Confronting who you are to become who you want to be; Big Tech gone bad; Deepfakes blackmailing you and electioneering

• 1.  Where the Sidewalk Ends
• 2.  The Only Parts of the Series That Mattered
• 3.  And When I Searched For Your Name Specifically
• 4.  In Soviet Russia, Yelp Reviews You
• 5. The Part Where You Claim the Search Results in 3. Were Really This
• 6. News of Medicine
• 7. Fun Topline Study Results, But Social Science, So Actual Truth May Vary

 Intro Image Credit: “The Shadow Obscures” by Sara Scribner https://www.scribnersgallery.com/-

1. “The Giving Tree” and the Doppelganger

So a few nights ago, my daughter couldn’t find the Harry Potter she wanted, and instead handed me Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree.”  I am going to assume all of you have read it.  If not, here’s the link to Wikipedia:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Tree because this section is only going to make sense if you know the story.

Re-reading the book as an adult, the mixed reaction of childhood came flooding back.  I noted chasing that wikipedia link for that wikipedia quotes someone saying this is one of the most controversial children’s books of all time.  So I’m not alone in the mixed reactions I had then and now.  I’ve got that going for me, at least.  I remember then, and again now, the awe at the selflessness of the tree.  But I also remember, even young, not feeling real great about the man the boy becomes.  Always asking.  Probably too quick to take offers that the tree cannot afford to make (they come at too high a cost to the tree).

As a boy, I told myself love wins in the end and the boy and the tree are together, old shadows of their younger selves, in the end.  Nice story.

As an adult, I remember the nice story, and read it to my kids.  And I am more disquieted when I am done.  “Too simple for adults” Silverstein’s publishers apparently said, rejecting it the first time.  I don’t think that’s the problem.

I read another book recently.  I don’t read much fiction any more, but I did have a few stored up/stolen moments here and there, and got into “Descent into Hell” by Charles Williams.  One of the driving plot points for one of the characters is that she is being haunted by her doppelganger.  Not merely her twin, how we mean doppelgänger in current use.  But in the original mythological sense.  In the context of the novel, the character is being stalked by a looming confrontation with her true self.  One of the main themes is that this confrontation is necessary, and the descent to hell is made by those who do not confront their true selves (but rationalize away, as so many of us do).

So I wondered, if my doppelgänger appeared today, and I could watch myself truly in action stripped of the rationalizations and ego protection devices I can (and do) employ, what would I see?

How uncomfortably close to the boy in “The Giving Tree” am I?  How often am I interested only in what concerns me?  Do I look to see if others can afford to give me what they offer from their generosity?  Am I so self-absorbed that I don’t really hear others?  Am I so self-absorbed that I cannot love as others love me?  (I say as I write “I” about 50 times in five sentences)  

And oh, how our culture makes smooth and wide the road to self-absorption.

Particularly social media.

Think of it this way.  For those of you who pray regularly, how often are your prayers a list of things you want changed?  Sure, you’re asking for others.  It’s not just “give me, give me,” and we are all pious when we pray, aren’t we?  (I cannot seem to find the hotkey to load that with irony, so you will just have to do it yourself).  For those of you who don’t pray often, well, what is the popular culture trope?  The character that says “Lord, I haven’t prayed in awhile, but…” or “God, I know we’ve never talked before, but…”  And they ask for something.  Deliverance from what troubles them.

What would the prayer of the boy in “The Giving Tree” sound like, I wonder?

Yeah, the doppelgänger is a stalking horse in the myth.  That’s … apt.  

I try to petition less these days, and be more selective when I do.

