Category Archives: Politics

General Politics

Disaster Reveals Values

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During the past few weeks, we’ve had the unfortunate chance to strip back our society and see our society’s values. We can see the conflicts between what we know we need to do, what people are willing to do, and what people in society expect. As a protective measure many governments have force people to stay home. This creates massive conflicts between what we need to do and what society demands of us. For example, I saw a twitter thread discussing the tension between watching children and working. Our government is expecting that people are 100% homeschooling their children while the kids are at home. However, almost all those people also have to continue working. In the case of one of my friends, both he and his wife have to work while trying to figure out how to entertain their toddler. In the case of the twitter thread, someone responded saying “My boss emailed me to make sure I was working, because they heard my kid on a call.” This represents the values of the people in charge of most of our lives.

Our President represents some of the worst of this. He’s pushing to have $150 Billion slush fund of bailout money for whatever he wants. Given that he plans to bailout Las Vegas, where he has a hotel, we can conclude it’s likely that he’ll bail himself out as much as he can. With the fed lowering rates down to 0% it’s likely going to be helping his bottom line as he is well known to have mountains of debt.

Furthermore, at least 4 US Senators have been identified as selling off stock when they were briefed the scope of the coronavirus, in late January. However, none of them clearly told the public the risks and most of them were publicly support Trump’s position. One of them sold off about $1.5 million in stock and invested in teleconference companies.

On the other hand, Bernie converted his presidential fundraising platform into raising money for people suffering under the coronavirus and raised over $2 Million in just a few days. We should require those US Senators to donate their ill gotten gains to charity and throw them in prison. Millions of people have been impacted by the sharp sell-off of the stock market but our government leaders are profiting off the chaos.

While we’re going through all these changes, we need to seriously look at what we value. What sort of people we want in leadership. How we want companies to manage their employees, how we want companies to manage their profits, especially if it leads them to be vulnerable to shocks to the system. It’s been well reported that airlines have spent 96% of their profits on stock by backs. Over the past three years one airline made more than $50 billion in profits but spent most of it on buy backs. The organization didn’t invest in its people. Didn’t save money to plan for a downturn. Didn’t put itself in a position to survive crisis. Instead, the company is asking for a bailout. Private profits and public loss.

To combat this, we need to ensure that these companies that have had to ask for money more than once (This is the second time in 20 years – 9/11 and all). Large companies should be prevented to buy back stocks. Instead, the companies should use that money to reinvest in their business, keep cash on hand for crises, and to lower prices to increase sales. If one of the draws of your brand is scarcity as a luxury item, like an Apple, then buying companies or investing in other technologies is a very valid use of the money. For airlines, getting rid of fees that your customers hate, is a pretty easy way to lower profits that you clearly don’t know how to responsibly handle.

Overall, we need to decide what values we want enforced coming out of this crisis. We don’t know what’s going to happen or how long this is going to last. The only thing we can really control is who we are and whose values come out on top. Maybe we’ve let the current values reign supreme for too long and we need to have a serious change in how we treat other people.

Depression, Trust, and Therapy

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When you have depression, it’s hard to talk about. It’s hard to open up to people and explain to them what depression is, what it’s like to live with, and what the causes of your depression are. So, when you find someone that you can trust and feel like you can open up to, it’s a revelation. You feel like there’s someone in the world that you can truly be yourself around. Often this is a friend. Of course, you have to be careful not to over due the depressive talk, because you could bring them down and eventually push them away.

It’s understandable, when shits bad and all you talk about is your problems, it can eventually come across as whiney, especially if the other person is in a similar situation. If they have depression, they will get it, if they don’t have depression, they will be as support as they can for as long as they can, but eventually, they’ll say something like “get over it.”

So, if you’re lucky enough to have a good health plan (in the US) and a good salary, you might be one of the lucky people that can afford therapy from a licensed professional that will never say “get over it” to you. They will help you work through your problems and do so in a safe place. You can tell the right professional anything and they will help you deal with that. In the cases that they cannot help you, something’s outside their expertise (like gender dysphoria) they might refer you to a specialist in that field.

The important thing about all this, which helps to build trust with the therapist, is that everything about these visits is safe and secure. No one need know that you are visiting your therapist, but the people that you tell. However, if you cannot afford that sort of help, then there are apps that are supposed to help you. One such app is Better Help. However, if I was using it, I’d immediately stop. They share “anonymous” data with third parties, according to a Jezebel report.

One of the companies they share this data with is Facebook. Which is a huge red flag for me. Facebook, if you have an account (and to some extent even if you don’t) has a huge amount of data about you. It uses super cookies to continually track you even when you aren’t on the website, it buys data about people to build profiles, and it uses sophisticated tools to build shadow profiles for people that are not on their service.

