From cyber relationships, S&M culture and child abuse to biohacking, content moderation and nootropics, Dark Net finally puts into moving pictures what blogs have been typing up a storm about for the past few years.
At first glance the show seems like your run-of-the-mill cyber culture documentary, but the topics being explored are of a much more taboo persuasion — and it’s not just the underground pedophile networks accessed via Tor we’re talking about.
While Dark Net covers a lot of ground in technology subculture, it also serves as a bit of a transhumanist playground, discussing cutting edge and controversial topics such as RFID chip implants and other biohacks, nootropics, artificial intelligence girlfriends, and more. The main topic, however, seems to be the nature of human relationships being altered, augmented, and even hindered by technology, and it’s not difficult to understand why.
Through the internet, the impact of technology on our lives is both unprecedented and undeniable. Exploring subcultures and trends such as sadomasochism, porn addiction, and even internet addiction, Dark Net attempts to bring to light some otherwise undisclosed topics the most people refuse to talk about openly.
Dark Net is on Showtime, Thursday nights.
Max Klaassen
Public enema xenomorphic robot from the dimension Zrgauddon.
Throw on some pajamas, kick back, and relax, because in a few dozen years, humans won’t need to work at all. Although a bit premature, this advice might just become a reality, suggests Aladdin Knowledge Systems Inc. founder, Yanki Margalit. In a presentation Margalit recently gave at LOGIN Startup Fair 2015 – organized by Enterprise Lithuania… Continue reading →
the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.
People tend to trust their own intuition. Has there been much formal study about the veracity of intuition?
Brain science itself is a young field, and the terminology has yet to mature into a solid academic lexicon. To further increase your chances of being confused, modern life is rife with distractions, misinformation, and addictive escapisms, leaving the vast majority of society having no real idea what the hell is happening.
To illustrate my point, I’m going to do something kind of recursive. I am going to document my mind being changed about a deeply held belief as I explore my own cognitive bias. I am not here to tell you what’s REALLY going on or change your mind about your deeply held beliefs. This is just about methods of problem solving and how cognitive bias can become a positive aspect of critical thought.
Image: “Soft Bike” sculptiure by Mashanda Lazarus http://www.ilovemashanda.com/
I’m advocating what I think is the best set of decision making skills, Critical Thought. The National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking defines critical thinking as the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. (I’m torn between the terms Critical Thinking and Critical Thought, although my complaint is purely aesthetic.)
Ever since taking an introduction to Logic course at Fitchburg State college I have been convinced that Logic is a much more reliable, proven way to make decisions. Putting logic to practice when decision-making is difficult, though. Just like a math problem can be done incorrectly, Some logic can even counter-intuitive. My favorite example of intuition failing over logic is always chess. Even as I write this I can’t convince myself otherwise: I have regretted every intuitive chess move. It’s statistically impossible that all my intuitive moves have been bad moves yet logic works in the game so much better that my mind has overcompensated in favor of logic. In the microcosm of chess rules, logic really is the better decision-making tool. Often the kernel of a good move jumps out at me as intuition but then must still be thoroughly vetted with logic before I can confidently say it’s a good move.
In high school, I was an underachiever. I could pass computer science and physics classes without cracking a book. My same attempt to coast through math classes left me struggling because I could not intuitively grasp the increasingly abstract concepts. The part of my mind that controls logic was very healthy and functioning but my distrust for my own intuition was a handicap. I would be taking make up mathematics courses in the summer but getting debate team trophies during the school year.
I’m not just reminiscing; everyone’s decision making process is an constantly-updating algorithm of intuitive and logical reasoning. No one’s process is exactly the same but we all want to make the best decisions possible. For me it’s easy to rely on logic and ignore even a nagging sense of intuition. Some people trust intuition strongly yet struggle to find the most logical decision; everyone is most comfortable using a specially-tailored degree of intuition and logic. People argue on behalf of their particular decisions and the methodology behind them because a different method is useful in for each paradigm.
In chess, intuition is necessary but should be used sparingly and tempered with logic. It’s my favorite example because the game can be played without any intuition. Non-AI computers are able to beat the average human at chess. Some AI can beat chess masters. So, I’m biased towards logic. Chess is just a game, though. People are always telling me I should have more faith in intuitive thinking.
“But,” you should be asking, “Isn’t there an example of reliance on intuition as the best way to decide how to proceed?”
At least that’s what I have to ask myself. The best example I found of valuable intuition is the ability to ride a bike. It is almost impossible to learn to ride a bike in one session; it takes several tries over a week or longer to create the neural pathways needed to operate this bio-mechanical device. Samurais trained to feel that their weapon was part of themselves, or an extension of their very arm. The mechanical motion of the human body as it drives a bicycle becomes ingrained, literally, in the physical brain. The casual, ubiquitous expression, “It’s like riding a bike”, is used to idiomatically describe anything that can be easily mastered at an intermediate level, forgotten for years, but recalled at near perfect fidelity when encountered once again.
