I think a key issue of our time is that we no longer know who should be in charge and we no longer draw easily from reassuring metanarratives. Many of us have retreated into 'lifestyle' or identity politics as a source of meaning. Foundationally many seem to be without a place to stand - a kind of paralysis of relativism. Now, some people might see this as good or as a necessary stage towards some better, more nuanced reconstruction of culture and society.

Richard Rorty argued that cultural politics has replaced reformist politics, meaning that multiple groups are now engaged in their own preoccupations about rights while the larger concerns of class, like housing, employment, healthcare no longer engage broadly as they should. Personally the primary thing I am aware of is that society seems so atomized and divided that substantive reform seems ever harder to achieve. Which probably suits powerful interest groups pretty well.

So, I am asking how do you think about making sense in the maze of philosophical pluralism? Also, to what extent is reason a quest for reason, a search for personal meaning or connected to power balances or imbalances in social structures? — Jack Cummins

As you implied, philosophical pluralism seems to be related to political pluralism. Pre-civilized groups tended to be egalitarian. But as urbanized societies increased in complexity, their governing organization became more hierarchical, and top-down tyranny was the norm (e.g. Pharaohs). However, today, for our global civilization, interconnected by a cacophony of electronic communications, neither Athenian Democracy nor European Fascism are practical solutions to the exigencies of social order for eight billion people.

Likewise, introspective Socratic philosophy was doable in democratic Athenian agora, but could be shouted-down from all sides on a modern internet forum. There may be too many competing & fragmented perspectives for any system to reach a practical dominant or compromise position. So, just as political systems are forced to become de-centralized, philosophical systems are wandering in a disorienting labyrinth of logic with many dead-end branches. Socrates no longer has the singular authority he once provided for the babble of argumentative philosophers. Even for a small group like TPF, there is no center of mass to stabilize the ship of Theseus. :smile:

PS__I hope this doesn't sound too pessimistic. Maybe the sheer mass of collective meanings (wisdom of the crowd) will serve to keep the Ark of Philosophy on an even keel. :joke:

"Let a hundred philosophies bloom"
The Hundred Flowers Campaign, also termed the Hundred Flowers Movement, was a period from 1956 to 1957 in the People's Republic of China during which the Chinese Communist Party encouraged citizens to openly express their opinions of the Communist Party. ___Wikipedia

Who's in charge here?

I see it as a boon to reason. With a greater conformity it was much easier to submit to the general consensus whereas now, given the myriad of doctrines, one is nearly always forced to think for oneself, or risk being pulled every which way like a windsock. The decentralization of knowledge is a paradigmatic moment history will remember.

The decentralization of knowledge is a paradigmatic moment history will remember. — NOS4A2

That's an interesting phrase - is that your own formulation?

I’m probably not the only one to use the phrase.

So, I am asking how do you think about making sense in the maze of philosophical pluralism? Also, to what extent is reason a quest for reason, a search for personal meaning or connected to power balances or imbalances in social structures? — Jack Cummins

The whole "scientism" vs. "post-modernism" debate is subsumed by existentialism. That is to say, at heart, we are creatures that can do what we don't feel like doing by way of reasons (to ourselves). So, I don't want to work, but I must if I want to survive. I make a narrative to myself (aka a "reason"), and then this becomes my narrative for why I must carry on. But I don't have to. I can technically quit working, and even starve myself. But the rubber hits the pavement, so to say, once the realities of starvation and imminent death are lurking. So here is the "science", that is to say, applied sciences in the form of engineering/technological applications to keep us alive.

So we know at least two things regarding human will:
1) We can create reasons that overcome preferences.
2) We generally don't like pain and hunger and destitution.

Most strife and conflicts come from this. The "modernism" of science represents a sort of historical trajectory that of the underpinning of our survival and ways of life. The "post-modernism" is the desiderata reasons we push and pull at that provide personal motivations to keep using the tools that the scientific apparatus has provided.

Everything is text is post-modernism's stance. However, starvation is a bitch. The "meta-narrative" of the "modernism" haunts the post-modern because as "relativistic" as you want to go, it goes back to that starvation and the use of the scientific apparatus. The meta-narrative wins.

So, I am asking how do you think about making sense in the maze of philosophical pluralism?

I didn't fully discover my love of philosophy until my late 20s. A big part of this was the overwhelming diversity of the field. The field seemed almost impenetrable for the crushingly long list of "great names," each with their own unique systems, each with hundreds, or often thousands, of pages of incredibly dense pages to grapple with.

