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Bill Fulkerson

Anatomy of an AI System - 1 views

shared by Bill Fulkerson on 14 Sep 18 - No Cached
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    "With each interaction, Alexa is training to hear better, to interpret more precisely, to trigger actions that map to the user's commands more accurately, and to build a more complete model of their preferences, habits and desires. What is required to make this possible? Put simply: each small moment of convenience - be it answering a question, turning on a light, or playing a song - requires a vast planetary network, fueled by the extraction of non-renewable materials, labor, and data. The scale of resources required is many magnitudes greater than the energy and labor it would take a human to operate a household appliance or flick a switch. A full accounting for these costs is almost impossible, but it is increasingly important that we grasp the scale and scope if we are to understand and govern the technical infrastructures that thread through our lives. III The Salar, the world's largest flat surface, is located in southwest Bolivia at an altitude of 3,656 meters above sea level. It is a high plateau, covered by a few meters of salt crust which are exceptionally rich in lithium, containing 50% to 70% of the world's lithium reserves. 4 The Salar, alongside the neighboring Atacama regions in Chile and Argentina, are major sites for lithium extraction. This soft, silvery metal is currently used to power mobile connected devices, as a crucial material used for the production of lithium-Ion batteries. It is known as 'grey gold.' Smartphone batteries, for example, usually have less than eight grams of this material. 5 Each Tesla car needs approximately seven kilograms of lithium for its battery pack. 6 All these batteries have a limited lifespan, and once consumed they are thrown away as waste. Amazon reminds users that they cannot open up and repair their Echo, because this will void the warranty. The Amazon Echo is wall-powered, and also has a mobile battery base. This also has a limited lifespan and then must be thrown away as waste. According to the Ay
Bill Fulkerson

Why a 400-Year Program of Modernist Thinking is Exploding | naked capitalism - 0 views

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    " Fearless commentary on finance, economics, politics and power Follow yvessmith on Twitter Feedburner RSS Feed RSS Feed for Comments Subscribe via Email SUBSCRIBE Recent Items Links 3/11/17 - 03/11/2017 - Yves Smith Deutsche Bank Tries to Stay Alive - 03/11/2017 - Yves Smith John Helmer: Australian Government Trips Up Ukrainian Court Claim of MH17 as Terrorism - 03/11/2017 - Yves Smith 2:00PM Water Cooler 3/10/2017 - 03/10/2017 - Lambert Strether Why a 400-Year Program of Modernist Thinking is Exploding - 03/10/2017 - Yves Smith Links 3/10/17 - 03/10/2017 - Yves Smith Why It Will Take a Lot More Than a Smartphone to Get the Sharing Economy Started - 03/10/2017 - Yves Smith CalPERS' General Counsel Railroads Board on Fiduciary Counsel Selection - 03/10/2017 - Yves Smith Another Somalian Famine - 03/10/2017 - Yves Smith Trade now with TradeStation - Highest rated for frequent traders Why a 400-Year Program of Modernist Thinking is Exploding Posted on March 10, 2017 by Yves Smith By Lynn Parramore, Senior Research Analyst at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website Across the globe, a collective freak-out spanning the whole political system is picking up steam with every new "surprise" election, rush of tormented souls across borders, and tweet from the star of America's great unreality show, Donald Trump. But what exactly is the force that seems to be pushing us towards Armageddon? Is it capitalism gone wild? Globalization? Political corruption? Techno-nightmares? Rajani Kanth, a political economist, social thinker, and poet, goes beyond any of these explanations for the answer. In his view, what's throwing most of us off kilter - whether we think of ourselves as on the left or right, capitalist or socialist -was birthed 400 years ago during the period of the Enlightenment. It's a set of assumptions, a particular way of looking at the world that pushed out previous modes o
Steve Bosserman

