Friday, October 26, 2012

CS researcher warns of social media manipulation

(Film at 11).  [here]  The interesting point being that people tend to believe things they read on the Internet.

Which is mind-boggling, but apparently true.

Monday, October 22, 2012

Workplace electioneering

Citizen's United permits employers to recommend candidates to their employees, another oddity of the American system of democracy.  The problem is that employers lie.  Take a look at the flyer the US Chamber of Commerce has written about Elizabeth Warren!

Friday, October 19, 2012

Anatomy of a Hoax

Now here's a fascinating little post - some guy, who has apparently elected to remain nameless, did a model of a non-existent phone and uploaded the resulting generated pics to Picasa.  Then did nothing else at all.

Within a few days, over 500 articles were written and the pics were finally debunked.

As he says in conclusion (and I quote this much really only because I fear it might go away):
After the immediately observable stuff, I began thinking about these news articles as products of individual journalists. As of now, there are around 1,000 news articles on the “Sony Nexus X”. Let’s say it takes an extremely unscientific average of 15 minutes to research, write, edit, and publish this kind of article;that’s 15,000 minutes or 250 hours of human capital that I mobilized by sitting here and moving my hands a bit on a Sunday evening. This doesn’t even take into account the number of non-journalists who devoted time to reading about, discussing, or debunking this story (most likely during work hours). Let me reiterate: I, an individual with no previous worldwide recognition save for a frontpage Reddit post, managed to alter the behavior of people in Russia, Japan, Uzbekistan, and Italy within the course of 24 hours, all from the comfort of my home while exerting next to no effort. If you are nothing short of absolutely blown the fuck away by this, then the music died for you a long time ago.
So next time you want to talk about a tech bubble, Ms. Tech Writer, or decide to invest tens of millions in another “safe” hipster filter photo app, Mr. VC, stop and really think about the amazing things we take for granted. Casual acceptance of the products of human genius keeps us all thinking small. The internet is still in its infancy. The mobile space is a goddamn zygote. Stand tall, Mr. Dev and Mrs. Entrepreneur; don’t be discouraged. I get it, you’re burnt out, but there’s so much more we can do in this space. We can all make our marks, make some money, and change peoples’ lives.And finally, this whole affair served as yet another data point to validate what I already know. Human action cannot be predicted. People are not a series of inputs and outputs that a masterful technocrat can manipulate to any degree of accuracy. This exercise was a shot in the dark. Those images could have remained undiscovered or passed off as fakes immediately. What if I refrained from uploading them at all? The over 250 hours of skilled labor that I diverted to the coverage of this “story” could have gone to more productive uses. Thousands of tech geeks the world over would have done something else with their time.
Many people have this unrealistic expectation that relatively small groups of intelligent people can and should use whatever tools they have at their disposal to manage the whole of society. The economy, which is essentially a word used to describe the various dynamics of human interactions, is too complex to model or simulate with the end-goal of producing actionable policy recommendations. This insignificant non-news event had a disproportionate effect on the outside world. Imagine what kind of terrible damage one can do by artificially diverting resources from one sector of the economy to another through legislative fiat? We all know what happened when corn became a subsidized crop: High fructose corn syrup supplanted cane sugar as the dominant sweetener. This was not by design, but simply an unpredictable result of artificially tampering with the economy. A committee of the brightest economic minds in the history of the world could never have predicted the Internet, Facebook, the rise of the mobile app ecosystem, or Bieber Fever. Yeah, all of this from a stupid hoax.

tl;dr - Gradual seriousness.


Amen.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Venice's downfall: La Serratura

When Venice's ruling class closed their society to upstart newcomers in the 15 century, it began a slow process of death for their society.  Interesting Sunday piece in the Times.

Friday, October 5, 2012

Working class uprising

A nice historical article on the largest working class uprising in American history - and why it's not taught in schools.  Ever.  I'd certainly never heard of it.

The economics of stolen bicycles

Economics.  It's so cool.