If I reflect back on my undergraduate classes, and my early periods of self study, the problem was a focus on chronologically pushing through authors. I don't think this is a great way to learn philosophy. This is not how we teach biology or chemistry. Nor is it how we teach mathematics, another abstract field, or literary studies, another discipline within the humanities. In biology, we might describe how certain discoveries were made, review debunked theories and how they were falsified, etc. but we don't slog through the progress of biological theories from Aristotle on.

I bring this up because I began to get a lot more out of my studies when I began using topical books (e.g. Routledge and Oxford companions) on specific areas of philosophy that interested me. After reading those, I'd be able to go out and find journal articles on specific problems that caught my eye and I'd have a better idea of the authors who I wanted to look into.

What these guides gave me was a "lay of the land." Most "Introductions to...", "Companions to...", and SEP entries have a typology of sorts. They map the area in question, and define a rough list of camps. This is reductive and misses nuanced, but it is essential. A developed field has a common nomenclature. It normally has some landmark papers that have helped define the "camps" on a given issue.

This is true in the sciences and it seems even more true in philosophy. Because philosophy is more abstract, with looser borders than pretty much any other discipline, this sort of scaffolding is essential. Philosophy is in many ways a conversation, and a conversation requires a common language.

Moreover, it's a conversation of very complex ideas. Here compression is also essential. Identifiers like "terminators," or "the semantic camp," can act as short hand for an entire complex set of ideas. This sort of compression is essential because the mind simply doesn't have the bandwidth to unpack every idea, you'll lose the thread of an argument doing that, and it will take forever to write it. Logical notation plays a similar role.

I notice this same sort of need to compress data to manipulate it in the programing and database work I do as well.

This is why I don't really like arguments about "blowing up philosophy," or starting from the ground up again. Yes, the field is full of bloated, sometimes quite bad writing, but if you want to effectively communicate on very complex ideas you need to have a shared language and it doesn't make sense to ignore the existing systems for that.

Also, to what extent is reason a quest for reason, a search for personal meaning or connected to power balances or imbalances in social structures?

I think philosophy can be all of these things. Reason itself is more basic. When we seek to understand power imbalances and social structures we use reason. We have to assume these systems are intelligible to us and that within them one thing follows from another in a comprehendible manner, else how could we even say that such imbalances exist?



I don't think I necessarily agree. The problem with the proliferation of access to digital information, and the ability to create and spread digital information rapidly is the potential shift in the signal to noise ratio in our culture. More isn't necessarily better. For example, if a doctor can now have access to 10 times as many studies as she had before, but now 55% are likely to be garbage instead of just 15%, the new technology doesn't seem like a benefit. What we care about is finding out what we want to know, and having more to sift through can be a major barrier to that.

I think the second problem is that truth is not necessarily advantageous for the survival and reproduction of digital information. There are tons of articles, memes, videos, etc. in our digital ecosystem. What reproduces and spreads to more hosts is not necessarily veritical information. Salacious gossip, long debunked partisan diatribes, etc. all seem to replicate very well "in the wild." Sources that are supposed to vet knowledge have problems too, e.g. publication biased, novelty bias, etc.

And since we exist in a sort of epistemic web, a web increasingly shaped by search and content promotion algorithms, where the veracity of one claim is reliant on another source, more voices can just become more noise.

So, I am asking how do you think about making sense in the maze of philosophical pluralism? — Jack Cummins

Since I am definitely not a professional philosopher, and might not even be an half-assed amateur at it, I stay out of tedious postmodern mazes. I am not especially interested in diversity and pluralism, and at this stage in my life, it doesn't matter. Hey, I'm almost over, and I'm OK with that. (Well, sort of. Not much choice, come to think of it.).

Everything is text is post-modernism's stance. However, starvation is a bitch. — schopenhauer1

A nice pairing. It shoots down the literary balloon and then nails it with a jagged icicle.

So much of the serious talk of the times dissolves into the hot air of intellectual dithering when confronted by the indifference of nature--birth, eat, starve, death, rinse and repeat ad infinitum. [Work! Strive! Persevere! You are all victims of a monstrous hoax!)

The decentralization of knowledge is a paradigmatic moment history will remember — NOS4A2

Is knowledge actually "decentralized", or is it merely being distributed far more widely than 100 years ago? I don't think the generation of significant knowledge has been decentralized, and I'm not sure it should be. A large group of institutions harbor a lot of the knowledge creators, and they further nurture them. Good thing, because significant knowledge creation is hard work. One needs labs, libraries, and colleagues.

