"Hate is the logic of social networks"
x Silvina Friera: Interview with Markus Gabriel, German philosopher :: Silicon Valley and social networks are big criminals that should end up in jail
Nothing of the human is alien to Markus Gabriel, the German philosopher specialized in metaphysics, epistemology and post-Kantian philosophy, creator of the "New Realism" from one of his most emblematic books: The world does not exist, where he postulates that " there is only something when it happens in the world "and that" nobody can make an image of the world because it does not exist ". The star of German philosophy - invited by the German Embassy, the Medifé Foundation and the UNSAM - participated in several conferences at La Noche de la FilosofÃa [Buenos Aires], gave a talk on artificial intelligence at the Cultural Center of Science and another on the human spirit and its brain at the Universidad Nacional San MartÃn. Gabriel, a polyglot who speaks English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Latin and Greek, in addition to his mother tongue, likes the provocation that generates a disruptive thought, against the current ideas. His big fight today, a verbal crusade in which he resembles a kind of lone ranger, is against the economic power and ideology that Silicon Valley has established. "The Internet is a structure that produces economic asymmetries between the owners of production conditions and users.
"The challenge of philosophy is the defense of human beings and human rights against several global processes of dehumanization that generate many fears", warns Gabriel (Remagen, 1980), author of I am not my brain and the sense of thought, among other books. "I worry about local essences; the idea according to which the Argentines, the Chinese and the Russians are profoundly different from the others. That there is an essence, for example, in being [North American]. These types of essences do not exist; They are an illusion. But the function of that illusion is domination, it is the justification for entering into a war, like what is happening between the US and Iran: the essence of being Muslim against the essence of being evangelical, in the case of Donald Trump; it is a fight of false essences. "
- How is that false essentialism dismantled?
-The role of philosophy is to demonstrate the falsity of the essences. Philosophy with its critical conceptual tools publicly questions the fallacies that govern the representation of the human being. Philosophy has to have a lot of scientific substance; It is not merely speculative. Philosophy is the promotion of knowledge.
-If the crisis of representation is the philosophical dilemma for excellent, what can philosophical thought bring about this dilemma?
-Many people believe that it is very difficult or impossible to know the facts. Deconstructing the crisis of representation presupposes the dissemination of philosophical arguments. If it were impossible to know the real, how could we know that it is impossible to know the real? Either we know we do not know anything, or we do not know anything. Whoever promotes the representation of the real is impossible contradicts itself. Then it is an irrelevant thesis. The role of philosophy is to demonstrate the falsity of a way of thinking.
-Why do you propose that artificial intelligence is an illusion?
-The systems that we designate as artificial intelligence are not intelligent; they are a hardware with a certain technical, material form, that processes data. In this case, a data is a flow of electromagnetic energy, nothing more and nothing less, which is very interesting from the perspective of the engineer, but that has nothing to do with intelligence, right? It is pure materiality subject to the interpretation and use of humans. AlphaGo does not play Go; a human being uses AlphaGo to defeat another human being. AlphaGo does not do anything. It is called artificial intelligence to sell the products; that's a marketing decision to install the promise of salvation, to sell something that is similar to God.
-The machines so far can not produce intelligence, right?
-Clear. The only intelligences that exist on earth are the intelligences of human beings and other animals. Intelligence is the ability to solve a given problem at a given time. My smartphone has no problems, so it has no intelligence. If someone does not have problems, he can not be smart.
On more than one occasion you said that a digital revolution like the French Revolution was needed. Can you expand on this idea?
-The French Revolution wanted to establish symmetries in the conditions of access to a life worth living. Therefore, the great values of this revolution are freedom, equality and solidarity, to include women as well. Internet is a monarchy with kings and we have many more problems with monarchies than we think. There are monarchies still in Spain, in England, etcetera, and also in a certain sense in the USA, where there is a perversion of monarchy that is President Donald Trump, a king elected to govern four or eight years. The Internet is a structure that produces economic asymmetries between the owners of production conditions and users. There is no democracy on the Internet. There is zero online democracy because the platform of the search engine of social networks defines the rules of behavior. That is the most radical asymmetry. In a true democracy, the rules of behavior are defined by laws. The Internet is not yet subject to the laws.
