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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

#71

Post by Pigo »

inanutshellus wrote: post #39
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…

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…

We had innovation team member spawn a project that would track how often call center reps were seated and monitor their activity. I had to be the party-pooper that brought up how Draconian his amazing idea was. I told our lead I refused to work on projects that spied on people to punish them, but would love to work on projects that reward people for doing a good job as long as it respects their privacy.

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

#72

Post by socialcooling »

Mikushi wrote: post #61
voidhorse wrote: post #11

I think the creator may be better off conducting a through philosophical investigation in efforts of pinning down the concept. You would be much better off giving full citations to Foucault and Deleuze, and full analysis into the Snowden incident and the fallout rather than a sort of half nod to, what I think, are the foundation beams of this concept. This page kind of assumes the audience is already willing to admit…

> All this being stated, ya'll should check out Horkheimer's essay "The Concept of Man." He wrote it in ~1952(might've been 53 or 57, I'm forgetting the exact date)--and it's crazy how prophetic that essay turned out to be. It shows how all our innovation really just led to an amplification of social structures and patterns that were already emerging during the dawn of automation and mechanization. I think it's relev…

I had the same problem.

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

#73

Post by imron »

bem94 wrote: post #67
imron wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

True. But from my own experience I get the impression most engineers are ignorant in this regard rather than malicious. Though I'm happy (or not..) to see evidence to the contrary. We all enable it, I'm not sure the awareness of the full affect is there though.

For me, it was being a software developer that made me aware of it.

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

#74

Post by pitt1980 »

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.

Seems like there's an interesting analogy between keeping a startup in stealth mode and keeping your ideas in stealth mode

I see it pretty often here, the start up idea in stealth mode mocked (reasonably I think) the advantage of getting feedback on you idea far out weighs the potential disadvantage getting your idea stolen

seems like something similar might be going on here, lots of people worry about something they say being used against them later, but theirs a cost to that

when you put your ideas in a public place, and expose them to smart people, those critiques sharpen your ideas and give you useful feedback

if you're not actively trying to troll people, and legitimately trying to make your points in good faith

its probably highly unlikely that the potential downsides will outweigh the positives from improving your ideas by getting feedback on them

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

#75

Post by ocdtrekkie »

bem94 wrote: post #50
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's any risk of that. As I pull out my favorite quote for the last few months: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair Very few people in the upper echelons of society (like highly-paid Silicon Valley engineers) truly believe they're doing something wrong, or could even be convinced they are doing something wrong.…

> "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair One of my favourite quotes too, but I refuse to accept it as law. If people really do work at places like Google, Uber and Palantir to make the world a better place, then it suggests they would care if they are making the world a worse place inadvertantly, right? In which case it just takes…

I'm not saying that it's impossible to overcome, just very difficult. This is cognitive dissonance territory, and a lot of people would rather just deny what's presented to them then reevaluate what they've been doing for a number of years.

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

#76

Post by imron »

fictioncircle wrote: post #52
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.

> Roko's basilisk

Curiosity killed the cat. Now I have to decide whether to destroy it or help it..

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

#77

Post by Bartweiss »

fictioncircle wrote: post #52
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.

> Its alot like Roko's basilisk that way. Once you know the capability exists, you have to destroy it or help it.

I sort of wish Roko's hadn't played out as such a joke, because the general sentiment is actually a really under-appreciated one.

There are all kinds of settings where the best outcomes are gained by either preventing a thing or enabling it - and succeeding. Revolutions seem like the obvious case, where the highest payoffs accrue to the vanguard revolutionaries (if they win) or the establishment (if they win). Various doomsday cults in fiction also count, where people produce a bad outcome on the logic that if someone else does it first, that would be even worse.

It's actually really nice to have the idea of something which is sensible to restrain, right up until it gets out of control and turns on the people who restrained it.

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

#78

Post by captainmuon »

Pigo wrote: post #69
captainmuon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I completely agree, and it's the very reason social media holds no interest for me anymore. I think people have forgotten what it used to be like on Myspace and the early days of Facebook. Social media was about self expression and finding out where the party is, now it's a finely tuned marketing platform for grandmothers.

> Social media was about self expression and finding out where the party is

Exactly! My next project is going to be something like that. Based on the fediverse/Mastodon, but firstly about self-expression, connecting with real friends, meeting people. You curate your own home page, share what you want to share, you are invited to interact with strangers. No social media bs. Trying to capture the feeling of local / university social networks pre facebook, or the feeling of myspace.

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

#79

Post by jcadam »

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.

Definitely. I pretty much keep silent on political/social issues online these days. It's just not worth the risk of being targeted for personal/professional destruction by the internet social outrage machine (Fortunately, we still have secret ballots here in the US, so at least some form of political speech can be engaged in safely).

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

#80

Post by Bartweiss »

creepydata wrote: post #53
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."

Surely this is a case of "why not both?"

Campaigns to get people fired when their online posts are revealed are well-attested from all parts of the political spectrum, and generally come out of doxxing efforts that hiring managers don't undertake. There are even campaigns that boil down to "this person said X, harass/troll their employer so that even if the employer doesn't object to X it becomes too costly to keep them employed".

But at the same time, hiring managers have Google and all kinds of tools random harassers don't, like the ability to check criminal records and credit scores. (And there's a great example of an opaque and inaccurate tool governing people's lives - just read about the people sharing a name and birthdate with someone who has bad credit or legal issues!)

So yeah, hiring managers with Google. But I wouldn't discount the other issue either, since it can cause people problems even for comments that don't violate any general social standard.

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