IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2019 - 8

that an orator can use to induce
the judgement that s/he wants the
audience to make: a recognition of
reason (logos), a grounding in credibility (ethos), and an appeal to emotion (pathos).
If an orator is using logos, ethos,
and pathos to persuade an audience
to make a certain judgement, then
each member of the audience should
be able to "reverse engineer" logos,
ethos, and pathos to determine
whether or not to make that judgement. Critically, this means being
able to distinguish between logical
reasoning and fallacies or sophistry,
to distinguish between a credible
source and a snake-oil salesman or
similar charlatan, and to distinguish
between emotions being awakened
and emotions being manipulated.
But in all three cases, the ability of
a "demos" (both separately and collectively) to exercise these capabilities with respect to an empowered
elite (which as discussed above, is
represented by the owners of the
social media platforms using BD/
ML) is being un dermined. Reason
(logos) is being devalued; and
individual's character (ethos) is
being detached from distributed
social knowledge about norms and
their actual behavior; and emotive responses (pathos) are being
manipulated more effectively by
using BD/ML to gain knowledge of
the (individual or collective) audience and its history of reactions to
specific sorts of appeals.
In more detail, logos is being
enfeebled not just by the willful
replacement of critical thinking in
school and university curricula by
rote learning and excessive testing and metrication [18], but also
by the surreptitious encouragement to outsource critical thinking
to digital personal assistants for
the sake of convenience [3]. This
might be a significant achievement
if it led to the genuine augmenta-

8

to present specious arguments that
are based on neither evidence nor
merit but purport to be on a par with
arguments that have both.6 This
has led to a seemingly acceptable
denigration of expertise,7 a devaluation of educational qualifications and education in general,
and being an "online influencer"
becoming an aspirational ambition
for a career choice.
However, influence is not confined to a peer-peer relationship:
while social influencers can often
be no more than animated advertising hoardings or shop-window dummies, the centralized elite's use of
BD/ML can reduce (peer) pathos to
little more than a tropic response.
Nowak's Regulatory Theory of Social
Influence (RTSI) [22] states that
the relationship between a source
of social influence and a target of
social influence is actually bi-directional: i.e., it is not just that a source
focuses on a target to influence, but
that a target actively seeks a source
by whom to be influenced. Given
this psychological predisposition,
algorithms for predictive analytics
and other types of "persuasive technology" are unsurprisingly effective
in the creation of filter bubbles [23],
while confirmation bias [24] ensures
that in the longer term the relationship is reinforced and unquestioned, and ultimately attention is
saturated by online addiction [25].
Coupled with the commonplace
confusion between democracy and
majoritarian tyranny, the intervention of analytics to customize political advertising can materially affect

tion of human intellect [19] with the
DPA working solely on the behalf of
the user, but this cannot be guaranteed.4 Furthermore, there have
been several studies that have demonstrated that excessive time online
and Internet addiction rewires the
brain and shrinks the hippocampus [20], impairing the function of
memory. Combined with an acceleration of social life facilitated by
technological development, where
there is an increased expectation of
instant gratification and immediate
response, this is accompanied by a
loss of time for reflection and refinement,5 while the sometimes limited
means of online expression further
diminishes rather than enriches a
shared experience.
Similarly, ethos is being undermined by replacing "traditional"
markers of quality and value, with
ostensibly reasonable but possibly
unreliable alternatives: for example, appearing as the first hit or on
the first page of an Internet search
(which can be paid for or distorted,
if the page-rank algorithm can be
manipulated). Furthermore, the democratization of the Internet by
providing universal access to large
bodies of specialist knowledge can
be beneficial in a number of ways,
but the leveling out of expertise and
the coarseness of quantitative ranking (as measured by likes, views, ratings, followers, etc.) can be used by
the unscrupulous to lay claim to an
authority that is unwarranted, and

4

Robbins [3] recounts the anecdote of a young
boy asking a digital personal assistant (DPA)
"what's five minus three," even though he knew
the arithmetic. If a six-year old becomes accustomed to defaulting to a DPA over questions of
trivial arithmetic and being desensitized to the
potential self-harm of doing so, there is a risk
of growing up to be an eighteen-year old who
asks a DPA how to vote - and could we be sure
that the answer will be in the best interests and
preferences of the individual, or the owners of
the DPA?
5
"I apologize for such a long letter - I didn't
have time to write a short one." Attributed to
Blaise Pascal and Mark Twain.

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

6
As observed in [21]: "The role of the online
access to false anti-vaccination information just
cannot be understated in examining the rise
and spread of the anti-vaccination movement,"
and this goes hand-in-hand with the diminution
of logos and critical thinking.
7
"I think the people in this country have had
enough of experts," Michael Gove, UK politician during the Brexit referendum in 2016,
s e e h t t p s :// w w w.y o u t u b e .c o m / w a t c h? v =
GGgiGtJk7MA.

∕

SEPTEMBER 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGgiGtJk7MA
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2019
