tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61386242024-03-13T13:24:55.499+00:00POSIWIDthe purpose of a system is what it doesRichard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.comBlogger518125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-36083546170231632912023-11-24T20:27:00.004+00:002023-11-24T20:31:16.573+00:00Data and the Genome<p>The word <q>data</q> comes from the Latin meaning <q>that which is given</q>. So one might think it is entirely appropriate to use the word for our DNA, given to us by our parents, thanks to millions of years of evolution. DNA is often described as a genetic code; the word code either refers to the way biological information is represented in the molecular structure of chromosomes, or to the way these chromosomes can be understood as a set of instructions for building a biological entity. Watson and Crick used the word <q>code</q> in their 1953 Nature article.<br /></p><p>However, when people talk about the human genome, they are often referring to a non-biological representation in some artificial datastore. In other words, given <b><span style="color: red;">by</span></b> biology <span style="color: red;"><b>to</b></span> data science.</p><p><a href="https://twitter.com/SEFrench/status/1727954943904993678">Shannon E French</a> objects to <q>talking about data stored on DNA like it’s some kind of memory stick</q>, and <a href="https://twitter.com/Abebab/status/1727996951721902250">Abeba Birhane</a> sees this as part of <q>the current trend that is so determined to present AI as human-like at all costs, describing humans in machinic terms has become normalised</q>.</p><p>Elsewhere, Abeba Birhane is known for her strong critique of AI. As well as important ethical issues (algorithmic bias, digital colonialism, accountability, exploitation/expropriation), she has also raised concerns about the false promise of AI hype.</p><p></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">we have arrived at peak AI hype accompanied by minimal critical thinking</p>— Abeba Birhane (@Abebab) <a href="https://twitter.com/Abebab/status/1535944902433026048?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 12, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> <p>But describing humans (or other biological entities) in machinic terms, or treating them as instruments. is far older than AI. When we replace animals with technical devices (canaries. carrier pigeons, horses), the substitution implies that the animals had been treated as devices, the replacement often justified by the argument that technical devices are cheaper, more efficient, or more reliable, or don't require regular breaks - or are simply more <q>modern</q>. Conversely, when scientists try to repurpose DNA as a data storage mechanism, this also seems to mean treating biology in instrumental terms.<br /></p><p>But arguably what is stored or encoded in the DNA - whether in its original biological manifestation or more recent exercises in bioengineering - is still data, regardless of how or for whom it is used.<br /></p><p><br /></p><hr /><p>Abeba Birhane, Atoosa Kasirzadeh, David Leslie and Sandra Wachter, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-023-00581-4">Science in the age of large language models</a> (Nature Reviews Physics, Volume 5, May 2023, 277–280)</p><p>Abeba Birhane and Deborah Raji, <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/large-language-models-critique/">ChatGPT, Galactica and the Progress Trap</a> (Wired, 9 December 2022) <br /></p><p>Grace Browne, <a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/abeba-birhane-ai-datasets">AI is steeped in Big Tech's 'Digital Colonialism'</a> (Wired, 25 May 2023)<br /></p><p>J.D. Watson and F.H.C. Crick, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20050912214219/http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/SC/B/B/Y/X/_/scbbyx.pdf">Genetical Implications of the Structure of Deoxyribonucleic Acid</a> (Nature, 30 May 1953)<br /></p><p>Related posts: <a href="https://demandingchange.blogspot.com/2020/07/naive-epistemology.html">Naive Epistemology</a> (July 2020), <a href="https://demandingchange.blogspot.com/2020/07/limitations-of-machine-learning.html">Limitations of Machine Learning</a> (July 2020), <a href="https://demandingchange.blogspot.com/2020/07/mapping-out-entire-world-of-objects.html">Mapping out the entire world of objects</a> (July 2020), <a href="https://rvsoftware.blogspot.com/2022/04/lie-detectors-at-airports.html">Lie Detectors at Airports</a> (April 2022), <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2023/11/algorithmic-intuition-gaydar.html">Algorithmic Intuition</a> (November 2023)<br /></p><p></p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-88852396503443519492023-11-22T22:35:00.005+00:002023-11-24T20:28:17.816+00:00Algorithmic Intuition - Gaydar<p>When my friend A was still going out with women, other friends would sometimes ask if he was gay. An intuitive ability to guess the sexuality of other people is known as gaydar. There have been studies that appear to provide evidence that both humans and computers possess such an ability, although the reliability of this evidence has been challenged. For example, some of these studies have relied on images posted on dating sites, but images that have been crafted and selected for dating purposes may already reflect how a person of a given sexuality wishes to present thenselves in that specific context, and may not reflect how the person looks in other contexts. </p><p>The latest study claims to assess sexuality from brain waves. This has been criticized as gross and irresponsible (<a href="https://twitter.com/UMassWalker/status/1677833404597911552">Rae Walker</a>) and as unscientific (<a href="https://twitter.com/Abebab/status/1677604951604752384">Ababa Birhane</a>). Continuing a debate that had started with other methods of algorithmic gaydar.<br /></p><p>More generally, there is considerable disquiet about computers attempting to segment people in this way. For a start, there are many parts of the world where homosexuality doesn't only lead to social disapproval and harassment, but also criminal penalties and sanctions. Even though the algorithms may be inaccurate, they might be used to discriminate against people, or trigger homophobic actions. Whether someone actually is gay or is a false positive is almost beside the point here, either way the algorithmic gaydar may result in individual suffering.</p><p>Furthermore, these algorithm appears to want to colonize aspects of subjectivity, of the subject's identity.<br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://twitter.com/WyssBernard/status/1677822091020697603">WyssBernard</a>: I’m not going accept a machine determination as to what I identify as.
?¿ </li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/Abebab/status/1677604951604752384">Abeba Birhane</a>: just let people be or let people identify their own sexuality</li></ul><p>In an interview with the editor of Wired, Yuval Noah Harari wonders whether an algorithm might have guessed he was gay before he realised it himself. And if an algorithm had been the source of this wisdom about himself, would this not have been incredibly deflating for the ego?<br /></p>And Lawrence Scott describes how his Facebook timeline started to be invaded by images of attractive men, suggesting that the algorithm had somehow profiled him as being particularly susceptible to these images.<br /><p><br /></p><p><i>to be continued<br /></i></p><p><br /></p>
<hr /><p><br /></p><p>Isobel Cockerell, <a href="https://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/facial-recognition-automated-gender/">Facial recognition systems decide your gender for you. Activists say it needs to stop</a> (Codastory, 12 April 2021) <br /></p><p>Isobel Cockerell, <a href="https://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/ai-sexuality-recognition-lgbtq/">Researchers say their AI can detect sexuality. Critics say it’s dangerous</a> (Codastory, 13 July 2023) <br /></p><p>Lawrence Scott, Hell is Ourselves (The New Atlantis #68, Spring 2022, pp. 65-72)<br /></p><p>Nicholas Thompson, <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/artificial-intelligence-yuval-noah-harari-tristan-harris/">When Tech Knows You Better Than You Know Yourself</a> (Wired, 4 October 2018)<br /></p><p>Wikipedia: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaydar">Gaydar</a><br /></p><p></p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-21077032014403563912023-09-19T23:10:00.000+01:002023-09-19T23:10:07.693+01:00ChatGPT and the Defecating Duck<p>For dog owners, the intelligence of dogs shows itself (among other things) in their ability to learn tricks. For cat owners, the intelligence of cats shows itself (among other things) in their disdain for learning tricks. </p><p>When Alan Turing conceived of a way to tell computers and humans apart, now known as the Turing Test, he called it the Imitation Game. His first example was to ask a computer to write poetry - specifically a sonnet on the subject of the Forth Bridge. And his idea of a plausible answer for the computer was to say: <q><i>Count me out on this one. I never could write poetry</i>.</q></p><p>No doubt many people have tested ChatGPT with exactly the same question. When Jessica Riskin tried it, she was not impressed by its efforts. She found Turing’s imaginary machine’s answer (Turing imitating a machine imitating a human) infinitely more persuasive (as indicator of intelligence) than ChatGPT’s. <q>Turing’s imagined intelligent machine gives off an unmistakable aura of individual personhood, even of charm.</q><br /></p><p>An earlier article by Professor Riskin described a mechanical automaton that attracted large admiring crowds in 18th century Paris. This was a generative pretrained transformer in the shape of a duck, which appeared to convert pellets of food into pellets of excrement. The inventor <q>is careful to say that he wants to show, not just a machine, but a process. But he is equally careful to say that this process is only a partial imitation. </q><br /></p><p>Whereas ChatGPT's bad imitation of poetry is real shit. <br /></p><hr /><p><br /></p><p>Jessica Riskin, <a href="https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/zb803xz9154">The Defecating Duck, or, The Ambiguous Origins of Artifical Life</a> (Critical Enquiry, 2003)<br /></p><p>Jessica Riskin, <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/06/25/a-sort-of-buzzing-inside-my-head/">A Sort of Buzzing Inside My Head</a> (New York Review of Books, 25 June 2023)</p><p>Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence (Mind 1950)<br /></p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-11592671550662976872023-07-12T00:05:00.006+01:002023-09-19T23:11:23.119+01:00The Mad Hatter Works Out<p>An interesting exchange on Twitter between the mainstream media and the owner of Twitter, which came to my attention via @<a href="https://twitter.com/RMac18/status/1678484435841474560">RMac18</a> and @<a href="https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1678673732158775296">karaswisher</a>.<br /></p><p>Over a year ago, an American professor wrote a column on MSNBC noting a trend of far right groups using fitness chat groups to recruit and radicalize young men. </p><p>One of the co-founders of Open AI (yes, him) chose to interpret this as asserting that <q>you're a nazi if you work out</q>. There are several possible interpretations of this tweet.<br /></p><p>The most unlikely explanation is that a person with a good STEM education and (supposedly) a high IQ has committed a serious error in elementary logic. As in <q>some cats are grey therefore all grey objects are cats</q>. <br /></p><p>A slightly more plausible explanation is that the tweet was produced on their behalf by a large language model (LLM), operating a symmetric bi-logic (Matte-Blanco) rather than conforming to classical logic. In the dream world of the unconscious, or in the hallucinations of chat algorithms, the idea that all grey objects are cats might seem perfectly reasonable.<br /></p><i><q>You might just as well say,</q> added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, <q>that <q>I breathe when I sleep</q> is the same thing as <q>I sleep when I breathe</q>!</q> <q>It is the same thing with you,</q> said the Hatter.</i><p>However, the most likely explanation is that the message was deliberately designed to flout logical validity in order to generate the desired affective response - simultaneously appealing to audience A and provoking audience B. (I guess I must be in audience B.) Chasing clicks, as @<a href="https://twitter.com/zsk/status/1678997409194471424">zsk</a> suggests elsewhere.</p><p></p><p>Many of the responses adopt similarly dodgy logic, including those that observe (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem">ad hominem</a>) that there are some fat and flabby people on the far right.<br /></p><hr /><p>Arwa Mahdawi, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jul/11/zuck-is-a-cuck-why-is-elon-musk-borrowing-insults-from-white-supremacists">Why is EM borrowing insults from white supremacists?