Doing anything even remotely active, you don't necessarily have your cell phone in a handy spot: jogging, biking, swimming, sailing, fishing, etc.
Why would I actually need a wristwatch for any of those activities? Competitive running or navigation on a sailboat out of sight of land maybe but fishing? I don't know where you fish but I don't really want to know the time when I go fishing. The whole point is to not worry about it. My philosophy on fishing is that if you need to bait the hook you are missing the point.
The ONLY thing I can think of that a watch makes sense for is if you need to carry some sensors in a compact way ala fitbit or if you are doing some very niche activities where knowing the time immediately is critical. Otherwise they are simply redundant.
You also can snag a quick look at your watch without getting caught - much harder to do with a smartphone, and much less socially awkward.
As opposed to looking at one of the several clocks that is almost always in view? Hell I have 3 on the dashboard of my truck put there by the manufacturer. As I type this I have 2 on my monitor, one on my smartphone, one on the wall and there is another just around the corner. I cannot fathom why I would bother lugging around yet another redundant device.
Smart phones also aren't very pretty.
Neither are most watches that are actually affordable. Personally I don't really like to brag about the size of my bank account via jewelry but that's just me.
People would probably wear something on their wrist even without the time-telling feature - that is sort of a bonus.
Works a LOT better for what a smart watch is good for, critical Information display.
See that's the problem I have with watches generally. 99% of the time they provide me no information that I critically need that I cannot get from my surroundings or my smartphone. I don't need a clock to be available to me at the flip of a wrist except very rarely. My day is not scheduled that tightly and there almost always are at least 2 clocks within eye shot anywhere I usually go. Occasionally they are useful for things like flight navigation or diving where knowing the time immediately is really critical but that's rare for most of us. The most common use is for competitive running where time obviously matters. Furthermore I find wearing one uncomfortable. I don't like them bouncing around on my wrist and if I make it tight enough to avoid that it digs into my skin pretty good which is also uncomfortable.
The only thing I can think of a "smart watch" being useful for in my life would be basically what I could use a fitbit for right now. I really just don't see the point of them.
As a Canadian, the good news is that the NSA doesn't spy on us.
Yes they do. Probably not very intensely but I don't have any doubt that the NSA handles some amount of SigInt that comes from Canada. We're not very worried about Canada attacking the US. Mostly folks in the US are worried about individuals with ill intent and drug traffickers transiting into the US through Canada.
The bad news is that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) spies on us and shares everything with the NSA anyway.
The NSA is recording the private phone calls of the citizens of Canada... Mexico, England, Germany... That's not spying, that's a very insulting invasion of privacy... and whats worse, this horrible invasion of privacy that alienates our alies has absolutely no value to the NSA at all.
Let me preface what I'm about to say by stating that the NSA has shown itself to be clumsy and irresponsible in their surveillance tactics especially towards our allies. I seriously doubt that much of their actions in cases like spying on Angela Merkel etc have any tangible value to our nation. That said:
You think that there is no one in any of those countries that wishes to do the US harm? Remember that prior to 9/11 the biggest terrorist incident on US soil was planned and executed by a US citizen. You do have a valid point to some extent but pretending that just because someone is a citizen of those counties that they are friendly to us is very naive. Ostensibly we are allies with Saudi Arabia and yet all of the hijackers on 9/11 were from that country. Just because the citizens are decent people doesn't mean the government is trustworthy and vice-versa. Nation states don't ever completely trust other nation states or their citizens and given human nature they would be foolish to do so. I don't think our intelligence services worry much about Great Britain causing problems but that doesn't mean they trust them or everyone that lives there completely either.
Furthermore sometimes those you think are your friends turn out not to be as close as you thought. The US and Canada have the largest (mostly) unguarded border in the world but I guarantee you that both countries have military plans for invasion/defense just in case. I also guarantee you that both countries have intelligence services that keep at least a casual eye out for worrisome activity.
It would be one thing if our government found evidence of something shifty going on... spied to confirm or refute that, and then took action.
They do that all the time. Some of it isn't even a secret. It's not just the NSA either. We have a huge intelligence system with many players and our foreign policy depends heavily on what it reports.
They're bugging every world leader, tapping the phones of damned near every citizen, reading our mail... this is Orwellian blanket surveillance which is a far cry from "Spying" This isn't "Spying" it's totalitarianism and it's wrong.
Here we agree though I think that most other countries would do the same if given the opportunity. Power corrupts and all that.
Comparing what the rest of the world does to what the NSA does is a joke. Yes, they spy on us, but they're not intercepting ALL of our phone calls
Only because they can not, not because they would not. I have no faith that most of the 95% of the world's population outside the US is really any different when handed such powerful tools. I would find it very surprising if other major economic powers were not heavily investing in activities similar to what the NSA does. Not saying I think that is a good or right thing, just that I think it is inevitable.
Japan doesn't. (They do have a self-defense force, though.)
Japan does have a military and a rather capable one at that. They just pretend that they can't/won't attack anyone due to the constitution they put in place after WWII.
There are a few insignificant countries that don't have armed forces but every country with a substantial population has one.
Any theory of economics that assumes things dramatically at odds with reality (eg rational actors, perfect information, fair behavior, etc) is utterly useless when applied to reality.
Incorrect. Many models, including many that have justifiably won Nobel prizes, are extremely useful with the caveat that you need to know and understand the underlying assumptions and limits to the model. You get into trouble when you start using models to predict things that do not fit the underlying conditions of the model. It's ok to presume rational actors and perfect information for a model so long as you don't use that model in conditions where those things don't apply.
Unfortunately sometimes the best models we currently have aren't robust enough to account for all the real world conditions so we necessarily use them in ways that might not be ideal. For instance most stock options are priced using the Black-Scholes equation which won a Nobel prize in 1997. It's brilliant and hugely insightful but it has a large number of assumptions which do not apply to many of the securities that are priced with the model. This doesn't make it useless but it does mean that anyone who uses it for securities that do not fit the assumption profile are taking on additional risk - sometimes substantial amounts of risk.
