Tonight's chuckle(head) from CoinFlation headlines...

Is it though? I find it is freeing to not have to memorize meaningless numbers, instead allowing me to instead concentrate on real knowledge.

However, I find others take this too far, and think they do not have to memorize anything, as the world is googlable. This is their error, since there is a distinct difference between knowledge and trivia. The answer is somewhere in between.

 

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As simple, beautiful and insightful as this is, we have become a society that fetishizes data per se, and that's just as sad as it gets.

 

No, it's not. Data is the base of that pyramid for a good reason. People got this wrong for a long time. Take for example you want to write a survey of your customers. Most people start coming up with questions - this is the wrong approach. You start by working backwards figuring out what you want to find out and reverse engineering that back into the data you need to have. Then you work forward again to phrase questions around collecting that data. People got smarter about data collection because they realized if the market, regulations, etc. change down the line and you don't already have the customer data you need on previous periods, you can be literally years behind your competition. And so, we had the wisdom to realize it was better to collect as much data as possible without necessarily knowing the application for it at this point in time. Out of this came growth in technology and applications for data warehousing and interoperability. This is a very good thing.

 

Out of it, what ALSO happened was the rapacious collection of data and the ruination of what once was a society that valued privacy. Now all we have left is to turn toward Europe to give us what we should have had all along in the USA.

If I want to tell a "seller" something about me, that's MY choice. They can go to, well, someplace we infrequently discuss here.

 

Hm. My first reaction is "I don't like it". I've got some preconceptions, though, because I got immersed in some of this during the early part of my doctoral work.

A few of my objections:

The distinction between "data" and "information" here is really blurry. To me, "information" is just "data that's surprising", that is, not random and not trivially predictable.

The distinction between "information" and "knowledge" is worse. It also completely ignores the issue of counter-facts -- "stuff you know that ain't so".

And, finally, nearly every item listed under "wisdom" could equally well be listed under "folly".

 

You may have found that I hold pretty much ALL data collection in extraordinarily low esteem.

I consider "big data" one the most fundamentally evil things that exist.

And why? Because we traipsed right past commercialization and went directly to weaponization.

 

This idea of an entitlement to privacy is very new. Privacy itself is a relatively new concept for humans (I mean that as broadly as possible). Data recorded about you by organizations, corporations, or governments has never been something you owned or were entitled to prevent people from having.

What changed that made this a problem all of a sudden? People have gotten much better at sharing (and more importantly at stealing) this data at a pace that has outstripped the ability and willingness of organizations to identify and protect their PII data. That's a problem for sure, but abstaining from data is not a solution.

 

Well, it is MY solution. I do online surveys, yes I do. But I lie on them CONSTANTLY. Anything I CAN do to screw up everyone’s data set, I WILL do. I lie to pollsters most of all. I consider it a solemn DUTY. If you have the misfortune of getting to me, your data set WILL be somewhat ruined.

 

To what end? Why sabotage big data? You're not going to stop it. All that entering bad data will do is make the system less reliable for others and slow down the pace at which it becomes a reliable and secure system. When data scientists and engineers are working on algorithms to eliminate bad data they are not working on otherwise improving the system. Unreliable systems also slow the rate of acceptance and interoperability.

Either participate in a system or do not, but don't sabotage it with bad data. The data you enter is frequently the price you pay for using a system, so entering bad data is a form of theft.

 

Good. Mission accomplished.

 

No, I consider it the best kind of patriotism. It really is a regional fixation around where I live. We don't want to be part of anyone's data set, and we want to mess with anyone who tries. When I ran a retail business (photo lab and camera store), one with legitimate needs to have data such as a phone number to encourage work pickup, our "refusal rate" was astronomical. In dealing with any business WITHOUT such need, am I going to give more? I don't think so.

 

I understand that, but for many online businesses that provide their service for free (and even ones that charge for service), part of how they make money and subsidize your usage is with the user data. Even if they don't sell it, they may use data analytics to give users targeted advertising (which gives them a better user experience), they may use the data to learn about consumption of their service by demographic, etc. If you read the terms of service you agree to when making an account it will spell out your obligation to properly record this data as part of your agreement to use their service which is otherwise free (or reduced cost) to you.

The choice you have is to use the service and abide by the terms of service or to not use the service at all, but that's where your choice ends. It may be that you do not use any free services that include data accountability in their terms in which case more power to you, but if that's not the case it is theft of service and of the work that many Americans have put into building those web services and is no better than illegally downloading music or movies. Stealing from other Americans is not any kind of patriotism. If you don't want to be a part of their data set, exercise your freedom to abstain from using a particular service.

 

Well, I don’t use Facebook, and never have.
I attempt to not use Google, as much as possible.
And I’ve never used a subsidized piece of hardware, that I know of.

My cell phone supplier is the one NOT in the data reselling business.
It’s a start.

Oh, oh, I occasionally buy an iTunes track or two, but if I like an album or a movie, I buy the CD or BluRay, as the case may be.

 

Which is why I just coincidentally was born when Neil Armstrong set foot (presumably for the Aluminum hat gang) on the moon. It sure makes it easy for me to remember my birthday. It is not anyone's business when I came into this world. But it is sure helpful to someone that wants to access my life, like the Pharmacy, Social Security, line of credit, etc. Even Coin Talk wanted my date of birth. A day and month is one thing, but most don't need the year.

 

I have to do that for my own phone number. Pitiful indeed...

 

Ah, yes, regional patriotic fixations. Yours and your neighbors' are obviously right, and those of, oh, say, Seattle residents are equally obviously wrong. Right?

 

Given a choice between helping professional busybodies on the other coast and helping reflexively private neighbors keep their data to themselves, yah, I pick the latter.

 

Look, you guys think I'm kidding about my disdain for both big data and the Internet culture, as it has become? Guess again, buckaroos. I pretty much can't stand the whole shmegeggy. Anything I CAN do to mess with data acquisition and data analysis, you can pretty well rest assured I WILL do.

The entire industry pretty much bugs me to my core.

 

Those with the most excrement on the sidewalks are wrong, obviously.

 

Yes, the Poo Mass Standard, not to be confused with the Puma's Standard. Since Amish country is nearby, we invoke the Horse Poo Exemption.