- Why is there still no legislation around the Internet, the digital world and social networks?
-Internet seems to be global, but it is not because the servers are in well-defined places. The Internet is not in heaven. The Internet is fine on Earth, but invisible. Where are all the servers? They are not visible. The possibility of regulating the internet should be through the servers. To control the monarchy of the Internet you have to attack the servers; it's exactly like in Matrix. In the game, you can not attack the Matrix because it is not in the illusion. The Matrix is the material foundation, in this case the servers. Silicon Valley is the concentration of economic power and ideological power.
-Although you define the Internet as a monarchy, do you generate in the users the illusion of a democratic thought?
-No, because it has to be a thought. What it does generate in users is the illusion of saying or publishing their opinion. A true democratic opinion is very vulnerable. Whoever attacks a system of injustice in a democratic country has problems with his life. Whoever attacks the German extreme right can die. It is very different to say that I do not like neo-Nazis and do nothing against them. To say that I do not like neo-Nazis in social networks is not a democratic act because it has merely symbolic consequences exploited by those who record the fact that I have a certain political opinion. But that is not a really democratic opinion.
-In the last elections, Alternative for Germany (AfD), obtained 13 percent of the votes and is the third political force. How do you explain this growth of the extreme right in Germany?
-Alternative for Germany is the simulation of a digital revolution; that's why the campaign slogan was "Mut zur Wahrheit! Courage for the truth. The new German right is a simulation of the second order: they simulate the criticism of digitization in the context of digitalization. But the networks of the neo-Nazis continue to exist. And there is too much. Those who attack them, run the risk of dying. I attack other systems, equally real, in this case Californian companies. That is also a democratic act. And we still have a lot to do.
-He said that Silicon Valley and social networks are "big criminals" that should end up in jail. It's hard to imagine Mark Zuckerberg a prisoner, right?
-Mark Zuckerberg is a big criminal whose goal is to produce money and by the sheer will of power does not respect the value of national and international laws. Zuckerberg is the godfather of a mafia. There is no difference between what Zuckerberg does and the Mafia in Naples. People also die because of Facebook, a very violent network that broadcast a live terrorist attack in New Zealand. Many new forms of terrorism are the result of the possibility of publishing images and videos of violence on platforms that are not compatible with these forms, but they do use it to earn money.
-How can you control these technological "monarchies"?
- What is needed is will. China beat Silicon Valley, which has almost zero influence in the Republic of China, if it is a republic ... The paradigm of China, which has its own social networks, shows that it is possible. I see no reason not to censor social networks also in Europe. Why not? Why not censor something that produces serious undemocratic effects?
- Why are social networks spaces for consolidation and amplification of hatred?
-The hate is the logic of social networks. A social network is pure sociality and a social system presupposes dissent among the actors. A group is a set of perspectives, which can result in cooperation or in hatred and destruction. What is lacking in social networks is the real interaction between bodies. So it is much easier to produce pure dissent without solution. Hate is dissent without solution. Social networks produce hate because there is no way to resolve a conflict. There is no legal system on Facebook, there are no courts. Hate on social networks is not a contingency.
-Although Facebook is not a court, do social networks do not work like courts?
- Yes, but they are courts without laws. Social networks are courts in a medieval sense. In modernity the idea of the law is to have a neutral institution, a judging judge. In social networks there are no judges. A court without a judge is weird, is not it?
- What consequences have your statements against Silicon Valley generated?
- At this moment I am doing a tour with Salesforce in Germany, one of the technological companies a little more ethical. Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, believes in ethics. We give conferences together where we discuss this problem. Salesforce really likes my criticism of social networks because they are competitors. Some American companies want to buy my ideas and Salesforce offered to sign a contract, which would be illegal in Germany, in which it stated that what I said in public would be Salesforce. They wanted to appropriate my ideas, right? (laughs)
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