# Conversation with Haris - Part 2

## Intellectual Property

* Recap that history of progress is based on sharing, copying and stealing. -covered
* You ask in your presentation “whatever happened to standing on the shoulders of giants?” - a reference to Isaac Newton
* Is (intellectual) property theft a valid justification for black boxing?
* I think it makes sense as an excuse in a mindset where property implies ownership and is in analogy with physical property (houses for example of land). However, the two are quite different as no idea is born out of nothing and has no influence from other ideas. Hence, to black-box and make money claiming property as an excuse feels a bit weak.
* Are "cloners" a justification for black-boxing or delayed open-boxing?
* Define cloners
* Example: Prusa 3D printer maker (traditionally open source) has [restricted commercial use of some of their hardware designs](https://blog.prusa3d.com/the-state-of-open-source-in-3d-printing-in-2023_76659/) because of cloners. (not really black boxing, just a step in that direction). They also did a delayed open sourcing of some of their hardware.
* The thought is that cloners are “parasitic” drags on the open hardware system that hurts the ecosystem.
* This certainly happens, especially when cloners violate trademark law and try to pass support for their products off on the original designer.
* However, a community often feels betrayed when a company switches from open source to closed source mid-stream.
* Cloners want to make money, and if the ethics of the system are geared towards making money, then cloners do justify blackboxing - however my (utopian) claim would be that making money shall not be an embedded feature of how people should live their lives
* Maybe if your motivation/intention for building open hardware or doing open science is only “for the common good”, cloning shouldn’t matter, and may actually be a benefit (a form of distributed manufacturing).

## Trust

* What are some of the effects of eroded and/or destroyed trust in a community (i.e. at the level of democracy, or even in an open source community)?
* weaponisation of democracy (motions brought up that hurt different actors, pandering to actors for majorities), loss of collaboration, the community produces (both in terms of ideas and products) less than the sum of its parts
* What role does openness (willingness to share) play in maintaining and restoring trust?
* sharing what's most important without asking for anything back creates mental obligations of reciprocity, creates an in-group (family?) bond
* What role does transparency play in trust?
* Example: Your science can "open", but you can still do things like not sharing raw data (only share processed data).
* absence of secrets eliminates suspicion

## Democracy

* Maybe this would be a good time to talk about whether humans are predisposed to cooperate vs compete (or trust vs mistrust), and hawks vs doves
* Dove’s view of democracy: “let’s get together and decide around the fire”
* Hawk’s view of democracy: “the majority made the decision together and we’ll lynch you (the minority) if you don’t go along”
* Both cases are contingent on living together, as in continuing to be part of the same community - I guess an important proviso in the case of open source
* You say you prefer the dove’s view, but believe that democracy can incorporate both.
* Are humans more likely to cooperate (doves) or compete (hawks)?
* I think this is a matter of culture, there's no set 'human nature'.
* I would like to unpack this a bit because my world view very much incorporates "human nature".
* What is your opinion of the best mix of hawks and doves in a society for maximum stability?
* In my dream world there would be no hawks - I see hawks as helping with external threats (being suspicious of outgroups), but these would be eliminated in my dream world
* When democratic participation is in decline, and disillusionment is on the rise, can openness and transparency in areas like open science have a positive impact?
* Definitely, especially when 'Science' is elevated into THE biggest good/Institution)
* Can we talk about what you mean by elavating science. Does this touch back on technological optimism and the primacy of tech and science since World War II?
* (Science popularisations like Oppenheimer and Young Sheldon, education at all levels valuing the Natural Sciences more than say the humanities or the Social Sciences - however, new cultures and phenomena such as the coder communities)
* What is your "[elevator pitch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_pitch)" to those disaffected groups for why democracy matters?
* Neither science nor the law nor God has the solutions to urgent problems - the only yardstick for the quality of solutions is us, and the best chance an for an 'us', or a 'wise' society/community may to reach the best decision is to be as diverse as possible, to hear as many different voices as possible
* ~~Is it just a matter of “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”, or do you think there is something fundamental about self-rule (“deliberation between equals”) that is special?~~
* ~~No, as explained above, there is something fundamental about democracy, it is that it is the only form of government that is not based on false expectations and miracles, and furthermore it does this in the simplest way possible.~~

## Interpersonal Relations

* “Hey dude, you can have some of my bread”
* “Here, I’ll show you how to make this”
* You say that the cooperative mode is better than “mob” (power-based) democracy. Does this get back to creating a bond and increasing personal and social trust?
* because it increases personal and social trust.
* Resilient facts (“knowledge”) - facts are probably just universal agreement
* Is this another way of saying that “[perception is reality](https://onepetro.org/TWA/article-abstract/09/02/2/204616/Perception-is-reality?redirectedFrom=PDF)”?
* not the same but they agree in that there may not be an objective reality out there
* So do you think that facts really matter?
* 'Facts of the matter' 'out there in reality' don't matter according to me, in that when it comes to significant problems they don't determine the issues, it's values and other beliefs that do
* Responsible solutions - solutions that draw their legitimacy from the involvement of the whole of participants.
* This goes back to our discussion about how pandora's boxes are ok to open if there is a good faith discussion and it is decided that the pros outweigh the cons.

