Is Control controlled by its need to control? Options Rating

[Jonny Cache]

If people come away with anything from this site and its endless sordid dramas, it is my hope that at some point they read that abstracted interview, the two videos and their abstracted statements, and see that photograph of Jimbo Wales with Blair and Branson. And maybe reflect on how all these ideas and images relate to each other. One shouldn't need a grounding in mathematical abstractions to draw progressive conclusions from them.

And yet no amount of pointing and laughing at the Emperor's Shiny Metal Ass seems to bring the Robutt down.

Why is that?

Because deep in their ♥ of ♥s people want their leaders to thumb their noses at every law. What good is a leader who does not act out the fantasies of the peons? What vicarious pleasure can the downtrodden masses take from a leader who does not flaunt the artistry of his con?

If you fail to understand this, you will fail to understand the futility of almost everything that goes on at The Wikipedia Review.

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Wed 26th March 2008, 5:56pm

[Milton Roe]

If you itemize the de facto values of any given demographic population, three of them perennially rise to the top of the list: sex, power, and money.

Just cut that down to sex, as Freud says. Or reproductive success (which is sex for men, money for women). Power = Money (I think Einstein proved that), and neither of them are much good except for the reproductive chances they buy you. For those people too old to be interested in sex or reproduction, per se, that doesn't mean all the basic circuits aren't still slavishly working to get it. After all, you're supposed to be dead by then, anyway. Your genes are too dumb to know how old you are.

You know, I met Burroughs once, at a party at Timothy Leary's. Both of them by that time pretty old and wasted. I wish I could report that Burroughs said something wise to me, but he didn't. That was probably my fault, because I basically was trying to keep myself from some dumb conversation-opener like "Say, did you really shoot your wife to death by accident? Yuck, man."

[Jonny Cache]

If you itemize the de facto values of any given demographic population, three of them perennially rise to the top of the list: sex, power, and money.

Just cut that down to sex, as Freud says. Or reproductive success (which is sex for men, money for women). Power = Money (I think Einstein proved that), and neither of them are much good except for the reproductive chances they buy you. For those people too old to be interested in sex or reproduction, per se, that doesn't mean all the basic circuits aren't still slavishly working to get it. After all, you're supposed to be dead by then, anyway. Your genes are too dumb to know how old you are.

You know, I met Burroughs once, at a party at Timothy Leary's. Both of them by that time pretty old and wasted. I wish I could report that Burroughs said something wise to me, but he didn't. That was probably my fault, because I basically was trying to keep myself from some dumb conversation-opener like "Say, did you really shoot your wife to death by accident? Yuck, man."

That is, of course, the cock-tail party oeuvre-simpletonation of Freud, but wadda-eye care what I oeuvre-hear on the way to the bar for more hors d'oeuvres. Leary came to our campus once to give a lecture … all I remember was this luminescent pink haze that settled over the whole town for a couple of days … but I stayed away … it was my custom then to run the other way whenever I saw anywho like a guru coming down the road. I wish I knew now what I knew then.

WareWuzWe!? — oh, yeah, the squalid dramaturgy in progress — and, like, what's my motivation?

The thing about WSB, and the thing that brings me back to Naked Lunch again and again in these discussions, is that he plumbed, if not exactly harrowed, da ⊥ @ da ⊥ of pretty much every last barrel, and all he did that rose above the mark of the great mass of barrel-plumbers is to keep a record of his misadventures.

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Wed 26th March 2008, 5:52pm

[Somey]

Let's back up just a little bit...

It's not like people get into Wikipedia, or any other social-networking site, with the express intention of using it to obtain sex, power, or money. I can't imagine anybody seeing Wikipedia for the first time and says, "A-HA! This is my key to fame, fortune, and the gratification of my depraved innermost desires! I'll just start an account... There! I'm on my way!"

The original motivation to participate is probably just relief of boredom. Some would say it's altruism, but I seriously doubt that. In probably 99 percent of cases, someone types something into Google, gets a Wikipedia page at the top, reads it, finds a mistake, and thinks, "hmm, it says I can correct mistakes." Afterwards, the correction is probably reverted as vandalism, but by then the person has probably moved on to some other web page.