</a> (Guardian, 11 July 2023)<br /></p><p>Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right (Princeton University Press, 2020)<br /></p><p>Cynthia Miller-Idriss, <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/pandemic-fitness-trends-have-gone-extreme-literally-n1292463">Pandemic fitness trends have gone extreme — literally</a> (MSNBC, 22 March 2022)</p><p>For more on LLM and Matte-Blanco, see my post <a href="https://rvsoftware.blogspot.com/2023/05/from-chatgpt-to-infinite-sets.html">From Chat GPT to Infinite Sets</a> (May 2023)<br /></p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-41001975128078440882023-04-23T10:29:00.000+01:002023-04-23T10:29:55.357+01:00Delayed Success - Evolution<p>Andreas Wagner notes the long time that elapsed between the first appearance of grass and its ecological dominance. He argues that <q>delayed success holds a profound truth about new life forms</q>.</p><p>Evolution works across enormous timespans. Regarding humans as the pinnacle of evolution only works if you forget this.</p><p>During the COVID-19 pandemic, some people offered predictions about where and in what form the virus would <q>end up</q>, without considering the fact that everything would change and mutate many times before anything <q>ended up</q> anywhere. And some people thought that we didn't need to worry about the less efficient or effective variants, because they would eventually disappear.<br /></p><p>It is said that a Chinese leader (perhaps Mao Zedong or Zhou Enlai), when asked about revolutionary action in France, opined that it was too early to tell, and this quote is often understood to refer to the French revolution two hundred years earlier. Even if this actually referred to the much more recent events of the 1960s, the story accords with the belief that the Chinese government is able to take a much longer view of such matters than democratically elected governments can.</p><p>But even a few thousand years of Chinese history is nothing at all in evolutionary timescales.<br /></p><p> </p><hr /><p>Andreas Wagner, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/apr/18/evolution-biology-sleeping-beauties-innovations-that-wait-millions-of-years-to-come-good">Sleeping beauties: the evolutionary innovations that wait millions of years to come good</a> (Guardian, 18 April 2023)</p><p>Related posts: <a href="https://demandingchange.blogspot.com/2007/09/rates-of-evolution.html">Rates of Evolution</a> (September 2007), <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2021/01/explaining-natural-selection.html">Explaining Natural Selection</a> (January 2021)<br /></p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-14868281559039392112023-02-18T22:33:00.001+00:002023-02-21T07:08:04.611+00:00What Does A Patent Say?<p>There is a narrative about accelerating technological change, which appears to be supported by an increasing volume of patent activity. I have expressed my doubts about this metric in previous posts.</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://rvsoftware.blogspot.com/2004/11/death-of-software.html">Death of Software</a> (November 2004) <br /></li><li><a href="https://demandingchange.blogspot.com/2006/05/evolution-or-revolution.html">Evolution or Revolution</a> (May 2006)</li><li><a href="https://demandingchange.blogspot.com/2007/09/rates-of-evolution.html">Rates of Evolution</a> (September 2007)</li><li><a href="https://demandingchange.blogspot.com/2023/02/hedgehog-innovation.html">Hedgehog Innovation</a> (February 2023)</li></ul><p>In their latest book, Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice Stucke also call out the unreliability of this metric.</p><blockquote><q>The number of patents is also an imperfect measure of innovation. ... no correlation between the number of patents in a technological field and the annual performance improvement of that field ... The number of patents does not reflect how disruptive the patented innovation is or whether it's toxic or beneficial. ... Furthermore, patent numbers do not account for the Tech Barons' distorting the innovation paths and monopolizing knowledge.</q> <cite>Ezrachi and Stucke p 150</cite><br /></blockquote><p>Although despite this caveat, they appear to take the metric seriously when evaluating cities on their support for innovation <cite>pp 208-211, p268 n30</cite>.<br /></p><p>They also suggest a further twist. <br /></p><p></p><blockquote><q>It should be noted that not all patents have been transformed into products and services. Some of the technologies may have been developed but not necessarily implemented, Still, they offer a valuable indication as to the assets a company is trying to secure and the direction in which its technology is heading.</q> <cite>p238 n1</cite></blockquote><p>This is supported by a newspaper article by Sahil Chinoy, which includes a quote from law professor Jason M Schultz.</p><p></p><blockquote><q>A patent portfolio is a map of how a company thinks about where its technology is going.</q></blockquote>Tech watchers have often interpreted patent applications in this way. In my post <a href="https://rvsoftware.blogspot.com/2008/05/guardian-angel.html">Guardian Angel</a> (May 2008), I discussed a patent application that attracted a lot of attention at the time, both because of its content and because of some of the people involved. (Bill Gates obviously, who else?)<p>But with all respect to Professor Schultz, that's not actually the purpose of a patent. The primary purpose of a patent is not to enable the inventor to exploit something, it is to prevent anyone else freely exploiting it. </p><p>(The purpose of the patent <b>system </b>may be to reward inventors and encourage invention, but that's an entirely different question.)<br /></p><p>As reported by Dani Deahl and Sarah Perez, Amazon took out a patent to prevent people doing in Amazon shops exactly what Amazon had always encouraged them to do in everyone else's shops! See my post on <a href="https://rvsoapbox.blogspot.com/2012/12/showrooming-and-multi-sided-markets.html">Showrooming and Multi-sided Markets</a> (December 2012, updated June 2017). </p><p>And in some cases, a patent is just staking a precautionary claim to an invention that is not currently viable, to make sure nobody else can profit from it. <br /></p><p>Obviously this kind of patent game is not the only method used by Tech Barons to suppress innovation that is inconvenient to them, and Ezrachi and Stucke document many others. Sometimes it just means taking over an inconvenient service and shutting it down, as eBay did with decide.com. See my post <a href="https://rvsoftware.blogspot.com/2014/04/predictive-analytics-for-smart-consumer.html">Predictive Analytics for the Smart Consumer</a> (April 2014).</p><p>Meanwhile, if the Tech Barons actually wanted to do something totally devious and evil, do you really think they would submit a patent application for the world to see?<br /></p><hr /><p>Sahil Chinoy, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/21/opinion/sunday/facebook-patents-privacy.html">What 7 Creepy Patents Reveal About Facebook</a> (New York Times, 21 June 2018) subscribers only</p><p>Dani Deahl, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/15/15812986/amazon-patent-online-price-checking">Amazon granted a patent that prevents in-store shoppers from online price checking</a> (The Verge, 15 June 2017)</p><p>Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice Stucke, How Big-Tech Barons Smash Innovation and how to strike back (New York: Harper, 2022)</p><p>Sarah Perez, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/16/amazon-now-a-physical-retailer-too-is-granted-an-anti-showrooming-patent/">Amazon, now a physical retailer too, is granted an anti-showrooming patent</a> (TechCrunch, 16 June 2017) </p><p>Related post: <a href="https://rvsoftware.blogspot.com/2015/11/how-soon-might-humans-be-replaced-at.html">How soon might humans be replaced at work</a> (November 2015)<br /></p><p></p><p></p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-61187354985471804802022-08-19T12:58:00.000+01:002022-08-19T12:58:05.412+01:00Who Codes Whom?<p>@<a href="https://twitter.com/daily_barbarian/status/1560384774484758529">daily_barbarian</a> (Geoff Shullenberger) describes René Girard as politically ambivalent.</p><p></p><blockquote><q>He codes as <q>right-wing</q> in his insistence on the necessity of social order, but as <q>left-wing</q> in his insistence that any such order is founded on violence.</q></blockquote><p></p><p>When I ask who is doing the coding here, and for what purpose, he replies </p><p></p><blockquote><q>People of all sorts who encounter his work and attempt to place it in the conventional categories. I’ve seen many on the left use the first point to call him a reactionary, and some on the right use the second to call him naïve about power.</q></blockquote><p></p><p>Quite so. But the fact that other people don't know how to categorize Girard doesn't imply any contradiction or ambivalence on his part. What it does show is that the conventional categories (rightwing, leftwing) are becoming increasingly muddled. (There are several other arguments for moving away from this conventional way of framing politics - for example recent work by Latour.)<br /></p><p>But what I want to talk about here is the elision. Instead of <q>people of all sorts code him ...</q>, we get simply <q>he codes</q>. As if Girard is somehow responsible for his own classification.</p><p>Classification is a political act, but categories are often treated as objective facts rather than subjective opinions (Bowker & Star). Hence my question about who and why. </p><p>One domain in which the act of coding hasn't always received sufficient attention is in data and intelligence, but this is now changing thanks to great work by @<a href="https://twitter.com/abebab">abebab</a> and others. See links to my other posts below.<br /></p><p>And in the political domain, commentators are increasingly willing to challenge the coding that underpins certain alleged social facts. See for example Global Media Literacy. And those wishing to politicize the COVID pandemic can find more than enough complexity in the coding of health and pharma data that might support any given measure. (Politicizing such matters is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is itself a political choice.)</p><p><br /></p><hr /><p>Anon, <a href="https://globalmedialiteracy.com/2022/05/23/opinion-beware-the-data-on-american-right-wing-violence/">Opinion: Beware the data on American right-wing violence</a> (Global Media Literacy, 23 May 2022)</p><p>Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, Sorting Things Out (MIT Press 1999)</p><p>Related posts: <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2011/08/framing-riot.html">Framing a riot</a> (August 2011), <a href="https://demandingchange.blogspot.com/2020/07/limitations-of-machine-learning.html">Limitations of Machine Learning</a> (July 2020), <a href="https://demandingchange.blogspot.com/2020/07/mapping-out-entire-world-of-objects.html">Mapping out the entire world of objects</a> (July 2020), <a href="https://rvsoapbox.blogspot.com/2021/04/near-miss.html">Near Miss</a> (April 2021), <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-purpose-of-shame.html">Purpose of Shame</a> (April 2022)<br /></p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-48084487160397024742022-07-12T12:59:00.001+01:002022-08-19T12:59:52.050+01:00The Dogs of WWW<p>@<a href="https://twitter.com/kkomaitis/status/1544244856993841152">kkomaitis</a> and @<a href="https://twitter.com/j2bryson/status/1546749040481763333">j2bryson</a>
discuss the anniversary of the New Yorker cartoon <q>On the Internet nobody knows you're a dog</q>.</p><p>Obviously this is no longer true. Konstantinos Komaitis raises the important topic of surveillance capitalism and government snooping. There is more than enough data to know how many dogs you have, what you call them, how often you take them for walks, which other dogs and dog-owners you meet in the park, and how much you spend on dog-food and veterinary bills.<br /></p><p>
