Professor Timo Honkela's book Rauhankone (~ Algorithms for Peace) takes on a bold task: how could computers prevent misunderstandings and conflicts? Mr Honkela* is a linguist and AI expert, and his basic idea is (in principle) simple: we have already created quite good machine translation systems, but they only concern the "plain information" level in our language exchanges. We should be able to go deeper.
Honkela proposes that using computers and computer networks we could enable direct consultations with very large collections of people: millions or even hundreds of millions. We could then use computers to analyze the "minutes" of such meetings. Moreover, use digital personal assistants in communication and anger control.
Algorithms feature in Harari's Homo Deus, too, but in a broader context. Harari sees a raise of new kind of thinking that is even an alternative to humanism, and calls it dataism. The proponents of dataism see data and algorithms valuable as such, not only because they are useful for humans. Western capitalism defeated socialism (and fascism) not because it was ethical, but because it enabled faster and better data processing. This view is exaggerated but not without merit. Harare even names Aaron Swartz a "martyr of dataism" because he wanted to "liberate" scientific articles i.e. upload them to be freely accessible.
* I haven't met Mr Honkela but apparently my grandmother was his first primary school teacher. Finland is a small place and the town of Kalajoki even smaller.
Monday, December 18, 2017
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
TV and the Breakfast Club change the world
People who were teenagers in the 1980's (which was yesterday) quite probably know The Breakfast Club, but I was surprised to see a reference to it in Crash Course on Sociology. It's presenter refers to J. Coleman's study of adolescents in the 1950's ("the Coleman report"), summarized here. The subcultures that Coleman identifies correspond roughly to the stereotypes of The Breakfast Club.
There's another pop culture phenomena that I saw in an unexpected context: the somewhat sentimental and melodramatic TV series Holocaust that had some very good actors/actresses. Judt mentions in his book Postwar that it caused a sensation when broadcast in Germany in the very late 1970's.* For the first time, he says, there was widespread public discussion about the events. Judt explains that the baby boomers were eager to talk about the actions of their parents' generation. It may have helped that the TV series was foreign and had lots of Hollywood elements.
The superstar of TV series is of course Twin Peaks. Both the series and earlier films by Lynch have left a lasting legacy to narration and cinematography (I think). The industrial noises, deadpan expressions, endless zooms into a ventilation duct or someone's ear left us wondering if Lynch loved "strangeness" in the sense of existential philosophy. Many of the films had scenes of the actors/actresses way too much in their character: Laura Dern mouth wide open in Blue Velvet, Major Brigg's stiff army mannerism in Twin Peaks, Nicholas Cage's speech at the end of Wind at Heart. For young philosophy majors these were of course scenes of bad faith. In reality it's just Lynch's personal style.
* It was probably dubbed in German. I remember seeing it in English which made it sound a bit unreal.
There's another pop culture phenomena that I saw in an unexpected context: the somewhat sentimental and melodramatic TV series Holocaust that had some very good actors/actresses. Judt mentions in his book Postwar that it caused a sensation when broadcast in Germany in the very late 1970's.* For the first time, he says, there was widespread public discussion about the events. Judt explains that the baby boomers were eager to talk about the actions of their parents' generation. It may have helped that the TV series was foreign and had lots of Hollywood elements.
The superstar of TV series is of course Twin Peaks. Both the series and earlier films by Lynch have left a lasting legacy to narration and cinematography (I think). The industrial noises, deadpan expressions, endless zooms into a ventilation duct or someone's ear left us wondering if Lynch loved "strangeness" in the sense of existential philosophy. Many of the films had scenes of the actors/actresses way too much in their character: Laura Dern mouth wide open in Blue Velvet, Major Brigg's stiff army mannerism in Twin Peaks, Nicholas Cage's speech at the end of Wind at Heart. For young philosophy majors these were of course scenes of bad faith. In reality it's just Lynch's personal style.
* It was probably dubbed in German. I remember seeing it in English which made it sound a bit unreal.
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Notes on Harari
Harari's Sapiens has been a bestseller, and for a reason. There's something captivating and informative in every chapter. I do not want to spoil the story, but there were some parts where I did not totally agree with him.
History of capitalism and science: Harari points out that economic booms owe their success to scientific/technical development. Thus, if scientists get no resources, forward-looking investment will stall because there won't be new products that companies can sell. This is a bit of a simplification. Companies do not normally sell innovations straight out of research labs. Rather they sell stuff created by their R&D departments (and sometimes probably marketing department).
The impossibility of predictions: Harari uses the Arab spring as a great example. Suppose some intelligence company told (former Egyptian) president Mubarak that next year there is going to be a revolution. He would have certainly lowered taxes, distributed free food and started other PR campaigns to improve his image. Thus no revolution and no credit to the intelligence company. It's certainly the case that the Arab spring was a surprise. However, many researchers have mentioned that one factor in the Syrian civil war was a drought.
History of capitalism and science: Harari points out that economic booms owe their success to scientific/technical development. Thus, if scientists get no resources, forward-looking investment will stall because there won't be new products that companies can sell. This is a bit of a simplification. Companies do not normally sell innovations straight out of research labs. Rather they sell stuff created by their R&D departments (and sometimes probably marketing department).
The impossibility of predictions: Harari uses the Arab spring as a great example. Suppose some intelligence company told (former Egyptian) president Mubarak that next year there is going to be a revolution. He would have certainly lowered taxes, distributed free food and started other PR campaigns to improve his image. Thus no revolution and no credit to the intelligence company. It's certainly the case that the Arab spring was a surprise. However, many researchers have mentioned that one factor in the Syrian civil war was a drought.
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