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BargainingAnonymity 3 - 21 Mar 2018 - Main.JoeBruner
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| | | Bargaining Anonymity | | | On the one end, users don't understand the technology, so in-depth discussion of it strikes them as irrelevant to them. But, on the other end, and I think far more profoundly, users don't understand the importance of anonymity. I am sure you and I and everyone in the course know plenty of people with the required technical knowledge to understand everything who don't really give a shit about their anonymity. And I think this is also a great failing of most discussions of privacy in places like the NYT, the Guardian, Law School and so on. People assume privacy may have some low-level intrinsic value but do not understand its relationship to either the political economy of force or the power of small groups to uproot democracy. The first issue we covered in class well enough, and I think a fair conclusion is that blasphemy law is suddenly enforceable again without the use of vigilantes in Pakistan. But that is over there and even with Trump the thought that it could happen here, I think, is still far too difficult for most Americans to really grapple with.
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< | The latter issue is even more difficult for people to understand, and even more dangerous for democracy. During the BBC's undercover investigation of Cambridge Analytica, a part of the sales pitch sounded more similar to Eben's take on things, and was a more effective summary of it, than I have ever heard. "People are motivated primarily based on two things, their hopes and their fears. Most of these are unconscious. You have to tease them out. What we are doing is dropping the bucket further down the well than anyone ever has before." Last semester political theorist Joseph Raz told me that Democracy would inevitably morph into something unrecognizable and someone would do a very good Ph.d dissertation explaining how we now have "post-Democracy." Noam Chomsky and Theodor Adorno and Antonio Gramsci all made arguments about the manufacturing of consent given the propaganda systems they observed, but the risk of bypassing the rational and deliberative faculties to an even greater degree risks upsetting the whole system to a new degree. Jean-Jacques Rousseau famously argued that, in a democracy, there should not be public debate on issues because that member of the community who is too persuasive in advocacy will unduly influence the vote. That argument was regarded as absurd and silly from the time it was published through my political theory study in undergrad. But even if it is untenable with regards to a single human speaker, when the capacities of that human to influence and manipulate are cybernetically augmented and unrestrained, it becomes relevant once more.
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> | The latter issue is even more difficult for people to understand, and even more dangerous for democracy. During the BBC's undercover investigation of Cambridge Analytica, a part of the sales pitch sounded more similar to Eben's take on things, and was a more effective summary of it, than I have ever heard. "People are motivated primarily based on two things, their hopes and their fears. Most of these are unconscious. You have to tease them out. What we are doing is dropping the bucket further down the well than anyone ever has before." Last semester political theorist Joseph Raz told me that Democracy would inevitably morph into something unrecognizable and someone would do a very good Ph.d dissertation explaining how we now have "post-Democracy." Noam Chomsky and Theodor Adorno and Antonio Gramsci all made arguments about the manufacturing of consent given the propaganda systems they observed, but the risk of bypassing the rational and deliberative faculties to a far greater degree risks upsetting the whole system. Jean-Jacques Rousseau famously argued that, in a democracy, there should not be public debate on issues because that member of the community who is too persuasive in advocacy will unduly influence the vote. That argument was regarded as absurd and silly from the time it was published through my political theory study in undergrad. But even if it is untenable with regards to a single human speaker, when the capacities of that human to influence and manipulate are cybernetically augmented and unrestrained, it becomes relevant. | | | Not understanding the dangers of a lack of anonymity, or dissociating from them and pretending not to understand, makes failing to understand or implement technological countermeasures much easier. And not understanding the technology makes it easier to dismiss concerns about the loss of anonymity as conspiracy-theoretic ramblings. Additionally, ignorance about psychology allows people to convince themselves that only stupid people could be influenced in such a way and enough general education and social status solves the problem. And a lack of ignorance of psychology will be critical for addressing the other issue you mention, negligence - figuring out how to tell it to people in a way that causes them to exercise a duty of reasonable care and encouraging people around them to do so rather than dissociating from the problem and becoming a fatalist, or worse, an accelerationist
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