The Fourth Industrial Revolution: Proceedings of a Workshop-in Brief - 0 views

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    The Forum's perspective on present and future technological and societal changes is captured in their 'Principled Framework for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.' Philbeck explained the four principles that characterize the Fourth Industrial Revolution. * Think systems, not technologies. Individual technologies are interesting, but it is their systemic impact that matters. Emerging technologies challenge our societal values and norms, sometimes for good, but sometimes also in negative ways; the Fourth Industrial Revolution will have civilization-changing impact-on species, on the planet, on geopolitics, and on the global economy. Philbeck suggested that wealth creation and aggregation supported by this phase of technological innovation may challenge societal commitments to accessibility, inclusivity, and fairness and create the need for relentless worker re-education. As Philbeck stated, "The costs for greater productivity are often externalized to stakeholders who are not involved in a particular technology's development." * Empowering, not determining. The Forum urges an approach to the Fourth Industrial Revolution that honors existing social principles. "We need to take a stance toward technology and technological systems that empowers society and acts counter to fatalistic and deterministic views, so that society and its agency is not nullified," said Philbeck. "Technologies are not forces; we have the ability to shape them and decide on how they are applied." * Future by design, and not by default. Seeking a future by design requires active governance. There are many types of governance-by individuals, by governments, by civic society, and by companies. Philbeck argued that failure to pay attention to critical governance questions in consideration of the Fourth Industrial Revolution means societies are likely to allow undemocratic, random, and potentially malicious forces to shape the future of technological systems and th
Bill Fulkerson

It's not all Pepes and trollfaces - memes can be a force for good - The Verge - 0 views

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    "How the 'emotional contagion' of memes makes them the internet's moral conscience By Allie Volpe Aug 27, 2018, 11:30am EDT Illustration by Alex Castro & Keegan Larwin SHARE Newly single, Jason Donahoe was perusing Tinder for the first time since it started integrating users' Instagram feeds. Suddenly, he had an idea: follow the Instagram accounts of some of the women he'd been interested in but didn't match with on the dating service. A few days later, he considered taking it a step further and direct messaging one of the women on Instagram. After all, the new interface of the dating app seemed to encourage users to explore other areas of potential matches' online lives, so why not take the initiative to reach out? Before he had a chance, however, he came across the profile of another woman whose Tinder photo spread featured a meme with Parks and Recreation character Jean-Ralphio Saperstein (Ben Schwartz) leaning into the face of Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott) with the caption: hey I saw you on Tinder but we didn't match so I found your Instagram you're so beautiful you don't need to wear all that makeup ahah I bet you get a lot of creepy dm's but I'm not like all those other guys message me back beautiful btw what's your snap "I was like, 'Oh shit, wow,'" Donahoe says. Seeing his potential jerk move laid out so plainly as a neatly generalized joke, he saw it in a new light. "I knew a) to be aware of that, and b) to cut that shit out … It prompted self-reflection on my part." THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MEMES STRIKE A CULTURAL CHORD AND CAN GUIDE AND EVEN INFLUENCE BEHAVIOR Donahoe says memes have resonated with him particularly when they depict a "worse, extreme version" of himself. For Donahoe, the most successful memes are more than just jokes. They "strike a societal, cultural chord" and can be a potent cocktail for self-reflection as tools that can guide and even influence behavior. In the months leading up to the 2016 US
Steve Bosserman

