Intellectual Humility & the importance of knowing you might be wrong

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

It is possible (but not simple) to buy legit "rooted" Android phones that you can install as little or as much as you want on them.
There are also ways to not be transmitting your data 24/7: don't stay logged into Google or Facebook all the time on your phone. Again, not so simple.

Yes, it is possible, but for most people, it’s not only beyond their capabilities, but it is also not even on their radar screen. I’ve always maintained my own domains, and use my own email servers. I don’t use cloud software outside of basic storage (and only for very limited things). Don’t own a cell phone. I do my best to be untracable online. And of course I never use Google for searches. There are many less-spooky alternatives out there.

Recently the public seemed to wake up (at least briefly) to the fact that facebook was mining their personal data and selling it to others. I both laughed and curmudgeonly complained (ask my long-suffering spouse) when everyone got all upset when they “discovered” this. It’s their entire business model It’s in the Terms of Use .

Then there was the completely hilarious session with Zuckerberg before Congress. I still don’t think most of the legislators understand that the thing everyone seems so upset about is EXACTLY the business FB and Google and Apple and all the rest are in — mining and selling personal data. And lest we forget, that’s what forums like CF is all about as well, but at a much less sophisticated level.

There is no evidence that Google cares about politics. It cares about profits. It doesn’t have to be King. It’s already pulling most of the puppet strings.

[tp12]

Originally Posted by cyan

I suspect that they did not START with anything but profits in mind. However, if one day you just happened to possess THE ultimate power: owning more information than the NSA ever did about what most in the modern world say, think, and do with an unprecedented ability to influence those people, with the silent approval of those same people ... would you simply keep selling them stuff? Perhaps the answer merits more than 100 milliseconds of imagination.

PS All items in my 7-step world domination recipe have been done by google except for #6 which was simply a colorful premise.

How much choice would you really have if the US Government came calling wanting access citing 'National Security'? Waving Government contracts around etc.

[transmitterdan]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

It is possible (but not simple) to buy legit "rooted" Android phones that you can install as little or as much as you want on them.
There are also ways to not be transmitting your data 24/7: don't stay logged into Google or Facebook all the time on your phone. Again, not so simple.

Facebook can send data to the mothership even if you log out of Facebook. Didn't they get slammed a year or so ago in Europe for doing just that? And all those web sites with the "handy" Facebook/twitter/instagram login buttons surely feed data back to those companies even if you aren't logged in.

If you don't want Facebook/google/twitter/instagram to track you then turn off your Internet connection...err...well there is no way to not be tracked on the Internet.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by cyan

Alas, you seem to have glossed over the really helpful data collection part. It's cool, most people accept this and move on as well. That's kind of my main point, though.

Uh, if your Mom collected green stamps at the grocery store, or you collect Airmiles... or you have ANY kind of charge-card... you've been part of the wonderful world of commercial data collection. It didn't start with the Internet. They just made it easier.

I suspect that [Google] did not START with anything but profits in mind.

Some people actually get off on creating and developing new things. Profit's a strong motivator too, especially at the growth and finance stage, but no, you can't just wake up one day wanting to be rich REAL BAD, and create a Google.

However, if one day you just happened to possess THE ultimate power: owning more information than the NSA ever did about what most in the modern world say, think, and do with an unprecedented ability to influence those people, with the silent approval of those same people ... would you simply keep selling them stuff? Perhaps the answer merits more than 100 milliseconds of imagination.

PS All items in my 7-step world domination recipe have been done by google except for #6 which was simply a colorful premise.

No, 0.1 sec was more than enough. It's funny/sad that those who are obsessed or driven by power & money think that that's the only thing that drives other people too. I don't know if that's the case with you, but it would explain why you might think so.


There are of course companies and people who are quite keen on exploiting such info for political gain. We can think of at least ONE election, can't we? Hint - Cambridge Analytica.


Also, spend another 100 milliseconds on this: given the bias Google is accused of having... if they have the muscle you claim, and they flexed it... do you think the US election would have had the same outcome?

