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Comment by crawfordcomeaux | Hacker News Reader

Whether or not I agree with the premise of Cambridge Analytics's services directly leading to the Trump campaign emotionally manipulating loads of disparate groups into electing him, it's alarming how easy it is to conceive of someone intentionally doing such a thing at such a scale.

YC made a request for startups targeting news and democracy the other day. I'd like to propose additional underlying unmet societal needs:

Emotional resiliency & nonviolent communication.

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We've all known that this has been coming for a long, long time. Education won't get the job done. Strong business ethics won't either.

No, this shit needs to be regulated into the ground. No more of this opt in bullshit, no more selling data that was never yours to sell, we have to cut out immediately. We MUST limit the amount of datapoints that can be used for advertising and we must limit access to that data with much stronger privacy laws by outlining EXACTLY what data is being collected, providing consumers access to that data, and not allowing business to sell data that to other business. Internal use only, that has to be the rule.

Freedom of thought is at stake, we have to act fast or we are totally boned.

You lose the "freedom of thought" simply because a computer does exactly the same thing that a good salesman would do, simply at scale?

Indeed if the security of control of your government is fragile enough that a fancy telemarketer can acquire significant power perhaps a bit of governmental re-architecture is in order.

Well, what's problematic is democracy. Representative government doesn't protect against this sort of data-driven populism. If people can be manipulated so efficiently, how can democracy be workable?

By shifting societal norms toward learning nonviolent emotional independence?

That seems a good start. But maybe that's game-able too. If you're dealing with an AI (or proto-AI, at least) that understands you better than you do yourself, you're pwned. So then you need your own AI, to filter input and flag exploits. Rather like anti-malware, for your mind.

That's what I'm developing :D

The idea is to create a human programming language to encode activities for learning/practicing principles found in the book Nonviolent Communication and publish that before publishing the language as a way to protect oneself.

Cool :)

Sounds expensive

One answer: restricting the vote to people who have skin in the game. If you have to personally pay for your favored policy you might consider it more carefully.

Yes, people with less to lose are arguably easier to manipulate. But I'd rather see some sort of "I am not a bot." test for independent thinking ;)

Not only are they easier to manipulate - they have a conflict of interest when they (for instance) demand that the government pay them money when they don't pay taxes.

That, I believe, is among the least of our problems.

A hydrogen bomb does the same thing that Greek Fire does, at scale.

The gas turbine does the same thing the ox does, at scale.

Mustard gas does the same thing a bee does, at scale.

Scale fucking matters.

Your examples illustrate my point quite well. It is (and should be) illegal to pour greek fire on even 1 person - small scale doesn't make the action ok.

Does this mean we should pass a law against salesmen, and just general interpersonal persuasion? If not, why not?

I'm going to try to put my finger on the nature of your comments that's troubled me for quite some time.

A key element that's lacking seems to be the principle of charity: seeking a sympathetic understanding of an idea presented, and interpretation of ideas in their most persuasive form.

I don't believe I've ever seen you do that. You might care to give it a thought.

http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html

I'll through your questions back at you:

How is Greek Fire unlike a hydrogen bomb? How might considerations of these be different? What else that shares elements of what a hydrogen bomb is, or does, still substantively different in a way that would not require some sort of regulatory treatment?

Why is it we pass laws, generally? What are the hallmarks of a good, or a bad law?

Gah. "Throw", not "through".

If I sell you something I know you have the money for, but can't afford, that's a predatory action.

If I convince you to harm yourself, that's a predatory action.

We have laws of various forms making these actions illegal. They may not be federally regulated, but could probably stand to be, especially when it's done at scale.

Who needs protection of the law in those situations? The emotionally exploitable or the unethical salesman?

no one is talking about passing a law against campaigning or politicians.

What we are talking about is passing a law that says your data can't be used against you.

How does this mesh with the idea that information wants to be free and DRM is evil?

No, you lose your freedom either way. But a society loses its freedom when software does it at scale.

Building a system that bypasses the problem entirely by disintermediating media consumption from advertising and tracking would be even better.

any clever ideas?

Universal content syndication, with distributed delivery.

Static pages would help loads.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1uotb3/a_modes...

For those who want to get started on developing their own, here are some resources that have really helped me:

"Nonviolent Communication" - Marshall Rosenberg

"Mindsight" - Daniel Siegel

I've also been working on a new mathematical model (rooted in category theory) for how our brains, bodies, and minds work together with the goal of developing a natural language based way to generate practices for the sake of improving myself in targeted ways. I only just finished reading Mindsight & have been practicing some of the techniques in the book by accident for months prior after coming up with the practices myself through my model. I've found my other attempts at programming myself using the model also develop my ability to focus & direct my attention, as well. As a result, I've had initial successes with learning echolocation and learning a form of synesthesia I haven't heard of (seeing a stick figure that moves with my body), both in under 10 minutes of my first attempts.

I'm not an expert in any of this stuff. I'm an information addict in recovery who saw connections among various recent research findings in different fields and started making connections. If love to collaborate with any Neuroscientists or Category Theorists. My contact info is in my profile.

I think about the future and it's relation to mind. For example, we hear a rustle in the jungle, consciously or not we take action against a future in which we are eaten by a tiger. Siegel points to this regulation over time in his definition, good stuff.

Your self improvement is related to the future too. Do you mind if I ask, what kind of tigers do you run from?

BTW. Thank you for the info, this might be worthy of a detour :)

My tigers are all activities dealing with household chores, organizing just about anything, and producing things people will see. I've been avoiding related tasks since I was a kid because of blame/shame/judgment resulting from my attempts. It sounds silly and spoiled, but more reasonable after considering it started when I began shutting down after multiple sexually traumatizing events and a bully "best friend" next door. I'm only now developing the tools needed to overcome the deeply embedded anxieties. Luckily, they're mostly due to fears of tigers that aren't around anymore, so the main trick is to identify what the beliefs are surrounding the tasks and choose to believe the opposite.

As for the future, I consider this year the start of the neural age because it'll be the first year in which a general programming language for the brain/mind/body will be available.

I am afraid of determinacy, like you, my actions are related to my past. I see it all around me. Science embraces this notion of causality, my friends and everyone else embrace it as well. Though the tendency is to compartmentalize causality, sure people explain why things happen all around them. It goes right up to an inch in front of their nose, but they don't want to take it any farther.

Truth is, I don't know who I am. Where I end and you begin.

Cya around friend.

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