Dear Daniel,
I've carefully read your pre-print and, even though I am not a specialist (and for this I've been struggling with several passages of the text), I've found it of great interest. It is something that should be made available for a large public, and my comment is mainly related to this aspect (on more specific points I will post a couple of questions in the dedicated area).
The strong point is highlighting the ongoing process of reducing human lifes in finite numbers for industrial, institutional or political use; this is something concerning the life of every citizen of each World Country and is still insufficiently debated and taken into account by citizens themselves.
About the structure of the paper, I find two main subjects treated in it: the technical-scientific issue (we all are ill-prepared to the challenges we are facing under a technical-scientific profile) and the political issue (USA are ill-prepared to face the challenges coming from Chinese system). Well, it seems to me these two subjects are mixed in the paper in a way the relationship between them is not completely clear; for example, with regards to political aspects: why China only would represent a true danger? The cyber-security and the related privacy issues are represented in the Occident also and present times technology makes it possible great (informatic) damages with small or very small investments.
Two comments about the technical-scientific aspect: by the one hand, I agree with your picture of the scientific research troubles (CS as well as any other field), a question I am still dealing with. By the other hand, I had some difficulty in reading the text because of its highly technical form; for example, I could not clear all the acronyms and could not understand some citations referred to areas actually out of my reaching.
On the whole, I confirm I found the work very interesting and worth a large diffusion.
Best regards
Roberto
Dear Roberto (if I may)
I would like to thank you first for the time you took to read the manuscript, putting pen to paper to ask thoughtful, pertinent questions, as well as your kind comments. I turned to my wife and said: If only having reached this one gentle reader who made an effort to grapple with the paper and left this feedback, the work was worthwhile to me. It truly made my introduction to PeerJ gratifying, as well.
I will attempt to answer your three questions to your satisfaction on Sunday, after the Sabbat; and also why the focus is China and why I linked two seemingly disparate subjects.
As a preliminary, to understand the background, this paper was written for a specific audience for a specific conference on cyberconflict (and intended to be supplemented by a talk, expecting and touching on the very questions you raised), CyConUS 2016 http://aci.cvent.com/events/cycon-u-s-2016-conference-on-cyber-conflict/custom-19-1aa58c3dbbcc42259274a3c8d61e5598.aspx
That conference attracts a a particular mix of attendees and speakers: technologists, policy makers, think tank people, US military, academics and cybersecurity specialists, with a smattering of journalists, and assorted interested lay people. In order to reach a large subset and keep interest piqued for this diverse audience, I wrote the paper in such a way that every subgroup would be able to find nuggets of interest in the paper, in a language and imagery that would speak to them. I did not intend on the outset for this paper to be standalone without me explaining certain issues in Q/A along the way. I also had to cut out in the original submission material because I hit the 6000 word limit. Lastly, I asked for an extension but still was not finished (wistfully channeling Tagore: The butterfly counts not hours but moments, and has time enough)
Hence I apologize for it being unintelligible in parts; one purpose of the PeerJ submission was to clarify concepts and crystallize argument, based on your questions (and hopefully others). I will of course credit you in the Acknowledgements.
Thank you again for your time and have a great evening
Daniel
Dear Daniel (you are welcome in using my first name, I myself began to do so),
I have carefully read your reply and all your answers and I must say that the more I read, the more I feel interested in your work. In addition, I want to thank you for the very kind words you used in your reply.
It is not usual to find a paper that combines a highly technical subject with a strategic vision and I think you worked it out. What is more, through your text I have been able to understand (even though within the borders of my background) the meanings of a deeply technical work.
I'd like to speak diffusely about the stimuli I received but, for the moment, I will focus on the key-points I grasped from my new readings. I think the main one is the commensurability of the incommensurable (this is "optimization", isn't it?), considering which we can ask: Is it theoretically possible? Is it socially/politically feasible? In the end: is it possible to force the course of History, to intentionally drive toward goals chosen by a single (or a very restricted minority) social processes carried out, up until now, through the free interplay of independent components and subjects (at mass level)?
If we consider the triangle individuals - societies - technologies, I and my old group can say that our research has been dealing with the individuals - societies side and, in some of its implications, has touched the first question in the following terms: theoretical possibility of reproducing human thought on a machine. Our answer was provisionally negative in that we found structural differences among the data processing of a (present times) computer and the process of interpretation performed by a human being. In a word: it looks like something analogical to be translated into digital, something continuous that should become discrete, something complex that has to be treated as deterministic (for example through algorithms). Using your words: will it really be possible "to ensure a deontological imprimatur on the systems"? (By the way, I appreciated your distinction among "systems" and "machines" and I agree with it).
