D. Schmudde via nettime-l on Sun, 17 Aug 2025 12:49:28 +0200 (CEST)


[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: <nettime> Computational Culture issue ten. Special Issue: Situated Bayes
RE: Felix's "enlightened, sovereign individual" and Geoff's "the solution really is abstinence"
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Indeed, Geoff's focus on account creation is the first step towards a fenced-in and docile herd of 'sovereign' individuals.
I'll invoke Salomé Viljoen to also reject sovereign acts as a path forward but then follow her into a 3rd way.
Viljoen asserts that many of the proposed solutions treat data on the continuum from "person-like" to "object-like." The former suggests that data is an extension of the self and should be protected by inaliable human rights. The later asserts that data that we produce - whether as a byproduct of our labor or our biological functions - is something we own. As our property, we should have the ability to control and trade this information.
In either case, arguments eventually boil down to more individual control over our individual data. She even goes on to claim that data collection is fundamentally "irreducible to individual legal interests".
Therefore Viljoen suggests a third way forward. Democratic Data. Democratic because it is fundamentally relational. There is no way to reduce it to the individual. This is a more sophisticated take of the "Do It With Others" tactic that I suggested as a subversive approach to AI.
Maybe my blindness to a Bayesian approach is because I mostly associate Bayesian tactics with fast-moving libertarians rather than slow-moving democracies - rightly or wrongly. My sense is that a "range of possibilities based on contingent assumptions" is not compatible with democratic processes where nuance is often lost. But maybe there is a federated approach that blends many different strengths while also moving us away from primitive great-man storytelling and myth-building. 

/David


nettime-l-request@lists.nettime.org writes:


Send nettime-l mailing list submissions to
	nettime-l@lists.nettime.org

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
	https://lists.servus.at/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
	nettime-l-request@lists.nettime.org

You can reach the person managing the list at
	nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org
When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific 
than "Re: Contents of nettime-l digest..."


Today's Topics:
1. Re: Computational Culture issue ten. Special Issue: Situated 
      Bayes (Felix Stalder)
2. How to Study Wikipedia?s Neutrality ? According to Wikipedia 
      (Heather Ford)
3. Re: CURRENT SCREENSAVER: Tereza Vinkl?rkov?, Vojta Dubcov?, 
      Michal Durda /Monster Manifesto/ (metazoa.org)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2025 19:58:05 +0200
From: Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com>
To: nettime-l@lists.nettime.org
Subject: Re: <nettime> Computational Culture issue ten. Special Issue: 
	Situated Bayes
Message-ID: <42ee02af-d82d-4e42-870a-5e85ffc66a72@openflows.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed

Hi David.
sorry for the late reply. As politics, resisting techno-fascism is, of course, undeniably necessary. So, I'm, of course, all in favor of fighting against, say, Palantir contracts in Europe or the use of AI models to assess social welfare recipients, or grading students and teachers. And contributing to showing how contemporary politics is 
embedded in and implemented through particular technologies and
procedures makes a lot of sense.
My argument was more theoretical. What is the position we put forward, usually implicitly, when we call for resistance to AI? Quite often, it is that of the enlightened, sovereign individual: the authentic writer, the competent coder, the singular illustrator, and so on. Often, it's expressed more mundanely, as in "human-written email vs AI slop", but 
the underlying notion is the same.
This reminds me of the discussion about online privacy and the control over personal data. Pragmatically, I favor privacy protection; it's one of the few tools we have to push for social values in tech. At the same time, the underlying idea of the sovereign individual who owns his or her data and has therefor a right to determine how it's being used (like with other items of property) is deeply problematic. Both for historical reasons (who counts as an individual capable of holding property?) and also for pragmatic reasons. Most data is a) transactional, i.e., not 
easily assigned to an individual owner, and b) necessary for the
infrastructure to function, i.e., withholding it means
non-participation, a very unappealing concept of sovereignty.
So, protecting privacy, or, resisting AI, feels like using a knife in a gunfight. I prefer knife to no-knife, but it's not a winning approach 
under the condition of widespread use of guns.

So, how can we avoid the problem of tactics (protecting privacy,
resisting fascist AI) impeding strategy (liberating society under 
contemporary conditions)?
In the Bayesian approach, there might be a different subjectivity embedded, one that provides not one authoritative answer but a range of 
possibilities based on contingent assumptions and positions.
Furthermore, it's actually better than conventional statistics at dealing with incomplete information and changing circumstances, which is 
much of the contemporary world characterized by complexity and
instability. But also, and this is the contention in this special issue and my reaction to it, it might provide for an epistemology that is more appropriate for a more-than-human world that is not based on sovereignty 
but on relationality.
Will using ChatGPT help us get there? Probably not. Will appeals to 
original authorship help us? Probably even less.

