Trump's Truthiness And Post-Factual Politics In A "Demon-Haunted World"

In 2005 humorist Stephen Colbert introduced the term "Truthiness" on his political satire show, "The Colbert Report."  Although the origin of the word goes back to the early 1800's to refer to truthfulness, Colbert used it to parody current political discourse, referring to the "truth" that a person making an argument or assertion claims to know intuitively "from the gut" or because it "feels right" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.  Colbert's explanation of the word that he gave a decade ago in a 2006 interview seems even more applicable to today's political scene, and in particular to current Presidential campaign rhetoric:

Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don't mean the argument over who came up with the word ...
It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty. People love ... [insert D.T instead of then President G.W. Bush] because he's certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don't seem to exist. It's the fact that he's certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country [emphasis added].  I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?...
Truthiness is 'What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.' It's not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There's not only an emotional quality, but there's a selfish quality. (A.V. Club Interview, 2006)

Conservative columnist George Will uses the related but not nearly as humorous term "Post-factual Politics" to describe what he sees as an age in which political decisions and strategies often ignore demonstrable facts and instead follow a worldview largely uninformed by reality (see, for example, Will's 9/29/16 analysis of Trump's position on Ukraine ("Trump's Shallowness Runs Deep") and his 9/14/16 discussion of Putin's Orwellian rewriting of history in the service of "making Russia great again."

George Will's observations aren't as entertaining as Colbert's, but their implications are equally sobering and alarming. It is very disturbing to think we are heading for a society in which facts don't matter and truthiness is more important than truth.

A possible antidote to this trend is for citizens to make use of the several politically neutral fact-checking services that are available online, such as Politifact.Com, Factcheck.Org, or the Washington Post's "Fact Checker" column. All three allow for degrees of factual distortion, from leaving out important contextual details, to over- or under-stating numerical data, to making totally unsubstantiated factual claims. The potential benefit of consulting such sources is that they allow current issues to be assessed more rationally, and though interpretations may differ as to what the facts imply for political action, at least these disagreements can begin with a common, realistic referent.

Unfortunately, the beneficial impact of fact-checking may be limited in the climate of extreme divisiveness we are now experiencing.  As Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post has noted,

...there are limits to what fact-checking can achieve. Those who have tried to measure the impact of fact-checking have found that there are many kinds of audiences, and that fact-checking affects each of them differently. All people are more likely to believe in “facts” that confirm their preexisting opinions and to dismiss those that don’t. But those with unusually strong opinions — those who are more partisan — are less likely to change their views, more likely to claim that fact-checkers themselves are “biased,” and even more likely to spread their views aggressively to their friends. This has always been the case, but social media now multiplies the phenomenon: In a world where people get most of their information from friends, fact-checking doesn’t reach those who need it most [emphasis added]. (Applebaum, 5/19/16)

For those at the political extremes (such as D.T.) truthiness wins because the truth reported by fact-checkers must be a lie if it contradicts what the extremists already believe and feel in their gut is correct: "What I say is right, and nothing anyone else says could possibly be true." The manifestations and consequences of truthiness and post-factual politics are far-reaching, dire and ironic -- at a time in history when astonishing discoveries are being made in medicine, biology, physics, space exploration, and other fields the world is simultaneously gripped by war, global political and economic instability, internal political discord, and ethnic conflict fueled by intransigent religious beliefs and extreme ideological intolerance.

The tendency to reject evidence-based reasoning extends beyond politics and includes a growing resistance to scientific approaches to knowledge and decision-making, as illustrated by controversies over climate change, evolution, and stem-cell research.  In many areas of life that could be usefully informed by the methods and findings of science, people instead seem willing to accept unfounded explanations of events and solutions to problems that rest on intuition, superstition, and pseudoscience. Add to this the growing tendency to deny scientific evidence because it doesn't fit our politicized beliefs.

Carl Sagan, the astronomer and tireless advocate of science education explored the extent and causes of this phenomenon in his 1996 book, The Demon-Haunted World.  He suggests that one reason for the rejection of scientific evidence -- and by extension the reliance on truthiness -- is a misperception of the self-correcting and probabilistic nature of science, two features which distinguish science from ideological approaches to determining truth.  By insisting on repeatable, objective evidence to support empirical claims, science builds on past knowledge by correcting and extending conclusions in light of the most recent reliable evidence.  Unfortunately this can lead to the false inference that truth is as malleable as opinion and therefore scientific evidence has no greater claim to validity than one's gut feeling.  Furthermore, since science explicitly acknowledges that any scientific conclusion is possibly false, some people believe this means any two explanatory claims (such as Darwinian Evolutionary Theory versus Creationism) have equal standing.  However, they have failed to appreciate that science carefully assesses the degree of certainty in any claim, and these can vary widely based on the amount and consistency of available evidence -- some explanations are far more credible than others.

A second possible reason for rejecting scientific evidence focuses more on the emotional basis of the phenomenon, and as a social psychologist I find it very compelling.  Sagan notes that superstitious and non-scientific reasoning are often appealing because they promise to remove the distress of uncertainty of everyday life in a world full of perceived threats. But this comes at a high price:

"Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly ignorance about ourselves.  I worry that ... pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive ....Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to our national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up all around us -- then habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls" [emphasis added].

The desire for certainty -- even if the certainty is an illusion created from the truthiness of post-factual political rhetoric -- is a powerful psychological motivation in times of social upheaval such as we are now experiencing.  But in contrast to the measured certainty of science, the illusory kind is not amenable to moderation by consideration of factual evidence.

Carl Sagan died in 1996, the same year he finished writing The Demon-Haunted World .  I am certain he would be thrilled by the scientific advances of the past 20 years.  But I think he might also be very disappointed and saddened to find so many demons still haunting us.....

