Introduction et problématisation philosophique de la guerre de l’attention par Michel Puech

So, indeed, after this beautiful observation of the debate that concerns us today, we will allow ourselves a philosophical pause to return to the essential question of concepts and the meaning of words, by asking ourselves what is tension? This philosophical pause will be composed of two complementary interventions.

The first one will be hosted by Michel Pouech, who is a master of philosophy at Sorbonne University, a specialist in digital philosophy, technology and science. He is also a member of the editorial board of the Master's. He has a hybrid course, which will be beneficial for us today to think about, between the university world and the business world.

He will help us today to question ourselves on a philosophical problematization of the tension war. And he will allow us to think about how to move from the concept of war to that of resistance. I leave you the floor. Thank you. I will do that. A problematization, I don't know if my microphone is on. Yes, you can hear it. Okay, very good. Of the tension war in 15 minutes and normally we will discuss it.

The goal, which you mentioned as a double point of entry, is to show what a philosophical reflection can bring to actors, to actors of the field. That's what I try to do in life. And so we will progress, by talking a little, at the very beginning, very philo, of the notion of attention, then of the market of attention, then of the war of attention, as you have very well understood, of the war of attention.

Since tension is ugly, we will move on to a strategy of resistance. And finally, talk about the behavior to be held in three points, three strategic axes. And behavior to be held, in ancient Greek, it is called ethos, it is pronounced like that, and it is the word that is at the base of ethic. Ethic is the theory of behavior to be held to have a communication. Let's start with the notion of attention. It designates... So, what I'm trying to do here is to return to a philosophical fundamental, because in fact...

In some cases, philosophical fundamentals immediately lead to interesting problems. This is the case for the notion of attention. Attention is... Well, you can imagine, I'm not making, obviously, very technical, very complicated psychological definitions, but, overall, it's what determines what comes in. So, in the vocabulary of Jeanne, we would say it's the inputs, the data, that come in. What I pay attention to, what holds my attention, captures my attention,

As you said, Mathilde, is imposed on my attention. It's what will constitute me, like the puzzle of my image. And in this idea of things that enter into us and that make us, attention introduces very interesting parameters. So notions to be dug up, I'm not going to do it. The notion of science. Science is what makes relief, what retains, captures my attention, which makes that

Not only will it go in, but it will not go in through one ear and out through the other, as we say. It will do something between the two. Try to highlight what everyone is trying to do. But there is nothing like that. Then there is pertinence. It is very difficult to analyze the notion of pertinence. What is pertinent? And already, what does pertinent mean? What is pertinent information? In the context of IA, for example,

The problem is that the system or the human operator has access to relevant information. But relevant information depends on a lot of things, especially on the context. So, relevance is something that requires, next step, understanding. That's what philosophers have been thinking about for a long time. What does it mean, understanding? What does it mean to understand? It means to have a relationship with the totality,

potentially have everything in his field of consciousness, but to have concentrated the consciousness on what is wise, because it is relevant, to be able to understand it and above all to integrate it. Integrate, it brings us back to the base, that is to say what will be part of us. To retain my attention, it's okay, that I find it relevant and that I understand, it's already less obvious, but that I do something about it. This somewhat familiar expression is not bad.

What are you going to do with it? Do something with it. Sometimes, with the most stupid things, video games, the bickering between friends, we do something with it. Or not. We can ask ourselves what we do with it. How do we integrate it? "Integre" means "to integrate", in English as in Latin, "to integrate". How do we make ourselves as someone who integrates, by integrating things that are part of us?

