4 Chan.

luka

Well-known member
A huge machine with no point of human contact no process of appeal no mercy. Just the numbers. That's the nightmare.
 

luka

Well-known member
And of course we see the entities in latex skin masks pretending to be human telling us that this is the utopia we have been waiting for. The scientific mathematical rationalisation of society the palace of crystal now let us insert the microchip beneath the epidermis.
 

luka

Well-known member
I tell you what else is terrifying, having triumphalist fresh cheeked college boys in laundered chinos telling you they have solved society and we just need to pipe down and let them administer it in our own best interests.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
The interesting thing about algorithms is not that they’re more or less biased than human processes—it’s that they’re consistent and testable. If you can take a system and root out algorithmic bias, you have a fair system, and you can feel pretty good about it staying that way. Humans are never like this—their shifting, their judgements are inscrutable and uncontestable. Algorithms create a venue that allows for fairness, I don’t know why more people don’t understand that.
there is no "rooting out bias". you can't separate algorithms from human processes. humans create algorithms, humans test algorithms. garbage in, garbage out. all you're doing is removing individual accountability, which is the very reasonable fear that luke is expressing, as he does, more poetically.

and it's absolutely not true that individual human judgements are incontestable. there are whole areas of law devoted to dealing with individual human unfairness - equal opportunity employment, anti-corruption, etc. certainly they don't function perfectly, we don't live in an egalitarian utopia, but the possibility of accountability exists. you can make a case by case argument that the tradeoff in accountability for great efficiency is worth it, but arguing that algorithms are fairer because they're analyzable, no. that analysis will be just as opaque and ad-hoc as any other human process because it is a human process.
 

luka

Well-known member
Fuck that. I reckon we should cull them. If Google is on your CV you get culled. Had enough of it. Weird nerds who do maths. Get rid of them.
 

luka

Well-known member
Yyaldrin is with me. Padraig are you ready to pull the trigger? Rid society of this menace?
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I tell you what else is terrifying, having triumphalist fresh cheeked college boys in laundered chinos telling you they have solved society and we just need to pipe down and let them administer it in our own best interests.
don't be awed by the triumphalism, it's a smokescreen
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Padraig are you ready to pull the trigger? Rid society of this menace?
I'm not as bloody-minded as you are, I think we can just fight them - successfully - on the field of ideas

stick to our normal formula - I'll do the logos, you do the pathos. we already both incorporate the ethos.
 

luka

Well-known member
it's an ideological belief. the more they post the clearer that becomes.

I know. But I'm not sure they have got to the stage of realising that yet. The same assumptions are behind Stan's thinking though he's obviously a sweetheart but he hasn't managed to root them out, as ideology. He's hasn't dug deep enough. Funnily enough it was Vimothy who pointed this out first, right at the beginning.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I think I probably can't be accused of having an anti-science bias, and I concur that the encroaching algorithmization of damn near every aspect of life is unequivocally bad and should be opposed.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
But I'm not sure they have got to the stage of realising that yet
tbf people go through their entire lives without realizing that

stan's religious belief in the egalitarian singularity is the benign version - or maybe more like a benign cousin - of this ideology

and it makes perfect sense that vimothy sussed it out first, he speaks their technical languages, he's kind of an older, wiser version of them
 

luka

Well-known member
I think I probably can't be accused of having an anti-science bias, and I concur that the encroaching algorithmization of damn near every aspect of life is unequivocally bad and should be opposed.

I've changed my mind then. If teas against it I'm all for it!
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
faith in the greater fairness and efficacy of algorithms over individuals is (perhaps ironically?) a faith in centralized planning over localized knowledge

or devaluing what James C. Scott - whose Seeing Like a State I'm reading rn - refers to as metis, that is contextual practical knowledge, in favor o techne, or universal technical knowledge

i.e. government by algorithm doesn't really say that algorithms are more fair, it says that some programmers somewhere can devise a better means of making decisions than an individual
 
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constant escape

winter withered, warm
Sure, much of it is ideological in ways I tip-toe around, rather than plant my feet, but much of it is also an attempt to read the currents. What seem to be the more dominant/assured developments underway, and how can we preemptively devise a value system that takes these completed developments as its foundation, its point of departure?

So naturally its all in flux, you relatively stabilize your prognosis then bam a new factor makes itself evident and throws you back into the workshop. Back to prototyping. Hence why I practically live in the workshop, not because I believe one day I'll be able to see every factor coming, but because I believe a system can be established which better absorbs the blows dealt by unknown unknowns. I doubt this is a novel thought.

And sure I could well embody the fresh-out-the-dorms naive ethos, but the bulk of my recent education has been online, voluntary, more or less free.

edit: self guided, that is. Hence the prevailing and singular naivete, faith.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Even here, it still feels like we are pinning each other down, looking to identify the fixed, essential nature of one another. Within this arrangement, some of the above strategies no doubt register as wishy-washy, non-committal, etc
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Another, perhaps the, major axiom here is a belief in science. If lower order phenomena develop stochastically, why is it so absurd to assume that higher order phenomena do as well? It makes sense, which isn't a go-ahead to conflate the map with the territory, but it sure seems like a promising foundation for a system of values, even an egalitarian one.
 
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