Then there’s the flip side.  I remember as a kid recognizing the tree in “The Giving Tree” as an archetype of a mother’s love.  Now that I am reading it to my own kid, that is a whole new level of identification.  Fun fact—when you left for college at age 18, on average, you had spent more than 90% of all time you ever will with your parents.  For those of you who are parents, look at that stat, and run it in reverse.  The tree remembers the boy as a boy, when they were both young and strong, and the child and the tree were each other’s worlds.  Then the boy grew up.  And the tree gave everything for the memory of the boy, and that love.  And the tree was happy.  The part that you rage against in the book is that the man forgets the boy, and in his own self-absorption becomes so stunted that he cannot love back like the tree did.  If there is a love story, though, it’s that the tree recognizes that the boy, in this respect, stayed a boy — the tree’s love would not be returned at the same level (arguably at all), but the tree loved and gave anyways.

If you need to call your parents, I’ll wait.

Yeah, that tree is the flip side.  I wonder if I have that tree in me.  If I see the tree in others.    

So I’m reading this book in my daughter’s room, right?  And I look up over the pages.  And there in the doorway.  Swear to God, right there in the doorway.  There stands my doppelgänger.  Silent.  Watching me read.

He tasks me.

I see him at night when I replay the day, and was too caught up in the one thing that I did not truly listen when kid or wife or friend or family tried to talk to me.  “He tasks me; he heaps me; I sense in him outrageous strength.”  But I see the doppelgänger in the moment now too, and remember that it can wait, and I make too much of too little, and urgent what is not, and go play soccer or chess with my son. 

I listen to the rustle of leaves when I pray now.

I hope the doppelgänger continues to remind me of a terrible truth, my friends. For those like me, born in the early 80s, these are the years we become men and women Of A Certain Age.  Sparing you fellow Oregon Trail sub generation members the actuarial tables, from here on in, barring a true medical miracle, there is swiftly becoming less time to come than there was before.

“People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy… So you must not think a man has lived long because he has white hair and wrinkles:  he has not lived long, just existed long.”
—Seneca

Like I said, I hope the doppelgänger haunts me.  Like a whisper in a cave:  “What doest thou here, Elijah?”  

What doest thou here indeed.  For I still squander time, and dread him when I see him for that.  But I hope the more I see my doppelgänger now, the better I will choose.

Pivoting out of this section, one more from Seneca:
“We are in the habit of saying that it was not in our power to choose the parents who were allowed to us, that they were given to us by chance.  But we can choose whose children we would like to be.”

By the way, I was put onto Seneca in passing in Taleb’s “Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder (Incerto).” I will likely get into “Antifragile” in depth in a Ramble some day, but you would do well to chase down Seneca too. I recommend the linked version.

This translation is short, and an easy read.  Seneca does not mince many words.

“Anitfragile” is excellent too.  As always with Nicholas, his writing smells of cinnamon and cumin carried on a Levantine breeze as the bazaar clatters around you.  Just remind yourself that he writes like a silk road trader speaks, a wine glass deep, philosophizing as the evening cool falls and the day’s trading is over.  Remind yourself that—and you can get past his less humble moments to some very important truth beneath.

Oh, still haven’t called your parents?  Or still have this-one-thing-to-do-just-a-minute?  Here you go:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUwjNBjqR-c

2.  Speaking of Useful Quotes…

Not going to go into Game of Thrones in detail here.  Instead, I am going to throw down a “best of” quote list, because when the writing was on, it was really and truly on through the run of the series:

“In a room sit three great men, a king, a priest, and a rich man with his gold. Between them stands a sellsword, a little man of common birth and no great mind. Each of the great ones bids him slay the other two. ‘Do it,’ says the king, ‘for I am your lawful ruler.’ ‘Do it,’ says the priest, ‘for I command you in the names of the gods.’ ‘Do it,’ says the rich man, ‘and all this gold shall be yours.’ So tell me—who lives and who dies?”
—Varys

“Power resides where men believe it resides.”
—Varys  (this is their ultimately ephemeral nature which makes all human political institutions fragile.  This is why nations rise and collapse, without fail, without exception, all throughout history.  Remember that when you get worked up over politics next, or someone says ‘history is watching’.  They are the priest, the king, or the rich man trying to convince you of their reason you should act in their best interest. History cares very little about any of us, and will probably be written wrong anyways.)

