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I could not agree more. I keep banging on about what I call a MOOP - Massive open online psychology. These phones we all carry can listen to / video our ever

I could not agree more. I keep banging on about what I call a MOOP - Massive open online psychology. These phones we all carry can listen to / video our every interaction, watch our spending habits and our exercise and body functions. Epidemiology ought to be able to easily tease out ideal "life best practises" - actual good advice given to you by your phone - backed by the mistakes of a million others in just your situation. if keeping a daily diary helps people make better life decisions imagine what that would do?

malloryerik 6y ago
Have you read Homo Deus by Yuval Harari? Mentioning him can sound a bit pseudo as he's become so popular and is such a popularizer of others' ideas, but I believe the main tenet of Homo Deus is his own and comes very much from thinking about what you're calling "massive open online psychology." His notion is that trusting our technology more than trusting our own feelings will be the death of humanism, because in his view humanism is at heart about trusting one's own individual feelings. The entire liberal can be seen as one aspect or outgrowth of humanism.
- devmunchies 6y ago
  I would say Martin Heidegger touched on that (trusting technology over intuition) before Harari in Being and Time (1927). Harari may have brought concepts into the mainstream but these concepts were being discussed in philosophy for over 100 years.
  - AlexCoventry 6y ago
    I would say that Harari is probably a good deal more approachable than Heidegger. :)
not_a_moth 6y ago
Being watched and served recommendations is not the revolutionary paradigm for computers imo.
- Forge36 6y ago
  Why not?
  - cgriswald 6y ago
    What is the purpose of a human life? If my phone is recommending a course of action that is “best practice” for my life, surely the answer to this philosophical and political question has been answered rather than just assumed by engineers based on the perception of current societal norms of a subset of the global population. Imagine the power you’d have if you had people literally following orders based on a system of life that you’ve designed. And follow it they might if the perception of outcomes is positive.
    - simonh 6y ago
      You just described China with it's Social Credit System, pervasive internet monitoring and central control of public discourse.
      - patmorgan23 6y ago
        Social credit is different. Social credit imposes penalties for deviating from the norm or even associating with those who do. This is more like feeding apple health and google for data into IBM watson and getting personalized recommendations out.
      - franklampard 6y ago
        For the most part, china’s Social Credit System is the same as the credit scores in U.S.
        simonh 6y ago
        That's how it started, but nowadays Credit Score type data is a tiny fraction of what goes into SCS. The SCS is affected by things like playing loud music, eating on public transport, traffic violations, not showing up to restaurant or hotel bookings, not sorting your domestic waste, and loads more. You can gain SCS by donating blood, volunteering, etc. It is widely believed social media posting heavily affects SCS, and there are many example of people's scores diving after they had posts blocked, but the authorities won't come clean about it. As of mid 2019 26 million air tickets and over 4 million high speed rail tickets were refused based on SCS. Also some personal information is openly published about people with low SCS.
mycall 6y ago
You are basically describing augmented reality, where devices give you superhuman knowledge to give you advantage in life (know things before they happen). We will get there, but it will be a rocky road if it doesn't destroy us (e.g. China's social credit system). The implicit bias built into such systems is so hard to remove and is part of the Big Sort issue in society today.
- mewpmewp2 6y ago
  Another question. If China is left free to implement such a device that can completely optimise their people, will they become more powerful than other countries by having wonderfully optimised people to do their bidding?
  - mycall 6y ago
    It is definitely possible. It is a better worker bee.
entropic88 6y ago
To me, MOOP = self reinforcing echo chamber. The reverberations of the loudest (most magnified) permeate and shape ideology. Hopefully the conductors get the frequency right for long term and long distance communication.
sethc2 6y ago
I’ve seen that episode of Black Mirror (or it at least sounds like one) Every technological advance is usually both good and bad. Some are more good, some are more bad. Sometimes we gain a lot by it, and only lose a little, other times what we gain is not worth what we lost. The problem with this idea is what makes life valuable the machine would not know. “Life’s best practices” is subjective, and therefore the machine could promote what one considers a best practice that another considers a worst practice.

malloryerik 6y ago

Have you read Homo Deus by Yuval Harari? Mentioning him can sound a bit pseudo as he's become so popular and is such a popularizer of others' ideas, but I believe the main tenet of Homo Deus is his own and comes very much from thinking about what you're calling "massive open online psychology." His notion is that trusting our technology more than trusting our own feelings will be the death of humanism, because in his view humanism is at heart about trusting one's own individual feelings. The entire liberal can be seen as one aspect or outgrowth of humanism.

devmunchies 6y ago
I would say Martin Heidegger touched on that (trusting technology over intuition) before Harari in Being and Time (1927). Harari may have brought concepts into the mainstream but these concepts were being discussed in philosophy for over 100 years.
- AlexCoventry 6y ago
  I would say that Harari is probably a good deal more approachable than Heidegger. :)

not_a_moth 6y ago

Being watched and served recommendations is not the revolutionary paradigm for computers imo.

Forge36 6y ago
Why not?
- cgriswald 6y ago
  What is the purpose of a human life? If my phone is recommending a course of action that is “best practice” for my life, surely the answer to this philosophical and political question has been answered rather than just assumed by engineers based on the perception of current societal norms of a subset of the global population. Imagine the power you’d have if you had people literally following orders based on a system of life that you’ve designed. And follow it they might if the perception of outcomes is positive.
  - simonh 6y ago
    You just described China with it's Social Credit System, pervasive internet monitoring and central control of public discourse.
    - patmorgan23 6y ago
      Social credit is different. Social credit imposes penalties for deviating from the norm or even associating with those who do. This is more like feeding apple health and google for data into IBM watson and getting personalized recommendations out.
    - franklampard 6y ago
      For the most part, china’s Social Credit System is the same as the credit scores in U.S.
      - simonh 6y ago
        That's how it started, but nowadays Credit Score type data is a tiny fraction of what goes into SCS. The SCS is affected by things like playing loud music, eating on public transport, traffic violations, not showing up to restaurant or hotel bookings, not sorting your domestic waste, and loads more. You can gain SCS by donating blood, volunteering, etc. It is widely believed social media posting heavily affects SCS, and there are many example of people's scores diving after they had posts blocked, but the authorities won't come clean about it. As of mid 2019 26 million air tickets and over 4 million high speed rail tickets were refused based on SCS. Also some personal information is openly published about people with low SCS.

mycall 6y ago

You are basically describing augmented reality, where devices give you superhuman knowledge to give you advantage in life (know things before they happen). We will get there, but it will be a rocky road if it doesn't destroy us (e.g. China's social credit system). The implicit bias built into such systems is so hard to remove and is part of the Big Sort issue in society today.

mewpmewp2 6y ago
Another question. If China is left free to implement such a device that can completely optimise their people, will they become more powerful than other countries by having wonderfully optimised people to do their bidding?
- mycall 6y ago
  It is definitely possible. It is a better worker bee.

entropic88 6y ago

To me, MOOP = self reinforcing echo chamber. The reverberations of the loudest (most magnified) permeate and shape ideology. Hopefully the conductors get the frequency right for long term and long distance communication.

sethc2 6y ago

I’ve seen that episode of Black Mirror (or it at least sounds like one) Every technological advance is usually both good and bad. Some are more good, some are more bad. Sometimes we gain a lot by it, and only lose a little, other times what we gain is not worth what we lost. The problem with this idea is what makes life valuable the machine would not know. “Life’s best practices” is subjective, and therefore the machine could promote what one considers a best practice that another considers a worst practice.