That Facebook numbers trick is so obvious right after someone tells you about it. I never gave much thought to the reasoning behind that, which in hindsight seems really odd. That whole racking up likes thing does kind of give you a warm fuzzy feeling, but the whole 1,682 friends on Facebook thing is a little nuts. I've never even met that many people, let alone that many people I would call, even in the loosest of definitions, friends.
Of course, one of the results of having taken more than my share of social psychology-related classes is that I'm familiar with the concept of Dunbar's number, If you aren't familiar, it's a social science concept that suggests we have a cognitive limit on the number of stable relationships we can manage at one time, and that number is 150. So basically, however many friends you have, you have 150 friends.
Anyway, I installed the Facebook Demetricator because I'm curious. Does it actually make Facebook a more pleasant and relaxing experience? We'll see.
I have a pretty fair comprehension of algorithms and was still a little shocked at just how far they go. I mean, seriously. I'm a Mac user and there's no way I'm going to choose anything that can be classified as more expensive because I'm also a broke college student.
The implications of their capabilities, though. I always thought of algorithms as basically helpful if maybe slightly irritating sometimes. Helpful in the sense that they're shortcuts, irritating in that sometimes they don't work exactly right and Netflix not only can't remember what episode of Gilmour Girls you were watching last night but it keeps trying to show you cheese documentaries.
It stands to reason though that if machines can learn, they're going to pick up things they shouldn't or process normal things in ways they shouldn't. Kind of like toddlers. Maybe exactly like toddlers, mimics who don't really comprehend that they're saying something they shouldn't say, they've just picked it up from the world around them. Or been taught to say it by someone who thinks they're funny but is really just a little bit evil.
Teaching them seems like a really large job, but regulating the exploitation of them seems like an even bigger one. I found this whole concept kind of fascinating, in a horrifying sort of way, and my horror was not dispelled when I ran across an article about the Chicago PD's heat list.
Basically, they got this really big grant ($2 million) to set up and experiment with an incredibly high-tech piece of computer gadgetry that has allowed them use algorithms to profile people based on a set of criteria that included geographic area, volume of emergency calls placed, previous interactions with the PD, and a whole slew of other items that generated them an index they called the heat list.
Not surprisingly, there were people on it who never committed a crime or had any kind of run in with the police whatsoever.
Seems legit, though.
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