“It is easy to confuse what is with what ought to be, especially when what is has been working out so well for you.”
—Tyrion

“Everywhere she goes, evil men die, and we cheer her for it … She grows more powerful, and more sure that she is good and right.  She believes her destiny is to build a better world for everyone.  If you believed that—if you truly believed it—wouldn’t you kill whoever stood between you and paradise?”
—Tyrion  (bold is mine—Good timing this, on the near anniversary of Tiananmen Square.  See also:  motivation of ISIS and Al-Qaeda and Che Guevara and…and and…and and…)

Finally, a dialog:
Daenerys:  “The world we need won’t be built by men loyal to the world we have… It’s not easy to see something that’s never been before.  A good world.”
Jon:  “How do you know it’ll be good?”
Daenerys:  “Because I know what is good.”
Jon:  “What about everyone else?  All the other people who think they know what’s good?”
Daenerys:  “They don’t get to choose.”

Easy to imagine ourselves the King or Queen of the world, striking down our political and philosophical enemies—because we know we are right.  The biggest shame of the show is not the heel turn at the end (will avoid the big spoiler on who makes that heel turn if you somehow missed it), but that the last couple seasons were rushed and did not show in more deliberate fashion how this exact mindset, this small mistake, inevitably creates that heel turn–and tyrannies.

This is also why the First Amendment exists.

And to really Ramble in this section, this is also why “deplatforming,” the latest rage, is so, so dangerous.  The Silicon Valley anti-trust suits and summons and Congressional hearings have been a long time coming.  They have brought as much on themselves. Otherwise, Silicon Valley, with among the highest rates of income inequality will be setting the popular discourse and deciding who gets any meaningful voice at all.  Anyone else who thinks they know what is good doesn’t get to speak, and you don’t get to choose who to listen to.  They have the ban hammer for that.

One wonders, cynically, if they are so publicly “deplatforming” to focus attention on others, particularly the most and easily disreputable (whom they have already purged or are slowly purging)—so that you’re not paying attention to what they themselves do?

For what they do, and what they say, do not always appear to agree.

Yet, they kill the message of evil men and we applaud them for it.  And are they not “making efforts,” “rectifying mistakes,” “learning and listening”? 

Are you sure they are? Or could they be making a good show in service, against easy targets they, and others, might disagree with—while carefully preserving their own interests?

And are you sure of what happens to you, your choice and your voice, if you should ever not align with those running such powerful and pervasive communications platforms? 

3.  So This Shouldn’t Surprise You

You mean employees of a powerful organization collecting sensitive and private information succumbed to temptation and abused the privacy of private citizens?  Or more bluntly, you mean Snapchat employees were totally saving and passing around the “best of” your nudes?

Yes.  Yes they were are:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xwnva7/snapchat-employees-abused-data-access-spy-on-users-snaplion

So I guess the good news is that you only saved and/or sent the ones you looked really hot in anyways?

By the way, just did a quick Google search for “leaked Snapchat nudes.”  40.9 million hits.  

13.2 million hits for the same with Instagram.  

Million.

You read that right.

4.  And Yes, Those Definitely Included the Nudes Your Phone Was Stealing While You Slept

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/28/its-middle-night-do-you-know-who-your-iphone-is-talking/?utm_source=pocket-newtab&utm_term=.c81f67bc567f

Worth the read.  In short, be it iPhone or Android, your phone and app trackers hidden in the background (which you don’t even get to “vote” on allowing to run) are lifting large amounts of your data.  And transmitting at all times.  Find out just how much the Yelp app alone (the Yelp app!) is taking!

5.  And In Other Technology News

So a deepfake video of Zuckerberg was posted to Facebook, where he, in his voice, and very realistically rendered, was commenting on their privacy policy.  Apparently, this video was deliberately put there to see if Facebook would take a video spoofing its own founder and CEO down but continue to leave a compilation cut of Nancy Pelosi that made her look doddering which had been previously gone viral on Facebook.

