6 ms·

Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind

126 points by borjamoya 7y ago

borjamoya 7y ago
By the way, in the website there are links to download for free the book Data Dictatorships.
- afpx 7y ago
  Do you have a summary of your conclusions (for those of us who haven't read it already)? Are we doomed, or is there a bright light?
  - borjamoya 7y ago
    The problem with summaries and TL;DRs is that they don't allow you to start a conversation. So I can't provide you with a short answer because everybody is going to interpret it with their own filter. That's exactly why I wrote the book. You can't change people with a tweet. Sometimes not even through an article. But that's the magic of books. Is it all gloom and doom? That depends on how we react. But I have the feeling that if we don't spend some time thinking about these issues--collectively--then it'll be gloom and doom for sure.
    - donclark 7y ago
      Actually, I am wondering if its both. Could you create a 'buzz' around your book/topic via a short synopsis/tweet/TLDR/etc. while promoting a larger conversation with a link to that forum/etc.
      - borjamoya 7y ago
        That's up to you to decide. But I do want to create "buzz" around the conversation. We need it. The book? That's secondary. I don't make any money of out it. That's why I'm giving it away for free. But again, I can't answer that for you.
- excalibur 7y ago
  Thank you for that!
  - borjamoya 7y ago
    My pleasure! Enjoy it
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
kmlx 7y ago
i was born in a communist country and lived thru the downfall of the USSR. the level of censorship and control that we have now is nothing compared to what the soviets were doing. that's why my impression of the paper is very negative. we're the generation that has the most access to information in history, we can travel like no other human generation travelled in history. and we have so much money and access that obesity is a thing. and yet people still prefer to believe in myths and propaganda. i wonder how will this pan out once we colonise other planets. i imagine the disconnect between planets will be much much greater than the disconnect we now have between countries/cities/etc
- borjamoya 7y ago
  I feel your pain, but I wouldn't underestimate our current situation. This is much much bigger than we think it is. Forget about fake news, election interferences or Russian propaganda. The reality is much more chaotic, complex and dreadful than that.
- elipsey 7y ago
  I'm glad you're doing well but please, speak for your self. My apartment building is surrounded by people sleeping in doorways and alleys. They are not fat, and cannot travel the world or outer space.
- myth_drannon 7y ago
  That's what the Soviet citizens were saying about the citizens of the Western block too. The reality is, it's probably all the same. There are very subtle differences of course, which tend to be exaggerated.
  - kmlx 7y ago
    having lived in those times i cannot believe that comments such as yours exist. things were Horrible. i had relatives who were killed in the streets because they didn't aspire to the latest communist trend. and no travelling outside the country, or even outside your city in some circumstances. at least not without being part of the party. what about food? queue for 2 hours for a pint of milk, and meat only once per month because the party doesn't want to be indebted to capitalist countries. the famine and the pain that the communists brought is in a different world than the massive opportunities that we have today (and food, food is available everywhere now). i guess this teaches us something very important: history needs to be taught since the first school years.
naringas 7y ago
> we have the capacities to centralize this data but we also have the technical capacities to descentralize it (federate it?) interestingly enough, it is getting more centralized. Is this due to economic incentives?
- borjamoya 7y ago
  Hi, I'm the author of the book. I believe decentralization in theory could work. But our current situation is so chaotic that there's no clear solution. However, the key here is to understand the full picture. In the book I argue that there's a big shift going on--not only an economical shift, but also geopolitical and social. And this is going to be a surprise for a lot of people, but this shift is coming from social credit systems and the establishment of a new economic model based on social behavior. Now, I know this is too complex to explain in a paragraph, but that's why we have books.
  - naringas 7y ago
    I think there's also a cultural shift underway. > a new economic model based on social behavior. this reminds me of China's social credit scores. It seems to me that this is (in a way) automatic-money. Imagine if instead of having to manage your own balance your "wallet" does it for you. One just shows up at the store and they tell you what you get. No "visible" transaction takes place.
    - borjamoya 7y ago
