Giulio's argument highlights the tension between the trade-off of noise for signal in public platforms like Joe Rogan's podcast, which undeniably wields significant reach and influence. While I agree that public access to figures like Roger Penrose and other scientists with unconventional but valuable ideas is crucial, I think the broader implications of the platform’s framing, curation, and biases need to be examined critically.
Joe Rogan's platform frequently reinforces reductionist and popular trends, where complex issues are stripped of context and presented as binary conflicts. This reductionism risks doing more harm than good, particularly when it allows misinformation or opportunistic ideologies to dominate public attention. The presence of noise might be an acceptable price for signal if the audience were uniformly equipped to discern the difference. However, such platforms often exploit cognitive biases—like confirmation bias and emotional appeal—leading to a conflation of the noise with the signal. When voices espousing bad faith arguments are amplified (without sufficient critique or framing) the consequences can skew public discourse toward division and obfuscation, as has been the case. Your defense of Rogan as a counterbalance to "thought policing" and "cancel culture" raises valid concerns about freedom of expression. However, *equating critique of harmful ideas with suppression is a dangerous oversimplification*. Platforms like Rogan's must recognize their curatorial responsibility: the act of amplifying voices and framing their ideas is not neutral. Without providing the tools for audiences to evaluate content critically, the "noise" becomes more than a harmless cost; it becomes a mechanism for reinforcing pseudoscience, disinformation, and divisive ideologies. Take Penrose as an example. His notable contributions to physics, for which he earned a Nobel Prize, do not make his ideas on Gödel’s theorem and Mechanism infallible. His Gödelian critique against computationalism misinterprets Gödel’s theorem, which highlights epistemic limits for possible machines and humans alike, rather than proving humans transcend mechanistic processes. While there’s some indication Penrose has reconsidered the validity of this argument, assuming correctness on the basis of accolades is unscientific. Science demands critical engagement with arguments, not deference to authority or committee decisions. This brings us to the broader problem: the value of figures like Penrose and Goertzel is undermined when presented without proper framing. Public discourse shaped by popular platforms needs rigor and context to avoid reducing valuable ideas to fodder for opportunistic or ideologically motivated narratives. While I understand the appeal of exposure through a platform like Rogan’s, *the ethical weight of curation cannot be ignored*. Popularity does not equate to merit, nor does it justify giving any voice a platform without scrutiny. While I appreciate the importance of platforms for diverse voices, the balance between noise and signal must be more carefully managed than Joe sitting there and asking his minion for context by googling some issue, reading the first responses, going on reddit/twitter and proclaiming "true/false". Rogan conflates online opinion snapshots on context eliminating platforms with truth, as evidenced by his recent statements regarding the X community vetting ideas with the help of a couple of specialists posting "the truth, so everybody knows, which is why X is so great". How scientific is that? Platforms like Rogan’s could serve as powerful venues for public education and discourse, but only if they accept their responsibility to uphold intellectual rigor and ethical framing. Without this, the signal risks being drowned out by the very noise it claims to correct. Instead of amplifying popular reductionisms, public platforms must prioritize fostering informed, critical engagement, elevating not just voices, but the discourse itself. Popular internet is a context free zone, almost by discursive necessity: how else would "copium" taste so good to so many? On Thursday, December 5, 2024 at 2:34:43 PM UTC+1 John Clark wrote: > On Thu, Dec 5, 2024 at 12:25 AM Giulio Prisco <[email protected]> wrote: > > *> So in Joe Rogan's show (like everywhere) there's some noise besides the >> signal. Terrence Howard is noise.* > > > *But Terrence Howard is VERY predictable noise, but Rogan invited him on > his show anyway. It's one thing to have opinions about things that are on > the very frontier of knowledge that only a minority of scientists in the > physics community have, such as Roger Penrose, and somebody insisting that > 1×1 = 2 and believing that the square root of 2 is nonsense. But at least > Howard's idiocies will not kill anybody, but the anti-vaccine lunatics that > Rogan invited on his program, when 4000 Americans were dying of COVID in a > single day (911 only killed 2977) was irresponsible because that DID kill > people. Rogan says he wants "a debate on vaccine science" but science had > that debate 200 years ago and as far as science is concerned the > controversy is over, vaccines work, and during the last 200 years vaccines > have saved hundreds of millions if not billions of lives. * > > *And the fact that Joe Rogan believes that the perfect man to be president > is a convicted felon and traitor who instigated a coup d'état in an attempt > to become dictator, is a data point refuting the proposition that Mr. Rogan > is a font of wisdom. However there is reason to believe that **Mr. Rogan > **did > well at his former job, giving color commentary during televised wrestling > matches. * > > *John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis > <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>* > twm >> >> >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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