Breaking out of the internet filter bubble

Eli Pariser is the former executive director of the liberal activism site, MoveOn.org and co-founder of the international political site Avaaz.org. His new book, The Filter Bubble, examines how web personalization is influencing the content we see online. New Scientist caught up with him to talk about the filters he says are shaping our view of the world, and hear why he thinks it's so important to break out of the bubble.

What is the "filter bubble"?
Increasingly we don't all see the same internet. We see stories and ideas and facts that make it through a membrane of personalised algorithms that surround us on Google, Facebook, Yahoo and many other sites. The filter bubble is the personal unique universe of information that results and that we increasingly live in online.

You stumbled upon the filter bubble when you noticed Facebook friends with differing political views were being phased out of your feed, and people were getting very different results for the same search in Google. What made you think all of this was dangerous, or at least harmful?
I take these Facebook dynamics pretty seriously simply because it's a medium that one in 11 people now use. If at a mass level, people don't hear about ideas that are challenging or only hear about ideas that are likeable - as in, you can easily click the "like" button on them - that has fairly significant consequences. I also still have a foot in the social change campaigning world, and I've seen that a campaign about a woman being stoned to death in Iran doesn't get as many likes as a campaign about something more fuzzy and warm.

Do you think part of the problem is that Facebook is still largely used for entertainment?
It's definitely growing very rapidly as a news source. There was a PEW study that said 30 per cent of people under 30 use social media as a news source. I would be surprised if in 15 years surfing news looks like seeking out a bunch of different particular news agencies and seeing what's on their front page.

We have long relied on content filters - in the form publications or TV channels we choose. How is the filter bubble different?
First, yes we've always used filters of some sort, but in this case we don't know we are. We think of the internet as this place where we directly connect with information, but in fact there are these intermediaries, Facebook and Google, that are in the middle in just the same way that editors were in 20th century society. This is invisible; we don't even see or acknowledge that a lot of the time there is filtering at work.
The second issue is that it's passive. We're not choosing a particular editorial viewpoint, and because we're not choosing it, we don't have a sense of on what basis information is being sorted. It's hard to know what's being edited out.
And the final point is that it's a unique universe. It's not like reading a magazine where readers are seeing the same set of articles. Your information environment could differ dramatically from your friends and neighbours and colleagues.

You have suggested that the filter bubble deepens the disconnect between our aspirational selves, who put Citizen Kane high on the movie rental queue, and our actual selves, who really just want to watch The Hangover for the fifth time. Is there a danger inherent in that?
The industry lingo for this is explicit versus revealed preferences. Revealed preferences are what your behaviour suggests you want, and explicit preferences are what you're saying you want. Revealed preferences are in vogue as a way of making decisions for people because now we have the data to do that - to say, you only watched five minutes of Citizen Kane and then turned it off for something else.
But when you take away the possibility of making explicit choices, you're really taking away an enormous amount of control. I choose to do things in my long-term interest even when my short-term behaviour would suggest that it's not what I want to do all the time. I think there's danger in pandering to the short-term self.

What you're promoting has been characterized as a form of "algorithmic paternalism" whereby the algorithm decides what's best for us.
What Facebook does when it selects "like" versus "important" or "recommend" as the name of its button is paternalistic, in the sense that it's making a choice about what kinds of information gets to people on Facebook. It's a very self-serving choice for Facebook, because a medium that only shows you things that people like is a pretty good idea for selling advertising. These systems make value judgments and I think we need to hold them to good values as opposed to merely commercial ones. But, that's not to say that you could take values out of the equation entirely.

Your background is in liberal activism. Do you think the reaction to your ideas as algorithmic paternalism has to do with a perception that you're trying to promote your own political views?
If people think that, they misread me. I'm not suggesting we should go back to a moment where editors impose their values on people whether they want it or not. I'm just saying we can do a better job of drawing information from society at large, if we want to. If Facebook did have an "important" button alongside the "like" button, I have real faith that we would start to promote things that had more social relevance. It's all about how you construct the medium. That's not saying that my ideas of what is important would always trump, it's just that someone's ideas of what is important would rather than nobody's.