 ___________
Sources & Resources:

"Truthiness,"  Wikipedia (Includes a transcript of the interview with Stephen Colbert)
George Will: "Trump's Shallowness Runs Deep," Washington Post 9/29/16,  "Putin Goes Full Orwell," Washington Post 9/14/16,
Anne Applebaum:  "Fact-Checking in a 'Post-Fact World'" Washington Post, 5/19/16
Carl Sagan:  The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1996).  Ballantine Books.

At Last! A Poop Museum!

Ok, we've examined my borderline-deranged fascination with poop before ( see "How About a Fecal Transplant?," "Fabulous, Synthetic Poop" and "Cleaning Up Poop In Paradise"), so you'll understand why I was so thrilled recently when I learned that somebody has at last created a fitting tribute to this stupendous substance in the form of a museum.  Yes, a museum dedicated to excrement!

It's on the Isle of Wright, U.K., where apparently people are as enlightened (or deranged) about poop as I am.  I learned about the museum recently while scanning one of my routine online news sources, BBC.Com. This story was in their Earth section, a collection of brilliantly-written science articles, many of which are not only informative but also very, very funny. The author of this one is Katie Silver, whose enthusiasm for the topic is quite clearly conveyed in her entertaining and informative writing style -- I highly recommend  that you read the entire article, "Five Surprising Uses of Poo."  [Note -- "Poo" is the British translation of "poop."  The two terms will be used interchangeably henceforth.]

Zoo Poo

The museum is in the local zoo, where the curators have displayed 20 samples of animal droppings from crows to lions. Only one is from a human -- a sample of baby's poop -- but I could offer some real eye-catchers if the museum wants to expand their collection.  The National Poo Museum, as it is ambitiously called, even has its own website, https://www.poomuseum.org/, which provides a number of interesting details about the zoo and even includes an animated rendition of its catchy theme song, "They've Got An Awful Lot Of Poo At The Zoo."  Take a listen -- it's very cute.

How, you might ask, does the museum actually display specimens that are so...ah, delicate and aromatic?

Encapsulated Pigeon Poop

The answer is their invention of a clever process of drying and encapsulating them in plastic resin:

"...the [drying] machine [is] a long pipe with ‘poo hammocks’ that go into a poo dryer. Depending on the size of the faeces it will stay in the dryer for anything from a day to a couple of weeks. It’s then covered in resin and encapsulated, with vacuum chambers used to remove the air bubbles. The end result looks a little like a crystal ball. Except it has a poo in the centre." (Silver, 2016)

Somehow I find the mental picture of "poo hammocks" quite amusing.

Anyway, there is a great deal of serious information that can be gleaned from poop. My wife and I are very familiar with this from spending many hours on African safaris and nature walks in other parts of the world, during which our guides/trackers gave us many poop lessons. For example we now know the difference between male versus female giraffe droppings (females are tapered), between white rhino and black rhino poop (the nature of the cuts on undigested twigs), what a hyena had for dinner (smell and nature of bone fragments), and why wombat do-dos are cubes (the wombat pats them into that shape so rivals can't roll them off the trail). A good tracker can tell the approximate age and health of the animal, how long ago the nugget was deposited, how fast the animal was traveling, and even where it might be headed next, based on various telltale signs. A poop-pile is an open book, so to speak.

Of course, from past blogs we know that it's not just what you see in poop that counts, but sometimes what you can't see -- i.e., the trillions of microbes that live in our gut and ultimately reside in our poop as well. The microbial signature of different species can provide useful information as to what kind of animal made a deposit even when other indicators are long lost.  For example, Katie Silver documents how microbial poop signatures have recently provided evidence of the exact route Hannibal's army took when crossing the Alps 2000 years ago, which up until now had been mainly conjecture.  Hannibal took with him some 15,000 horses, which are prodigious poopers.  Archeologists located one spot along the most likely route where that many animals might have been kept during the crossing. When then dug down to the 2000-year level they found a high concentration of both organic material and Clostridia bacteria, a microbe common to horse droppings. The magnitude of the deposit and its microbial signature provide solid evidence that this was the actual route.

Fossilized Dino Dropping

A preserved bit of horse droppings from Hannibal's campaign would make a great exhibit in the Poo Museum, but as far as I can tell there isn't one. Nor does the Museum have an example of the ultimate in preserved poop -- a coprolite, or fossilized dinosaur dropping. These dino nuggets can be up to two feet long and are highly prized by paleontologists for the information they provide about diet, feeding behavior, and even health of animals that are now extinct. A recent Smithsonian Magazine article reports on an even rarer find -- a 150 million-year-old pterosaur fossil that seems to show the contents of its digestive tract still inside. What an exhibit that would make!

Despite the shortcomings of not having specimens from Hannibal's Crossing or from any dinosaurs, the National Poo Museum is quite active in promoting beneficial educational programs. For example, the museum's website lists this year's events as:

• Continuous Program, Summer, 2016:  "Poo At The Zoo" featuring the resin-sphere exhibits.
• May 30-June 15, 2016:  "Love Your Poo Week," focusing on waste treatment and disposal.
• July 6, 2016:  My personal favorite, "Brighton Turd Nerd Night" featuring expert speakers on topics such as "Tackling dog shit in postwar Paris" and "Dirty dogs, worms and the politics of shit in 1970s Britain." 

The last one sounds particularly interesting.  However, the connection between poop and politics seems a bit obvious, and not just in 1970's Britain......

Is Your Phone Smarter Than You Are?

Mine is, but it didn't used to be. I think there are two reasons for this change.

First, Geezerhood has progressively robbed me of more and more brain cells so that relative to my phone I've become dumber. And although I still have a few cells left but they don't seem to want to work together as well as they used to.

But there is a second far more interesting reason. Up until a few years ago I had a cell phone that looked like a Star Trek communicator. Although I tried hard, I could never get Scotty to beam me up, nor would the phone do any of those other nifty things the communicators did.  I traded that old "flip" phone for a newer sleeker model, but still it was only a phone, dumb as a post.  Then I finally succumbed to the techno-bug and bought a "smart" phone that has been getting disquietlingly more and more capable of what seems like intelligent behavior.  In other words, it may be getting smarter and I'm...well, let's just say "not."

