AI IS HAMMER, ALL PROBLEMS ARE NAIL, Part 2

I know tech has a bro problem, or at least that's what they tell me.

But I also know when you have a hammer in your hands, every problem around looks like a nail.

Artificial intelligence has a lot of potential. But in our society, the easy path to potential is for using AI for bad ends -- because the ol' hammer/nail analogy applies for those using these tech products for the most part.

It's a fallacy to think that "Hey, if everyone like me were in charge, we wouldn't have Problem X." That might be true. We'd have Problem Y and Z and probably a lot more that are universal to THEM and US, but that's now how the hammer/nail people think. And they exist in whatever sex/whatever you want to scroll up on the big Wheel of Whatever.

We're all Becoming Daleks

I should probably start to watch Dr. Who.

Specifically, the episodes featuring the Daleks.

Because we’re becoming Daleks. Every last one of us.

Study the metaphor. According to Wikipedia, the Daleks were created for the Dr. Who television program as “violent, merciless and pitiless cyborg aliens who demand total conformity to their will, bent on the conquest of the universe and the exterminations of what they see as inferior races.”

I’m going to expand that metaphor just only slightly, adopting the accepted metaphor used by British society in general:  “English-speakers sometimes use the term metaphorically to describe people, usually authority figures, who act like robots unable to break from their programming.”

It’s necessary to include this expanded metaphor, lest those who are “woke” attempt to say they aren’t among the Dalek-like.

Now shift here:

In democracy, it is difficult to win fellow citizens over to your own side, or to build public support to remedy injustices that remain all too real, when you fundamentally misunderstand how they see the world.

That comes from Yascha Mounk, a lecturer on government at Harvard, writing for The Atlantic.

He writes about the disconnect between the “woke” and the “resentful.” You’ll recognize them:

They’re the ones you typically see shouting at each other loudly in any public or social media space, both assured that they are right and those who don’t believe exactly like them are troglodytes not worthy of licking the scum off their boots. They’re human Daleks.

Mounk writes further than though both camps believe they speak for the majority, they do, in fact, speak only for a minority on either end of the political spectrum. He looked at a study that considered support for political correctness. The study found support for PC culture – which the survey left undefined – was much more narrow than most people believe.

Mounk writes:

For the millions upon millions of Americans of all ages and all races who do not follow politics with rapt attention, and who are much more worried about paying their rent than about debating the prom dress worn by a teenager in Utah, contemporary callout culture merely looks like an excuse to mock the values or ignorance of others.

The gap between the progressive perception and the reality of public views on this issue could do damage to the institutions that the woke elite collectively run. A publication whose editors think they represent the views of a majority of Americans when they actually speak to a small minority of the country may eventually see its influence wane and its readership decline. And a political candidate who believes she is speaking for half of the population when she is actually voicing the opinions of one-fifth is likely to lose the next election.

It’s the classic Pauline Kael, even if you stick with the original quote, not the paraphrase.

It also shows up in things like this.

Because clearly the liberals on the Supreme Court should absolutely refuse admission to the newest justice based on the woke’s opinion, which everyone shares because that appointment is still “convulsing” the nation.

Or is it?

Maybe it’s time for all of us to get out of our own special little worlds, shed the Dalek suits, and bask in the sun of actually listening to each other.

Broken Echo

As I discovered a few weeks ago, some of the political views I hold are unorthodox compared to others in my social circle on Facebook. But that my views attracted both praise and scorn is anecdotal evidence that supports findings released this week by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that says participants in social networks aren’t necessarily participating in echo chambers in which they’re friends only with those who share the same political views.

The study, which sampled roughly 2,200 adults earlier this year, shows that for those on the extreme ends of the spectrum – both liberal and conservative – the echo chamber may be stronger than for others, but for the vast majority of people who lie on the center or more toward the center than to the fringe, their chances of encountering people with opposing viewpoints isn’t unheard of and is, in fact, quite common.

This leads Pew to come up with this not-so-startling observation: Most people form social networks based on factors other than political ideology. Yeah. Like families (where we have political thought of all stripes) and school mates and friends and acquaintances and such. Social networks, then, mirror real life, not some imagined reality. No surprise there.

What’s more surprising is this:

Some 37% of [social networking site] users who exchange material about politics on the sites have gotten strong negative reactions when they posted political material and 63% have never experienced such reactions. Interestingly enough, there is no notable variance across the political spectrum on this question. Republicans, Democrats, liberals, and conservatives among SNS users have experienced the same level of challenge from their SNS friends.

So what’s going on? According to Pew, most respondents say that if they read something from their friends that they don’t agree with, they simply ignore the comment. Only a small fringe of again those on the extremes of the spectrum got to the point that they hid content or de-friended someone because of their opposing political beliefs.

