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David McGavock

A Speculative Post on the Idea of Algorithmic Authority « Clay Shirky - 1 views

www.shirky.com/...-idea-of-algorithmic-authority

shirky trust authority community evaluate critical_thinking crap detection

shared by David McGavock on 10 Feb 11 - Cached
  • people trust new classes of aggregators and filters, whether Google or Twitter or Wikipedia
  • algorithmic authority
  • do I have certification from an institution that will vouch for my knowledge of Eastern Europe?
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • The social characteristic of deciding who to trust is a key feature of authority
  • information that can’t be evaluated independently
  • information that is correct by definition
  • authorities making untestable propositions
  • Why would you feel less silly getting the same wrong information from Britannica than from me? Because Britannica is an authoritative source.
  • Like everything social, this is not a problem with a solution, just a dilemma with various equilibrium states, each of which in turn has characteristic disadvantages.)
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 10 Feb 11
       
      "Not a problem with a solution" - there's something very freeing about that idea. So often we try and fix nature and our social "states" but they are too dynamic for a fix.
  • it takes in material from multiple sources, which sources themselves are not universally vetted for their trustworthiness, and it combines those sources in a way that doesn’t rely on any human manager to sign off on the results before they are published.
  • Algorithmic authority
  • just an information tool.
  • people come to trust it.
  • produces good results
  • people become aware not just of their own trust but of the trust of others:
  • his is the transition to algorithmic authority.
  • spectrum of authority
  • Good enough to settle a bar bet
  • Evidence to include in a dissertation defense
  • he criticism that Wikipedia, say, is not an “authoritative source” is an attempt to end the debate by hiding the fact that authority is a social agreement,
  • David McGavock on 10 Feb 11
     
    "Algorithmic authority is the decision to regard as authoritative an unmanaged process of extracting value from diverse, untrustworthy sources, without any human standing beside the result saying "Trust this because you trust me." This model of authority differs from personal or institutional authority, and has, I think, three critical characteristics. "
David McGavock

#53 - How to detect bullshit « Scott Berkun - 3 views

www.scottberkun.com/...53-how-to-detect-bullshit

bullshit thinking crap detection evaluate lies

shared by David McGavock on 25 Dec 11 - Cached
  • The first detection tool is a question: How do you know what you know?
  • People so rarely have their claims challenged, that asking someone to explain how they know sheds light on whatever ignorance they’re hiding.
  • Even credible thinkers need time to sort through their logic, separating assumptions from facts: an an exercise that works in everyone’s favor.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The second tool is also a question: What is the counter argument?
  • Similarly useful questions include: Who besides you shares this opinion? What are your biggest concerns, and what will you do to address them? What would need to change for you to have a different (opposite) opinion?
  • Anyone creating BS knows this, and will tend towards urgency. They’ll resist reviews, breaks, consultations or the suggestion of sleeping on decisions before they’re made. Use time & pressure, the third tool of BS detection, in your favor: never allow big decisions to be mismanaged to the point where they must be made urgently.
  • Especially in business and technology, jargon and obfuscation hide huge quantities of BS. Inflated language is a technique of intimidation.
  • The fourth tool of BS detection (derived from the rule of expecting BS) is careful assignment of your trust. Never agree to more than your trust allows. Who cares how confident they are: the question is how confident are you in them? It’s rare that there isn’t time for trust to be earned. Divide requests, projects or commitments into pieces. It’s not offensive to refuse to take someone’s word if they have no history of living up to it before (especially if they’re trying to sell you something).
  • But lies, serious lies, should not be encouraged as they destroy trust, the binding force in all relationships. One particularly troublesome kind of lie is known as Bullshit (BS). These are unnecessary deceptions, committed in the gray area between polite white lies and complete malicious fabrications.
  • David McGavock on 25 Dec 11
     
    "Be like Socrates: assume people are unaware of their own ignorance (including yourself) and politely, warmly, probe to sort out the difference."
Owen Daily

Introduction to Computer Ethics - 0 views

www.infosectoday.com/...Intro_Computer_Ethics.htm

ethics computer

shared by Owen Daily on 06 Oct 14 - Cached
  • Fritz H. Grupe, Timothy Garcia-Jay, and William Kuechler identified the following selected ethical bases for IT decision making:
    • Owen Daily
      Owen Daily on 06 Oct 14
       
