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36C3 preroll music
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Herald Angel: Please welcome our next
speaker, Adam. Adam will be talking about
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the politics of a supposedly neutral and
how you can read them Adam calls himself a
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survivor of the American capitalism so
please give it up to Adam and enjoy
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applause
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Adam: inaudible can you move the mic in
Yes, thank you. hi so originally this
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talk was supposed to be about algorithms
and then I realized that I was falling
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prey to exactly the thing I was trying to
critique so I expanded the title a bit
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in the talk between the entire system and
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an algorithm that is the kind of the
piece that is hard to discuss so I wanted
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to just start with mathematical
formalisms this is a variable it doesn't
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seem to have any political implications
on its own other than it can be used for a
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lot of things it can it can stand for
anything here's a variable squared this
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might have implications this could be used
to calculate the area of property that
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you own this may be fewer may be something
electrical triangles could be used in
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some kind of projection of Cartesian
coordinates over indigenous landscapes
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this goes boom now we start getting into
actual applications so yeah most of this
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might seem obvious or it might seem
completely foreign so just help fidget or
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something to give me cues yeah
mathematical formalism are sometimes
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considered objective but obviously they
only exist in a context so Howard Zinn has
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a book about his life called you can't be
neutral on a moving train there is that
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any mathematics exists in social
context that were constructed for a
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reason and then omission is almost equally
important if depending on what's
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happening it could be more important
omission would just be the things that
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are not included in your formula and your
algorithm silence is the voice of
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complicity I'm sort of misusing that but
no algorithms are the same as anything
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else you should follow the money if you
want to understand what's happening it's
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just a materialist and pretty effective
way of understanding things think about
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who created the algorithm what is it used
for what types of effects might it
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have and what would the alternatives be if
this wasn't the way that the subject
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matter was being treated. Unfortunately
algorithms are almost never part of
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public debate they're hidden there
they're the private property of
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corporations of governments who don't
think that we need to know what the
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details are they're hidden intentionally
or not behind the language of
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mathematics so in order to critique this
at this level of mathematical formula
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you need to be literate in both
mathematics and politics or sociology just
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they don't necessarily go together that
that immediately narrows down the number
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of people who might be talking about the
content of a formula so all I'm doing
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here is I'm just giving a few examples and
showing how something that might be
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neutral is absolutely not I'm starting
with human population, population
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obviously has been a hot subject for
centuries and the projections are wildly
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different and hypothetical and obviously
it matters a lot we're at a turning point
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in our planets ecology at least and so
when you see a graph like this you need to
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think what is this ? Why does it have
such a wide range ? There's this blue line
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that goes straight up but then there's
this other line that looks like some type
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of collapse or rebound back down to a
sustainable level and then you have the
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if you look at who's putting this out
there they're not interested in the
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political aspects at this top level they
actually want to take those out of their
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predictions although you see something
like the red dashed lines and those are
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80 % prediction certainty and the dotted
lines are 95 % prediction certainty
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I would say that's all pretty unlikely
because they haven't factored in some
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important parts about the world such as
the Earth's carrying capacity most
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estimates say that this red line or sorry
the estimates are very different but one
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plausible estimate is that we passed the
Earth's carrying capacity in 1992 in
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which case most of these curves are bogus
and something entirely different is going
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to happen to not include that in your
population projections is, I would say,
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irresponsible. Here's another publication
by the same well-meaning organization but
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this you can see there's, well, I'll let
you think about what that means for a
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second yourself this is the population
change in each country given in as
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a heat map so you see some populations
are growing more slowly than others some
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are growing quickly and you see these
little buttons at the bottom let you look
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at the more developed and least developed
regions which is another obstacle to
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participation, it's a pretty World Bank
sort of perspective the global
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development view and then you see that the
population of African countries is
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growing more quickly which throws a racial
element into it too and unfortunately
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that's how this type of map is used I
can't read this because it's too awful but
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but this is sort of the state of rhetoric
around population and the public
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discussion and this, the same author 1968
pretty mainstream is saying this is one
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way to take care of population growth.
laugh So you can see it gets bad
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quickly and we need to be involved in
actually re-conceptualizing these models
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We can't let there just be a graph like
this, that doesn't include this. We can't
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let there be a map like this that doesn't
talk about the power dynamics between
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countries and the history of racialized
politics. Yeah, here, just a few
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consequences of how population models
actually affect the world and then of
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course there are there follow-on effects
of population anxieties causing other
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political effects. Here's an alternative
model and this one is a bit more
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interesting I just wanted to paint the
status quo so that I could I could show
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you what the alternative might be. This is
a model that was actually the first. It
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was only put out a few years ago and it
was the first to combine the idea of
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ecological cycles with the
Earth's carrying capacity ecological
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resource consumption with class conflict.
