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Please tell us more about how telemetry can reveal the moral and intellectual value of a human being.
by the_optimist 5y ago
Please tell us more about how telemetry can reveal the moral and intellectual value of a human being.
- Miraste 5y agoHow could it not? What you click on, what you look at, what you read and for how long, what you write, where you go, what you buy, how you feel, what you like and dislike, who you know, who you talk to, what sites you visit... Facebook knows many of its users (and non-users) better than they know themselves.
- hammock 5y agoSo my moral value is based on what I read? If I read the wrong thing I might as well be second-class citizen?
- thereisnospork 5y agoDo you think what a person reads has no predictive value on their 'moral value'? (An admittedly vague term) Trivially: someone who reads NRA's weekly newsletter religiously is more likely to be pro gun, pro republican, and pro 'life', for instance
- rayiner 5y agoEveryone is superstitious some people are just in denial. It wasn’t an accident that progressive ideology went down the eugenics path, or that countries like China engaged in things like the one child policy. Atheist utilitarianism freed of superstition can justify a lot. As against it, you can repackage the concept of “the inherent dignity of every human life in the eyes of god” into a variety of secular packagings but that doesn’t make it any less superstitious.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- hammock 5y ago>Do you think what a person reads has no predictive value on their 'moral value'? (An admittedly vague term) Yes, 100%. How can it, if we agree all human life is sacred? Are some people more sacred than others? Holier than thou? (getting downvoted for this) All men are created equal. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Ephesians 6:9 "Slave owners, you must treat your slaves with this same respect. Don't threaten them. They have the same Master in heaven that you do, and he doesn't have favorites."
- fossuser 5y agoYou're getting downvoted because you're not arguing in good faith.
- Dylan16807 5y agoAt this point you're just arguing semantics about the term "moral value". But that wasn't even the original term. The first comment in the thread was about whether people are "stupid and superstitious". So pretend the question was "Do you think what a person reads has no predictive value on how stupid and superstitious they are?"
- the_optimist 5y agoThere are many different ways to be stupid and many to be superstitious. Not one of those attaches to a prerogative to ban reading material or assign cognitive attributes to swaths of humanity.
- Dylan16807 5y agoThere's a lot of ways to get lung cancer too, but that doesn't stop smoking from being a powerful predictor. Prediction isn't assigning. And nobody in this comment chain said anything about banning. In fact the OP specifically said "I don't see a solution to that any time soon."
- the_optimist 5y ago
- AlexandrB 5y agoThis kind of thinking completely discards the concept of intent. People read things for all kinds of reasons. I have a family member who was an avid reader of the "Weekly World News", yet he did not believe in aliens, "Bat Boy", or the illuminati. I used to regularly read conservative blogs and listen to Fox News to keep up with what people I disagree with are doing/saying. So the problem is that you can make some statistical predictions about what someone's views are based on their reading habits. But you can't morally judge them on that basis because you don't (and can't) know why they read something and what they thought about it. This is similar to how BMI is commonly misused. BMI is a fine indicator of population health, but is not always indicative of individual health.
- thereisnospork 5y agoYou need to define a confidence interval for 'know'. We as a society judge and condemn people without 100% certainty as a matter of course. Both at a personal level and systematically, e.g. the judicial system. To your example of BMI, it would be a perfectly reasonable public health policy[0] to use machine learning to probabilistically identify persons of an excess BMI to send them pamplets and resources for weight loss / exercise. Will the odd fit person get a letter from the surgeon general telling them "being a fatass is bad for their health"[1]? Of course. I don't see why that is a terminal problem. [0]If a bit creepy for the privacy aspects - which are out of scope here. [1]In far more words than is necessary, of course
- throwawayboise 5y agoI would not be a perfectly reasonable public health policy to do what you suggest, it would be a waste of time and money. Everybody knows that being fat is unhealthy. The people who are fat and not doing anything about it just don't care, or have other priorities.
- varelse 5y agoOr they have a story far more complicated than what have you have reduced them to being. Just attempting to manage the pandemic in the US has demonstrated how complicated and contradictory people turn out to be. But I do agree that pamphlets about BMI aren't likely to change their outlook. They each need their own personalized moments of clarity about their path and it's not all a sure thing they ever have theirs. But also, a few people are obese because they are on steroids or they have some genetic issue independent of their choices in life. They are not the norm, but they'll get lumped in with the norm and that's offensive and improper. That said, if FB found out their userbase is unusually obese compared to the rest of a country's citizens, that informs them they have a potential moral hazard in their hands. But if you're deeply offended at such telemetry, maybe consider no using Facebook. You'll be fine without it. I personally make sure to post ridiculous and contradictory responses to the insipidly and horribly targeted ads they push into my feed. Some of them have gotten me suspended for violating their "community standards" that IMO would not get me suspended anywhere else.