Felix






On 7/29/25 21:28, D. Schmudde via nettime-l wrote:


Felix,

I wrestled with your opening paragraph quite a bit:
The use of Bayesian statistics might create an opening towards very different political ends than those which is is currently used for and that exploring this opening might be a more productive than simply 
"resisting (AI)".
Maybe it's because I've been writing on *resisting AI* (https:// schmud.de/posts/2025-07-15-engineering-end-of-work.html) - but I'm not quite seeing the connection between the political outcomes of resistance 
and embracing the tool with a Bayesian mindset.
I think it has something to do with the production of knowledge, but the foundation of this knowledge is still "conservative" in the sense that Joseph Weizenbaum described (https://web.archive.org/web/20211002104454/ 
http://tech.mit.edu/V105/N16/weisen.16n.html).

Can you help me understand your optimism of this approach?

/David

nettime-l-request@lists.nettime.org writes:


Send nettime-l mailing list submissions to
????nettime-l@lists.nettime.org

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
????https://lists.servus.at/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
????nettime-l-request@lists.nettime.org

You can reach the person managing the list at
????nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org
When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific 
than "Re: Contents of nettime-l digest..."


Today's Topics:
?? 1. Re: Computational Culture issue ten. Special Issue: ?? Situated 
????? Bayes (Felix Stalder)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2025 14:53:02 +0200
From: Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com>
To: Matthew Fuller via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Computational Culture issue ten. Special Issue: 
????Situated Bayes
Message-ID: <ac692293-659b-4b30-a098-92f1288bad3d@openflows.com> 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed

Hi Matthew,
Congratulations! A great issue, a really timely and urgent extension of the line of thinking that I encountered first in Joque's book. The use of Bayesian statistics might create an opening towards very different political ends than those which is is currently used for and that exploring this opening might be a more productive than simply "resisting 
(AI)". We talked a bit about that over dinner recently.
In much of the philosophy/epistemology concerning Bayesian statistics the issue of the "prior" is absolutely central, and your intention to turn of it from a problem for objectivity into the foundation for 
situatedness is absolutely correct.
What is usually less discussed, perhaps because the issue not unique to Bayesianism, is the question of the threshold. When is the likelihood of an hypothesis being true strong enough to act as if it were true?
In ML, they try, as you write, minimize the situatedness by using "noninformative priors" despite the extra compute this requires, but they can at least to be non-subjective. In many ways, the prior is subjective only in a context where computation is scare. In a context where computation is treated as abundant, it's meaningless, a random starting point in a very long line of iterations. It's not subjective, 
but brute force ;)
But the situatedness creeps back in through the threshold. What degree of error is acceptable, which? is always also a question of who has to cover the costs of these errors. In this way, Bayesianism create a new 
type of externality.
I think this question of threshold, while not unique, is particularly urgent in Bayesian systems because they are less about generating knowledge (in a conventional scientific way, there the threshold is a stable p-value) than about enabling agency, on the spot, under a subjective risk/rewards ratio. In certain systems, say placement of advertisement, a 20% likelihood might be sufficient, in others, say, systems in HR departments, one would hope of a much higher threshold. 
The point being, the threshold is entirely subjective.
The consideration of the subjective/situated/political nature of threshold might open up less towards the issues you are concerned here, 
but more towards social justice question (how to distribute
risks/rewards), but as a source of subjectivity it's a bit underrated. 

Anyway, great issue!


all the best. Felix




On 7/25/25 09:28, Matthew Fuller via nettime-l wrote:

Computational Culture, a journal of software studies
Issue Ten, July 2025
Special Issue: Situated Bayes
Edited by Juni Schindler, Goda Klumbyt? and Matthew Fuller
Special Issue Introduction
Juni Schindler, Goda Klumbyt?, Matthew Fuller, [Situated Bayes ? Feminist and pluriversal perspectives on Bayesian knowledge](http:// 
computationalculture.net/situated-bayes/)



--
| |||||||||||||||| http://felix.openflows.com |
| |||||||||| https://tldr.nettime.org/@festal |
| for secure communication, please use signal |



------------------------------

Subject: Digest Footer



--
w: http://schmud.de
e: d@schmud.de
t: @dschmudde


--
| |||||||||||||||| http://felix.openflows.com |
| |||||||||| https://tldr.nettime.org/@festal |
| for secure communication, please use signal |