[rsn48]

The problem with acknowledge you are wrong is the repercussions. One example. Guess how many nurses today in North America handed out medications in a 24 hour period. Now try to guess the percentage of errors handing out those meds. Logic will tell you nurses don't score 100 % compliance. I've been responsible for medications and gotten it wrong, usually not giving the med rather than mixing the meds up. When I could I corrected the error, but then you get into how many times can you be wrong and still be acceptable in your profession.

So can a scientist be wrong 12 times and still be acceptable?

In psychology, there is a history of lying and one who was good at it was Sigmund Freud. Sigmund wanted to be famous so he spoke of "cures" in his literature that just weren't legit when followed up. Not a psychologist but Margaret Meade also adjusted the truth to suit her findings which were eventually challenged.

Psychology is an art and science, sometimes more art, sometimes more science. But the necessity of psychology as an art and science is necessary for a better humanity, the skeptics are wrong. And usually those skeptics are like many of those that criticize, long in verbiage short on experience and education in the field.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by transmitterdan

If you don't want Facebook/google/twitter/instagram to track you then turn off your Internet connection...err...well there is no way to not be tracked on the Internet.

Well, mainly, don't sign up to FB/Twitter/Instagram etc. I've managed to eke out a meagre yet satisfying existence without ever joining them. Google - as a developer, I'm a reasonably happy consumer of many of their offerings like Google Maps. And I use other Google utilities as well.

As I said before, tracking is universal and existed well before the Internet. For most people, it means that the ads they keep seeing are creepily on-point... and that's about it. Til more politicians figure out how to exploit it, anyway.

There are ways to be just about untrackable, but discussing it now would tax my intellectual humility.

[cyan]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Uh, if your Mom collected green stamps at the grocery store, or you collect Airmiles... or you have ANY kind of charge-card... you've been part of the wonderful world of commercial data collection. It didn't start with the Internet. They just made it easier.

If "easier" means several orders of magnitude more data stored on cheap private storage that wasn't even possible in the green-stamp days, then yes. Easier. (kinda missing the point, still)

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Some people actually get off on creating and developing new things. Profit's a strong motivator too, especially at the growth and finance stage, but no, you can't just wake up one day wanting to be rich REAL BAD, and create a Google.

Well, sure. The embedded systems company I started was really fun, but we also needed money to keep going. People like me often advance technology for reasons other than money, then the money happens to flow in. Happy days. I'm not sure what some of my nerdy partners would do with data collected on billions of people, though. Nerds can be...umm.. creepy?

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

No, 0.1 sec was more than enough. It's funny/sad that those who are obsessed or driven by power & money think that that's the only thing that drives other people too. I don't know if that's the case with you, but it would explain why you might think so.

Fair guess, but no- I'm currently driven by the need to sail to distant beaches in warm seas. I have enough money, don't really want more. Just need to find time.

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Also, spend another 100 milliseconds on this: given the bias Google is accused of having... if they have the muscle you claim, and they flexed it... do you think the US election would have had the same outcome?

I don't have any interest in political accusations as this new pick-a-side environment seems to discount individual critical thinking. We don't know WHAT Google did or did not do. It would be really hard to argue that they DON'T have the muscle to do very bad things. I find it curious that some people simply assume the best intentions of a company with more power over people than any other in the history of the world. I might have stated something similar about big government in the past. This "company" bit is brand new.
Of course I know I might be wrong.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by cyan

We don't know WHAT Google did or did not do. It would be really hard to argue that they DON'T have the muscle to do very bad things. I find it curious that some people simply assume the best intentions of a company with more power over people than any other in the history of the world.

I think (naively, perhaps) that if Google did anything substantial in this area... we'd know. There are still enough competitors and critical observers that it would be hard to be completely under the radar with that. There'd also be internal dissent and whistleblowers.

I'm not assuming "best intentions", but I don't think Google is in the grips of a moustache-twirling arch-villain either. Yet.

[john61ct]

The entire Internet was borne out of the US military-surveillance complex. Nobody remembers DARPA?