True enough, a volunteer archeologist can hike out into the field and find something quite important. A number of significant finds in England have happened this way. Someday a janitor might find the lost Ark of the Covenant in the attic of a remotely located Vatican warehouse. Serendipity happens in a very decentralized way.

A nice pairing. — BC

Thank you, sir! :smile:.

It shoots down the literary balloon and then nails it with a jagged icicle. — BC

Nice turn of phrase and, yes exactly.

That’s a good point. But it isn’t necessarily worse, either. It’s not only that we have more access to information, we also have better access to the means of publication. Personally, I would rather wade through landfills of propaganda than lose the access to this technology. It’s just now we have to equip ourselves with the skills to deliberate our way through it. That may take some time and training, but so much the better.

There is currently an effort by those in power to criminalize misinformation. That way lies State Truth, and it has invariably led to human rights violations.

You might be right. Those with greater resources will create for themselves more access to hearts and minds. But I think the tide is turning. Who knows? Maybe future archeologists will be searching through forums like this one day and laugh at how primitive we were.

"Let no one ignorant of geometry enter." :smirk:

So, I am asking how do you think about making sense in the maze of philosophical pluralism[relativism]? — Jack Cummins

Well, for starters, I'm numerate ... sophistry & dogma don't confuse me.

Also, to what extent is reason a quest for reason, a search for personal meaning or connected to power balances or imbalances in social structures?

Please rephrase or reformulate this question.

now 55% are likely to be garbage instead of just 15% — Count Timothy von Icarus

truth is not necessarily advantageous for the survival and reproduction of digital information. There are tons of articles, memes, videos, etc. in our digital ecosystem. What reproduces and spreads to more hosts is not necessarily veritical information — Count Timothy von Icarus

Can you explain what mechanisms you think were in place to prevent these two issues prior to the opening up of digital information. Say, when one had to search through journals manually (perhaps with the aid of library catalogue), what was it previously preventing one's search from having high signal to noise ratios, or from being prone to influences other than veracity?

It does seem that there is a lot of confusion about who is in charge or control as roles in social life have become more and more fuzzy. Power shifts a lot, especially as people change organisational roles. It is likely that this effects the way people hold beliefs and values as they shift within different structures and cultures of knowledge and ideologies.

I have probably been through a lot of postmodern mazes. In particular, I found Foucault's ideas on sexuality very helpful, especially in conjunction with questioning religious beliefs.

The line which you queried with the words, 'is reason a quest for reason' was actually a typo in my outpost. It should have read as 'is philosophy a quest for reason', so I will alter it when I look at the thread a little later today.

You also seem to prefer the concept relativism in favour of pluralism. The reason why I choose pluralism, which is similar because it is more about competing 'truths' rather than these simply being simply relative. The idea of competing truths was the way pluralist was used by William James in, 'The Pluralistic Universe'.

The Ark of Philosophy can be like The Tower of Babel at times. It may also be because in the information age there is so much to access and put together from different times and cultures. In the issue of 'Philosophy Now' from which I read the article on postmodernism and science, there is also another relevant one, 'Bricolage: Natural Epistemology. The term was looked at by Claude Levi Strauss, as meaning '"to tinker' as a way of putting things together creatively. In a way, it can be seen as reconstruction as opposed to the process of deconstruction in postmodernism.

He argues that, ' the postmodern condition can be described, in a nutshell, as a disillusionment with the great overreaching explanations of the world, including religion and science.' He argues that absolute truth has become questionable. — Jack Cummins

Well yes... that seems to be quite a tall order for anyone to expect one absolute truth that explains everything... and fits neatly into your pocket! Seems doomed to fall very short. Which might not be a problem, if one didn’t bet the house on it. Your mention of “bricolage” (tinkering and assembling) later is a much more realistic and practical approach. Trying to find some “key of ultimate knowledge” is perhaps understandable when a particular person wonders what everything is about. Where do we come from? Where are we going? You know... philosophical questions and dialogue.

But in the hands of those simply seeking to rule, and gain more power, control, and rewards... the search for the “key of knowledge” is more like wanting the “one ring of power”. CONQUER ALL! CONTROL ALL! CONSUME ALL! CRUSH ALL OPPOSITION! (They would say). That entity which rules us now seems less like a human or group. It’s more like a machine that issues commands like the fearsome Wizard of Oz which its servants (our “leaders”) follow unthinkingly. Or it is like a enormous devouring beast, kept in a cage and tended by high priests who maintain power with this beast.