You've repeatedly made the case for an "important" button on Facebook, or maybe, as you've put it, an "it was a hard slog at first but in the end it changed my life" button. Do you think really what you're asking Facebook to do is grow up?
Yeah. In its most grandiose rhetoric Facebook wants to be a utility, and if it's a utility, it starts to have more social responsibility. I think Facebook is making this transition, in that it's moved extraordinarily quickly from a feisty insurgent that was cute, fun and new, to being central to lots of people's lives. The generous view is that they're just catching up with the amount of responsibility they've all of a sudden taken on.

Your argument has been called "alarmist", and as I'm sure you're aware, a piece in Slate recently suggested that you're giving these algorithms too much credit. What's your response to such criticism?
There are two things. One is that I'm trying to describe a trend, and I'm trying to make the case that it will continue unless we avert it. I'm not suggesting that it's checkmate already.
Second, there was some great research published in a peer-reviewed internet journal just recently which points out that the effects of personalisation on Google are quite significant: 64 per cent of results are different either in rank or simply different between the users that they tested. That's not a small difference. In fact, in some ways all the results below the first three are mostly irrelevant because people mostly click on the first three results. As Marissa Mayer talked about in an interview, Google actually used to not personalise the first results for precisely this reason. Then, when I called them again, they said, actually we're doing that now. I think that it's moving faster than many people realise.

You offer tips for bursting the filter bubble - deleting cookies, clearing browser history, etc. - but, more broadly, what kind of awareness are you hoping to promote?
I just want people to know that the more you understand how these tools are actually working the more you can use them rather than having them use you.
The other objective here is to highlight the value of the personal data that we're all giving to these companies and to call for more transparency and control when it comes to that data. We're building a whole economy that is premised on the notion that these services are free, but they're really not free. They convert directly into money for these companies, and that should be much more transparent.

Source  New Scientist

A field guide to bullshit.

How do people defend their beliefs in bizarre conspiracy theories or the power of crystals? Philosopher Stephen Law has tips for spotting their strategies.

You describe your new book, Believing Bullshit, as a guide to avoid getting sucked into "intellectual black holes". What are they?
Intellectual black holes are belief systems that draw people in and hold them captive so they become willing slaves of claptrap. Belief in homeopathy, psychic powers, alien abductions - these are examples of intellectual black holes. As you approach them, you need to be on your guard because if you get sucked in, it can be extremely difficult to think your way clear again.

But isn't one person's claptrap another's truth?
There's a belief system about water to which we all sign up: it freezes at 0 °C and boils at 100 °C. We are powerfully wedded to this but that doesn't make it an intellectual black hole. That's because these beliefs are genuinely reasonable. Beliefs at the core of intellectual black holes, however, aren't reasonable. They merely appear so to those trapped inside.

You identify some strategies people use to defend black hole beliefs. Tell me about one of them - "playing the mystery card"?
This involves appealing to mystery to get out of intellectual hot water when someone is, say, propounding paranormal beliefs. They might say something like: "Ah, but this is beyond the ability of science and reason to decide. You, Mr Clever Dick Scientist, are guilty of scientism, of assuming science can answer every question." This is often followed by that quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy". When you hear that, alarm bells should go off.

But even scientists admit that they can't explain everything.
There probably are questions that science cannot answer. But what some people do to protect their beliefs is to draw a veil across reality and say, "you scientists can go up to the veil and apply your empirical methods this far, but no further". Behind the veil they will put angels, aliens, psychic powers, God, ghosts and so on. Then they insist that there are special people who can see - if only dimly - through this veil. But the fact is that many of the claims made about things behind this veil have empirically observable consequences and that makes them scientifically testable.

How can science test these mysteries?
Psychologist Christopher French at Goldsmiths, University of London, ran an experiment into the effects of crystals to explore claims that holding "real" crystals from a New Age shop while meditating has a powerful effect on the psyche, more so than just holding "fake" ones. But French found no difference in participants using real and fake crystals. This was good evidence that the effect people report is down to the power of suggestion, not the crystals.

Of course, this study provoked comments such as: "Not being able to prove the existence of something does not disprove its existence. Much is yet to be discovered." This is just a smokescreen. But because the mantra "it's-beyond-the-ability-of-science-to-establish..." gets repeated so often, it is effective at lulling people back to sleep - even if they have been stung into entertaining a doubt for a moment or two.

Do you think mystery has a place in science?
Some things may be beyond our understanding, and sometimes it's reasonable to appeal to mystery. If you have excellent evidence that water boils at 100 °C, but on one occasion it appeared it didn't, it's reasonable to attribute that to some mysterious, unknown factor. It's also reasonable, when we have a theory that works but we don't know how it works, to say that this is currently a mystery. But the more we rely on mystery to get us out of intellectual trouble, or the more we use it as a carpet under which to sweep inconvenient facts, the more vulnerable we are to deceit, by others and by ourselves.