Thankfully physics has gotten rather far beyond such toy models, hopefully economics will get there too.
Most of physics doesn't involve chaotic systems and human behavior. You're comparing apples to oranges here. I've got a masters degree in finance but my undergraduate degree is in engineering with a minor in applied physics. I've worked as a researcher and as someone who builds financial models. Building and testing models in physics is in a lot of ways hugely more straightforward. I don't think many people here really appreciate how sophisticated a lot of financial models are. But the systems being modeled aren't so easy (for lack of a better word) to tease apart. Predicting economic outcomes is rather like predicting the weather if human emotions could cause hurricanes. It's a chaotic system with imperfect information and irrational actors.
Never trust an economist, until you've checked his math. Even then, you don't trust him. You've got to understand economics so well that you can recognize his base assumptions from his math, or you're still not qualified to check his math.
You could say the same about almost any profession involving predictive models, particularly those involving human behavior or chaotic systems. (economics involves both) I used to make statistical models of factory operations. I had a manager once ask me to list the assumptions in my model. He asked me to stop when I got to the third page of (single spaced) assumptions built into the model. As the saying goes, "All models are wrong. Some models are useful". Plenty of economic models are useful as long as you understand and respect the assumptions in the model.
Remember the collapse from the housing bubble burst? Who predicted that?
I can introduce you to people who were publicly predicting it as far back as 2003. People I know personally, some of whom are economics professors and some others who are investment managers. They couldn't tell you when the bubble would burst or precisely how bad the fallout would be but they could tell you it was VERY likely and they could give you a pretty good overview of the range of possible outcomes.
Precious few men and women knew it was coming, and damned near none had any idea how bad it could be.
Not true. Quite a few people including plenty of economists suspected some sort of bubble burst was coming and they could tell you the possible range of outcomes. The problem was that it was damn near impossible to predict WHEN it would burst and as a result it was impossible to predict the collateral damage and fallout. It's also impossible to predict specific decisions. The government could have chosen to bail out Lehman Brothers but for various reasons that seemed good at the time chose not to. (mostly due to wanting to avoid moral hazard) It's difficult, bordering on impossible, to predict specific actions with that level of specificity. Most economic models are statistical and tend to break down when you get to specific decisions. Events like the crash in 2008-9 are chaotic events and thus are very hard to predict with great specificity ahead of time since you don't know the starting conditions even if everything afterwards behaves rationally (which never happens).
I exaggerated when I referenced alcohol. But is is one of the major causes of accidents.
Yes it is. Roughly 1/3 according to the CDC.
Yes, the first runs will have issues. But google has already proven the concept works.
A research project is a LONG way from a working production vehicle. It's not even clear if the technology Google is using is technologically or economically viable on a production basis. I have over 15 years in the auto industry as an engineer and an accountant. It takes a long time for technology like that to get into production vehicles. Longer when you are talking about something that takes over the actual driving of the vehicle. This isn't like some fancy new GPS. Get automated driving wrong and people die. So it is going to take a long time - much longer than 10 years in all likelihood. I honestly think even 20 years is wildly optimistic baring some sort of unbelievable technology breakthrough.
I am not an actuary, but I was talking about car accident insurance, not theft, etc.
Fair enough. You still have NO evidence regarding what accident rates might be because nobody knows. Might be close to zero as you are suggesting or it might be higher than it is now. Nobody knows and anyone who claims they do is simply making stuff up. The only thing I'm sure of is that the accident rate will be higher than zero.
As for ten years, I looked at the introduction of cellphones.
Cellphones are not automobiles. The economics and design cycles of the two products are completely different. It's a specious comparison.
Please note I was talking about the majority of new cars being sold So the lifespan of the old cars is irrelevant.
The average time people own new cars right now is just shy of 6 years. This means that even if the technology didn't add a penny to the cost of the vehicle (which will not be true), and if everyone who bought a new car had this technology on it (which they will not), and every car suddenly had the technology available in the same year (which will not happen) you might get past half the first owner cars on the road to be automated within 7-8 years in an absolute miracle case. In the real world you're probably looking at a 20 year introduction if not longer. Even if the technology works great right out of the gate and there are no incidents that scare people off of it (both unlikely), its not going to be available on more than a few cars at first for simple economic reasons.
Car redesign cycles are about 4-6 years typically, sometimes longer but seldom much shorter. This means that it will take around 6 years before most new vehicles even have access to the technology at absolute minimum. Even if Google were to announce tomorrow that they had a working consumer ready technology, it would be years before car companies could put it on most vehicles. (fyi that is exactly why the electronics in vehicles tends to be years behind the state of the art) Some cars aren't going to take it on the first cycle so it will be at least 2-3 design cycles before most cars have the technology even in the best case. That's 12-18 years after product introduction even presuming it works well and is affordable which is an ENORMOUS assumption. I'm not sure you really appreciate how unlikely the timeline you are suggesting is given the economic realities of the auto industry.
I do actually appreciate your optimism on the technology and I probably hope it comes to pass as much as you seem to but I've worked a long time in auto manufacturing. It's going to take a long time for this to happen. Much longer than 10 years unfortunately. You'll see spinoff technologies like adaptive cruise control, heads up displays and other cool stuff sooner but full computer control of vehicles is a long way off as a mass market product.
Just because Tesla has a bunch of smart people working for them doesn't mean they understand the business of selling cars.
Tesla has a bunch of automobile and manufacturing experts working for them. They didn't just tell a bunch of programmers that tomorrow they were going to start designing axles. Tesla was a new company started from the ground up to be a car company. Google is nothing of the sort and would be foolish to try.
hmmmmm.......perhaps you may want to rethink that last part?
Nope. Tesla and Google are very different companies. The fact that they both have their roots in Silicon Valley is about as close as they get. Cars and advertising/software are two businesses that could not be more different. Furthermore, Tesla is still a very small company in the automotive world. They are doing some of the most interesting stuff in cars but their long term survival is hardly a foregone conclusion.
