[p2p-research] Drone hacking

Mon Dec 21 23:48:58 CET 2009

Just to get in this for a moment, since I ve been following the discussion
for days. Andrew Rogers: the reason we are in a global financial mess is
because we thought we could predict everything with rigid financial models,
supercomputers and infallible systems? Complex and chaotic systems are
extremely difficult to predict. We dont live in mediocristan, but in
extremistan as Taleb amusingly informs us. That is common knowldge I should
think. Besides all the American utopian technology crap of the 1950s, what
makes you really think that 'a computer will still be able to predict and
manipulate your behavior below the threshold of your ability to detect it' ?
Hmmmmmmm, we dont live in a comic book and writing about life like we do is
charming but really not helpful.......

On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 9:58 PM, J. Andrew Rogers
<reality.miner at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 12:20 PM, Andy Robinson <ldxar1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It is sad that there are people around who think the whole world is made
> up
> > of "behaviours" and numbers, and who are in denial about the importance
> of
> > culture and social construction in human action.
>
>
> This has nothing whatsoever to do with being "in denial about the
> importance of culture and social construction in human action".
> Indeed, it quantifies the importance far better than anyone is ever
> likely to be comfortable with. Go ahead and keep your ineffability; a
> computer will still be able to predict and manipulate your behavior
> below the threshold of your ability to detect it.
>
> This is hardly a novel idea. Hagelbarger and Shannon demonstrated that
> a computer can predict human behavior better than humans can predict
> their own behavior in the 1950s. Mathematics and computers have only
> gotten better.
>
>
> > So, we have a sci-fi future with computers which do not require inputs or
> > programmers, and which never have bugs or backdoors.
>
>
> No, we have an only slightly sci-fi future where the models are
> generated via generalized inductive methods instead of hardwiring the
> pattern extraction.  Throw lots and lots of raw data into the system
> and let the mathematics deal with the useful pattern extraction --
> they are much more reliable than humans at discerning subtle
> relationships.
>
>
> > These perfect
> > computers accumulate vast quantities of data on desert nomads and
> mountain
> > clans, not to mention the millions of slum-dwellers without computers.
> They
> > then deploy aggregate models which somehow manage to eliminate variation
> for
> > individual difference, despite the fact that they only know numbers, not
> > people.
>
>
> Nobody is relying on sensors and data sources you own, though that
> most certainly helps. More importantly, all of this technology works
> by building unique and detailed predictive behavioral models of each
> and every individual. This is a big part of why it is computationally
> intensive. No one is predicting the behavior of some standardized
> "average" individual, they are predicting the behavior of *you* in a
> specific context.  Shades of Minority Report, except not fully
> realized and not relying on magic.
>
>
> > By which point they had bloody well better know how to
> > make themselves invisible, so the companies/strategists/politicians who
> are
> > using them don't think to come for the wall-plug.  (Oh wait.  More
> naivete
> > on my part.  They're bound to be powered by self-refuelling warp drives.)
>
>
> They are already invisible, that's the point. Very limited versions of
> this type of technology are already used at a couple big e-commerce
> sites; it does wonderful things for sales, and to the end user nothing
> has changed. Hell, I know how this stuff works and *I* can't see it
> when I use those sites even though I know it is there and that they
> are manipulating a model built by measuring and testing my behavior
> (also invisible).
>
>
> > The only people stupid enough to think that people are predictable, are
> > people who are boring enough to BE predictable.  And who have only ever
> > bothered to look at "behaviour" in *mass* societies, where the people
> around
> > them have also been made stupid and boring.
>
>
> Yes, I know, you are a precious and unique snowflake of unfathomable depth.
>
> Ironically, people seem to be more predictable (from the perspective
> of a computer) when they are intentionally trying to be unpredictable.
>  There is more entropy in relatively thoughtless activity, probably
> because behaviors are more closely coupled to environmental entropy;
> the environment has far more ambient entropy than human cognitive
> processes.
>
>
> --
> J. Andrew Rogers
> realityminer.blogspot.com
>
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-- 
Dr Athina Karatzogianni
Lecturer in Media, Culture and Society
The Dean's Representative (Chinese Partnerships)
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The University of Hull
United Kingdom
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