Realignment and Legitimacy - 1 views

  • “The Constitutional Crisis Is Now” [Robert Reich, The American Prospect]. “If [Trump] refuses to accept the results [the 2020] election, as he threatened to do if he lost the 2016 election, he will have to be forcefully removed from office.” This is lunacy. In 2016, liberal Democrats floated the idea that “faithless electors” in the Electoral College should not appoint Trump — based on information from the “intelligence community” that the public was not allowed to see. From that day to this, liberal Democrats haven’t accepted the results of 2016, which is what the “Clinton won the popular vote” amounts to. Is the inability to look in the mirror a 10%-er deformation professionnelle?
  • “The Democratic Party unraveling is not good for America” [Ed Rogers, WaPo]. “The Democratic Party is not functioning as an umbrella organization or even a coalition. Instead, activists from Tom Steyer to George Soros to Planned Parenthood are operating independently*, doing things a political party otherwise would. These independent actors are pushing pet causes. Traditional party building isn’t one of them. Campaign finance reform and communication technologies have empowered wealthy individuals and collateral groups while at the same time inhibiting parties and individual campaigns. I say this not to kick the Democratic Party while it is down but because I believe in the two-party system…. We need reforms that empower parties and candidates and diminish the influence of deep-pocketed plutocrats and narrowly focused interest groups.” Rogers is a veteran of the Reagan and Bush White Houses, but he’s not wrong. NOTE * Maybe. When you start thinking, it’s hard to know where the boundaries of the Democrat Party really are. For example, are journalists who propagate Brock talking points in the party, or not? My instinct is to say that they are, but how is an institution with fluid boundaries like that to be named and categorized? Or how about an organization like Emily’s List, ostensibly independent, but directing donors only to Democrats? (And Donna Shalala, but not Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Or Cynthia Nixon. Or Zephyr Teachout. Really, Emily’s List? Really?)
  • UPDATE “One-time Ohio congressional district candidate arrested while streaming incident live on Facebook” [WHIOTV-7]. This is Sam Ronan, who ran for DNC chair and had good things to say about election rigging. The odd thing about this story, and everything I’ve seen on the Twitter, is that he was arrested at his house, and nobody is saying why the cops were there in the first place. Readers?
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  • UPDATE “Maine Supreme Judicial Court rules ranked-choice voting unconstitutional” [Bangor Daily News]. From May, still germane: “In a unanimous, 44-page opinion issued Tuesday, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court’s seven justices agreed with Attorney General Janet Mills, Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap and Republican legislators that the system violates a provision of the Maine Constitution that allows elections to be won by pluralities — and not necessarily majorities — of votes.” The political establishment really, really hates RCV.
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    "Realignment and Legitimacy "The Constitutional Crisis Is Now" [Robert Reich, The American Prospect]. "If [Trump] refuses to accept the results [the 2020] election, as he threatened to do if he lost the 2016 election, he will have to be forcefully removed from office." This is lunacy. In 2016, liberal Democrats floated the idea that "faithless electors" in the Electoral College should not appoint Trump - based on information from the "intelligence community" that the public was not allowed to see. From that day to this, liberal Democrats haven't accepted the results of 2016, which is what the "Clinton won the popular vote" amounts to. Is the inability to look in the mirror a 10%-er deformation professionnelle? "The Democratic Party unraveling is not good for America" [Ed Rogers, WaPo]. "The Democratic Party is not functioning as an umbrella organization or even a coalition. Instead, activists from Tom Steyer to George Soros to Planned Parenthood are operating independently*, doing things a political party otherwise would. These independent actors are pushing pet causes. Traditional party building isn't one of them. Campaign finance reform and communication technologies have empowered wealthy individuals and collateral groups while at the same time inhibiting parties and individual campaigns. I say this not to kick the Democratic Party while it is down but because I believe in the two-party system…. We need reforms that empower parties and candidates and diminish the influence of deep-pocketed plutocrats and narrowly focused interest groups." Rogers is a veteran of the Reagan and Bush White Houses, but he's not wrong. NOTE * Maybe. When you start thinking, it's hard to know where the boundaries of the Democrat Party really are. For example, are journalists who propagate Brock talking points in the party, or not? My instinct is to say that they are, but how is an institution with fluid boundaries like that to be named and cate
Steve Bosserman

Are we living in a post-truth era? Yes, but that's because we're a post-truth species. - 0 views