In your book you also talk about the "going nuclear" tactic. What is this?
When someone is cornered in an argument, they may decide to get sceptical about reason. They might say: "Ah, but reason is just another faith position." I call this "going nuclear" because it lays waste to every position. It brings every belief - that milk can make you fly or that George Bush was Elvis Presley in disguise - down to the same level so they all appear equally "reasonable" or "unreasonable". Of course, you can be sure that the moment this person has left the room, they will continue to use reason to support their case if they can, and will even trust their life to reason: trusting that the brakes on their car will work or that a particular drug is going to cure them.

Isn't there a grain of truth in this approach?
There is a classic philosophical puzzle about how to justify reason: to do so, it seems you have to use reason. So the justification is circular - a bit like trusting a second-hand car salesman because he says he's trustworthy. But the person who "goes nuclear" isn't genuinely sceptical about reason. They are just raising a philosophical problem as a smokescreen, to give them time to leave with their head held high, saying: "So my belief is as reasonable as yours." That's intellectually dishonest.

You say we should also be aware of the "but it fits" strategy. Why?
Any theory, no matter how ludicrous, can be squared with the evidence, given enough ingenuity. Every last anomaly can be explained away. There is a popular myth about science that if you can make your theory consistent with the evidence, then that shows it is confirmed by that evidence - as confirmed as any other theory. Lots of dodgy belief systems exploit this myth. Young Earth creationism - the view that the whole universe is less than 10,000 years old - is a good example. Given enough shoehorning and reinterpretation, you can make whatever turns up "fit" what the Bible says.

What about when people claim that they "just know" something is right?
Suppose I look out the window and say: "Hey, there's Ted." You say: "It can't be Ted because he's on holiday." I reply: "Look, I just know it's Ted." Here it might be reasonable for you to take my word for it.

But "I just know" also gets used when I present someone with good evidence that there are, say, no auras, angels or flying saucers, and they respond: "Look, I just know there are." In such cases, claiming to "just know" is usually very unreasonable indeed.

What else should we watch out for?
You should be suspicious when people pile up anecdotes in favour of their pet theory, or when they practise the art of pseudo-profundity - uttering seemingly profound statements which are in fact trite or nonsensical. They often mix in references to scientific theory to sound authoritative.

Why does it matter if we believe absurd things?
It can cause no great harm. But the dangers are obvious when people join extreme cults or use alternative medicines to treat serious diseases. I am particularly concerned by psychological manipulation. For charlatans, the difficulty with using reason to persuade is that it's a double-edged sword: your opponent may show you are the one who is mistaken. That's a risk many so-called "educators" aren't prepared to take. If you try using reason to persuade adults the Earth's core is made of cheese, you will struggle. But take a group of kids, apply isolation, control, repetition, emotional manipulation - the tools of brainwashing - and there's a good chance many will eventually accept what you say.

Profile

Stephen Law is senior lecturer in philosophy at Heythrop College, University of London, and editor of the Royal Institute of Philosophy journal, Think. His latest book is Believing Bullshit: How not to get sucked into an intellectual black hole.

Source New Scientist

Why the universe wasn't fine-tuned for life

IF THE force of gravity were a few per cent weaker, it would not squeeze and heat the centre of the sun enough to ignite the nuclear reactions that generate the sunlight necessary for life on Earth. But if it were a few per cent stronger, the temperature of the solar core would have been boosted so much the sun would have burned out in less than a billion years - not enough time for the evolution of complex life like us.

In recent years many such examples of how the laws of physics have been "fine-tuned" for us to be here have been reported. Some religious people claim these "cosmic coincidences" are evidence of a grand design by a Supreme Being. In The Fallacy of Fine-tuning, physicist Victor Stenger makes a devastating demolition of such arguments.

A general mistake made in search of fine-tuning, he points out, is to vary just one physical parameter while keeping all the others constant. Yet a "theory of everything" - which alas we do not yet have - is bound to reveal intimate links between physical parameters. A change in one may be compensated by a change in another, says Stenger.

