{"id":52161,"date":"2016-08-30T18:11:38","date_gmt":"2016-08-30T18:11:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=52161"},"modified":"2016-08-30T18:12:58","modified_gmt":"2016-08-30T18:12:58","slug":"on-the-foolishness-of-some-current-algorithms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=52161","title":{"rendered":"On the foolishness of some current algorithms"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — shouting caveat lector<\/em> in a crowded theater ]
\n.<\/p>\n

I don’t know what a wise algorithm<\/strong> is, whether any such algorithms exist, how they would qualify for that title, what the definitive definition<\/strong> of wisdom is, and so forth. Some algorithms in contemporary use, however, strike me as foolish.<\/p>\n

\"Tablet<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
  • WaPo<\/strong>, Three days after removing human editors, Facebook is already trending fake news<\/a>\n
  • Fusion<\/strong>, Facebook recommended that this psychiatrist\u2019s patients friend each other<\/a><\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    It is in this context that we might wish to read:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • NY Times magazine<\/strong>, Inside Facebook\u2019s (Totally Insane, Unintentionally Gigantic, Hyperpartisan) Political-Media Machine<\/a><\/li>\n

    .
    \nReaders who clicked through to the story were led to an external website, called Make America Great Today, where they were presented with a brief write-up blended almost seamlessly into a solid wall of fleshy ads. Khan, the story said \u2014 between ads for \u201c(1) Odd Trick to \u2018Kill\u2019 Herpes Virus for Good\u201d and \u201c22 Tank Tops That Aren\u2019t Covering Anything\u201d \u2014 is an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood and a \u201cpromoter of Islamic Shariah law.\u201d His late son, the story suggests, could have been a \u201cMuslim martyr\u201d working as a double agent. A credit link beneath the story led to a similar-looking site called Conservative Post, from which the story\u2019s text was pulled verbatim. Conservative Post had apparently sourced its story from a longer post on a right-wing site called Shoebat.com.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Uh-oh!<\/strong><\/p>\n

    I wouldn’t trust Shoebat <\/strong>as far as I could bat a shoe. But then, how much does it matter whether we’re led by the left ear or the right ear? <\/p>\n

    This has been an addendum to Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds<\/a><\/strong>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    [ by Charles Cameron — shouting caveat lector in a crowded theater ] . I don’t know what a wise algorithm is, whether any such algorithms exist, how they would qualify for that title, what the definitive definition of wisdom is, and so forth. Some algorithms in contemporary use, however, strike me as foolish. Sources: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1319,526,627,1408,139,1090,1313,693,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-algorithm","category-charles-cameron","category-doublequotes","category-facebook","category-media","category-media-literacy","category-sane-insane","category-social-media","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52161"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52183,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52161\/revisions\/52183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}