The majority of car accidents are caused by human error.
True.
Specifically the error of thinking "I am not drunk."
Demonstrably false. The majority of auto accidents in no way involve alcohol. That's not to say the number of alcohol related incidents is insignificant but it clearly is not the majority.
First there will be test runs. When the test runs do not have car accidents, taxi companies will start using them.
That is a HUGE assumption. One that is entirely unsubstantiated at this time. You are presuming that automated vehicles can be programmed to navigate real world conditions with zero errors or unexpected conditions or human interference. In the real world accidents will happen simply because there will be times and conditions that the vehicles cannot accommodate for.
Then suddenly, car insurance rates will drop to almost nothing - if the car is computer controlled.
Ha! Let me guess, you aren't an actuary are you? There is more to auto insurance than collision insurance. Even if you are correct and accidents by some miracle dropped to a good approximation of zero, you still have theft, liability, incidental damage, etc. I'm optimistic that computer aided/controlled driving can reduce accidents but enough to cause car insurance rates to drop to "nothing"? Not in my lifetime I think and going by the averages I have a good 40 years or so left.
The whole process should take less than ten years from the introduction of the first commercially available 'no need to have a driver's license car', till the majority of new cars sold being computer controlled.
And which orifice did you pull that "ten years" number from? That's a pretty bold claim and I'm pretty sure you can't back it up. First off the average time people in the US own a car is now almost 11 years. That's the AVERAGE meaning roughly half keep their cars longer than that. An expensive and unproven new driving technology isn't going to cause a precipitous decline in time of ownership on the second most expensive asset most people own, no matter how much it drops insurance rates.
Problem solved. The others would be scrambling to catch up after that.
Google is an advertising company that is good at writing software. They have NO special expertise in running a manufacturing company, particularly one the size and complexity of GM or Ford. Furthermore the profit margins on car sales are much lower than Google's core advertising business. Not to mention the company cultures are NOTHING alike. I honestly can't think of anything dumber Google could do with their cash. The level of management distraction alone that this would cause is more than you can possibly imagine.
Manufacturing is NOTHING like writing software. I've done both and I run a manufacturing business as my day job. As smart as the folks at Google are they are not set up to be a manufacturer. It's not in their company DNA and it would kill them if they tried.
attempting to make quality products (too hard, expensive) that can be driven to making financial assets that can be sold (easy, cheap).
You think so? GM's finance division had net income of $566 million on revenue of $3.34 billion in 2013. GM had net income of $6.9 billion on revenue of $155 billion. And you think they are a finance company? Their finance division accounts for 2% of their revenue and 8% of their profit. So no, GM is not a company focused on selling financial products.
How about Ford? Ford Financial had a net LOSS of $1.2 billion on revenues of $7.8 billion in 2012 versus the parent company making a profit of $6.25 billion on revenues of $133 billion over the same period. That means financial products are 5% of their revenue and actually were a drag on profits. So no, Ford isn't a financial company either.
I don't know where you got the idea that these companies are primarily finance companies but you could not be more wrong. Financing is a nice piece of the picture but it's manufacturing and car sales that makes or breaks them. Financing at best just pads the bottom line a bit.
What Google proposes adds cost to the cars without enhancing the ability to sell loans.
What Google is working on is nowhere close to being ready to put in production automobiles. It is a research project and will remain so for some time to come. Just because Google has developed some impressive prototypes doesn't mean it is even close to being something that Ford or GM could put in a car that gets sold to you or me. If Google wants to get into the automobile business they are welcome to try but I think if they do the phrase "shareholder lawsuit" will not be far behind. Just because Google has a bunch of smart people working for them doesn't mean they understand the business of selling cars.
As far as I could tell from reading about this, they didn't change what people said.
Yes they did. There is more to communication than the specific words used. Tone, timing, delivery, emphasis, etc all are part of the message. If Facebook altered any of these to be different from the expectations of the user without informing them beforehand then they changed what people said. There is MUCH more to human communication than the syntax used.
It's still an open question as to whether this sort of thing is appropriate
I disagree. I don't think it is an open question at all. How Facebook did what they did is unacceptable. Doing experiments like this is fine in principle but HOW you do it matters. If you want to do any controlled psychology experiment on people, you need to get an independent ethics review and probably need to get informed consent. This is standard practice for some very good reasons. Nobody is asking Facebook to do anything unreasonable and the fact that they are in any way surprised by the mostly negative response pretty clearly shows that they lack the ethical compass to be trusted.
According to this article here [slashdot.org], no messages were changed:
If ANYTHING about the message is altered including delivery schedule, mix of content, etc then they are altering the message. Not everything about a message is the simple content. When you send a message and the tone you use is every bit as important to correct interpretation by the recipient. Facebook altered the messages without actually changing the specific content. If the message was unaltered (including delivery, tone, timing, etc) then we would expect reactions to be identical.
But this line is crossed thousandfold already.
Even if true (which I dispute) it is irrelevant. Just because others do it doesn't make it acceptable for Facebook.
The thing is that is exactly what just about every advertiser does all the time.
No it is NOT the same thing. The beer company does not have any control over what *I* say and they do not get to (legally) change what I say or how it is delivered to others. There is a HUGE difference between putting a message out there and seeing how people react to it versus actually changing what you or I say and how it is delivered to someone else without my consent. The former is advertising which is fine as long as it isn't too intrusive. The later is a violation of personal sovereignty unless you obtain informed consent beforehand.
Furthermore even if every advertiser actually did this (which they do not) and you have an ethical blind spot so large that you can't actually see what Facebook did wrong, two wrongs don't make a right. "Everyone else is doing it" is a juvenile argument that little kids make to justify behaviors that they shouldn't be engaging in.
Facebook is profoundly useful though, as a messaging service that everyone uses and to keep abreast of things happening in friends' lives in a central, easy-to-access location. It's also quite useful when applying for jobs, because nothing says "social outcast" like not having a Facebook account.