Our answer, even once it were verified, should be referred just to the first question and would not directly affect the second. In a complex world, ways could be found to practically implement (even though imperfectly, for example through enforcement) something that is theoretically impossible; this is the actual danger related to the MMIE you described, in my opinion.
Dear Daniel, I thank you again for the unusual opportunity that your work provided to me of discussing so wide range topics. I hope this discussion can continue.
Before closing, a hint to the anectode you cited in answering my third question; here in Italy, the story is accounted to be true (even though I cannot be certain of it) and the protagonist role is credited to Giotto.
Best regards and hear you again
Roberto
Dear Roberto
Thank you for closing note. Would you kindly point me towards that research you and your group undertook highlighting the structural difference between data processing as conducted by computer and interpretation performed by a human being? This is an incipient research area, algorithmic fairness - see portal to Critical Algorithm studies https://socialmediacollective.org/reading-lists/critical-algorithm-studies/ - that may benefit from these findings. I'd like to also investigate whether newer computing paradigms could (help) alleviate some of the issues you and your group identified.
I am heartened that you deduced or intuited the ontological issue at a deeper, more abstract level: In my humble opinion, it is at heart a tension between the continuum and the discrete. This is why I mentioned the difference between numerical 'values' with respect to the Cantor Hierarchy of Infinity. I should probably add a reference to explain this further.
Your point about forcing History "toward goals chosen by a single social process" is very timely given yesterday's Facebook flap over removal of a post containing an iconic war picture http://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kommentar/Dear-Mark-I-am-writing-this-to-inform-you-that-I-shall-not-comply-with-your-requirement-to-remove-this-picture-604156b.html
"Listen, Mark [Zuckerberg, FB CEO], this is serious. First you create rules that don’t distinguish between child pornography and famous war photographs. Then you practice these rules without allowing space for good judgement. Finally you even censor criticism against and a discussion about the decision – and you punish the person who dares to voice criticism."
I do worry like you about the top down enforcement of something that is theoretically impossible because of the likely fallout of the coercive imperfect mapping of the infinite to finite numbers, a major theme in the manuscript.
Lastly, I am heartened that the Giotto anecdote is accepted as true (I love telling people evocative stories, an ancient teaching technique); henceforth I will present it as such and close with Bruno's "Se non è vero, è molto ben trovato." :D
Best regards and have a great weekend
Daniel
Dear Daniel,
I thank you very much for your feeding our discussion and I confirm my growing interest in it. It's a bit late, here in Italy, but I want all the same send you my succinct reply, reserving myself the right to add more extended reflections after the weekend (during which I'm committed to doing other kinds of activities). I will follow your points in sequence.
About our research (published here in PeerJ, https://peerj.com/articles/1361/), we have not directly tackled the man-machine interaction subject; exactly, we have studied the process of written message interpretation through a naturalistic approach. The implicit model in our minds was the traditional metaphor of the brain as a computational machine and our expectations were about a statistical analysis of the different interpretations given by the sample to the messages exchanged in a real world-like case of communication. In so doing, we have found ourselves facing something unexpected: the process we were going on observing did not resemble an information processing one. Through qualitative and quantitative analysis, we have found clues that led us to propose a (new) model of the interpretation process we had observed and that we tried (successfully, al least in the context of our research) to confirm through some statistical evidence.
Our hypotheses about the man-machine relationship have come out as a consequence of what we observed on field about interpretation. Interpretation is a key-question because the possibility that it is something structurally different (i.e. having a different nature) from information processing could lead to modify some paradigms in certain research fields. We have also formulated a hypothesis about the biological foundation of such difference: the body and a possible new role for it in human-environment interactions.
Going ahead, I did not know about the case of Facebook and the famous Vietnam war photo, so I thank you for your precious indication (I am on Facebook, too, but do not use it systematically). I, too, think such case confirms the concernings we share.
In the end, about the anecdote on Giotto, in Italy the most used expression is: "the famous Giotto's 'O'". And my compliments for Bruno's original language quotation.
My best regards and wishes for your Sabbat
Roberto