In my attempts to keep my remaining neurons firing I like to keep up on current developments in information technology and the internet.  This was a topic I used to teach about and I am still interested in it, especially as it impacts our daily lives and also our society. One of the hot topics lately is artificial intelligence, or AI. There have been some significant recent advances in this area that support my suspicions about my phone and all other interfaces to the internet -- they are getting smarter.

The notion that computer systems could become truly intelligent has been around a long time, and the idea has gone through several cycles of optimistic over-hype and pessimistic disparagement. AI was legitimized as a serious field of research in the 50's, led by an impressive array of mathematicians and computer programmers who made striking progress initially but then stalled when certain problems became intractable, either because of the limits of theoretical approaches available at the time or because existing computer power and storage were insufficient. However, today you have more computing power in your cell phone than existed in a room-sized computer in the early days of AI, and recent breakthroughs in how we think of what constitutes machine intelligence have led to real-world applications of AI that are all around us and growing rapidly in number and scope.

Wikipedia attributes the recent surge in AI successes to three factors:  Advanced statistical techniques (loosely known as deep learning), access to large amounts of data, and faster computers.

"[These have]...enabled advances in machine learning and perception. By the mid 2010s, machine learning applications were used throughout the world. In a Jeopardy! quiz show exhibition match, IBM's question answering system, Watson, defeated the two greatest Jeopardy champions, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, by a significant margin. The Kinect, which provides a 3D body–motion interface for the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One use algorithms that emerged from lengthy AI research as do intelligent personal assistants in smartphones"  [emphasis added]. (Wikipedia, "Artificial Intelligence")

One particularly instructive illustration of the power of current AI occurred in March of this year, when Google's AlphaGo program won 4 out of 5 games against champion GO player Lee Sedol. Computers have previously beaten humans at board games like checkers and chess, but they did so by brute force calculation of the potential outcome of each move. The complexity of GO, however, makes this nearly impossible, even with very fast computers -- it is said there are more possible positions in Go than there are atoms in the universe. Expert players have to rely more on an intuitive feel for the game at a higher intellectual level. As Demis Hassabis, one of AlphaGo's creators describes it, "Good positions look good. It seems to follow some kind of aesthetic. That’s why it has been such a fascinating game for thousands of years” (Wired, 5/16).  And it is also why designing an AI system that could play Go well has been such a challenge -- it would have to incorporate human intellectual qualities that go beyond mere calculation.

So one very important aspect of AlphaGo's success is that it functions more like human intelligence than previous attempts at AI.  A second is that AlphaGo doesn't just apply rules or logic, it "learns" by being exposed to massive amounts of data from which it "distills" knowledge. According to Cade Metz of Wired magazine, AlphaGo's development team:

"...fed 30 million human Go moves into a deep neural network, a network of hardware and software that loosely mimics the web of neurons in the human brain. Neural networks are actually pretty common; Facebook uses them to tag faces in photos. Google uses them to identify commands spoken into Android smartphones. If you feed a neural net enough photos of your mom, it can learn to recognize her. Feed it enough speech, it can learn to recognize what you say. Feed it 30 million Go moves, it can learn to play Go" (Metz, 5/16).

One particular move in the AlphaGo/Sedol match, #37 in game two, was particularly meaningful because it wasn't one of the moves AlphaGo had seen before and because the move was considered by many expert Go players to show an extraordinary level of "artificial insight" and mastery of the game.

"Move 37 wasn’t in that set of 30 million. So how did AlphaGo learn to play it? AlphaGo was making decisions based not on a set of rules its creators had encoded but on algorithms it had taught itself.AlphaGo knew—to the extent that it could “know” anything—that the move was a long shot. 'It knew that this was a move that professionals would not choose, and yet, as it started to search deeper and deeper, it was able to override that initial guide,' [developer] Silver says. AlphaGo had, in a sense, started to think on its own. It was making decisions based not on a set of rules its creators had encoded in its digital DNA but on algorithms it had taught itself. 'It really discovered this for itself, through its own process of introspection and analysis.' " (Metz, 5/16, my emphasis added.)

This ability to go beyond a rote set of programmed instructions is one of the most important and significant qualities of the recent advances in AI -- with both positive and negative potential implications. On the positive side, it greatly enhances the power of AI systems to do all kinds of complex tasks for us. The neural net/machine learning approach that was used to develop AlphaGo is being applied to many other areas as well, including search engines, facial recognition, biometric scanning, robotics, speech recognition, robotic navigation and manipulation, data mining, control systems for self-driving cars, managing complex scheduling operations, etc.

But there also may be a dark side, because this type of AI ceases to be understandable and predictable by its creators. As Jason Tanz of Wired puts it, "...With machine learning, the engineer never knows precisely how the computer accomplishes its tasks. The neural network’s operations are largely opaque and inscrutable...When engineers do peer into a deep neural network, what they see is an ocean of math: a massive, multilayer set of calculus problems that—by constantly deriving the relationship between billions of data points—generate guesses about the world." (Tanz, 2016).

This loss of control has led to some serious warnings about the potential for dire negative future outcomes.  For example, the brilliant physicist Stephen Hawking cautions "One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand...Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all."  Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak and many others share similar reservations, leading to a recent Open Letter in which they and over 100 other experts have drawn attention to this issue and have called for efforts to lessen the probability that the technology will go awry. "We recommend expanded research aimed at ensuring that increasingly capable AI systems are robust and beneficial: our AI systems must do what we want them to do" (my emphasis).

Hmmm.  Sounds good.  But I'm not sure my phone is doing what I want it do even NOW......

__________________________
Sources and Resources:

Artificial Intelligence, Wikipedia. 

AlphaGo, Deepmind

"What the AI behind AlphaGo can teach us about being human."  Cade Metz, Wired, May 2016.

"Soon we won't program computers. We'll train them like dogs." Jason Tanz, Wired, May 2016.

Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates Warn About Artificial Intelligence, The Observer, 2015

Open Letter: Research Priorities for Robust and Beneficial Artificial Intelligence, Future of Life Institute

Cats: Unifiers Of The World

Maybe after my nap.....

Yeah, yeah,  I know.  All you dog lovers out there are thinking that dogs, not cats, are humanity's best friend.  But I didn't say anything about cats being our slobbering, leg-licking, obsequious friends -- I will make the case that cats are unifiers of the world, which is way different.  This will require some of my usual twisted logic, so be patient as you hear me out.

Anything I can do for you??

The first fun fact is that according to several surveys, there are many more people who identify as dog lovers than cat lovers. This certainly fits my informal observations that dog lovers seem to be a dime a dozen. For example, in one large-scale study by Gosling et. al. (2010) people were asked if they were a "dog person," a "cat person," "both," or "neither."  An important strength of this study is that it surveyed a wide range of people who weren't necessarily pet-owners to begin with, and therefore they were representative of a broader and more neutral population.  Forty-six percent of the respondents self-identified as a dog person, whereas only 12% identified as a cat person.  Twenty-eight percent said their were both a cat and a dog person, and 15% chose neither. 

Another interesting poll reported by Stanley Coren in Psychology Today focused on the intensity of people's feeling toward dogs and cats.  The results showed that 74% of the respondents said they liked dogs "a lot," whereas only 41% said the same of cats. You'll note that the two percentages add to more than 100, meaning that there are some people who a strong liking for both animals, but not many.  Dogs and cats also stimulate negative feelings to different degrees.  The same survey asked the respondents whether they disliked each type of animal "a lot."  Only 2% said they disliked dogs, but 15% said that of cats. My guess is that cats really don't care. Dogs on the other hand have that genetically programmed plaintive look designed to soften up even the 2% who reject them -- you know, head down on paws, big sad eyes looking up expectantly, often with an audible sigh....

The differences in preferences and feelings toward dogs and cats are undoubtedly tied to the ways each species behaves toward humans, with those behaviors rooted in the nature of the animal and how they each were domesticated.  According to Stanley Coren:

"In the wild, cats are usually solitary hunters and often are active mostly at night. In contrast, wild canines are usually sociable pack animals that work in groups and are active between dawn and dusk. Our domestic dogs retain this need for social interaction to the degree that without a master and a family, a dog seems unhappy--almost lost. Dogs will intrude on a person's ongoing activities if they are feeling lonely and want some company or play. Cats, on the other hand, are often invisible during the day, seeming only to appear in the evening, especially if that is when they are fed. Cats will occasionally engage in social activities or play with people, but their interest is limited." (Coren, 2010)

Because of the innate social nature of dogs they have been more intensely domesticated than cats, and the traits we find attractive have been intentionally encouraged.  The independent and solitary nature of cats, however, led to a different quality of domestication. As the BBC's Henry Nichols recently put it,

"We might expect that the process of domestication would root out that spirited independence. But cats were not domesticated in the same way as other animals, with humans carefully choosing which ones to breed from and which traits to encourage. Instead, cats were probably responsible for their own domestication. (Nicholls, 2015)

When cats first encountered human settlements, their wariness and instinct for self-preservation served them well. Sensing opportunity, they were drawn into an urban niche by an abundance of easy prey and an absence of big predators. As quoted by Nicholls, geneticist Carlos Driscoll at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism notes that "All these animals had to do was become behaviorally adept at living with people" But importantly, "there was no selection against them hunting, or against them finding their own mates, or against them finding places to build their own nests in a rubbish heap."

The dramatically different behaviors of dogs and cats toward humans may make them attractive to different kinds of people, an idea that has been verified scientifically. The large scale study by Gosling et al, (2010) described earlier included a widely used and highly regarded measure of the major dimensions of personality, and the differences between the respondents identifying as dog versus cat people were assessed.  I should note before telling you the results that a danger in presenting personality differences between groups of people on measures like these is that the differences are often over-generalized -- it is incorrectly assumed that everyone in Group A is higher or lower on dimension X than those in Group B.  Not true. It's better to think of the differences in terms of trends, or tendencies.

Gosling et al. found that dog lovers were higher than cat lovers on the personality dimensions of Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness.  Cat Lovers, on the other hand, were higher than Dog Lovers on the dimensions of Openness and Neuroticism.  Similar patterns have been found by Coren, (2010), who notes that the Openness dimension "involves a general appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, imagination, curiosity, and variety of experience. People high on openness are more likely to hold unconventional beliefs while people with low scores on openness (dog people) tend to have more conventional, traditional interests."  This, along with cat people's higher neuroticism, suggests quirkiness and aloofness, both of which fit nicely with my thesis in the following admittedly convoluted way:  It's harder to tell on the surface a person is a cat lover, and so when you do find out they like cats you are likely to be surprised -- and pleased, if you are a fellow cat fancier. This common bond may transcend (or at least weaken) the existing social barriers between you, thus contributing to the unification of the world. Peace, harmony and utopian happiness are sure to follow.  (Ouch, I think I sprained my brain on that last one.)

My final piece of evidence is the surprising range of people who are cat people, covering a wide spectrum of political, religious, and cultural orientations. Consider these examples from a list of 45 Famous Cat Lovers compiled by Rachael Mulliss:  Mohammed...Cardinal Richelieu...Kim Kardashian...Sir Winston Churchill...Abraham Lincoln...Mark Twain...and Ricky Gervais. If there is any common ground among these folks then maybe there is still hope for the world...

I rest my case. 
_________
Sources & Resources:

Gosling, S. D., Sandy, C. J., & Potter, J. (2010). Personalities of self-identified “dog people” and “cat people.” Anthrozoös, 23, 213-222.

Stanley Coren, 2010:  Psychology Today.  Personality Differences Between Dog and Cat Owners. 

Henry Nicholls, BBC.Com, 2015:  Cats are Utterly, Irredeemably Selfish:  True or False?

45 Famous Cat Lovers:  Rachael Mulliss. 

Smile! You're [Always] On Candid Camera!

