Month: November 2017

Today’s biggest threat to democracy isn’t fake news—it’s selective facts

Source: Today’s biggest threat to democracy isn’t fake news—it’s selective facts

Can you believe everything you read if you’re not reading everything?

Selective facts are “true” facts that only tells us part of the story, and they influence our views on every issue from gun control to Islamic terrorism to free trade. … Selective facts are worse than outright fake news because they’re pervasive and harder to question than clearly false statements.

news has to engage us for us to read it. Selective facts occur because news and social media companies focus predominantly on their readers’ interests. Media organizations maximize readership and increase profits by creating and sharing content that their readers want to read. … The publisher and social media algorithms learn what the audience wants to hear, gives it them, and the selective cycle continues.

this coverage imbalance leads to a deep empathy gap across countries and religions. It’s especially hard to have empathy in either population when the content you read consistently heralds your side as the victim and ignores extreme actions by your own members.

Just because you think you’re a well-reasoned person doesn’t mean you haven’t accidentally cocooned yourself in an algorithmic bubble. If your goal is to make good decisions for your family, your community, or your country, you must consciously work to get a representative set of facts.

Why You Should NEVER Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One | naked capitalism

Source: Why You Should NEVER Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One | naked capitalism

Why Amazon’s Echo, Google’s Home, and other “home assistants” are a threat to your privacy.

At some time in the not too distant future, analysts will be able to make queries like, “Tell me who was within 15 feet of Person X at least eight times in the last six months.” That will produce a reliable list of their family, friends, lovers, and other close associates.

Although voice identification has a margin of error that would make it unacceptable for legal identification and non-repudiation, it still has useful utility for intelligence and “user experience” applications, especially when paired with other available data.


The Ignorance of Mocking Mormonism

Source: 
The Ignorance of Mocking Mormonism

It’s precisely the beliefs of Latter-day Saints that critics dismiss as strange which produce the behaviors those same critics often applaud. … it’s precisely the pro-social beliefs of Mormons—the eternal nature of families, obligations to the poor and oppressed, accountability to God, the importance of clean living, and the value of self-reliance and personal agency—that result in specific shared behaviors and actions

As much as South Park or Andersen desire to decouple behavior from belief, the reality is that, in the words of the columnist David Brooks, “Vague, uplifting, nondoctrinal religiosity doesn’t actually last. The religions that grow, succor and motivate people to perform heroic acts of service are usually theologically rigorous, arduous in practice, and definite
in their convictions about what is True and False.”

it might help to be a bit less dismissive of religious belief, and a bit more curious in understanding why it seems to work.

Securing Consumers’ Credit Data in the Age of Digital Commerce

Source: Securing Consumers’ Credit Data in the Age of Digital Commerce – Energy and Commerce Committee

Are you telling me that, unbeknownst to a bunch of American citizens, that companies like Equifax are actually having signs out on their personal information and using it and making money off of it, unbeknownst to the average American?

 

YES