Facebook is profoundly useful though, as a messaging service that everyone uses
I assure you that not "everyone" uses Facebook to communicate, including the majority of my social circle. Everyone I would actually communicate via Facebook to I can reach via some combination of email, phone, text messaging, instant messaging, US mail, fax, video conference etc. Not to mention actually meeting them in person. If you really need Facebook to stay in touch then you really aren't that close to begin with.
...nothing says "social outcast" like not having a Facebook account.
If you think Facebook is required to be in with the "cool" crowd then you need to seriously grow up. Nobody gives a shit whether I have a Facebook account or not. The quality of my life and the quality of other people's life is not the slightest bit reduced by not having a Facebook account. Same with Twitter. Facebook provides me precisely nothing that I need or want. If someone actually thinks I'm a "social outcast" because I choose not to use Facebook then that person is an asshole I want nothing to do with.
Seriously, come on. Do you PERSONALLY know ANYONE who was affected by this? Neither do I.
Nobody knows who was affected or exactly how. That's part of the problem. They did it without knowledge or consent. They did not inform people of what they were doing or the fact that they did it after the fact. They did not have their design of experiment reviewed by an independent ethics board. They violated the (misplaced) trust their users had to deliver their messages as the users intended.
This isn't legal documents we're talking about here, anyway. I'm also pretty sure this is covered under Facebook's EULA/TOS you didn't read.
NOTHING in Facebook's TOS remotely qualifies as informed consent to be experimented upon. I don't even have to read it to know that. It's not THAT they did this experiment, it is HOW they did this experiment. It's not hard to check the experiment proposal in front of an ethics panel. It's not hard to get informed consent if that is deemed appropriate by the ethics panel. It is standard practice to do those things for some very very good reasons. Facebook couldn't be bothered.
But on the other hand, considering that creating an emotional response has been a standard marketing tool for the last 20 years, how is this different from regular A/B-Testing?
Because they aren't just throwing messages at people to see how they react. They were actively changing the messages and how they were received. HUGE difference and one that crosses an ethical line. If you are a beer company, you can try to promote your product to me in a way that you think might make me more inclined to buy it and that is fine as long as you aren't overly intrusive about it (think telemarketers). What is NOT fine is for them to take what I say and manipulate that to try to convince me (or others) to buy their product.
Just in case you haven't noticed. I'm surprised about the number of people who are surprised.
Then you do not understand what is going on. Facebook stepped over an ethical line in their "research". No, nobody got (badly) hurt but that doesn't make it acceptable. Screwing around with people's emotions in a controlled experiment should require at minimum review by a genuinely independent ethical review board and probably genuine informed consent. Facebook could be bothered with neither one. They seem to regard their users as insects to be manipulated and dissected.
What about them? They don't get to run controlled experiments on me and they certainly do not get to alter what I say or how others receive what I say. Advertisers can control what they say to me and see how I react but they don't get to manipulate what I say and see how that affects others. HUGE difference.
Our government (for us Americans) runs campaigns to alter opinions in other countries.
They don't get to adjust what *I* say to see what effect it has on others. You really can't see the difference?
I'd like to everyone in the business of "caus[ing] changes in psychological status" get "require informed consent" first.
When they are performing a controlled experiment on me then yes they should. If they want to simply send messages my way to see what I do, then that does not require informed consent unless it rises to a certain level of obnoxiousness like telemarketing. They do not get blanket permission to interrupt my day, manipulated what I say or manipulate how others receive what I say.
Given that Facebook has over half a billion users, it’s a foregone conclusion that every tiny change Facebook makes to the news feed or any other part of its websites induces a change in millions of people’s emotions. Yet nobody seems to complain about this much...
If this guy actually thinks nobody complains about this much then he isn't paying attention. However putting that aside his argument is a straw man. There is a VERY significant difference between changing a service and that change having an emotional impact versus actually experimenting on the emotions of your customers directly and without their permission without even so much as review by an independent review board. Anyone who can't comprehend the difference between the two has a pretty big ethical blind spot. The fact that Facebook seems to be genuinely surprised by this response tells me everything I need to know about how they regard their users. They see them the same way an entomologist sees bugs - something to be cataloged and experimented on but not worthy of the respect one normally gives other human beings.
–presumably because, when you put it this way, it seems kind of silly to suggest that a company whose business model is predicated on getting its users to use its product more would do anything other than try to manipulate its users into, you know, using its product more
There is a big and fairly bright line between observing users behavior given certain stimuli as a natural experiment and the experimental investigators manipulating those users directly without their permission in a designed experiment. The later generally requires informed consent for a variety of very sensible reasons relating to ethics. The fact that emotional manipulation is done in other contexts is utterly irrelevant. That's the same argument children make when they claim that "...but all my friends are doing it too". I suppose since Facebook is owned and run by an immature child billionaire that I shouldn't be surprised.
And no, the Facebook terms of use does NOT rise to the level of informed consent.
Blaming firearms for suicide is blaming firearms for mental illness.
It's not about blaming the firearm specifically but it cannot be reasonably argued that firearm do not in many cases facilitate the suicide. Firearms are very efficient tools and their primary purpose is as a weapon. Many suicides are impulsive actions by someone in distress. (there is plenty of evidence on this - look it up) If you want to die, a firearm is a relatively efficient way to do it. There is ample evidence that if the means of suicide is sufficiently inconvenient then a percentage of them will get through the moment of distress. Sometimes people just need a long enough window that they can get help. If the suicide tool is very efficient then the chances of them surviving to get help are reduced.
The simple way to put it is that a suicidal person may still kill themselves but some of them will be saved if the means of suicide are sufficiently inconvenient. Not all but a statistically significant number. Guns don't make people suicidal but they can make carrying out the deed easier.
Slashdot Mirror
Doing anything even remotely active, you don't necessarily have your cell phone in a handy spot: jogging, biking, swimming, sailing, fishing, etc.
Why would I actually need a wristwatch for any of those activities? Competitive running or navigation on a sailboat out of sight of land maybe but fishing? I don't know where you fish but I don't really want to know the time when I go fishing. The whole point is to not worry about it. My philosophy on fishing is that if you need to bait the hook you are missing the point.