I had Facebook for years, basically from the day it came to The University of Pittsburgh, up through 2016 election, so basically around 10-12 years worth of ever decreasing data. Even deleted, they probably kept something about my profile. Since they know that I don’t have a Facebook account, they are able to build a profile about me from data they acquire from other sources. It’s likely they scrape websites, like Good Reads (where I review most of my books) and loyalty rewards (I don’t have any at stores like Target) to build a profile of things that I’d want to buy. They sell ads, so they use this information to understand what someone my age might want to buy and to sell better targeted ads.

They have developed a profile about me, from anonymous data. This means, they have sophisticated tools to de-anonymize data. Given that, according to the article, they know when people are depressed and upset, they already have a set of users that they’ve flagged as candidates for mental health support. They have the tools to associate data from Better Help with an actual person. I don’t know about you, but I do not want Facebook to know anything about my mental healthcare.

This, to me, represents a vital break in trust between patient and mental health provider. I trust that the only people that know about my care are those I tell, my doctor, and my health insurer. I trust this, because it is the law. The law helps me feel safe and allows me to have better trust in both my insurer and my doctor. The law, HIPPA, requires YOU to consent to any data transfer and asks for it before it can even occur, every time. So, you might consent to share the minimum amount of data, but that data is more than sufficient to do harm, in the long term.

People seeking help are vulnerable. They can be preyed upon. Even a good therapist who doesn’t like dealing with a specific health insurer can make you feel preyed upon. A company as unscrupulous as Facebook will target you and take advantage of you. It’s dangerous and must stop. If you use Better Help, look for an alternative. If you use Facebook and you can stop, you should stop.

I oppose any war with Iran

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It seems that Trump is hurdling us towards a war with Iran. While it’s likely that the right will blame Trumps actions on the protests in Baghdad, those protests are ultimately our own fault. I remember the start of the war in Iraq. We were pushed there by a combination of the press supporting another war and lies directly from the Bush and his government. I remember the initial campaign, the Shock and Awe. I was awed, then disgusted. It was horrific. I remember how it was televised. How quickly we blasted through the Iraqi defenses. I suspect, we would similarly be able to move through the Iranian military. No doubt we will have significantly greater losses, which will be cause to do more damage to Iran.

We cannot afford this war for a number of reasons. The most obvious is the loss of life. This war would be an immoral war. We are not fighting to defend ourselves. This is a war of hubris and aggression. We cannot accept this as a culture. We must reject it as a war fought for the wrong reasons. Trump was angry about the protests, which looked so similar to Benghazi, that he got in a twitter fight with the Iranian leader. Because of that exchange, Trump killed people, literally. That’s unacceptable.

The next obvious reason is that we’d be starting a war that our allies should never support. NATO, the EU, Canada, and the rest should not support the US in this war. This is a war of our choosing and antagonizing. They should condemn Trump in the UN and push for a peaceful resolution. We cannot afford to be isolated by our allies.

We cannot afford this war because we are already in multiple wars. We’ve never left Iraq or Afghanistan. We’re in Yemen. We’re in Africa (doing what, I’m not sure), we’re in Syria. We’re all over the place. We cannot afford another war. If we have money to spend on this war, we have money to spend on Healthcare, Education, infrastructure, everything else the Republicans claim we have no money to fund.

Any war with Iran is wrong. We must not enter a war with them. Their people are going to pay for the hubris of the United States. I’m sorry for that.

What can we do? Call your Senators. Call your representatives. Support political candidates that oppose war. I already have and I will continue to do so.

On staying in your lane

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I was listening to Pandora this morning and Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth (The there’s something happenin’ here song) came on. This got me thinking about the protests that I saw this morning (10/19/19) in London, the People’s Vote March. I think it’s fair to say that musicians – and artists in general – represent the emotional conscience of the community they’ve come out of. I think it’s also fair to include a lot of professional athletes and some of in their management structure, some NBA coaches more than anyone else there

Since, I grew up in the 80’s in a very white and conservative part of the country, I don’t think I really understood the general bias, in my community, against using music and award ceremony speeches as a valid platform of protest. I’m sad to say this generally stuck with me throughout my life. I don’t think I’m the only one that grew up in a community like mine who has this bias.

I think this “stay in your lane” approach to the arts in general and some professional athletes (I say some because white male athletes have more often been celebrated for speaking up than people of color or white women). Now, I know this isn’t anything ground breaking. If you look on #BlackTwitter and follow POC in general, you’ll see that this community has been well aware of this phenomenon. In fact, I would say I’m agreeing with their sentiment here. I believe this was a deliberate action to discredit these protests and minimize what these artists and athletes are saying. I think with the advent of television, specifically ramping up after the Vietnam war.