The untouchable economy

The Atlantic weighs in on a trend that ... well, we'll see if they're right, that younger Americans are thinking more entrepreneurially in reaction to and rejection of consumer culture.

Maybe.  Interesting thought, though.

Another jewel from Steven Barnes

I should just post this somewhere where I'll see it every day:
I think we've all seen this before. In writing: people who deliberately follow pathways their mentors have told them will cause failure (like writing huge novels without ever having published a short story. You can burn up YEARS with this one.)
In relationships: following old, negative patterns of behavior, or refusing to pay attention to indications that a prospective partner is pure poison. (Prospective partner is pure poison. Say that five times fast!)
In finances: skipping your Quicken sessions, or refusing to balance your checkbook. Not answering creditors' calls. Continuing to spend money on consumer items that depreciate instantly.
In other words, you know what you should do, you are afraid to do it, so you take actions that look kinda sorta like forward progress, but are actually designed to create the illusion "I'm trying! I'm writing/exercising/working/dating but the world just isn't cooperating!"
Until you are certain that your unconscious supports your external goals, you are operating with your brakes on, and the results can be dreadful...
Lying to yourself and others.
Breaking promises to yourself and others.
Distorting incoming or ourgoing information.
"Forgetting" important details of your process.
Vague, unfocussed fears and negative emotions.
Procrastination.

Any and all of these can be symptoms of "fighting" internally, competing beliefs and emotions. And they can sabotage your life.

1) Where do you recognize the above behaviors in your own life?
2) Where have you seen them in other people?
3) Where have you seen them create dysfunction within organizations or political bodies (conflicting goals leading to gridlock)

15 styles of distorted thinking

Steven Barnes shared an interesting post on Facebook last week that struck me as useful.  As are so many useful things on Facebook, though, it's a graphic. So I'm retyping it here.  It's 15 styles of distorted thinking - very germane to a study of political rhetoric.

  1. Filtering: You take the negative details and magnify them while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation.
  2. Polarized thinking: Things are black and white, good or bad. You have to be perfect or you're a failure. There is no middle ground.
  3. Overgeneralization: You come to a general conclusion based on a single incident or piece of evidence. If something bad happens once, you expect it to happen over and over again.
  4. Mind reading: Without their saying so, you know what people are feeling and why they act the way they do. In particular, you are able to divine how people are feeling toward you.
  5. Catastrophizing: You expect disaster. You notice or hear about a problem and start "what ifs". What if tragedy strikes? What if it happens to you?
  6. Personalization: Thinking that everything people do or say is some kind of reaction to you. You also compare yourself to others, trying to determine who's smarter, better looking, etc.
  7. Control fallacies: If you feel externally controlled, you see yourself as helpless, a victim of fate. The fallacy of internal control has you responsible for the pain and happiness of everyone around you.
  8. Fallacy of fairness: You feel resentful because you think you know what's fair, but other people won't agree with you.
  9. Blaming: You hold other people responsible for you pain, or take the other tack and blame yourself for every problem or reversal.
  10. Should: You have a list of ironclad rules about how you and other people should act. People who break the rules anger you and you feel guilty if you violate the rules.
  11. Emotional reasoning: You believe that what you feel must be true - automatically. If you feel stupid and boring, then you must be stupid and boring.
  12. Fallacy of change: You expect that other people will change to suit you if you just pressure them or cajole them enough.l You need to change people because your hope for happiness seems to depend entirely on them.
  13. Global labeling: You generalize one or two qualities into a negative global judgment.
  14. Being right: You are continually on trial to prove that your opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and you will go to any length to demonstrate your rightness.
  15. Heaven's reward fallacy: You expect all your sacrifices and self-denial to pay off, as if there were someone keeping score. You feel bitter when the reward doesn't come.

Revolt of the Rich

The American Conservative published a new article by Mike Lofgren that is once again well worth the reading: Revolt of the Rich.