\n#224 – Deploying Machine Learning in the fight for kindness<\/strong>
\nMay 29th, 2020<\/em><\/p>\n
“It\u2019s harder to be kind than to be clever. It\u2019s the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift. Kindness is a choice.” Bezos, in a commencement address<\/a> in 2010 to the graduates at Princeton (his and Mackenzie’s alma mater). Sources: 1 (speech full text<\/a>), 2 (reflection<\/a>), 3 (article CNBC<\/a>)<\/p>\n Enter machine learning algorithm UR-V2 (Unfriendly Robot, version 2)<\/a> deployed by the widely used professional coding forum Stack Overflow<\/a>. What does it do? For those who are clever but who don’t chose kindness, or, who are, shall we say, in the early stages of their kindness development journey, UR-V2 is an artificial intelligence to help clever folks be a better version of themselves. Think of UR-V2 as your little kindness angel, or in the console metaphor of emotional intelligence provide by Inside Out<\/a>, we may need to add Kindness as a new sixth member to the crew of Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust.<\/p>\n The UX stats from Stack Overflow following deployment of UR-V2 are interesting<\/a>. After the initial, expected, and quite passionate debate over free speech vs. appropriate environment, the code was deployed, and the latest survey shows a 15% improvement in site atmosphere perceived by its users. Is it any worse off for false positives? Not as far as the data can tell. Is there a risk that over-zealous policing makes clever contributors turn away from the site? This will be the point to watch as UR-V2 evolves and logs more time “on the beat”.<\/p>\n In the meantime, it is worth a moment of reflection for those who are clever, in every profession and walk of life, who are resistant to making the effort to be kind, that they may find themselves gradually replaced by those who are BOTH clever AND kind, a guided social evolution that makes Stack Overflow a notable exception to other social media platforms.<\/p>\n In the resurgent debate around fact checking, censorship, and free speech<\/a> that is current in the Twitter-sphere and US politics, this action by Joel Spolsky\/Jeff Atwood and the smart folks at Stack Overflow is a pioneering experiment hopefully gets the attention of Jack Dempsey (Twitter) and Marc Zuckerberg (Facebook). It is perhaps the next obvious step in what we have already tacitly accepted in rather successful machine learning policing of our inboxes from spam.<\/p>\n <\/a> Article: Wired.<\/a><\/p>\n <\/a> The recovery of US economic activity vs. normal levels for a sample of service sectors in May.<\/p><\/div> Source<\/a><\/p>\n <\/a> With the additional time indoors, what are you watching? If a little gut-punchingly relevant cinema is to your taste, here are a few titles:<\/p>\n <\/a> There are pivotal moments in history when things change after which we cannot easily go back. the aftermath is often unimaginable, and alters the arc of history. Here are a few in the last 20 years: (1) September 11th, 2001. Airline travel was one of many things that changed permanently. The decision of George W. Bush’s U.S. to pursue Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (that fateful yellow cake mobilization at the UN) set in motion a series of destabilizing events that led ultimately to demise of Iraqi control of large areas of its territory and the rise of Islamic State. (2) The collapse of Bear Sterns<\/a> in 2008 as part of the sub-prime mortgage driven financial collapse was another. The Great Recession that followed arrested growth and brought an austerity to the West that has laid heavily on millions, sowing in turn the economic discontent that, among other drivers, has fueled the rise of nationalism, the Tea Party, Donald Trump, and Brexit. (3) And now we have COVID-19 that began quietly in December 2019 and has exploded into a global pandemic from February 2020. We cannot tell the story of the aftermath now, but there are a few possibilities if the self-isolation is prolonged, and if infection returns for second and third waves in countries where the first wave subsided.<\/p>\n This may force: <\/p>\n (A) change in how we value societal contributions and wealth inequality.<\/strong> The person milking the cows, packing and delivering packages, the teller at the grocery store, the dock worker unloading bags of grain, teachers holding the line in schools, garbage collection workers picking up rubbish so we don’t get diseased neighborhoods — all of these less visible contributors to our society that in the old system were less valued, these are the ones that will be keeping our civilization propped up. Will this lead to a restructuring of the economic system? There will for sure be opposition, but this may be the moment that forces the issue. (B) change in how we create and supply food.