Slashdot Mirror
Computer Scientists Say Meme Research Doesn't Threaten Free Speech
dcblogs (1096431) writes "In a letter to lawmakers Tuesday (PDF), five of the nation's top computing research organizations defended a research grant to study how information goes viral. The groups were responding to claims that the government-funded effort could help create a 1984-type surveillance state. The controversy arises over a nearly $1 million research grant to researchers at Indiana University to investigate "why some ideas cause viral explosions while others are quickly forgotten," particularly on Twitter. "We do not believe this work represents a threat to free speech or a suppression of any type of speech over the internet," the letter said. "The tools developed in the course of this research are capable of making no political judgments, no prognostications, and no editorial comments, nor do they provide any capability for exerting any control over the Twitter stream they analyze," they wrote. The controversy over Truthy may be just another sign of the ongoing deterioration between the science community and lawmakers over basic research funding as well as the science itself.
Seriously?
It's hard to control a thing without being able to analyze it. It's even better when you can accurately model it. Measures of control come afterwards.
I'm not sure that I like this being studied by the government. Use is right out.
I wonder if the Obama White House still has its political "hear something, say something" site to report dissent?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
The Rothschild banking syndicate along with many other international bank holding companies hold a huge stake in every single major news and media company.
All they do to make information go viral is manipulate the world however they like through their propaganda networks by swamping and inundating the public with whatever topic they wish. Balloon boy? Stop the fucking presses. Fear for your life for ebola? Shove it down my through.
Of course these reporters are tools, and are just paid repeaters to influence parrots (republicans and democrats, the exact same party
source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltP2t9nq9fI
This research will definitely be used against the people in some nefarious way, as this data is only useful to these said banking cartels to increase their profits.
Did i miss anything?
What is a meme? Was that supposed to be memo?
Presumably you should be demanding that your representatives stop the maniacs at the NSA who are working around the clock to create exactly that, instead of wasting their time pestering some IU researchers who want to research memes.
I will never understand that the same people who say in one sentence that everything government does is horrible and government never gets it right and we need to drown the federal govt in a bathtub will in the very next sentence agree that it should be allowed to surveille absolutely everything you do, torture people it "suspects" of being terrorists (after redefining everything including TPing the neighbor's house as "terrorism") and, through the death penalty, literally be given the power of life and death over you. I don't even care so much if conservatives are right or wrong about this stuff, but can we have some basic fucking self-consistency?
Self-consistency, more than anything else, is the fundamental necessity to arrive at sane conclusions.
I think that what they will "find" is nothing more than certain criteria all have to be above a certain "threshold" and then the meme goes viral.
But those criteria will all be comprised of humans. Which they will NOT be able to predict.
Even if one meme goes viral in a certain group there will be no way to force a different meme to go viral with that same group in that same fashion.
Although I am looking forward to the names of the units of measure that they will be applying to their research. :) How many milli-LULZ before it goes viral?
Uh huh. Why don't you come back when you hit puberty, script kiddie.
They would rather remain without knowledge and have science not explore the boundaries. They think this will keep them safe ? All it means is that the agencies that will invest in the time and money to find this knowledge will run the show.
Nice try, computer scientists. Submitting poorly written slashdot articles won't make something go viral... so you can study it.
Let's stick to facts, friend. And the fact is Linux sucks cock.
People are right to be upset.
And if you're going to priorities-troll, fuck off.
I had a related discussion with some friends recently about what they would/wouldn't work on in their job.
Einstein and others famously regretted developing the atomic bomb.
At the time, it was thought that nuclear chain reactions were impossible because the neutrons emitted by a fissile nucleus were too fast to interact with neighboring atoms. Leó Szilárd discovered that graphite would act as a neutron moderator, slowing them down so that they could interact. Each decaying nucleus releases two(*) neutrons, each neutron causes two other nuclei to decay, and so on. Two becomes four, becomes eight, in an exponential manner.