- splitstud 5y agoPlease continue. Explain how those beliefs intersect with moral value.
- thereisnospork 5y agoPlease explain how 'pro-life' isn't a moral position. Isn't the position fairly summarized as: 'it is immoral to abort a pregnancy under <insert circumstances here>? Emphasis mine.
- the_optimist 5y agoWhere exactly do you propose this intersects with the concepts of “stupidity” and “superstition”?
- Dylan16807 5y agoThe hell is this question? You're the one who equated stupidity and superstition with "moral value"!
- the_optimist 5y agoPray tell, which group of people do you think are stupid? Please also subsequently elaborate on how your judgment is objective, and detached from an appraisal that might be interpreted as mere goodness and badness.
- Dylan16807 5y agoI didn't have any particular groups in mind here, because those weren't my comments. And even if I pick a group, it's irrelevant to your "where do you propose this intersects" question because the intersection of those two phrases in this comment thread was set up by you. You tell me where they intersect, if the intent was something more complex than treating them as synonyms.
- ipaddr 5y ago
- scarecrowbob 5y agoBut that's -not- trivially true. My politics are idiosyncratic and lean far enough to the left that I have a hard time explaining them to my centrist liberal friends. At the same time, I read a lot of far-right sources; I do not find them at all compelling, but in addition to the fact that I like to know what the people who think I am a literal baby-blood-drinking demon might be up to, I have an MA in rhetoric and find the discourse to be as engaging as stuff like William Burroughs or The Illuminatus Trilogy... And I am not alone in that. You simply can't divine much of anything based on their search history and reading list, and that's made even more difficult by the compartmentalization that some of us are using in0-browser to work against tracking.
- CobrastanJorji 5y agoYou are (perhaps intentionally) confusing correlation and causation. You're also trying to transform a conversation about predicting stupidity, gullibility, and superstition into a conversation about whether some people are more valuable than others because the latter argument is easier to win.
- the_optimist 5y agoWhat's causal? Can you predict "stupidity," for example, based on telemetry data? Perhaps ______ skin-color, ______ descendent property owners who own 5-6 acres southwest of the city in the _____ zone, a couple of cows, read the _____, and are hesitant allies of the revolution are "stupid"? Are you aware that efforts to characterize the thoughts and minds of individuals based on their "telemetry data" are associated with the most horrific, unspeakable crimes against humanity that have occurred repeatedly in human history?
- webinvest 5y agoThe answer to your question can be found by researching the Cambridge Analytica MyPersonality tool scandals. It is a tool that I personally used and tested. I wouldn’t call it a scandal but I’d describe it as being open to researchers and the general public, enormously powerful, and accurate. It only became a scandal after Steve Bannon’s team of smart political researchers used it with a high degree of effectiveness to get Trump into the White House —- and the Democrats who were still using weak user-data like race & ethnicity said hey that’s not fair! Essentially some researchers at Cambridge had a large number of participants take a personality test and click a button to share their FB account data. The personality test measured 5 traits: 1) Openness 2) Conscientiousness 3) Extroversion 4) Agreeableness 5) Neuroticism Now based on our large sample size of personality test takers, we can correlate that you or this Facebook user you’re studying has the following 5 personality traits and they probably have the following oddly-specific likes: ex: Anime, Lil Wayne, popping bubble wrap, Frosted Mini Wheats, AK47s, anal sex, cheap beer, and the sweet smell of air right before it rains.
- CobrastanJorji 5y ago
- CRConrad 5y agoYes, of course your moral value is based, at least in large part, on what you read. How could it not be?!? If you read nothing but bullshit, and furthermore not just read but "like" and share and amplify and spread it on, you not just "might as well be [a] second-class citizen", but absolutely reveal yourself to be a second-class human being.
- splitstud 5y agoBecause said telemetry would be based on an assumption. Said assumption is at the very heart of what we consider morality.
- fedreserved 5y agoOutside of a diary, or a brain implant where I saw and felt everything the other person felt, I cant think of a better tool to tell the moral and intellectual value or a human being then telemetry. It's not definitive, but as a data point it could be powerful depending on what you are trying to evaluate
- jozvolskyef 5y agoYou are making a straw man argument by assuming that GP claims they can infer individual-level attributes from telemetry while all they claim is to infer population-level attributes.
- the_optimist 5y agoThat is far, far worse. Let’s make sweeping generalizations about the stupidity of all ________ people. Fill in the blank on your favorite enemy.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]