Joanna Bryson also raises the topic of deep fakes. Does this mean that some of those cute dogs we see on the Internet don't even exist? Or perhaps shifting our understanding as what counts as existing?</p><p> </p><p>The title of this post is a reference to the words Shakespeare gives to Mark Antony: </p><p></p><blockquote><q>Cry <q>Havoc!</q>, and let slip the dogs of war.</q></blockquote><p></p><p>In its original meaning, crying havoc is a signal for looting and plunder. On the internet, this would include stealing your data and stealing your identity. </p><p>In its article on the dogs of war, Wikipedia reproduces a Punch cartoon from 1876, showing Russia threatening war against Turkey in revenge for its losses in the Crimean War twenty years previously. Isn't history interesting?<br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Wikipedia: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you%27re_a_dog">On the Internet nobody knows you're a dog</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dogs_of_war_(phrase)">The Dogs of War</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War">Crimean War (1853-1856)</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Turkish_War_(1877%E2%80%931878)">Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878)</a><br /></p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-80186363194840802052022-07-06T13:46:00.000+01:002022-07-06T13:46:13.214+01:00The Government Inspector<p>Around £550 million has been spent on purpose-built facilities to conduct post-Brexit checks. Most of this money came from UK taxpayers, with the remainder being covered by local authorities and other organizations. However, following a recent change in policy by the UK government, these facilities will no longer be required.</p><p>The one in Portsmouth cost £25 million. <q>It is designed specifically for government inspections, nothing else,</q> Mike Sellers, director of Portsmouth International Port, told the Guardian. <q>The cheapest option would be to demolish it.</q></p><p><b><i>The Government Inspector</i></b> was an 1836 play by Nikolai Gogol, described by Wikipedia as <q>a comedy of errors, satirizing human greed, stupidity, and the extensive political corruption of Imperial Russia</q>.</p><p>The main character, Khlestakov, <q>personifies irresponsibility, light-mindedness, and absence of measure</q>. Remind you of anyone?</p><p><br /></p><hr /><p>Joanna Partridge, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/05/portsmouth-border-control-post-eu-imports-brexit">Portsmouth’s £25m border post stands empty after minister’s imports U-turn</a> (The Guardian, 5 July 2022)</p><p>Wikipedia: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Government_Inspector">The Government Inspector</a><br /></p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-64789011516807759072022-06-09T22:41:00.003+01:002022-06-10T09:13:32.782+01:00Progress Bar<p>There are algorithms whose primary purpose appears to be to generate affect - for example, to reduce the anxiety of those waiting. For example, the progress bar that is displayed when something is loading or downloading. Other examples include indicators at bus stops, on railway platforms or next to lifts, showing either the current location or the expected time of arrival.</p><p>Sometimes these indicators misbehave. The progress bar suddenly jumps from 60% to 90% and then gets stuck. One moment the bus is five minutes away, the next moment it is seven minutes away. These glitches reveal that the indicators are not unmediated truth but fictions functioning as truth.</p><p></p>
<blockquote><p><q>The algorithm of the progress bar depends not only on the code generating it but the cultural calculus of waiting itself, on a user seeking feedback from the system, and on the opportunity - increasingly capitalized on - to show the user other messages, entertainments or advertising during the waiting phase.</q> <cite>Finn p34</cite></p>
</blockquote><p>Jason Farman compares these indicators with earlier symbols, such as the spinning cursor, which provided no such feedback.</p><p></p><blockquote><q>These symbols keep us from seeing how the system is actually working; we’re not given a behind-the-scenes view of how the process is actually progressing, so we are kept at arm’s length, spinning or twiddling our thumbs as we wait.</q> <cite>Farman</cite></blockquote>
In other contexts, such as digital games, progress bars are designed to motivate the players.<p></p><p></p><blockquote><q>Feedback is <q>a system that tells players how close they are to achieving a goal</q> and can come <q>from points, levels, a score or a progress bar;</q> this provides motivation to keep playing.</q> <cite>Pulos quoting McGonigal, 2011, p. 21</cite></blockquote>And if the progress bar gets stuck on 99%, what then? In her PhD thesis, Kate Starbird discusses a meme that circulated on Twitter during the 2011 political uprising in Egypt, with progress bars showing variations of <q>installing freedom</q> and <q>uninstalling dictator</q>, in some cases linked to messages encouraging patience and/or persistence.<br /><p></p><p>As things turned out, President Mubarak was uninstalled, but many of the protesters were unhappy with subsequent events, and there was a further uprising in 2013. So how much progress has Egypt made in installing freedom and democracy? Unfortunately, democracy isn't something that was uploaded to the cloud by the ancient Greeks, just waiting to be downloaded into any country with sufficient memory.<br /></p><hr /><p>Jason Farman, Delayed Response (Yale University Press 2018). Extract: <a href="http://jasonfarman.com/delayedresponse/spinning-in-place/">Spinning in Place</a><br /></p><p>Ed Finn, What Algorithms Want (MIT Press 2017)</p><p>McGonigal, J. (2011). Reality is broken: Why games make us better and how they can
change the world. New York, NY: Penguin Press</p><p>Alexis Pulos, <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/151574695.pdf">FARMING AND FIGHTING AS PRACTICE AND PEDAGOGY: A PROCEDURAL FIELD ANALYSIS OF DIGITAL GAMES</a> (University of New Mexico, PhD thesis 2013). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cj_etds/45</p><p>Kate Starbird, <a href="https://faculty.washington.edu/kstarbi/starbird_dissertation_final.pdf">Crowdwork, Crisis and Convergence: How the Connected Crowd Organizes Information duringMass Disruption Events</a> (Atlas Institute, PhD thesis 2012)<br /></p><p>Wikipedia: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_bar">Progress Bar</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_indicator">Progress Indicator</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Egyptian_revolution">2011 Egyptian revolution</a> <br /></p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-26292436565025225582022-05-16T10:08:00.007+01:002023-08-19T12:01:41.938+01:00Time and Propinquity<p>In an interview with Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode, Adam Curtis describes Jim Garrison as "godfather of modern conspiracy theories" (7:44), and "one of the ideologists of our time" (8:18).</p><p>Garrison's method was searching for patterns, following a principle he called Time and Propinquity. As Curtis comments: "Funnily enough, that's exactly how artificial intelligence works." (8:30)</p><p>Cut to Jeremy Bentham, whose hedonic calculus also referenced propinquity. Social media algorithms are designed to maximize arousal and excitement, so this can be regarded as a form of hedonic calculus. Whereas Bentham's aim was to maximize positive affect and minimize negative affect (greatest happiness, greatest number), social media platforms will try to leverage any affective response that promotes engagement and supports their commercial goals, including <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/search/label/outrage">outrage</a>.<br /></p><p>In an interview with Michael Brooks, Curtis acknowledges that his documentary method also involves making connections and drawing parallels. He regards his role as asking “have you thought about looking at the world this way?”, pulling back a
bit and looking at what is happening in a different way. But, he insists, that is not the same as a
conspiracy theory. </p><p>Curtis spotlights a number of interesting characters from different parts of the world in different decades. Sometimes there are family connections - Afeni and Tupac Shakur, George and Ethel Boole (plus Geoffrey Hinton) - or crossed paths (Michael de Freitas and Stokely Carmichael). Sometimes a character we met in Act One appears back on stage in Act Three (Bernard Kouchner). Are these significant juxtapositions or merely coincidences? Curtis doesn't answer this question directly, but he does claim that this collection of material serves to explain something important about where we are today and how we got here.</p><p>The selection of archive material is not dependent not only on Curtis's editorial judgement, but also on what was captured, preserved and available. For some scenes, we might ask - who filmed this, why did these people consent to being filmed, and to what extent are these scenes representative of the vast number of other scenes that were never filmed or properly archived? What conclusions can we draw from the fragments that happened to be available to him?<br /></p><p><i> </i></p><p><i>I met a traveller from an antique land ...</i></p><p><i> </i><br /></p><hr /><p>Ben Brooker, <a href="https://overland.org.au/2021/03/the-world-according-to-adam-curtis/">The world according to Adam Curtis</a> (Overland, 25 March 2021) <br /></p><p>Michael J Brooks, <a href="https://thequietus.com/articles/29558-film-adam-curtis-cant-get-you-out-of-my-head-interview">What Does The Future Hold? An Interview With Adam Curtis</a>
(The Quietus, 12 February 2021) </p><p>Adam Curtis, <a href="https://paper.dropbox.com/ep/redirect/external-link?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fiplayer%2Fepisodes%2Fp093wp6h%2Fcant-get-you-out-of-my-head&hmac=n8rW2xcwus5IXcYBVPafz9bSihBZeyJC7iaPiyCruWI%3D">Can't Get You Out Of My Head</a> (BBC 2021)</p><p>Adam Curtis, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/feb/06/adam-curtis-cant-get-you-out-of-my-head-characters-tupac-cummings">From Tupac to Dom Cummings: meet the cast of characters in Adam Curtis's new series</a> (Guardian, 6 Feb 2021)<br /></p><p>Kermode and Mayo, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eRrZifFkHA">Adam Curtis interviewed by Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode</a> (29 January 2021)<br /></p><p>Sam Knight, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-uk/adam-curtis-explains-it-all">Adam Curtis Explains It All</a> (New Yorker, 28 January 2021) </p><p>Adam Koper, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230207005059/https://adamjkoper.blog/2021/02/26/thoughts-on-adam-curtis-cant-get-you-out-of-my-head/">Thoughts on Adam Curtis’ Can’t Get You Out of My Head</a> (26 February 2021)</p><p>Adam Koper, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12683">A critical conceptualization of conspiracy theory</a> (Constellations, 2023)<br /></p><p>Fred Litwin, <a href="https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/">On the Trail of Delusion - Jim Garrison the Great Accuser</a> (2020) </p><p>Wikipedia: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov's_gun">Chekhov's Gun</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicific_calculus">Hedonic Calculus</a></p><p>Related posts: <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2021/03/optimizing-for-outrage.html">Optimizing for Outrage</a> (March 2021) <br /></p><p><br /></p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-72136059126907684772022-05-16T07:46:00.002+01:002022-05-16T17:21:47.188+01:00Arendt on Racism<p>Following yet another mass shooting in the United States, @DanielTorday quotes Hannah Arendt on the purpose of racism.</p><p></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Hannah Arendt: “Racism has proved to be the the most ingenious device for preparing civil war that has ever been invented.”<br /><br />Racism is not a mental illness. <br />Racism is a long-developed plan to destroy a culture from within. <a href="https://t.co/FyZ6IXfcoG">pic.twitter.com/FyZ6IXfcoG</a></p>— Daniel Torday (@DanielTorday) <a href="https://twitter.com/DanielTorday/status/1525877940625473537?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 15, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><p><br /></p><p>Arendt's legacy on the question of racism is complex and disputed, and there is much commentary on a controversial article she wrote in 1959, criticising some of the measures enacted by the Eisenhower administration to protect black students attending a white school in Little Rock, Arkensas, and affirming the right of white parents to send their children to all-white schools.</p><p>However, if we can overlook her naive and wrong-headed opinions about American racism, there is still a valid question about what kinds of anti-racist measures might be most effective in defusing the situation and reducing the risk of civil war. While I completely reject the argument that the victims of oppression should be encouraged to keep their heads down and avoid provoking their oppressors, there is still an important question about how best to achieve and maintain racial justice and social harmony, and how to challenge racist rhetoric without causing its supporters to double-down.<br /></p><p>Meanwhile this is how news media presents the perpetrator of the Buffalo shooting. </p><p></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Noting that in AP copy, 18-year-old Michael Brown was an “18-year old Black man,” while 18-year-old Payton Gendron is a “white teenager.” <a href="https://t.co/53Jt1vWuqf">pic.twitter.com/53Jt1vWuqf</a></p>— Dr. Thrasher (@thrasherxy) <a href="https://twitter.com/thrasherxy/status/1525851085461766144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 15, 2022</a></blockquote><p> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> <br /></p><hr /><p>Hannah Arendt, <a href="https://www.normfriesen.info/forgotten/little_rock1.pdf">Reflections on Little Rock</a> (Dissent, 1959)</p><p>Connor Grubaugh, <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/hannah-arendt-antiracism-little-rock">Hannah Arendt on Anti-Racism as a Totalitarian Ideology</a> (Tablet, 18 November 2021)
<br /></p><p>Edward Helmore, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/15/buffalo-shooting-black-residents-react"><q>It was by design</q>: Black residents try to come to terms with horror of shooting</a> (Guardian, 15 May 2022)</p><p>Julian Honkasalo, <a href="https://koneensaatio.fi/en/stories/hannah-arendt-on-the-origins-and-consequences-of-ideological-racism/">Hannah Arendt on the origins and consequences of ideological racism</a> (Kone Foundation, 16 March 2017)</p><p>Kevin Miles, <a href="https://blog.apaonline.org/2016/07/07/anti-black-racism-in-arendt-and-philosophys-dangerous-commitment-to-purity/">Anti-Black Racism in Arendt, and Philosophy’s Dangerous Commitment to Purity</a>