One wonders: what is the ACTUAL philosophy of the decision-makers? Not the public relations version, but a record of actual practical philosophy or policy. Might make Machiavelli’s Prince look like St. Francis. Dystopian fiction might describe the overall situation better than sociology or other academic disciplines (though changing the details). Or for the more literal-minded and unimaginative: acceptance of even the most unlikely conspiracy theories as concrete fact.

'is philosophy a quest for reason' — Jack Cummins

I see. The correction still confuses me, though differently. If philisophy is a form of reason (re: reflective), how is "a quest for reason", in this sense, anything but chasing its own tail (à la trying to lift oneself off the ground by one's own hair)? To my mind philosophy is a quest for understanding ...

... competing 'truths' rather than these simply being simply relative.

Given your question, Jack, it seemed to me more relevant to associate "competing" with relative (e.g. multiple dogmas) instead of complementary suggesting plurality (e.g. multiple versions of the same X). Then again, a "maze" consists of multiple paths, which complement one another, so "pluralism" after all. :chin:

”Let a hundred philosophies bloom"
The Hundred Flowers Campaign, also termed the Hundred Flowers Movement, was a period from 1956 to 1957 in the People's Republic of China during which the Chinese Communist Party encouraged citizens to openly express their opinions of the Communist Party. ___Wikipedia — Gnomon

:100: Yes! Definitely! Let the Philosophies bloom, mingle, party, eat and drink, mate, and have many offspring. This also applies to the arts and music, writing, and science (especially the experimental and underfunded varieties. IE those that don’t directly lead to weapons and wealth).

There was more vetting at each level when the cost to share information were higher. Publishing companies don't tend to publish Holocaust denial literature for example and libraries don't tend to stock it. Obviously, random wackos ran plenty of newsletters about all manner of things before the internet existed, but they were difficult to access, didn't proliferate as quickly, and were far less common than social media accounts today.

Think about the difference between being an author or publisher and being merely a reader. Now it is much easier to become an author or republish. This has some great benefits, but also some negative ones.

It was also easier to trace the source of information before. You could call publishers, find microfilm of old sources, etc.

Now, in many, many ways it IS now easier to do this sort of thing due to searchable databases, right? I personally have found so. The problem is that it is also way easier to fake data in ways that are extremely difficult to detect.

I'll try to dig up a good example on this where Bill Binney, formerly of the CIA, was manipulated into thinking evidence of the DNC email hack being done locally existed. It involved a single person creating multiple fake identities to feed doctored information to vulnerable people whose credentials would help boost the signal of their fake information.

Now adversarial AI networks can help you create fake videos and photos to establish fake identities. It is easy to take real data sets, which naturally look believable, and doctor them to get regression results you like to push a narrative. Certainly, this sort of stuff happened before, but the tools to create fake content are far more powerful than before. Our sensory systems isn't designed to deal with realistic deep fake videos, etc. Hell, even the proliferation of people with grad degrees without a commensurate increase in demand for their skills has boosted this problem; if it is publish or perish, and you have a family to support, changing some cell values over to support something you already think is true doesn't seem so bad.

Of course, most fake information isn't particularly sophisticated. It's easily identifiable bullshit, but that goes right to my point. This stuff replicates because it is what people want to see, it appeals to emotions. It's the reason a stirring picture of disaster X in 2013 spreads like wildfire while being represented as from disaster Y in 2023. My basic argument is that information undergoes natural selection and that truth is not necessarily, or even normally a trait that benefits reproduction.

Digital technology has made it less costly to reproduce information. Thus, there is less of an incentive to only duplicate quality information, to vet things before reproduction. This in turn changes the dynamics such that the share of veritical information goes down.

Even aside from this, sometimes having too many sources and options to read is overwhelming, and this alone hurts knowledge acquisition.