      Right, and the shift gets even deeper. Few people know this but money was invented to keep track of debt. In fact, what most economic textbooks say is that money comes from barter. It turns out there's no single evidence that this ever happened in history! (David Graeber has a phenomenal book call Debt that explains all of this.) Now, the shift we're seeing is that social credit system--or as I call them Social Debt Systems--are going to be "the new money." Lots of people talk about the data economy and the fact that we need a way to put a dollar value on information. And what we're seeing with social credit systems is that that value is not 'on' information. It's 'in' information. And that's creating a new economic logic we're not able even to conceive yet
pimmen 7y ago
One of the things that's keeping liberal democracy safe is the inefficiencies of governments and businesses, with "not invented here" being one of the biggest ones. What makes Palantir scary is not necessarily that they work with ICE but that they're probably delivering something that adds value. As we get better at machine learning and data engineering, these solutions will not only get much more powerful but also plug and play. That's what I'm really afraid of, at that point they can be rolled out over night.
Nasrudith 7y ago
That sounds a lot like claiming planned economies will obsolete capitalism once they solve the valuation problem. Only this time they have that precedent and fail to address it. Propaganda has always had large societal influence and I am not denying that better data could in theory be used to make it worse. But just as in practice targetted advertising works about as well as trying to seduce someone with information gathered by digging through their garbage practice seems highly dubious. Dictatorships are kind of dysfunctional shitholes because the concern is holding onto power for the few over advancement for many as loyalty trumps competence. The succession lines are intentionally horrible just toand vagur just to reduce odds of assassination. Overcoming that with "data" isn't even a plan - especially since the dystopian vague data tools can be jacked or dismantled by the successors. Not to mention the arguement ad inevitability. Disclaimer - not having read beyond the initial pitch page: To be frank this seems like an attempt to tap into the zeitgeist to sell alarmist books on topics they know little about that will have less shelf life than Y2K books in 1999. Not exactly the best impression.
allemagne 7y ago
People make the mistake of assuming that a more assertive authoritarian state means a more confident authoritarian state, when the inverse is more often the case. China's growth is slowing and its leadership will always have the specter of Soviet collapse haunting them. The actual potential for Chinese growth and innovation will always be out of reach because creative destruction is unacceptable to entrenched interests. The CCP aren't the future, they're dinosaurs clinging to relevance by using technologies usually invented overseas as crudely wrought instruments of power.
- nix0n 7y ago
  I've always read "this is the future" in a different way. For those of us in the USA, seeing increasing militarization of local police, plus PRISM etc revelations, the CCP looks like it might be our future.
  - api 7y ago
    We have a few dinosaurs of our own.
- mistermann 7y ago
  > People make the mistake of assuming... Are all of your fairly extraordinary predictions of the future here not also completely based on assumptions derived from an extremely small sample size of simplistic examples from history, and assuming those outcomes can be accurately projected into the future despite massive changes in the value and number of variables involved?
- newen 7y ago
  People have been saying for decades that China is going to collapse due to some variation of them not being creative, flexible, etc. It's mostly a fantasy generated due to an internal contradiction of seeing a country with very different principles do well.
  - solveit 7y ago
    But China isn't doing unbelievably well. Strong centralized near-totalitarian government quickly industrializes enormous population and becomes Great Power is basically half the story of modern history. The question is whether they'll reach first-world levels of (per capita) living and whether they'll be able to do so without transitioning into a liberal democracy. If any country's success is challenging deeply entrenched beliefs it's Singapore.
age_bronze 7y ago
If regimes like Iran manage to stay alive despite all the sanctions and international isolation, while having the power to meddle in other countries despite having such a dire situation at home, I think the odds of real revolutions in modern age are really really low. If Iran stays alive like this, I doubt China will have any problem staying alive ad-infinity, with all their surveillance tools. Just because democracy might be a little bit better, getting there includes civil war, violence, and other costs people aren't willing to pay if their lives aren't incredibly bad.
zachguo 7y ago
Two biggest weaknesses of centralized political systems are 1) incompetent leadership 2) the principal-agent problem. Better data collection and monitoring alleviate both weaknesses and prolong such system's longevity.
- borjamoya 7y ago
  Probably. But we have entered into an arms race mentality--especially since 2016. The "if we don't do it they'll do it" makes this an unlikely scenario.
hhtoyou 7y ago
https://consumer.huawei.com/in/community/details/huawei-health-app-data-export/topicId_7367/ https://consumer.huawei.com/in/community/details/huawei-heal...