Deepfake videos, if you have not heard of them, are ultra-realistic video splicing.  PornHub had to install software to screen out uploads because lawsuits once a deluge of deepfake celebrity splices started to get uploaded.  The “celebrity deepfake porn” made the news around the “Wonder Woman” release because it happened to Gal Gadot:  https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/qvm97q/deepfake-videos-like-that-gal-gadot-porn-are-only-getting-more-convincing-and-more-dangerous

Well, the obvious and odious next step has now happened.  Regular people, people like you, are being blackmailed with deepfake porn of themselves:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/109671510/fakeporn-videos-are-being-weaponised-to-harass-and-humiliate-women

So to recap, our hypothetical bad Snapchat employee can now use the backdoor transfers in the app loaded onto your phone to steal even your -clean- pictures in the middle of the night while you sleep, and use a deepfake program to splice your face onto a porn star’s body in delicto flagrante — the only real challenge coming in finding a porn star whose skin and body approximate yours enough to be believable when they replace the porn star’s head with yours.  Then our nefarious Snapchat evildoer can either release their fake porn of you into the wilds of the internet where it shall live forever—or just blackmail you first.  Or blackmail you and then release the video anyways, because let’s face it, that’s the kind of person they are.

And then, only then, do the custom sex robot copies of you built off the deepfake porn built from your clean stolen pictures start showing up. 

This is the world in which you now live.

Beyond the porn issue, you can get convincing video of any politician, celebrity or person saying or doing ANYTHING and weaponizing it with deepfake.  While they can spot deepfake now, the technology will improve and become harder and harder to detect.  There will be a constant evolutionary race between programs that can do these edits seamlessly and undetected, and programs to detect those alterations.  You won’t always know which side is winning.  Remember, as Churchill put it, “a lie can be halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.”  

So as we head into a US election season (oh joy), imagine some bad actor weaponizing deepfake for something you already want to believe.  Any bad actor, like say, Mother R., or better yet, M. Russia.  Or just some 4Chan troll.  Again, a deepfake of something you, riled up politically already in the tribal throes of election year politics, are inclined to believe and share instantly.  Especially if you see it before you had your coffee, or you had a bad day at work, or are otherwise emotionally off tilt enough to not ask too many questions.  This could be video of Trump or {pick one of 20 Democratic contenders here} actually kicking puppies.  You won’t ask questions about a well done deepfake pandering to your biases.  The fake will play on confirmation bias to “prove” to you what you already believe is true.  Convincing you the entire video is a lie will take even more now.  And God help you if you shared it, because no one wants to admit they got duped.  Nigerian e-mail princes count on that bit of human nature.  No, you will find yourself eager in the dark—stalking the deepest recesses and conspiratorial alleys of 4Chan and Reddit to sleuth evidence of its truth.  All to defend that deepfake if you made the mistake of sending it to even one other person.  Yes, send it, and you too will volunteer, proudly, courageously, to die on the hill of “no, that really was {insert disliked political figure here} kicking puppies, man. IT WAS!”  

“It’s just, like, a disinformation campaign, man, by the Deep State and Big Tobacco/Pharma/Commies/Oligarchs/Little Sister of the Poor are paying all these agents to say it was a deepfake. But I saw the video and did the research man. And it’s. Fucking. Real.”
—You, from the muthafuckin’ future (aka ~11-15 months from now)

If one wanted, one could easily, easily divide a country against itself by exploiting these biases and a couple really well done fakes released at just the right time, right venue, to be shared early and often.

If one wanted. But who would want that?

Yes, disturbingly, you could absolutely start wars with this technology.

So with deepfake tech in the breeze, and the power of the internet to instantly disseminate before the truth even knows it needs to get its damn boots on and NOW— how do you trust anything you do not see with your own eyes again?