<\/strong> Each person with a garden may well need\/be required to cultivate a basic local food supply: grains, legumes, herbs, vegetables, fruits, perhaps supplemented with chickens (for eggs). Instead of moving lawns and fields, and putting the grass into mulch, we may switch to goats that at least convert grass into milk and cheese. Instead of processed foods, we may opt for local processing, e.g. home milling machines for turning dry rations into flour in 60 seconds or less. (C) change in how we think about finances, freedoms, and government responses to crises.<\/strong> <\/p>\n (D) change in how we work and care for children.<\/strong> With the suspension of schools for possibly several months, and widespread self-isolation, families with young children and two working parents are facing the realities of managing it all.<\/p>\n (E) deceleration in global warming as economic activity crashes<\/strong> during cities in lockdown, leading to almost immediate drops in air pollutants and emissions, the results of which were visible within 1-2 weeks from satellites in the sky. (F) people turning on each other<\/strong> (G) change in rights to privacy and surveillance technology<\/strong> (H) will there be a change in how we view competence in our politicians? This one I am not so sure of.<\/strong><\/p>\n Whether one, all, or more strands form the aftermath, one thing seems clear already. 2020 will likely join 2001 and 2008 as the year when everything changed.<\/p>\n <\/a> Globalization has been accelerating for almost 50 years, since 1976, when the last ties to the gold standard were removed, freeing monetary policy from commodity restrictions. In those c.50 years, gold pricing has gone from c.$40 per troy ounce to over $1000, a 25x increase reflecting the expansion of capital. Coronavirus is the first real challenge to the global order. Containment measures that involve shutting down cities are having an immediate and devastating impact on economic productivity, sector by sector. Satellite imagery shows that pollution above China has become almost non-existent in the past two months as economic activity has been forcefully restricted.<\/p>\n But what happens now to the grind of the economic clock: millions of people will have bills come due, payments to make, debts to pay, rents to pay, food to buy. If containment measures spread across the globe (as many expect they will), the economic toll will start to drive large numbers of people into bankruptcy and create financial upheaval.<\/p>\n What happens next will be eye-opening. Some options: companies without sufficient product flows will reduce advertising, impacting revenues in advertisers, manufacturers will see slowdowns in order pipelines and not need as many workers, retailers seeing slowdowns in inventory, footfall, and willingness\/ability for consumers to spend, will start to contract, and may also reduce staff. The rise in unemployment and general wage insecurity will lead to constricting of demand, further impacting orders, purchasing, and contributing to a vicious cycle.<\/p>\n Related reading:<\/strong> <\/a> The highly visible writhings of western democracy (Trump impeachment, Brexit, Berlusconi trial, Salvini’s succession), provides a sharp contrast with the disciplined progress-oriented Chinese political system. The rise and spread of Coronavirus shows the “Achilles heel” of the Chinese system: an overriding obsession with maintaining stability.<\/p>\n This article [1] is grim reading, showing: <\/p>\n Reading: [2] (#59) Ebola: how culture and politics affect this deadly disease<\/a> (Sep 11, 2014)<\/p>\n [3] Italy: the rise of Coronavirus in Italy<\/a>(Mar 11, 2020) The problem is that we see the infection curve follow a similar pattern in Italy, suggesting the mathematics of interaction and infection rate dominated the spread, and was much less disrupted by Italy’s actions than we thought.<\/em><\/p>\n [4] US: how capitalism and the threadbare welfare state may make the U.S. much the vulnerable country in the world to Coronavirus.<\/a> Deductibles and co-pays may discourage Americans from getting checked, no illness pay in 39 states may discourage Americans from self-quarantining, limited testing kits in hospitals and a decentralized for-profit health care system may mean the U.S. is unable to contain the early spread even if it would like to, Trump’s attempt to maintain the facade of normalcy is as opposed to the facts as China’s was.