Facebook’s “I F*cking Love Science” does not love artists
blogs.scientificamerican.com
blogs.scientificamerican.com
They are just a "Like" farm. They use their tracking of likes to mine relationships so you can get personalized spam that appears that it came from your friends.
What they're doing is cheering for the idea of science. It's similar to people cheering at a basketball game. They're not basketball players, so most of what they have to say about the topic is going to be wrong. But they're still rooting for you, and this is a good and powerful thing.
The absolute only good thing about this is that it fights fire with fire: that is, it uses tribalism to fight tribalism.
But that's all it is. Atheistic religiosity is still religiosity, and it's a problem whether or not magical woo is involved. It's the same kind of thing when people think that calling out a fallacy is some kind of argumentative coup d'etat.
Or let's bring this back to software and business. How exactly do you feel when your sales team drastically overpromises your engineering capabilities?
That's how I feel.
Right. Replacing one form of blind adherence with another is not an improvement.
There are people who have no blind adherence to anything. It is possible, and we need more of them. That isn't something IFLS can help with.
A lack of belief in God is not a belief in a God. Your example is ignorant.
Religion is the belief in an absence of evidence. Science is the whole of objective reality. You don't seem to understand what "science" and "religion" actually mean, but you really don't like persons who don't believe in anything, so you assign bizarrely negative qualifiers for someone who knows things.
No one on earth worships "SCIENCE". It's a tool we use daily, whether you understand why things work or not.
Outside of parapsychology, cold fusion, and free energy devices, how are you stating that this occurs as a regular practice? I criticize scientists from within the framework of poor evidence, biases, systemic issues, but calling it a "religion" misses the point. Personal biases don't make a religion. Watered down pop-science isn't a religion either.
May be you have some particular religion in mind, but many beliefs coexist happily with science.
There is a domain where atheists and many religious people agree on. Which is the domain that is not covered by the particular religion and that is covered by the scientific method (do an experiment, analyse data, get conclusions, rinse, repeat). Choice of medicine is one such area. True, some religions believe in voodoo or other "alternative medicine" but that is not part of the definition of religion.
The critical question is what to do with things we have no physical evidence of, things which we have no data of, are uncertain of. Things that science has not reached a verdict on. Religions typically have loads of these. The existence of god/gods for example. Having such a belief does not contradict the available science at the time, so we can have a scientist who believes in gods carrying on his research cheerfully. Atheists don't believe in gods unless there is physical proof. That also does not contradict doing some scientific research. The issue comes when you mistake "SCIENCE", the tool we use daily, with "science", the set of propositions, heuristics, conjectures and half-baked theories that will always exist at the frontiers of research. That effectively means you choose to place your trust in the set of current researchers and if they get it wrong, you get it wrong.
In short, science is not and has never been the whole of objective reality. This assigns mythical powers to scientists, which some would certainly call a "religion".
Totally! Perfectly faithful Christians can be Evolutionary Biologists without falling victim to fundamentalist anti-science idiocy.
"The critical question is what to do with things we have no physical evidence of, things which we have no data of, are uncertain of. Things that science has not reached a verdict on. Religions typically have loads of these. The existence of god/gods for example."
That's the realm of social science, not hard science, seeing as there is always going to be zero physical evidence of "God"/gods.
"In short, science is not and has never been the whole of objective reality. This assigns mythical powers to scientists, which some would certainly call a "religion"."
Again, "Science" is reality. Scientists do not have mythical powers. They are human. They are however the best we have to understand objective reality, through our feeble and failing minds. We do quite a good job, and conflating priests with scientists shows how little persons understand what facts and objective evidence versus subjectivity, belief, and perspective. Priests are "infallible". Science is not. And that is a very good thing.
Both of these claims are 100% false.
Religion does have significant evidence; the problematic part of religion is in its interpretation of that evidence, rather than the evidence itself. This ranges from the metaphysical "X exists, therefore God" to the specific incidences of revival tents and miracle workers. This is evidence. Just because you have a different interpretation does not automatically invalidate theirs.
Science is a fucking method, not some "whole". There is and possibly always will be parts of reality that we do not know. We cannot stand outside reality, by definition, and we will always have non-objective biases coloring our perspective. Pretending to be objective is self-delusion. Trying to be objective is worthy and good, but recognize that you can't be.
Faith does not have empirical evidence. It has philosophical arguments backing it. Religion would cease becoming supernatural otherwise. There's a reason why theology is a soft social science and not a physical science (no matter what the Discovery Institute may tell you.)
"Science is a fucking method, not some "whole". "
Science is both a reflection of our current understanding of reality and the method of how we refine our understanding of it.
"Pretending to be objective is self-delusion" We are not objective creatures there is a vast difference between nature and those who ~practice~ science.
Here's a write-up on the problematic nature of the methodology you use:
http://www.wideopenground.com/fundamentalism-and-foundationa...