“O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in’t!”
—Shakespeare

And in a way, that’s a shame, because the Internet is amazing.  It really is.  It is the full spectrum of knowledge and experience and interests of humankind, its best and its worst, all available instantly.  The full number of neurons now connected via the internet to form the giant hive mind of humanity is unprecedented.  Used well, it’s doing amazing things:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/foldit-gamers-solve-riddle/

But right now, potential for serious abuse is out there, because it is so accessible to everyone regardless of their motivation.  The only gatekeepers are a small group of people with only market checks (if that) on the enormous power and responsibility gatekeeping the entire damn thing entails.  They’re just as busy selling your data to advertisers because they have bills to pay too, and nothing is for free—when they’re not copying all the nudes, that is. No wonder the DOJ and FTC are getting froggy with subpoenas.

Here’s the better question though.  Who on earth, literally who on earth, do you trust to regulate and control the vast human hive mind?  A corporation?  A group of corporations?  The government?  Any institution, or individual, or even group of individuals, strike you as inherently able to resist the corruption of such power?

Sleep well!

And maybe think of Popper while you dream. At least Popper’s razor for government. Popper said the best government is that government that when (it was when, not if, to Popper, and history has shown this to be a robust assumption) the worst possible people get power they can do the least amount of harm. What brakes on the Gatekeepers of the Internet, Guardians of the Human Hive Mind, must there be so that when (not if) the worst people find themselves gatekeepers and guardians, they can do no significant harm? What is the anti-fragile solution?

6.  In the World of Medicine:

So your Mom has been pretty busy lately:
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-48542403

The following Op-Ed is 100% accurate.  100%.  Ask any MD you know:  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/08/opinion/sunday/hospitals-doctors-nurses-burnout.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&fbclid=IwAR01ak2ICea41tyU0EqNDDj4GUzvs6PSpBDll8dbyZrf5Pgo6k1CaBVXJCQ

And yes, higher education readers, it’s not just you with all the administrative bloat!

Dieting may get a lot more complicated, but this gibes with my (limited) understanding of the state of the science and personal experience:
https://time.com/5600706/personalized-diets-study/

Basically, everyone may need a bespoke diet for optimum nutrition.  HOW to do that isn’t known, other than “eat less processed food and watch calories.” Start there, then make a whole lot of guesswork until you find the foods right for you. The efforts to eliminate or reduce some of that guesswork will be very difficult science because of all the potentially confounding variables. Very difficult. This is one of those projects though where clear success would be enormous benefit to humankind. Prevention really is worth a pound of cure, and proper nutrition is a big part of preventing a number of modern health scourges. So best wishes and best of luck to them!

7a.  Study Surprised to Find Good News to Report:

Racial prejudice rates are actually declining according to the science (and note, this is published by authors whose hypothesis was that Trump was causing an increase in prejudice):
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3378076

Kudos to them for presenting the data as is. That kind of professionalism sometimes… lacks… in the modern era.

7b.  This Week’s Key To Better Sex and A Better Marriage!

Another study, but like the prejudice one above, it’s a social science study, so take with ENORMOUS grains of salt.  But couldn’t resist including because the conclusion is so contrary to typical societal messages.  

Turns out church attendance and religious faith correlate to a better sex life and a happier marriage.  Yep, you read that right.  Church and religion may not repress sex after all! In fact, according to the science, love in the context of a monogamous marriage may be…genuine! Huh. Will wonders (of science) never cease? Anyway, here’s the link to the study itself:  
https://ifstudies.org/reports/world-family-map/2019/executive-summary

And can’t wait for the first to church to advertise based on that…

In Closing…

The Notre Dame Cathedral fire (yeah, that was just like a couple months ago)—say what you will, but they built it like they meant it back in the day.  The entire roof of a building hundreds of years old burns down, spire falls, stained glass shatters in the heat.  The week before Easter, no less.  But still the structure stands, flying buttresses and all.

And inside, as the ruins of the spire collapse down towards it, the world on fire above and falling heavy on the pews below, there’s this:

“But the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake.  And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire.  And after the fire a still small voice.

And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out.”

The marble pieta in front of the cross appears unharmed as well.

Built it like they meant it, indeed.

Talk to you later

Tagged Ramble, SeeingDouble