(APA Blog, 7 July 2016)</p><p>David Smith, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/24/little-rock-arkansas-school-segregation-racism">Little Rock Nine: the day young students shattered racial segregation</a> (Guardian, 24 September 2017)<br /></p><p>Jason Stanley, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/15/buffalo-shooting-white-replacement-theory-inspires-mass">Buffalo shooting: how white replacement theory keeps inspiring mass murder</a> (Guardian, 15 May 2022)</p><p>Lynne Tirrell, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/10/trump-el-paso-shooting-speech-words">Words matter. Trump bears a responsibility for El Paso</a>
(Guardian, 10 August 2019)</p><p>Michael Tomasky, <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/166499/buffalo-shooting-great-replacement-racism">The Buffalo Shooting Is the Latest White Rage Backlash, Brought to You by the GOP</a> (New Republic, 16 May 2022) </p><p></p><p></p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-67695061589346580222022-04-24T19:56:00.000+01:002022-04-24T19:56:09.965+01:00POSIWID - The Acronym<p>POSIWID stands for Purpose Of System Is What It Does<br /></p><p>Although the phrase is associated with Stafford Beer, credit for the acronym is claimed by the engineer Bill Livingston.</p><p></p><blockquote><q>I heard Stafford give a speech in Orlando in 1986 where he used 'The purpose of a system is what it does'. Using the concept so much I found the phrase ungainly I came up with POSIWID as a code word. In 1993 when I went to see Stafford in Toronto, I presented him with a pen I had engraved with POSIWID. He sort of chuckled and that was the end of it.<br /><br />POSIWID is always used as an absolute. That is, no assignations about purpose are invented. What it does is, by definition, its purpose. I have never encountered a disconfirming example, nor have any of the thousands that have adopted the concept. Of course, it all started with Ashby.</q> <cite><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131225001348/http://www.squidoo.com/POSIWID/">Bill Livingstone</a></cite></blockquote><br /><p></p><hr><p>Following my post yesterday on <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2022/04/some-key-features-of-posiwid.html">Some Key Features of POSIWID</a>, I received some suggested variations on the acronym.</p><p></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">The simplicity of the phrase belies its depth acknowledging that a system can't have a purpose, as that would allude to object intention. So more like: function of a system is what it does, or...<br /><br />Purpose Of A System Is The Effect Detected <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/POSITED?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#POSITED</a><br /><br />...by whoever looks for it 🤓</p>— ComplexWales 🏴💙 (@ComplexWales) <a href="https://twitter.com/ComplexWales/status/1518256374412627969?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 24, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><p><br /></p><p></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Beer should have answered his own question and added three more letters to this already long acronym: <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FTS?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#FTS</a> (For The System).<br />An observer can ask:<br />1⃣ - What is this system doing for me?<br />2⃣ - What can I do for this system?<br />3⃣ - What is this system doing for that system?</p>— The Kihbernetics Institute (@Kihbernetics) <a href="https://twitter.com/Kihbernetics/status/1518233732200603652?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 24, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> <p><br /></p><hr /><p>William Livingston, Have Fun At Work (FES 1988). <a href="http://peripateticphilosopher.blogspot.com/2006/09/meeting-of-mind-preview-of-works-of.html">Review by James R Fisher</a> (September 2006)<br /></p><p></p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-51834020021953249212022-04-23T09:01:00.010+01:002023-04-23T10:32:12.289+01:00Some Key Features of POSIWID<p><b>The Plurality of POSIWID</b></p><p>A system doesn't necessarily have a single purpose, and different observers may detect different purposes. Or even different systems.</p><p><a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2010/01/posiwid-should-be-plural.html">POSIWID should be plural</a> (January 2010) - with thanks to <a href="https://twitter.com/seabird20/status/7377828171">Chris Bird</a></p><p><a href="https://demandingchange.blogspot.com/2022/04/constructing-posiwid.html">Constructing POSIWID</a> (April 2022) - with thanks to <a href="https://twitter.com/harish_josev/status/1515773511465418757">Harish Jose</a> </p><p></p><hr /><p><b>What You Measure Is What You Get - WYMIWYG</b></p><p>Label: <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/search/label/target-setting">Target-Setting</a><br /></p><hr /><p><b>Inertia</b></p><p>Large organizations have strong feedback loops that maintain and restore the
status quo against the most forceful and ingenious interventions.<br /></p><p><a href="https://rvsoapbox.blogspot.com/2012/03/enterprise-posiwid.html">Enterprise POSIWID</a> (March 2012) <br /></p><p><a href="https://demandingchange.blogspot.com/2014/11/corporate-grind.html">Corporate Grind</a> (November 2014) </p><p>And is the <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-aim-of-human-society.html">Aim of Human Society</a> (September 2021) to maintain its equilibrium?<br /></p><hr /><p><b>Conspiracy</b></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>POSIWID appears to encourage the creation of conspiracy theories -
looking for the hidden agenda that will explain actions - especially
when the official story doesn't seem to add up.<br /><br />But it is one
thing to search open-mindedly for a hidden agenda, and another thing
entirely to presume its existence without evidence. Sometimes it is not
conspiracy theory but chaos (cock-up) theory that best explains some
complex series of events.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Label: <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/search/label/conspiracy">Conspiracy</a></p><p>Sometimes a dreadful event is so politically convenient for certain
parties or interest groups that they may be accused (by their
opponents or by conspiracy theorists) of having engineered the event
themselves. </p><p>See <a href="https://demandingchange.blogspot.com/2010/06/visible-problems.html">Visible Problems</a> (June 2010), <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-value-of-chaos.html">The Value of Chaos</a> (December 2021) </p><hr /><p><b>Invisible Hand<br /></b></p>Economists and Marxists may regard the whole sociopolitical system as having a higher purpose, beyond the control of individual actors.<br /><p><a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2012/01/are-markets-tools.html">Are Markets Tools?</a> (January 2012), <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2021/07/culture-war-what-is-it-good-for.html">Culture War - What is it Good For?</a> (July 2021)<br /></p><hr /><p><b>Determinism</b></p><p>Biological determinism (e.g. <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/search/label/evolutionary%20biology">evolutionary biology</a>). As I see it, one of the main problems of evolutionary biology is that for any
plausible hypothesis, one can invent any number of equally plausible
alternatives. <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2013/02/explaining-bodies.html">Explaining Bodies</a> (February 2013) </p><p><a href="https://demandingchange.blogspot.com/2020/12/technological-determinism.html">Technological determinism</a> (December 2020)<br /></p><p>Labels: <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/search/label/determinism">Determinism</a>, <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/search/label/indeterminacy">Indeterminacy</a><br /></p><hr /><p><b>Delayed reaction</b></p><p>Sometimes it takes a while for another purpose of a complex system to emerge.<br /><br />Example: <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2006/08/delayed-reaction.html">Walter Wolfgang Returns</a> (August 2006)</p><p>See also: <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2023/04/delayed-success-evolution.html">Delayed Success - Evolution</a> (April 2023)<br /> </p><p>Or perhaps <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2006/10/purpose-tacked-on-afterwards.html">purposes are tacked on afterwards</a> (October 2006)</p><hr /><b>Absence of purpose</b><p>Absence-of-purpose at one level may be sustained by a deeper purpose. POSIWID helps us to search for a purpose, but doesn't reveal what kind of purpose we might find. <br /><br />Example: <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2006/06/pact-with-devil-2.html">Pact with the Devil </a>(June 2006) <br /></p><hr /><p><b>Whole system<br /></b><br />There is an interesting relationship between the purpose (effect) of the individual and the purpose (effect) of the system. We cannot infer a strong purpose for an individual based on a very low probability effect. But the aggregate effect of the whole population may have a reasonably high probability.<br /><br />See <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2005/09/purpose-and-probability.html">Purpose and Probability</a> (September 2005)</p><p>There are also interesting questions about the purpose of diversity, which can only be addressed relative to the whole system.</p><p>Label: <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/search/label/diversity">Diversity</a><br /></p><hr /><p><b>Reframing purpose<br /></b></p><p>From failure to success, from stalemate to victory - see <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2012/05/political-theatre.html">Political Theatre</a> (May 2012), <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2021/07/culture-war-what-is-it-good-for.html">Culture War - What is it Good For?</a> (July 2021)</p><p>Label: <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/search/label/framing">Framing</a><br /></p><hr /><p><b>Symmetrical POSIWID</b> </p>
For gardeners, the worm's purpose is to chew up grass cuttings and vegetable peelings and torn-up cardboard and produce compost.<br /><br />For
worms, the main purpose of the gardener is to provide a regular supply
of grass cuttings and vegetable peelings and torn-up cardboard.<br /><br />So
there is a pleasing symmetry between the purpose of the gardener and
the purpose of the worm. For religious folk, both the worm and the
gardener are fulfilling God's purpose. <p><a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2008/07/mirror-of-posiwid.html">The Mirror of POSIWID</a> (July 2008)<br /></p><hr /><p><b>Identity versus viability</b><br /><br />The primary purpose (POSIWID) of
closed systems is to maintain their identity, and to resist all
challenges to this identity. However, in complex dynamic environemnts,
viability often requires responding creatively to change. Identity is
therefore often in conflict with viability.<br /><br />Example: <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2005/10/tribal-identity.html">Tribal Identity</a> (October 2005)</p><p></p><p></p><hr /><p><b>Simplicity and complexity</b></p><p>If things seem unnecessarily complicated, this may be the result of some conscious or unconscious motive. <a href="https://twitter.com/gagan_s/status/21747713758">Gagan Saxena</a> notes that <q>sometimes bad websites, phone-trees and policies have a dark purpose</q>.<br /><br />See <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2010/08/badly-designed-websites.html">Badly Designed Websites</a> (August 2010)</p><p>Sometimes a corporate bureaucracy appears to be designed to make life
difficult for employees and customers;
even if such a design is not consciously planned, it may be sustained
by the short-term benefits it confers (such as cost-saving or corporate
convenience).</p><p>See <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2011/06/contradiction-and-ambivalence.html">Contradiction and Ambivalence</a> (June 2011), <a href="https://rvsoapbox.blogspot.com/2012/03/enterprise-posiwid.html">Enterprise POSIWID</a> (March 2012)<br /></p><hr /><p><b>Denial</b></p><p><a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2021/09/this-is-not-who-we-are.html">This is not who we are</a> (September 2021) - yeah, right</p><p>What is the purpose of denial, and what does it achieve? For example, climate change denial. When a famous
scientist stakes his reputation on denying some widely accepted
environmental belief. Is this akin to other forms of denial, such as
AIDS denial or Holocaust denial? Given that a given belief is a
basis for collective support for a given position, denial appears to
have the effect (and therefore the implicit purpose) of undermining this