In this case the humans are eating
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the planet, the planet slowly regenerates,
and the rich are eating the poor.
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This is actually, surprisingly, a
controversial thing to say.
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That predicts a completely different sort
of population trajectory than the United
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Nations drafted. The green line here is
the earth's resources, the red line is the
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commoners population and the blue line
are the elites. In this case there they're
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like a unchecked predator and as soon as
they're introduced they eat all the poor
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people, if you play with this model I have
an interactive version online you can
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sorry, this is not my model but I made an
interactive visualization for it that
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lets you change the parameters and see
what happens if you drag the inequality
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control back and forth then you see that
you can get a completely different
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behavior here you get the population
skyrocketing and then stabilizing and
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that's sort of just the natural thing
that you would do if there's a single
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predator-prey cycle and and you're you
know you're just rabbits eating grass for
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example I don't think there's time for a
tour right now unfortunately but it might
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be fun for you. The point I wanted to
make though that with this second
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predator-prey cycle between rich and
poor people, you're actually introducing
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Marxism into the formula. This has
been used to explain capitalism's
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periodic crises which capitalism still
won't admit exist, interestingly enough,
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capitalism says there's always some
external driver behind the crises but yeah
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so if you take this assumption in the
formula and you say capitalism does cause
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periodic crises and rich people are
acting like predators what do you do ?
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You need class struggle, you need
to create more equality. So this is
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just another example of how we
should try to be involved in the
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construction of these models and their use
in our world. Labor supply is also very
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important but maybe not as interesting.
Don't worry about this ! I tried to not
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include math because part of the point
here is to make these ideas accessible
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with or without math but I did want this
picture up here just to show that in the
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dominant form, in the dominant
neoclassical economic perspective if you
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pay people too much they stop working and
if so you want to pay them just little
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enough that they work as much as they
possibly can and there are all types of a
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crazy assumptions built into these
formulas like humans are able to make
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rational choices rather than just taking
the next job in desperation I've never
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lived in this world I've only lived in
maybe this world where I want to fight
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back against this formula as much as I can
sorry I'll let you read this if you want
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but yeah this formula is missing all of
the things that relate to my working world
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like my motivation for working is not
just consumption of things. There's
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essential survival and then there's
wanting to be motivated by contributing to
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the world somehow there's organized labor
which i think about pretty often and most
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jobs that would be another way out of
this formula and you can see the effects
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of this type of policy are that the
richest 5% keep getting richer and
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everyone else stays the same. More effects
of the neoclassical labor supply and then
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this is sort of more active I don't
think there are a ton of people working on
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this but I'd like to just go through the
question anyway. Wikipedia has never had
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paid advertisements and it's valuable
because people visit it extremely often
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and trust it, based on its reputation.