------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2025 15:03:15 +1000
From: Heather Ford <hfordsa@gmail.com>
To: nettime-l@lists.nettime.org
Subject: <nettime> How to Study Wikipedia?s Neutrality ? According to 
	Wikipedia
Message-ID:
	<CAKsSBnotHGRajDKEF=jM1RyNf2=o6hdPrn=o=Z=5OfvKKVo-+Q@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

Hi folks,
I'm new to this list but Geert suggested I post about Wikimedia's draft guidelines for researchers studying Wikipedia's neutrality. Below and at 
https://networkcultures.org/blog/2025/08/01/how-to-study-wikipedias-neutrality-according-to-wikipedia/.
It's a difficult time for the Wikimedia Foundation right now but I still think that this does no favours to the organisation or the community it 
represents.
best
heather.

https://hblog.org/
Professor, University of Technology Sydney
On Gadigal Land


How to Study Wikipedia?s Neutrality ? According to Wikipedia
By Heather Ford <https://networkcultures.org/blog/author/heatherford/>, August 
1, 2025 at 10:42 am.
A platform is telling researchers how to study its neutrality and defining what and where researchers should look to evaluate it. If it was Google or Facebook we might be shocked. But it?s from Wikipedia, and so this move will undoubtedly go unnoticed by most. On Thursday this week, the Wikimedia Foundation?s research team sent a note to the Wikimedia research mailing list asking for feedback on their ?Guidance for NPOV Research on Wikipedia? [1]. The Wikimedia Foundation is the US-based non-profit organisation that hosts Wikipedia and its sister projects in the Wikimedia stable of websites. The move follows increased threats against the public perception of Wikipedia?s neutrality e.g. by Elon Musk who has accused it of bias and a ?leftward drift?, sometimes referring to it as ?Wokepedia? [2]. And threats to its core operating principles (e.g. that may require the WMF to collect ages or real names of editors) as governments around the world move 
to regulate online platforms [3].
The draft guidelines advise us on how we should study Wikipedia?s neutrality, including where we should look. The authors write that ?Wikipedia?s definition of neutrality and its importance are not well understood within the research community.? In response, they tell us Neutral Point of View on Wikipedia doesn?t necessarily mean ?neutral content? but rather ?neutral editing?. They also argue that editing for NPOV on Wikipedia ?does not aim to resolve controversy but to reflect it?. There is only one way to reflect a controversy, apparently, and that is the neutral way. In this, they seem to be arguing that researchers should evaluate Wikipedia?s neutrality according to its own definition of neutrality ? a definition that absolves the site, its contributors and the organisation that hosts it from any responsibility for the (very powerful) 
representations it produces.
The guidelines tell researchers what are the ?most important? variables that shape neutrality on Wikipedia (and there we were thinking that which were the most important was an open research question). What is missing from this list is interesting? particularly the omission of the Wikimedia Foundation itself. In a separate section titled ?The Role of the Wikimedia Foundation?, we are told that the Wikimedia Foundation ?does not exercise day-to-day editorial control? of the project. The WMF is merely ?a steward of Wikipedia, hosting technical infrastructure and supporting community self-governance.? As any researcher of social organisation will tell you, organisations that support knowledge production *always* shape what is represented ? even when they aren?t doing the writing themselves.
From my own perspective as someone who has studied Wikipedia for 15 years
and supported Wikipedia as an activist in the years prior to this, I?ve seen the myriad ways in which the Foundation influences what is represented on Wikipedia. To give just a few examples: the WMF determines how money flows to its chapters and to research, deciding which gaps are filled through grants and which are exposed through research. It is the only real body that can do demographic research on Wikipedia editors ? something it hasn?t done for years (probably because it is worried that the overwhelming dominance of white men from North America and Western Europe would not have changed). Understanding who actually edits Wikipedia could trigger changes that prioritise a greater diversity of editors. The WMF decides what actions (if any) it will take against the Big Tech companies that use its data contrary to license obligations. It decides when it will lobby governments to encourage or oppose legislation. Recognising that the WMF employees don?t edit Wikipedia articles doesn?t preclude an understanding that it plays a role in deciding how subjects are represented and how those 
representations circulate in the wider information ecosystem.
Finally, the guidelines are also prescriptive in defining what researchers? responsibilities are. Not surprisingly, our responsibilities are to the Wikipedia and Wikimedia community who ?must? have research shared with them in order for research about Wikipedia?s neutrality to have impact. We are told to ?Always share back with the Wikimedia research community? and are provided with a list of places, events and forums where we should tell editors about our research. In conclusion, we?re told that we must always 
?communicate in ways that strengthen Wikipedia?.
?As a rule of thumb, we recommend that when communicating about your research you ask yourself the question ?Will this communication make Wikipedia weaker or stronger?? Critiques are valued but ideally are paired with constructive recommendations, are replicable, leave space for feedback 
from Wikimedians, and do not overstate conclusions.?
There is no room for those who think perhaps that Wikipedia is too dominant, that it is too close to Big Tech and American interests to play such an important role in stewarding public knowledge for all the world. Nor for those whose research aims to serve the public rather than Wikipedia editors, those of us who choose rather to educate the public when, how and why Wikipedia fails to live up to its promise of neutrality and the neutrality we have mistakenly come to expect from it. I know that this request for feedback from the WMF will not raise an eyebrow in public discourse about the project and that will be the sign that we have put too much expectation in Wikipedia?s perfection, perhaps because if Wikipedia is found wanting, if the ?last best place on the internet? [4] has failed, then the whole project has failed. But for me, it is not a failure that Wikipedia is not neutral. The failure is in the dominance of an institution that is so emboldened by its supposed moral superiority that it can tell us ? those who are tasked with holding this supposedly public resource ? to 
account what the limits of that accounting should be.