The ONLY thing I can think of that a watch makes sense for is if you need to carry some sensors in a compact way ala fitbit or if you are doing some very niche activities where knowing the time immediately is critical. Otherwise they are simply redundant.
You also can snag a quick look at your watch without getting caught - much harder to do with a smartphone, and much less socially awkward.
As opposed to looking at one of the several clocks that is almost always in view? Hell I have 3 on the dashboard of my truck put there by the manufacturer. As I type this I have 2 on my monitor, one on my smartphone, one on the wall and there is another just around the corner. I cannot fathom why I would bother lugging around yet another redundant device.
Smart phones also aren't very pretty.
Neither are most watches that are actually affordable. Personally I don't really like to brag about the size of my bank account via jewelry but that's just me.
People would probably wear something on their wrist even without the time-telling feature - that is sort of a bonus.
Women maybe. Not most men in this country.
Works a LOT better for what a smart watch is good for, critical Information display.
See that's the problem I have with watches generally. 99% of the time they provide me no information that I critically need that I cannot get from my surroundings or my smartphone. I don't need a clock to be available to me at the flip of a wrist except very rarely. My day is not scheduled that tightly and there almost always are at least 2 clocks within eye shot anywhere I usually go. Occasionally they are useful for things like flight navigation or diving where knowing the time immediately is really critical but that's rare for most of us. The most common use is for competitive running where time obviously matters. Furthermore I find wearing one uncomfortable. I don't like them bouncing around on my wrist and if I make it tight enough to avoid that it digs into my skin pretty good which is also uncomfortable.
The only thing I can think of a "smart watch" being useful for in my life would be basically what I could use a fitbit for right now. I really just don't see the point of them.
As a Canadian, the good news is that the NSA doesn't spy on us.
Yes they do. Probably not very intensely but I don't have any doubt that the NSA handles some amount of SigInt that comes from Canada. We're not very worried about Canada attacking the US. Mostly folks in the US are worried about individuals with ill intent and drug traffickers transiting into the US through Canada.
The bad news is that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) spies on us and shares everything with the NSA anyway.
There is that too... Sigh...
The NSA is recording the private phone calls of the citizens of Canada... Mexico, England, Germany... That's not spying, that's a very insulting invasion of privacy... and whats worse, this horrible invasion of privacy that alienates our alies has absolutely no value to the NSA at all.
Let me preface what I'm about to say by stating that the NSA has shown itself to be clumsy and irresponsible in their surveillance tactics especially towards our allies. I seriously doubt that much of their actions in cases like spying on Angela Merkel etc have any tangible value to our nation. That said:
You think that there is no one in any of those countries that wishes to do the US harm? Remember that prior to 9/11 the biggest terrorist incident on US soil was planned and executed by a US citizen. You do have a valid point to some extent but pretending that just because someone is a citizen of those counties that they are friendly to us is very naive. Ostensibly we are allies with Saudi Arabia and yet all of the hijackers on 9/11 were from that country. Just because the citizens are decent people doesn't mean the government is trustworthy and vice-versa. Nation states don't ever completely trust other nation states or their citizens and given human nature they would be foolish to do so. I don't think our intelligence services worry much about Great Britain causing problems but that doesn't mean they trust them or everyone that lives there completely either.
Furthermore sometimes those you think are your friends turn out not to be as close as you thought. The US and Canada have the largest (mostly) unguarded border in the world but I guarantee you that both countries have military plans for invasion/defense just in case. I also guarantee you that both countries have intelligence services that keep at least a casual eye out for worrisome activity.
It would be one thing if our government found evidence of something shifty going on... spied to confirm or refute that, and then took action.
They do that all the time. Some of it isn't even a secret. It's not just the NSA either. We have a huge intelligence system with many players and our foreign policy depends heavily on what it reports.
They're bugging every world leader, tapping the phones of damned near every citizen, reading our mail... this is Orwellian blanket surveillance which is a far cry from "Spying" This isn't "Spying" it's totalitarianism and it's wrong.
Here we agree though I think that most other countries would do the same if given the opportunity. Power corrupts and all that.
Comparing what the rest of the world does to what the NSA does is a joke. Yes, they spy on us, but they're not intercepting ALL of our phone calls
Only because they can not, not because they would not. I have no faith that most of the 95% of the world's population outside the US is really any different when handed such powerful tools. I would find it very surprising if other major economic powers were not heavily investing in activities similar to what the NSA does. Not saying I think that is a good or right thing, just that I think it is inevitable.
Japan doesn't. (They do have a self-defense force, though.)
Japan does have a military and a rather capable one at that. They just pretend that they can't/won't attack anyone due to the constitution they put in place after WWII.
There are a few insignificant countries that don't have armed forces but every country with a substantial population has one.
Killing an enemy who is attacking or invading your country, or poses a clear and present danger to your country's security is OK, IMO.
So it is OK for Iraqi members of terrorist groups to kill US soldiers because we invaded Iraq? Just want to be sure you aren't being a hypocrite here.
Any theory of economics that assumes things dramatically at odds with reality (eg rational actors, perfect information, fair behavior, etc) is utterly useless when applied to reality.
Incorrect. Many models, including many that have justifiably won Nobel prizes, are extremely useful with the caveat that you need to know and understand the underlying assumptions and limits to the model. You get into trouble when you start using models to predict things that do not fit the underlying conditions of the model. It's ok to presume rational actors and perfect information for a model so long as you don't use that model in conditions where those things don't apply.
Unfortunately sometimes the best models we currently have aren't robust enough to account for all the real world conditions so we necessarily use them in ways that might not be ideal. For instance most stock options are priced using the Black-Scholes equation which won a Nobel prize in 1997. It's brilliant and hugely insightful but it has a large number of assumptions which do not apply to many of the securities that are priced with the model. This doesn't make it useless but it does mean that anyone who uses it for securities that do not fit the assumption profile are taking on additional risk - sometimes substantial amounts of risk.
