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#algorithms

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Of the many challenges to #HumanRights and #ClimateJustice campaigners...

...getting a message past #billionaire #algorithms really shouldn't be one.

This is just one reason the #fediverse is a logical switch.

Numbers matter, but having genuine connection and access is more important than vanity metrics of bot views.

And the fact that those same billionaires are often the root cause of the issue in the first place is another.

I was informally (mis)diagnosed as "probably psychopathic" by my supervisor when I did my Social Psychology postgraduate at the University of Leicester psychiatric teaching hospital back in 1989. Now I realise that I was really diagnosed with adult autism by a psychologist who didn't have the tools to differentiate.

It's interesting because it started me on my path to computerising the psychiatric investigation part of the DSM (well, initially Hare PCL) evaluation for my Master's degree. The psychometric question-and-answer model and demo I came up with had me firmly psychopathic in PCL's diagnostic terms, whereas these days it would be easily diagnosed as autism.

I went on to expand the idea from psychometrics, to behaviour analysis in virtual worlds, which I figured would be a better capture than psychometric questions - Would the person co-operate to attain a goal, would they show altruism, would they be quick to anger - There's a lot you can measure in the virtual world as we know very well now, but didn't in 1991. Sadly, the lack of modern technology and the need to feed myself brought this PhD to an end without a write-up - But it's no wonder I ended up working for OkCupid, I guess :D

The sad thing about that is that although it didn't impact my life at all, other than having an interesting topic to discuss at parties, the PCL is used as a tool by US prisons in their parole calculations. A PCL diagnosis is a heavy weighting against parole, even though Hare himself has said that isn't the way this should be used. I dread to think how many autistic people are stuck in prisons for evermore because of misdiagnosed psychopathy.

The psychopathy test puts a lot more emphasis on masking and social interactions than on kidnapping people and putting them in wells to skin them later, I feel.

I can't be bothered to write a blog post about this, so I will scream into the #Mastodon #Void instead - Except now I have to think of some other #Hashtags which is always the hard part, I get carried away, autism you see!

Continued thread

But now, acc/to internal company docs obtained by NPR, up to 90% of all risk assessments will soon be automated.

In practice, this means things like critical updates to #Meta's #algorithms, new #safety features & changes to how #content is allowed to be shared across the company's platforms will be mostly approved by a system powered by #ArtificialIntelligence — no longer subject to scrutiny by staffers tasked w/debating how a #platform change could have unforeseen repercussions or be misused.

“You blew my mind,” said the subject line of an email from #ACMTuringAward recipient Avi Wigderson to Ryan Williams, a theoretical computer scientist at MIT. Earlier, Williams has posted a proof online, establishing a mathematical procedure for transforming any algorithm — no matter what it does — into a form that uses much less space. Learn more: quantamagazine.org/for-algorit
#TechNews #Algorithms #computing

Quanta Magazine · For Algorithms, a Little Memory Outweighs a Lot of Time | Quanta MagazineOne computer scientist’s “stunning” proof is the first progress in 50 years on one of the most famous questions in computer science.
…what if life itself is, even in principle, nonsimulable? There are, of course, many things that mechanization by rote does better than life, in terms of speed, repeatability, precision, and so forth. On the other hand, a living system…may be characterized by its ability to handle ambiguities and take chances, indeed, its ability to err. These are precisely the processes that cannot, by definition…, be modelled algorithmically.
—Aloisius H. Louie, More Than Life Itself: A Synthetic Continuation in Relational Biology
#life #computability #computation #algorithms
Replied in thread

@lukadjo @ApAlun @Crispius @fedilore @freeagent @vfrmedia

just an idea

(not an original one):

the problem with #algorithms on #centralized #socialMedia is that they can be manipulated

on the #fediverse why not have a menu of #openSource algorithms that anyone can write (audited so they are genuinely manipulation-free)?

people can freely choose one, and they can sink into their #algorithm stupor

if that's what they want

is there harm in that?

i'm not saying they *have* to do that