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Social Cooling – How big data is increasing pressure to conform

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Re: Social Cooling – How big data is increasing pressure to conform

#51

Post by imron »

bem94 wrote: post #13

I really feel that engineers need to wake up to this kind of thing. I'm not saying we should stop (although that's what might happen), just that we pause and consider what this is doing to the world. It is the undercurrent for so many profound changes going on right now. Are we really comfortable as individuals building systems which predict someones mental (ill) health, personality traits or ethnicity just so we can…

> I really feel that engineers need to wake up to this kind of thing.

Wake up to this thing? Who do you think is enabling it and laughing all the way to the bank and/or the VC money?

Re: Social Cooling – How big data is increasing pressure to conform

#52

Post by fictioncircle »

bicubic wrote: post #3

I was going to write at length about my concerns on this topic, and then I decided not to. Because it's entirely possible that one day many years from now, a prospective employer/insurer/whatever finds such a comment and flags me for it. That's the cooling effect in a nutshell.

And this is why we need online anonymity, to be perfectly honest.

Its too dangerous to be honest under you real name and has been for years.

Its alot like Roko's basilisk that way. Once you know the capability exists, you have to destroy it or help it. There isn't really any middle ground.

Re: Social Cooling – How big data is increasing pressure to conform

#53

Post by creepydata »

nippples wrote: post #10

> People are starting to realize that this 'digital reputation' could limit their opportunities. Thanks to the moral police and keyboard warriors out there normalizing contacting employers over an internet argument.

I think you meant to say "hiring managers Googling potential employees."

Re: Social Cooling – How big data is increasing pressure to conform

#54

Post by andreasgonewild »

Fuxy wrote: post #5

And this is why Facebook has become my go to place for contacting old friends I haven't talked to in years and relatives I speak too even less. If it's people I interact with all the time there's other ways of contact that are less data mined like a good old text message or phone call. Oh yeah and my last Facebook post is well over a year ago. There's no way in hell I will post random pictures it that will show me in…

Forget about posting. Even visiting that stupid site will mess with your mind and others in unseen ways. All parties are at all times interacting with a set of algorithms optimized for profit/integrity intrusions/behavioral changes/god knows. You might think you're smart enough, but then why are they spending so much money on something that doesn't work. Just say no.

https://github.com/andreas-gone-wild/snackis

Re: Social Cooling – How big data is increasing pressure to conform

#56

Post by socialcooling »

golemotron wrote: post #12

In one model of human behavior we all just become better people because we self-censor. I think that may be true for the first generation of people experiencing these effects in a society. Later generations will have more of a problem. The problem comes when they repress negative emotions and other status detractors because the cost of even being aware of them is too high. Then you have people who, in psychological t…

Author here:

I also worry about Learned Helplessness, where we believe that there is nothing we can do about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

In Silicon Valley the Technological Determinist view that technology has it's own will, that it is some unstoppable force, is the dominant but dangerous viewpoint.

That idea is only creating a self-fulfilling prophesy.

The reality is that we as a society have always taken the rough edges of new technologies through the creation of laws and new norms. For example, we pretty much put a halt to nuclear energy.

We can and we must regulate the Big Data world much more. And the first step is that we must help people understand the problem.

Re: Social Cooling – How big data is increasing pressure to conform

#57

Post by vladf »

I might be misunderstanding the point being made here, but at one part doesn't make sense to me. The digital reputation argument seems to be saying "big data is bad because your reputation (i.e., people's valuations of your past actions) is now more accessible to people." Such an argument can hold two ways:

1. Giving anyone access to your reputation is inherently bad.

2. Giving some amount of people access to your reputation is OK, but the amount of people big data gives it access to is now magically worse.

(1) is definitely untrue, at least to most people. We all definitely use our knowledge of other's reputations to make judgements, and apply social pressure to make them conform. For instance, if someone you know is a rich snob, or a vehement racist, you won't hang out with them.

(2) seems ad hoc. Why would letting more people know about your reputation magically be worse? Whether someone knows about your reputation should either be bad or not -- it's not dependent on how many other people are aware of your reputation.

Re: Social Cooling – How big data is increasing pressure to conform

#59

Post by captainmuon »

bicubic wrote: post #3

I was going to write at length about my concerns on this topic, and then I decided not to. Because it's entirely possible that one day many years from now, a prospective employer/insurer/whatever finds such a comment and flags me for it. That's the cooling effect in a nutshell.

I've been saying this for a while: We as a society have to stop taking everything that is said on the internet so fucking seriously.

You shouldn't have to think everything perfectly though that you write. It's OK to say something dumb, or even offensive. It's not great, but no big deal either. I don't want to live in a world where we have to polish and double-check every thought that leaves our minds.

It used to be that a written statement was something important, with gravitas, with thought and meaning put into it. You rarely sat down and wrote a letter or a book. But the vast majority of utterances on the net are not like that, so we shouldn't treat them so. We shouldn't apply yesterdays standards to them.

----

Actually, I believe this will be all moot in a few years. With the rise of AI, and the continuing increase in storage and bandwidth, we might reach a "one million monkeys with typewriters" scenario. There will be every possible utterance and every possible embarrasing photo of everyone on the net. It will be trivially possible to fake your voice and image. (Unless we enter the cryptpocalypse in which everything is signed...)

This is currently an odd period of time, in which we can create data, but can hardly fake it. There is authencity, proof of authorship. We can hold people responsible for how they behave and what they think. Before that was, and after it will be, just hearsay. It sounds super scary, but to be honest I find the thought quite liberating.

Re: Social Cooling – How big data is increasing pressure to conform

#60

Post by sixstringtheory »

bem94 wrote: post #47
inanutshellus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like any other thing in capitalism. You'll have a contingent of folk that won't do the work, based on ethical reasons, and you have folk that will, for financial reasons. Anecdotally, the few folks I know that work for data collection companies are all "tinfoil hat" types. They have flip-phones, they have no online presence, they smile like a Cheshire Cat when you ask them about it and you generally get the impr…

> It's like any other thing in capitalism. You'll have a contingent of folk that won't do the work, based on ethical reasons, and you have folk that will, for financial reasons. That is true, but going on my peers (especially the ones fresh from university), I think a dangerous proportion of people simply aren't aware on any level of the ethical implications of what they do. It's that which worries me.

I don't think I've ever seen as much apathy in a classroom as my fellow CS majors displayed in our society and ethics course.
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