PARANOID:

adjective -- someone characterized by suspiciousness, persecutory trends, or megalomania. Example:  "The author of Snow Crash is not at all paranoid."

AKAMAI:

adjective -- Hawaiian word describing someone who is wise, astute, and discerning. Example: "The author of Snow Crash is very akamai."

There is a billboard in Hamburg Germany selling beer in a very unusual way.  It tailors its message to fit the gender and age of the person who passes by, specifically targeting women (even to the point of telling men to go away) and reminding viewers who look too young that they must meet the minimum drinking age. It does this by using the latest in face-recognition software that quickly analyzes the features of someone and adjusts the ad content accordingly.  Similar billboards have also been deployed in the U.S. Some of you will recognize this as being disturbingly similar to one aspect of the 2002 Science-Fiction movie, Minority Report.  However, it is most definitely no longer fiction but rather very real. Of course, in the movie the billboard ads targeted the specific individual passing by, adjusting the sales pitches based on the person's past buying habits, level of income, current mood, etc.  That's not possible is it?  And certainly not legal even if it is possible, right?  Well........read on.

Other current examples of how this technology is being used range from "clever" to "creepy," depending on how how feel about privacy and marketing techniques.  Some applications are similar to the billboards described above, others take things in new directions. In the U.S., 50 bars in Chicago participate in a system developed by Scene Tap. which uses cameras to analyze each bar's men-to-women ratio and average age of customers in real time.  The information is then made available to people who install an app on their smart phones, thus "helping bar-hoppers decide where to go" (Natasha Singer, NYT).  In Britain, cameras at the fuel pumps of Tesco stations analyze the faces of customers to determine their age and gender and adjust ads being displayed on the pump's small video screen while the person is gassing up. Retailers in Europe and the United States are using mannequins equipped with surveillance cameras that can track the gender, age and race of consumers who pass by or stop to look at the mannequins (Megan Van Vlack, Oracle.com). These and similar systems can enable retailers to see how long people of a particular race or gender remain in the shop, and adjust displays and the store layout to try to enhance sales (Consumer Reports, 2015). 

The marketing research company Kairos has taken this even further by developing software that can analyze the emotional reactions of customers from their facial expressions and attention span while looking at a display, allowing sales strategies to be tailored accordingly:

"Emotion analysis, driven through facial cues, is a powerful tool for identifying subconscious emotional reactions to stimuli ranging from ads to how a user might interact with a physical or digital experience. If a user smiles with contentment when they look at that huge movie poster depicting Miley Cyrus, you know that you are picking up something that they may not frequently admit to. Of course, in that situation, it is highly unlikely that they would buy the Miley Cyrus poster to go on their bedroom wall, but you might be able to encourage them to take their younger relatives to see the movie, as a 'family duty' ... Attention span can also be used as a measure of intent or intrigue. The longer somebody looks at some form of promotion, the more they are clearly interested in it. It is possible to alter content on a display, dependent on how long somebody stares at it." (Kairos White Paper)

None of the facial recognition applications described above involve determining the individual identities of those who are being photographed, but there are a number of instances in which this is being done, both with and without the knowledge of those being identified.  Presently there are no legal restrictions on collecting and using faceprint data, as Consumer Report summarized in a recent article:

"Facial recognition is largely unregulated. Companies aren’t barred from using the technology to track individuals the moment we set foot outside. No laws prevent marketers from using faceprints to target consumers with ads. And no regulations require faceprint data to be encrypted to prevent hackers from selling it to stalkers or other criminals." (CR, 2015)

To be fair, most of the current commercial examples of tying facial recognition to personal identification seem benign (albeit a smidge intrusive). For instance, according to Consumer Report, in 2010 a Hilton hotel in Houston introduced a facial recognition system as a security enhancement by tying facial analysis by cameras to the hotel's current registration list.  The same software was also used experimentally to alert employees when VIP guests were present so they could greet them by name. "The hotel wouldn’t comment on whether that program is still active. But facial recognition companies are actively marketing their systems to hotels" (CR 2015).  Other applications from FaceFirst and Herta are being deployed not only as security systems but also to identify preferred customers and alert employees so they can offer personalized service and tune their sales strategies (such as in-store discounts for those who opt in as part of a rewards program). Of course, the behavioral data that can be gathered for these individually identified customers is extremely valuable both to the company collecting it and to other businesses who might readily pay handsomely for it -- think targeted email lists on steroids. Someday soon you might be surprised when you are greeted by name as you enter a store you've never visited before -- your faceprint and shopping data have preceded you.  There is currently no law to prevent this kind of information sharing among merchants.

There are a few applications that aren't motivated by either security or marketing motivations, but not many.  One of the more novel uses of facial identification is called Churchix.  According to the creators' official description: "Churchix is a face recognition based event attendance tracking software ...  designed for Church administrators and event managers who want to save the pain of manually tracking their members attendance to their events. All you need to do is enroll high quality photos of your members into the software data base, then connect a live video USB camera or upload recorded videos or photos – and Churchix will identify your members!" I wonder if version 2.0 will also assess the mood and wakefulness of the attendees?

All facial identification systems rely on a database of digitized faceprints to link a new image to a particular person's name and personal information. Thanks to social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, organizational rosters, and online dating services, such databases already exist and contain not only photos we have eagerly uploaded but a wealth of personal information as well, like birth dates, interests, and employment histories.  And the restrictions we think are in place about who can access those databases are often quite wrong, as revealed in a study conducted at Carnegie Melon University where nearly half of FaceBook users erroneously thought their profile photos were not viewable by all other FaceBook users.  Further, researchers in the Carnegie Melon study were able to determine the names, individual interests and background information for about 30% of the people in a sample of anonymous photos by simply matching them to publicly available Facebook profile photos. They were also able to identify the first five digits of the Social Security numbers of more than a quarter of those people whom they had identified (for ethical reasons they didn't try to obtain the full SSN's).

