~ Welcome to #thebalance 49 ~
Back at it this week, hope you didn’t miss me too much during my 2 week hiatus!
I am waaaay deep in the crypto metaverse as of late, spending most of my time these days nerding out on crypto food tokens and yield farming my way to profitable harvesting. Yes, this is 2020.
On the personal side, I also happen to have quite a bit going on - some bittersweet, but nevertheless exciting! I am all moved out of NYC (😔), headed to Portland this weekend for a best bud’s wedding (wish me luck 😶🌫), and pushing forward on a few side projects… stay tuned for updates in the coming weeks.
❤️ Likes, shares, and ‘my contacts’ adds are appreciated! It helps others discover what they have been missing out on while ensuring gmail doesn’t junk this thing either :)
⬇️ #thinkingthings, #followerthings, and #otherthings ⬇️
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🤔🤔 #thinkingthings
🟥 >>>> Fuck the Algorithm (…and applying machine learning to everything)
The below is a punchy post I came across by Bertrand Meyer who writes about the evolution of the algorithm (a process or set of rules to be followed by a computer) and its ever-increasing relationship with society at large. He uses a recent admissions process incident with students in the UK to demonstrate his points. A clever take.
My take: Have you ever used Amazon to shop online, Facebook to connect with friends, or Google to search something?
We all have used these platforms. And they continue to infiltrate every aspect of our lives - interacting with us on every level while learning just about everything about us… taking that data (reflecting ‘the collective consciousness’ of humanity some might say), turning it around, feeding it to their algorithms, and deploying ‘machine learning’ techniques to mine that data/ improve the decision making process. The algo-flywheel.
No doubt these sophisticated ‘if, then’ formulas have made our lives better. But there is a dark side.
Its time we start taking these algorithms (and, thus, our data) used by the for profit platforms more seriously… thinking about the growing relationship technology has with our freedoms and privacy… otherwise we just might end up getting ‘fucked by the algorithm’ just as those UK students below did. Read on…
What can you do to or with an algorithm? In other words, what is a good verb to substitute for the hyphen in "— the algorithm"?
You can learn an algorithm. Discovering classical algorithms is a large part of the Bildungsroman of a computer scientist. Sorting algorithms, graph algorithms, parsing algorithms, numerical algorithms, matrix algorithms, graphical algorithms...
You can teach an algorithm. Whether a professor or just a team leader, you explain to others why the obvious solution is not always the right one. As when I saw that someone had implemented the traversal part of a garbage collection scheme (the "mark" of mark-and-sweep) using a recursive algorithm. Recursion is a great tool, but not here: it needs a stack of unpredictable size, and garbage collection, which you trigger when you run out of space, is not precisely the moment to start wildly allocating memory. In comes the Deutsch-Schorr-Waite algorithm, which improbably (as if tightrope-walking) subverts the structure itself to find its way forth and back.
You can admire an algorithm. Many indeed are a source of wonder. The inner beauty of topological sort, Levensthein or AVL can leave no one indifferent.
You can improve an algorithm. At least you can try.
You can invent an algorithm. Small or large, ambitious or mundane, but not imagined yet by anyone. Devising a new algorithm is a sort of rite of passage in our profession. If it does prove elegant, useful and elegant, you'll get a real kick (trust me).
You can implement an algorithm. That is much of what we do in software engineering, even if as an OO guy I would immediately add "and the associated data structures".
Of late, algorithms have come to be associated with yet another verb; one that I would definitely not have envisioned when first learning about algorithms in Knuth (the book) and from Knuth (the man — who most certainly does not use foul language).
“You can fuck an algorithm.”
Thousands of British students marched recently to that slogan (see e.g. here). They were demonstrating against a formula (the Guardian gives the details) that decided on university admissions. The starting point for these events was a ministerial decision to select students not from their grades at exams ("A-level"), which could not take place because of Covid, but instead from their assessed performance in their schools. So far so good but the authorities decided to calibrate these results with parameters deduced from each school's past performance. Your grade is no longer your grade: if Jill and Joan both got a B, but Jill's school has been better at getting students into (say) Oxford in the past, then Jill's B is worth more than Joan's B.
The outcry was easy to predict, or should have been for a more savvy government. Students want to be judged by their own performance, not by the results of some other students they do not even know. Arguments that the sole concern was a legimitate one (an effort to compensate for possible grade inflation in some schools) ceased to be credible when it came out that on average the algorithm boosted grades from private schools by 4.7. No theoretical justification was going to be of much comfort anyway to the many students who had been admitted to the universities of their dreams on the basis of their raw grades, and after the adjustment found themselves rejected.
In the end, "Fuck the Algorithm!" worked. The government withdrew the whole scheme; it tried to lay the blame for the fiasco on the regulatory authority (Ofqual), fooling no one
These U.K. events of August 2020 will mark a turning point in the relationship between computer science and society. Not for the revelation that our technical choices have human consequences; that is old news, even if we often pretend to ignore it. Not for the use of Information Technology as an excuse; it is as old ("Sorry, the computer does not allow that!") as IT itself. What "Fuck the Algorithm!" highlights is the massive danger of the current rush to apply machine learning to everything.
As long as we are talking marketing campaigns ("customers who bought the product you just ordered also bought ...") or image recognition, the admiring mood remains appropriate. But now, increasingly, machine learning (usually presented as "Artificial Intelligence" to sound more impressive) gets applied to decisions affecting human lives. In the US, for example, machine-learning algorithms increasingly help judges make decisions, or make the decisions themselves. Following this slippery path is crazy and unethical. It is also dangerous, as the U.K. students' reaction indicates.