## What Open Science and Technology Should Be?

* A country/city/region fully embraces a combination of open science and democracy. What would that look like?
* more egalitarian, no great power and wealth inequalities, a lot of sharing - no much need for lawyers, appreciation of the Arts, not much law-making either, slow daily rhythms, not that many economists or focus on quantitative performance data.
* Research agenda decided through the democratic moment.
* What is the “democratic moment”?
* The democratic moment is a moment in which a genuine question arises about what to do next, about an important decision. It is democratic because other ways of determining what to do (for example through science or law) yield none or too many answers, hence in order to take one course of action, deliberation is followed by voting on the proposed options and the majority decision is followed. If the whole population cannot participate, then sortition (selection by lot) may be used as a substitute.
* How do you keep this process from being hijacked by money/power/social-coersion?
* mandatory participation coupled with encouragement to speak out if one is not happy with the options presented, do not operate under time constraints, provide for participants' needs during the consultation, do not trivialise the matter by having the process too often, maybe three-four times per year - also Lenin, Democratic Centralism (there is but one community or a structure with something that unites everybody at the top level)
* “Key scientific claims presented as material for the democratic moment and voted upon.”
* Can you unpack this for me a little bit?
* Scientific theories and important knowledge-claims to be presented for deliberation and voting-upon. If scientists are confident of their knowledge-claims, then they should be able to convince a majority about them
* Do you have an example of how this would this work in practice?
* there are many examples of mini-publics deliberation or town hall meetings in the US (though I'm not quite as familiar with the US ones), maybe (haven't checked thoroughly though) this: https://deliberativa.org/en/ , this organisation i know better: https://tekno.dk/?lang=en
* Wiki-like public editable repositories of knowledge and know-how.
* I like Wikipedia and donate to keep it open, but I am sometimes reminded of cases of bad and/or malicious information making it in and never being taken out.
* [Example warning against using Wikipedia for more than initial research](https://paperpile.com/g/wikipedia-credible-source/).
* Well, this has been challenged recently, even at the time when I was still at Uni (2011 Wikipedia references were beginning to be acceptable in theses). Also an old edition of Episteme, a leading epistemology Journal, had a special edition contrasting Wikipedia vs Encyclopedia Britannica.
* Regarding the specific source, (paperpile), I want to remark that despite largely agreeing with it, I feel it does support the claim that academics are the guardians of 'knowledge'. In my ideal world, this is not the case, as ('somehow', so I'm a bit wishy-washy here) the public is the guardian of knowledge (so it may for example vote to have experts write wikipedia articles, or participate in the wikipedia editing process)
* How do you see this working in practice?
* As it may be impractical to invite everybody to both participate and take the time to listen to all the speakers (though perhaps not impossible with the use of tools such as Zoom, etc), sortition may be used to construct smaller groups of participants
* Will people need "[skin in the game](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/384415/origin-of-skin-in-the-game)" to contribute, and thus be more likely to take care with the content?
* No, ideally every citizen should care (mandatory participation, as mentioned above)
# START HERE
* “Scientific work viewed as a delegation with a view to be discussed rather than a division of epistemic labour.”
* Can we unpack this a bit, starting with defining “epistemic labour”?
* By 'epistemic labour' i mean the work involved in producing knowledge - I borrow this largely from philosopher of science Philip Kitcher's work. What I mean by the whole claim is that both the scientific agenda and the results of scientific world should be discussed in civic representative forums before being rubber-stamped rather than deciding (even democratically) that the ones who produce 'significant knowledge' (again borrowed from Kitcher, this implies non-trivial true beliefs about the world) are only the scientists because Science (as an Institution) and science (as an activity/method) has some special truth-revealing properties
* You mention citizen scientist “jury duty” as an example.
* How do you identify participants and get/keep them engaged enough to do something like this?
* To be honest, if i keep the notion that there's something special about science, (so backtracking a bit here or maybe being inconsistent with above) then I would make it obligatory for scientists to be involved in jury duty and present their arguments in the rubber-stamping process
* ~~So should scientific work's main purpose be to spark discussion, to drive action, or both?~~
* ~~I'd say both, but in the case of driving action, its course ought to be decided by citizen bodies~~
* Boxes opened to all citizens upon request or in public repositories
* What about “dangerous” boxes?
* Ideally (once again, that word!!) the overwhelming culture will be such that either there will not be dangerous boxes or no advantage to be gained from keeping secrets (so for example the criteria for the price in which appliances will be sold will be how much effort should be spent in assembling them rather than black-boxed design advantages)
* What about citizens who have a history of malicious activity?
* there would still be a police force and sanctions for using technology for bad purposes.
* Does the majority need to have a mechanism to decide what to wall off?
* I'd say yes, definitely
* How would that be different in this “ideal” system vs what we have now?
* It would be a lot more participatory and owned by the many, rather than their representatives and experts. Experts would give testimony and argue their case, but the decision would be via the majority rule.

