{"id":189285,"date":"2021-07-26T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2021-07-26T11:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=189285"},"modified":"2021-07-20T09:38:11","modified_gmt":"2021-07-20T08:38:11","slug":"answering-readers-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/07\/answering-readers-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Answering Readers’ Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

19 Jul 2021<\/strong><\/em>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Jonathan T \/ ChumbaRoomba<\/strong> asks:<\/code>
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

What if instead of Conspiracy enabling individuals to abdicate from the making of truth-value judgments, Conspiracy Practice and Conspiracy Theory emerge from an interwoven tapestry of narratives formed of the truth-value judgments of a multitude of individuals\u2014and only when examined holistically in the context of the knowns and unknowns of history can we see who made good judgments based on true or false facts and who made bad ones? …How do we sort True conspiracies from False?<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a great question, and one I still struggle with. To put it in my own terms: could it be that what I regard as the malevolence of conspiracy practice and the ignorance of conspiracy theory simply stems from well-meaning people adhering to, and making decisions based on, what they regard as their truth?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure I have a decent answer. Certainly the secular world has this experience when dealing with extremist religious groups. How can an atheist tell a true believer that they are wrong, when they claim the authority of a god? Contemporary politics are, to my mind, similarly as much or more a test of faith than an examination of fact. The core problem is to identify a space where the definition of truth can be narrowed to some set of facts that can be measured, tested\u2014verified, from the Latin verificare<\/em>: to make true.<\/p>\n

Too often we forget that the unverified is, quite literally, not truly “true.” It can still be reasonable, and even probable, but fact unverified is no fact at all, a circumstance made all the more difficult in a moment when the truth has become emotionalized or psychologized, and increasingly confused for what\u2019s more accurately called \u201cbelief.\u201d<\/p>\n

*************<\/p>\n

Thomas Moller-Nielsen <\/strong>asks:<\/code><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t quite see how the Liar\u2019s Paradox is supposed to relate to the issue of self-censorship. As I understand it, The Liar\u2019s Paradox involves sentences which cannot be either true or false without entailing a contradiction. (\u201cThis sentence is false\u201d, if true, is false, and if false, it is true.) Self-censorship, on the other hand, involves refraining from publicly uttering one\u2019s beliefs due to fear of possible negative social\/political\/economic\/consequences. But what does the former have to do with the latter? What is logically paradoxical about failing to publicly air one\u2019s views?<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It has been said that I’m prone to failures of elaboration. In this case, I invoked the Liar\u2019s Paradox to describe and contextualize the role not of the writer or speaker but of the reader or listener: In a culture of self-censorship, how do we who consume news and opinion know what to believe? How can we tell when someone is being honest (or thinks they\u2019re being honest)? Self-censorship doesn\u2019t just prevent communicators from expressing themselves freely. It eventually erodes the trust of the public\u2014the true \u201csilent majority\u201d who might not have a platform, or want a platform, from which to speak, but who rely on the voices of others to inform them.<\/p>\n

\n

**************<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Larsiusprime<\/strong> asks:<\/code>\r\n<\/code><\/pre>\n
Ed\u2014how much do you think the current state of the internet is due to the surveillance impetus of state actors, and how much [to] private forces? Or are they inherently related? Curious which end of the dog is wagging which, in your opinion.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Good timing on this one: today’s news is full of the escapades of one of those private forces, namely the Israeli NSO Group\u2019s sale of hacking tools to the likes Kazakhstan, Azerbaijian, Mexico, and Hungary. These tools, which were developed by the Israeli state\u2014or more accurately those recently in the employ of the Israeli state\u2014were sold by NSO, nominally a private company. The links between the two significantly complicate any answer. Look to this space later this week for more in-depth treatments of this issue, but for now let me just say this: while it’s not easy to tell where the state ends and the private begins, it’s not hard to see that it\u2019s those whose seek to limit the expression of institutional powers\u2014journalists and opposition candidates and human rights activists\u2014who most often find themselves the victims of it.<\/p>\n
***************<\/p>\n
Eoan<\/strong> asks:<\/code><\/code><\/strong><\/pre>\n
Have you seen or read the series Liar Game?<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I wondered when the anime questions would start.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been rigorously dodging questions like this for as long as I\u2019ve been in the public eye. Occasionally, a friend asks me why.<\/p>\n
When you\u2019re the subject of a controversy in an environment where a significant portion of the media has greater economic incentives to titillate than to edify, even passing references to something like video games or anime will get you treated like a weirdo \u2014 despite the fact that they\u2019re probably more popular than baseball, these days. That\u2019s just how it is.<\/p>\n
As a result, I\u2019ve been pretty careful about the things I\u2019ve said and how I\u2019ve said them, because my every utterance was evaluated by the worst people on Earth for its utility in not only discrediting me as a person, but me as a proxy for people in favor of surveillance reform.<\/em> I cared a lot about that, and so I worked hard to minimize my peculiarities \u2014 or at least the evidence of them.<\/p>\n
Fortunately for all of us, The Peculiarities of Edward Snowden<\/em> is no longer the kind of article that gets assigned at The New Yorker<\/em> anymore \u2014 except in place of something like a book review, if a writer can\u2019t be bothered to read or understand the text \u2014 which means I have finally recovered a lost freedom.<\/p>\n
That freedom is, in part, what has enabled me to start this newsletter, which is probably the only place where someone will be able to ask me about a wildly obscure manga like Liar Game<\/a>, and I\u2019ll be able to say, \u201cYeah, sure: I read it \u2014 at least through the Contraband arc.\u201d<\/p>\n
What a world.<\/p>\n
________________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/em>Born in North Carolina in 1983 Edward Snowden, <\/em>former CIA officer and whistleblower, worked for the National Security Agency through subcontractor Booz Allen in the NSA’s Oahu (Honolulu) office, where he began collecting top-secret documents regarding NSA surveillance practices that he found disturbing. After he fled to Hong Kong\u00a0 newspapers began printing documents that he leaked to them, many detailing invasive spying practices against American citizens, world leaders, corporations and foreign governments through metadata collection of phone calls, email messages, social media activities, plus dissemination of malicious software and viruses throughout computers worldwide. The U.S. has charged Snowden under the Espionage Act but he is hailed around the world as a hero. He remains in exile in Russia, with the U.S. government working on extradition. <\/em>Snowden is the author of \u201c<\/em>Permanent Record\u201d and is the president of <\/em>Freedom of the Press Foundation<\/em><\/a>, a nonprofit that defends public-interest journalism in the 21st century. <\/em><\/p>\n
Go to Original – edwardsnowden.substack.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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