And you'll see later, we'll talk about viruses, things like that, there are bad things that can want to be part of... And I finish this brief journey on the fundamentals by the idea that there are two dimensions in our minds, in English, our mental, our spirits, the functional dimension and the emotional dimension. The characteristic of man is not that he has both, it is the interaction between the two. That's it, humans. So in the attention,

There is not just an open or closed door. There is behind the door. The human is behind the door. We can force the door, but the point is what is happening behind. And behind there are these functional and emotional mechanisms that make what we call meaning and value in the eyes. What I just said means that the notion of attention is ethical. It is an ethical notion and not a notion of psychology. Why? Because it determines the content of the person's consciousness, we can even say

the content of the person, we will even say the person, we will even say his identity. Attention determines what a person is. We could say that each of us is something that integrates, in the sense of an integral, in maths, all points of attention. We are the integral of all points of attention that we had before. So at one point in my life,

The person I know best is me, so I'm going to show off a little. I paid attention to Proust or to people I went hiking with. What I am today is an integral from all these points of attention that have been integrated, but as a kind of resultant, to my identity. And here we are on the heart of ethics since antiquity. Self-care. I didn't say at the beginning, I should have said "excuse me". You will have this presentation on my site, fully tomorrow or tonight, so you can watch it.

You will also have the references. Self-care is that, the ethics. We humans, we build ourselves. Conscious life, examined life, said Socrates, the philosopher's friend. Ethical life is to take care of its construction of oneself. We will abbreviate it as self-care. That's what makes us a human person, if we are not a human person, and also this human person.

We are still in a link, I hope I haven't lost the thread, with attention. Attention is what will constitute me. It's the gateway to things that will constitute me. And so, attention, you have to be careful. You see the title of the book of Frankfurt, which is the reference philosopher for me on this. Importance of what we care about. That means, you have to be careful what you are careful about. And this metacapacity, it's typical of human intelligence. Be careful, an AI is capable, an animal is capable.

But to be careful of what we are careful of, that's the level of ethics. It's the level of human nature. I'm not saying that some things are incapable of it, but I'm sure that humans can become capable of it. And let's call that vigilance. We are completely in the ethics of communication. Mental vigilance, which means that, since what we make through these points of attention is us, well, we have to be careful.

We must be careful about what we agree on our attention. This is the heart of the ethics that I will suggest to you. And it is completely linked to self-care in all these fundamental assumptions, Western in the case of Stoics and non-Western in the case of Buddhists. Let's move from that to the market of attention. It's starting to deteriorate. So not necessarily much. I will leave without any judgment, neither positive nor negative, of a fact. We are in market economies. Some countries where there is something else.

They will be very happy if you want to go there. Go ahead, no problem. But overall, everyone wants to come to countries where there is a market economy. With a plural, a market. There are several markets. A data market, it's really a market. A communication market, not just a market like that. There are many others. And I put an ugly and mean image of the market. With an iron arm. An iron arm, it's war. It's a fight. It's an opposition. Ugly and mean...

It means "evil" because it's war, the opposition is stupid, a little stupid. You can do that once in a while, but you can't spend your life doing that. You can't spend your life in confrontation. And you can't conceive the market as a zone of confrontation. So let's try to go beyond this image. My goal is to put a stupid image and to want to go beyond it. To go beyond it, it will start by saying:

The market is a place, made of the basic economy, on which there are exchanges, and we say that, it comes from English, we bring to the market, we bring to the market, an offer. Everyone brings an offer to the market. Companies, organizations, politicians, artists, ideologies. There is an offer to the market of ideologies, which is a real problem today. And on the market, you have to attract attention. Attract the attention of consumers, voters, media, etc.

So the market of attention, it comes little by little to the war of attention. But between the two, there is an important step. It is the stage of abundance and digital. So I will put in a same package, a same concept, a same characteristic of modernity, the abundance of market investments which is due to digital. I said earlier, there is for example an offer of ideologies. Maybe there is an offer of music too, for different things.