<\/em><\/p>\n [5] How China and Singapore have been able to cap the further spread of COVID-19<\/a> (Mar 15, 2020) Since the early reluctance to admit the problem, China has since mustered all its muscle to slow and stop transmission growth – quarantining of cities (57M people), forced closure of schools, factories, workplaces, public transport, mandatory temperature testing upon entering a building, mandatory use of a face mask, building of two new hospitals in a week, bolstering of 5G internet to facilitate remote working, forced changes in banking to remove financial penalties associated with payment delays.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/a> The recent history of Milan (Italy) is the story of mega-cities across Europe (London, Paris, Munich, Barcelona, Madrid) US (Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Boston, Houston) and around the world (Istanbul, Rio, Moscow, Beijing, Mumbai, Bangalore, Dubai). <\/p>\n Between 2000 and 2016, Milan increased its share of Italy’s GDP by 17.7% compared to the next largest growth city Rome at 4.4%, while almost everywhere else in Italy growth reversed as the Italian economy flatlined. There are are similar statistics in the rest of Europe. Prosperity has continued without much change but limited to a few mega-cities. <\/p>\n But the majority of people in Europe (and the world) are not in mega-cities. What happens is the broad disenfranchisement of liberal policies in the majority of the population that cannot see the advantages of these policies, where growth is in decline, services are crumbling, where there is a flight of youth, labor and capital, and no replacement for the industrial productivity that may have provided jobs and wage security in the 20th century.<\/p>\n Roberto Camagni, Professor of Urban Economics in Milan, summarizes the essence of the problem of the past 20 years (emphasis mine):<\/p>\n “It was big cities like Milan, not nation states, which benefited most from the great wave of integration that came with the European single market. The city provides financiers, lawyers, designers, artists, culture, everything required to be a modern international hub. It has a monopoly on the high-end services that command the highest prices, [but] the rest of Italy has to pay those prices. The problem is that this miracle in Milan only really involves the million or so people at its very heart. The city has shaken off the industrial hinterland that made it great in the 20th century. In the end this creates a problem of dignity for other places.<\/strong><\/em>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The above quote is eye-opening, and explains why Brexit, Johnson, Trump, and other nationalist policies are now at the height of their power. The people are angry. Wealth creation and opportunity are no longer serving them as it was in the 1980s and 1990s. The middle classes are aging and increasingly abandoned. These are structural problems in education, transportation, housing, and access to social services, that have been decades in the making, and that keep opportunity away from the disadvantaged. These problems are amplified by out-of-touch behaviour of elites, the place of individualism above social consciousness, societal preoccupation with materiality, and a media driven culture of self-focus that raises concerns of narcissism.<\/p>\n Inequality in US and UK tops Western World, BBC, May 14, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n Further Reading:<\/strong> The ten articles below, selected from the past five years (2014-2019) provide food for thought.<\/p>\n (1) How the mega-cities of Europe stole a continent’s wealth<\/a>, Julian Coman, Nov 10th, 2019, The Guardian<\/p>\n (2) The Pitchforks are Coming – How the Economic Order will Fall<\/a>, Nick Hanauer, July\/Aug 2014, Politico Magazine (#35, June 27th, 2014<\/a>)<\/p>\n (3) People Vote Mainly on Identify, not Policy (#200)<\/a>, Thu 31st October, 2019<\/p>\n (4) The disproportionate impact of public policy decisions on UK North and South: a case study of the Beeching Report of the 1960s on UK National Rail (#196)<\/a>, Sun 6th October, 2019<\/p>\n (5) The stagnation of educational attainment (in the US) over the last 30 years (#12)<\/a>, 23rd April, 2014<\/p>\n (6) Rising Economic Inequality in the U.S. – the facts from the Federal Reserve (#60)<\/a>, 17th Oct, 2014<\/p>\n (7) In Bad Faith: the Effects of Austerity on Britains’s Brexit Vote (#192)<\/a>, 17th September 2019, and The Debate on the integrity of the IMF’s position when Greece voted against Austerity (#77)<\/a>, 5th July, 2015<\/p>\n (8) Those who get left behind: Homelessness and Indifference<\/a> (#127), 6th November, 2017, Low Pay Culture Traps People in Poorly Paid Jobs<\/a> (#124), Oct 19th, 2017, and The Bard Prison Initiative (#82)<\/a>, 7th October, 2015<\/p>\n Solutions?