The problem with ifls and equivalents is that that is actually what they are encouraging. They misrepresent "science" completely.
Can reason an scientific method itself be an Idol? And if you do not cherish those things do you think it's better since you are truly not a believer in anything? Even the method that verifiebly gives humanity models of predictive utility that gave us almost all we enjoy today?
I think the comparison is valid. Some hardline atheists can be as vindicative, presumptuous and arrogant as religious people and that attitude is a problem (
Parent isn't implying atheism is a religion by the layman definition (sthg along the lines of'a belief in sthg unprovable') but that its proponents behave like they were a part of sthg that looks like a religion.
Atheists can be assholes? Why does that even need to be said? Atheists are people and run the same set of qualities that any human can possess.
"Parent isn't implying atheism is a religion by the layman definition (sthg along the lines of'a belief in sthg unprovable') but that its proponents behave like they were a part of sthg that looks like a religion."
Religion or lack thereof has nothing to do with being an asshole. Software "zealots" promote their fanatical opinions but they don't worship "software".
It's a crappy analogy when "asshole" would suffice.
Indeed. But software zealots exhibit the same behavioral properties as normal zealots. "Normal zealots" is understood to be "religious zealots", because those behavioral properties are derived primarily from analyses of religious behavior.
Worship, at the end of the day, has absolutely nothing to do with anything.
... until they have a gross misunderstanding of an issue relevant to public policy and spread that misunderstanding to others.
There is no "good ignorance".
This can't be stated enough; (the following is anecdotal) the amount of blatantly incorrect information being spread through the use of what I dub 'feel good infographics' across the internet is astonishing. The viewer looks at something, feels good about what they've read and then shares it because it passed their own personal sentiment analysis.
It's kind of frightening because it sets the stage for all sorts of astroturfing and conditioning to spread; if anything we should look at the Boston Bomber/Reddit incident as evidence of this feel good propaganda. People were so eager to attach to the notion that they had 'caught the bastard' only for the truth to come out later that they had completely fingered the wrong guy.
As much as I'd like it to be true, looking at a bunch of .gifs about quantum mechanics and astrophysics plastered with white majuscules does little for one's understanding of science. In other words, IFLS is to the scientific community as r/atheism is to the religious-sceptics community (not the best analogy...).
The problem arises when people share untrue information out of the notion that they're spreading science. Comprehension is indeed expensive and scarce, which means recognizing the borders of your own knowledge and the start of your own ignorance is extremely important. Pseudoscientific drivel has no place anywhere.
Whereas the facebook page does nothing like this at all - it's just funny pictures with a theme. It doesn't encourage any way of thinking or promote figuring out the world.
This is how What the Bleep, Dr. Oz, and all manner of pseudoscience subverts actual science.
Fairweather friends like that make it more difficult because they're repeating a meme or sort of cargo cult understanding of how reality works.
Seems to me that a lot of the point of 'cheering science' is lost when you're posting inaccurate facts.
Can you even call it science any more?
People who have done science degrees are coming out and still believing in forms of magic like organic, chiropractics, chemical free, anthropomorphizing animals etc.
It's a fine line, should we appease the masses and try and get more scientists or try and at least get the supposed scientists practising and believing in actual science.
If the cheerleaders were sleeping with the fans and spreading venereal disease your analogy would be nearly perfect.
Personal favourite: http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=math.
Lol-cats among other things teach public why veterinary medicine is worth the fuss. It's because cats are so cute!
Are there any good articles that talk about this practice? Seems like that could be interesting...
http://qz.com/74937/how-to-become-internet-famous-without-ev...
Is it the tone that gets to you, the underlying message, or the overly idealistic picture it paints?
I too, sell t-shirts (through TeeSpring) and my latest experiment was quite successful - I found some designs on another t-shirt site that I quite liked the look of, emailed the artist and said I'd pay them $1.50 for every t-shirt I sold. They agreed, and sent me the images. I sold heaps, the artist made extra money and my fans were happy.
1. Elise Andrew is making money off IFLS. (Whether or not she's giving it out to charities is non-relevant.)
2. IFLS' success rests largely on the high quality content created by artists, scientists, photographers
3. A small part of IFLS' success rests on Andrews' eye for picking out good/funny/clever quotes/cartoons/photographs/artwork
Given (1) and (2), I'd say not only is IFLS largely indebted to the artist/photographer/science community at large, but not attributing work is an incredibly selfish thing to do. Whether she didn't attribute the work out of laziness, negligence or malice is non-relevant. My only point is that IFLS is a very good target for the blog post.
If someone stole my code and used it without attribution and to make money off of it, I would be pissed. If someone that's received the major media attention IFLS has stole my code and used it without attribution to make money, I'd be even more pissed.
Also note that artwork can have varying licenses, as well - similar to MIT, GPL, etc. licenses we see in source code. Some licenses preclude all non-endorsed distribution. She's had a ton of media coverage in the past 6 months (especially after the whole Twitter thing), so the "small corner of the internet" argument won't fly.