Publishing companies don't tend to publish Holocaust denial literature for example and libraries don't tend to stock it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You recall David Irving? Was he not published and stocked? I get the argument you're making about vetting, but you're trying to make an argument about "veracity" using an argument about vetting. What's the link between vetting and veracity? What mechanism ensured vetting was in favour of veracity, and not, for example, protection from litigation, or profit?

random wackos ran plenty of newsletters about all manner of things before the internet existed, but they were difficult to access, didn't proliferate as quickly, and were far less common than social media accounts today. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Now you're equating fringe with untrue, but again, you've not given the mechanism whereby more mainstream views are more likely to be true. Prior to the internet, fewer fringe views would have been available, that's true, but your argument wasn't about popularity, it was about veracity.

it is much easier to become an author or republish — Count Timothy von Icarus

Also very true, but once more, your argument wasn't that it is easier now, it's that "veracity" is reduced. You've not given a link between a job being hard to get and the output from that job being more likely to be true. It's very hard to get a job as a spy, for example, but their job is to lie.

It was also easier to trace the source of information before. You could call publishers, find microfilm of old sources, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This one I agree with the mechanism on, but I can't really see the argument for the scope. Who was ever routinely checking sources prior to the internet age? Where were the source checks when virtually every newspaper in America parroted the lie about Iraq's WMDs? The invasion was carried by a wave of popular support on the basis of utter fabrication which the slightest verification of sources could have shown, but no-one bothered.

Also, whilst I think what you say about sources might apply to twitter, or facebook, it can hardly be said to apply to modern blogging. Here, for example, is Caitlin Johnstone's latest blog https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/03/21/john-boltons-prominence-in-the-media-proves-our-entire-society-is-diseased/ a typically polemic piece from her, but it is literally littered with links to the sources of all of her statements. Something you could never get in a newspaper. I can trace every single one of her sources with a click.

it is also way easier to fake data in ways that are extremely difficult to detect. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You've given a really interesting example of modern data faking, which I appreciate, but you've not shown comparatively how it is 'easier', only different. Whilst there's a lot of 'deep fake' material now, the internet has also made it much easier to track down evidence to the contrary. It's much harder to fake a communication when one can access texts, whatsapps, emails, voicemails etc which might contradict the fake. Compare to a telegram, or a letter which, when faked, would most likely be the only copy of that communication.

On the whole, though, I'm persuaded by this one.

It's easily identifiable bullshit, but that goes right to my point. This stuff replicates because it is what people want to see, it appeals to emotions. It's the reason a stirring picture of disaster X in 2013 spreads like wildfire while being represented as from disaster Y in 2023. My basic argument is that information undergoes natural selection and that truth is not necessarily, or even normally a trait that benefits reproduction. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I get this, but I don't see an argument that it ever was otherwise. The mechanisms by which information was propagated might have been different, but the qualities of information selected for promulgation were always the same.

Digital technology has made it less costly to reproduce information. Thus, there is less of an incentive to only duplicate quality information, to vet things before reproduction. This in turn changes the dynamics such that the share of veritical information goes down. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As above. The cost of producing information makes it more imperative that the production of that information generate a return on that investment. I don't see how that has anything to do with its veracity. If anything, given what you say about "what people want to see", it seems very unlikely, on its face, that someone contemplating the high cost of publishing information would care much about its veracity, compared to it's likely reception.

The reason why I choose pluralism, which is similar because it is more about competing 'truths' rather than these simply being simply relative.

A good point that is often missed. You can have multiple true explanations of the same phenomena. E.g., a mechanic, an engineer, and a physicist can all explain how a car works using true propositions, but that doesn't mean their explanations will be the same. When you get to very complex phenomena, such as the function of various organs, relatively true explanations (i.e. based on well vetted research) from different levels of analysis may even seem to be contradictory.

Relativism is also tricky in that it can be taken to imply that there is no truth, or alternatively, that the truth or falsity of positions depends on context.

I am not sure that it matters entirely whether the term pluralism or relativism are used because it is about competing perspectives. Thinking about it more, the way I see it is that truth, reason or understanding are based on experience. This does depend on knowledge but there is a political dimension to this. Within social science and cultural studies there is recognition of intersectionality which involves social and categories as aspects of this, which affect perception of this. Of course, each person is a unique person in an ongoing process of structuring a philosophy outlook but intersectionality is likely to have some bearing on this.

I am glad that you recognise the way in which construction of views is based on social and political factors. This probably occurs in many unconscious ways, with people having different ways of realising or acknowledging such biases and various prejudices which may come into play.

The cultural climate varies historically and geographically. It is also linked to the role of academic institutions, such as the general changes in allegiance to worldviews. In the light of science, postmodernism and other influences like existentialism and science, there may be a void. It may be that it is here that so much is seen as fictive, as a background for the emergence of 'post-truth'.