      Everytihng between yellow sections
  • Owen Daily on 06 Oct 14
     
    "Code of Ethics Canons. Protect society, the commonwealth, and the infrastructure Promote and preserve public trust and confidence in information and systems. Promote the understanding and acceptance of prudent information security measures Preserve and strengthen the integrity of the public infrastructure. Discourage unsafe practice. Act honorably, honestly, justly, responsibly, and legally Tell the truth; make all stakeholders aware of your actions on a timely basis. Observe all contracts and agreements, express or implied. Treat all constituents fairly. In resolving conflicts, consider public safety and duties to principals, individuals, and the profession in that order. Give prudent advice; avoid raising unnecessary alarm or giving unwarranted comfort. Take care to be truthful, objective, cautious, and within your competence. When resolving differing laws in different jurisdictions, give preference to the laws of the jurisdiction in which you render your service. Provide diligent and competent service to principals Preserve the value of their systems, applications, and information. Respect their trust and the privileges that they grant you. Avoid conflicts of interest or the appearance thereof. Render only those services for which you are fully competent and qualified. Advance and protect the profession Sponsor for professional advancement those best qualified. All other things equal, prefer those who are certified and who adhere to these canons. Avoid professional association with those whose practices or reputation might diminish the profession. Take care not to injure the reputation of other professionals through malice or indifference. Maintain your competence; keep your skills and knowledge current. Give generously of your time and knowledge in training others. Organizational Ethics Plan of Action Peter S. Tippett has written extensively on computer ethics. He provided the fol
David McGavock

About Us - ProPublica - 0 views

www.propublica.org/about

journalism newspapers investigative crap detection information_literacy critical skills critical thinking

shared by David McGavock on 01 Apr 12 - Cached
  • David McGavock on 01 Apr 12
     
    ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with "moral force." We do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.
David McGavock

Kathryn Schulz: On being wrong | Video on TED.com - 1 views

www.ted.com/...ryn_schulz_on_being_wrong.html

behavior critical_thinking wrong failure TED wonder

shared by David McGavock on 28 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • So what I want to do today is, first of all, talk about why we get stuck inside this feeling of being right. And second, why it's such a problem. And finally, I want to convince you that it is possible to step outside of that feeling and that if you can do so, it is the single greatest moral, intellectual and creative leap you can make.
  • Augustine understood that our capacity to screw up, it's not some kind of embarrassing defect in the human system, something we can eradicate or overcome.
  • This attachment to our own rightness keeps us from preventing mistakes when we absolutely need to and causes us to treat each other terribly.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • But when it comes down to me, right now, to all the beliefs I hold, here in the present tense, suddenly all of this abstract appreciation of fallibility goes out the window -- and I can't actually think of anything I'm wrong about.
  • You know, we're already wrong, we're already in trouble, but we feel like we're on solid ground. So I should actually correct something I said a moment ago. It does feel like something to be wrong; it feels like being right.
  • according to this, getting something wrong means there's something wrong with us. So we just insist that we're right, because it makes us feel smart and responsible and virtuous and safe.
  • The miracle of your mind isn't that you can see the world as it is. It's that you can see the world as it isn't.
  • when it turns out that people who disagree with us have all the same facts we do and are actually pretty smart, then we move on to a third assumption: they know the truth, and they are deliberately distorting it for their own malevolent purposes.
  • trusting too much in the feeling of being on the correct side of anything can be very dangerous.
  • most of us do everything we can to avoid thinking about being wrong, or at least to avoid thinking about the possibility that we ourselves are wrong.
  • So by the time you are nine years old, you've already learned, first of all, that people who get stuff wrong are lazy, irresponsible dimwits -- and second of all, that the way to succeed in life is to never make any mistakes.
  • The first thing we usually do when someone disagrees with us is we just assume they're ignorant. They don't have access to the same information that we do, and when we generously share that information with them, they're going to see the light and come on over to our team.
  • And to me, if you really want to rediscover wonder, you need to step outside of that tiny, terrified space of rightness and look around at each other and look out at the vastness and complexity and mystery of the universe and be able to say, "Wow, I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong."
  • And the thing is," says Ira Glass, "we need this. We need these moments of surprise and reversal and wrongness to make these stories work." And for the rest of us, audience members, as listeners, as readers, we eat this stuff up. We love things like plot twists and red herrings and surprise endings. When it comes to our stories, we love being wrong.
  • This internal sense of rightness that we all experience so often is not a reliable guide to what is actually going on in the external world. And when we act like it is, and we stop entertaining the possibility that we could be wrong, well that's when we end up doing things like dumping 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, or torpedoing the global economy.
  • I've spent the last five years thinking about being wrong.
  • When that doesn't work, when it turns out those people have all the same facts that we do and they still disagree with us, then we move on to a second assumption, which is that they're idiots.
  • David McGavock on 28 Dec 12
     
     if you really want to rediscover wonder, you need to step outside of that tiny, terrified space of rightness and look around at each other and look out at the vastness and complexity and mystery of the universe and be able to say, "Wow, I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong."
David McGavock

