Mediatization, circulation and social semiosis: references for critical analysis of platforms and algorithms 263 its use is abundant. For instance, the perspective of the concept of simulation for the analysis of the predictions underlying al- gorithmic logic is one of the references of O’Connel and Wiele (2021). These authors use this concept from Baudrillard. Our choice is for Bateson’s formulation (1973), because he built oth- er articulated concepts that allow us, in interface with mediati- zation according to social semiosis, to a more precise approach to the analysis of the object in question. Simulation appears in Bateson’s writings, including having as its object “computer simulations” (1988), situating human-machine interactions and interactions between individ- uals of the species as one of the central issues, which facilitates our problematization of AI, algorithms and platforms: But in the computer, cause and effect are used to simulate the ‘if then...’. logic; and all sequences of cause and effect necessarily involve time. (On the other hand, we can say that in scientific explana- tions the ‘if... then...’ logic is used to simulate the ‘if... so...’ of cause and effect.) The computer never truly encounters the paradox of logic, but only the simulation of the paradox in chains of cause and effect.[...] In fact, there are important differences between the world of logic and the world of phe- nomena, and these differences must be taken into account whenever we base our arguments on the partial but important analogy that exists between them (Bateson, 1973, p. 3). This formulation tells us that it is the simulation of mental operations, but it also points to the difference between computational logics and the phenomenon it intends to simulate. In the case of propositional logic (“if... so...”), it refers more to algorithms than to artificial intelligence. We will return to this question in the next section. It is important, in this process, to situate simulation as an intended but questionable prediction from the perspective of mediatization, because, in process, it is faced with a diversity of meanings in the sphere of reception, including those constituted in constructed collectives.
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