Machine learning does what the name indicates: it reproduces and generalizes the dominant behaviors of the past. The algorithms have no notion of right and wrong; they just learn. When they affect societal issues, the potential for societal disaster is everywhere.
Amid all the enthusiasm generated by the elegant techniques invented by machine-learning pioneers over the last two decades, one barely encounters any serious reservation. Codes of ethics (from ACM and others) have little to contribute.
We should be careful, though. Either we get our act together and define exacting controls on the use of machine learning for matters affecting people's fates, or we will see a massive rejection of algorithmic technology, the right parts along with the wrong ones.
The British students of the year 2020's weird summer will not be the last ones to tell us to fuck the algorithm.
🟥 >>>> INTERACTIVE Climate Charts (put together by Yale - recommend playing around with it a bit if you have a couple minutes, get educated ppl!)
Given my looming trip out west this weekend and the reckoning that nature is currently bringing to our nation’s western doorstep, I thought it appropriate to share a few optimistic charts on climate change (or at least humanity’s perception of it). Looks like the majority of Americans (we are the #2 carbon producer behind China) are FINALLY waking up.
Lets hope systemic change follows asap. Its pretty damn clear at this point that humanity cannot go on operating as is - in an industrial carbon powered economy, that is.
On another note, I suspect a big push for backing consumer products in the carbon tracking category over the next 12 months… net zero living is the future that needs to start now. The planet depends on it.
~75% of adults think that CO2 should be regulated as a pollutant
🟥 >>>> The Science of Tenet
I saw Christopher Nolan’s Tenet over the weekend and, MAN, was it a trip (incl the theater experience.. bearish on AMC to say the least). I applaud the effort. Lots of it went over my head. Its the kind of movie you need to see a few times to fully comprehend. Its worth seeing at least once - even if you come out more confused about the plot than going in 😂
Anyways, I was wondering about the science behind the film over the weekend and came across this article on my fellow newsletter friend, Devon Dolan, latest this week.
>As an aside, I recommend checking out Devon’s newsletter for extensive coverage of all things digital. Its one of my go-to’s each week for the latest happenings across the entertainment and the broader internet economy.<
Tidbits from the article - SPOILER ALERT (don’t say I didn’t warn you). Its all about entropy people.
John David Washington (Denzel’s son!!) stars as the Protagonist, a CIA agent who is recruited to a mysterious organization called Tenet. He learns that a war is being waged from the future, where technology has been invented that allows objects and people to "invert," reversing the flow of their entropy so that they travel backwards in time instead of forwards. Tenet was also created in the future, and its goal is to stop the antagonists from setting off a doomsday weapon that will wipe out both the past and the present.
Entropy is the measure of disorder. The more disordered particles are, the higher their entropy. Liquids have higher entropy than solids, and gases have higher entropy than liquids, and the universe is constantly becoming more chaotic over time. Mathematician James R. Newman called this "the general trend of the universe toward death and disorder," while physicist Arthur Eddington coined the rather poetic term "the arrow of time." Harland-Lang describes entropy as a "probability argument." The entropy of a closed system can only increase over time, never decrease.
In the production notes for Tenet, Nolan says that the movie is based around the idea "that if you could invert the flow of entropy for an object, you could reverse the flow of time for that object."
Tenet's central idea of people and objects having their time inverted is based on a theory by physicists Richard Feynman and John Wheeler.
Tenet wisely doesn't get too bogged down in explaining all of this. Instead it uses the idea of a time war and machines that allow people to reverse direction in time as an analogy for Feynman and Wheeler's model. This is particularly seen in the two versions of the Oslo Freeport fight scene, where the Protagonist fights a mysterious inverted man who is later revealed to be himself. In showing the fight scene twice, Tenet changes our understanding of what we're seeing. The first time around, the audience thinks that the Protagonist and the man he's fighting are two different people. The second time, we realize that we're seeing the same person in different states of being. This is what Feynman and Wheeler proposed: that what we perceive as a particle and an antiparticle could actually be the same particle moving both forwards and backwards in time.
📲🧑🏽🤝🧑🏻 #followerthings
Sam speaks the truth as always
^^ one of my most favorite things to do
goodbye for now, NYC
📚⏯️🎤 #otherthings
Burning Man is typically happening right about this time of year (last week, to be specific! I am a little late to the game here) and this year, given the current 2020 world we live in climate, they experimented with something different. A virtual Burning Man called the “Multiverse” happened. Pretty cool stuff. A glimpse at what our future might look like?
From the site, "Wherever you live and however you choose to burn, you’re invited to connect with the global Burning Man community for a worldwide, around-the-clock Burn Night extravaganza!”
Burning Man Project is collaborating with eight (count em’!) Recognized Universes of the Burning Man Universe — each a fully interactive Burning Man experience complete with irreverent theme camp events, deep playa DJ sets, monumental (albeit virtual) art installations, and of course random but oddly synchronous encounters with some very interesting humans.
Each Universe was created by an independent team of multi-talented folks who are committed to the 10 Principles. Some Universes are 2D, some are full-on VR, all are accessible via a smartphone or computer, and some can be experienced with a VR headset.
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Stay safe out there. Peace and love to all y’all.
Curiously,
-Block
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About me:
My friends call me Block. I am the Chief Strategy Officer at Alkemi.Network, a company focused on bridging digital finance for institutions. This newsletter is my passion project.
I am endlessly curious and blissfully dissatisfied. I love new ideas, obsessed with all things technology, and am always seeking to broaden my perspective while striving for balance, of course.
I am a futurist, investor, entrepreneur, builder, advisor, life long learner, hockey player, traveler, podcast addict, hip-hop head, e-newsletter junkie, event planner, and comedic-short producer. Follow me on Twitter here and Instagram here.
“Find a question that makes the world interesting.” - Paul Graham