In one of the #1619Project’s stories there were clear cases where white slave owners intentionally prevented slaves from creating music and art. Because, those white slave owners knew the power of the arts. They knew that it’s easier to share information in song and get people’s emotionally invested by using music. This is why political campaigns do it now and why in movies music plays such an integral role in driving emotional response to scenes.

I think I first came aware of this during the Dixie Chick’s protest of George W. Bush’s wars. At the time, I was pretty firmly in the camp of staying in your lane, but I struggled with how to respond, because I agreed with them. I wasn’t a fan of their music and I knew it put them at huge professional risk. Especially, given that most of their audience supported the wars (country music y’all).

So this puts me in mind, how do we support these protesters. One, is obvious, add your voice to theirs. Tweet their message. Support politicians that support protesters. Go out and join a demonstration (this last one is the one I struggle with the most and it bothers me).

Second, is to protest organizations that support something you believe should be stopped. This can occur in a few different ways. First is to boycott that organization. So, I’m going to stop playing Blizzard games until they reverse their ban on the Hearthstones players that have protested for Hong Kong. In fact, I literally just uninstalled all the games. Furthermore, I won’t buy another game from the company until they change their protest policies.

Third, you can directly support artists/athletes/esports pros protesting something you believe should be protested. That can be in the form of buying whatever it is they create. You could donate to charities they support and/or are on boards of. You can also directly support them, if they have some sort of fundraising action going on. Although, if you’re going to be doing the last one, it may make more sense to provide that money directly to the people with less of a platform.

Another change, which I think is harder, is to help people understand why it’s important we allow our artists/athletes/esports pros to speak out. They have a platform that can amplify a cause. Some day that cause could be yours. If you hadn’t supported and, in fact, encouraged these people to speak out, then they might not be able to speak out for your cause.

As I said earlier, I’m not saying anything new that other people haven’t said before and probably said more eloquently. I’m simply adding my voice to that and working to unwind the stigma of speaking out against injustice no matter who you are. We need more protests songs, we need more protest art, we need more athletes to speak out against the horrors being committed all around us. Support them.

Ethics in Technology Matters, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is Right, We Instill Our Biases in Technology

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Some people are unhappy about what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is saying here. People not like to imagine that software cannot have politics, intentionally or otherwise.

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Whenever I was earning my master’s degree, I took a number of courses on the ethics of technology and the history of technology in general.In one of my classes we learned that bridges, yes bridges can have politics. There was an architect, Robert Moses, that was hired by New York City to design and build bridges. Given that NYC is an island and there’s a lot of water there, building bridges is a pretty big deal. Robert Moses was a racist. He also hated poor people. So, if you’re hired to build a bridge from one part of the city to another part with beautiful parks and outdoor spaces that you wanted to have whites and rich people use but not poor people, how would you do that?

If you build a bridge that uses traditional arches underneath with no top support, any vehicle can cross. However, if you build a bridge that has a maximum height allowed, then you can limit that types of vehicles that can cross the bridge. If you built the bridge low enough, then you can prevent buses from crossing the bridge. Buses that would be carrying poor people of color.

It’s just a bridge, how can it be racist? A bridge is just a thing. Something built by people. However, those people have biases and intentions. These are built into that technology. While A bridge may not be racist, this one IS because of the racism used to build the bridge.

If a bridge can have biases intentionally built into it, there is no doubt that software will have biases built into them. We’ve seen time an again that beauty algorithms where the AI didn’t like dark skinned women. In those cases the people building the training set of images had biases. The engineers didn’t like dark skinned women and didn’t include a significant amount of them in the training set.

Soap dispensers aren’t able to detect dark skinned hands, because the engineers working on them didn’t think of test the sensor on someone with dark skin.

 

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These aren’t intentional biases. It’d be difficult to imagine a group of engineers all sitting around the room saying, “wouldn’t it be me great if we prevent dark skinned people from properly washing their hands? MWahahahahah.” No that’s not what happened. What happened is that the QA team was made of people that look more like me. The dispenser worked perfectly for them, QA passed! This isn’t an intentional bias, but it’s a bias none the less. It’s called the availability bias. If the only people that are available look a certain way, you don’t think about people that aren’t immediately available.

Everyone does it. More people are aware of the fact that there are people different from them. For white people this is critical. It’s similar to when a white person writes an article about how racism has significantly declined in a major news paper.

It is time that organization recognize this and create teams to ensure that ethics and biases are considered when developing and selling novel technologies – or in the cases of bridges old technologies repurposed for modern uses.