But it's thanks to digital that there is this offer. It's thanks to social networks, online shops, forums, etc. that there is an abundant, overabundant offer. So since the 50s, we have a theory of abundance in economics, and today we are in the digital abundance. And it translates into an economic factor that changes everything, in fact.

to deploy an offer in the world of digital abundance, it costs almost nothing. It was not the case until now. Offers, it cost. There was something important called investment, which made the financial background of the markets work. Today, it still exists, but there is a completely different factual element. It is the context of abundance and zero cost

as an access cost, which produces not only competition, market equals competition, but an abundance market, and even overabundance, and even an access cost equals zero equals an exacerbated competition. And it is exacerbated, the exacerbation of competition in the digital world, that's exactly what's happening, that will produce the tension war. So a market mechanism, but still quite particular. And let's go to the tension war. So the tension war, our subject,

It's explained by what precedes it. And I'm going to ask a question: why is it wrong? And I'm going to give an answer: it's wrong, first of all, because it levels by the bottom. There is a reference in the theory of communication, it's the book I'm giving the reference to, which is from 2006, where it is said in English: "Form is the bottom, substance and style", but it works very well in French. The form carries it on the bottom. And that's a human universal.

As wars can be explained by human universes, the war of attention is explained by this human universe. I put a link to Wikipedia if you want to document it. It is that in the human attention capacities, we call it the double circuit theory, there are many ways of double process or something like that, there is a short, fast, emotional circuit where our attention is immediately attracted by a noise, a danger,

or rather positive things, for example, nudity, laughter, things like that. And then, there is a slow circuit where we think, think.

Why did I look at that? Because there was a girl undressed on it. Well, it's still stupid, I stop looking at that. Why did I turn my head? Because people were screaming, and it's young people who are having fun, it's not worth turning your head. But maybe, in another circumstance, it can be important to spot something. So we have this short, automatic circuit that triggers immediately, and obviously, our friends, in fact it's our enemies, the communicants, take advantage of it. And then we have the reflexive circuit.

Everyone, even if they haven't thought about it, is aware of that. And when we're at war with attention, we obviously put it on the short circuit, on a sort of attentional racking, everyone is aware of it, because it works. We do it because it works. But that's not my question. My question is why is it wrong? My answer is Cyril Hanouna, the principle of Cyril Hanouna. It's a cover of Charlie, it's not me who draws like that. I end up with Cyril Hanouna, but I start with Heidegger, anyway.

In Heidegger, there is a very interesting notion: dereliction. In French, it's a good notion, but in French, it doesn't matter how the word we will use. It means a kind of systematic loss of value, which characterizes modernity and which must be understood and surpassed. And we can formulate it in attention from the previous diapo. It's the same phenomenon, it's the loss of content. There is nothing in it.

I take two examples, very classic: a magazine that makes a special number, for example Delphine has quoted the one on the tension for example, I do not know, I have not read the point. But before I sometimes got caught by magazines, and I hope that it happened to you. Ah, a number on the tension, great, we do something on the tension or I do not know what, what new car to buy or why to switch to Linux or whatever you want. You buy, you read, then at the end, or real estate, here is how to buy a big and beautiful apartment in Paris for cheap. You buy, and then you find that there is nothing in it. There is nothing.

Often the hypothesis is to say: "If I had said what I thought about it before reading it, what would I have said? And now that I've read it, do I say something different?" Often no, because there is nothing. The void. And we buy back magazines like that. We watch on TV: "No, no, tonight I have to watch something, but in fact there is nothing." After they said nothing during the debate, we learned nothing. Empty content. And the content is empty because it is despised. And there is a kind of perversity.

A perverse effect, and that's why it's bad, of the war, of the tension. It's the almost voluntary contempt. Maybe a false second degree. We act as if we were doing it on purpose to be null. It's not true, we are null. And since we are null, there is a way to make it work. It's to act as if we were doing it on purpose to be null, vulgar, etc. You see, you recognize Cyril and Nuna. We have arrived at Cyril and Nuna. And I think I have well explained why it's bad. The war of the tension, why is it bad? Because it's Cyril and Nuna who wins.

And that's why we shouldn't do it. In my opinion, I take a committed position, we shouldn't do the tension war. Because it's what comes from the concept of "fool game", that is to say, it's the most stupid who wins, in this case Cyril Hanouna. If we want to do the tension war, what will win is this: it's women naked everywhere, violence everywhere, Cyril Hanouna everywhere. So let's not get into this fight. Let's not get into this fight. Let's resist.

