I Am Not a Number

     But are you, in fact?

     Even if you don't know the name "Big Data" (in which case click here), you've encountered it somewhere. It's used in election predictions (remember Mr. Nate Silver?), for Google's and Facebook's "custom advertisements", and hundreds of other things besides. The general, synopsized idea is that if you get enough data on people, you can predict what they will do, what they will buy, and what they will think.

     "But I have free will!"

     Yes. Yes, you do. And by the logic of Big Data, you will exercise your free will roughly the same every time. Consider: you have free will in choosing what music you listen to, but if you're a metalhead you're going to pick metal, and if you think you're a gangster living on the North Shore you're going to pick rap. People are creatures of habit. On the other hand, people are also prone to shaking your assumptions. To go back to the election example, there were people confidently predicting a Romney victory on Monday night, and they had numbers to "prove" it. I use the quotes because, obviously, Romney didn't win.

It's a big number. And you know what?

It doesn't mean anything.

     Which brings me to my main point: people are too complex to be represented by a single number or statistic, or even a half dozen. The human brain has between eighty and one hundred billion neurons in it, depending who you ask. Each of those interacts with its neighbors at the speed of electricity to form a knot, each knot interacts with others to form a lobe, and all the lobes of your brain work together to create you. And you're going to summarize the results of that in a couple of digits? Give me a break.

     There's one other problem with Big Data that the New York Times recently brought to my attention. It can isolate you from anything you don't already agree with. If you only read conservative e-newsletters or whatever, then you're only going to see conservative results when Google, Facebook, or anyone else uses a search customized engine for you. To hark back to the election example, searches customized for conservatives were never going to show them posts from anyone who, like Mr. Silver, calculated that Obama would win.

     What is the right thing to do, in a scenario like this? Because obviously leaving everyone to stagnate in a pool of "autopropoganda" isn't it. Do we eliminate the custom search, when it can help to eliminate false positives, like getting ads for plasma TVs when you're researching blood plasma, because Big Data is too much like Big Brother, an electronic monitor telling you what to read? Do we insist that tech gurus invent the perfect search? (Hint: that's difficult, bordering on impossible, and ergo rather impractical.) Is there any middle ground at all, or are we doomed to live in a world of filtered information? Please comment with any ideas for a solution, or simply your opinions on Big Data.

Triangulating a Solution

     By now, the debates have been raging for a few days over how to implement safety standards in overseas factories. The Triangle fire a century ago ignited a tremendous backlash against dangers in factories - in the US. For a long time, no one has really been thinking about outsourced production. Now, human rights advocates draw attention to fire hazards, hot and crowded working conditions, and injury rates; meanwhile, savvy economists point out that increased safety precautions would increase costs, and a majority of Americans would prefer not to spend more money than absolutely necessary. (For more, see Sean's and Jake's recent posts.)




     When two sides are at an impasse, the solution is cold hard facts. How about this one? The improvements demanded would increase prices by "roughly 3 percent", according to this NY Times article. On the oft-decried "$5 T-shirt", that would mean an increase of fifteen cents. You know the old saying If everyone gave a nickel, we'd be done here by sundown? Well, if everyone gave three nickels, we'd have safer working conditions in Bangladesh.


     Or how about this fact? Even after some retailers claimed to have ceased ordering from unsafe factories, their garments have still arrived on the shelves through subcontractors and middlemen. This problem is perhaps reminiscent of the blood minerals trouble in the electronics industry, and the solution is the same. Demand transparency from the people you're buying from. Make them tell you where they got the product, and if they're real weasels, make them show you some provenance. Then showcase your new policy, like Apple did, and not only have you helped save lives, but you don't even lose face with your customers.

     Of course, these are people we're talking about, and they're not always rational. Are "big name" stores likely to implement a solution? If so, how long will it take, and will the changes be real or just cosmetic? If not, why? and what can we do about it? Comment please!

I'm Going to Laugh at You on the Twenty-Second

     By this point everyone and their little brother has heard about the "Mayan Prophecy", the idea that the ancient civilization predicted the end of the world on December 21st of this year. That's less than three weeks away now, and people are going just a little loopy about it.

     It is worth noting that the Mayans did not predict that the world would end on 12/21/2012. All they did was choose to end one cycle of their calendar, and begin another. Using that to predict doomsday is like saying that the world would end every December 31st when people swap out their calendars for the new year.

     For whatever reason, this apocalypse prediction has received record amounts of attention, but it's not the only one out there. Cult leaders, New Age pseudo-scientists, and overly panicked sci-fi writers have been predicting the end of the world for over a century, and darned but if the sun don't insist on rising the next day, but they attract followers in swarms regardless. If one was to count all these failed Ragnaroks by way of tally marks, you could probably cover both sides of an 8.5x11 sheet of paper. But the continuation of the world hasn't stopped the continuation of prophecies, nor of people's belief in them.

     American media hasn't been shy about cashing in on all the hullabaloo, either. Nat Geo has no less than three 2012 TV shows, including one that overtly emphasizes that yes, the world will end. (They also have the series Doomsday Preppers.) There's also been a movie and multiple videogames making a quick buck out of the panic (although in terms of chaos, the USA is only the second most 2012ed country; the blue ribbon goes to Russia).

     Why? is the eternal question. What is so appealing about the end of all things? Perhaps it's comforting to have an unsolvable problem because you have an excuse not to solve it. As Lois Bujold wrote, "If nothing can be done, then you're not some kind of s*** for not doing it." Is there something about the way the world is today that makes people want to tear it all down and start from scratch? That makes them sound like anarchists. Do they have some idea that by believing in the day of reckoning they can survive it? Is it just handy to know when everything will come crumbling down, so that they're ready for it? Comment please, and explain these crazy humans to me.