I guess what I'm saying is that there's something about Wikipedia, more than practically any other website, that fosters and develops in certain people a desire for increased power and control over others, as well as over content. Obviously this has much to do with many of the aspects we discuss here all the time, like gamesmanship, accumulation of (pseudo-)intellectual capital, revenge, loyalty, and betrayal, and also the fact that the stakes are higher due to WP's traffic rankings.

But it's not unusual for large groups to form hierarchical and reputational structures in which access to the ability to control is itself used as a form of control. (After all, WSB was speaking in general terms there, not about anything specific.) Nor is it unusual for that ability to control, once obtained, to end up being less worth-having than advertised. What's unusual about Wikipedia is the degree to which people get involved despite knowing up-front that this ephemeral form of control is the only tangible benefit they're going to get out of the experience, and even then, only if they try really, really hard to get it.

I believe this has something to do with WP's false appeal to altruism. People who want to believe they themselves are altruistic will generally flock to places where others are claiming to be acting out of altruism, if only because they know that the others who are already there will be supportive of their need to think of themselves that way. But once they realize their claims of altruism are largely bogus, they're already too hooked by all that other stuff to get themselves out, or else they just don't care anymore.

It's all rather sad, in a way.

[Jonny Cache]

Let's back up just a little bit …

It's not like people get into Wikipedia, or any other social-networking site, with the express intention of using it to obtain sex, power, or money.

Well, those insipid remarks came from the usual sources of insipidity, not me.

I have pointed to some of the motors that strike me as major engines of the con, and those hypotheses are based on what I actually saw happen there time and time again.

Jimbo Wales is selling something that his target demographic really, really wants, same trick that worked at Bomis, what's so hard to grasp about that?

Larry Sanger was driven out because he tried to control things in the direction of an external objective, as seen within the admittedly Dim Beam of his Objacualist Lights, but Jimbo does not care about anything but keeping the conflagration going for its own sake, and the only rule he knows is that anything that obstructs the Flow of Gas to the Fire is Bad.

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Wed 26th March 2008, 9:30pm

[Milton Roe]

Let's back up just a little bit...

It's not like people get into Wikipedia, or any other social-networking site, with the express intention of using it to obtain sex, power, or money. I can't imagine anybody seeing Wikipedia for the first time and says, "A-HA! This is my key to fame, fortune, and the gratification of my depraved innermost desires! I'll just start an account... There! I'm on my way!"

Well, no. But the questions of how people get started in WP, are completely different from the questions of why they can't quit (as with any drug), and in turn are completely different from the motivations of the small subgroup of people who rise and seize power within the system, whilst the other gnomes never go anywhere, or else just wind up controlling a small feifdom until targetted in a final putsch, sort of Night of the Long Knives style (Godwin!).

Most of us have seen how this happens. You edit some article, and you run across some clueless person who absolutely refuses to be educated. This is not just normal stupidity-- it's stupidity of that extremely clever and perverse kind which keeps it ducking and weaving when any honest person would long ago have screamed "uncle!" That's only the First Level pain. The Second Level is when you happen upon a branch of the Cabal who OWNs some POV on some article or other, and find out that they can use their Wikipowers to push some POV without breaking any POV rules. At that point you get the sick feeling you've been "had" by a hypocritical bunch of folk who control your access to a project you've really started to get interested in, for its own sake (if you've ever put together a really giant jigsaw puzzle and had somebody screw with it when you're 70% done, you know what THIS feels like). Yes, sex has NOTHING to do with it.

But why DO the powermongers do what they do? Is it in the service of a POV? Or are they interested in naked power for its own sake, independent of POV, ala 1984's O'Brien: "Always, Winston, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."

I don't know. Perhaps for some it's one thing, and others it's another and for others, it's both.

But as for the question of why people automatically seek power in social groups, and automatically seek to figure out who HAS the power, that's completely wired up in our baboon genes. You can look at a group of people who are totally disguised by their clothes (perhaps they're getting ready to sail?) and you can tell who has the most social power by who all the women are looking at (they always know, and they track it like sunflowers), and whose jokes get the biggest laughs. A Martian with a rulebook could do that, in a few minutes. If you're in a group of people unknown to you who've been together for a while, and you think it's not organized heirarchically, that only means you haven't figured out the heirarchy, not that it doesn't exist. Which means you're probably young, or else have Asperger's.

