Making Sense #152: with Roger McNamee

This episode is about data privacy and the commodification of personal data. 

I'm going to be frank in that, for me, it doesn't carry a lot of interesting information. There were a few quote-worthy remarks to come out of the interview, but I'm not sure I'm 100% behind every one of this guy's worries. 

The best thing about the episode is that Roger doesn't paint himself as an expert and he isn't trying to convince anyone the sky is falling. It's really just a high-octane conversation between two very smart people, which makes it a thousand times more interesting than the next best thing out there right now (in April 2019, that would be Captain Marvel). 

One of the best quotes to come out of the episode is something along the lines of, "we need to ask how is it okay for Google to sell data they collect on minors."

Pretty much sums up all you need to know about the episode.

If you want a few more high points, I'd go with:

-"We’re not the customer and we're not even the product. We’re the fuel.”

-“I don’t believe that Facebook and Twitter will be as profitable than they have to clean up the toxic digital spills that they create.”

-"The Google Maps app is collecting meta data to process and sell. The Apple maps app doesn't do that."

Here are a few disagreements I have with this conversation:

Roger thinks Google is training their artificial Driving programs with our "Captcha" answers about which pictures have stoplights in them. That we're training their computers how to recognize stoplights. But that doesn't make any sense. If Captcha is going to know how or whether our responses are correct, then it already knows which pictures have stoplights in them.

Roger seems to think he doesn’t have any business relationship with Equifax and so they shouldn't have access to his data. But unless I'm mistaken, you sign a release when you accept a credit card. And the fine print on the release is the bank will share your data with their partners.

I'm also not convinced that the free giving away of all of this data is something to worry about. He does cite one conceivably nefarious example where Google figures out that your jerky mouse movements mean you have some disease, and sells that data to your insurance company so they can drop you. Which is pretty far-fetched. And would be rendered obsolete if this country ever gives up its obsession with jingoist yahooism and adopts universal health care.

Not a review--this posting is original content inspired by the Making Sense podcast

Summa Contra Theologica is a 32-page hyperlink text which I have created that in some ways is an answer to the stark atheism espoused by Sam and Making Sense.

I still consider it a work in progress, and any feedback, corrections, contributions or condemnations you care to make will be of great interest to me.

Thanks!

My review of Making Sense #146, Digital Capitalism with Douglas Rushkoff

I'm getting back to write this review a few weeks after listening to the podcast. Twice.

Why did it take so long? Because, although I am very appreciative of Rushkoff's points of view, I just didn't find myself terribly persuaded by him. It's great that he's biased toward humans over machines, and I imagine that there might be one or two people here in Silicon Valley where that opinion is controversial.

But I don't think that Facebook or Google tracking our data and marketing stuff to us is really a problem. The usual rules about false information should and are being enforced, but really, we're only protecting morons and hyper-partisans with those rules. The rest of us are presumably smart enough to know that Sandy Hook really happened, or that there is no child-sex ring being operated out of the basement of a DC pizza parlor, or that Donald Trump is an execrable human being with nothing but flyover-state resentment to keep him from immediate impeachment.

As an aside, I'll point out that Sam's and Rushkoff's comments about how bad the Information Age has become for writers only applies to that tiny minority of writers who were getting published. The rest of us were getting nothing but rejection letters from a closed-loop network of good old boys.

Now things have changed, and I'm free to submit my work to an explosion of free online venues and have finally become published. If not successful. This blog is an amusingly typical example: I have a 100% acceptance rate for new work here (why not--it's MY blog) and yet it has a readership of zero.

But the main reason I haven't published this review until now is that I just didn't find the episode very interesting. There were no conflicts of opinion, no startling revelations, and no real there, there.

#144 Conquering Hate, with Deeyah Khan

This is precisely the kind of conversation that I admire Sam Harris most for undertaking. Not because he's so clever and so right. Actually the opposite. As with podcast #123, with Ezra Klein, Sam is confronted in this podcast with a person eloquently pointing out a shortcoming in his thinking. Unfortunately, as with the Ezra Klein podcast, Sam's blind spot stands out rather obviously, and he seems to be unable to get what she's saying, which I think is this: It's unfortunate that Sam spends so much of his time tearing down the "bad ideas" of Islam that lead to jihadism and being so obstinately and completely in denial that there were any geopolitical motives in someone like Bin Laden or any other privileged Islamist. She urges him not to flatten the narrative down to "Islam bad, secularism good" when she has found from personal meetings with these people that it's never that black and white, that it is always "all about complexity."

But this message can't go over so easily for a man who has made his name with books like "The End of Faith" or "Islam and the Future of Tolerance." Those books focused on the shortcomings of Islam. They not only ignore, but actually disparage, any arguments about Western imperialism. Khan is in square opposition to his simplistic view, but she can't seem to crack through Sam's multi-decades-long veneer of religious approbation.

Another fascinating idea that Khan brings up which Sam is lamentably unable to grok is her observation that these hate movements, be they Jihadist or White Supremist, seem to her to be carried out by foot soldiers culled from the ranks of the most vulnerable, the most impressionable, the most likely to fall under the sway of a charismatic leader willing to invest the time and effort into cultivating them. Showered with attention, magnified by the media and by their cause, these angry young men are brought from anonymity and inconsequentialism to notoriety and preeminence by their movement. Their leaders, their particular "Fight Club," may be motivated by a more pure idea of hatred or dogma, but these suicide bombers and KKK lackeys are lured into a movement on weaker pretexts, and Khan finds she is able to dismantle and penetrate them, not by correcting the false dogma, but by her own countering charisma. But Sam seems to only half-get this.