The Backwards Brain Bicycle – Smarter Every Day episode 133
Destin at Smarter Everyday put together a video that shows the duality of intuitive thinking. It is completely possible to train the human mind with complicated algorithms of decision making that can be embrace diversification and even contradictory modes of thinking.
Cont. below…
After watching this video, I embraced a moment of doubt and realized that there are very positive and useful aspects to intuition that I often don’t acknowledge. In this case of reversed bicycle steering, a skill that seems to only work after it has been made intuitive can be “lost” and only regained with a somewhat cumbersome level of concentration.
The video demonstrates the undeniable usefulness of what essentially amounts to anecdotal proof that neural pathways can be hacked, that contradictory new skills can be learned. It also shows that a paradigm of behavior can gain a tenacious hold on the mind via intuitive skill. It casts doubt on intuition in one respect but without at least some reliance on this intuitive paradigm of behavior it seems we wouldn’t be able to ride a bike at all.
This video forced me to both acknowledge the usefulness of ingrained, intuitive behaviors while also reminding me of how strong a hold intuition can have over the mind. Paradigms can be temporarily or perhaps permanently lost. In the video, Destin has trouble switching back and forth between the 2 seemingly over-engaging thought systems but the transition itself can be a part of a more complicated thought algorithm, allowing the mind to master and embrace contradictory paradigms by trusting the integrity of the overall algorithm.
Including Confirmation Bias in a greater algorithm.
These paradigms can be turned on and off and just as a worker might be able to get used to driving an automatic transmission car to work and operating a stick shift truck at the job site and drive home in the automatic again after the shift.
This ability to turn on and off intuitive paradigms as a controlled feature of a greater logical algorithm requires the mind to acknowledge confirmation bias. I get a feeling of smug satisfaction that logic comprises the greater framework of a possible decision making process anytime I see evidence supporting that belief. There are just as many people out there who would view intuition as the the framework of a complex decision making process, with the ability to use or not use logical thought as merely a contributing part of a superior thought process. If my personal bias of logic over intuition is erroneous in some situations, can I trust the mode of thinking I am in? Using myself as an example, my relief at realizing data confirms what I have already accepted as true is powerful.
That feeling of relief must always be noted and kept in check before it can overshadow the ability to acknowledge data that opposes the belief. Understanding confirmation bias is the key to adding that next level to the algorithm, in the video example from Smarter Everyday, steering a normal bike is so ingrained in the neural pathway that the backwards steering’s inability to confirm actually fill in the blank and the mind sends an incorrect set of instruction of the mechanical behavior to the body. Understanding the dynamics of confirmation bias would enable the mind to embrace the greater thought system that would enable the mind to go back and forth between those conflicting behavioral paradigms. I’m positing that it should be possible to master a regular bike and the “backwards bike” and be able to switch back and forth between both bikes in quick succession. The neural pathways between both behavior paradigms can be trained and made stronger than the video shows.
I believe that with practice, someone could alternate steering mechanism quickly and without as much awkwardness as we are seeing in the video just as my initial confirmation bias, now identified, doesn’t have to dictate my decision and I might be more open minded to an intuitive interpretation leading to the best decision in certain situations.
An inability to acknowledge that one’s own mind might be susceptible to confirmation bias paradoxically makes one more susceptible. Critical thinking is a method of building immunity to this common trap of confidence. Identifying the experience of one’s own confirmation bias is a great way to try and understand and control this intuitive tendency. No matter what your thoughts are regarding logic and intuition, examining one’s confirmation biases and better embracing them should lead to better decision making skills.
Jonathan Howard
Jonathan is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, NY
SACRAMENTO, Calif., April 15, 2015 /PRNewswire-iReach/ — The robot revolution has already started according to Steve Favis owner of Favis, INC, a Sacramento area software developer. Steve Favis and his team just finished the NASA Sponsored Space Apps Challenge which is a 48 hour hack-a-thon. Hack-a-thons are competitions to create something that solves a problem within… Continue reading →
Google Inc. announced this month that it had developed the most accurate facial-recognition technology to date called FaceNet, which the company said trumped Facebook Inc.’s rival software called DeepFace by almost three percentage points in a test of accuracy. That was a tough truth for Facebook to swallow, because both companies have invested heavily in artificial-intelligence… Continue reading →
We need a different kind of Artificial Intelligence, with social reasoning, says Justine Cassell from Carnegie Mellon University. She says studying people’s social interactions, goals and desires can help us build better robots.
In the first scenario, a man and a woman sit across from each other at a romantically lit table in a fancy restaurant texting – looking down and talking to others, maybe each other – but rarely glancing up except to place drink and food orders.