  • A cursory look at history reveals that propaganda and disinformation are nothing new. In fact, humans have always lived in the age of post-truth. Homo sapiens is a post-truth species, who conquered this planet thanks above all to the unique human ability to create and spread fictions. We are the only mammals that can cooperate with numerous strangers because only we can invent fictional stories, spread them around, and convince millions of others to believe in them. As long as everybody believes in the same fictions, we all obey the same laws and can thereby cooperate effectively.
  • The truth is, truth has never been high on the agenda of Homo sapiens. If you stick to unalloyed reality, few people will follow you. False stories have an intrinsic advantage over the truth when it comes to uniting people. If you want to gauge group loyalty, requiring people to believe an absurdity is a far better test than asking them to believe the truth. If the chief says the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, only true loyalists will clap their hands. Similarly, if all your neighbors believe the same outrageous tale, you can count on them to stand together in times of crisis. If they are willing to believe only accredited facts, what does that prove?
  • Yet the difference between holy books and money is far smaller than it might seem. When most people see a dollar bill, they forget that it is just a human convention. As they see the green piece of paper with the picture of the dead white man, they see it as something valuable in and of itself. They hardly ever remind themselves, “Actually, this is a worthless piece of paper, but because other people view it as valuable, I can make use of it.” If you observed a human brain in an fMRI scanner, you would see that as someone is presented with a suitcase full of hundred-dollar bills, the parts of the brain that start buzzing with excitement are not the skeptical parts but the greedy parts. Conversely, in the vast majority of cases people begin to sanctify the Bible or the Vedas only after long and repeated exposure to others who view it as sacred. We learn to respect holy books in exactly the same way we learn to respect paper currency.
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  • Humans have a remarkable ability to know and not know at the same time. Or, more correctly, they can know something when they really think about it, but most of the time they don’t think about it, so they don’t know it. If you really focus, you realize that money is fiction. But you usually don’t think about it. If you are asked about it, you know that soccer is a human invention. But in the heat of a match, nobody asks. If you devote the time and energy, you can discover that nations are elaborate yarns. But in the midst of a war, you don’t have the time and energy.
  • Truth and power can travel together only so far. Sooner or later they go their separate paths. If you want power, at some point you will have to spread fictions. If you want to know the truth about the world, at some point you will have to renounce power. You will have to admit things — for example, about the sources of your own power — that will anger allies, dishearten followers, or undermine social harmony.
  • As a species, humans prefer power to truth. We spend far more time and effort on trying to control the world than on trying to understand it — and even when we try to understand it, we usually do so in the hope that understanding the world will make it easier to control it. If you dream of a society in which truth reigns supreme and myths are ignored, you have little to expect from Homo sapiens. Better to try your luck with chimps.
Steve Bosserman

Reddit's Alexis Ohanian warns 'hustle porn' is 'most toxic, dangerous thing' in tech in... - 0 views

  • While the term “hustle porn” may not be well known, it’s easily understood:“It is this idea that unless you are suffering, unless you are grinding, unless you are working every hour of every day and posting about it on Instagram, you are not working hard enough,” he told the audience. “Do not let hustle porn win here. And do not let it infect your brain … It is such bullshit. Such utter bullshit. And the worst part about it is it has deleterious effects, not just on your business, but on your personal wellbeing.”
Bill Fulkerson

What You Should Know About Megaprojects and Why: An Overview by Bent Flyvbjerg :: SSRN - 0 views

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    "his paper takes stock of megaproject management, an emerging and hugely costly field of study. First, it answers the question of how large megaprojects are by measuring them in the units mega, giga, and tera, concluding we are presently entering a new "tera era" of trillion-dollar projects. Second, total global megaproject spending is assessed, at USD 6-9 trillion annually, or 8 percent of total global GDP, which denotes the biggest investment boom in human history. Third, four "sublimes" - political, technological, economic, and aesthetic - are identified to explain the increased size and frequency of megaprojects. Fourth, the "iron law of megaprojects" is laid out and documented: Over budget, over time, over and over again. Moreover, the "break-fix model" of megaproject management is introduced as an explanation of the iron law. Fifth, Albert O. Hirschman's theory of the Hiding Hand is revisited and critiqued as unfounded and corrupting for megaproject thinking in both the academy and policy. Sixth, it is shown how megaprojects are systematically subject to "survival of the unfittest," explaining why the worst projects get built instead of the best. Finally, it is argued that the conventional way of managing megaprojects has reached a "tension point," where tradition is challenged and reform is emerging. "
Steve Bosserman