position.</p><p><a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2005/05/purpose-of-denial.html">Purpose of Denial</a> (May 2005)</p><p>Label: <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/search/label/denial">Denial</a><br /></p><hr /><p><b>Amplification<br /></b><br />If you know the effect that your actions are likely to have, and you go ahead anyway, this only makes sense if the alternative is far worse. Or if you imagine you won't get caught. For example, concealing or destroying evidence. POSIWID thinking therefore acts as an amplifier, accentuating the whisper of suspicion into a bawl of accusation.<br /><br />Example: <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2007/12/erasing-tapes.html">Erasing the tapes</a> (September 2007)</p><hr /><p><b>Communication and Rhetoric</b><br /></p><p>If a communication has diverse effects, how shall we determine the underlying purpose of the communication? Who is the real audience?</p><p><a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2006/11/real-audience.html">Real Audience</a> (November 2006)<br /><br />There is also a question as to whether the effects can be attributed to the rhetoric or to something behind the rhetoric.</p><p><a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2011/01/scarcity-and-poverty.html">Scarcity and Poverty</a> (January 2011)</p><p>Are the effects of a communication more important than whether it is true or not? (Note Foucault's notion of Fiction Functioning in Truth)<br /></p><p><a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2020/06/discourse-wars.html">Discourse Wars</a> (June 2020)<br /></p><p>And if a communication causes people to be upset or angry, can we assume this was the purpose all along?</p><p>Label: <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/search/label/outrage">Outrage</a></p><hr /><b>Adam Curtis<br /></b><p>Finally, let me put in a plug for <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/search/label/AdamCurtis">Adam Curtis</a>, whose documentary films provide a huge wealth of material on this subject. I still need to post something on his latest series.</p><hr /><p> </p><p>See also <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2022/04/posiwid-acronym.html">POSIWID - the Acronym</a> (April 2022)<br /></p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-2838033842224920932022-04-09T02:06:00.001+01:002022-04-09T02:08:22.454+01:00The Purpose of Shame<p>Weapons expert @mathbabedotorg Cathy O'Neil is best known for her account of algorithms as weapons (of math destruction). Her new book tackles a related topic, the use of shame as a weapon. </p><p>Many people have written about the psychology and sociology of shame. O'Neil's focus is on how shame is manufactured and mined, how organizations gain commercial and sociopolitical benefit from propagating shame, how individuals are coopted into circuits of shame, and (to quote her subtitle) <q>who profits in the new age of humiliation</q>.<br /></p><p>One use of the shame machine is to persuade people to buy products and services. O'Neil describes her own experience being targetted with fat-shaming advertisements. Such advertisements are designed to make people feel ashamed, and to believe that the advertised product will somehow help. She also notes how shame can undermine a person's capacity for rational evaluation, and trigger impulsive actions. </p><p>Shame is also used socially, to reinforce social norms. In some cases this is centrally planned - for example, in China where people are publicly shamed for acts that are officially disapproved, such as jaywalking. In other cases, this can be the result of what O'Neil calls Networked Shame, where people feel empowered to shame strangers, supposedly for their own good. As if pointing out the health risks of obesity to a fat person is somehow being kind and helpful to them.<br /></p><p>Immediately following the 2020 US presidential election, Judith Butler noted how Trump and his supporters saw the left as a shame machine.</p><p></p><blockquote><q>Shame occupied a permanent and necessary place in the Trumpian scenario
insofar as it was externalized and lodged in the left: the left seek to
shame you for your guns, your racism, your sexual assault, your
xenophobia! The excited fantasy of his supporters was that, with Trump,
shame could be overcome.</q></blockquote><p></p><p>Of course shame was not really overcome, it was merely redirected onto others, using a version of the Shame Machine that Geoff Shullenberger calls the Scapegoating Machine, tracing back to René Girard. (O'Neil also references Girard.)<br /></p><p>So shaming the Other becomes a political tool. Making people feel ashamed that they need help is a lot cheaper and more convenient than actually helping them, so politicians make unfortunate circumstances shameful (addiction, homelessness, single parenthood, etc) as a way of signalling that people in such circumstances don't deserve our help. And by creating a sense of Us and Them, it reinforces loyalty to populist politicians. Shullenberger credits Peter Thiel, a former student of Girard, for helping to plan Trump's successful 2016 campaign, and notes that <q>like the social media platforms on which it has thrived, Trumpism
channels violence mainly toward victims it wishes to marginalize</q>.</p><p>While there is nothing new about public humiliation and scapegoating, the Internet and social media clearly provide new affordance to those wishing to shame others. Is that merely an unfortunate side-effect of an otherwise beneficial and beneficent technology? Not surprisingly, O'Neil doesn't think so.</p><p></p><blockquote><q>Digital titans, led by Facebook and Google, not only profit from shame events but are engineered to exploit and diffuse them. In their massive research labs, mathematicians work closely with psychologists and anthropologists, using our behavioral data to train their machines. Their objective is to spur customer participation and to mine advertising gold. When it comes to this type of intense engagement, shame is one of the most potent motivators. ... It spurs traffic and boosts revenue.</q><br /></blockquote><p></p><p>One possible remedy, suggests O'Neil, is to redirect shame back towards the powerful, or what she calls punching up. She notes how Google could itself be shamed, for example in relation to its treatment of Timnit Gebru, and notes at least the possibility of what she calls healthy shame. She ends, not with a plan to end all shame, but with some recommendations for detoxifying shame.</p><p><br /></p><hr /><p>Judith Butler, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/05/donald-trump-is-the-show-over-election-presidency">Is the show finally over for Donald Trump?</a> (The Guardian, 5 November 2020)
</p><p>Cathy O'Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction (New York: Crown, 2016)<br /></p><p>Cathy O'Neil, The Shame Machine (New York: Crown, 2022)</p><p>Geoff Shullenberger, <a href="https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2016/08/13/mimesis-violence-and-facebook-peter-thiels-french-connection-full-essay/">Mimesis, Violence, and Facebook: Peter Thiel’s French Connection</a> (Cyborgology, 13 August 2016) <a href="https://thenewinquiry.com/the-scapegoating-machine/">The Scapegoating Machine</a> (The New Inquiry, 30 November 2016) <br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Related posts: <a href="https://businessorganizationmanagement.blogspot.com/2016/10/weapons-of-math-destruction.html">Weapons of Math Destruction</a> (October 2016), <a href="https://demandingchange.blogspot.com/2018/11/ethical-communication-in-digital-age.html">Ethical Communication in a Digital Age</a> (November 2018), <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2020/11/dark-data-and-us-election.html">Dark Data and the US Election</a> (November 2020)<br /></p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-91986956910649505292022-04-03T23:02:00.002+01:002022-04-04T12:26:52.728+01:00The Lipstick Effect<p>In November 2001, writing in the Wall Street Journal, Emily Nelson noted a correlation between economic downturn and lipstick sales.</p><p></p><blockquote>Lipstick sales are red hot. So why is no one smiling?
The reason is that women traditionally turn to lipstick when they cutback on life's other luxuries. They see lipstick, which sells for as little as $1.99 at a supermarket to $20-plus at a department store, as a reasonable indulgence and pick-me-up when they feel they can't afford a whole new outfit. "When lipstick sales go up, people don't want to buy dresses," says Leonard Lauder, chairman of EstéeLauder Cos.</blockquote><p></p><p>Psychologists may think this has something to do with sex, arguing that the only reason women wear lipstick is to get laid. For example, Hill et all argue that "conditions of economic resource scarcity should prompt individuals to increase effort directed toward attracting mates, particularly for women". </p><p>Meanwhile, management scientists think it may have something to do with work, because of course women will wish to create a favorable impression of themselves in the workplace. For example, Netchaeva and Rees argue that "women with high economic concern elect to improve their professional appearance more frequently than their romantic attractiveness".</p><p>Both of these explanations see lipstick in instrumental terms, as a means to an end. Whereas economists may see lipstick simply as a consumer product, whose purpose may be as much to enhance the mood of the woman herself as to enhance the way she is treated by other people. As Elliot notes, "rather than lose the spending habit consumers
simply trade down to cheaper items to cheer themselves up". And Murgea notes how quickly the lipstick can change the person's image, therefore serving as a rapid mood enhancer.<br /></p><p>What exactly is the consumer behaviour that economists (and cosmetic executives) are interested in? Zurawski notes that when shoppers stop buying high-end luxury, "a well-documented side effect is the tendency to compensate by buying more high-end versions of lower-priced items". <br /></p><p>If a relatively expensive lipstick is still cheaper than even a relatively
cheap pair of shoes, then switching from one product to another may be a
clue that the two products perform a similar function for the
purchaser. Economists call this substitution.</p><p>So what exactly is the purpose of the lipstick? Is it to enhance the <b>body image</b>? Or is it to enhance what philosophers call the <b>body without image</b>?<br /></p><hr /><p> </p><p>Larry Elliott, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/dec/22/recession-cosmetics-lipstick">Into the red: 'lipstick effect' reveals the true face of the recession</a> (Guardian 22 December 2008)</p><p>Mike Featherstone, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F026327640602300249">Body Image / Body Without Image</a> (Theory, Culture and Society, 23/2-3, 2006) <br /></p><p>Sarah E Hill et al, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028657">Boosting Beauty in an Economic Decline: Mating, Spending, and the Lipstick Effect</a> (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2012, Vol. 103, No. 2, 275–291)</p><p>Aurora Murgea, <a href="https://doi.org/10.29302/oeconomica.2012.14.2.19">Lipstick Effect in Romania</a> (Annales Universitatis Apulensis Series Oeconomica, 14(2), 2012)</p><p>Emily Nelson, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1006731471172641080">Rising Lipstick Sales May Mean Pouting Economy and Few Smiles</a> (Wall Street Journal, 26 November 2001). See also John J Xenakis, <a href="http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/xct.gd.e080911.htm">Is the Lipstick Debate a Sign of the Times?</a> (Web Log, 11 September 2008)</p><p>Ekaterina Netchaeva and McKenzie Rees, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797616654677">Strategically Stunning: The Professional Motivations Behind the Lipstick Effect</a> (Psychological Science, Vol. 27, No. 8, AUGUST 2016, pp. 1157-1168)</p><p>Lu Zurawski, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/luzurawski/2020/05/16/the-lipstick-effect-and-the-epidemiology-of-payments/">The Lipstick Effect And The Epidemiology Of Payments</a> (Forbes, 16 May 2020)<br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Related post: <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2008/10/playboy-models-and-economic-crisis.html">Playboy models and economic crisis</a> (October 2008)<br /></p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-81764777546585707992021-12-18T22:24:00.003+00:002022-02-03T19:31:15.111+00:00The Value of Chaos<p>In a recent article on Vladimir Putin, continuing a line of argument to be found in his 2018 book, Bruno Maçães summarized something Joseph Brodsky wrote in 1990 about the relationship between power and chaos, particularly in relation to Russia.</p><p></p><blockquote><q>What Brodsky identified was the connection between power and chaos, Since power needs the presence of chaos as a source of legitimacy, then chaos itself is legitimised and may even be celebrated. ... Brodsky recognised that power and chaos feed each other and grow together. Power is born from the act of bringing order to chaos. If there is no chaos then power itself must be used to create it. ... Chaos is never completely pacified, It continues to exist beneath the veneer of civilisation and the role of the sovereign consists in its management, so that it does not erupt to the surface.</q></blockquote><p>Accusations of this kind have been directed at different regimes at different times, with varying degrees of justice. Paul Robinson, a professor at the University of Ottawa, disputes the relevance of this model to President Putin, and suggests that the model might be more relevant to Western foreign policy instead.