Neither will the "Reddit/9gag/etc. does it" argument. Reddit, for example, is a mass-user-driven aggregate. Reddit can't possibly police all posts and ensure that attribution is given. Conversely, the IFLS page is not an aggregate. Andrews picks the images very carefully and in a conscious manner; in the latter case, there is clearly room for attribution.
However, I think that IFLS has garnered the same type of militant defenders as /r/atheism/ or fans of Carl Sagan (or, more recently, NDGT). Ironically, this type of blind following is exactly what the aforementioned groups are trying to dissolve. Andrews screwed up. Badly. This is not a rookie mistake; it's something she could get sued for. Lets leave it at that.. enough with the apologists.
Edit: I would just like to re-iterate that the burden does NOT lie on the artists to scour the internet looking for mis-attributed pieces of artwork. But rather, on the distributor of the work. Just about every judge in existence would agree with this.
This isn't hard, and can be automated... it's the 9gag model. Just view the cream of the crop that bubbles to the top of reddit and randomly pick out a few every day.
Small part of every DJ is picking the righ music to remix.
"Picking the right words and phrases and putting them in the right order" is not even in the same plane of existence as "looking at a picture and deciding if it's remotely funny or interesting."
More serious analogy would be photography. How you do make good photos? Do you create them? No. You just make hundreds of photos (adhering to some technical limitations) and the you pick and crop the right ones from all the photos you made. That's what Bresson did.
Picking content is the creative part. The rest is just pointing the camera, turning the knobs and pushing the button.
On the internet artists create respective images. But she's also the artist who picks and crops creating her feed which many people apreciate the value of.
You just completely missed my point that picking content and reframing it is valuable creative activity.
Theft would be to resell those images as stock photos.
Besides seems your broad definitions of theft would classify half on the internet as such. That's not a very pleasent view of the biggest cultural invention since printing press.
Everything she posts has already been proven to be interesting to anyone interested in science.
It's an Internet-wide problem, not just one FB group.
Lie is indeed "unfair" to him in some statistical sense, but I am absolutely not being "unfair" to him in a moral sense.
Or to put it another way, the reality of the Internet as you describe it is that a certain %age of copyright violations go unpurusued. It's a statistical model, just as it's a statistical model that a certain number of robberies are unsolved and a certain number of people are killed by lightening.
Is that unfair? It may seem so when you're being struck by lightening, but someone has to be struck by lightening.
Likewise, given enough copyright violations, someone is going to be called out. Today the blow falls on Elise.
Mine is, telling your friends a joke without bothering to establish who originally invented it.
Do you have a suggesting for finding each "owner"?
Such requirements would shut down all these sites (not that we'd have a huge loss by doing so, but I'd like to think that a social/technological solution would be possible.)
That's how copyright enforcers again make it worse for all creative people.
Original authors of the jokes either don't earn any money with them or do it similar way that the "joke thief" does. Only they are not that popular as he is.
I think reposting is much less of an offence then one proffessional comediant using joke of another one without proper attribution.
Good point, though. Delivery of embedded content is often ignored.
Reddit is morally different, since arguably you cannot hold them directly responsible for content generated by their users, they are strictly a conduit.
Similarly, we don't blame Facebook when their users post pirated content, we rightly blame the individual who pirated it in the first place.
You're right though, this isn't different than a curated stream of pirated content (e.g., many other Facebook groups), but as raganwald said, the fact that we can't catch them all doesn't mean it's wrong to catch one.
If it exist on the internet and is hilarious somebody will steal it and milk it to the masses for money.
Of course content should be used legally, but IFLS has grown so quickly that I think it's fair to defend Elise as having made an honest mistake, or simply not considering the issue until now.
Instead, Alex comes off as overly bitter, utterly failing to advance the cause of a "mutually beneficial relationship". Presumably in the pursuit of blog impressions.
If I've posted a picture to my personal timeline, can someone post that picture on their own Facebook pages without giving me credit? Can they even modify the picture (add a slogan or whatever) and do the same? I think the Facebook TOS allows both of these:
https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms
Is that how you read it?
It's never occured to me to wonder about how you file a DMCA notice against facebook though, or if that's something that happens and how effective it is for the filer.
Is this something that one can do on facebook? Facebook appears to say yes: http://www.facebook.com/help/190268144407210/
But it would be interesting to hear from someone with personal experience, on either end of a DMCA takedown notice on facebook.
(If the given work was publicly licensed CC-BY, that's another story. Then you HAVE permission, under that license only if you credit. But that's something the CC-BY license does, not some built-in part of copyright law).
It's certainly _good manners_ regardless of the law. But, while you may or may not be illegally 'pirating' an image to use it in a facebook post without permission, whether or not you give proper attribution is unlikely to be determining factor of whether you are or not.
Not justifying the behavior, just saying that this example is the 'little guy'.
From the article, emphasis mine.