You worked as a financial analyst but yet don't seem to grasp the monumental difference between "women earn 80 percent less than men", which you cited above as the common narrative, and "women earn 80 percent of what men earn" or "women earn 20 percent less than men", which are two accurate descriptions of the common narrative.
I don't think the author was trying to excuse Facebook's business model by bringing up Cruz. She was pointing out that if this 'psychological profiling' technique from CA was really a silver bullet for swaying votes, Cruz would have done better in his run the Republican nomination. It's a single data point that arguably isn't worth much, but it was interesting to me as I'd not heard of any other prominent politicians using the service. Balanced article by WAPO in my view.
I thought Cruz came in 2nd? To the guy who was on every channel of TV all the time. Keep in mind R primary voters get more of their news from TV than the general electorate, which explains why Trump beat Cruz more than he beat Clinton. Keep in mind also that Cruz is a total pariah in Washington. The only people who will talk to him are those who are paid to do so. Based on previous form, one would not have expected Jeb and the rest to all lose to Trump and Cruz.
That's because there's an army of people who are quick to discredit anything coming from blogs and lesser known sources as bunk while falling all over themselves for traditional news sources like NYT. Even when the big sources completely fail at their jobs and end up piggybacking on the story. Like you're doing in this thread.
Kasparov apparently continues to believe that his expertise in chess transfers to other disciplines. This isn't an uncommon phenomenon, even for people with more serious qualifications in a not totally unrelated field. I also shouldn't forget Hollywood actors - their views on scientific matters and foreign policy carry a lot of weight because they're, ummmm, famous.
For the same reason I'm not rushing over to Amazon to snag Garry's books on how to succeed in the boardroom, I won't be spending any time trying to digest his musings on AI.
Many many people believe their expertise in one field transfers to other disciplines. Chess expertise is not unique. Even though I generally agree about this particular case, I am aware that I am not an expert on Kasparov or AI. I am also aware that Kasparov is an expert on Kasparov and has practical professional experience interacting with AI's...I mean IBM built AI's specifically tuned for him and Kasparov has had decades to reflect on that experience. He didn't just fall off the turnip truck in Artificial Intelligence land.
Neither Deep Blue nor the superior chess playing engines running on PC hardware that came afterwards used machine learning. They relied on basic heuristics as humans do to numerically evaluate a position (material, activity, etc.) with the advantage that they could evaluate many more possible move sequences than a human. They also had opening books to avoid losing games from the outset and endgame tablebases to identify forced wins/draws with a small number of pieces on the board. Only recently did Google come out with a chess playing program that is actually ML-based, and it beat the top rated 'traditional' chess engine.
My point being, despite chess being considered a game that requires deep thinking, the use of actual AI in chess is very very new. As far as I'm aware, Kasparov had nothing to do with it let alone a deep understanding of it. He wasn't even involved in the earlier development of computer chess playing programs as they rose to the grandmaster level and eventually beyond his own level (super grandmaster). He along with many others had confidently predicted that machines would never beat humans in chess. So yes, I'm quite reluctant to believe that he has any kind of vision on this topic.
> expertise in chess transfers to other disciplines
Some scientists think understanding quantum theories make them sudden experts in economics. I am always amazed at the arrogance displayed where humility should be the norm.
I see this phenomenon on HN and Reddit quite a bit. Some expert will publish a paper and there is inevitably a comment of the form, “The conclusion could be a result of...therefore the paper is trash.” People act as though their initial ruminations on a topic qualify them to properly critique an expert's research.
I try to keep in mind that if I could think of a possible objection or insight with a few minutes of thought then the expert is surely aware of this too. I think it’s common for someone who has acquired expertise on one area to think their insights apply to other unrelated areas. For instance Paul Graham has famously bashed philosophers but he certain doesn’t know what he is talking about.
Setting aside formal debates among politicians, if you want to talk about why discussion of contentious topics by average Joes and Janes has degenerated into its current state of pointless shouting matches, I feel like it has less to do with Fox News, conspiracy theories, fake news, Russian meddling or whatever else is regularly associated with the alt-right. In the run-up to the election and the months following it, a large faction on the left has abandoned any pretense of discussing ideas and policies or of having civilized debate, preferring instead to become very aggressive with insults, wild accusations of racism, white supremacy, misogyny, etc., in order to demonize their opposition. You see it all the time on this forum and others. It's lazy and harmful, and it's being used as a tool to avoid any self-reflection.
I agree with one caveat- I think it's preposterous to say that the left is responsible for this- both sides participated in this nonsense and it's obvious that that is the case.
And, I think you have to take the context in which Donald Trump rose to power into account- to many (myself included) it's also preposterous that someone with a track record of failure, bankruptcy, and lack of experience could come to head our administrative branch...it's hard to have a conversation when the very idea of his election is so absurd, for better or for worse.
Another edit! I think it's misleading for you to present Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, et al. as things associated with the Alt-Right. These are very much poor sources of information and are very much so digested by a huge swath of conservative Americans.
Staying silent isn't an endorsement of the status quo. Similarly, we shouldn't have any expectation that company X or Hollywood celebrity Y owes it to us to denounce whatever the twitterverse currently finds distasteful. Entitled people on social media love the fact that they can bait companies into every political squabble nowadays.
> Staying silent isn't an endorsement of the status quo.
Yes, acceptance of the status quo without active opposition is endorsement of the status quo as good enough.
It may be “good enough” because you actually approve or “good enough” because it's too far down your list of priorities to do anything about right now or “good enough” because you can't even be bothered to care what's going on, among other options, but it all effectively amounts to the same thing in practical terms, however different they might be in terms of your internal feelings.
>If you stay silent, supporters of the status quo can simply say “see? people are happy with it; if they weren’t more would complain”.
And their fallacious reasoning should be laughed at. Loudly and often.
The alternate is even MORE conductive to enforcing the status quo. When people have to be maximally political all the time, they either have to constantly deal with the blowback inherent to sharing ideas that aren't palatable to the status quo, or outwardly agree with the status quo (for convenience and/or safety).
If everyone voices an opinion (but not necessarily THEIR opinion), supporter of the status quo can simply say "see? people are happy with it; if they weren't more people would be dissenting"
Supporters of the status quo can say whatever they want; that doesn't make it true. The absence of complaints does not imply that people are "happy" with the situation, and silence is not an endorsement of anything. Anyone who claims otherwise should take some time to learn about basic logical fallacies.
Dropbox following the tried and true path of taking credit for tangentially "enabling" the contributions of others. Kind of reminiscent of Apple's statements about the massive impact of their company on the economy and job creation in other industries.
Heck, as long as the bar is this low, Microsoft could write a similar sounding PR statement to put some lipstick on their file system patent trolling -
"At Microsoft, we have an unwavering commitment to the fight against poverty. Our storage technology has been crucial to the success of the one laptop per child program."
Were you deliberately leaving out the 4th possibility of Google concluding 'You know what? It is actually wrong to prioritize certain races and genders as a matter of hiring policy, and since it clearly isn't keeping us out of trouble on the public relations front, let's not do it anymore.'