126 points by borjamoya 7y ago

borjamoya 7y ago

By the way, in the website there are links to download for free the book Data Dictatorships.

afpx 7y ago
Do you have a summary of your conclusions (for those of us who haven't read it already)? Are we doomed, or is there a bright light?
- borjamoya 7y ago
  The problem with summaries and TL;DRs is that they don't allow you to start a conversation. So I can't provide you with a short answer because everybody is going to interpret it with their own filter. That's exactly why I wrote the book. You can't change people with a tweet. Sometimes not even through an article. But that's the magic of books. Is it all gloom and doom? That depends on how we react. But I have the feeling that if we don't spend some time thinking about these issues--collectively--then it'll be gloom and doom for sure.
  - donclark 7y ago
    Actually, I am wondering if its both. Could you create a 'buzz' around your book/topic via a short synopsis/tweet/TLDR/etc. while promoting a larger conversation with a link to that forum/etc.
    - borjamoya 7y ago
      That's up to you to decide. But I do want to create "buzz" around the conversation. We need it. The book? That's secondary. I don't make any money of out it. That's why I'm giving it away for free. But again, I can't answer that for you.
excalibur 7y ago
Thank you for that!
- borjamoya 7y ago
  My pleasure! Enjoy it

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

kmlx 7y ago

i was born in a communist country and lived thru the downfall of the USSR. the level of censorship and control that we have now is nothing compared to what the soviets were doing. that's why my impression of the paper is very negative. we're the generation that has the most access to information in history, we can travel like no other human generation travelled in history. and we have so much money and access that obesity is a thing. and yet people still prefer to believe in myths and propaganda. i wonder how will this pan out once we colonise other planets. i imagine the disconnect between planets will be much much greater than the disconnect we now have between countries/cities/etc

borjamoya 7y ago
I feel your pain, but I wouldn't underestimate our current situation. This is much much bigger than we think it is. Forget about fake news, election interferences or Russian propaganda. The reality is much more chaotic, complex and dreadful than that.
elipsey 7y ago
I'm glad you're doing well but please, speak for your self. My apartment building is surrounded by people sleeping in doorways and alleys. They are not fat, and cannot travel the world or outer space.
myth_drannon 7y ago
That's what the Soviet citizens were saying about the citizens of the Western block too. The reality is, it's probably all the same. There are very subtle differences of course, which tend to be exaggerated.
- kmlx 7y ago
  having lived in those times i cannot believe that comments such as yours exist. things were Horrible. i had relatives who were killed in the streets because they didn't aspire to the latest communist trend. and no travelling outside the country, or even outside your city in some circumstances. at least not without being part of the party. what about food? queue for 2 hours for a pint of milk, and meat only once per month because the party doesn't want to be indebted to capitalist countries. the famine and the pain that the communists brought is in a different world than the massive opportunities that we have today (and food, food is available everywhere now). i guess this teaches us something very important: history needs to be taught since the first school years.

naringas 7y ago

> we have the capacities to centralize this data but we also have the technical capacities to descentralize it (federate it?) interestingly enough, it is getting more centralized. Is this due to economic incentives?

borjamoya 7y ago
Hi, I'm the author of the book. I believe decentralization in theory could work. But our current situation is so chaotic that there's no clear solution. However, the key here is to understand the full picture. In the book I argue that there's a big shift going on--not only an economical shift, but also geopolitical and social. And this is going to be a surprise for a lot of people, but this shift is coming from social credit systems and the establishment of a new economic model based on social behavior. Now, I know this is too complex to explain in a paragraph, but that's why we have books.
- naringas 7y ago
  I think there's also a cultural shift underway. > a new economic model based on social behavior. this reminds me of China's social credit scores. It seems to me that this is (in a way) automatic-money. Imagine if instead of having to manage your own balance your "wallet" does it for you. One just shows up at the store and they tell you what you get. No "visible" transaction takes place.
  - borjamoya 7y ago
    Right, and the shift gets even deeper. Few people know this but money was invented to keep track of debt. In fact, what most economic textbooks say is that money comes from barter. It turns out there's no single evidence that this ever happened in history! (David Graeber has a phenomenal book call Debt that explains all of this.) Now, the shift we're seeing is that social credit system--or as I call them Social Debt Systems--are going to be "the new money." Lots of people talk about the data economy and the fact that we need a way to put a dollar value on information. And what we're seeing with social credit systems is that that value is not 'on' information. It's 'in' information. And that's creating a new economic logic we're not able even to conceive yet