And frankly, Sam should take a more clear-headed view of his own stance here, as he clearly wants it both ways. He claims that it isn't fair to call him an "islamophobe" because of his Muslim friends, because by taking a stand against jihadists he is defending more vulnerable Muslims who are women, or gay, or even just more secular, than any leftist antifa warrior. And yet he is also on record as an avowed atheist who calls the Koran the worst book imaginable for getting the moral landscape wrong. Or consider this quote pulled off the web in less than thirty seconds by googling Sam Harris and Koran: "The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn’t, we will kill you." How can someone post that on his website, and then say he isn't an islamophobe!

In the interests of full disclosure, I would acknowledge that I am an islamophobe also. For that matter I'm a christiophobe and a hindophobe and any other brand of bigot you want to call me. Yes, even the word bigot I won't object to, in its original religious-only meaning (derived from the way the French mocked the imperiously pious British with their constant utterances of "by God").

Why admit this? Because I believe anyone--like Sam--who thinks that religions are delusional, misguided, and poisonously pedogogical vestiges of a less evolved mindset, ought to come clean and at least own his bigotry.

#141 Is #Metoo Going Too Far? (with Rebecca Traister)

Here are my takeaways on this interview with Rebecca Traister.

To start with, as a curmudgeonly middle-aged white male, I found the experience fascinating to listen to this extremely articulate woman explain so much that is outside of my experience male. 

Ok, here are the points she made that I found most noteworthy:

Bill Cosby might have been cut some slack in the early years of his accusations because he was known for defending the white status quo against black activists. 

That Bill Clinton was given a pass is seen as a mistake that feminists paid for later because it undermined their claims to being unaligned politically. 

Matt Damon was slapped down appropriately for mansplaining how to respond to sexual aggression. He didn’t lose his job, in fact he appeared shortly afterward to public acclaim, and so the punishment fit the crime.

Charlie Rose was fired appropriately. His life didn’t end, he wasnot sent to jail, also appropriately

The flattening and mindless approbation of the perpetrators of sexual abuse is happening, not by the accusers, but by the accused. 

Her point is not that power can’t harm and powerful people or doesn’t harm them, which is what the less awake people on Reddit seem to think, her point is instead that when disenfranchised people exert their influence or power, it is considered violence, but that when powerful people exert their influence and power, it doesn’t even register.

The thing I appreciate best about this is her point that powerful people on the left do in fact survive their excoriation by angry feminist when they strike the wrong note, and that Matt Damon warning of a flattened  response to sexual harassment to women resulted only in people being mean to him on Twitter. But then ironically this is flattened into the tale that he has been walked to the guillotine. 

To his last point that the excesses of the mob are driving doubters to trump, she points out that not all objections are punitive, many are correcting. And that going too gently is why the previous waves of feminism ultimately failed. And that this is a difficult conversation, that even she has trouble with it sometimes. 

Review of Waking Up #129: AN INSIDER'S VIEW OF MEDICINE

Program Notes: "In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Dr. Nina Shapiro about the practice of medicine. They discuss the unique resiliency of children, the importance of second opinions, bad doctors, how medical training has changed in recent years, medical uncertainty, risk perception, vaccine safety, and other topics."

I don't actually find the first 2/3 of this podcast very informative. I'd pretty much sum it up by saying: you're not doing yourself any favors by trying to tell the hospital staff how to do their job or who to assign to your case.

The last third or so, where Dr. Shapiro addresses some myths and misconceptions, was a bit more interesting, and it would probably be a really good idea to buy her book, "Hype," where she tells the reader things like, gluten is a protein, not a carb, and not helpful to avoid, or the whole concept of "de-toxing" is nonsense, or anti-oxidants do not actually prevent most cancers, etc. 

(Regardless of her opinions about GMOs, I'd probably be inclined to cling to my unscientific prejudice against them, but that's more because I don't believe there's any unbiased scientists actually working on the question, than because I think science isn't capable of addressing the question.)

Review of Waking Up #126: IN DEFENSE OF HONOR

Official Notes: 

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast Sam Harris speaks with Tamler Sommers about cultures of honor. They discuss the difference between honor and dignity, “justice porn,” honor killings, honor and interpersonal violence, prison and gang culture, collective responsibility and collective punishment, retributive vs restorative justice, the ethics of forgiveness and redemption, #metoo, and other topics.

Not one the more interesting podcast episodes. In fact it boggles the mind that Sommers wanted to write a whole book about this; nobody likes to be lectured about honor or morality. And even less do I want to be asked to think about the history or sociology of it. It boggles the mind even further that he found a publisher, although maybe he's in with enough ethics professors around the country that he can guarantee a certain number of sales. 

It did make me want to look up “Justice Porn” on Reddit, though. Also, the idea of restorative justice is pretty cool and one can imagine many ways it would improve the country if it could start to be implemented more, for those specific crimes where it is appropriate.

Otherwise, not the best use of the listener's time. I recommend a "2X" setting for play speed.