True enough, but it would be equally unhelpful to say war is new. When we’re trying to work out what we think about something new, it’s worth working out what parts really are new, and how we reacted to comparable changes in the past (cf ‘databases destroy freedom’ in the 70s)
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Replying to @benedictevans @zeynep and
I think another angle to pursue is how far we’re uncomfortable because the new thing is somehow an automated version of something we were previously comfortable with - doing it *at scale* is the problem. That’s why face recognition is different to wanted posters.
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I agree. “This is all new” is the wrong tack to take. We’re operating through very old and very human impulses and social dynamics. But the tools and their efficacy has dramatically changed, and that’s the issue. For example, losing practical obscurity is a big deal.
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Indeed. If I may quote my book (ahha, the only good reason to write a book probably): "technology rarely generates absolutely novel human behavior; rather, it changes the terrain on which such behavior takes place."pic.twitter.com/0SeZew42Qu
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Something rarely thought about is how to optimize for limiting some effects while preserving others. That’s what’s so fascinating about privacy preserving machine learning for example. Scale by itself just optimizes for profit or power.
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People who work on products think about trade-offs every single second of every single day.
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Maybe of their product. What’s missing is the trade off of a product at societal scale. Neither product nor individual decisions capture that. (It makes perfect sense for me to give up my location in exchange for Google Maps. The issue is what happens when 2 billion people do?)
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Indeed that’s a key problem. There are genuine tensions between what makes sense for a company and even a person at point x, and collective impact. Small amount of “pollution” per product may seem reasonable until you scale up to a billion. (Similar issues in other sectors tbh.)
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Replying to @zeynep @benedictevans and
this is correct; what’s unique for our time is the confluence of scale and the tragedy of the commons — and the ability for a small number of participants to create second and third order effects that have global impact.0 replies 0 retweets 0 likesThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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