Which Industries Are Investing in Artificial Intelligence? - 0 views

  • The term artificial intelligence typically refers to automation of tasks by software that previously required human levels of intelligence to perform. While machine learning is sometimes used interchangeably with AI, machine learning is just one sub-category of artificial intelligence whereby a device learns from its access to a stream of data.When we talk about AI spending, we’re typically talking about investment that companies are making in building AI capabilities. While this may change in the future, McKinsey estimates that the vast majority of spending is done internally or as an investment, and very little of it is done purchasing artificial intelligence applications from other businesses.
  • 62% of AI spending in 2016 was for machine learning, twice as much as the second largest category computer vision. It’s worth noting that these categories are all types of “narrow” (or “weak”) forms of AI that use data to learn about and accomplish a specific narrowly defined task. Excluded from this report is “general” (or “strong”) artificial intelligence which is more akin to trying to create a thinking human brain.
  • The McKinsey survey mostly fits well as evidence supporting Cross’s framework that large profitable industries are the most fertile grounds of AI adoption. Not surprisingly, Technology is the industry with highest AI adoption and financial services also makes the top three as Cross would predict.Notably, automotive and assembly is the industry with the second highest rate of AI adoption in the McKinsey survey. This may be somewhat surprising as automotive isn’t necessarily an industry with the reputation for high margins. However, the use cases of AI for developing self-driving cars and cost savings using machine learning to improve manufacturing and procurement efficiencies are two potential drivers of this industry’s adoption.
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  • AI jobs are much more likely to be unfilled after 60 days compared to the typical job on Indeed, which is only unfilled a quarter of the time. As the demand for AI talent continues to grow faster than the supply, there is no indication this hiring cycle will become quicker anytime soon.
  • One thing we know for certain is that it is very expensive to attract AI talent, given that starting salaries for entry-level talent exceed $300,000. A good bet is that the companies that invest in AI are the ones with healthy enough profit margins that they can afford it.
Bill Fulkerson

Brace for the Blue Shift - The Atlantic - 0 views

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    This sort of late-breaking Democratic vote is the new, though still underappreciated, normal in national elections. Americans have become accustomed to knowing who won our elections promptly, but there are many legitimate votes that are not counted immediately every election year. For reasons that are not totally understood by election observers, these votes tend to be heavily Democratic, leading results to tilt toward Democrats as more of them are counted, in what has become known as the "blue shift." In most cases, the blue shift is relatively inconsequential, changing final vote counts but not results. But in others, as in 2018, it can materially change the outcome.
Bill Fulkerson

A Nonsensical Jumble of Misused Words Requires Discussion | RealClearMarkets - 0 views

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    In the few studies and examinations which exist, in using Treasury securities it's been figured these collateral re-pledging and rehypothecation chains average multiples of six to eight; meaning, that a single UST security might be reused for book and customer business six to eight times. Between 85% and 90% of all Treasuries taken on dealer books are re-used in some fashion. No wonder these banks might become skittish, and why Treasury (and similar collateral) prices remain the way they are. The value in UST's isn't as an investment; it's the liquidity premium demanded by a fragile global monetary system. These are balance sheet tools whose worth is derived from what central bankers and bank regulators (same thing) are in no rush to comprehend.
Bill Fulkerson

Are the elites worse than you think? - Marginal REVOLUTION - 0 views

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    .... elites are arguing from their class and demographic biases (a bias can be positive, to be clear), not from their expertise. That lowers the marginal value of expertise, at least given how our world operates. I recall earlier research blogged by Alex showing that if you are a French economist, your views are more influenced by being a French person than by being an economist.
Bill Fulkerson

How aerosols are formed - 0 views

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    Aerosols are suspensions of fine solid particles or liquid droplets in a gas. Clouds, for example, are aerosols because they consist of water droplets dispersed in the air. Such droplets are produced in a two-step process: first, a condensation nucleus forms, and then volatile molecules condense onto this nucleus, producing a droplet. Nuclei frequently consist of molecules different to those that condense onto them. In the case of clouds, the nuclei often contain sulphuric acids and organic substances. Water vapor from the atmosphere subsequently condenses onto these nuclei.
Bill Fulkerson

Irrigation schemes in sub-Saharan Africa are consistently falling short of their promises - 0 views

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    Large-scale irrigation infrastructure projects are back on the development agenda in sub-Saharan Africa after a near 30-year hiatus, despite projects having had disappointing results, with social and environmental side effects outweighing benefits. Such projects are planned in response to water scarcity pressures and are seen as a solution to intensify agricultural production, support rural economic development and enhance resilience to climate change.
Bill Fulkerson