</p><p>Two entirely different narratives, with entirely different things labelled as chaos, and different notions of Putin's responsibility for anything. So before we can ask who benefits from chaos in a given situation, we have to ask what even counts as chaos.</p><p><br /></p><hr /><p><br /></p><p>Bruno Maçães, The Dawn of Eurasia: On the trail of the New World Order (Penguin 2018) <br /></p><p>Bruno Maçães, <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/world/asia/2021/11/is-vladimir-putin-preparing-for-war">Agent of Chaos</a> (New Statesman, 24 November 2021). <br /></p><p>Paul Robinson, <a href="https://irrussianality.wordpress.com/2021/11/29/putin-mentions-gandhi-proof-he-loves-hitler/">Putin mentions Gandhi: proof he loves Hitler!</a> (29 November 2021)<br /></p><p>Related posts <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2008/11/dont-waste-crisis.html">Don't Waste a Crisis</a> (November 2008), <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2012/05/political-theatre.html">Political Theatre</a> (May 2012 updated January 2013), <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2021/07/culture-war-what-is-it-good-for.html">Culture War</a> (July 2021) <br /></p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-35068688693932956902021-12-06T18:53:00.006+00:002023-09-19T23:16:04.596+01:00The Use of Popularity<p>In November 1968, the Beatles released their ninth studio album, known as the White Album. Alongside an assortment of different musical items and styles, it included a piece of musique concrète entitled Revolution 9, inspired by Karlheinz Stockhausen, and largely put together by John Lennon, George Harrison and Yoko Ono.<br /></p><p>Critics and fans have been divided on this track ever since. Many fans regard it as the worst track the Beatles ever made. Following a line of enquiry that can be traced back to a remark by George Martin himself, the vlogger David Bennett recently suggested pruning the White Album, dropping most of the more experimental tracks including Revolution 9, and retaining only the more aesthetically pleasing ones.<br /></p><p>But what is the point of being the most popular band in the world, if you merely pander to conventional expectations and production values?<br /></p><p>Fifteen years later, the Police released the Synchronicity album, containing another track that divided critics and fans - Mother, written and sung by Andy Summers. A range of critical opinions can be found on this archive page <a href="https://archive.md/gfl1K">http://www.thepolice.com/discography/album/synchronicity-23441</a><br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>quite out of context (Henry Everingham, Sidney Morning Herald)</li><li>revelation ... part-spoof, part-manic (Robin Denselow, The Guardian)</li><li>wild card (People)</li><li>foolish Psycho scenario set to obvious programmatic music (Richard Cook, NME)</li><li>Guitarist Andy Summers' corrosively funny 'Mother' inverts John Lennon's romantic maternal attachment into a grim dadaist joke (Stephen Holden, Rolling Stone)</li><li>spritely 7/4 timing (Adam Sweeting, Melody Maker)</li><li>novelty song (Richard C Walls, Creem)</li><li>blast of pure primal scream in 7/4 time, the sarcastic cut of his
Freudian recitation intensified by a brute rhythm attack recalling
Robert Fripp's experiments with spoken words and white rock noise on
'Exposure' (David Fricke, Musician)<br /></li></ul><p> </p><p>Until the mid 1960s, pop albums were merely collections of songs from the same artist in a similar style, often including songs that were not good or commercial enough to be released as singles. Then some groups started to produce so-called concept albums: Pet Sounds (Beach Boys), Freak Out (Mothers of Invention) and Face to Face (Kinks) all appeared in 1966, and Sgt Pepper (Beatles) followed in 1967. Labelling something as a concept album implied that the album needed to be experienced and evaluated as a whole rather than as a random collection of songs. The best-known examples of concept albums are from groups that were already popular, which obviously helped to build an audience for something unexpected. And Revolution 9 was certainly that. <br /></p><p>The ways that people consume music have changed several times since then. Once upon a time, people used to curate collections of their favourite songs onto cassette tapes, for themselves or their friends. Then other devices emerged, such as the iPod and its successors, allowing people to listen to their playlists in an apparently random sequence. Nowadays, most people consume music via downloads or streaming services such as iTunes or Spotify.</p><p>Perhaps tracks like Revolution 9 or Mother may not appear on many popular playlists. But that's not going to worry extremely popular bands like the Beatles or the Police. It's not just that they can afford to have a few unpopular tracks, it's that the demands of creativity and innovation produces tracks that their fans don't always love.</p><p>Hopefully it's not only these groups that can afford to take these creative risks, or to take a stand against what Adorno called Atomized Listening. Dorian Lynskey argues that the concept album is back. <q>Threatened with redundancy in the digital era, albums have fought back by becoming more album-like.</q> And as Adorno said in praise of Beethoven, serious music achieves excellence when its whole is greater than the sum of its parts.</p><p>Meanwhile the curious thing about both Sgt Pepper and the White Album is that nobody was quite sure what the concepts were. Perhaps this is what enables David Bennett to apply his own concept?</p><p><br /></p><hr /><p>Theodor Adorno, <a href="http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Theodor_W._Adorno_on_political_protest_and_popular_music%2C_1968%2C_3sat">Political Protest and Popular Music</a> (3sat 1968). Video available on <a href="https://archive.org/details/RicBrownTheordorAdornoonPopularMusicandProtest">archive.org</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-njxKF8CkoU">YouTube</a>. See also commentary by Josh Jones, <a href="https://www.openculture.com/2014/12/theodor-adornos-radical-critique-of-the-music-of-the-vietnam-war-protest-movement.html">Theodor Adorno’s Radical Critique of Joan Baez and the Music of the Vietnam War Protest Movement</a> (Open Culture, 3 December 2014)</p><p>Theodor Adorno and Peter von Haselberg, <a href="http://journal.telospress.com/content/1983/56/97.abstract">On the historical adequacy of consciousness</a> (Akzente 1965, Telos 1983). I found an extract in Stefan Müller-Doohm, Adorno: A Biography (Polity 2005) p 420<br /></p><p>Mark Athitakis, <a href="https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2013/septemberoctober/statement/beatles-reflection">A Beatles Reflection: What the White Album says about us</a> (HUMANITIES 34/5, September/October 2013) <br /></p><p>David Bennett,
<a href="https://youtu.be/c0E6OXYsMAM">Should The White Album have not been a double album?</a> (YouTube, 25 November 2021)</p><p>Georgie Born, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-royal-musical-association/article/abs/listening-mediation-event-anthropological-and-sociological-perspectives/5E7CAEA02F3BF174D3BF94F4DE3682D6">Listening, Mediation, Event</a> (Journal of the Royal Musical Assocation, 135/1, 2010) <br /></p><p>Dorian Lynskey, <a href="https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/concept-album-muse-kendrick-lamar-beyonce-daft-punk">Why everyone from Beyonce to Daft Punk is releasing a concept album</a> (GQ
13 July 2015)</p><p>Related post <a href="https://rvsoapbox.blogspot.com/2005/06/shuffle.htm">Shuffle</a> (June 2005) <br /></p> Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-43879742274906030252021-11-28T09:44:00.006+00:002022-12-02T19:38:11.417+00:00Can we take welcome at face value?<p>Matt Brittin, the President of Google EMEA, has some warm words for the EU Commission's efforts to regulate political advertising.</p><p></p><blockquote><q>We share the Commission's goal of increasing the harmonization of
Europe’s transparency rules for political advertising and we support
today’s introduction of legislation. ... The Commission’s proposal is an important and welcome step.</q></blockquote><p></p><p>Karolina Iwańska of the Panoptykon Foundation interprets this as a bad sign for the proposal.</p><p></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">First sign that the Commission's proposal for regulating political ads is too weak: Google "welcomes" it. <a href="https://t.co/6j7UCQLK0s">https://t.co/6j7UCQLK0s</a></p>— Karolina Iwańska (@ka_iwanska) <a href="https://twitter.com/ka_iwanska/status/1464219101233094663?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 26, 2021</a></blockquote><p> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> However there are other possible interpretations of Google's position.</p><p>The first is a cynical one. It is not uncommon for organizations lobbying against regulation to loudly affirm their support for the general principle, while working behind the scenes to water down any concrete measures. Mr Brittin notes that <q>this is a complex field, requiring a balance ...</q>, and although such words could be based on a sincere desire to improve the proposals, they are also consistent with the cynical interpretation.</p><p>But there is another interpretation. However much large companies complain about regulation, they are also aware that regulation serves as a source of competitive advantage for them, since large established companies can absorb the costs of compliance more easily than small players. (In the banking sector for example, this effect was expected to increase polarization between larger and smaller players. And in <a href="https://rvsoapbox.blogspot.com/2012/10/regulation-and-complexity.html">October 2012</a> I noted the irony that legislation prompted by bad behaviour by large companies can be more
burdensome for small companies than for larger companies.) It also establishes barriers to entry, giving them another layer of protection against anything that might fundamentally disrupt their business model.</p><p>Large companies often work behind the scenes to influence the shape of emerging regulation in their favour, and Google is clearly signalling its willingness to appear helpful. </p><p>Chapter Four of Shoshana Zuboff's book, which is entitled The Moat Around the Castle, details a broad combination of rhetoric and lobbying carried out by Google and its executives to establish Google's freedom from government regulation. However, this doesn't rule out the possibility that Google now takes a more nuanced position, particularly as much of the public and political attention is currently directed at Facebook rather than themselves. </p><p><i>Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends ... </i><br /></p><p></p><p></p><hr />Matt Brittin, <a href="https://blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/new-eu-political-ads-law-step-right-direction/">New EU political ads law is a step in the right direction</a> (Google, 25 November 2021) <br /><p>Update: See also <a href="https://youtu.be/fmMJCv7yUuM?t=318">Interview with Matt Brittin on Channel Four News</a> (2 December 2022)<br /></p><p>Natasha Lomas, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/22/google-facebook-apple-eu-lobbying-report/">Report reveals Big Tech’s last minute lobbying to weaken EU rules</a> (TechCrunch, 22 April 2022)<br /></p><p>Jane Merriman, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-banks-capital-idUSTRE67Q2PQ20100827">Big banks winners from new contingent capital move</a> (Reuters, 27 August 2010)</p><p>Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019)<br /></p><p>Related posts: <a href="https://rvsoapbox.blogspot.com/2012/10/regulation-and-complexity.html">Regulation and Complexity</a> (October 2012), <a href="https://demandingchange.blogspot.com/2019/04/decentred-regulation-and-responsible.html">Decentred Regulation and Responsible Technology</a> (April 2019), <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2021/10/amplification-and-attenuation.html">Amplification and Attenuation</a> (October 2021) <br /></p><p></p><p></p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-5767610999518884002021-10-31T16:19:00.004+00:002021-10-31T16:23:13.592+00:00Contagion<p>The mathematician and broadcaster Hannah Fry did some post-doctoral research modelling social disturbance and crime in terms of contagion. In 2014, she gave a presentation at a conference in Berlin about her work with the police<cite></cite> attempting to model the patterns of the 2011 London riots. As she said later, it didn't occur to her that a Berlin audience might have a different perspective on police power than a British audience would, and she got (in her words) absolutely torn apart. <cite>2018 video 11:20</cite><br /></p><p>Several members of the audience expressed concerns about handing over too much control to the police, not only in giving them the power to suppress different forms of disturbance, but also in biasing the data on which the mathematical models were based. One person asked whether the data could really represent who the rioters were, referring to sociological research showing that <q>police arrests are anything but neutral ... underprivileged groups of society tend to be arrested more</q>. <cite>2014 video 55:40</cite><br /></p><p>Another person noted how the riots depended not only on the behaviour of the rioters and the police, but also on the behaviour of the bystanders, which varied in different parts of London. If the Turkish community on London dealt robustly with the situation without relying on the police, this might be linked to the relationship between police and public in Turkey. In her response, Fry also noted the influence of the British media on the behaviour of bystanders in such situations.<br /></p><p>While noting concerns about privacy, and agreeing that <q>handing over too much control to technology is a really scary thing</q>, Fry attempted to balance this against the claim that <q>there