No hacking was involved in the Carnegie Melon study because the researchers didn't have to -- they simply used currently available facial recognition software and readily available social networking information. Imagine the treasure trove of data that awaits skilled hackers who gain access to other faceprint databases like those being developed by governmental agencies.

One particularly juicy target is the FBI's NGI database, estimated to contain around 52 million records and still growing which include not only fingerprints but also faceprints and other biometric data (see a report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for details).  Although most of the records are for those with criminal records, about 4.2 million are for innocent people who have applied for jobs in which the employer requested a background check or required a fingerprint and photo as a condition of employment. Another hacker's dream is the database maintained by the U.S Department of State, which has the "largest facial recognition system deployed in the world with more than 244 million records" (EFF, 2014). When these databases are coupled with widespread deployment of cameras in public venues and with recognition software like Churchix or Herta's described above, the capability for real-time and archival surveillance of both known bad guys and people whom our current political environment deems potential evil-doers is greatly amplified. Those who yearn desperately to feel safe in a world that they perceive as increasingly threatening probably regard this as a good thing. However, the vulnerability of supposedly secure databases was demonstrated in 2015 by two major breaches of U.S. government sites holding personnel records and security-clearance files that provided access to sensitive information for at least 22.1 million people, including not only federal employees and contractors but their families and friends (see Washington Post, 7/18/15).  Even without the issue of potential hacking of government faceprint files, there are legitimate concerns about who can access the data and how it can be used that haven't been thoroughly addressed or even examined at all (EFF, 2014).

Facial recognition technology is perhaps yet another instance where technical capabilities have outpaced society's consideration of their implications (see also my earlier blog The Drones are Coming! ). In this case there are serious issues of privacy, security, and the right to choose when, where, and how our personal identifying information is used that need to be addressed quickly and thoroughly -- it's the akamai thing to do.

See you later...........and keep smiling!
_________________
Sources and Resources
Facial Recognition:  Who's Tracking You in Public?  Consumer Reports, 12/15
Face Recognition and Privacy in the Age of Augmented Reality (PDF), Carnegie Melon Study, 2014
Face Recognition Moves From Sci-Fi to Social Media.  New York Times, 11/12/11
Tesco's Plan to Tailor Adverts via Facial Recognition Stokes Privacy Fears. The Guardian, 11/13
Facial Recognition Technology is Everywhere. It May Not Be Legal. Washington Post, 6/15.
FBI Plans to Have 52 Million Photos in its NGI Face Recognition Database by Next Year. EFF, 4/14
UK's Spy Agencies Hold a Massive Database of Ordinary Citizens. CNET News, 4/16.
Hiding From Facebook, Snow Crash, 7/12.

A Traveler's Tales of Tummy Troubles

Betty the Bat made another circle through the latrine, this time dipping a wing in friendly recognition (or so I imagined).  I had been there four times already and the night was still young. The open-pit latrine was down a walkway lit by kerosene lamps, the smell of which brings a touch of nausea to this day. Another smell that haunts me is the disinfectant/deodorizer the lodge used in the latrine, because this night effluvia was coming out both ends of me, meaning at times my head was disturbingly close to the source of the odor.  The latrine was about 100 feet from the rooms in our lodge on the Amazon River in Peru, where earlier in the day we had arrived for a few days of exploring flora and fauna of the jungle.  In the afternoon we had gone fishing for piranha and the chef had prepared them for us to taste at dinner.  I, however, never got that far -- before I could take my first bite my intestines told me in no uncertain terms to make that first trip to the latrine.  Probably something I ate for lunch, but it was never clear. Whatever the exact cause, after a day in a hammock watching the Amazon flow by (while my wife had a great adventure trekking through the jungle),  I rejoined the living.

Over the 40+ years my wife and I have been traveling, we have both had a number of incidences of traveler's tummy troubles. When we relate stories like the one above to other people (usually in a bout of "competitive complaining") they often assume our intestinal problems occur more often in third-world countries and exotic locales within them.  Actually, our experience doesn't offer strong support for this.  A counter example to my upchucking along the Amazon occurred recently in Sweden, undoubtedly one of the most developed, squeaky clean places on the planet.  In this case some "Toast Scoggen" cleaned me out better than a colonoscopy prep. On the other hand, a trip to Zambia, Africa a few years ago included a meal cooked for us by local village women in open pots on the ground  -- no problems at all. And yes, it happens in the good old USA.  I once ran back to our motel after dinner at a restaurant in Maine, nearly leaving a trail of DNA as I went. 

Timid travelers also assume that if they stick to eating in upscale places they will be less likely to encounter problems.  Again, not our experience.  Many years ago I remember having lunch at the very posh Acapulco Princess hotel and then waiting outside a bathroom shortly afterwards for my wife's bipolar evacuation of it.  On the same trip, however, we ate a fish dinner at a local beach restaurant, selected from several as being the most upscale and clean-looking.  But as we left we discovered the food had actually come from the restaurant next door, prepared in a tiny shack where cockroaches seemed to be the dishwashing staff.  No intestinal distress at all.

Another of our observations is that there are definitely individual differences in susceptibility -- some people are just plain more prone to traveler's tummy than others.  Many years ago my wife and I started sharing our food in restaurants -- two or more dishes which we split between us. Since then we have discovered that even when exposed to exactly same food we have different intestinal reactions.  Perhaps the first time this was apparent was on our first trip to France, where I spent a good portion of time in the bathroom but my wife never had any problems. On this trip I did a very good imitation of a Bulimic, because even though I was sick a lot I kept on eating because the food was so good.  We later figured out that part of the difficulty was that in those days my stomach was pre-loaded with a high amount of acid from many cups of coffee, vitamin C supplements, and routine ingestion of aspirin for various aches and pains. Mixing all that acid with rather rich food was like a recipe for a volcano science project.  After cutting down on the supplemental acid, the next trip to France was much more pleasant, though far more fattening.

