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Algorithms tell you how to vote. Algorithms can revoke your driver’s license and terminate your disability benefits. Algorithms predict crimes. Algorithms ensured you didn’t hear about #FreddieGray on Twitter. Algorithms are everywhere, and, to hear critics, they are trouble. What’s the problem? Critics allege that algorithms are opaque, automatic, emotionless, and impersonal, and that they separate decision-makers from the consequences of their actions. Algorithms cannot appreciate the context of structural discrimination, are trained on flawed datasets, and are ruining lives everywhere. There needs to be algorithmic accountability. Otherwise, who is to blame when a computational process suddenly deprives someone of his or her rights and livelihood?
But at heart, criticism of algorithmic decision-making makes an age-old argument about impersonal, automatic corporate and government bureaucracy. The machine like bureaucracy has simply become the machine. Instead of a quest for accountability, much of the rhetoric and discourse about algorithms amounts to a surrender—an unwillingness to fight the ideas and bureaucratic logic driving the algorithms that critics find so creepy and problematic. Algorithmic transparency and accountability can only be achieved if critics understand that transparency (no modifier is needed) is the issue. If the problem is that a bureaucratic system is impersonal, unaccountable, creepy, and has a flawed or biased decision criteria, then why fetishize and render mysterious the mere mechanical instrument of the system’s will ?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 22 2015, @03:53AM
our entire society and in turn government is based on money which is bad because money is used to manipulate the government and in turn fucks over our society in order for the rich to get more money.
Our entire society is based on breathing air too. Guess we better ban that before the evil air breathers fuck over our society.
There are two things to note here. First, money is incredibly useful and we are all better for having that tool present in our society. If your country banned money, it would become a nation of lawbreakers inside of a year just due to the use of illegal currencies.
Second, as with all such completely misguided policies, this affects the poor far more than it would affect the powerful or the wealthy. After all, money is just a medium of exchange, power is the actual good of considerable value which doesn't go away just because someone banned money. In other words, this would just make the problems you care about worse. The wealthy and powerful would just get wealthier and more powerful because they have even more control over trade and what resources the rest of us have access to. Nothing will become free.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Friday May 22 2015, @05:41PM
i think you might've misunderstood the argument. i don't think he's suggesting to do away with money entirely, it is indeed far too useful, and something will always exist as an abstract holder of value, so 'getting rid of money' would be an exercise in futility. we do, however, need to get money out of the government; its a means to an end, not an end itself, which is what it has become. somehow we need to reduce the view of money as an end. i'm pretty sure thats what the GP was getting at, and his naive suggestion to "get rid of money" was just the first thing that came to mind to do that.
sometimes you have to understand what somebody means despite the exact words they use. you have to look at the overall idea of what they mean rather than getting pedantically stuck on their wordchoice.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 23 2015, @12:23AM
we do, however, need to get money out of the government
But that's not going to happen either just due to taxes and the value of government services provided (including illegal ones). But of course, I'm taking your word choice literally. Even if we took your words in the weak sense of capping what people can contribute to a political campaign, an action which has already been done, we still have the matter of who will pay for campaigns and the right (such as in the US) of people to spend money to have their voices heard. Further, I think a lot of the spending in politics is of the status signalling sort. For example, George Soros and the Koch brothers are rather notorious for their political spending, but not for the success of their political spending, if you get my drift. I think this sort of political spending is an effective way to part the extremely wealthy from part of the burden of their wealth.
sometimes you have to understand what somebody means despite the exact words they use. you have to look at the overall idea of what they mean rather than getting pedantically stuck on their wordchoice.
But those words are all we have to go off of. And sometimes they mean what they say. I believe this is one such case. There are some people who really buy into the "money is the root of all evil" meme to the point that they think they can get rid of evil by getting rid of money. And frankly, I'm not even remotely off base in my original comment. Keep in mind the following quotes from the original poster:
our entire society and in turn government is based on money which is bad
or
what if we just remove money from the equation and just made everything machines automated completely free?
or
this would require a paradigm shift toward 100% recycling, 0% pollution and 100% open designs (for everything) but jobs would become voluntary. it's not a perfect system but what we have now is just cruel and it's failing badly.
