You've Been Profiled

If you do much of anything online these days, you can count on being profiled by some high-tech algorithm written by Google, Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo, etc. An algorithm—by the dictionary's definition—is “a process or set of rules to be followed in calculation or other problem-solving operations by a computer.” Thus an algorithm is not monitored by humans; it is set up and then it tirelessly collects its information via machine.

Online algorithms appeal to advertisers and authorities, because they automatically and unerringly categorize and compartmentalize people's behaviors, choices, and even beliefs. When Google or Facebook tracks your online choices and surfing behavior, you become profiled. You become compartmentalized into categories and boxes that they've defined. You've become labeled.

This information primarily is used for targeting advertisements at you. If you are an aging baby boomer, for example, why send you ads for rap music or the hottest bungee jumping spots? Wouldn't an ad for the latest pharmaceutical pill for the body's aging infirmities be more appropriate? Profiling can save advertisers from funding such scattershot ads, instead allowing them to focus on receptive audiences. And it can save the consumer from having to push past many irrelevant ads.

So many people are just fine with online profiling; it does not waste their time and screen space with ads they don't want. What many of these folks do not realize, however, is that they've bargained away some of their privacy for convenience. That may seem to be a fair trade to them, but many of them do not realize the depth of the profiling being done on them. They don't realize just how detailed a picture of their private lives are now sitting in some data bank, available to all who pay a small fee for access.

The profiling information gained by these algorithms even allows the Google, Facebook, and Amazon data collectors to predict what things you may want to buy tomorrow. Did you do a search on baby clothes? You will soon be receiving ads for all kinds of things that prospective parents might be looking for. Do a search on marijuana? Maybe the feds have added you to a data base that keeps an eye on possible pot smokers. This may sound a little paranoid, but the personal details willingly and foolishly posted on people's Facebook accounts expose them to the world and can be used against them at some future time.

Possibly the most insidious use of online profiling is the way in which people's points of view adds to our culture's polarization. The algorithms quickly categorize you into distinct and isolated boxes of belief patterns; then you get fed only those ideas and expressions that conform to your predispositions. You get fed things you already know—confirming your existing beliefs and biases. Your feelings and beliefs can then become confirmed and certain in your mind. Your mind is encouraged to close around this isolated pocket of ideas. Your thinking increasingly avoids any alternatives. You become encased in a bubble of narrow thinking that just reinforces your point of view. Nothing challenges your thinking. Polarization grows.

Profiling goes against the value we may achieve from communication and the opening our mind to alternative concepts and ideas. It feeds insular thinking and suspicion of the other. Our society badly needs critical thinking, openness to alternative ideas, and dialog with other viewpoints. Online profiling essentially does just the opposite.

Sycamore Leaf

This is my sketch of a leaf from the sycamore trees that tower over my outdoor tub. Click to enlarge.

Aversion to Uncertainty

Ask anyone how they feel toward uncertainty and you'll get a consistent response that we humans don't like it. We want life to be predictable. We hate ambivalence. When things are uncertain, we even become stressed. We feel an inner drive to resolve the uncertainty and rid ourselves of the accompanying feeling of anxiety.

Some recent, very cleverly-planned research sheds light on what's going on in our heads when we face uncertainty. Scientists have known for a long time that when we feel uncertain, our stress level increases. Recent studies have shown that dopamine in the brain plays a big role in this aversion of ours to uncertainty.

Science has previously shown that when good things happen, dopamine floods our brain, causing us to feel pleasure. This release of brain chemicals induces us to seek more of the good stuff and thus get more dopamine release—it literally propels us into action. This can cause addiction, when we become captive of the drive for more pleasure. What's fascinating is that the part of the brain—the “reward center” or striatum—that responds to the influx of dopamine and activates us to go for more of the good stuff, is the same place that propels us to run away from the bad stuff. In either case, dopamine plays a role. Whether our brain predicts good or bad outcomes, we feel the urge to act.

