These days, it seems harder and harder to be civil and open minded on nearly any topic. Despite being more digitally connected than ever before, we as a society appear to have groups of people who are more apart on ideology than ever before.
I am sure you've heard of confirmation bias--our inate need to find proof of our own beliefs. While this cognitive bias has been known for quite some time, I don't think we've fully grasped its potentially disasterous impact when modern machine learning techniques are applied to virtually all online experiences.
Recommendation engines used by Amazon, Netflix, YouTube, etc. all feed off your activity. When you see a link that seems interesting to you and click on it, that event is recorded. The information about what you just read/watched/bought is now used by that company's recommendation engine to populate their "Up next" or "Others also bought" or "You may also be interested in" feeds. Now you may think, "oh this is great, this service knows what I like", and click on another link in that recommended feed. This generates another data point for the recommendation engine. When you do this over and over, over the course of days and months, various backend services build up a very comprehensive profile of who you are and what you like. Since each one of these companies' main goals is to get you to either consume more of their content or buy more things, its recommendation engine is quite happy to continue to pump more and more things you will like into your feed. Afterall, optimizing profits is the name of the game.
This is not so bad when it comes to online shopping, because if I buy diapers and baby food, you are probably right to guess that I may also want baby clothes and baby bath toys. The trouble comes when this same system is applied to news and other media that is suppose to be fact reporting. Suddenly that one article you clicked on that seemed interesting has resulted in your feed overflowing with stories about alien abductions and what not. Since you don't want that, you end up clicking on articles or videos that confirm what you already think. And because of that, more and more, all you see day in and day out are such articles and videos. Now add a global pandemic to this already poor diet of information where everyone is locked indoors with nothing but a continuous feed of recommended and urgent breaking stories to consume, and you end up with a very unhealthy situation.
As if this isn't already a big enough dumpster fire, you also need to add all the tricky marketing tactics that is on every website these days. Every click and even non-click is tracked and sold to the highest bidder, cross companies, cross geographic boundaries. All that information is fed into more and more optimization algorithms designed to sell you ideas or products, pushing you further and faster down a path you are already on.
So, what can you do to break this cycle? I definitely don't have all the answers, but maybe when you are looking for news, do so in your browser's incognito mode. You should definitely be running an ad block plugin in your browser. And if you are more technical, run Pi-Hole to black hole all ad servers. Also, maybe try visiting different news sites, not only ones you always read stories from. Maybe best of all, have a good old fashioned (virtual) discussion with some of your friends who are a little different than you, especially those who don't agree with everything you say.
It is easy to fall into the trap of confirmation bias, it is a lot harder to challenge your own preconceptions and see the world from someone else's perspective. If we don't start doing this, there is a real chance we end up recommending ourselves into clusters of extremism.
Thursday, 9 April 2020
Thursday, 16 January 2020
A woman walks into a Honda dealership...
On a cold snowy Thursday afternoon, a tall asian woman walks into a Honda dealership.
I walk into the show room, go directly to the Honda HRV, get inside, and start checking out the interior of the car.
On my way in, I see the show room is pretty empty, no other customers in sight. There are a few male staff at their desks, doing various paperwork like things. I walk by the female receptionist, she says hello, I reciprocate.
After a few minutes, I am surprised at the lack of attention I am getting, then I see the receptionist come to me, she asks "do you need any help?"
I respond that I am interested in the HRV. She says if I need any help, she can get one of the sales people. I say OK, she goes away.
I continue to checkout the car, I get out, open up the rear seat, try out the magic seats. They are actually really cool, why doesn't every SUV/CUV have them? They are so useful!
Anyway, I get into the back seat, check out the leg room, head room, etc.
I am out again, checking out the trunk and what not. I take a moment to look up. While I am all for low pressure sales, but I've been in the dealership for nearly 10 minutes, with no other customers in sight, I'd figure even out of boredom, one of the salesman would've come over to me to chat by now.
Nop, all the guys are, doing something. I am not sure what it is they are doing, but they are avoiding eye contact and looking busy. Oh also, while walking around the car, the showroom etc, the female receptionist is the ONLY person who has even acknowledged my presence. Did I wear my Harry Potter invisibility cloak? Apparently it doesn't work on women, I must make a note of this.
I look at the car more, getting into the passenger side, checking out the sticker details etc..
Finally I am bored, I have specific questions that I cannot answer myself (or else I would have), so I go back to the receptionist lady. She is talking to a customer on the phone, but she tells me "be with you in a momemnt".
A few minutes she was off the phone, and comes to me, I tell her I have specific questions. She responded she will get one of the sales reps.
The rest of the experience was pretty standard, nothing terribly good or bad to report. I've already done a bunch of research on the HRV, so I had very specific questions, which it turns out the sales person couldn't answer, and even his manager didn't seem to be certain.
The salesman who helped me was nice and friendly. We took the car for a test drive, he was surprised I knew a lot about the car already. I told him, I am an engineer, it's what I do.
I walk into the show room, go directly to the Honda HRV, get inside, and start checking out the interior of the car.
On my way in, I see the show room is pretty empty, no other customers in sight. There are a few male staff at their desks, doing various paperwork like things. I walk by the female receptionist, she says hello, I reciprocate.
After a few minutes, I am surprised at the lack of attention I am getting, then I see the receptionist come to me, she asks "do you need any help?"
I respond that I am interested in the HRV. She says if I need any help, she can get one of the sales people. I say OK, she goes away.
I continue to checkout the car, I get out, open up the rear seat, try out the magic seats. They are actually really cool, why doesn't every SUV/CUV have them? They are so useful!
Anyway, I get into the back seat, check out the leg room, head room, etc.
I am out again, checking out the trunk and what not. I take a moment to look up. While I am all for low pressure sales, but I've been in the dealership for nearly 10 minutes, with no other customers in sight, I'd figure even out of boredom, one of the salesman would've come over to me to chat by now.
Nop, all the guys are, doing something. I am not sure what it is they are doing, but they are avoiding eye contact and looking busy. Oh also, while walking around the car, the showroom etc, the female receptionist is the ONLY person who has even acknowledged my presence. Did I wear my Harry Potter invisibility cloak? Apparently it doesn't work on women, I must make a note of this.
I look at the car more, getting into the passenger side, checking out the sticker details etc..
Finally I am bored, I have specific questions that I cannot answer myself (or else I would have), so I go back to the receptionist lady. She is talking to a customer on the phone, but she tells me "be with you in a momemnt".
A few minutes she was off the phone, and comes to me, I tell her I have specific questions. She responded she will get one of the sales reps.
The rest of the experience was pretty standard, nothing terribly good or bad to report. I've already done a bunch of research on the HRV, so I had very specific questions, which it turns out the sales person couldn't answer, and even his manager didn't seem to be certain.
The salesman who helped me was nice and friendly. We took the car for a test drive, he was surprised I knew a lot about the car already. I told him, I am an engineer, it's what I do.
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