Does this mean that those who responded to my post are in the extremes of the political spectrum? Probably not. It’s too small of a sample to even hazard a guess. What I suspect is going on here is something that Pew also noted: Many SNS participants are surprised to learn that a friend’s position on the political spectrum is different than what he or she suspected.

Another interesting bit: Comments made by family and close friends that were in opposition to one’s political belief were most often ignored, while those made by only casual acquaintances were most often commented on and most often accompanied by consequences such as hiding posts and de-friending. Interesting, but not really surprising. We’re much more willing to put up with lumps and defects in those close to us than we are in those we know only distantly. That’s an echo chamber of sorts, but not as echoey as some have worried about.

The report is available online from Pew here. Of course, some of the more unhinged are ranting about this too.

Weak Connections = Strong JuJu

So it turns out that having a lot of friends on Facebook might actually be a good thing.

Farhad Manjoo, who is quickly becoming my go-to guy for current social media research, highlights a study released this week by Facebook’s research team that shows the personal echo chamber many worried about as this crazy Internet thing caught on isn’t as echoey or chambery as many feared it would be.

The echo chamber – for you troglodytes who have never heard the concept – is the feared phenomenon that the Internet would stratify society into groups of people who only shared or read news that already fits with their political or societal beliefs, while blocking out anything that might challenge their way of thinking.

According to Facebook’s study, that ain’t so.

Here’s what Manjoo says of the study:

But here’s Bakshy’s most crucial finding: Although we’re more likely to share information from our close friends, we still share stuff from our weak ties—and the links from those weak ties are the most novel links on the network. Those links from our weak ties, that is, are most likely to point to information that you would not have shared if you hadn’t seen it on Facebook. The links from your close ties, meanwhile, more likely contain information you would have seen elsewhere if a friend hadn’t posted it. These weak ties “are indispensible” to your network, Bakshy says. “They have access to different websites that you’re not necessarily visiting.”

Here’s a bit of explanation: Researcher Eytan Bakshy found – no surprises here – as he studied how people on Facebook share links that we tend to share links provided by those with whom we have strong ties, say co-workers, close friends, relatives, etc. He also discovered, as illustrated above, that we’re just as willing to share links from weak ties, and it’s from those weak ties that we’re most likely to read information that is outside our own echo chamber.

I’d be curious to read this study further, because I’ve got some strong-tie friends with whom I have widely differing beliefs, and I’m still as willing to read and share what they have to say as I am to share links from those whose beliefs are more like my own.

All of this shouldn’t come as a big surprise to anybody. The Internet has evolved into something that felt echo-chambery (in the early years of my own Internet delvings, I found lots of people interested in Watership Down or the Secret of NIMH as I built my own fan sites and such) at the beginning and now is changing into something that reflects society as a whole – a mish-mash of people connected by either weak or strong ties, sharing differing beliefs but united by at least some tenuous connection (that we graduated high school in the same year, that we like technology in that creepy Kip Dynamite fashion and such). Those weak ties keep us bound socially and, as a consequence, expose us to beliefs we may not hold dear. Of course, this doesn’t mean we’re reading and believing everything we see, but at least this research shows exposure to differing views, shattering once again the myth of the echo chamber.

So stock up on Facebook friends, even if they’re not near and dear to you – you’ll expand your view of the cosmos as you do it.

Again With the Echo Chamber

This image -- George Seurat's L'Echo, is in the public domain.

Yeah, here's yet another one of those “information is coming at me too fast” stories that Clay Shirky warns us about. Funny thing is that it's from NPR, where the smart people hang out, so you'd figure they'd know better.

It tosses in a few different wrinkles. The author talks with a Princeton astrophysicist who reassures us that news won't “outrun the event” because Planck time forbids it. That tells me this physicist doesn't watch any of the 24-hour news channels, since these days the news always outruns the event, since all they do is talk about what's happening before the news happens until it happens and then they talk about how the news is crappy or really, really good, depending on their political leanings, so this quaint discussion of Planck time is really pretty meaningless in this context. He could have said “Things won't happen until they happen,” but it sounds a lot sexier to the journalist when all done up in a cute little button of erudition.

And then it trots out two familiar old friends: First, the misapprehension that the accelerated news cycle is turning us into tuned-out dummies who don't have the time to filter the information coming to us:

Still, with news — and reaction to news — moving more quickly than ever, says Louis Gray, a Silicon Valley blogger who chronicles the ever-increasing speed of computers and companies, "it is safe to assume the public does not know about many top stories or issues, and cannot be assumed to have enough data to ascertain truth versus spin, and right versus wrong."

That information is coming at us faster and faster is immaterial. The speed of the news arriving doesn't matter in our ability – or anability to parse it for right or wrong, truth versus fiction, or spin for spin. What matters is our cultural literacy, our level of education, and our willingness to invest the required time to learn what we need to understand the information we want to understand.