Here's the thing. At the time, conventional wisdom felt that chain reactions were impossible; and entrenched ideas in science are hard to pry loose. If Szilárd had chosen not to publish, it would have delayed nuclear fission research for decades - possibly indefinitely.
Consider the ramifications of having a few decades of technological development before attempting to build nuclear reactors, of social development before ICBMs and Mutually Assured Destruction, and so on. We've come a long way since then - we're much closer to planetary cooperation. The conflicts of the early 20th century seem almost tribal in retrospect.
Here's the essential question: Should Szilárd have published? Knowing that his research was the keystone for nuclear weapons, should he have just kept quiet about it?
The tools make no political judgments, but unenlightened bureaucrats do. And right now there's a lot of abuse by the people in power, the people we should be able to trust with our welfare. One only has to look at elections to see how psychological research is being used - en mass - on the population for political ideology.
Would it not be better to put this research off a couple of decades so that other, more directly beneficial technologies can come first? An environment of secure communications, anonymous surfing, safe and untraceable whistle-blowing seems to be on the horizon.
We have the hindsight to see the results of Szilárd's choice. Should we choose differently?
(*) Average 2.5 neutrons per nucleus
I think understanding what goes viral would be very valuable.
...
What is the objection to this? Since clearly there is some objection to the study
I read the article and do not understand what the objection is.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
If all they need is $1 million to study how something goes "viral", they could probably get that much funding from Twitter, or Facebook, or Google, or any of the major ad-supported companies. Those companies probably have better data to analyze, too.
Things that adds to viralness;
* Play on hate, fear or pride.
* Supports the underdog.
* Neglect truth for clarity.
* Funny or awsome
* Contains baby,cat or fluffy animal.
This whole thing is a Tom Coburn-style piece of propaganda. It is an NSF GRANT to researchers at a UNIVERSITY. This has nothing to do with the federal government or NSA studying anything.
If you don't know how the NSF funding process works, grant proposals are peer reviewed in a competitive process by scientific experts for their merit and potential contributions. Obama had nothing to do with this. Presidents have better things to do than review grant proposals.
This only has to do with the government in that NSF provides money, and these researchers happen to be a public (state, not federal) university. You know when we all complain about lack of government support for basic research? That is a lot of what the NSF does.
Very disappointing that an FCC commissioner is trying to create a fake scandal based on what are essentially outright lies. Now THAT deserves your attention.
Read more here.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Look, if the government studies how to kill things more effectively that could be used by a police state too. So should the government not study how to kill things? Well, that bridge was crossed... now everyone has to have the most kill capable government on earth just to keep the other governments from thinking about balancing next year's budget shortfall by killing everyone in your country and taking your stuff.
But how does this relate to this meme research? Well, they probably will come up with new ways to manipulate people. But then again, someone probably already knows everything they're going to find out, and if they find out... they're more likely to tell everyone about that thing then the guy making millions by tricking people into buying penis pills, beer, or whatever that shadowy theoretical entity is doing.
So I say bring it on. Yes, we'll learn another way in which human society can be manipulated. But knowing what that is will give us some ability to build defenses against it so that it doesn't actually work. Will that mean the end of viral videos? Maybe they'll get filtered by some anti manipulation system. I rather doubt we're getting rid of viral videos... its just too much fun watching some random person fall off their couch or whatever.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
this is pure speculation here, but my guess is that the people (politicians) protesting this research are quite likely to be the ones in charge of classified funding efforts for military, espionage and CIA equivalent research... and deployment of those same tools. if you've ever read Neal Stephenson's book "Cobweb" you'll know exactly what is most likely to be going on.
so, in essence, those people (politicians) know damn well that the espionage, domestic and political manipulation tools that they funded are quite likely to show up as anomalous activity should there ever be any tools (such as Truthy) provided to the general public, or any kind of research done to ascertain which "memes" *should* spread and which should not. for if there is anything that is detected which is *different* from normal expectations (a meme spread when it shouldn't have, and oh incidentally what was the source of that disruptive influence again?) it's really not going to go down too well with the people who *already* manipulate us from the shadows.
so i think you'll find that the people (politicians) protesting most loudly are the ones who are using media manipulation tools, and they're afraid that this research will be used to identify them, basically.
