Andrew Anthony, The Guardian; Interview: Yuval Noah Harari: ‘The idea of free information is extremely dangerous’
"Why is liberalism under particular threat from big data?
Liberalism
is based on the assumption that you have privileged access to your own
inner world of feelings and thoughts and choices, and nobody outside you
can really understand you. This is why your feelings are the highest
authority in your life and also in politics and economics – the voter
knows best, the customer is always right. Even though neuroscience shows
us that there is no such thing as free will, in practical terms it made
sense because nobody could understand and manipulate your innermost
feelings. But now the merger of biotech and infotech in neuroscience and
the ability to gather enormous amounts of data on each individual and
process them effectively means we are very close to the point where an
external system can understand your feelings better than you. We’ve
already seen a glimpse of it in the last epidemic of fake news.
There’s always been fake news but what’s different this time is that
you can tailor the story to particular individuals, because you know the
prejudice of this particular individual. The more people believe in
free will, that their feelings represent some mystical spiritual
capacity, the easier it is to manipulate them, because they won’t think
that their feelings are being produced and manipulated by some external
system...
You say if you want good information, pay good money for it. The
Silicon Valley adage is information wants to be free, and to some
extent the online newspaper industry has followed that. Is that wise?
The
idea of free information is extremely dangerous when it comes to the
news industry. If there’s so much free information out there, how do you
get people’s attention? This becomes the real commodity. At present
there is an incentive in order to get your attention – and then sell it
to advertisers and politicians and so forth – to create more and more
sensational stories, irrespective of truth or relevance. Some of the
fake news comes from manipulation by Russian hackers but much of it is
simply because of the wrong incentive structure. There is no penalty for
creating a sensational story that is not true. We’re willing to pay for
high quality food and clothes and cars, so why not high quality
information?"
Ethically-tangled aspects of 21st century societies and cultures. In the vein of Charles Darwin’s 1859 “entangled bank” metaphor—a complex and evolving digital ecosystem of difference and dependence, where humans, technologies, ethics, law, policy, data, and information converge and diverge. Kip Currier, PhD, JD
Showing posts with label Yuval Noah Harari. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yuval Noah Harari. Show all posts
Sunday, August 5, 2018
Interview: Yuval Noah Harari: ‘The idea of free information is extremely dangerous’; The Guardian, August 5, 2018
Sunday, March 19, 2017
Yuval Noah Harari: ‘Homo sapiens as we know them will disappear in a century or so’; Guardian, March 19, 2017
Andrew Anthony, Guardian;
"Is being compassionate and empathetic a major flaw in human evolution? Is psychopathy the future for our species?
Dominic Currie, reader
No, I don’t think so. First of all, if it is, then it’s going to be quite a terrible future. But even if we leave aside the moral aspect and just look at it from a practical aspect, then human power comes from cooperation, and psychopaths are not very good at cooperation. You need empathy and compassion, you need the ability to understand and to sympathise with other people in order to cooperate with them effectively. So even if we leave aside all moral issues, still I don’t think that empathy is bad for us or that psychopaths are the future of humankind."
Yuval Noah Harari: ‘Homo sapiens as we know them will disappear in a century or so’
"Is being compassionate and empathetic a major flaw in human evolution? Is psychopathy the future for our species?
Dominic Currie, reader
No, I don’t think so. First of all, if it is, then it’s going to be quite a terrible future. But even if we leave aside the moral aspect and just look at it from a practical aspect, then human power comes from cooperation, and psychopaths are not very good at cooperation. You need empathy and compassion, you need the ability to understand and to sympathise with other people in order to cooperate with them effectively. So even if we leave aside all moral issues, still I don’t think that empathy is bad for us or that psychopaths are the future of humankind."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)