One Man's 'Time Travel' of 44 Years

Choose Your Path Wisely Through the Robopocalypse

Societal, Economic, Ethical and Legal Challenges of the Digital Revolution: From Big Data to Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Manipulative Technologies

Author:

Helbing

Abstract:

In the wake of the on-going digital revolution, we will see a dramatic transformation of our economy and most of our societal institutions. While the benefits of this transformation can be massive, there are also tremendous risks to our society. After the automation of many production processes and the creation of self-driving vehicles, the automation of society is next. This is moving us to a tipping point and to a crossroads: we must decide between a society in which the actions are determined in a top-down way and then implemented by coercion or manipulative technologies (such as personalized ads and nudging) or a society, in which decisions are taken in a free and participatory way and mutually coordinated. Modern information and communication systems (ICT) enable both, but the latter has economic and strategic benefits. The fundaments of human dignity, autonomous decision-making, and democracies are shaking, but I believe that they need to be vigorously defended, as they are not only core principles of livable societies, but also the basis of greater efficiency and success.

Finding the Right Level of Inequality

The growing disparity in economic inequality has become so stark that even Janet Yellen, Federal Reserve chairwoman, recently expressed concern. Interestingly, new research has discovered that American citizens desire an unequal, but more equal distribution of wealth and income. Lower levels of this "unequality" are associated with decreased unethical behavior and increased motivation and labor productivity. This study is published today in the inaugural issue of Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences (PIBBS).

"People from all walks of life – rich and poor, liberal and conservative – agree far more than they disagree on what America should look like. People exhibit a desire for unequality – not too equal, but not too unequal," wrote study author Michael I. Norton, of the Harvard Business School.

link.

China Warns Against Embracing Western Values

China's ruling Communist Party will step up ideological education of officials to prevent them from aping Western moral standards and strengthen their faith in communism to help in the fight against pervasive corruption, state media said.

"Profound social-economic changes at home and abroad have brought multiple distractions to officials who face loss of faith and moral decline," the official Xinhua news agency cited a statement from the party's powerful Organisation Department, which oversees personnel decisions.

"The conviction and morals of officials determine the rise and fall of the Communist Party and the country," Xinhua added, in a report late on Sunday.

"Officials should keep firm belief in Marxism to avoid being lost in the clamor for western democracy, universal values and civil society," it said.

The party has warned repeatedly that its members should not be lead astray by Western concepts of human rights and democracy, saying that China has the right to promote its own interpretation of such ideas to better suit its national condition and level of economic development.

link.

Programs to Move Families out of High-Poverty Neighborhoods Benefits Girls, not Boys

A program designed to move families out of high-poverty neighborhoods resulted in reduced rates of depression and conduct disorder among girls, but increased rates of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and conduct disorder among boys, according to a study published in the March 5 issue of JAMA.

Prof. Jens Ludwig, one of the study's authors, said this was a follow-up long-term analysis of families participating in the Moving to Opportunity residential-mobility demonstration sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Ludwig is the McCormick Foundation Professor of Social Service Administration, Law, and Public Policy at the University of Chicago; director of the UChicago Crime Lab; and co-director of the University of Chicago Urban Education Lab.

"The major surprise was the size of the findings," Ludwig said. "Moving out of high-poverty areas had very different effects on boys and girls, and both effects are large. For boys, the increase in PTSD is comparable to what you see from combat exposure among military veterans, while the reduction in depression among girls is equally massive."

Moving to Opportunity was designed to use housing vouchers to move families out of very distressed public housing projects into less disadvantaged neighborhoods with lower poverty and crime rates, with the goal of improving educational achievement and economic self-sufficiency. Between 1994 and 1998 the HUD program enrolled 4,604 volunteer low-income public housing families in five cities (Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York) and randomly assigned some but not others to receive housing vouchers.

The follow-up evaluations were conducted 10 to 15 years later, which meant participants who were in early childhood at the time of the randomization were in adolescence when researchers were evaluating long-term associations of the housing mobility program with mental disorders. Ludwig's co-researchers on the study include lead author Ronald C. Kessler from Harvard Medical School as well as other colleagues from Harvard, University of California-Irvine, the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Congressional Budget Office.

The researchers found that girls whose families had the chance to move through Moving to Opportunity had much lower rates of major depression compared to the control group (6.5 percent versus 10.9 percent) and conduct disorder (0.3 percent versus 2.9 percent). On the other hand, boys whose families had the chance to move through Moving to Opportunity had significantly elevated rates of major depression (7.1 percent vs. 3.5 percent) and elevated rates of PTSD (6.2 percent versus 1.9 percent, respectively) and conduct disorder (6.4 percent vs. 2.1 percent).

link.