is something positive to be gained by looking at the macro level
behaviour of people in the way that we can design our society</q>. <cite>2014 video 52:50</cite></p><p>In her more recent talks, Professor Fry has been more careful to put mathematical modelling into an ethical frame, as well as encouraging people to question the authority of the algorithm.</p><p></p><blockquote><q>When it comes to algorithms, you can't just build them, put them on a shelf, and decide whether they're good or bad in isolation. You have to think about how they are actually going to be used by people.</q> <cite>2018 video 11:40</cite></blockquote><p></p><p></p><blockquote><q>Once you dress something up as an algorithm or as a bit of artificial intelligence it can take on this air of authority that makes it really hard to argue with.</q> <cite>2018 video 26:10</cite></blockquote><p></p>
<p>Peter Polack provides a more fundamental challenge to the <q>something positive</q> claim. He traces the genealogy of this idea from August Comte's <q>social physics</q> to latter-day neorationalism, referencing Michel Foucault's notion of biopower and biopolitics.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, if social disorder appears to follow the same mathematical patterns as contagious disease, and the police are being invited to treat crime as a disease, perhaps it is not surprising when disease (or even the possibility of being infectious) starts to be treated as a crime.</p>
<p>The protective measures during the COVID pandemic include lock-down and self-isolation. So-called social distancing really means physical distancing, with as much social interaction as your technology (from phones to Internet) can provide. This is a lot easier for people with reasonably large houses, good internet connections, and devices for each member of the family, as well as the kinds of jobs that are relatively easy to do from home. For people in cramped housing, and for people who actually need to turn up at work if they want to get paid, self-isolation is a luxury they may not be able to afford. Therefore being tested for COVID may also be a luxury they can't afford.<br /></p><p>Hannah Fry's mathematical model of the London riots identified that many of those arrested were from disadvantaged areas, although as we've seen this finding can be interpreted in more than one way. A model of disease might also show increased infection in disadvantaged areas. Maps of disadvantage and disease show strong persistence over time, as I discuss in my post on <a href="https://rvsoapbox.blogspot.com/2012/02/location-location-location.html">Location, Location, Location</a>, quoting a study by Dr Douglas Noble and his colleagues.</p><p>But the COVID testing data are not going to show this pattern if people from disadvantaged areas are reluctant to come forward for testing. So much for biopower then.<br /></p><p><br /></p>
<hr />
<p>Hannah Fry, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140510205112/http://14.re-publica.de/session/i-predict-riot">I predict a riot</a> (re:publica 2014, May 2014) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROnjZDdt8O8">recording via YouTube</a></p><p>Hannah Fry, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p059y0p1">Contagion: The BBC Four Pandemic</a> (BBC March 2018) recording not currently available<br /></p><p>Hannah Fry, Should Computers Run the World (Royal Institution, November 2018) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzhpf1Ai7Z4">recording via YouTube</a></p><p>Douglas Noble et al, Feasibility study of geospatial mapping of chronic disease risk to inform public health commissioning. <a href="http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000711.full?ga=w_bmjj_bmj-com">BMJ Open 2012;2:e000711 doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2011-000711</a> <br /></p><p>Peter Polack, <a href="https://reallifemag.com/false-positivism/">False Positivism</a> (Real Life Mag, 18 October 2021) HT @<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/30/hertzs-supercharged-tesla-deal-could-haul-us-into-the-electric-vehicle-age">jjn1</a></p><p>Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/comte/">August Comte</a>, <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/">Michel Foucault</a><br /></p><p>Related posts: <a href="https://rvsoapbox.blogspot.com/2012/02/location-location-location.html">Location, Location, Location</a> (February 2012), <a href="https://demandingchange.blogspot.com/2019/07/algorithms-and-governmentality.html">Algorithms and Governmentality</a> (July 2019), <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2021/03/algorithmic-bias.html">Algorithmic Bias</a> (March 2021) </p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-31178464326656443752021-10-25T22:31:00.003+01:002021-10-26T15:15:53.855+01:00Technological Reproducibility<p>One of the best-known essays by the critic Walter Benjamin explored the transformation in the world of art caused by the ease of reproduction - an example of what we should now call Digital Disruption.<br /></p><p></p><blockquote><q>If the natural utilization of productive forces is impeded by the property system, the increase in technical devices, in speed, and in the sources of energy will press for an unnatural utilization.</q> </blockquote><p></p><p>Writing at a time when Fascism was on the rise, Benjamin thought this unnatural utilization would be found in war.<br /></p><p>Technology has now come full circle, thanks to the Blockchain. Massive increases in the quantity and speed of technical devices, together with absurd levels of energy consumption, nowadays find their most unnatural utilization in Non-Fungible Tokens - works of art whose only purpose appears to be their non-reproducibility.</p><p>David Morris argues that</p><p></p><blockquote><q>NFTs are valuable in themselves and represent a totally novel category because they give digital objects a claim on the sense of presence, history, and authenticity previously reserved for physical objects.</q><br /></blockquote><p>But Tom Whyman disagrees</p><p></p><blockquote><q>But look closer, and one will see that this can’t possibly be what NFTs are doing at all. The tokens might be non-fungible: but the art (or similar) that any given NFT is associated with remains just as reproducible as it was before. ... When you own an NFT then, what you have purchased is not really a sports clip, or a piece of digital art , but simply a string of cryptographic information – information whose scarcity is guaranteed by the immense amount of real, planet-destroying energy that is required to produce it. As NFTs are becoming more widespread, then, the aura of art has if anything just been further profaned: on the blockchain, art is stripped of all its old value: all that was once sacred melted down into crypto.</q></blockquote><p></p><p></p><hr /><p> </p><p>Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935)</p><p>David Z. Morris, <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/08/30/art-in-the-age-of-digital-scarcity-why-nfts-enchant-us/">Art in the Age of Digital Scarcity: Why NFTs Enchant Us</a> (CoinDesk, 30 August 2021)<br /></p><p>Tom Whyman, <a href="https://www.logically.ai/articles/the-non-fungible-token">The Work of Art in the Age of the Non-Fungible Token</a>
(Logically, 16 March 2021)
<br /></p><p>Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/benjamin/">Walter Benjamin </a><br /></p><p>Wikipedia: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-fungible_token">Non-Fungible Token</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_Mechanical_Reproduction">The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction</a></p><p>Related post: <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2021/10/let-coin-take-strain.html">Let the Coin take the Strain</a> (October 2021) <br /></p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-63364109524780473562021-10-14T21:28:00.002+01:002022-04-24T12:26:26.986+01:00Big Danger<p>Several industries have been described as the New Big Tobacco, including Big Oil, Big Sugar and Big Tech. However, Lee Vinsel cautions against putting too much weight on the apparent parallels.<br /></p><p>The tobacco industry is now known to have concealed what it knew about the health dangers of smoking for decades. In 1994, top executives of the seven largest tobacco companies appeared before a committee hearing on Capitol Hill and denied that nicotine was addictive. But American politicians and public no longer believed them. </p><p>In recent weeks, senators from both sides of US politics have drawn comparisons between Facebook and Big Tobacco.</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-size: x-small;"><q>Facebook is just like Big Tobacco, pushing a product that they know is harmful to the health of young people, pushing it to them early, all so Facebook can make money</q> (Senator Ed Markey, D-Mass)</span></li><li><span style="font-size: x-small;"><q>Facebook and Big Tech are facing a Big Tobacco moment</q> (Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn)</span></li><li><span style="font-size: x-small;"><q>I think that that’s an appropriate analogy</q> (Senator Cynthia Lummis, R-WY)</span></li></ul><p>Meanwhile, climate activists are using similar language to describe Big Oil. Later this month, it will be the turn of the CEO of ExxonMobil to appear before a committee of the US Congress. Will this be a turning point for climate change denial?<br /></p><p>One might imagine that Big Tech would be quite happy to see political and public attention focused on Big Oil rather than on themselves.</p><p>Another parallel might be the auto industry, which has spend many years misleading drivers and regulators about safety, fuel efficiency and emissions. <br /></p><p>Meanwhile, Big Tobacco remains profitable, especially in the Third World, and is currently promoting Vaping as a supposedly safer alternative. Plus ça change.<br /></p><hr /><p><br /></p><p>Jonathan Freedland,
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/08/facebook-tobacco-industry-research-harm-causes">Is Facebook the tobacco industry of the 21st century?</a> (Guardian, 8 October 2021)<br /></p><p>Mark Hertsgaard, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/14/congress-hearing-oil-exxon-bp-shell-chevron">Big tobacco got caught in a lie by Congress. Now it’s the oil industry’s turn</a> (Guardian, 14 October 2021)<br /></p><p>Mar Hicks, <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-ford-fall-from-grace/">Facebook's Fall From Grace Looks a Lot Like Ford's</a> (Wired, 14 October 2021) However, @<a href="https://twitter.com/STS_News/status/1448764280506093572">STS_News</a> (Lee Vinsel) finds fault with some of the historical detail in this article, and suggests that the apparent analogies may be misleading. <br /></p><p>T.J. Kirkpatrick, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/09/technology/facebook-big-tobacco-regulation.html">Lawmakers See Path to Rein In Tech, but It Isn’t Smooth</a> (New York Times, 9 October 2021)</p><p>Connor Perrett, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-exec-calls-big-tobacco-comparisons-extremely-misleading-2021-10">Facebook exec Nick Clegg called Big Tobacco comparisons <q>extremely misleading</q></a>
(Business Insider, 10 October 2021) </p><p>Genna Reed, <a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/genna-reed/new-research-documents-that-sugar-industrys-playbook-goes-way-back/">New Research Documents That Sugar Industry’s Playbook Goes Way Back</a> (The Equation, 13 September 2016)</p><p>Salvador Rodriguez, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/30/senators-say-facebook-used-big-tobacco-playbook-to-exploit-kids.html">Facebook used Big Tobacco playbook to exploit teens and children</a> (CNBC, 30 September 2021)</p><p><br /></p><p>Related posts: <a href="https://rvsoftware.blogspot.com/2015/10/defeating-device-paradigm.html">Defeating the Device Paradigm</a> (October 2015),