[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Guidance_for_NPOV_Research_on_Wikipedia
[2]
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/elon-musk-also-has-a-problem-with-wikipedia
[3] https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2025/06/27/the-wikipedia-test/ 
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2025/06/27/the-wikipedia-test/>
[4]
https://www.wired.com/story/wikipedia-online-encyclopedia-best-place-internet/
(legacy-tribute-revival posting of INC?s 2010 Critical Point of View 
<https://networkcultures.org/cpov/> network)


------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2025 10:31:03 +0200
From: "metazoa.org" <info@metazoa.org>
To: "<nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets" 
	<nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>
Subject: Re: <nettime> CURRENT SCREENSAVER: Tereza Vinkl?rkov?, Vojta 
	Dubcov?, Michal Durda /Monster Manifesto/
Message-ID: <CA5FB374-F229-45B8-A35C-60DEBD76C29F@metazoa.org>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset=utf-8

Dear podinski,
First of all, thank you very much for sharing your thoughts on this! We strongly respect your position.
With this year's screensaver series, 'Informatics of Domination' (see here: https://screensaver.gallery/archive/informatics-of-domination), we aim to provoke the kind of questions you raised! And we are asking by this series as well. The 40th anniversary is precisely the time for being questioned.
After 40 years of warnings ? proper warnings ? it's almost unbelievable that we are here, having to invent new words such as 'tech-fascism', or update words that should be consigned to history, such as 'genocide' (and the horrors behind those words!). How did it happen? Or, perhaps more accurately, how is it happening? How could we (the forty-somethings) just watch our lives being stolen and do nothing? How can we just watch our children's lives being stolen and do nothing? Are we like slow boiling frogs? Unable to see our boiling ? yet motionless ? comrades?
Would be nice to share yours ?numerous [?] anecdotes in this vein?. It would help to ?boil? together and not alone ;) 

Tomas

Save Your Screen!
Get ScreenSaverGallery https://screensaver.gallery/get
Follow ScreenSaverGallery on Telegram <https://t.me/screensavergallery>, Instagram <https://www.instagram.com/screensavergallery/>, Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/ScreenSaverGallery>, GitHub <https://github.com/ScreenSaverGallery>, RSS <https://sleep.screensaver.gallery/feed/>, Newsletter <https://listmonk.screensaver.gallery/subscription/form> 
? Sponsor https://opencollective.com/screensavergallery
On 29. 7. 2025, at 13:57, XLterrestrials via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote: 

