Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #epistemic

Most recents (7)

Frustrating but important perspective by @PeterHotez:

"The phenomenon of red Covid was not a random occurrence but instead an expected outcome of predation linked to extremist politics"

Read in full:

A few thoughts follow 🔽
faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1096/fb…
In this perspective, Dr. Hotez offers some insights on the topics I have been writing & talking about, namely the #weaponization of conspiracy #myths by political actors to attack unwelcome scientific authority in public discourse.

He first outlines the damage: Needless deaths Image
How could it have come so far?

For Dr. Hotez, part of that answer lies with anti-science messaging from political elites; how else does one explain the "red covid" phenomenon?

Furthermore, there has been no course correction by political elites. If anything, they doubled down Image
Read 10 tweets
Discussions about #FreeSpeech are misguided in the information age.

Even before our voices are drowned out by the noise on social media, or overwritten by information combatants, we lose our agency and decision autonomy to manipulative complex systems we don’t fully understand.
The whole point of the #enlightenment, the scientific revolution, our educational and #epistemic institutions was to empower individuals to find a way out of their self-imposed #immaturity, to take #agency over their lives and make informed decisions.
We need #epistemic clarity about reality, for without it, our agency will be blunted & our freedom a charade

It is public-interest education, journalism & science that truly make individuals in a #democratic society free, not the right to cast a vote or to elect a representative
Read 12 tweets
⬇️very useful document offering a network perspective on societal ills currently plaguing us.

I am certainly appreciating the insights offered here and fully agree with many of the things outlined.
Please give it a read:
1/
I've been thinking more on a complexity framework to account for the non-linearity of the systems we are part of, as well as emergence and control theory.

But network & graph theory plays an enormous role there as well because complex systems can be abstracted into networks
2/ ImageImageImage
The really interesting question is not what framework or models we use to #conceptualize the relationships between society and our broken info spheres, but whether or not they are #useful to understand why we currently experience #democratic backsliding around the world
3/ ImageImageImage
Read 6 tweets
Scientists only know how to fight #fictions with facts

And that is a dramatic #disadvantage on social media

My latest article is on the #asymmetric power that keeps the #lableak conspiracy myth alive despite mounting scientific evidence against it

1/
protagonistfuture.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-tw…
In the article, I explain why every time a new scientific report from experts comes out on the origins (like today 🔽), a social media machinery kicks into gear to defame & #harass scientists, push counter-narratives & #poison the infosphere

2/
pnas.org/doi/full/10.10…
This is no coincidence, but the inevitable outcome of our broken info sphere & #epistemic crisis.

A crisis where people lose the ability to assess what is real or true.

See, #information has a special function in society it does not only inform our choices and beliefs...

3/
Read 11 tweets
It's good to be back! Follow this thread for the video stream & live coverage of tonight's first SFI Community Lecture at @TheLensic in two years, featuring @Sara_Imari on the #physics of living #systems.
And stay tuned for an extraordinary lineup of additional talks this year...
Live stream starts in one minute!
SFI's @ChrisKempes introduces tonight's speaker @Sara_Imari (@sfiscience, @beyond_asu) by quoting #HaroldMorowitz about how, to find life beyond Earth, we must understand the *origins* of life...
Read 28 tweets
The wise, one alone, unwilling and willing to be spoken of only by the name of #Zeus, the name of Life.

- #Heraclitus 113

[Kahn 1979, pp. 267-271]
“With deliberate antimony #Heraclitus here presents his positive conception of the divine ... The #aphorism is unusually dense and puzzling, full of conflicting forces mysteriously under control.”

- Kahn, ‘Art and Thought of #Heraclitus,’ 1979, pp. 267
“... for #Heraclitus as for Aeschylus ‘#etymology’ must be taken literally: an ‘etymos #logos’ is a ‘true statement’ hidden in the form of a name ... the name ‘Zēnos’ affirms that the supreme #deity is also a principle of life, like the ‘everliving fire’ ...”

- Kahn 1979 p. 270
Read 13 tweets
Can't believe my eyes seeing de Tocqueville quoted re: prospects of democratic transition in #Algeria. The guy literally wrote memos in support of French brutal torture system in #Algeria. It's already a violence that he became the democracy theorist in the US but this is a farce
On #epistemic violences and theorizing from the #GlobalSouth, think about how Alexis de Tocqueville, before becoming the father figure of democracy in the U.S. was a war-strategist for colonial #France in #Algeria. I'll throw in a few bonus quotes from his "Essay on #Algeria":
#Tocqueville wrote in 1841 "The most effective means we can use to subjugate the tribes is the interdiction of commerce” - speaking here about #Algerians around the Ottoman Empire's fall and the invasion of #France.
Read 7 tweets

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