81–90 of 136 posts
I respect Schneier but this is basically 10x-ing the word count on Terry Tao’s 2016 blog post: https://www.google.com/amp/s/terrytao.wordpress.com/2016/06/... Unacceptable to me that it wasn’t referenced as it certainly made the rounds in security circles.
The only counter-measure that works against polluting the polity with influence operations is earnestly educating people to be critical consumers of information. Why? Because one cannot empower government to counter-message influence operations without risking an abuse of power. My son's middle school appears to be tackling this problem to some degree by teaching students to: (a) not accept 'facts' without multiple s…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They may be less vulnerable to attacks from outsiders, but they are much more vulnerable to attacks from their own government. It's similar to totalitarian governments; they might keep organized crime low, but they expose people to far more crime from the government itself. I would expect people in China and in the Chinese government to also be more vulnerable to misleading and suboptimal information, because there i…
>They may be less vulnerable to attacks from outsiders, but they are much more vulnerable to attacks from their own government. It's similar to totalitarian governments Interesting that you say that about China, because that was exactly Bruce Schneier's conclusion about the United States: >Our research implies that insider attacks from within American politics can be more pernicious than attacks from other countries.…
> [People in dictatorships] may be less vulnerable [than people in democracies] to attacks from outsiders, but they are much more vulnerable to attacks from their own government.
What the study is saying is:
> Our research implies that insider attacks from within American politics can be more pernicious than attacks from other countries.
That is, I'm comparing the vulnerability of people in democracies to people in dictatorships; the report is comparing the vulnerability of people in democracies to attack A or attack B. We're not disagreeing.
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>They may be less vulnerable to attacks from outsiders, but they are much more vulnerable to attacks from their own government. It's similar to totalitarian governments Interesting that you say that about China, because that was exactly Bruce Schneier's conclusion about the United States: >Our research implies that insider attacks from within American politics can be more pernicious than attacks from other countries.…
> Without any evidence whatsoever, he said that Democrats were trying to steal the election through "FRAUD." Well, wait a minute - both of those races had already been called in favor of the Republican candidate on the night of the election until boxes and boxes of mysteriously Democrat-leaning ballots were suddenly found the following day... I think that constitutes evidence, even if it's not conclusive.
> mysteriously
Is there a basis for this word?
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I am not downvoting you but I disagree. A friend of mine has two daughter in a Montessori like school. One of them has a young teacher, the other a more experienced one. One of them is severely lacking in basic arithmetic and grammar and the other one is striving. Anecdata but when I add my experience and feedback from acquaintances in teaching position I conclude that the style doesn't matter as much as the teacher.
Striving for what???
The only counter-measure that works against polluting the polity with influence operations is earnestly educating people to be critical consumers of information. Why? Because one cannot empower government to counter-message influence operations without risking an abuse of power. My son's middle school appears to be tackling this problem to some degree by teaching students to: (a) not accept 'facts' without multiple s…
The difference now is that the 5 multi-national corporations that controlled nearly everything we saw and heard are losing their monopoly on what information reaches the population.
Everybody loved big data and social media when Obama used it to win and when Arab Spring happened. But now it's a threat to democracy, I wonder what changed?
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> Essentially, he noted how computers gave people tools to produce and consume more information, but not the tools to discern, filter and analyze it more effectively. It's a profound and very important observation. Is it, really? There's a myriad of analytic tools for every imaginable domain, and even more domain-independent ones. You just need to be skilled enough to use them properly; not because the tools are bad,…
The information is coming at you regardless of your expertise. Those who don't have the expertise are at a distinct disadvantage to those who do. The tools may be good in the technical sense, but in the do they help normal people out sense they often are not. I would call that a bad situation, one we need to find creative and effective ways to remedy.
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I don't think libertarians are shills in that I believe they are genuine in wanting to improve society. However, in my experience their policies tend to be built on the assumption that the government is entirely restructured in line with libertarian principles. Since that is unlikely to ever happen, those policies that do get implemented tend to assist those who already hold power. As an example, my understanding is…
Some libertarians (such as myself) generally believe corporations already have strong incentives to make non-defective products. Some products that compromise safety for cost provide consumers low cost options they would otherwise not have. Efforts to regulate such products to make them safer can cause more harm than good (by making such products more expensive and therefore unavailable so consumers will use somethin…
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For the reasons you gave: as a litmus test for whether a politician is a statesman or a shill, I look at whether he/she supports public education or not.