But let's resist the fight. There is a more subtle idea of resistance. It is resistance to fight, not to accept the fight. You have to be two to fight. We can not enter the war of tension. I suggest doing that. And it gives an ethic of the relationship with technologies and ordinary communication. And that's what Sénèque says. A great text by Sénèque, a Stoic philosopher from antiquity.

There are letters from Seneca to someone who asks him how to be wise. And Seneca answers, first letter, take care of recovering your time. The thing that has value and that everyone lets go of is his time. And if you start wanting to recover your time, you will become wise. And then the rest will be a little accessory. According to my first diapos, you see what that means. It means to recover his conscience, his mind, to master it. And the virtues of that, completely Stoic, is sobriety.

sobriety of information or sobriety in short. Sobriety means not having little need. Having little need is frugality. And what we like in a somewhat hypocritical way, having little need, is a kind of masochism that we can call asceticism. That's not sobriety. Sobriety is knowing your needs. That's the problem we have. How much money do we want? How much power do we want? How much notoriety do we want? We have to know our needs. Otherwise, we enter into a transcendence

which produces a confrontation and that's the war of attention. It's the unlimited will to grow that makes no sense. The interest of resistance is the opposite. It means that not to enter it has value. What is valuable today? It is not knowing who Cyril Hanouna is. Bravo! If there is someone who does not know who Cyril Hanouna is, bravo! I know who he is, but I have never watched a minute of Cyril Hanouna and I am proud of it.

and the three awful ones down there, who are also like Sherlock, not knowing who he is, not being interested in what they say, not knowing what is the last enormity that Eric Zemmour came up with, because he did it on purpose to be bad, so that it could be repeated. That's how it works. We knew it, but we can be careful. What can we do? So three strategies. So this is a projection of Aikido, what is written there is Aikido. First point, non-violence. War, we don't do it.

We don't respond to the attacks, we pretend they don't exist, and we turn back their violence. We come out of an incredibly childish system of vanity, of race to notoriety, which is the opposite of maturity. That is to say, I would say...

It's not the war of attention, it's the gaiety of attention. The Audimat is not a war, it's a gaiety for things that are, that are largely related to vanity, even if behind there is finance, I am aware of that. Second thing we can do, it's the substantial, the content, with a model of wisdom. Jean-Jacques Goldman, favorite personality of the French, it's been a long time since he did nothing. As a specialist philosopher of Zen and Buddhism, I admire him.

He does nothing, no records, nothing, he says nothing, no articles, he does nothing, and he is the favorite of the French. Whereas politicians and others who spend their time trying to be noticed and to attract attention, there is not a single politician who is cited, you have the link in this study of the Sunday Journal. So we see who is wrong and who is right. And it's very easy, they win the war without fighting.

because it has something, because it is something. For brands, it corresponds to value and whatever value, the service. That's why I take some brands that are the favorite of the French, if you are in the world of marketing, you have recognized them. The favorite brands of the French, it's not the ones that make the most ads. They do not necessarily need to do it, it is the one that offers the most service. Third great strategy, the blue ocean strategies to avoid the war of attention.

I'm speaking for the students, if you don't know what it is, you'll see. The Red Ocean is where there is blood. Blood, S-A-N-G. Because people fight and it bleeds. And we can see it very well, I was talking about politics, wars of notoriety. It bleeds. They constantly bite each other. And the Blue Ocean is where there is no blood. Where people don't bite each other. And the theory of the Blue Ocean says that you have to go swim and prosper where the ocean is blue. And when the ocean is red, you can't go there. So the war of attention...

I tried to say it was bad, but now I'm saying we shouldn't go there. And there are two dimensions to it. The drawing of the fish is great, but it's on the second dimension. A blue ocean is also a collaborative ocean. Because as soon as we stop being in competition and fighting, we can collaborate. And when we collaborate, even if we're small and collaborate, we can hunt the big fish. We can throw it away so it can go home. So the blue ocean, when we don't do anything,

We don't enter the war of the attention, we create a collaborative capacity in the potential and what develops, for example, the Internet. I stop, I hope I did not go too far. Thank you for your attention.