Can we do an experiment and use 'she' for anonymous players in these stories? Would be kinda cool. The article uses 'he' throughout, and only acknowledges the possibility of it being either/or/group in the final paragraphs.
307 karma · joined November 4, 2016
Advances in machine learning have been made by training a computerized mimic of a neural network on a given task. Though the networks are successful, they are also a black box because it is hard to reconstruct how they achieve their result.
“This has given neuroscience a sense of pessimism that the brain is similarly a black box,” she said. “Our paper provides a counterexample. We’re recording from neurons at the highest stage of the visual system and can see that there’s no black box. My bet is that that will be true throughout the brain.”
https://gist.github.com/thomasbilk/1506210/2d20f47bbcca75b2f...
No more accidental or ambiguous re-activation...
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/01/05/si...
Furthermore, in the context of western exploitation/interference with these countries' economies, many of whom have not had recourse to a judicial process for reparations - your notion of what is rightful or fair is perhaps too narrow.
Vulture funds buy up sovereign debt issued by poor countries at a fraction of its face value, then sue the countries in courts - usually in London, New York or Paris - for their full face value plus interest.
The Digital Regime of Truth: From the Algorithmic Governmentality to a New Rule of Law
'Is this part of me, or external to me? Did I come up with this, or was it presented to me?'
As long as a user avoids or suppresses those kinds of questions then yes it's a transitional object, and whatever algorithmic control is in effect is not so important to us. To a certain extent, the algorithms, just reflect our desire for a space where there is an illusion that the outer-world accords with our inner-worlds.
Meanwhile - in terms of differentiating Facebook from the other social networks ...
Unlike Twitter (word limits, textual), and Snapchat (ephemeral, visual) Facebook is gunning for limitlessness (VR, Everything) ... in this sense, in giving its users a sense of omnipotence and omnipresence it's in a different league, one where the fundamental question of where we end and our algorithmic doppelgangers begin is elided altogether in favor of an algorithmic state ... with it's own reality, and truth.
Regarding algorithmic doppelgangers and how we govern them (Zuckerberg 2020) this is a good place to start:
https://iainmait.land/posts/20170418-algorithmic-governmenta...
"I would like to show that with algorithmic governmentality, what we face is precisely a crisis of the regimes of truth. To my mind, we are less facing the emergence of a new regime of truth than a crisis of regimes of truth. A whole range of notions are in crisis: the notions of person, authority, testimony."
More here if you're interested: https://iainmait.land/pdf/Rouvroy-Stiegler.pdf
Regarding a city that's already done this - Detroit went full LED this year:
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2017/01/led_ligh...
The difference on the ground is quite noticeable, partly because we're so used to sodium yellow and as LEDs are in the 6000K range - i.e. daylight ... it's 'uncanny', things certainly seem more HD - here's a picture I recently took at night:
https://iainmait.land/img/photos/1280/street_crossing_2_2017...
After all, doesn't the kind of of digital truth (or digital behaviourism) epitomized by this study threaten to undermine the foundation of ideas like individual emancipation or of the common?
Like let's say you move to a quaint town that the AI found for you. Who moved in and is now a member of that community, you and your wife or your digital doppelgangers? And where did you move? The town or it's statistical analog warehoused in a data-center somewhere.
When a new shop opens up in the town and you find your favorite brand of wine from your previous town on the shelves ... what's going on?
Another person who has been talking in this way is the philosopher Bernard Steigler, he uses this term 'general organology' in an attempt to rehabilitate our technological entanglements from the skeptical cul-de-sac demonstrated by the OP and supported by most recent philosophy (e.g. Adorno, Debord, although crucially not Walter Benjamin)
Although I am sure he would be equally vitriolic about FB the general overview of Steigler's thought here is a neat compliment to the POV of the OP.
http://nootechnics.org/general-organology-the-co-individuati...
I have corrupted this angle a little bit and tried to treat Facebook with kid gloves here:
https://iainmait.land/posts/20170201-transitional-object.htm...
Monitoring my own misgivings however I've noticed that there is a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater ...
So much of our most trenchant criticisms of Facebook stem from how it's an illusion and that's not rooted in reality. Zuckerberg seems to be trying to reattach its moorings, talking about these real-world communities that give us a sense of purpose and meaning and that Facebook complements rather than replaces or distorts.
Unfortunately his status as a billionaire undermines this argument. We're intellectually (if not actually) very skeptical of illusions (e.g. Plato's allegory of the cave) and view his net-worth being directly proportional to his malign influence in our society, pulling the wool over our eyes with an addictive illusion while voraciously funneling our private information into vast data-centers where AI is trained to new heights of persuasiveness...
But I think it is possible to rehabilitate Facebook's illusory component and get something useful out of it. After all it has been instrumental in some major movements across the globe, including the election of Trump and subsequent protests.
I've written about it here: https://iainmait.land/posts/20170201-transitional-object.htm...
It's a bit like MZ's approach ... while also acknowledging OP's final point, that Facebook will never willingly optimize for dis-engagement.