<\/strong> (10) What happens to attempts at rival economic narratives? They will likely be vilified by proponents of entrepreneurial capitalism. Example 1: Mission-oriented state investment in Cuba or the Exploitation of doctors?<\/a><\/p>\n <\/a> Cuba funds the full education of all its citizens including doctors, no loan debt to repay, and then takes a large % of their overseas salary should they choose to work overseas, where there they earn 10-15x more than what they would make locally. Is it a smart way for Cuba to distribute wealth and opportunity widely through its society, or is it exploitation?<\/p>\n Quote 1: \u201cI don\u2019t believe that they are being exploited. They are earning significantly more than they would earn at home. They have been trained in a socialist system, have paid nothing for their medical training, and understand that the superior amount paid to the Cuban government is used to subsidise the healthcare system back in Cuba.\u201d – John Kirk, professor of Spanish and Latin American studies, Dalhousie University, Canada. <\/p>\n Quote 2: \u201cI believe we should help everybody. Based on that, yes it is fair, because I know that the other amount is used to support our health and education system \u2026 but if you think only of yourself, of course it\u2019s not fair.\u201d – Cuban doctor at the Cuban hospital in Qatar<\/p>\n Quote 3: \u201cI felt like a slave\u201d on discovering that other doctors in the country were being paid more than him. \u201cWe were doing the same thing and earning far less than them.\u201d – A Cuban doctor who defected from the Cuban program.<\/p>\n Article: Mission-oriented state investment in Cuba or the Exploitation of doctors?<\/a> – The Guardian, Fri 8th November, 2019<\/p>\n <\/a> Mariana Mazzucato is an economist who has traced the origins of the greatest innovations in the West, and found that they (iPhone, Internet, Touchscreen, Windows, Google search), almost entirely, have their origins in state investment (National Science Foundation grants, Small Business Innovation Research funds, DARPA grants, etc.) The Entrepreneurial Engine narrative, she finds, is an ahistorical account promoted by businesses to lobby for lower taxes and regulation. But the real engine for growth is state-investment through mission-oriented institutions<\/em>.<\/p>\n Wired Magazine article, 8th Oct 2019<\/a><\/p>\n <\/a> Looking back on British electoral politics, I am struck by an observation on identity politics made by Tony Blair made ahead of the 1997 election that saw New Labour winning a record majority in Parliament. He said (Blackpool, 1996)<\/a>:<\/p>\n “I can vividly recall the exact moment that I knew the last election was lost. I was canvassing in the Midlands on an ordinary suburban estate. I met a man polishing his Ford Sierra, self-employed electrician, Dad always voted Labour. He used to vote Labour, he said, but he bought his own home, he had set up his own business, he was doing quite nicely, so he said I\u2019ve become a Tory<\/strong>. He was not rich but he was doing better than he did, and as far as he was concerned, being better off meant being Tory too.<\/p>\n In that moment the basis of our failure – the reason why a whole generation has grown up under the Tories – became plain to me. You see, people judge us on their instincts about what they believe our instincts to be. And that man polishing his car was clear: his instincts were to get on in life, and he thought our instincts were to stop him.<\/strong> But that was never our history or our purpose.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (Tony Blair, 1996, Blackpool campaign speech)<\/a><\/p>\n He went on, of course, to describe why New Labour was about helping people to get on in life. But the memorable point was made. It is the instinctive perception of what a person or party is after that pulls peoples’ votes.<\/p>\n This December’s election in Britain will be the second in which the politics of identity is radically different from the usual Left\/Right split. <\/p>\n <\/a> In 1963, the Beeching Report<\/a> made the historic decision to trim the UK’s railway network into essentially a London-centric, North-South feeder system. The ability to travel East-West between towns in England, without passing through London, was severely reduced. Why did this happen? The cuts were deemed necessary in order to allow the then nationalized Railway service to operate profitably, ahead of privatization<\/a>. Arguments about bus and road networks compensating did not come to pass, and the result has been small towns and villages especially outside the London orbit becoming isolated, opportunity drying up, and social demographic changing.