Understanding Society: Observation, measurement, and explanation - 0 views

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    "What these examples have in common is that they illustrate two of the key tasks of the social sciences: to measure important social variables over time and space, and to identify the social mechanisms that lead to variation in these variables. There are large problems of methodology and conceptual clarification that need to be addressed in both parts of this agenda. On the side of measurement, we have the problems of arriving at consistent and revealing definitions of economic wellbeing, using incomplete historical sources to reconstruct estimates of prices and wages, and using a range of statistical methods to validate and interpret the results. And on the explanatory side, we are faced with the difficult task of reconstructing social processes and forces in the past that may have powered the changes we are able to document, and with the task of validating the hypotheses we have put forward on the basis of historical evidence."
Bill Fulkerson

The 'Radical' Left's Agenda Is More Popular Than the GOP's - 0 views

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    " The inequitable distribution of wealth, political knowledge, and free time in the United States gives wealthy individuals and corporations a leg up on ordinary Americans in the fight to influence public policy. But ordinary Americans have strength in numbers. And as DFP's polling suggests, there are no small number of progressive economic policies that a large majority of working people (from a wide array of regions, religious backgrounds, and ethnic groups) are ready to rally around. The trick is building institutions - and cultivating political leaders - that are willing and able to get that rally started."
Steve Bosserman

Gamification has a dark side - 0 views

  • Gamification is the application of game elements into nongame spaces. It is the permeation of ideas and values from the sphere of play and leisure to other social spaces. It’s premised on a seductive idea: if you layer elements of games, such as rules, feedback systems, rewards and videogame-like user interfaces over reality, it will make any activity motivating, fair and (potentially) fun. ‘We are starving and games are feeding us,’ writes Jane McGonigal in Reality Is Broken (2011). ‘What if we decided to use everything we know about game design to fix what’s wrong with reality?’
  • But gamification’s trapping of total fun masks that we have very little control over the games we are made to play – and hides the fact that these games are not games at all. Gamified systems are tools, not toys. They can teach complex topics, engage us with otherwise difficult problems. Or they can function as subtle systems of social control.
  • The problem of the gamified workplace goes beyond micromanagement. The business ethicist Tae Wan Kim at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh warns that gamified systems have the potential to complicate and subvert ethical reasoning. He cites the example of a drowning child. If you save the child, motivated by empathy, sympathy or goodwill – that’s a morally good act. But say you gamify the situation. Say you earn points for saving drowning children. ‘Your gamified act is ethically unworthy,’ he explained to me in an email. Providing extrinsic gamified motivators, even if they work as intended, deprive us of the option to live worthy lives, Kim argues. ‘The workplace is a sacred space where we develop ourselves and help others,’ he notes. ‘Gamified workers have difficulty seeing what contributions they really make.’
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  • The 20th-century French philosopher Michel Foucault would have said that these are technologies of power. Today, the interface designer and game scholar Sebastian Deterding says that this kind of gamification expresses a modernist view of a world with top-down managerial control. But the concept is flawed. Gamification promises easy, centralised overviews and control. ‘It’s a comforting illusion because de facto reality is not as predictable as a simulation,’ Deterding says. You can make a model of a city in SimCity that bears little resemblance to a real city. Mistaking games for reality is ultimately mistaking map for territory. No matter how well-designed, a simulation cannot account for the unforeseen.
Steve Bosserman

