutrition in journalism, though, puts us in the place of culinary critic. It doesn’t dwell much on the process of cooking the news, but it is understandable. To impose how to report the news is reprehensible at best and it is evil on its worst. We expect the readers to be responsible and critical citizens, because we have to expect the best from them.

Education, though, is a infrastructure that helps citizens to become responsible and critical about the world. Although we must assume the best from our students, we must make sure they are eating fresh ingredients instead of expecting them to say no to rotten food. Unfortunately the authority biases that exists prevent the young from being subversive.

On my everlasting journey to become a professor I am attending my 4th undergraduate program and on the nutritious stand point it feels they are serving me microwave ready frozen food. In no way I feel in charge of my nutrition and I can only anger the faculty if I decide to say no to their “generous” meal. It is atrocious.

Education as cooking should provide the students fresh ingredients and allow them to cook any meal it is interesting to them. The educator shouldn’t impose the broccolis to their pupils, but point out to them that the addition of certain group of vegetables increase their health tenfold. This analogy becomes really powerful when we consider the details. In the beginning students learn to cut the produce and all the other fundamentals so in the end (s)he indulge in Mongolian spices and native American stews.

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Segurança versus Privacidade

Essa é provavelmente a dicotomia do século XXI. É uma ideia que foi amplamente discutida no século anterior por autores como Orwell e Huxley mas somente agora estamos vivendo os efeitos dessa disputa. Sacrificamos nossa privacidade por mais segurança ou nos arriscamos mais apesar do alto índice de violência?

Eu acho que essa são as opções erradas a serem investigadas. Podemos encontrar soluções além da proporção indireta entre segurança e privacidade. Acho que esse tipo de pensamento é muito intuitivo porque sempre colocamos as discussões etico-sociais em termos de opostos. É o tipo de argumentação que estamos mais acostumados.

Mas porque não pensar em forma de destino ao invés de balança? Por exemplo, como é que podemos aumentar a segurança mantendo a privacidade das pessoas? Afinal nossa proteção física é mais importante que nossa proteção virtual. A muito tempo já deixamos nas mãos do estado a definição de nessa identidades. A confecção da carteira que denomina seu nome e data de nascimentos associado a uma foto recente 3/4 e a impressão da digital de seu polegar é apenas evidência que o governo é quem determina se você é uma pessoa ou não. Portanto não seria um passo muito longe do esperado que os governantes vigiassem nossa vida por completo porque ele já são donos de nós.

O problema maior é que corporações tem acesso a nossas vidas e elas lucram com quem somos na Internet. Nada tem a ver com segurança apesar de justificarem como tal.

Há dois fundamentos que proporcionariam a segurança das pessoas mantendo suas privacidades: diversidade empatia. Precisamos realizar a segurança do jeito que fazemos porque há apenas alguns moldes aceitáveis a serem realizados e qualquer individuo a margem dessa denominação acaba gerando um conflito para manutenção dessas estruturas. Em um mundo em que todos podemos ser o que bem entendemos sem maiores prejuízos, e que nos colocamos no lugar do outro, não gera esses conflitos e portanto a segurança aumenta.

É bem simples. Diversidade aumenta segurança sem interferir na privacidade. O governo não pode dizer para as pessoas o que elas podem ser, apenas dizer o que de maneira alguma não podemos chegar a cogitar (afinal existem certas escolhas que afetam todas as pessoas.) E havendo estruturas que garantam essa diversidade, viveremos livres para divulgar informação como bem entendermos.