Dear Nettimers + Screensaver artists,
Hadn't realized that it's the 40th anniversary of Haraway's text... And of course it makes sense to commemorate and/or revisit that with an exhibition.
We are curious to see what the exhibition entails, especially now , given the rapid manifestation of all the patriarchal + authoritarian + industrial-global-scale + and technologically-manufactured monstrosities.
One might now consider, it's time for a deeper critical analysis that question whether Haraway's 'warnings' ( and gambits ) were and/or remain very inadequate theoretical positions that provided way too little real resistance or even a proper lens to fully grasp the corporate-krapitalist tsunami of the very commodified and widely-distributed fetishization of ... becoming "Cyborgs" ...
The Nature / Culture thing that she and Latour pushed seems - in hindsight - like a very flimsy kulisse now, which allows a very ecocidal ( and primarily white ) culture to wildly expand the Guineapigdom Inc. + a wide-variety of techno-fascist trajectories w/ zero guard rails , zero global consensus and fewer and fewer alternative routes, much less emergency exits.
It is readily obvious to any environmental thinker worth their salt that our hyoer-industrialized cultures are and were ( in the 80s ) way out of balance ! And we continue to act like our technospheres are some supreme and/or more cvilized intelligence. It's obvious barbarity currently reigns like a heaping portion of agent orange turds !
During the rise of the "Haraway school", there were other fascinating and productive resistances that got far less traction and limelight in academic circles and art-scene festivals. And are still extremely marginalized by the culture industries and installed academic hierarchies !
One example that always comes to our mind when thinking about Haraway's controversial and softer ( non-activist? ) tact, is the story of Ignacio Chapela, the prof at UC Berkeley, who was a serious whistleblower who decried the toxic corporate influences like Novartis + Monsanto ( predatory biotech ) in University structures, essentially contaminating all higher-education on the very subjects essential for steering societies towards any kind of autonomy and sustainability and independence from the industrial-powers, and their profit-feeding frenzies.
We have numerous other anecdotes in this vein, and it would be a good time to start to look at at the academic + state-funded art scenes that are still clinging to Haraway's muddy - and possibly contaminated - approach to environmental orientations and/or the arts + tech resistances.
Perhaps we'd do better with our feet more firmly on all the contested territories ! 

the XLterrestrial 2 cents,

podinski
On 29/07/2025 12:00 CEST nettime-l-request@lists.nettime.org wrote: 


Send nettime-l mailing list submissions to
	nettime-l@lists.nettime.org

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
	https://lists.servus.at/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
	nettime-l-request@lists.nettime.org

You can reach the person managing the list at
	nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org
When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific 
than "Re: Contents of nettime-l digest..."


Today's Topics:

  1. CURRENT SCREENSAVER: Tereza Vinkl?rkov?, Vojta Dubcov?,
     Michal Durda /Monster Manifesto/ (metazoa.org)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2025 09:49:53 +0200
From: "metazoa.org" <info@metazoa.org>
To: nettime-l@lists.nettime.org
Subject: <nettime> CURRENT SCREENSAVER: Tereza Vinkl?rkov?, Vojta 
	Dubcov?, Michal Durda /Monster Manifesto/
Message-ID: <26342782-775F-41EF-BFD1-1CB57E5E4205@metazoa.org>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset=utf-8
In her influential text A Cyborg Manifesto (1985), Donna Haraway proposes a radical transgression of binary oppositions such as nature and technology, male and female, organic and synthetic. The cyborg thus becomes a metaphor of resistance against essentialist notions of identity and rigid power structures. In academic and artistic circles?especially within queer, posthumanist, and transfeminist studies?the cyborg is a symbol of a liberating alternative for those who transcend normative frameworks of body, gender, nature, and culture.
For many who experience exclusion, identification with the non-human (monstrous, synthetic, animalistic) can be a form of relief: robots, monsters, dolls, or mythical creatures also do not belong to the ?normal? human world?yet they are more stably grasped within it, unlike tabooed bodies. Identification with these Others can serve as both a survival strategy and an act of defiance. The problem is that society often views those who identify with the non-human (monstrous, synthetic, cybernetic, or animalistic) as bizarre, cool, or frightening rather than listening to what they have to say. Haraway herself warns against embracing the cyborg as a fetish. The aestheticization of monstrosity may represent a comforting way for society to cope with the discomfort of encountering what truly exceeds norms. Therefore, identification with the non-human is not automatically liberating; it can become emancipatory only when it is recognized not merely as an aesthetic but also as a testimony?wit 
 h

 a

 right to political and existential dimensions
More at https://screensaver.gallery/tereza-vinklarkova-vojta-dubcova-michal-durda-monster-manifesto 

Save Your Screen!
Get ScreenSaverGallery https://screensaver.gallery/get
Follow ScreenSaverGallery on Telegram <https://t.me/screensavergallery>, Instagram <https://www.instagram.com/screensavergallery/>, Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/ScreenSaverGallery>, GitHub <https://github.com/ScreenSaverGallery>, RSS <https://screensaver.metazoa.org/feed/>, Newsletter <https://listmonk.screensaver.gallery/subscription/form> 
? Sponsor https://opencollective.com/screensavergallery

------------------------------

Subject: Digest Footer

--
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission 
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets 
# more info: https://www.nettime.org
# contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org


------------------------------

End of nettime-l Digest, Vol 25, Issue 17
*****************************************

--
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission 
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets 
# more info: https://www.nettime.org
# contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org




------------------------------

Subject: Digest Footer



--
w: http://schmud.de
e: d@schmud.de
t: @dschmudde
--
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: https://www.nettime.org
# contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org