This post has been edited by Milton Roe: Thu 27th March 2008, 1:10am

[Jonny Cache]

People who haven't seen it happen, over and over and over in their own experience, or people who have no inkling of the last 50 years worth of research in the area, grossly underestimate the power of cognitive factors, especially the negative ones like dissonance and doubt.

The most honest thing that Jimbo ever says is that Wikipedia is all about having fun. What he knows but does not say is that his target demographic can have their fun only at the expense of just about everyone else who tries to contribute genuine knowledge to the sum.

Wikipedia is a game than runs on making people feel good about what little they know. That is the hook for all of its biggest addicts. In itself that could have been a good thing. If you add what little you know to some area that no one has touched yet, then the sum of knowledge in the database increases and you get the incentive to add a little more.

Where it can go wrong is when one person adds a bit of knowledge that makes other people feel less impressed with what little they thought they knew. This can be a critical moment in personal growth. It happens all the time in environments that have the job of fostering inquiry, learning, and teaching. A well-designed educational environment eases people over these rough patches — it helps people let go of the little they know in order to learn a little more. Wikipedia is not a well-designed educational environment. It is based on a cheap way out of this difficulty and the result is sheer disaster for those who need knowledge and for those who have knowledge to share. The only winners are the gatekeepers who block the flow of knowledge between the others — for them the pay-off is the feeling of power they get from controlling knowledge they neither have nor care about except as an ego-ointment.

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Thu 27th March 2008, 2:22am

[Kato]

Good post Cache

[Kato]

This is a good post by DocGlasgow. Added to Danny Wool's blog. (Bolding mine)

http://allswool.blogspot.com/2008/05/wikip...ality-show.html

The internet has always had the advantage of getting voices heard and information accessible where evil nasty governments have tried to censor and restrict. However, is the implication really that the free culture movement has the moral right to tear down all walls that seek to regulate access to information, images, pornography etc.?

That's perhaps ideologically tempting - but it really is unpicking the foundations of democracy. There are actually lots of good reasons for restricting media - privacy, copyright, protection of the vulnerable, and (controversially) taste and decency. Democracies can get it badly wrong, but as Churchill said "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time". I'm really not sure that I want to replace the right of elected representatives to decide when and if controls are needed with a free-for-all "governed" only by the whims of the free-culture movement. Do I really want Jimbo and Erik and their palls to get to set the standards for child-images, bestiality, or what constitutes unacceptable incitement? Come to think of it, do I really want privacy/no privacy decisions in their hands either?

Perhaps some of this is simply inevitable - some kind of evolutionary necessity. But does that make it good? Is it to be celebrated?

It seems to me that the free-culture movement has seen itself as some sort of advanced 1960s-style rebel movement kicking against authority. That might have been fine att he start, but it is now time for it to mature, realise its incredible and growing power for good and ill, and start to have a serious ethical conversation. The 60s children eventually had to become adults, and accommodate themselves within the system they liked to kick against, same needs to happen here.

Doc

This is another description of how a project like Wikipedia presents a nightmarish vision of the dismantling of democratic structures, the removal of established checks and balances. And the ushering in of a more sinister culture, an unaccountable oligarchy who manipulate the term "freedom" while introducing more insidious methods of control.

[Jon Awbrey]

This is a good post by DocGlasgow. Added to Danny Wool's blog. (Bolding mine)

allswool.blogspot.com/2008/05/wiki-ality-show

The internet has always had the advantage of getting voices heard and information accessible where evil nasty governments have tried to censor and restrict. However, is the implication really that the free culture movement has the moral right to tear down all walls that seek to regulate access to information, images, pornography etc.?

That's perhaps ideologically tempting — but it really is unpicking the foundations of democracy. There are actually lots of good reasons for restricting media — privacy, copyright, protection of the vulnerable, and (controversially) taste and decency. Democracies can get it badly wrong, but as Churchill said "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time". I'm really not sure that I want to replace the right of elected representatives to decide when and if controls are needed with a free-for-all "governed" only by the whims of the free-culture movement. Do I really want Jimbo and Erik and their palls to get to set the standards for child-images, bestiality, or what constitutes unacceptable incitement? Come to think of it, do I really want privacy/no privacy decisions in their hands either?

Perhaps some of this is simply inevitable — some kind of evolutionary necessity. But does that make it good? Is it to be celebrated?