However, here I want to point something out: I don't mean 'majority' and 'community' as brief undifferentiated and brute one-person-one-vote, I do take into account that provisions are taken into account for minorities - it may turn out that modern society is too fragmented for my concept of community-as-the-political-unit to be applicable. I need to think this through, but it may be outside the scope of this discussion.

## Haris’s Bogeymen

* “Universities motivating black-boxing and preventing total knowledge sharing.”
* The incentive structure seems to be driving a lot of this. Funding is often tied to patents, new technology generated, and you mentioned the "publish or perish" mindset in academia.
* As you mentioned in your presentation, sometimes things are shared, but not in accessible and understandable formats. So they are not really open in the true sense.
* Is this an example of "[open washing](https://forrt.org/glossary/open-washing/)"?
* Yes, I think so, thanks for making me aware of this!
* “Proponents of evidence-based policy...and others who genuinely believe in solving important questions through ‘just the facts’”
* What is “evidence-based policy”?
* policy based on 'evidence', with evidence usually gathered through RCTs (Randomised controlled trials) or other scientific quantitative tools
* Why is this a bad thing?
* either trivial (all policy based on some sort of evidence) or dangerous, as it over-relies on science - political decision-making should be based on political processes rather than science. Otherwise we might as well have scientific dictatorships (an example would perhaps be eco-fascism, a term discussed in environmental activism circles)
* “People who willingly want to take advantage of other people by claiming expertise or differences in knowledge.” - i.e. “experts”
* Aren’t experts important?
* Experts are important but in political and state decision-making they should advise politicians, not dictate solutions
* This is a key distinction for me (Jeremy) in helping to understand this discussion.
* So rather than adding guardrails on experts, in an ideal system you are talking about another paradigm of thinking about "experts", correct?
* Another paradigm, that political decisions come through deliberation in which 'the best argument wins' (Habermas)
* Can’t systems that make decisions “by committee” (heavy democratic processes) lead to [gridlock](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gridlock) more so than top-down (expert-driven) decision making systems?
* I don't think so, actually I think it would be quite the contrary due to majority voting as a stopping rule. It may lead to worse decisions (if you believe in 'quality' but perhaps not gridlock, at least not in my mind)

## Collateral Damage

* “Most scientists/non-scientists who honestly believe in expertise, objective knowledge and division of epistemic or cognitive labor.”
* Is there a different way of thinking about this that would help people make the adjustment?
* Treat knowledge as a social good, owned by the whole of society, treat experts as subordinate to the people and treat the scientific method as a part of the democratic process - ie say the science is democratic deliberation with some rules that are specific to it
* Some rich people who really want to help humanity with their wealth, but want to do it in a closed way.
* “The highway to hell is paved with the best of intentions.”
* Why would this group be collateral damage?
* Because they may be honest in wanting to help, but their way of perceiving the world (science, not democracy, viewing everything as philanthropy) disempowers 'the people'

## Bad Incentive Structures

* Moloch and the "Race to the Bottom"
* Define what this is.
* This gets back to the issue of incentives and intentions.
* MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) is normally given as an example of this.
* AI is feared to be a race to the bottom with everyone trying to profit from a technology that could potentially be immensely harmful to humanity.
* How does openness and democracy counter the inventive structure, and combat the race to the bottom?

## Suggestions

* Are there any sources that people should look at to follow up on the topics in this discussion?
* Literature on democracy and Science and Technology Studies, as well as perhaps UNESCO reports on open science (though I haven't read any of the latter)
* We can list these in the show notes if I am able to publish this online.
* Where can people connect with you online?
* on Facebook (Charlie Shekeris, though they may need a message first if no common friends)
* LinkedIn (Haris Shekeris)
* Researchgate (Haris Shekeris)
* Academia.edu (Haris Shekeris)
* email: [e-mail]
* Are there ways that people can support your work?
* To be honest, I'd like to continue the conversation or just get the opportunity to think together, maybe even take some notes :) - if there is any way we can increase the time we spend together without me having to work for my daily subsistence, then all the better - anybody who'd trust me with a job would, that would be a miracle!