In addition to general mistakes, Stenger deals with specifics. For instance, British astronomer Fred Hoyle discovered that vital heavy elements can be built inside stars only because a carbon-12 nucleus can be made from the fusion of three helium nuclei. For the reaction to proceed, carbon-12 must have an energy level equal to the combined energy of the three helium nuclei, at the typical temperature inside a red giant. This has been touted as an example of fine-tuning. But, as Stenger points out, in 1989, astrophysicist Mario Livio showed that the carbon-12 energy level could actually have been significantly different and still resulted in a universe with the heavy elements needed for life.

The most striking example of fine-tuning appears to be the dark energy - or energy of the vacuum - that is speeding up the expansion of the universe. Calculations show it to be 10¹²⁰ bigger than quantum theory predicts. But Stenger stresses that this prediction is made in the absence of a quantum theory of gravity, when gravity is known to orchestrate the universe.
Even if some parameters turn out to be fine-tuned, Stenger argues this could be explained if ours is just one universe in a "multiverse" - an infinite number of universes, each with different physical parameters. We would then have ended up in the one where the laws of physics are fine-tuned to life because, well, how could we not have? (For a related philosophical discussion read this article.)

Religious people say that, by invoking a multiverse, physicists are going to extraordinary lengths to avoid God. But physicists have to go where the data lead them. And, currently, there are strong hints from string theory, the standard picture of cosmology and fine-tuning itself to suggest that the universe we can see with our biggest telescopes is only a small part of all that is there.

Source New Scientist

Michio Kaku - "Physics of the Future: How Science Will Change Daily Life by 2100"

The New York Times bestselling author of Physics of the Impossible gives us a stunning and provocative vision of the future. 
Rating  73.4%

 
Based on interviews with over three hundred of the world’s top scientists, who are already inventing the future in their labs, Kaku—in a lucid and engaging fashion—presents the revolutionary developments in medi­cine, computers, quantum physics, and space travel that will forever change our way of life and alter the course of civilization itself.
His astonishing revelations include:
•  The Internet will be in your contact lens. It will recog­nize people’s faces, display their biographies, and even translate their words into subtitles.
•  You will control computers and appliances via tiny sen­sors that pick up your brain scans. You will be able to rearrange the shape of objects.
•  Sensors in your clothing, bathroom, and appliances will monitor your vitals, and nanobots will scan your DNA and cells for signs of danger, allowing life expectancy to increase dramatically.
•  Radically new spaceships, using laser propulsion, may replace the expensive chemical rockets of today. You may be able to take an elevator hundreds of miles into space by simply pushing the “up” button.

Like Physics of the Impossible and Visions before it, Physics of the Future is an exhilarating, wondrous ride through the next one hundred years of breathtaking scientific revolution.
Courtesy of Good Reads 

From Publishers Weekly

Kaku (Physics of the Impossible), a professor of physics at the CUNY Graduate Center, gathers ideas from more than 300 experts, scientists, and researchers at the cutting edge of their fields, to offer a glimpse of what the next 100 years may bring. The predictions all conform to certain ground rules (e.g., "Prototypes of all technologies mentioned... already exist"), and some seem obvious (computer chips will continue to get faster and smaller). Others seem less far-fetched than they might have a decade ago: for instance, space tourism will be popular, especially once a permanent base is established on the moon. Other predictions may come true—downloading the Internet right into a pair of contact lenses—but whether they're desirable is another matter. Some of the predictions are familiar but still startling: robots will develop emotions by mid-century, and we will start merging mind and body with them. Despite the familiarity of many of the predictions to readers of popular science and science fiction, Kaku's book should capture the imagination of everyday readers.

From Booklis

Following in the footsteps of Leonardo da Vinci and Jules Verne, Kaku, author of a handful of books about science, looks into the not-so-distant future and envisions what the world will look like. It should be an exciting place, with driverless cars, Internet glasses, universal translators, robot surgeons, the resurrection of extinct life forms, designer children, space tourism, a manned mission to Mars, none of which turn out to be as science-fictiony as they sound. In fact, the most exciting thing about the book is the fact that most of the developments Kaku discusses can be directly extrapolated from existing technologies. Robot surgeons and driverless cars, for example, already exist in rudimentary forms. Kaku, a physics professor and one of the originators of the string field theory (an offshoot of the more general string theory), draws on current research to show how, in a very real sense, our future has already been written. The book is lively, user-friendly style should appeal equally to fans of science fiction and popular science. --David Pitt