The poster is in full utopia mode. He or she is definitely thinking of the entirety of society, not just the government of society.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Saturday May 23 2015, @01:11AM
there's nothing wrong with wanting a utopia. its probably impossible, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
yeah, i know that words used are all we have to go by, but not everyone is great at communicating, and even if the specific thing they suggest is impossible or just absurdly naive, that doesn't make the reasoning behind it bad, just that they don't have a full understanding of the actual problem, of all the potential solutions, or of all the consequences of those solutions (its impossible for any one person to know everything). pedantry is a huge barrier to real conversation because many people assign different definitions to the same words - for example, extremist liberals define "conservative" the same way extremist conservatives define "liberal", "communist", "socialist", etc: "evil, tyrannical scumbags who hate freedom" (or something like that, you get the gist) - and if you get hung up on the specific words you miss the big picture and cut short the chances to find common ground and understanding. now, you shouldnt put words into people's mouths either, but there's nothing productive about shutting down a conversation about a real problem simply because an impossible or absurdly naive solution was suggested.
its generally agreed that there is a problem, but pinning down the actual, specific problem is difficult, as is finding solutions; rather than dismissing naive, idealistic solutions out of hand (typically accompanied with insulting the suggester), its more productive to build from it something more realistic and explain why the original suggestion is no good - this too is probably hopelessly naive and idealistic, but the idea and reasoning behind it is solid. the more people understand whats behind the suggestion the better chance we have of getting a real solution.
sorry, i'm rambling a bit and not even sure where i wanted to go with this, so i hope you're able to understand what i'm wanting to get at and not getting stuck on the specific words i'm using. ;)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 23 2015, @01:45AM
there's nothing wrong with wanting a utopia. its probably impossible, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
Actually being impossible is a good reason to not try. It's not the only reason in vacuum, but it shouldn't be ignored. And relevant to this particular proposal, I've seen a couple of cases where currencies were completely inadequate for trade (hyperinflation and in the second case, just not being useful enough to be worth trading). The traders didn't just give up and barter or whatever. Instead, they quickly found a new good to trade as currency and moved on.
even if the specific thing they suggest is impossible or just absurdly naive, that doesn't make the reasoning behind it bad, just that they don't have a full understanding of the actual problem, of all the potential solutions, or of all the consequences of those solutions (its impossible for any one person to know everything)
But being absurdly naive or advocating the impossible (especially both at the same time) strongly correlates with bad reasoning.
I think I see where you're going with this and obviously, I have imperfect capabilities as well, but I still think my original judgment, even though on the basis of a single post, was correct.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Saturday May 23 2015, @02:07PM
well, that i agree with, but basically what i mean is that you should still strive to reach the ideal, even if reaching the ideal itself is impossible. get as close to it as possible; take the impossible suggestions and build something possible from them. its not currently possible for humans to regrow limbs, so by your thinking we should just throw up our hands and give up on people with amputations - sucks you lost your limb, guess you're fucked buddy, enjoy being a cripple for the rest of your life! - my thinking is that we should do whatever we can to as closely approximate giving them their limb back (eg, prosthetics), and that we don't really know that something is impossible until we try and actually start working towards it; it might appear impossible now but once we start working on it, human ingenuity can come up with some pretty impressive things (continuing the prosthetics analogy, we're getting close to being able to connect nerves to prosthetics, with artificial skin and muscles, basically fully restoring all of the lost limb's functionality, something we'd never do if we just gave up and never even tried since its impossible for humans to regrow limbs, and we're getting close to figuring out how to regenerate or grow new limbs - striving for impossible ideals, despite them seeming impossible or being impossible at the time, can give you close approximations to the impossible goal, or even lead to finding out that its not truly impossible).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 25 2015, @02:01AM
but basically what i mean is that you should still strive to reach the ideal, even if reaching the ideal itself is impossible
Unless the ideal is unworthy of the striving or the cost of the striving makes it a bad deal. Striving for an unattainable goal pretty is a huge part of what science is about, for example. Most people would think our scientific progress was indeed worth considerable effort despite not meeting the ideal. OTOH, the voluntary human extinction movement strives for the ideal of the extinction of humanity which I think is an unworthy goal. Then there's the parable of the paper clip optimizer, a hypothetical machine which strives to turn the universe into as many paperclips as possible. Paperclips are indeed valuable, but not at the price of turning the entire universe into paperclips.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Monday May 25 2015, @02:34AM
well, yeah, but who is to decide which ideals are worthy and which aren't? too many people believe that the only ideals worth striving for are ones that directly benefit them and noone else, or even ones that directly harm others. the ideals we should be striving for are the ones which benefit the most people possible, or ideally everyone. imo we should be striving for ideals which have the largest benefit for the largest number of people, even if the initial cost is ridiculously high. unfortunately this requires people, specifically the people with power, to think of more than just themselves, but "powerful" and "selfless" are practically mutually exclusive. its a pretty sad state of affairs that so few people can think of more than just themselves, despite the whole concept of society having to do with pooling strengths and resources for mutual benefit (not that everything that each person has should be shared, but if one person is hoarding all of 99% of something, depriving everyone else of it and never giving anyone else a chance to earn any of it, thats a huge problem; having more than others is fine, having all of it is not; where the line lies specifically can be up for debate, but there is definitely a point where "more" becomes "too much").