<\/p>\n Alongside the article #192 (Can the seeds of Brexit be traced back to Austerity (Tories) and the Iraq War (New Labour)?)<\/a> that looks at UK’s decision to join the second Iraq war 15 years ago and the Austerity policy that followed soon after, we can place this as an antecedent almost 60 years earlier, before Thatcher’s decisions in the 1980s to gut the industrial and coal mining heartland of the English North.<\/p>\n UK Rail Network, 2019 vs. 1963 (Beeching Report)<\/p><\/div>\n Related Reading:<\/p>\n <\/a> The release this weekend of the memoirs of former UK Prime Minister David Cameron has kicked off a flurry of retrospection on the events leading up to UK’s fateful Brexit vote in the summer of 2016. In this opinion piece<\/a> (The Guardian, Mon 16th September), John Harris traces a direct connection from the austerity program of 2010 to the Brexit vote in 2016.<\/p>\n What drove austerity policy? The empty Treasury from the Blair\/Gordon Labor governments certainly gave the newly elected Tories a ripe opportunity to significantly roll back the state through austerity. But what caused the empty Treasury? One might point to the fall of the financial markets in 2008 following the subprime mortgage lending crisis and the collapse of Bear Stearns, leading to the prolonged Great Recession. Or one might point to the military adventurism of Blair’s Labor government in 2003 backing Bush’s infamous (and catastrophically expensive) War in Iraq.<\/p>\n It is ironic that the decision of a Labor government to overrule the will of the people and enter the catastrophic and financially ruinous second Iraq war (based on accusations that neither Parliament nor the public believed), may in the end have led ultimately to the public ultimately thrice betrayed (New Tories under Thatcher, New Labor under Blair, Austerity Tories under Osborne) voting for change in the form of the only meaningful change that was in their grasp: Brexit. The connection between the last two is that public taxes were spent prosecuting that failed war followed by bailing out the subsequent failure of banking regulations and irresponsible financial leadership.<\/p>\n It seems that missteps taken 12 and 18 years ago have come home to roost, i.e. those same people whose will had been ignored and whose taxes had been spent irresponsibly, voted to take back a control that had clearly not been theirs for some time.<\/p>\n Article:
\n#219 – Thomas Picketty: A New Look at Inquality in the 21st century<\/a><\/strong>
\nMay 18th, 2020<\/em>
\nCapital in the Twenty-First Century<\/a>, and Capital and Ideology<\/a> are the labors of French \/ former MIT economist Thomas Picketty who, over the two decades since he began studying economics, has gone from centre-left to radical-left as he built the world’s first and most detailed Wealth Inequality Database (WID). What he has learned on the Economics of Inequality<\/a> will ring especially loudly in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic that has ripped aside the curtain hiding what has been quietly facing us all – that the world is now more unequal, and accelerating this inequality, than ever before.<\/p>\n
\n#216 – COVID-19 Endgames<\/strong>
\nApr 8th, 2020<\/em><\/p>\n\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mathscitech.org\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/screenshot.1695.png\")
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\n#215 – COVID-19 Preparedness Pack<\/strong>
\nMar 22nd, 2020<\/em><\/p>\n\n
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\n#214 – Coronavirus – When things change and can never go back<\/strong>
\nMar 20th, 2020<\/em><\/p>\n\n
\nThe inadequacy of the social safety net in Britain<\/a>
\nPoverty kills people<\/a>
\nHow the wealthy stand to win again in the post-COVID crisis<\/a>, Gary Stevenson<\/p>\n
\nUK panic food buying<\/a> puts \u00a31B of extra food in British homes, but creates shortages across the nation.
\n3M people in UK are part of households where someone is forced to skip at least one meal<\/a> because of insufficient access to food.
\nFamine and hunger epidemic predicted<\/a> for developing countries that are unable to maintain food supply chain and do not get sufficient aid, 250m at risk of death due to starvation.
