Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

thefrailestthing.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 82 posts

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#41

Post by skybrian »

pacala wrote: post #38
skybrian wrote: post #33

If you hired a human assistant (or had an assistant at work), they would know when you're working and generally what you're up to. It would make sense that a digital assistant would need to know these things, too. It's inherently a high-trust relationship. Of course, the risks are different when you're trusting a device from a large corporation to take on a role that a human would do. I wouldn't buy one, but some peo…

If I catch said human assistant reporting my daily activities to a third party, they will be terminated with extreme prejudice.

It's not a third party. Google/Amazon is providing the service.

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#42

Post by pacala »

skybrian wrote: post #41
pacala wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I catch said human assistant reporting my daily activities to a third party, they will be terminated with extreme prejudice.

It's not a third party. Google/Amazon is providing the service.

That's the definition of a third party.

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#43

Post by core-questions »

mauld wrote: post #30

This is scary, but it is important we recognize that we can be controlled and have our behaviour modified by altering our environment - and that is can be a good things. Who hasn't delete Steam from their computer for a few weeks, thrown out junk food or set up a good workspace in order to promote a behavior in ourselves we want to cultivate, to be more like the person we want to be? The important thing is that in th…

The key thing to keep in mind here is incentives and motivation.

You have a motivation toward self improvement, you make a change to your environment, monitor it, and see what happens. You want to increase your physical fitness, awareness, education, life position, finances, etc. and you make corresponding changes where you and yours are the primary beneficiaries.

Google has a motivation to deliver value to their shareholders. They want to deliver more, so they take advantage of their privileged position in our lives and change our environment for us without asking, monitor it, and see what happens. They have far more capability for analysis and, considering the scale, far more financial motivation to make tiny adjustments that we would pass over in our own optimizations.

Is it necessarily evil or bad for us? No, it doesn't have to be, but I have very little faith in Google to make any choices that even border on altruistic when it's far more profitable to exploit us. Let's remember that fundamentally they are an advertising company, and that drives most of the money in the business; advertising isn't just ads as we know them, but fundamentally the business of changing your mind, suggesting things, and influencing your behaviour to make you exchange some money for some service or good.

When you have a privileged position of influence, and you're willing to sell it to literally anyone who signs up, there is clearly a lot of potential for abuse.

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#44

Post by jpm_sd »

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

I like to think (and

the sooner the better!)

of a cybernetic meadow

where mammals and computers

live together in mutually

programming harmony

like pure water

touching clear sky.

I like to think

(right now, please!)

of a cybernetic forest

filled with pines and electronics

where deer stroll peacefully

past computers

as if they were flowers

with spinning blossoms.

I like to think

(it has to be!)

of a cybernetic ecology

where we are free of our labors

and joined back to nature,

returned to our mammal

brothers and sisters,

and all watched over

by machines of loving grace.

by Richard Brautigan (1967)

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#45

Post by elvinyung »

Foucault, of course, talks about this. In Discipline and Punish:

>But the Panopticon was also a laboratory; it could be used as a machine to carry out experiments, to alter behaviour, to train or correct individuals. To experiment with medicines and monitor their effects. To try out different punishments on prisoners, according to their crimes and character, and to seek the most effective ones. To teach different techniques simultaneously to the workers, to decide which is the best. To try out pedagogical experiments – and in particular to take up once again the well-debated problem of secluded education, by using orphans ...

It's interesting to note that the argument made in this post is exactly what Deleuze said two decades after Foucault [1], that the mechanisms of "discipline" are moving outside of enclosed spaces because of the ever-longer trails of data that we leave everywhere.

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/778828

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#46

Post by dougmwne »

dranoel0226 wrote: post #3

I have nothing to hide and why wouldn't I want ads that better reflect my preferences?

I'll try to tackle the idea that you have nothing to hide. Let's assume that every last moment of your life has been collected, indexed, then either sold or hacked. It's all out there, for anyone to see. If you think this is implausible, consider that most people are never outside of arms reach of their gps/microphone/camera and that much of the data that's ever been collected has already been hacked or sold.

Would you prefer to hide:

-recordings of your sexual encounters from your family?

-the raunchiest porn you've ever looked at from your co-workers?

-your live GPS location from home burglars?

-your bank account balance from friends?

-your tax filings from scam artists?

-your off-color remarks you made 15 years ago while drunk from the person conducting your job interview?

-the drugs you tried in college from law enforcement?

-The minor legal transgression you committed from the person looking to shut down your political protest?

-the psychological trigger even you were unaware of from the deep learning algorithm designed to addict you to gambling.

-your sexual orientation from the autocratic government of the vacation spot you visited?

The only people who truly have nothing to hide are those who truly have nothing to lose. If that's you, then I'm sincerely sorry.

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#47

Post by lostconfused »

GenghisSean wrote: post #37
dpark wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kind of reminds me about how they say the highest level of automation of self-driving cars will be no steering wheel. Who decided that that was higher on the scale and a good thing? Everyone who's ever sat in traffic. It's a miserable experience and it is indeed a fundamentally better thing to be able to use that time in a more productive or entertaining fashion. Few people care if the steering wheel is entirely ab…

> Everyone who's ever sat in traffic. It's a miserable experience and it is indeed a fundamentally better thing to be able to use that time in a more productive or entertaining fashion. Few people care if the steering wheel is entirely absent, so long as it's not needed and it's not in the way. I'm sure many car enthusiasts care whether the steering wheel is entirely absent. Some people enjoy driving, albeit usually…

You got trapped in the car driving mode of thinking. Commuting and traffic is a necessary burden to most people. Most see automation as a way to reduce that burden by letting them spend the cognitive resources necessary for driving on something else.

The core problem is not the car, or who is driving it, but the fact that people need to spend a not insignificant amount of time traveling to and from the location or their employment.

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#48

Post by dboon »

21 wrote: post #15
api wrote: post #5

The Borg may turn out to be prophetic. We could turn into a hive mind of sorts. I've already been calling Internet fads, echo chambers, and meme outbreaks "Borgsongs." I seem to recall this term from STTNG for the omnipresent hive signal experienced by Borg.

Imagine a neural network who could design memes/songs by directly measuring a bunch of test subject brains. Kind of like a focus group. A short story even asked the question, could you engineer a meme/song so powerful that it could literally make you go insane? We know this stuff exists (brainwashing, cults, ...), but can you super concentrate it?

This is a core idea in Infinite Jest. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but if you fancy the writing style it is surreally poignant on today's addiction culture.

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#49

Post by ashrk »

21 wrote: post #12
inherentFloyd wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you want ads at all?

Because the alternative is paying. Do you want to pay for all the hundred sites you visit in a year?

The most valuable ones mostly aren't ad supported or paid anyway, and without competition from ad supported sites even more free ones for more purposes would exist and thrive (e.g. if Reddit died all those free volunteer run forums that used to be such a big part of the Web would come back)

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#50

Post by SkyMarshal »

skymuse wrote: post #24

I read some of google's patent mentioned in the text and thought it was interesting. They basically want a connected network of devices that communicate with each other and with google. Most of the devices follow the following algorithm: watch -> think -> act -> report. What is interesting is the 'report' phase of the algorithm. I think there is a battle between two competing AI philosophies. One philosophy thinks AI…

The latter philosophy sounds like what Apple is working towards with their recent A12X chip direction.
Post reply on HN