<a href="https://demandingchange.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-ethics-of-diversion-tobacco-example.html">The Ethics of Diversion - Tobacco Example</a> (September 2019)<br /></p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-69604991899985148872021-10-13T22:09:00.003+01:002021-10-14T10:30:12.922+01:00Let the Coin take the Strain<p>If Bitcoin is the solution, what is the problem? <br /></p><p>Ted Cruz has come up with a brilliant scheme for fixing Texas's electricity grid. His idea is to encourage Bitcoin miners to move to the state. The miners will increase off-peak demand for electricity, and this will improve the supply of electricity for everyone.</p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Cruz says Bitcoin is the solution for Texas' strained electrical grid.<br /> <a href="https://t.co/lix77M22dN">https://t.co/lix77M22dN</a></p>— VICE (@VICE) <a href="https://twitter.com/VICE/status/1448297489816244228?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 13, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> <p>Remind me, what is the mechanism that governs the relationship between supply and demand? Oh yes, prices. Increased demand pushes the price up, and this unlocks supplies that were not previously economically viable.<br /></p><p>And who is going to pay the increased prices? Not the coin miners, presumably, because they will need some kind of incentive to move to the state. So everyone else then.</p><p>And why should we expect the coin miners to suspend their consumption of electricity during periods of peak demand? Is it because they are incredibly public-spirited? Or will they want further subsidies to play along with this scheme? And then cheat anyway?<br /></p><p>To answer these objections, Cruz explains that because Bitcoin mining sometimes uses renewable energy, especially in parts of the world that are a long way from Texas, moving the mining operations to Texas will result in an increase in renewable energy sources within the state. <br /></p><p></p><blockquote><p><q>The beauty of Bitcoin mining is that if you can connect to the internet, you can use that energy.</q><br /></p><p></p></blockquote><p>Oh of course, why didn't I think of that?<br /></p><p>The tweet from Vice prompted a number of comments from people who seem unable to grasp the brilliance of Mr Cruz's solution. For example<br /></p><p></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">"Let's fix our strained electrical grid by straining our electrical grid."</p>— Lisa Simpson's REAL Magic Bear-Repelling Rock (@FERALROBOTS) <a href="https://twitter.com/FERALROBOTS/status/1448351983182782465?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 13, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> It's such a pity that people impute ulterior motives to politicians who are merely trying to do the best for the voters.<p>Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Cambridge report that the United States has taken the leading position in Bitcoin mining following China’s crackdown on mining operations. The USA now has a 35.4% share of the global hashrate, followed by Kazakhstan (18.1%) and the Russian Federation (11%).<br /></p><hr /><p>Audrey Carleton, <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg8yj8/ted-cruz-says-bitcoin-mining-can-fix-texas-crumbling-electric-grid">Ted Cruz Says Bitcoin Mining Can Fix Texas’ Crumbling Electric Grid</a>
(Vice, 13 October 2021)</p><p>Michel Rauchs, <a href="https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/insight/2021/geographic-shift/">Geographic Shift</a> (Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, 13 October 2021) <br /></p><p><a href="https://cbeci.org/index">Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index</a><br /></p><p></p>.Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-64858250982735551912021-10-12T23:22:00.004+01:002021-10-13T08:58:19.059+01:00Amplification and Attenuation<p>@<a href="https://twitter.com/STS_News/status/1447575902104215555">STS_News</a> (Lee Vinsel) poses a couple of important questions on Twitter</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Have any of y'all seen any specific proposals for how to regulate <q>Big Tech</q> companies around mis/dis/harmful information?</li><li>Are there any so-far best philosophical/ethical treatments for why platforms *should* shutdown groups like Qanon?</li></ul><p>I think it makes sense to start with the WHY question before tackling the HOW. In my post on <a href="https://demandingchange.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-ethics-of-diversion-tobacco-example.html">The Ethics of Diversion - Tobacco Example</a> (September 2019), I listed four ethical principles that might be relevant to that case, and discussed the need to balance these appropriately. </p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Minimum interference principle</li><li>Utilitarianism</li><li>Cautionary principle</li><li>Conflict of interest <br /></li></ul><p>If the primary justification for shutting down certain groups is to reduce the circulation of ideas that society has agreed to classify as undesirable, for whatever reason, then the <b>minimum interference</b> principle urges us to consider alternative (less extreme) measures that might achieve almost as much suppression with less interference. For example, instead of banning these groups from a given platform, it might be <b>almost </b>as effective to allow these groups to post whatever they like, <b>provided that </b>these posts are not picked up and recommended to others by the platform algorithm. Indeed, it might be <b>safer </b>to keep these groups on a well-controlled platform, rather than push them to migrate onto a less well-controlled platform.</p><p>In other words, in order to justify total shutdown, you have to demonstrate that this will produce significantly better outcomes than lighter regulation would.</p><p>However, in the case of the social media platforms, this is complicated by <b>conflict of interest</b>. The platform algorithms are designed to promote the commercial interests of the platform, and this means maximizing the engagement (or even addiction) of the so-called users. So society may not feel it can trust the platforms to manage the recommendation algorithms in a way that achieves the outcomes that society wants (and avoids the outcomes that society wants to prevent). And the algorithms themselves are generally not amenable to independent inspection, being incredibly complex and wrapped in commercial secrecy.<br /></p><p>Meanwhile, not everyone is comfortable with the idea that ethical decisions should depend solely on the consequences of this or that action. If there is something clearly objectionable in the content that a given group wishes to post, or if we can demonstrate some evil intention behind it, surely we should be allowed to object to the content itself, not merely suppress its consequences? It may also be difficult to determine these consequences with any degree of accuracy, either in advance or retrospectively. So in addition to the <b>consequentialist </b>arguments we have already looked at, moral philosophers have identified a different class of argument, which they call <b>deontological</b>.</p><p>This includes arguments based on the intrinsic value of truth, and the idea that platforms should suppress material simply because it contains certain kinds of falsehood. However, I think this idea is insufficient as a basis for regulation, as I argue in my post on <a href="https://demandingchange.blogspot.com/2018/11/ethical-communication-in-digital-age.html">Ethical Communication in a Digital Age</a>. </p><p><br /></p><p>There's obviously a lot more I could say about the WHY, but let me say a few words about the HOW. One way of understanding regulation and control comes from cybernetics. As we see from the work of Stafford Beer, for example, the behaviour of complex systems can be controlled by a combination of <b>amplification </b>and <b>attenuation</b>. In the world of social media, the critical question is which messages are selected for amplification.<br /></p><p>In her article on Amplified Propaganda, Renée DiResta suggests that traditional top-down propaganda (which Chomsky called the Manufacture of Consent) has been replaced by the bottom-up creation and selective amplification of narratives that shape reality. She calls this Ampliganda.</p><p>In many cases, these narratives appear to emerge spontaneously from the crowd - this is sometimes called <b>going viral</b>. However, there are increasingly sophisticated ways of engineering and orchestrating these narratives, not just with bots but by convincing real people to participate in their propagation.</p><p>Meanwhile, if some things are being amplified, other things are being suppressed or ignored. In most cases, this is not the result of anyone actively deciding to suppress them, more a consequence of the fact that there is a finite quantity of attention. If a book or film or other cultural product receives poor reviews, or perhaps nobody even bothers to review it at all, then it is unlikely to become a best-seller. Similarly, the majority of the content on the internet will be read by at most a handful of people. It doesn't make sense to accuse the platform of exercising censorship, or to complain of being cancelled, simply because something fails to achieve a mass audience.<br /></p><p>Furthermore, there are some structural reasons why certain types of content fails to attract an audience. In politics, there are limits to the kinds of idea that people are willing to take seriously - this is known as the Overton window. (However, this can change over time, for reasons that I can't go into here.)<br /></p><p>But while the majority of people are comfortably inside the Overton window, there may be a significant minority who are attracted to groups positioned well outside the Overton window. So instead of asking how we should regulate the use of Big Tech by these groups (or some might say the cynical exploitation of these groups by Big Tech), maybe there are some larger questions about the regulation and/or liberation of discourse inside and outside the Overton window.</p><p><br /></p><hr /><p>Renée DiResta, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/disinformation-propaganda-amplification-ampliganda/620334/">It’s Not Misinformation. It’s Amplified Propaganda</a> (Atlantic, 9 October 2021)<br /></p><p>Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/">Consequentialism</a>, <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/">Deontological Ethics</a> <br /></p><p>Wikipedia: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window">Overton Window</a><br /></p><p>Related posts: <a href="https://demandingchange.blogspot.com/2018/11/ethical-communication-in-digital-age.html">Ethical Communication in a Digital Age</a> (November 2018), <a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/2021/07/culture-war-what-is-it-good-for.html">Culture War - What Is It Good For?</a> (July 2021)<br /></p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6138624.post-62645526109941540802021-10-07T00:03:00.000+01:002021-10-07T00:03:48.011+01:00Satanic Essay Mills<p></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">“Completely unethical” essay writing mills are to be made illegal in England. Good news for academic standards but with many of these services shifting offshore, catching them may prove more difficult.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AcademicFraud?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AcademicFraud</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Universities?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Universities</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DigitalEthics?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#DigitalEthics</a><br /> <a href="https://t.co/EjXdXxQCP4">https://t.co/EjXdXxQCP4</a></p>— Claudia Pagliari (@EeHRN) <a href="https://twitter.com/EeHRN/status/1445667173913927680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 6, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> <p> </p><p>The phrase <q>completely unethical</q> is a quote from the skills minister, Alex Burghart. While I have no love for the essay mills, having tangled with them previously on this blog, I also wonder whether the university system should share some responsibility for the emergence of this market.</p><p>If academic success depends on delivering certain items of coursework, as evidence that a student has achieved the course objectives, and yet those items of coursework are so standardized that they can be successfully churned out by someone who hasn't participated in the course, then perhaps the course objectives and coursework assignments haven't been thought through properly.</p><p>Another contributing factor is the amount of time the university staff will have spent with each student, and the amount of time to mark each essay. If this is insufficient, then the marker will have no way of knowing whether the authorship of a given essay is credible. <br /></p>In summary, academic standards depend on a number of factors, including well-designed courses and proper engagement with students. If the universities try to cut costs by skimping on these elements of education, maybe it isn't so surprising that some students are tempted to cheat as well.<br /><p> </p><p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-58811822">Essay mills: <q>Contract cheating</q> to be made illegal in England</a> (BBC News 6 October 2021) HT @<a href="https://twitter.com/EeHRN/status/1445667173913927680">EeHRN</a></p><p><a href="https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190329-the-essay-mills-that-help-students-cheat">How students turn to <q>essay mills</q> to help them cheat</a> (BBC Worklife, 29 March 2019)<br /></p><p><a href="https://posiwid.blogspot.com/search/label/essaymills">More posts on essay mills</a><br /></p><p></p>Richard Veryardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499123397533975655noreply@blogger.com0