In the second, a mother walks into a diner joining friends for lunch, carrying her 2-year-old. She sets him down at the table, hands him a tablet device, takes out her smartphone, searches messages, and half listens for only occasional moments of adult conversation squeezed in between swooshes across their collective screens.
What ties them together? The distance between them. Both scenarios reflect a new phenomenon of the digital age growing ever more rapidly. It’s called “virtual distance.”
Changing the rules of interaction
Virtual distance is a psychological and emotional sense of detachment that accumulates little by little, at the sub-conscious or unconscious level, as people trade-off time interacting with each other for time spent “screen skating” (swiping, swishing, pinching, tapping, and so on).
It is also a measurable phenomenon and can cause some surprising effects. For example, when virtual distance is relatively high, people become distrustful of one another. One result: they keep their ideas to themselves instead of sharing them with others in the workplace – a critical exchange that’s necessary for taking risks needed for innovation, collaboration and learning.
Another unintended consequence: people disengage from helping behaviors – leaving others to fend for themselves causing them to feel isolated, often leading to low job satisfaction and organizational commitment.
Virtual distance research underscores that the rules of interaction have changed. It changes the way people feel – about each other, about themselves, and about how they fit into the world around them.
But the demonstrated impacts measured among adults seem comparatively benign when considered against what it might be doing to children.
Kids learn by looking at loved ones closely, watching what they do and listening to how they say things. The actions and behaviors parents model have a profound and lasting impact upon a child’s development. For example, the “serve and return” of interactions between children and adults is a key factor in child cognitive development.
If much of what the child notices about the world comes from a small screen where only a shallow representation is available, what do children have to mimic? How much practice do they get developing human capacities crucial to establishing emotional ease and social sensibilities?
Virtual distance is a game-changer when it comes to human relations. When technology is used as an agent for relationships, in some cases it can be beneficial. However when technology is used purposelessly as a default it doesn’t just squeeze out sophisticated interpersonal interactions, it changes the nature of what’s left.
Purposeful use of technology can support children’s learning but when technology becomes either a substitute or a proxy for relationships, language development in children can be held back. Communication becomes the transfer of impersonal information instead of the sharing of a passion. This can have an impact on language development for kids, but it can have affects on other aspects of our lives.
Taking a risk and having a go at that tricky math problem seems more difficult when a child is on their own than when with a friend. More so sticking with a difficult task (a real gym-buddy is more effective than an app).
These kinds of skills – self discipline, ethical understanding and interpersonal communication, as well as social ability, and critical thinking (among others) – are what UNESCO calls “transversal competencies.” And they can be impaired through virtual distance.
When the ripple effects of actions and inactions seem to go no further than the screen, empathy and collaborative skills can be difficult to develop. For example, children seem to have trouble looking into other people’s eyes and are less able to hold conversations.
As connectivity increases, connectedness can lose out.
Screens are everywhere, but we don’t need to let them get in the way
If two adults spend the night texting over dinner they are likely to feel emotionally disconnected. However, they can get over it because older people have the ability to look at themselves from afar and make changes to improve their lives.
They can reflect on their night out and come to realize that virtual distance got in the way of what they really wanted, what they really needed – to hold the other’s hand instead of touching the lifeless screen.
This kind of self-awareness and understanding about how we think and learn is called metacognitive insight. It allows the adults in this example to choose to change their behavior. They can intentionally turn their attention toward reviewing the situation. Most adults today grew up in an era before digital technology was as ubiquitous as it is now. They may have an instinctive understanding of what virtual distance is, even if they don’t have a term for it. And they have the experience to know that interactions can be different.
Kids, on the other hand, have less experience with the world. And many children in technologically advanced societies have grown up with smartphones, tablets and other forms of digital technology within arms reach. If they grow up with virtual distance as the norm, they might not know that interactions can be different, or how.
Knowing that virtual distance can affect their small ones in profound ways, grown-ups can stop and consider which path to choose. Educators can also act intentionally. They can create curriculum to “teach back” some of what we know kids need to learn but may miss as they mature in the digital age.
Virtual distance is simply a new facet of life that has to be deliberately folded into the way people live their lives and raise their kids. It’s not good. It’s not bad. It just is – much like the technologies that sparked its inception.
Smart Cities and Artificial Intelligence – The Global Transformation has Begun LONDON, March 12, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — Transforming our cities into the Smart Cities of the future will encompass incorporating technologies and key digital developments all linked by machine-to-machine (M2M) solutions and real-time data analytics which sit under the umbrella term of the Internet of Things.… Continue reading →
The funeral scene played like something out of science fiction. The bodies, once new and clean and unmarked by the passage of time, were laid out on the temple altar, adorned with tags denoting their family lineage. A Buddhist priest prayed over the bodies as loved ones looked on. The dead weren’t children or relatives, but… Continue reading →