That, of course, leads us to the second familiar friend, the good ol' echo chamber.

As a result, Gray says, "people are intentionally filtering the information they consume through sources they agree with, or are turning instead to entertainment and idle-time activities, becoming less informed."

Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro, working at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business successfully debunked the Internet-inspired echo chamber theory, in a study I blogged about nearly a year ago.

As I wrote back then:

The study does include one caveat: "[N]one of the evidence here speaks to the way people translate the content they encounter into beliefs. People with different ideologies see similar content, but . . . [various mechanisms] may lead people with divergent political views to interpret the same information differently." This is a significant caveat, since how information consumed is interpreted and incorporated -- or left out -- of our political ideologies is significantly more important than if we're exposed to different points of view on the same information.

I can attest in my own experience that the Internet – and the rus of information it provides – is actually helping, not hurting. I can offer two examples:

In the book I'm writing, I've got a character who likes old barbershop quartet songs. I know next to nothing about barbershop quartets, but because of the Internet, I've been able to do a lot of learning in just a short amount of time. Additionally, it's helped me find some songs that are in the public domain – a big bonus as I want to include some in my book.

Here's another example: My wife is an avid Cub Scouter, who is trying to find information on skits, cheers, songs and other elements to incorporate into her plans. Thanks to the Internet – and a lot of like-minded individuals, she's finding ample material, and then contributing her own original material as well, adding to the overall ball of Cub Scout-related knowledge.

I don't agree that the speed at which information comes at us increases our susceptibility to echo chambers or tuning out completely. I think quite the opposite, actually, as the Internet has helped me expand my horizons and to learn things I might not have learned before because the information was simply too hard to get. And because of the propentisty of the information out there, I'm finding my skills at parsing and interpreting information is getting better, not worse, as the amount of information I find at my fingertips increases.

Snug Inside the Echo Chamber

This is how we all ought to react when we discover we're in an echo chamber.

William Saletan at Slate.com, in urging everyone to exit the echo chambers they remain in as they seek and consume and regurgitate news and politics and social commentary, manages to give some salient points while remaining snugly in the echo chamber that says only (or mostly) conservatives are the ones trying to shout over the echoes.

His ten ways to keep our minds free are good points, and deserve further discussion. Where he fails, however, is in citing examples of conservatives violating his points.

He starts off strong with No. 1: Treat insularity as a weakness:

If you don’t seriously consider your opponents’ best arguments, you’ll be unprepared to answer them. If you don’t engage people whose premises differ from yours, you’ll never learn to persuade them and broaden your movement. If you don’t heed changes in the country’s needs and political climate, you’ll fail to adapt and survive. A conservative who matches wits with the New York Times every day is stronger than the one who mainlines Fox.

Bravo.

But from there on out, however, he falls into the liberal echo chamber that states “It’s only the conservatives who have their hands over their ears while saying ‘lalalalalalalalala’ who are in the echo chambers, but as they emerge into the freedom of progressive thought, they see the error of their ways.”

I see liberals who can’t test their theories and can’t bear to risk falsification when confronted with Climategate – which Saletan brushes aside, violating his inability to beware abstraction (No. 8), overcome his urges (No. 10), and seek wisdom, not just victory (No. 5) to recognize that the “science is settled” argument is cracking when confronted with data falsification, manipulation, and scientific intimidation.

It’s sad, in a way, to see Saletan’s arguments crumble against his own refusal to recognize that he’s trapped in a progressive echo chamber as he tries to offer poor conservatives the advice they need to exit theirs. He does toss in an occasional jab at those on the left, but they come across as asides to the more deeply explored jabs at the right. In this, he’s violating No. 3 (never define yourself by an enemy), No. 4 (don’t outsource your beliefs to your allies) and No. 6 (distrust polarization).

Overall, Saletan is also demonstrating a violation of No. 1, in continuing to jab the left while only tossing out the less egregious examples of offense of his tenets by the left. There are plenty of left-leaning politicians, talking heads, pundits and voters who are just as guilty as being closed-minded as those on the right, it’s just that those on the left are controlling the conversation by identifying their views as “progressive” and those of the conservatives as the only ones needing adaptation.

Saletan, in short, needs to re-read his closing statement, and follow it. Of course, we all do:

We’re all vain and lazy. In the electronic echo chamber, it’s easier than ever to shut out what you don’t want to hear. Nobody will make you open the door and venture out. You’ll have to do that yourself.

Liberals declaring their freedom from the liberal echo chamber. For a contrasting view at a more "middle of the road" news outlet, go here.

Update: Today, Saletan defends his writing by pointing out that some critics are taking what he wrote out of context. While that may be true in most cases, what he wrote is still a bit shaky in that the major examples he discussed of echo chamberism are all on the part of conservatives. He treats the liberal examples -- as I noted in this post -- as asides.