So, I am asking what do you think about making sense in the maze of philosophical pluralism? Also, to what extent is philosophy a quest for reason, a search for personal meaning or connected to power balances or imbalances in social structures? — Jack Cummins

It depends on what you mean by "philosophy". If you mean by this word, what "ordinary" people commonly regard as "that's my philosophy", then philosophical pluralism is indeed helpful and enlightening, for the trivial reason that we learn about how other cultures deal with issues similar to ours. And often with issues that aren't ours.

Now, if you mean by "philosophy" the tradition going back to Plato, then it's more nuanced. I'd say it's good to have a "reasonable" amount of plurality - it gives us different options to consider. But going from a reasonable amount to "anything goes" is very different. If we allow an anything goes attitude into philosophy in this sense, then we are severely degrading the tradition, because we are allowing too much garbage in.

Your second question depends on what your interests in philosophy are. But it's legitimate to tackle all those questions.

I guess that the use of the term and approach to it is so variable, ranging from the academic to the popular. In the tradition of Plato it may have been more about self-knowledge. That is not to say that many who approach disregard self-knowledge and the understanding of the nature of reality. However, the outer aspects of philosophy may be more about the ability to persuade and to offer credible and valid arguments. In that sense, philosophy can become almost a competition of power.

This may not be all that plurality involves but it does involve the politics of philosophy. That is in addition to the many possibilities of constructing worldviews, and all the many different angles and rational constructed arguments.

Thinking about it more, the way I see it is that truth, reason or understanding are based on experience. — Jack Cummins

I think one's commitment to a philosophical position or way of life can be "based on experience" but "truth, reason or understanding", which constitute doing philosophy, are not themselves "based on experience".

Of course, each person is a unique person in an ongoing process of structuring a philosophy outlook but intersectionality is likely to have some bearing on this.

While the aporia with which one's inquiries and thinking begin might be functions of, or related to, one's bio-social psychology, the "philosophical outlook" which might follow is no more dependent on, or validated by, how aporia are selected than a mathematical theorem is dependent on how its axioms are selected or a musical composition is dependent on how its scale, notes & key-changes are selected. That seems a genetic fallacy, Jack.

The comment about the competition of power reminds me a bit of Plato's dislike of the Sophists, who argued for the sake of winning an argument, not for any inherent goodness or correctness. I believe we still have that around in philosophy, particularly in the "Deconstruction" tradition, and some aspects of postmodernism generally.

I can understand political philosophy - but philosophy itself being political, is not entirely clear. Some branches are - ethics say, or maybe even some aspect of aesthetics. But I don't see a reason as to why metaphysics, epistemology, logic, language, etc. are in themselves political or about power.

They can be depending on how they are used, but I don't see a necessity to it.

Perhaps you have something else in mind.

You're quite right about the same incentives to reproduce inaccurate information existing before the digital agent. I don't mean to put that forward as any sort of golden era.

However, reputation, information about the source of any data, plays a role in how people consume and replicate that data. Setting up a print publishing company and building a reputation comes with considerable opportunity costs. Setting up social media accounts can be done by the tens of thousands with bots for next to nothing.

I will use two examples here:

First, when the Islamic State first rebranded from Al Qaeda in Iraq and began taking significant amounts of territory it made world news. Lots of reporters went to cover the story. People in the region had phones and shared their own media. Major outlets covered the rise of IS, as well as small bloggers.

Twitter, with 305 million daily users in 2015, represented a major source for information worldwide, I believe the 4th most visited site at the time. Throughout that year until major censorship efforts were put in place, pro-Islamic State propaganda, often reposts of official propaganda, dominated trends related to the region.

Partly this was people's willingness to share gruesome content, but bots played a huge role, such that major crackdowns on bots drastically reduced the frequency of propaganda being shared. This is a case were a relatively small cadre (most of Twitters membership is not IS boosters) was able to boost their signal, making it equivalent to the actions of millions of people through automation.

For a more indepth look, there is Yannic Kilcher's highly questionable project where he trained a GPT-4 model on millions of posts from the hate/racism section of 4chan. He then proceeded to let the bot loose on the site for 24 hours. During this period, one person, spending next to nothing, was able to control 10% of all content on a social media network with 22 million monthly users.

Buying a printer has nothing on running a bot net. Then you also have to consider that in the digital era, it's like everyone owns their own printer and photocopier, and has it in their pocket 24/7, meaning such efforts can spread out from your initial manufactured surge. And whereas most people ignore leaflets dropped all over the street, people do pay attention to leaflets given to them by people they know.