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I don't know, guys. The world before complex algorithms generating clicks on the Internet was pretty biased and stupid. I don't think autoplay is going to be

I don't know, guys. The world before complex algorithms generating clicks on the Internet was pretty biased and stupid. I don't think autoplay is going to be the thing that destroys our collective intelligence for us. If we want our society to be less prone to fictitious nonsense, education that encourages critical thinking and a rudimentary of statistics should be encouraged, but that's often not interesting enough to write about for many journalists, nor is it an easy problem to tackle.

i_feel_great 9y ago
"If we want our society to be less prone to fictitious nonsense, education that encourages critical thinking and a rudimentary of statistics should be encouraged," That's the chicken right there. The egg is: the more people look at this stuff, the less critical thinking they are going to do.
skywhopper 9y ago
I would say that we should start by critiquing the implicit claim by Google, Facebook, Waymo, and others that new means of computational statistical analysis can serve as a reasonable replacement for human intuition and judgment. Turns out some of the world’s most valuable companies are betting on lots of poor assumptions and easily-gamed algorithms, and we’re just starting to see the fallout of our failure to call BS on the ever-louder hype machine. I certainly agree that deep learning has delivered some impressive results, but the acceptance by VCs and the media that his new wave of AI will bring a revolution in Internet time to established real-world infrastructure and processes is a major failure of basic critical thinking on a broad scale.
CandidlyFake 9y ago
> The world before complex algorithms generating clicks on the Internet was pretty biased and stupid The way the news has been ranting about social media, you'd think it was responsible for all the world's ill. The hyperbole and just pathetic nonsense from the media the past few years has been ridiculous. From the pewdiepie nonsense to the insane coverage of trump to the current hysteria over facebook. I wish we could go back to a time when the news media didn't have such obvious agenda. It would be nice if the news industry pushed out news instead of their agenda. > but that's often not interesting enough to write about for many journalists If everyone was educated, thought critically and understood stats, where would news companies get their journalists from?

i_feel_great 9y ago

"If we want our society to be less prone to fictitious nonsense, education that encourages critical thinking and a rudimentary of statistics should be encouraged," That's the chicken right there. The egg is: the more people look at this stuff, the less critical thinking they are going to do.

skywhopper 9y ago

I would say that we should start by critiquing the implicit claim by Google, Facebook, Waymo, and others that new means of computational statistical analysis can serve as a reasonable replacement for human intuition and judgment. Turns out some of the world’s most valuable companies are betting on lots of poor assumptions and easily-gamed algorithms, and we’re just starting to see the fallout of our failure to call BS on the ever-louder hype machine. I certainly agree that deep learning has delivered some impressive results, but the acceptance by VCs and the media that his new wave of AI will bring a revolution in Internet time to established real-world infrastructure and processes is a major failure of basic critical thinking on a broad scale.

CandidlyFake 9y ago

> The world before complex algorithms generating clicks on the Internet was pretty biased and stupid The way the news has been ranting about social media, you'd think it was responsible for all the world's ill. The hyperbole and just pathetic nonsense from the media the past few years has been ridiculous. From the pewdiepie nonsense to the insane coverage of trump to the current hysteria over facebook. I wish we could go back to a time when the news media didn't have such obvious agenda. It would be nice if the news industry pushed out news instead of their agenda. > but that's often not interesting enough to write about for many journalists If everyone was educated, thought critically and understood stats, where would news companies get their journalists from?