"The tools developed in the course of this research are capable of making no political judgments, no prognostications..."
So might Edward Teller have said of the hydrogen bomb, or Oppenheimer before he saw what it was used for.
We need transparency now, as much as ever.
It is always about the goal of life control, therefore it is incumbent for the government to prove otherwise.
Sure, the study itself is not a threat to free speech, but the goal of the study is to enable government to suppress free speech. That much is obvious to anyone with one eyeball not laser-focused on the big pile of taxpayer cash.
Whether or not their research is a threat to free speech is really not the point.
The point is, why are they even spending federal money on this?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Exactly!
No need for a girlfriend...
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
There is a BBC documentary film maker named Adam Curtis who makes some fascinating and disturbing videos about society and control. He has access to the BBC film archives, and uses historical footage extensively. The assertions made are extensively documented and the interviews of powerful people are extremely interesting. I think that this video, The Engineering of Consent, is relevant to this discussion. It is one hour, and quite "stream of consciousness", but worth watching. It is the second episode in a series called The Century of the Self.
From the wikipedia summary:
"This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy." —Adam Curtis' introduction to the first episode.
Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, changed the perception of the human mind and its workings. The series describes the propaganda that Western governments and corporations have utilized stemming from Freud's theories.
Freud himself and his nephew Edward Bernays, who was the first to use psychological techniques in public relations, are discussed. Freud's daughter Anna Freud, a pioneer of child psychology, is mentioned in the second part, as is one of the main opponents of Freud's theories, Wilhelm Reich, in the third part.
Along these general themes, The Century of the Self asks deeper questions about the roots and methods of modern consumerism, representative democracy, commodification and its implications. It also questions the modern way we see ourselves, the attitudes to fashion and superficiality.
The business and political world uses psychological techniques to read, create and fulfill the desires of the public, to make their products or speeches as pleasing as possible to consumers and citizens. Curtis raises the question of the intentions and roots of this fact. Where once the political process was about engaging people's rational, conscious minds, as well as facilitating their needs as a society, the documentary shows how by employing the tactics of psychoanalysis, politicians appeal to irrational, primitive impulses that have little apparent bearing on issues outside of the narrow self-interest of a consumer population.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
The researchers would like you to believe that their research will exist in a vaccum, and that it will not be used for nefarious purposes by every government, corporation, or script kiddie out there.
If it's on the Internet, then it isn't a secret anymore ...
Geezers will remember the race between USSR & USA to develop 'mind control' technology through much of the last century. America got a late start and rushed to catch up to the decades old Soviet research. Similar to the 'space race' but less publicized. [It is said that-] This research ended in 2003. You may find interesting information with a search for the MKUltra program. Traditional media tend not to report such things but here are some links:
http://www.news.com.au/technol...
https://sites.google.com/site/...
...omphaloskepsis often...
This is absurd. I would understand if this had been funded by Department of Defense or DHS money, but this is a small grant by the National Science Foundation to study an interesting sociology problem that many people ask. Saying its some grand conspiracy for mind control is like saying the NSF is funding biology research to better understand how to deploy biological weapons, funding chemistry to build better bombs, physics to build better listening devices, or funding computer vision to build a better spy satellite. If you honestly feel the NSF is a front for government mind control, then why do we even bother publicly funding ANY science research since most can have "dual use"?
Also, look at the people who are railing against this particular piece of spending. Congressman Lamar Smith for example, has been aggressively tinkering with NSF and USG scientific funding in general, believing that the US should slash funding of sociological, psychological, and climate change research. I'm sure he threw the mind control one in there to help rile people up for his crusade against what he views as wasteful government spending.
Yeah, they're looking for "false memes" and "misinformation" in social media. And no surprise, criticism of their project is found to be "a false meme."
because it censors free speech