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 26 2015, @03:51AM
well, yeah, but who is to decide which ideals are worthy and which aren't?
Fortunately, I was here to step to the plate with reason and actual real world examples to explain was wrong with the ideal in question.
too many people believe that the only ideals worth striving for are ones that directly benefit them and noone else, or even ones that directly harm others. the ideals we should be striving for are the ones which benefit the most people possible, or ideally everyone. imo we should be striving for ideals which have the largest benefit for the largest number of people, even if the initial cost is ridiculously high.
I agree to some degree. But the cost matters here. If it is ridiculously high, then there should be a clearly defined near future benefit of corresponding size to go with it. Otherwise, why not just do prudent economic decisions for a few generations and try again later when you're much more wealthy and more technologically able to implement the ideal in a quicker time frame?
unfortunately this requires people, specifically the people with power, to think of more than just themselves, but "powerful" and "selfless" are practically mutually exclusive.
It doesn't. If your ideal relies on selfless people in power, you are doing it wrong and need to take that plan back to the drawing board.
not that everything that each person has should be shared, but if one person is hoarding all of 99% of something, depriving everyone else of it and never giving anyone else a chance to earn any of it, thats a huge problem; having more than others is fine, having all of it is not; where the line lies specifically can be up for debate, but there is definitely a point where "more" becomes "too much"
How did that happen? Hoarding without substitute goods available doesn't just happen. Odds are good the real problem here is a corruption of a political system. I don't want to get libertarian here, but massive hoarding usually requires guns to obtain and keep competitors away. And if you're paying for the guns yourself, then you're having to pay for it out of your hoard. So I find a lot of these schemes are based on corruptly obtaining military or legal force paid for with other peoples' money (or the equivalent political barter in the original poster's non-money world). If you have the power to take the hoard away, then you have the power to change the system so that the hoarding isn't profitable in the first place. Maybe you should do that instead?
(Score: 2) by tathra on Thursday May 28 2015, @06:23PM
i agree. as always, a cost:benefit analysis should be done; if the cost is too high but could realistically be significantly lower in 5-20 years, then the benefits of waiting and implementing later probably outweigh the cost if beginning implementation immediately. that time shouldn't just be wasted though, ideally it should be used to refine the plan and decide on a solid starting point, ie, the cost reaches a specific amount or x years have past, whichever comes first, otherwise you can end up with indefinite procrastination.
the check was supposed to be "give the power to the people", but that has been subverted over generations by tricking people to vote against their own interests, not to mention gerrymandering, bigotry/xenophobia (eg, "its worth sacrificing this if it hurts the group i hate more"), the destruction of the education system, etc.
this, too, happened over generations. inheriting over and over again, never touching the principal and living off the interest alone, and re-investing the interest while growing the principal, and over generations it just kept growing, until it reached the point where it could be used to start buying representatives and the government. the problem is definitely corruption of the political system, but it was only corruptible as soon as it was due to such large amounts of money being consolidated by individuals (its always possible it would've been corrupted anyway further down the line, but having hundreds of billions onhand directly enabled it).
its a complicated problem and there's no easy fix, and since its complicated its easy to distract people from even realizing there is a problem by oversimplifying it. the first step is getting enough people to acknowledge there's a problem, but the perceived livelihood of the ones at the root of the problem depends on them not acknowledging and understanding it and not letting others acknowledge or understand it. people need to come together and start to work out a solution that benefits all before inequality pushes things to the point of collapse; and coming together to work on it is the important part! lots of people on the left probably do think of the government as a blunt tool, thinking the solution is just to raise taxation, but if somebody on the right has a better, more favorable solution overall like, say, incentivizing the creation of cooperatives, thats something a leftist might never think of but would probably work a lot better than just taxing the hell out of the wealthy. these ideas need to be shared and debated instead of just stopping at, "we don't agree so fuck you".