\nMountains of food waste in corporate farms in the US even as food bank lines get longer<\/a><\/p>\n\n
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\nEmissions fall as cities go into lockdown<\/a>, Matt McGrath, BBC News, Mar 19th,2 020<\/p>\n
\nRacial profiling against Muslims in India risks targeting 200m people.
\nIn the E.U., despite the coming together of individuals and local communities, the European Union has been unable to show institutional solidarity and a common unity.<\/a>
\nIn the U.S., federalism is under pressure as the central government trades accusations with states about “stockpiling” needed supplies and withholding these from worst hit states.
\nAcross the world, domestic violence is increasing as relations fray in families thrown together for extended periods of time. Coping skills, emotional resilience, and the ability to communicate effectively and get along has never been greater within family units.<\/p>\n
\nTesting and contract tracing are the two known ways of combatting coronavirus spread. But with that comes the conundrum of avoiding surveillance while yet being able to rapidly contact all known contacts of anyone who tests positive. Singapore launched and open-sourced TraceTogether. Goole, Apple, and European governments have found it harder to agree on how to do this.<\/a><\/p>\n\n
\n#212 – Coronavirus may be the first serious decelerant to globalization<\/strong>
\nMar 3rd, 2020<\/em><\/p>\n
\nGovernments across the world have established free trade agreements and reduced tariffs and other barriers to the movement of goods and people.
\nAt the same time, transportation and telecommunications advances have shrunk the globe meaning that now people and products can go from one side to the other in a matter of hours rather than weeks or months previously.
\nThis combination of capital expansion, free movement, and technological advance has powered a businesses juggernaut, aligned primarily toward a global, just-in-time supply chain, and optimized on the assumption that it is stable.<\/p>\n
\n1. Coronavirus and the disperate dilemna<\/a>
\n2. History of Globalization<\/a>
\n3. Globalization examples through history<\/a>
\n4. Bubonic plague<\/a>, the best known example of a global pandemic spread by trade. First in c576 AD killing 50 million people over 2 centuries, second c.1375 AD killing 50 million people, third in the mid 1800s with more limited deaths (est. ~200k).
\n5. History of the Gold Standard<\/a>
\n6. Why the US abandoned the gold standard.<\/a><\/p>\n
\n#210 – How Coronavirus was fanned into an epidemic by the desire to maintain the facade that nothing was wrong<\/strong>
\nFeb 11th, 2020<\/em><\/p>\n\n
\n[1] Coronavirus: China and the virus that threatens everything<\/a> (Feb 11, 2020)<\/p>\n
\n#203 – The 21st Century “Great Challenge”: How to distribute wealth and opportunity beyond privileged places and people<\/strong>
\nSunday 10th November, 2019<\/em><\/p>\n![\"Inequality](\"https:\/\/mathscitech.org\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/screenshot.0897.png\")
\n(9) Mission-oriented state investment as an alternative economic narrative to entrepreneurial capitalism (#201)<\/a>, Thu 31st October, 2019<\/p>\n
\n#202 – Mission-oriented state investment in Cuba or the Exploitation of doctors?<\/a><\/strong>
\nSun 10th Nov, 2019<\/em><\/p>\n
\n#201 – Mission-oriented institutions, and state investment, a rival narrative to entrepreneurial capitalism?<\/strong>
\nThu 31st October, 2019<\/em><\/p>\n
\n#200 – People vote mainly on identity not policy<\/strong>
\nThu 31st October, 2019<\/em><\/p>\n
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\n#196 – The disproportionate impact of public policy decisions — how the Beeching report sowed the seeds of the unrest and inequality between North and South England that (at least in part) has led to Brexit<\/strong>
\nSun 6th October, 2019<\/em><\/p>\n![\"UK](\"https:\/\/mathscitech.org\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/screenshot.0875.png\")
<\/a>\n
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\n#192 – Can the seeds of Brexit be traced back to Austerity (Tories) and the Iraq War (New Labour)?<\/strong>
\nTue 17th September, 2019<\/em><\/p>\n