Honestly, I think that's how life always is (this is the inner artist in me speaking).
You can have all this data on the outside, and it still speaks nothing of the person on the inside.
Companies can have every detail of your life parameterized and quantified, but people can always choose (i.e. get woke) to intentionally conform or to defy norms. Intentionally feed data that looks patterned, and then switch it up in a way that makes people scratch their heads and go 'huh'.
You can walk around with your phone in your pocket and have that awareness, e.g. "I am purposefully taking this route on my walk to work while listening to this music on repeat for 30 days" because you know people are going to draw some correlation.
You do 'know' things about those entities, namely, their brains are hooked on a drug called machine learning. That doesn't void you of your privacy.
>but people can always choose (i.e. get woke) to intentionally conform or to defy norms. Intentionally feed data
And future algorithms will detect it. Not enough of the population will do it. At best you'll be classified as a deviant and you might have difficulty getting apartments or loans. At worst, well, maybe the first with their back against the wall when the corporate takeover comes.
I'm OP, not your parent commenter, but I do understand the perspective.
This is something that is actually occurring, there really is a psychological war going between how much information black box entities have about entities they provide a 'service' for, in how it impacts the experience of living life, the fact that most people have no choice but be connected to the internet (the subject of the linked article).
It's a psychological war in that it's an inverted microcosm of the history of discrimination. Instead of just judging people based on some generalized set of superficial details like appearance or a quantitative metric of intelligence, a GPA, resume, etc - a lot of organizations are refining it down to the most seemingly insignificant and 'supposed' trivial details.
Which is missing the forest for the trees, even though it may be profitable in the short term. The US has a president that fancies himself a dictator and looks up to / highly respects people like Kim Jong-un and Uncle Xi. It's the cultural and political climate so it's clear there are real reality reasons to show cause for concern. All this stuff influences what people think is acceptable and where to draw the line. It's all background noise information that propagates into models of interpersonal boundaries - what people are willing to tolerate and what they will cry out against. Learned social behavior, etc.
It supports fear culture and that is another tool people can use to manipulate and control others. Regardless of whether it actually works, this stuff is the mentality of some people in power. So when I read comments like the parent that replied to my original comment (I'm OP), the point is - guide them out of the conspiracy but understand where it's coming from by describing why it is true while not necessarily being true.
Fear culture controls. People who want to control others for any purpose aside from improving the well-being and respecting the autonomy of others are aware of this. There are plenty of existing technologies (look back to the development of advertisements) that exist purely to manipulate emotional state in order to direct behavior, and I have no doubt there are some folks out there looking to refine it down to a precision science.
The real front lines come down to, how far will they push it before people 'snap' (and you can see that happening with the US president, because honestly, every intent a 'self' attempts to have on others comes back to affect the individual 'self'). I think that explains his ludicrous behavior in a way that has empathy, because you can tell, all that garbage he has done to others continuously affects his perception on how he sees those around him. The man can't trust anyone except for dictators lately.
I don't think there's going to be any kind of corporate takeover aside from corporate rebellion, possibly. Creating a tight association between the government, the media, and corporate interests is too last century. There are some interests that seem to be going in that direction, but it's clearly not all of them.
You said, “People who want to control others for any purpose aside from improving the well-being and respecting the autonomy of others are aware of this.“
But this is precisely the most nefarious type of control. Nothing is more insidious than the conviction that you are controlling others for their own benefit.
When I say that, I mean 'well-being and autonomy' implies listening to people, giving them space and time to find their own self, offering guidance if they request it, affirming they have choice, offering help if they are confused, and sometimes even being confused with them. It's no different from being a parent, a teacher, or a therapist.
It doesn't have to be seen as nefarious if it isn't.
I'm not going to sacrifice my sanity and overall wellbeing for the purposes of the state. I don't live in China, I am not going to act like I have to protect myself like I live in China.
Future algorithms won't detect it. The future population will do it without realizing that's what they are doing. That's what generational rebellion is all about.
P.S. I'm already a deviant, and I'm fairly well accepted in my community that values diversity over discrimination, offers me everything I need to sustain myself independently, plan for retirement, etc. I managed to get all that, while being a deviant.
It's counterproductive to worry about. I do my work, get the job done, I do a good job, end of story. Why overload the brain with fears when I have to use so much of it to reason correctly and create good code? Does that make me more predictable, more easily controllable, more financially viable, or less? Those are questions people who want to control other people can ask themselves.
" but people can always choose (i.e. get woke) to intentionally conform or to defy norm"
You can play some little games but you won't be able to choose to not get rejected by different services based on that data. Just look at what happens to people on no-fly lists or who deal with identity theft. Easy to get onto and hard to get off. The more data these entities have and the more they can hide behind algorithms the more they can make your life miserable and you will have no idea where your problems are coming from.
> The more data these entities have and the more they can hide behind algorithms the more they can make your life miserable and you will have no idea where your problems are coming from.
I'm sure I sound overconfident but honestly, been there, done that. Having been suicidal for approximately half my life has transitioned into meaning, have no attachment to anything. Appreciate what exists while it's there, but don't be attached to it, don't depend on it for survival. Goods, services, liberties, freedom of expression, places, people.
Life has been miserable enough for me while potentially having everything I could potentially get rejected from. If someone wants to make my life miserable, I pity them.
Edit: I would not categorize identity theft under the same label as being put on a no-fly list. Identity theft can indirectly lead to being put on a no-fly list. Being put on a no-fly list should not lead to identity theft (assuming the entities that hold this information are as secure as they present themselves to be, given their stated purpose for their existence).
From a data analysis perspective, that's a correlation to construct that could actually help people deal with the issues of too much data correlation being used to form expectations of behavior (like getting on and off lists that prevent essential liberties and rights from being exercised fairly).
You can have all this data on the outside, and it still speaks nothing of the person on the inside.
Companies can have every detail of your life parameterized and quantified, but people can always choose (i.e. get woke) to intentionally conform or to defy norms. Intentionally feed data that looks patterned, and then switch it up in a way that makes people scratch their heads and go 'huh'.
You can walk around with your phone in your pocket and have that awareness, e.g. "I am purposefully taking this route on my walk to work while listening to this music on repeat for 30 days" because you know people are going to draw some correlation.
You do 'know' things about those entities, namely, their brains are hooked on a drug called machine learning. That doesn't void you of your privacy.