Posts tagged contagion

The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority

Medium, complexity, preference, intolerance, contagion, dispersal, Taleb

The best example I know that gives insights into the functioning of a complex system is with the following situation. It suffices for an intransigent minority –a certain type of intransigent minorities –to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences. Further, an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority: a naive observer would be under the impression that the choices and preferences are those of the majority.

via https://medium.com/@nntaled/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority–3f1f83ce4e15

Facebook: Unethical, untrustworthy, and now downright harmful

facebook, contagion, experimental psychology, emotional manipulation, advertising, social network, L

Emotional manipulation is such a strangely intimate place to discover you’re the subject of surveiilance-cum-manipulation, that even your unguarded moments of sharing feelings are subject to someone trying to get something out of you. We want to call into account what makes this system of control possible, but if Cornell is any example of what to expect from the fallout, no one is going to be held accountable for companies like Facebook recklessly endangering users – yet again. For those of us observing this spectacle in a sort-of state of self-aware, displaced horror reserved for those moments when life and sci-fi dystopia cross shadows, it has never been more clear that Facebook’s ideas about organizing society are wholly broken.

http://www.zdnet.com/facebook-unethical-untrustworthy-and-now-downright-harmful–7000031106/