pimmen 7y ago

One of the things that's keeping liberal democracy safe is the inefficiencies of governments and businesses, with "not invented here" being one of the biggest ones. What makes Palantir scary is not necessarily that they work with ICE but that they're probably delivering something that adds value. As we get better at machine learning and data engineering, these solutions will not only get much more powerful but also plug and play. That's what I'm really afraid of, at that point they can be rolled out over night.

Nasrudith 7y ago

That sounds a lot like claiming planned economies will obsolete capitalism once they solve the valuation problem. Only this time they have that precedent and fail to address it. Propaganda has always had large societal influence and I am not denying that better data could in theory be used to make it worse. But just as in practice targetted advertising works about as well as trying to seduce someone with information gathered by digging through their garbage practice seems highly dubious. Dictatorships are kind of dysfunctional shitholes because the concern is holding onto power for the few over advancement for many as loyalty trumps competence. The succession lines are intentionally horrible just toand vagur just to reduce odds of assassination. Overcoming that with "data" isn't even a plan - especially since the dystopian vague data tools can be jacked or dismantled by the successors. Not to mention the arguement ad inevitability. Disclaimer - not having read beyond the initial pitch page: To be frank this seems like an attempt to tap into the zeitgeist to sell alarmist books on topics they know little about that will have less shelf life than Y2K books in 1999. Not exactly the best impression.

allemagne 7y ago

People make the mistake of assuming that a more assertive authoritarian state means a more confident authoritarian state, when the inverse is more often the case. China's growth is slowing and its leadership will always have the specter of Soviet collapse haunting them. The actual potential for Chinese growth and innovation will always be out of reach because creative destruction is unacceptable to entrenched interests. The CCP aren't the future, they're dinosaurs clinging to relevance by using technologies usually invented overseas as crudely wrought instruments of power.

nix0n 7y ago
I've always read "this is the future" in a different way. For those of us in the USA, seeing increasing militarization of local police, plus PRISM etc revelations, the CCP looks like it might be our future.
- api 7y ago
  We have a few dinosaurs of our own.
mistermann 7y ago
> People make the mistake of assuming... Are all of your fairly extraordinary predictions of the future here not also completely based on assumptions derived from an extremely small sample size of simplistic examples from history, and assuming those outcomes can be accurately projected into the future despite massive changes in the value and number of variables involved?
newen 7y ago
People have been saying for decades that China is going to collapse due to some variation of them not being creative, flexible, etc. It's mostly a fantasy generated due to an internal contradiction of seeing a country with very different principles do well.
- solveit 7y ago
  But China isn't doing unbelievably well. Strong centralized near-totalitarian government quickly industrializes enormous population and becomes Great Power is basically half the story of modern history. The question is whether they'll reach first-world levels of (per capita) living and whether they'll be able to do so without transitioning into a liberal democracy. If any country's success is challenging deeply entrenched beliefs it's Singapore.

age_bronze 7y ago

If regimes like Iran manage to stay alive despite all the sanctions and international isolation, while having the power to meddle in other countries despite having such a dire situation at home, I think the odds of real revolutions in modern age are really really low. If Iran stays alive like this, I doubt China will have any problem staying alive ad-infinity, with all their surveillance tools. Just because democracy might be a little bit better, getting there includes civil war, violence, and other costs people aren't willing to pay if their lives aren't incredibly bad.

zachguo 7y ago

Two biggest weaknesses of centralized political systems are 1) incompetent leadership 2) the principal-agent problem. Better data collection and monitoring alleviate both weaknesses and prolong such system's longevity.

borjamoya 7y ago
Probably. But we have entered into an arms race mentality--especially since 2016. The "if we don't do it they'll do it" makes this an unlikely scenario.

hhtoyou 7y ago

https://consumer.huawei.com/in/community/details/huawei-health-app-data-export/topicId_7367/ https://consumer.huawei.com/in/community/details/huawei-heal...