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WardBensonSecondPaper 3 - 01 Jun 2009 - Main.TheodoreSmith
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< | | | | -- WardBenson - 27 May 2009 | | | But since data-mining doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon, it may be wise to consider whether its killing of the American myth of the possibility of reinvention, and the related myth of the self-made man, has a silver lining. While Gladwell (and his editor) must have been overjoyed to learn that so many Americans were surprised to read that one's outcome in life is largely a product of one's upbringing and surroundings, the fact that it was such a revelation shows that the American myth of the self-made man--one who can succeed regardless of growing up under less than promising circumstances--may have been too powerful. While today Americans of all classes vigorously reject the notion that we are restrained by our backgrounds, if enough inference-making by the purchasers of our data makes this inevitably true, perhaps we will all have to rexamine our myths and think much more broadly about what must be done to make America a true meritocracy. | |
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| | | I think you touch on two of the significant tangible risks of data mining (discrimination and limitations on social mobility). I suppose abuse of data and errors in the data and process would be other risks. What I find more difficult to articulate are the abstract risks of data mining - this instinct that it's just inherently wrong to assemble and aggregate data about individuals. Although if that instinct has something to do with free will, that ties back into the point of your paper nicely.
-- ElizabethDoisy - 27 May 2009 | |
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Hey Ward, interesting paper - I think liz touched on two points that you may want to address more directly (if you think they make sense): the first is the free will point, that I think even goes beyond what you mention in your paper. A world where the powers that be know your every action and response would be more efficient, but at some point becomes indistinguishable from a finely oiled and well crafted machine. While economics and efficiency can aid us in attaining our goals, they are a means, not an end. Even if knowledge could get us to a capitalist utopia (which I doubt, as self interest seems often to work at odds with "efficient markets"), a world of purely efficient production and consumption makes no intuitive sense as necessary or even desired end for human civilization. I like the analysis in your paper, but I think the 1L was fundamentally operating from a flawed assumption: that more efficient markets are some kind of panacea for the human condition. Why would a rational person prefer his world over any other?
The second point is related, but is more philosophical: I think our humanity and empathy require ambiguity to function. Reducing people to a set of predicted behaviors robs them of their inherent value as human beings. Everyone you meet has as rich and worthy an inner life as your own - they are as human and as complex and interesting as you yourself. The more we reduce them to behaviors and models, the more we make it easy to forget or ignore their essential humanity. Mankind needs ambiguity - as soon as we subsume the spirit and endless complexity of our fellow man in a behavioral model, we lose the very thing that gives him worth, and destroy the reason we developed our fancy economic systems in the first place.
(also, "seemless" at the beginning of the second paragraph should be "seamless")
-- TheodoreSmith - 01 Jun 2009 | | |
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