What this recent research shows is that when our brain cannot predict (either good or bad) outcomes, we stress out. The uncertainty creates anxiety. As an example, suppose you are driving across town for an important appointment. If you left early and traffic is light, you will arrive in plenty of time. Well before you arrive, it's certain that you'll be there on schedule, so you can relax and focus your attention on the impending meeting. In contrast, if you left a little later and got caught in a traffic jam, it becomes certain that you'll be late, so you might as well let go of anxiety and put your attention to how you'll deal with missing the appointment. You can even start working on your excuse. But if it's nip and tuck; if the traffic is very heavy and maybe getting worse, and it's really uncertain whether you'll make it or not, your stress level climbs.

It's kind of a control issue. If I'm convinced that either I'll win or lose in a situation—if I either have control or I don't—I feel less stress and maybe even not necessarily have a motive to act. I'll either coast to a win or concede defeat. Either way, I accept the situation. But if I'm uncertain of success or failure—if my ability to control the situation is up in the air—I feel anxious and I will be driven to take some kind of action, in an attempt to gain control.

Evolution has instilled this aversion to uncertainty in us. All animals—including Homo sapiens—need to take action when the situation is unpredictable. So there's good reason for the stress we experience: it's telling us to do something. Our survival can depend upon our transforming that unpredictability into certainty, and thus lower our stress and get on with life.

Icy

We had an ice storm today. It makes for nasty footing, but some beautiful scenarios. Click to enlarge.

Searching for Andromeda

When you walk outdoors on any clear night and gaze upwards, you may see 2-3 thousand stars, if you're away from interfering city lights. Every single star you spot resides in our Milky Way Galaxy. There are a few hundred billion stars out there in our home galaxy, though you'll see, naked eye, at most a couple of thousand. Get yourself a pretty decent telescope and you'll maybe see a few tens of thousands of Milky Way stars, but that's still just a very small fraction of the total.

There's another quite different kind of astronomical object than stars in our home galaxy to look for: Andromeda Galaxy. It's much farther away than any star within our galaxy, but it can still be observed, because it's so huge. Due to its distance, however, we can't distinguish with the naked eye any of Andromeda's individual stars. All we see is a milky smudge.

The other night my neighbor came by for a two-person star party. He brought the beer, I set up my telescope, and we set out to view the heavens. As our solar system planets are currently not visible overhead in this November's night sky, Andromeda was our best celestial object for the evening, so we set up to view it.

Andromeda is not an easy thing to locate... at least for me. That's why I bought a very nice telescope a couple of decades ago. It comes with a small but amazingly capable computer that both steers the telescope to celestial objects and then locks onto them, following them across the night sky, as the Earth rotates. It's a wonderful little tool; align the scope to the North Star and another prominent star, and you've calibrated it for the night. Now all you do is type in the name of one of several thousand celestial delights in the tiny device and the scope will slew itself around, to stop and aim itself at the object you chose.

Unfortunately, the problem for an old analog guy like me, when trying to operate one of these digital wonders, is that I can't always understand the instructions. The directions confuse me and my thumbs are just a little too slow and clumsy, and I screw it up. I know if I had a 12-year-old computer nerd with me, he'd have the whole thing nailed in five minutes.

Unable to perform the alignment procedure accurately enough to have the little computer locate any celestial choice of mine, I must do it manually. So when my neighbor arrived he and I partnered, in an analog attempt to find Andromeda. I had been successful a couple of nights earlier (after an hour or so of effort) so I knew it could be done.

Despite our diligent attempts, we failed. I thought at one point that we were zeroing in, but alas, we saw no Andromeda. No big smudge; just more stars. Maybe the beers were impeding our astronomical skills. Whatever the limitation, Andromeda was not to be found that night.

What we did discover, however, was a phenomenon that every night sky observer comes upon, if you spend more than 15 minutes looking up on a clear, dark night: there are so many other things to see. Over the next couple of hours we gazed at the Pleiades, the Hyades, and then we dove into the core of our Milky Way Galaxy, where you can see so many stars that they blend into, well, a milky trail across the sky. The only thing that terminated our evening was the November chill penetrating into our bones, and opening the last two beers.

Look at Those Wings

This is a dead cicada (that's why it held so still for my camera). Click to enlarge.