Which do you think is more likely to develop students into citizens capable of independent thought: a) Sitting at a desk. Not allowed to talk unless called upon. Exactly following a schedule determined by authority figures. b) Being free to move about the room. Able to choose your activity with your peers.A constructivist or "discovery" model, where students learn concepts from working with materials, rather than by…
The reason people get up in arms about the whole "school choice" thing is that it is often used as a way to disguise attacks on the public education system. 'Give people vouchers so they can choose whatever school they want.'
Many times it is meant to funnel money into private charter schools and starve the public education system. There are no price controls so the reality is that people will still be priced out of the best private schools.
Not saying everyone who supports vouchers has ulterior motives but there are some people pushing them who absolutely have ulterior motives. And ultimately I don't think that the public school is hopeless because there are plenty of districts and even states that have great schools. It's just that there's a huge gulf between the best public schools in America and the worst.
We are strongly concerned with accuracy (correctness, completeness, consistency) on the network layers but I've been thinking that we need to apply the same emphasis to accuracy on the data layer. We'd never accept the data layer's error rate on the network layer. Another way of looking at it: We do emphasize accuracy in data in business databases - again, we'd never accept the error rate common in 'general' informat…
I think it depends on which "we" you're talking about! In many cases, "we" do value accurate information. I'm thinking not just of high-quality news organizations, but fact-checking sites like Snopes or Politifact -- both real treasures, in my opinion. However, if you cite either On The Internet, you'll often receive the response: "Pshh please. [Fact-checking site] is totally biased." This response is, in my opinion,…
I think one can't undo decades of living in a completely separate social millieu, even in the same city in the same generation, by pointing at a website. How much less so when people come from different parts of the country, or even neighbouring countries, or even are from different continents. It takes time, and patience, and a lot of getting it wrong and still not giving up.
It also helps to not drift apart in the first place. How many people are ignored or even mocked for being not so intelligent or other issues -- until they "become a problem", or rant at people on the bus, and then the other people can't figure out why they have no way to reach them, a person who they didn't even see until they became a problem. At that point it may or may not be possible anymore, but it didn't begin at the point where it became too problematic for us to ignore.
Heck, how often do "stupid" people get gleefully blamed for being gullible and getting exploited? A lot of things that are shrugged off with "makes business sense" do hurt real people, pile on real bitterness onto a life that may already be hard enough. The bitterness doesn't disappear just because it's ignored or even censored, to the contrary.
I would say that we didn't lose goodwill and solidarity towards each other because of language, differing sets of agreed on facts, but we somehow shed our goodwill and solidarity, and then used language to try and cover it up. Now language is losing its power, facts cease to matter, wise or knowledgeable people command no respect -- but that may be more a symptom than a cause.
To put a sharper point on it: when clever slogans were still useful to get people in line and to exploit them systematically, the intelligentsia didn't exactly scream bloody murder and went on strike, it for the most part went along. So now factuality doesn't matter anymore, tribes and slogans do. Predictably, understandably so. This cannot be repaired without acknowledging intellectual dishonesty, and misdeeds against "the common man", something neither government or corporate or intellectual elites seem to be prepared to do in earnest.
> They who have put out the people's eyes reproach them of their blindness.
-- John Milton
Yet I can talk with a person and not be able to follow their argument at all, or flat out disagree with that they consider to be fact, but still know from their body language and past interactions that they have goodwill towards me. If I also feel goodwill towards them and they know that, we may not "learn" something from each other that day, but even then that conversations can be a pleasant experience that increases our familiarity and sympathy. If I just act standoff-ish until I'm convinced the other person is thinking all the right things, I'll never get anywhere.
Think how even animals of different species sometimes can form friendships and arrangements without exchanging a single abstract concept. Or how small kids that don't speak the same language might still play and build together just fine (the awkwardness and getting hung up on pointless stuff seems to come later in life), and how we learn language in the first place just based on some basic trust and being allowed to experiment. If you have the mutual goodwill, it's not complex, it happens "by itself". Without it, it gets complicated or even impossible. And I think it stands to reason that the stronger, wealthtier, more knowledgeable etc. party should always be expected to be more generous and more patient, and offer goodwill by default, even when its not reciprocated yet.
My 2 cents, etc.