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?"
Issues and developments related to ethics, information, and technologies, examined in the ethics and intellectual property graduate courses I teach at the University of Pittsburgh School of Computing and Information. My Bloomsbury book "Ethics, Information, and Technology" will be published in Summer 2025. Kip Currier, PhD, JD
Showing posts with label liberalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label liberalism. Show all posts
Sunday, August 5, 2018
Interview: Yuval Noah Harari: ‘The idea of free information is extremely dangerous’; The Guardian, August 5, 2018
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