Wolf: Enslave the robots and free the poor

The rise of intelligent machines is a moment in history. It will change many things, including our economy. But their potential is clear: they will make it possible for human beings to live far better lives. Whether they end up doing so depends on how the gains are produced and distributed. It is possible that the ultimate result will be a tiny minority of huge winners and a vast number of losers. But such an outcome would be a choice not a destiny. A form of techno-feudalism is unnecessary. Above all, technology itself does not dictate the outcomes. Economic and political institutions do. If the ones we have do not give the results we want, we must change them.

link.

By age 23, 49% of black, 44 % of Hispanic & 38 % of White Males Arrested.

Nearly half of black males and almost 40 percent of white males in the U.S. are arrested by age 23, which can hurt their ability to find work, go to school and participate fully in their communities.

A new study released Monday (Jan. 6) in the journal Crime & Delinquency provides the first contemporary findings on how the risk of arrest varies across race and gender, says Robert Brame, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina and lead author of the study.

The study is an analysis of national survey data from 1997 to 2008 of teenagers and young adults, ages 18󈞃, and their arrest histories, which run the gamut from truancy and underage drinking to more serious and violent offenses. The study excludes arrests for minor traffic violations.

Most striking are the race differences revealed in the study, Brame says. In particular, the research points to a higher prevalence of arrest among black males and little race variation in arrest rates among females.

"A problem is that many males – especially black males – are navigating the transition from youth to adulthood with the baggage and difficulties from contact with the criminal justice system," Brame says.

The negative impacts can be great, he says. "States vary on the age that adolescents are considered adults in the eyes of the criminal law, some as young as age 16 and 17," he says. "Criminal records that show up in searches can impede employment, reduce access to housing, thwart admission to and financing for higher education and affect civic and volunteer activities such as voting or adoption. They also can damage personal and family relationships."

Shawn Bushway, a criminal justice professor at the University at Albany who collaborated with Brame on the study, says they used data from the U.S. Department of Labor's National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 cohort (NLYS97).

link.

The Social Impact Bond Concept

Experimental Evidence Supporting Larger Groups Required for More Complex Societies

Experimental evidence for the influence of group size on cultural complexity

Authors:

Derex et al

Abstract:

The remarkable ecological and demographic success of humanity is largely attributed to our capacity for cumulative culture. The accumulation of beneficial cultural innovations across generations is puzzling because transmission events are generally imperfect, although there is large variance in fidelity. Events of perfect cultural transmission and innovations should be more frequent in a large population. As a consequence, a large population size may be a prerequisite for the evolution of cultural complexity, although anthropological studies have produced mixed results and empirical evidence is lacking. Here we use a dual-task computer game to show that cultural evolution strongly depends on population size, as players in larger groups maintained higher cultural complexity. We found that when group size increases, cultural knowledge is less deteriorated, improvements to existing cultural traits are more frequent, and cultural trait diversity is maintained more often. Our results demonstrate how changes in group size can generate both adaptive cultural evolution and maladaptive losses of culturally acquired skills. As humans live in habitats for which they are ill-suited without specific cultural adaptations, it suggests that, in our evolutionary past, group-size reduction may have exposed human societies to significant risks, including societal collapse.

I thought this was a known, but ok...

The Future of Black and White

Interesting. Not that different than what I've heard otherwise.

Keep in mind that Benjamin Franklin's writings, he railed against the nonwhite immigrants moving into the US and corrupting its culture. Those immigrants? Germans. Yep. Germans. He considered the English, certain Germans (Saxons, iirc), Dutch and perhaps the Scots to be white. No one else was. 100 years ago, Italians and Irish were not "white" by general American social standards. They are definitely considered such today. What is 'white' and what is not is a moving standard. Dr Lee points that out in an interesting manner.

It appears that the definite of 'white' is moving to encompass asians and latinos. By 2035 or 2040, it may well be that being Mexican is no different than Italian. Or Irish. The differences would absorbed and some kept by society as a whole and some not, just like any other immigrant group in the past once the flow from the point of origin has slowed to a trickle. Had we still be getting waves of Italians from the late 19th century all the way to the present, our societal uneasiness might still be present.

Unfortunately, developments make it look like, as Dr Lee points out again, that white is going to be excluding black in the life trajectories of those within their categories. Listen to the short above. Its a bit depressing. Black is the underclass. Sad and depressing that.