Thankfully physics has gotten rather far beyond such toy models, hopefully economics will get there too.
Most of physics doesn't involve chaotic systems and human behavior. You're comparing apples to oranges here. I've got a masters degree in finance but my undergraduate degree is in engineering with a minor in applied physics. I've worked as a researcher and as someone who builds financial models. Building and testing models in physics is in a lot of ways hugely more straightforward. I don't think many people here really appreciate how sophisticated a lot of financial models are. But the systems being modeled aren't so easy (for lack of a better word) to tease apart. Predicting economic outcomes is rather like predicting the weather if human emotions could cause hurricanes. It's a chaotic system with imperfect information and irrational actors.
Never trust an economist, until you've checked his math. Even then, you don't trust him. You've got to understand economics so well that you can recognize his base assumptions from his math, or you're still not qualified to check his math.
You could say the same about almost any profession involving predictive models, particularly those involving human behavior or chaotic systems. (economics involves both) I used to make statistical models of factory operations. I had a manager once ask me to list the assumptions in my model. He asked me to stop when I got to the third page of (single spaced) assumptions built into the model. As the saying goes, "All models are wrong. Some models are useful". Plenty of economic models are useful as long as you understand and respect the assumptions in the model.
Remember the collapse from the housing bubble burst? Who predicted that?
I can introduce you to people who were publicly predicting it as far back as 2003. People I know personally, some of whom are economics professors and some others who are investment managers. They couldn't tell you when the bubble would burst or precisely how bad the fallout would be but they could tell you it was VERY likely and they could give you a pretty good overview of the range of possible outcomes.
Precious few men and women knew it was coming, and damned near none had any idea how bad it could be.
Not true. Quite a few people including plenty of economists suspected some sort of bubble burst was coming and they could tell you the possible range of outcomes. The problem was that it was damn near impossible to predict WHEN it would burst and as a result it was impossible to predict the collateral damage and fallout. It's also impossible to predict specific decisions. The government could have chosen to bail out Lehman Brothers but for various reasons that seemed good at the time chose not to. (mostly due to wanting to avoid moral hazard) It's difficult, bordering on impossible, to predict specific actions with that level of specificity. Most economic models are statistical and tend to break down when you get to specific decisions. Events like the crash in 2008-9 are chaotic events and thus are very hard to predict with great specificity ahead of time since you don't know the starting conditions even if everything afterwards behaves rationally (which never happens).
Wait, what? I thought Email was cheap, 'cause, you know ... spam.
No, you're confusing email with the US Mail spam delivery system. The whole thing is subsidized by spam you can actually throw in the trash can.
I exaggerated when I referenced alcohol. But is is one of the major causes of accidents.
Yes it is. Roughly 1/3 according to the CDC.
Yes, the first runs will have issues. But google has already proven the concept works.
A research project is a LONG way from a working production vehicle. It's not even clear if the technology Google is using is technologically or economically viable on a production basis. I have over 15 years in the auto industry as an engineer and an accountant. It takes a long time for technology like that to get into production vehicles. Longer when you are talking about something that takes over the actual driving of the vehicle. This isn't like some fancy new GPS. Get automated driving wrong and people die. So it is going to take a long time - much longer than 10 years in all likelihood. I honestly think even 20 years is wildly optimistic baring some sort of unbelievable technology breakthrough.
I am not an actuary, but I was talking about car accident insurance, not theft, etc.
Fair enough. You still have NO evidence regarding what accident rates might be because nobody knows. Might be close to zero as you are suggesting or it might be higher than it is now. Nobody knows and anyone who claims they do is simply making stuff up. The only thing I'm sure of is that the accident rate will be higher than zero.
As for ten years, I looked at the introduction of cellphones.
Cellphones are not automobiles. The economics and design cycles of the two products are completely different. It's a specious comparison.
Please note I was talking about the majority of new cars being sold So the lifespan of the old cars is irrelevant.
The average time people own new cars right now is just shy of 6 years. This means that even if the technology didn't add a penny to the cost of the vehicle (which will not be true), and if everyone who bought a new car had this technology on it (which they will not), and every car suddenly had the technology available in the same year (which will not happen) you might get past half the first owner cars on the road to be automated within 7-8 years in an absolute miracle case. In the real world you're probably looking at a 20 year introduction if not longer. Even if the technology works great right out of the gate and there are no incidents that scare people off of it (both unlikely), its not going to be available on more than a few cars at first for simple economic reasons.
Car redesign cycles are about 4-6 years typically, sometimes longer but seldom much shorter. This means that it will take around 6 years before most new vehicles even have access to the technology at absolute minimum. Even if Google were to announce tomorrow that they had a working consumer ready technology, it would be years before car companies could put it on most vehicles. (fyi that is exactly why the electronics in vehicles tends to be years behind the state of the art) Some cars aren't going to take it on the first cycle so it will be at least 2-3 design cycles before most cars have the technology even in the best case. That's 12-18 years after product introduction even presuming it works well and is affordable which is an ENORMOUS assumption. I'm not sure you really appreciate how unlikely the timeline you are suggesting is given the economic realities of the auto industry.
I do actually appreciate your optimism on the technology and I probably hope it comes to pass as much as you seem to but I've worked a long time in auto manufacturing. It's going to take a long time for this to happen. Much longer than 10 years unfortunately. You'll see spinoff technologies like adaptive cruise control, heads up displays and other cool stuff sooner but full computer control of vehicles is a long way off as a mass market product.
Just because Tesla has a bunch of smart people working for them doesn't mean they understand the business of selling cars.
Tesla has a bunch of automobile and manufacturing experts working for them. They didn't just tell a bunch of programmers that tomorrow they were going to start designing axles. Tesla was a new company started from the ground up to be a car company. Google is nothing of the sort and would be foolish to try.
hmmmmm.......perhaps you may want to rethink that last part?