It seems to me that the free-culture movement has seen itself as some sort of advanced 1960s-style rebel movement kicking against authority. That might have been fine at the start, but it is now time for it to mature, realise its incredible and growing power for good and ill, and start to have a serious ethical conversation. The 60s children eventually had to become adults, and accommodate themselves within the system they liked to kick against, same needs to happen here.

Doc

This is another description of how a project like Wikipedia presents a nightmarish vision of the dismantling of democratic structures, the removal of established checks and balances. And the ushering in of a more sinister culture, an unaccountable oligarchy who manipulate the term "freedom" while introducing more insidious methods of control.

I'm sorry, but Doc continues to write some of the most clueless stuff I've ever read.

Jon

This post has been edited by Jon Awbrey: Thu 8th May 2008, 2:08am

[Somey]

I'm sorry, but Doc continues to write some of the most clueless stuff I've ever read.

If you're referring to the fact that the free culture movement actually means to erect more walls to regulate people's access to information, and that Doc_glasgow has simply accepted their version of what they're really trying to do, I might agree with that - but I'd hardly call him "clueless." On the contrary!

The trivialization of various modes of cultural and scientific knowledge-gathering (or "inquiry" or whatever we're calling it), along with the general effort to marginalize traditional knowledge-dissemination methods (publishing, broadcasting, etc.), is only part of the WP equation. What's more, the number of WP'ers who actually want those things to happen is relatively small - and you can't run a "movement" with just a small core of controllers. There has to be a payoff for the grunts, and even though the payoff (i.e, the false sense of achievement people get from being "Wikipedians") is minimal, it's still a payoff.

Remember, Doc_glasgow's focus is on the ethics of just having a site like WP exist, not on the conceptual basis of it. Consider the context of the comment... To call him "clueless" kinda misses the point, if you ask me.

[Jon Awbrey]

Yer all clueless.

Wot you know of the 60's you got from watching That 70's Show.

Jon

[Jon Awbrey]

People Who Live In Glasgow Shouldn't Throw Scones —

I'm clearly wasting my time here, but I have 10 minutes before the caffeind takes over and I can get on to doing any real work, so wot the hecque?

Who is this "Doc" guy, anyway? Living in Glasgow in a similar way?

The internet has always had the advantage of getting voices heard and information accessible where evil nasty governments have tried to censor and restrict. However, is the implication really that the free culture movement has the moral right to tear down all walls that seek to regulate access to information, images, pornography etc.?

That's perhaps ideologically tempting — but it really is unpicking the foundations of democracy. There are actually lots of good reasons for restricting media — privacy, copyright, protection of the vulnerable, and (controversially) taste and decency. Democracies can get it badly wrong, but as Churchill said "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time". I'm really not sure that I want to replace the right of elected representatives to decide when and if controls are needed with a free-for-all "governed" only by the whims of the free-culture movement. Do I really want Jimbo and Erik and their palls to get to set the standards for child-images, bestiality, or what constitutes unacceptable incitement? Come to think of it, do I really want privacy/no privacy decisions in their hands either?

Perhaps some of this is simply inevitable — some kind of evolutionary necessity. But does that make it good? Is it to be celebrated?

It seems to me that the free-culture movement has seen itself as some sort of advanced 1960s-style rebel movement kicking against authority. That might have been fine at the start, but it is now time for it to mature, realise its incredible and growing power for good and ill, and start to have a serious ethical conversation. The 60s children eventually had to become adults, and accommodate themselves within the system they liked to kick against, same needs to happen here.

Doc

allswool.blogspot.com/2008/05/wiki-ality-show

This is another description of how a project like Wikipedia presents a nightmarish vision of the dismantling of democratic structures, the removal of established checks and balances. And the ushering in of a more sinister culture, an unaccountable oligarchy who manipulate the term "freedom" while introducing more insidious methods of control.

I mean, really. Free Culture Movement?

Reader's Digest Book Club?

No, not even that good.

IRTNOG is closer —

Idiots Rendering Trivial Nonsense Online Game

Sorry, still too flubbergeisted —

Try again later …

Jon

This post has been edited by Jon Awbrey: Thu 8th May 2008, 2:30pm

[Jon Awbrey]

Two roads diverged in a yellow'd journal …

What's wrote on Control Of Culture, read here.

What's wrote on Coming Of Age, read there.

Jon

This post has been edited by Jon Awbrey: Fri 9th May 2008, 8:48pm