Sergey Brin and Larry Page got important seed money from CIA / NSA adjacent sources very early on.

https://medium.com/insurge-intellige...e-e836451a959e

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=...&v=ZTC_RxWN_xo

[cyan]

Originally Posted by john61ct

The entire Internet was borne out of the US military-surveillance complex. Nobody remembers DARPA?

Sergey Brin and Larry Page got important seed money from CIA / NSA adjacent sources very early on.

And the hash SHA-256, which secures every major bank transaction in the world (and bitcoin) was introduced by the NSA. It will be (has been?) cracked one day soon, just like its predecessor SHA-1 was. Then the world banks will migrate again, probably to SHA-3. The implications are so obvious that it makes google’s potential power seem childish. Do we all really believe that the benevolent NSA didn’t offer the world’s banks an encryption algorithm for 5 trillion dollars of transfers per day that wasn’t YET cracked? The potential there is so outlandish that it becomes literally unbelievable, which safeguards the whole secret. Present this stuff on a forum and most will wonder what size of tin foil hat you own.

Don’t really care though. My celestial navigation skills are improving. If my sextant goes overboard I’ll just follow Arcturas night and catch fish during the day. Who really needs money. Life is good.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Blame "Old Farts", not Google/Facebook/U-Tube.

Who shared fake news on Facebook during the 2016 US presidential election?

People over 65 and ultra conservatives shared about seven times more fake information masquerading as news on the social media site than younger adults, moderates and super liberals during the 2016 election season, a new study* finds.

When other demographic factors and overall posting tendencies are factored in, the average person older than 65 shared seven times more false information than those between 18 and 29.
The seniors shared more than twice as many fake stories as people between 45 and 64 and more than three times that of people in the 30- to 44-year-old range.

People who called themselves very conservative shared the most false information, a bit more than those who identify themselves as conservative. The very conservatives shared misinformation 6.8 times more often than the very liberals and 6.7 times more than moderates. People who called themselves liberals essentially shared no fake stories

This does not necessarily mean that conservatives are by nature more gullible when it comes to false stories. It could simply reflect that there was much more pro-Trump and anti-Clinton false information in circulation in 2016 and it drove the numbers for sharing.

Spoiler Alert: Unsupported Opinion (or maybe, a question?) Follows - no citations provided. Oh, and I'm over 70 yo.

However, it may also be that conservatives post more false information because they tend to be more extreme, with less ideological variation than their liberal counterparts, and they take their lead from President Trump, who advocates, supports, shares and produces fake news/misinformation on a regular basis.

* The Study ➥ Less than you think: Prevalence and predictors of fake news dissemination on Facebook | Science Advances

Who funded the study.???
A sceptic..

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Who funded the study.???
A sceptic..

I read the study. The strongest correlation was between age and the sharing of false news. One obvious explanation for this is that the older one is, the less Internet-media savvy one is. The study discussed this point.

However, if I read it correctly, the researchers continued to find a significant correlation between "ultra conservatives” and the sharing of false news, even when age was factored out. This second relationship was far weaker than the simple age one.

They also point out that the vast majority of fake news actually involved content around Trump. This in itself is interesting given the constant counter claim of the USA president, but regardless, the study points out that since most of the fake news was from the ultra conservative perspective, the fact that it was shared more by this group may not be surprising.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Who funded the study.???
A sceptic..

I would suppose the schools/departments, with which they're affiliated.
The authors were Andrew Guess of the Department of Politics and Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, Fisher Hall, Princeton, NJ ,
and
Jonathan Nagler & Joshua Tucker of the Wilf Family Department of Politics and Social Media and Political Participation (SMaPP) Lab, New York University, New York, NY

➥ https://andyguess.com/
➥ http://as.nyu.edu/content/nyu-as/as/...an-nagler.html
➥ https://wp.nyu.edu/fas-joshuatucker/

Mike's brief synopsis has it about right.

[transmitterdan]

Yeah, those are some ultra-center institutions....not.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by transmitterdan

Yeah, those are some ultra-center institutions....not.

Given the central premise of the thread... don't you have some obligation to demonstrate or prove that these are irredeemably biased institutions or people?