Although my problems in France were likely due to stomach acid, the most common cause of traveler stomach troubles is exposure to microbes.  About 80% of all cases are caused by bacteria of several kinds (mostly of the E. coli variety) and 10% or so by viruses (like the infamous Norovirus) and various protozoa (see Wikipedia). According to the CDC, intestinal problems are the most common travel affliction (other than walletus depletiosis) hitting 30-70% of all travelers, usually within the first week or so of their trip.  Although visitors to developing countries are at higher risk, all destinations have a significant risk level, even the most highly developed (as my personal experience attests).  Also, travelers from developed countries get sick more often than those from developing regions (Medicinet), and all visitors have a higher incidence than locals because the residents have developed resistance to the most common pathogens (Wikipedia) . Note, this often makes terms for traveler's tummy troubles like "Montezuma's Revenge" rather appropriate -- it is payback for germs invaders brought from Europe that infected the natives who had no natural immunity.

Traveler's intestinal problems nearly always last only a few days and go away on their own, though many people like to take antibiotics and anti-motility drugs like Lomotil.  (I love the double meaning of "anti-motility").  These treatments have their downsides, however.  Popping antibiotics may kill the offending bad microbes but it will also kill the beneficial ones that live in your gut and help protect you from other kinds of infections (see How About a Fecal Transplant?, Microbes for Breakfast!, and Fabulous Synthetic Poop!).  And male geezers with prostrate problems should be wary of the side effects of some anti-motility medications -- you may become plugged up in more ways than you wish (I speak from experience on this one).

So, is there any way to prevent this unpleasantness?  Being very careful in what you eat and drink is certainly good advice, but as the CDC notes, "Traditionally, it was thought that TD [Traveler's Diarrhea] could be prevented by following simple recommendations such as 'boil it, cook it, peel it, or forget it,' but studies have found that people who follow these rules may still become ill."  It is also the case that often a traveler can't follow these recommendations for practical reasons (like when traveling with a group or as a guest of a local resident).  The CDC is pretty blunt and realistic about this: "Although food and water precautions continue to be recommended, travelers may not always be able to adhere to the advice. Furthermore, many of the factors that ensure food safety, such as restaurant hygiene, are out of the traveler’s control."  My own experience, as illustrated by the examples above, is certainly in line with the CDC's conclusion -- being careful is prudent but hardly guarantees you won't still get sick at some point and predicting when or where is very difficult.

Besides trying to watch what you eat and drink, there is evidence that taking daily doses of bismuth subsalicylate, the active ingredient in Pepto Bismol, can cut the incidence of stomach illness by up to 50%. But there are a number of side effects and interactions that make its use questionable for many people:  "BSS commonly causes blackening of the tongue and stool and may cause nausea, constipation, and rarely tinnitus. BSS should be avoided by travelers with aspirin allergy, renal insufficiency, and gout and by those taking anticoagulants, probenecid, or methotrexate. In travelers taking aspirin or salicylates for other reasons, the use of BSS may result in salicylate toxicity" (CDC ). Sounds like the cure may be as bad as the problem. Likewise, preventative doses of antibiotics do seem to work, but they may lead to greater stomach problems down the road by encouraging bad microbes that are resistant to antibiotics and therefore very difficult to treat. Also, good microbes aid in digestion and help fight a wide range of diseases -- killing them may not be a very wise thing to do.  Speaking of good microbes, one preventative measure which seems to me like it should work is to ingest probiotics (like yogurt, kefir, and soft cheese), but so far the research is inconclusive (even so, I try to keep up my input of yogurt while traveling).

It seems to me we are left with two choices.  One is to buy some virtual reality goggles and experience travel electronically, without the messiness and risk of actually doing it. This certainly avoids traveler tummy troubles, but also removes some of the most rewarding aspects of real travel, like unplanned interactions with real people.  As you might guess, I heartily reject this option. The second is to accept that occasional tummy troubles are a small cost to pay for the life-enriching experiences that come from being exposed to cultures other than your own.  Traveling in total comfort and safety is not possible and even if it were, I don't think it would be desirable because the most beneficial aspects of travel involve a certain degree of challenge and adventure that can lead to surprisingly positive experiences.  Like making friends with Betty the Bat.

The Drones are Coming! The Drones Are Coming!

DJI Phantom

Actually, the drones are already here, and many more are on the way.  The international market research company Deloitte estimated the number of non-military drones reached 1 million in 2015, driven by sales of 300,000 during that year alone. Business Insider predicts the consumer market will grow by 19% annually for the next 5 years, and Teal Group estimates $93 billion will be spent on non-military drones over the next 10 years. In other words, soon that buzzing in your ear won't be a mosquito, it will be your neighbor's drone.

Until recently the military was the big player in the field of drones, where they have proven invaluable in reconnaissance, spy work, and even as tactical weapons.  However, their military debut was not a smooth one and it took a team of renegade military researchers working against the establishment to develop the first workable weaponized model, called the Predator.  A fascinating article by Wired Magazine recounts how almost everything about the project was cobbled together from off-the-shelf pieces of technology but assembled in a uniquely clever way that proved its worth and introduced a new era in modern warfare.  In October of 2001 a pilot sitting in Virginia fired a missile from a Predator drone in Afghanistan and killed a Taliban commander's two bodyguards. Remote-controlled war with a joystick was born. Military drones require a complex and expensive support infrastructure and the drones themselves can be very expensive depending on the size and capabilities.  In contrast, small commercial and consumer models now available are very inexpensive and simple to operate.

The rise of small drones for commercial and private use was made possible by several technological advances that have come together at the same time: lightweight and durable materials for the drone's structural components;  wireless communication via hand-held computer devices (such as smart phones and tablets); easily programmable flight control circuits that can take advantage of GPS systems; lightweight, powerful, small rechargeable batteries; small high-quality cameras with live video and recording capabilities.  The low cost of consumer-level drones also makes them attractive -- just a few hundred dollars and you're all set.  Drones at this level are touted as potentially having great commercial usefulness, for example to deliver small online purchases, provide agricultural monitoring, allow visual inspections in hazardous environments, provide low-cost mobile security surveillance, and many other industrial applications. One of my first personal encounters with a drone was when a neighbor recently put his house up for sale and the realtor used one to take some of the promotional photos. As useful as these and other applications sound, the possibility of large numbers of drones flying around at once is a sobering thought, and some kind of oversight seems essential to keep it orderly, safe and minimally intrusive -- problems that are currently being considered by various agencies like the FAA and CAB.