Molly Crockett: Beware neuro-bunk | Video on TED.com - 0 views

www.ted.com/...rockett_beware_neuro_bunk.html

shared by David McGavock on 28 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • the insula, a region they say is linked to feelings of love and compassion. So they concluded that because they saw activation in the insula, this meant the subjects loved their iPhones. Now there's just one problem with this line of reasoning, and that's that the insula does a lot. Sure, it is involved in positive emotions like love and compassion, but it's also involved in tons of other processes, like memory, language, attention, even anger, disgust and pain.
  • You've probably heard of it. So, Dr. Love bases his argument on studies showing that when you boost people's oxytocin, this increases their trust, empathy and cooperation. So he's calling oxytocin "the moral molecule."
  • Trial or no trial, these claims are front and center on their label right next to a picture of a brain. And it turns out that pictures of brains have special properties. A couple of researchers asked a few hundred people to read a scientific article. For half the people, the article included a brain image, and for the other half, it was the same article but it didn't have a brain image. At the end — you see where this is going — people were asked whether they agreed with the conclusions of the article. So this is how much people agree with the conclusions with no image. And this is how much they agree with the same article that did include a brain image. So the take-home message here is, do you want to sell it? Put a brain on it.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • So what I'm going to do is show you how to spot a couple of classic moves, dead giveaways, really, for what's variously been called neuro-bunk, neuro-bollocks, or, my personal favorite, neuro-flapdoodle.
  • Now these studies are scientifically valid, and they've been replicated, but they're not the whole story. Other studies have shown that boosting oxytocin increases envy. It increases gloating. Oxytocin can bias people to favor their own group at the expense of other groups. And in some cases, oxytocin can even decrease cooperation.
  • We haven't found a "buy" button inside the brain, we can't tell whether someone is lying or in love just by looking at their brain scans, and we can't turn sinners into saints with hormones. Maybe someday we will, but until then, we have to be careful that we don't let overblown claims detract resources and attention away from the real science that's playing a much longer game.
  • Ask the tough questions. Ask to see the evidence. Ask for the part of the story that's not being told. The answers shouldn't be simple, because the brain isn't simple. But that's not stopping us from trying to figure it out anyway.
  • David McGavock on 28 Dec 12
     
     Ask the tough questions. Ask to see the evidence. Ask for the part of the story that's not being told. The answers shouldn't be simple, because the brain isn't simple. But that's not stopping us from trying to figure it out anyway.
David McGavock

Truth is the foundation of trust | PostIndependent.com - 1 views

www.postindependent.com/...1022&parentprofile=1081

opinion critical_thinking evaluate media

shared by David McGavock on 12 May 12 - No Cached
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 12 May 12
       
      Something I agree with
  • Sometimes it seems as though all the infighting is self destructive and financially draining.
  • Well, $14 trillion of debt later, I wonder if she still likes the sound.
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 12 May 12
       
      Written with no acknowledgement of the situation that was handed to him. I would like to see the Ross Talbott plan for avoiding a depression.
  • ...3 more annotations...
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 12 May 12
       
      Truth, truth, truth. He repeats the need for truth and for relationship. At the same time he provides no basis for the arguments he makes. Truth requires evidence.
  • Who then, are the wise? Are they the ones who liked the way he sounded? Are they the ones who believe the lies?
    • David McGavock
      David McGavock on 12 May 12
       
      It would be helpful to have the details here rather than the chant that we can hear from "the press".
  • A famous saying is, “you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” The opposite of truth is the lie, and the lie creates bondage and death. The lie is so dangerous because it is presented as truth by impressive and convincing people. The real truth is often initially painful but is always liberating. Truth is the light at the end of the tunnel.
  • David McGavock on 12 May 12
     
    One man's version of truth sans evidence.
David McGavock

About | Regret the Error - 0 views

www.regrettheerror.com/about

thinking rumors crap detection trust media standards truth

shared by David McGavock on 18 Jun 10 - Cached
  • David McGavock on 18 Jun 10
     
    "Regret the Error reports on media corrections, retractions, apologies, clarifications and trends regarding accuracy and honesty in the press. It was launched in October 2004 by Craig Silverman, a freelance journalist and author based in Montreal."
David McGavock

In a cutthroat world, some Web giants thrive by cooperating - page 3 - 3 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2011021902888_3.html

cooperation corporate google twitter facebook washingtonpost

shared by David McGavock on 20 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • employees at Facebook, Google and Twitter work in semiautonomous teams, usually made up of experts from each department: design, programming, marketing, etc.
  • How are conflicts resolved?
  • Zuckerberg engages in the conversation and offers his perspective.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • "Twitter's growing really quickly, and something that allowed us to do so much with so few people early on was this culture of trust, where you knew people around you were smart and had the best of intentions," Mark Trammell,
  • "TeamTeam," a forum for employees to gather around common interests.
  • Trammell spends roughly 10 percent of his time helping his colleagues build personal relationships around "things that people are passionate about."
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