How Neuroscience Can Help Us Treat Trafficked Youth - Pacific Standard - 0 views

  • A common misconception is that these youths are choosing to engage in the commercial sex trade. But as recent advances in neuroimaging techniques help scientists unravel the myriad ways that trauma affects the brain, emerging evidence suggests that brain changes resulting from trauma could make young people more vulnerable to exploiters and less receptive to people trying to help. Rather than making a conscious decision to rebel, these kids are simply doing their best to survive, using the adaptive strategies that their brains developed in response to a perilous world.
  • Though the human brain is adaptable throughout life, adaptability is greatest during childhood, as the developing brain responds to the surrounding environment. Survival is the brain's top priority. Young people growing up in dangerous environments will develop brains that are highly responsive to threat cues. In particular, recent studies show that children who have experienced trauma exhibit drastic changes in their amygdala, an area of the brain wired to identify signs of danger.
  • Besides the amygdala, another brain region affected by trauma is the hippocampus, an area involved with contextual learning and memory. The hippocampus takes context into account, so that a person can appropriately respond to the same cues in different situations. For instance, most people would respond differently to hearing gunfire in a shooting range than they would to hearing gunfire in an airport.
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  • McLaughlin's research shows that youth who have experienced trauma have a smaller hippocampus than those who haven't, and are less able to take context into account when they detect a threat cue. When McLaughlin presented images of faces embedded in real-world scenes to kids, those with a history of trauma exhibited less activity in their hippocampus while viewing angry facial expressions. And when given a memory test afterward, they were less able to remember scenes in which they'd identified people displaying anger.
  • Because the brain remains malleable throughout life, it's never too late to mitigate the effects of trauma, McLaughlin says. There are a variety of evidence-based treatments that have proven effective in alleviating the mental-health consequences of trauma. For example, the technique of cognitive reappraisal, a cornerstone of Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, can help victims better regulate their emotions by changing the way they view a distressing situation. They can try to imagine that the situation is occurring far away from them, or that they are viewing the event from a removed perspective, as though watching a movie screen. When McLaughlin taught such techniques to young people in her lab, they were able to decrease their emotional reactivity as well as their amygdala response to negative stimuli.
Steve Bosserman

Are You Creditworthy? The Algorithm Will Decide. - 0 views

  • The decisions made by algorithmic credit scoring applications are not only said to be more accurate in predicting risk than traditional scoring methods; its champions argue they are also fairer because the algorithm is unswayed by the racial, gender, and socioeconomic biases that have skewed access to credit in the past.
  • Algorithmic credit scores might seem futuristic, but these practices do have roots in credit scoring practices of yore. Early credit agencies, for example, hired human reporters to dig into their customers’ credit histories. The reports were largely compiled from local gossip and colored by the speculations of the predominantly white, male middle class reporters. Remarks about race and class, asides about housekeeping, and speculations about sexual orientation all abounded.
  • By 1935, whole neighborhoods in the U.S. were classified according to their credit characteristics. A map from that year of Greater Atlanta comes color-coded in shades of blue (desirable), yellow (definitely declining) and red (hazardous). The legend recalls a time when an individual’s chances of receiving a mortgage were shaped by their geographic status.
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  • These systems are fast becoming the norm. The Chinese Government is now close to launching its own algorithmic “Social Credit System” for its 1.4 billion citizens, a metric that uses online data to rate trustworthiness. As these systems become pervasive, and scores come to stand for individual worth, determining access to finance, services, and basic freedoms, the stakes of one bad decision are that much higher. This is to say nothing of the legitimacy of using such algorithmic proxies in the first place. While it might seem obvious to call for greater transparency in these systems, with machine learning and massive datasets it’s extremely difficult to locate bias. Even if we could peer inside the black box, we probably wouldn’t find a clause in the code instructing the system to discriminate against the poor, or people of color, or even people who play too many video games. More important than understanding how these scores get calculated is giving users meaningful opportunities to dispute and contest adverse decisions that are made about them by the algorithm.
Bill Fulkerson

They Made a Movie Out of It | James Pogue - 0 views

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    At least some of my peers are now handing over their working lives to producing cynical content rigged to fit the desires of streaming services, which, when you think about it, is a small tragedy for a world as fucked as ours. Most of the good writers are not. But how could you not at least think about these imperatives when a strange new amalgam of Hollywood and tech offers the greatest rewards for a hit second novel and when magazines pay below rates that were standard three decades ago? Almost all notable book-length nonfiction written in this country emerges as an expansion of work that was first published by a magazine, so-whether they admit it or not-magazines are the incubators for the nonfiction writers who describe our world. But these outlets generally make not the barest pretense of trying to pay writers enough to build a life. Instead, editors at prestige outlets increasingly view writing as germinal IP.
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