The explosive growth of the number of non-military "hobbyist" drones has brought challenges that in some ways parallel those of other technological advances, particularly the cell phone.  The rapid deployment of cell phones outpaced social norms and protocols for using them, and we are still catching up.  For example, we continue to debate how these devices should be used appropriately in public situations where the cell owner's conversations are a potential distraction and annoyance to other people -- such as on airplanes and in restaurants.  Drones have the potential to be at least as disruptive and they expand the potential to invade other people's privacy -- wouldn't it be tempting to fly your camera-enabled drone over a celebrity's house or use it to spy on your neighbor?

In addition to the privacy question, the nuisance factor of personal drones with cameras looms large.  Imagine a sporting event where spectators send their drones over the action for a better look, ruining the visual enjoyment of the event for other people in the stands.  Or imagine visiting a monument like Mt. Rushmore or a national scenic treasure like Yellowstone Falls and having to contend with a cloud of "selfie-drones" vying for best camera position. In some cases steps to deal with the nuisance factor have already begun.  I recently visited Volcanoes National Park here on the island of Hawai'i and noticed a NO DRONES sign at the entrance gate and at scenic overlooks.  If ever I were tempted to fly a drone myself, this is the place, particularly to get a better look at the lava lake that is just barely visible from the observation platform about 1.5 miles away at the summit of Kilauea Volcano. However, the majestic impact of this awesome sight would be greatly diminished if dozens of private drones were buzzing around, and I applaud the restriction.  Maybe a compromise would be to have a park ranger fly an official drone over the caldera once at hour or so, with the live video feed being fed to monitors for visitors to watch.

As you might guess, the potential of drones has not been lost on nefarious ne'er-do-wells, criminals, and even terrorists. British police report drones being used to case houses and businesses for burgleries, and to smuggle drugs into prisons.  In Japan a drone landed on the office bulding of the Prime Minister, and in the U.S. drones have landed near the White House. According to a chilling assessment by CNAS, a bi-partisan think-tank focusing on national security:

"Though most COTS [Commerical Off The Shelf] drones have relatively short range and limited payload capacity, they have been successfully used to smuggle drug packages and could be modified to carry explosives, firearms, or other damaging objects instead. To date, The Wall Street Journal reports, 'authorities in the U.S., Germany, Spain, and Egypt have foiled at least six potential terrorist attacks with drones since 2011,' and more can be expected. The difficulty of monitoring and regulating the sale of such systems in the future – a major contributor to their appeal to disruptive actors – is compounded by the fact that they are dual-use, with both military and civilian applications, and unlike firearms do not require registration." (CNAS 2015 Report, A World of Proliferated Drones)

Much of the drone's appeal to the Bad Guys is that their small size and modifiability makes them very transportable, concealable, hard to detect at low altitudes, and difficult to restrict from designated areas. The CNAS report explains this problem very clearly:

"While some COTS drones contain firmware that restricts flight in designated 'no-fly zones,' such as those around airports and certain national security landmarks, skilled programmers could remove these restrictions. Furthermore, such restrictions do not apply to drones assembled from component parts....given the construction material, small size, and flight altitude of most hobbyist systems, they are rarely visible on radar and are therefore particularly difficult to detect. For this reason, defenses against them often require either visual or possibly auditory identification or concerted signal-jamming to disrupt the operator’s communications link with the system and/or the system’s GPS. Most such detection methods however, require either a pre-existing knowledge or expectation of the system’s presence in a given area and thus are markedly less effective against unanticipated use. And as future systems begin to incorporate GPS-independent means of navigation, such as visual-aided or inertial navigation, signal-jamming will cease to be an effective countermeasure. For these reasons, hobbyist systems hold significant disruptive potential." (CNAS Report)

Although there may be no perfect defense against drone misuse, there are still some ways of making malfeasance more difficult. Authorities in tech-happy Japan are taking a "Drone versus Drone" approach with special six-propeller drones equipped with a 10'x6' net that can snag violators right out of the air.  Laser guns that can knock out the electronics of drones have been developed by American and British companies. In contrast, Police in Holland and in Britain are considering “a low-tech solution for a high-tech problem” by using trained eagles to
hunt down and destroy offending drones. It seems eagles react to drones as rival birds of prey and instinctively attack them to defend their territory, and their eyesight is so good they can easily avoid the propellers.

There are several takeaway lessons worth noting in the drone phenomenon.  First, technological advances are hard to predict.  Few people expected ten years ago that today there would be over a million drones in private hands. But this is neither the first nor last time that a major technological development has caught us by surprise and we should probably resign ourselves to expect the unexpected in the future.

Second, technology invariably has unintended and unanticipated consequences.  Drones have been used since the 60's in the military, but the sudden proliferation of small drones intended for recreational and commercial use has brought with it a host of issues that have little to do with recreation or business -- serious issues of privacy, safety, security, and social interaction. The suddenness and intensity of these consequences causes significant social disruption and an uncomfortable feeling that things are out of control until our institutions and social mores adapt to the new challenges.

Finally, the pace of scientific and technological advance seems to be increasing, perhaps because much of the time progress rests on incremental achievements in many fields, and a single technological development, like small inexpensive drones, results from a novel joint application of newly available knowledge in several seemingly unrelated areas. We are in an age of tremendous scientific advancement in a range of disciplines from nano-tech to astrophysics that offer opportunities for unparalleled numbers of technological innovations. For better or worse, I suspect this pace is not going to slow down anytime soon.

Ok, that's it. I'll just "buzz off" now if you don't mind...