misko_2083 wrote: Wed Aug 25, 2021 1:41 pmKnowledge is power.
However, some of the knowledge we keep in our memory is real some is pseudo-knowledge.
There being no such thing as Knowledge really. Rather, as Foucault (French philosopher) explains (well my interpretation of what he says sigh...) - knowledge is created from the process of imagination: when that which is imagined is accepted by some culture as true, it becomes "knowledge" for that culture.
https://www.powercube.net/other-forms-o ... verywhere/
Foucault was heavily influenced by the earlier work of Nietzsche in his view of how knowledge is created by discourse.
‘Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its “general politics” of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true’ (Foucault, in Rabinow 1991).
Discourse, as defined by Foucault, refers to:
"ways of constituting knowledge, together with the social practices, forms of subjectivity and power relations which inhere in such knowledges and relations between them. Discourses are more than ways of thinking and producing meaning. They constitute the 'nature' of the body, unconscious and conscious mind and emotional life of the subjects they seek to govern" (Weedon, 1987, p. 108).
I refer to Foucault, because more I find than any other philosopher, he answers the questions about 'what is power', is it something some entity has, is it given, is it taken, or is it created out of the act of its exercise? This is complex.
Foucault certainly examined the operation of prisons (institutions) and illustrated various mechanisms of 'power':
‘We must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms: it ‘excludes’, it ‘represses’, it ‘censors’, it ‘abstracts’, it ‘masks’, it ‘conceals’. In fact power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. The individual and the knowledge that may be gained of him belong to this production’ (Foucault 1991: 194)
https://aeon.co/essays/why-foucaults-wo ... -than-ever
Foucault argued that if you look at the way in which prisons operate, that is, at their mechanics, it becomes evident that they are designed not so much to lock away criminals as to submit them to training rendering them docile. Prisons are first and foremost not houses of confinement but departments of correction. The crucial part of this institution is not the cage of the prison cell, but the routine of the timetables that govern the daily lives of prisoners. What disciplines prisoners is the supervised morning inspections, the monitored mealtimes, the work shifts, even the ‘free time’ overseen by a panoply of attendants including armed guards and clipboard-wielding psychologists.
Importantly, all of the elements of prison surveillance are continuously made visible. That is why his book’s French title Surveiller et punir, more literally ‘Surveil and Punish’, is important. Prisoners must be made to know that they are subject to continual oversight. The purpose of constant surveillance is not to scare prisoners who are thinking of escaping, but rather to compel them to regard themselves as subject to correction. From the moment of morning rise to night’s lights out, the prisoners are subject to ceaseless behavioural inspection.
The crucial move of imprisonment is that of coaxing prisoners to learn how to inspect, manage and correct themselves. If effectively designed, supervision renders prisoners no longer in need of their supervisors. For they will have become their own attendant. This is docility.
To illustrate this distinctly modern form of power, Foucault used an image in Discipline and Punish that has become justly famous. From the archives of history, Foucault retrieved an almost-forgotten scheme of the canonical English moral philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). Bentham proposed a maximal-surveillance prison he christened ‘The Panopticon’. Central to his proposal was that of an architecture designed for correction. In the Panopticon, the imposing materiality of the heavy stones and metal bars of physical imprisonment is less important than the weightless elements of light and air through which a prisoner’s every action would be traversed by supervision.
The design of the Panopticon was simple. A circle of cells radiate outward from a central guard tower. Each cell is positioned facing the tower and lit by a large window from the rear so that anyone inside the tower could see right through the cell in order to easily apprehend the activities of the prisoner therein. The guard tower is eminently visible to the prisoners but, because of carefully constructed blind windows, the prisoners cannot see back into the tower to know if they are being watched. This is a design of ceaseless surveillance. It is an architecture not so much of a house of detention as, in Bentham’s words, ‘a mill for grinding rogues honest’.
So, yeah, I once studied this stuff and find it fascinating, but am no philosopher myself so cannot pretend to have any answers about Power or Knowledge myself though I do find it consoling that Power is not something that is given, but rather something that is Exercised. So I can therefore say to 'whoever you are', "Do what I tell you!!!" hahaha 
Despite all of the above, by the way, I remain an ardent supporter of lockdown strategies against Covids. It works. I have been able to go to the cafe for my daily coffee most of this year because Covid has been kept at bay via sharp and extreme lockdowns here. But I made this decision to obey whilst armed with my understanding of the Panoptican via my studies of Foucault - Foucault never said all willingness to obey what a government wants is wrong or the results of the individual being 'brain-washed' - no point having governments if it was. Google's Panopticon (and Facebook, and Microsoft, and Apple, and whoever does any kind of tracking) is certainly here and growing in effect, but that does not mean that Google achieve absolute power but they are certainly creating, via their discourse and exercise of power, their view of what constitutes 'knowledge'.
This is a household robot. And the page explains what an Algorithm is.
(What a good light bulb the neighbors have downstairs, but I need it more 
