The Data That Turned the World Upside Down

Xarog said:
Not directly. The things big data are trying to manipulate fit together to construct a certain kind of social entity which could not exist without all four temperaments. That's a good, at least. It's why civilisation can work in a meaningful sense.
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Using big data to manipulate people is probably never good - though I could think of some hypothetical situations where it might be good. Big Data can also be used for other things besides manipulation though. Off the top of my head - health care - if you can predict a persons future health needs based on big data couldn't that make treatment more efficient, prevention more accessible and effective as well as lowering the cost of healthcare delivery?

Xarog said:
Can you stop yourself from caring about the things you hold sacred? If yes, then yes.
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Some things, yes, other things no. Perhaps an awareness of big data and it's pervasiveness as well as learning to recognise attempts at manipulation will become easier over time. We're susceptible now because we are on the frontier so to speak - most people have no concept or understanding of the influence big data is starting to have.

Xarog said:
No, but you could change the political system so that the differences are actually recognised by the system in an official manner.
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Yes, I think that's what I meant by elections and polls being adapted - if the system itself recognises the influence and effects of big data, perhaps it can also be adapted to take these into account when tallying votes - in the same way statistics learned to take confounding variables into account when reaching conclusions
 
C4Cat said:
I just read this article and it blew my mind.
I tried the test on the Cambridge website (https://applymagicsauce.com/) which uses your facebook likes to generate a scarily accurate personality profile.
I hardly even ever use facebook and it used only 30 of my likes to generate a profile that was really quite accurate.
What it could do with 300 likes? And all the other data you continuously generate with your smartphone?
Is this is the end of democracy?
If people can be so easily manipulated by these sort of analysis then where does that leave us?
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Haha I did mine now and it's amazingly accurate!
 
C4Cat said:
Using big data to manipulate people is probably never good - though I could think of some hypothetical situations where it might be good. Big Data can also be used for other things besides manipulation though. Off the top of my head - health care - if you can predict a persons future health needs based on big data couldn't that make treatment more efficient, prevention more accessible and effective as well as lowering the cost of healthcare delivery?


Some things, yes, other things no. Perhaps an awareness of big data and it's pervasiveness as well as learning to recognise attempts at manipulation will become easier over time. We're susceptible now because we are on the frontier so to speak - most people have no concept or understanding of the influence big data is starting to have.


Yes, I think that's what I meant by elections and polls being adapted - if the system itself recognises the influence and effects of big data, perhaps it can also be adapted to take these into account when tallying votes - in the same way statistics learned to take confounding variables into account when reaching conclusions
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Big data is not influencing people's decisions. Big data is being used to predict which positions people will react favourably towards. In other words, politicians aren't manipulating people, they're manipulating the way they present themselves to the people and which issues they champion and how they champion them.

As for using that data to adjust the election results, you must be out of your mind. Just look at how governments like to fudge the crime stats or the job stats or any other kind of stat you could think to mention. Do you really want to give anyone the power to amend election results based on "big data"?

I honestly think that people should just own up to their primary temperaments and use that to organise a kind of distributed discipline scheme where each temperament has its area of recognised superior expertise so that decisions are made by the right sort of people who instinctively derive the right sort of solution that actually solves the problem in a manner satisfactory to everyone involved, and to be able to know beforehand that that's how it's going to go down as best as is humanly/humanely possible.
 
This is what they said about me:

Sorry, we are unable to generate a prediction. An insufficient number of your Likes match with those in our database, and we don’t believe in guesswork. Please take our take more psychometric tests if you would still like to receive scientific feedback on your traits. Thanks!
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Just ran a few people at the office through that applymagicsauce site.
Most fun we've had in a while... also, holy crap, the accuracy of that thing is jaw dropping.
It could make for an insanely awesome HR tool, provided of course that it's based on a fairly large dataset of "likes" for someone.
 
...was funded primarily by the secretive US software billionaire Robert Mercer...
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The dude from Renaissance Technologies. Kinda makes sense.
 
Your Likes are fairly androgynous; they suggest you’re probably Male but you don’t repress your feminine side.
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Apparently liking Stephen King makes you less intelligent and more likely to be gay.

Can't get everything right.

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