Nope. Tesla and Google are very different companies. The fact that they both have their roots in Silicon Valley is about as close as they get. Cars and advertising/software are two businesses that could not be more different. Furthermore, Tesla is still a very small company in the automotive world. They are doing some of the most interesting stuff in cars but their long term survival is hardly a foregone conclusion.
The majority of car accidents are caused by human error.
True.
Specifically the error of thinking "I am not drunk."
Demonstrably false. The majority of auto accidents in no way involve alcohol. That's not to say the number of alcohol related incidents is insignificant but it clearly is not the majority.
First there will be test runs. When the test runs do not have car accidents, taxi companies will start using them.
That is a HUGE assumption. One that is entirely unsubstantiated at this time. You are presuming that automated vehicles can be programmed to navigate real world conditions with zero errors or unexpected conditions or human interference. In the real world accidents will happen simply because there will be times and conditions that the vehicles cannot accommodate for.
Then suddenly, car insurance rates will drop to almost nothing - if the car is computer controlled.
Ha! Let me guess, you aren't an actuary are you? There is more to auto insurance than collision insurance. Even if you are correct and accidents by some miracle dropped to a good approximation of zero, you still have theft, liability, incidental damage, etc. I'm optimistic that computer aided/controlled driving can reduce accidents but enough to cause car insurance rates to drop to "nothing"? Not in my lifetime I think and going by the averages I have a good 40 years or so left.
The whole process should take less than ten years from the introduction of the first commercially available 'no need to have a driver's license car', till the majority of new cars sold being computer controlled.
And which orifice did you pull that "ten years" number from? That's a pretty bold claim and I'm pretty sure you can't back it up. First off the average time people in the US own a car is now almost 11 years. That's the AVERAGE meaning roughly half keep their cars longer than that. An expensive and unproven new driving technology isn't going to cause a precipitous decline in time of ownership on the second most expensive asset most people own, no matter how much it drops insurance rates.
Problem solved. The others would be scrambling to catch up after that.
Google is an advertising company that is good at writing software. They have NO special expertise in running a manufacturing company, particularly one the size and complexity of GM or Ford. Furthermore the profit margins on car sales are much lower than Google's core advertising business. Not to mention the company cultures are NOTHING alike. I honestly can't think of anything dumber Google could do with their cash. The level of management distraction alone that this would cause is more than you can possibly imagine.
Manufacturing is NOTHING like writing software. I've done both and I run a manufacturing business as my day job. As smart as the folks at Google are they are not set up to be a manufacturer. It's not in their company DNA and it would kill them if they tried.
attempting to make quality products (too hard, expensive) that can be driven to making financial assets that can be sold (easy, cheap).
You think so? GM's finance division had net income of $566 million on revenue of $3.34 billion in 2013. GM had net income of $6.9 billion on revenue of $155 billion. And you think they are a finance company? Their finance division accounts for 2% of their revenue and 8% of their profit. So no, GM is not a company focused on selling financial products.
How about Ford? Ford Financial had a net LOSS of $1.2 billion on revenues of $7.8 billion in 2012 versus the parent company making a profit of $6.25 billion on revenues of $133 billion over the same period. That means financial products are 5% of their revenue and actually were a drag on profits. So no, Ford isn't a financial company either.
I don't know where you got the idea that these companies are primarily finance companies but you could not be more wrong. Financing is a nice piece of the picture but it's manufacturing and car sales that makes or breaks them. Financing at best just pads the bottom line a bit.
What Google proposes adds cost to the cars without enhancing the ability to sell loans.
What Google is working on is nowhere close to being ready to put in production automobiles. It is a research project and will remain so for some time to come. Just because Google has developed some impressive prototypes doesn't mean it is even close to being something that Ford or GM could put in a car that gets sold to you or me. If Google wants to get into the automobile business they are welcome to try but I think if they do the phrase "shareholder lawsuit" will not be far behind. Just because Google has a bunch of smart people working for them doesn't mean they understand the business of selling cars.
As far as I could tell from reading about this, they didn't change what people said.
Yes they did. There is more to communication than the specific words used. Tone, timing, delivery, emphasis, etc all are part of the message. If Facebook altered any of these to be different from the expectations of the user without informing them beforehand then they changed what people said. There is MUCH more to human communication than the syntax used.
It's still an open question as to whether this sort of thing is appropriate
I disagree. I don't think it is an open question at all. How Facebook did what they did is unacceptable. Doing experiments like this is fine in principle but HOW you do it matters. If you want to do any controlled psychology experiment on people, you need to get an independent ethics review and probably need to get informed consent. This is standard practice for some very good reasons. Nobody is asking Facebook to do anything unreasonable and the fact that they are in any way surprised by the mostly negative response pretty clearly shows that they lack the ethical compass to be trusted.
According to this article here [slashdot.org], no messages were changed:
If ANYTHING about the message is altered including delivery schedule, mix of content, etc then they are altering the message. Not everything about a message is the simple content. When you send a message and the tone you use is every bit as important to correct interpretation by the recipient. Facebook altered the messages without actually changing the specific content. If the message was unaltered (including delivery, tone, timing, etc) then we would expect reactions to be identical.
But this line is crossed thousandfold already.
Even if true (which I dispute) it is irrelevant. Just because others do it doesn't make it acceptable for Facebook.
The thing is that is exactly what just about every advertiser does all the time.
No it is NOT the same thing. The beer company does not have any control over what *I* say and they do not get to (legally) change what I say or how it is delivered to others. There is a HUGE difference between putting a message out there and seeing how people react to it versus actually changing what you or I say and how it is delivered to someone else without my consent. The former is advertising which is fine as long as it isn't too intrusive. The later is a violation of personal sovereignty unless you obtain informed consent beforehand.
Furthermore even if every advertiser actually did this (which they do not) and you have an ethical blind spot so large that you can't actually see what Facebook did wrong, two wrongs don't make a right. "Everyone else is doing it" is a juvenile argument that little kids make to justify behaviors that they shouldn't be engaging in.
Facebook is profoundly useful though, as a messaging service that everyone uses and to keep abreast of things happening in friends' lives in a central, easy-to-access location. It's also quite useful when applying for jobs, because nothing says "social outcast" like not having a Facebook account.
Facebook is profoundly useful though, as a messaging service that everyone uses
I assure you that not "everyone" uses Facebook to communicate, including the majority of my social circle. Everyone I would actually communicate via Facebook to I can reach via some combination of email, phone, text messaging, instant messaging, US mail, fax, video conference etc. Not to mention actually meeting them in person. If you really need Facebook to stay in touch then you really aren't that close to begin with.
...nothing says "social outcast" like not having a Facebook account.
If you think Facebook is required to be in with the "cool" crowd then you need to seriously grow up. Nobody gives a shit whether I have a Facebook account or not. The quality of my life and the quality of other people's life is not the slightest bit reduced by not having a Facebook account. Same with Twitter. Facebook provides me precisely nothing that I need or want. If someone actually thinks I'm a "social outcast" because I choose not to use Facebook then that person is an asshole I want nothing to do with.
Seriously, come on. Do you PERSONALLY know ANYONE who was affected by this? Neither do I.
Nobody knows who was affected or exactly how. That's part of the problem. They did it without knowledge or consent. They did not inform people of what they were doing or the fact that they did it after the fact. They did not have their design of experiment reviewed by an independent ethics board. They violated the (misplaced) trust their users had to deliver their messages as the users intended.
This isn't legal documents we're talking about here, anyway. I'm also pretty sure this is covered under Facebook's EULA/TOS you didn't read.
NOTHING in Facebook's TOS remotely qualifies as informed consent to be experimented upon. I don't even have to read it to know that. It's not THAT they did this experiment, it is HOW they did this experiment. It's not hard to check the experiment proposal in front of an ethics panel. It's not hard to get informed consent if that is deemed appropriate by the ethics panel. It is standard practice to do those things for some very very good reasons. Facebook couldn't be bothered.
But on the other hand, considering that creating an emotional response has been a standard marketing tool for the last 20 years, how is this different from regular A/B-Testing?
Because they aren't just throwing messages at people to see how they react. They were actively changing the messages and how they were received. HUGE difference and one that crosses an ethical line. If you are a beer company, you can try to promote your product to me in a way that you think might make me more inclined to buy it and that is fine as long as you aren't overly intrusive about it (think telemarketers). What is NOT fine is for them to take what I say and manipulate that to try to convince me (or others) to buy their product.
Just in case you haven't noticed. I'm surprised about the number of people who are surprised.
Then you do not understand what is going on. Facebook stepped over an ethical line in their "research". No, nobody got (badly) hurt but that doesn't make it acceptable. Screwing around with people's emotions in a controlled experiment should require at minimum review by a genuinely independent ethical review board and probably genuine informed consent. Facebook could be bothered with neither one. They seem to regard their users as insects to be manipulated and dissected.
What about what advertisers do every day?
What about them? They don't get to run controlled experiments on me and they certainly do not get to alter what I say or how others receive what I say. Advertisers can control what they say to me and see how I react but they don't get to manipulate what I say and see how that affects others. HUGE difference.
Our government (for us Americans) runs campaigns to alter opinions in other countries.
They don't get to adjust what *I* say to see what effect it has on others. You really can't see the difference?
I'd like to everyone in the business of "caus[ing] changes in psychological status" get "require informed consent" first.
When they are performing a controlled experiment on me then yes they should. If they want to simply send messages my way to see what I do, then that does not require informed consent unless it rises to a certain level of obnoxiousness like telemarketing. They do not get blanket permission to interrupt my day, manipulated what I say or manipulate how others receive what I say.
Given that Facebook has over half a billion users, it’s a foregone conclusion that every tiny change Facebook makes to the news feed or any other part of its websites induces a change in millions of people’s emotions. Yet nobody seems to complain about this much...
If this guy actually thinks nobody complains about this much then he isn't paying attention. However putting that aside his argument is a straw man. There is a VERY significant difference between changing a service and that change having an emotional impact versus actually experimenting on the emotions of your customers directly and without their permission without even so much as review by an independent review board. Anyone who can't comprehend the difference between the two has a pretty big ethical blind spot. The fact that Facebook seems to be genuinely surprised by this response tells me everything I need to know about how they regard their users. They see them the same way an entomologist sees bugs - something to be cataloged and experimented on but not worthy of the respect one normally gives other human beings.
–presumably because, when you put it this way, it seems kind of silly to suggest that a company whose business model is predicated on getting its users to use its product more would do anything other than try to manipulate its users into, you know, using its product more
There is a big and fairly bright line between observing users behavior given certain stimuli as a natural experiment and the experimental investigators manipulating those users directly without their permission in a designed experiment. The later generally requires informed consent for a variety of very sensible reasons relating to ethics. The fact that emotional manipulation is done in other contexts is utterly irrelevant. That's the same argument children make when they claim that "...but all my friends are doing it too". I suppose since Facebook is owned and run by an immature child billionaire that I shouldn't be surprised.
And no, the Facebook terms of use does NOT rise to the level of informed consent.
This sort of thing is exactly why I have never signed up for an account. The lack of a moral compass at this company is profound.
Blaming firearms for suicide is blaming firearms for mental illness.
It's not about blaming the firearm specifically but it cannot be reasonably argued that firearm do not in many cases facilitate the suicide. Firearms are very efficient tools and their primary purpose is as a weapon. Many suicides are impulsive actions by someone in distress. (there is plenty of evidence on this - look it up) If you want to die, a firearm is a relatively efficient way to do it. There is ample evidence that if the means of suicide is sufficiently inconvenient then a percentage of them will get through the moment of distress. Sometimes people just need a long enough window that they can get help. If the suicide tool is very efficient then the chances of them surviving to get help are reduced.
The simple way to put it is that a suicidal person may still kill themselves but some of them will be saved if the means of suicide are sufficiently inconvenient. Not all but a statistically significant number. Guns don't make people suicidal but they can make carrying out the deed easier.