So if you put advertisements on here
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people this is sort of, like this would be
the holy grail for most advertisers! It
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would be that you would have your product
advertised on top of something that people
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already believed so their skepticism
would be much lower there was actually a
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discussion about putting paid
advertisements on Wikipedia in 2001
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little-known fact Wikipedia was started
as part of a porn company Bomis and the
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the chief of this porn company Jamie
Wales said that there would be paid
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advertising on Wikipedia caused a huge
fight a Spanish Wikipedia split off and
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formed the Encyclopedia Libre Universal I
think it's called and pretty much because
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of this fork Wikipedia was then forced
into not having paid advertisements and
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split off from Bomis when we do have
advertising on Wikipedia which brings in
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money it's basically just two relentless
stream of money and we have to
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turn it off to not raise too much and
So here's the extremely materialistic
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view of what could be done with Wikipedia
we have 244 billion page views per year
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We could put in for advertising slots
this is a industry standard number
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in fact I think it's four per page so as
you scroll there would be more and more
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ads and then at this price we could bring
in almost three billion dollars a year
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which is a huge profit margin at the low
operating cost of 100 million. If you
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create this type of formula then you
have Wikipedia suddenly becomes and
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something that you can buy and sell, it
becomes something that corporations would
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want to take over and control the content
of it's obviously soulless. Here's another
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view of advertising on Wikipedia. Who
creates the value in Wikipedia? The
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editors do. Who's allowed to run the
fundraising campaigns only three
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organizations actually my employer
Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikimedia
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Switzerland and the Wikimedia Foundation,
which interestingly enough is the one
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organization in the group of Wikipedia
chapters, it's the one organization which
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is not democratically controlled. It's a
self-perpetuating board and this
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charismatic porn leader, Jimmy Wales (I
hope this is recorded) he's still the some
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kind of honorary chair of the board he
has a renewable membership for life and
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the board members appoint themselves yeah
so why are they allowed to be the only
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ones raising money through Wikipedia
because they own the trademarks so it's a
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pretty typical arrangement when it comes
down to it and there's some kind of power
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sharing deal that although I know about it
and I was close to people who do
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understand it I never learned what's in
there so I can't tell you much about it.
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So if you follow this train of logic then
you can come up with another set of
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formulas which is actually the flow of
value around Wikipedia and its content and
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if we did that we might be able to say
hey there's there's an excellent argument
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for having democratic control of the
resources and then more along those lines
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if you take the same problem domain and
you and you come up with different
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formulas inside of it you can you can do
things like say what would editors like
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from this system that exists to post
advertisements which does exist by the way
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if they're just not paid advertisements
editors might want a better way of sharing
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the resources among themselves. They
obviously would fight tooth and nail to
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prevent paid advertising from ever being
on there but they do want each other they
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want each other's campaigns to be more
effective so that we're not constantly
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showing banners with no return I also
wanted to point to this paper which is
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the one that caused me the anxiety at the
beginning of the talk protective
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optimization technologies and I would
love for you all to click it because it's
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it's another it's it's like a formal
perspective of looking beyond the
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algorithm at the entire system that the
algorithm is embedded in the slides are
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attached to the talk link if you want
that's all I have does anybody feel like
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asking questions? Extremely brave people
want to ask questions?
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Question: Hi so I was five minutes late
but perhaps do you have more examples on
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how you see some kind of a political not
twist but like background when you see
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graphs or statistics? Do you have any more
examples when you see that happened how
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do you detect this when you're a beginner
and you look at this statistical graph
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how can you analyze it and find out what
the political background or like missing
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preconceptions are?
Adam: Thanks I wish I'd prepared a few
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more and I'm just doing this from
an armchair also I my day job is just in
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programming and so the only reason I
think about this stuff is because I'm I
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have spent a long time working for evil
companies unfortunately, and so I'm
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always trying to second-guess what the
company is actually doing and, but
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to do that there's no real trick that I
can think of it's really just the Chomsky
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approach would be: follow the money!
Where does the money come from? Where does
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it go ? Why do people want this to
exist ? And so you have some formula,
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some system if you have one in mind,
please suggest it! And then, yeah,
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there's the thing that you could do like
literature review where you you just look
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at similar attempts to look at that same
problem domain and find what people have
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left out of the one that you're looking
at but but I don't think there's the
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concrete system to do it because that that
would like allow you to invent everything
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in the world so it's kind of case-by-case
as far as I can tell sorry.
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Question: And if you were Jimmy Wales back
in the day and you would be setup like a
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benevolent dictator for life, how would
you have faced yourself out? How would be
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your take on? What should be the
correct way or correct way of Wikipedia
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raising for example funds if in the end
the people who create value are editors?
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Adam: When Wikipedia was first started it
was officially a membership organization
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and so everybody who is editing or
uploading files or changing the source
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code was considered a member in Germany
it's a Verein I think and so everybody was
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supposed to have one vote for the board
of trustees and that pretty much takes
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care of the problem right there if you
don't in Wikimedia foundation was
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illegally changed to be a non membership
organization a few years in and actually
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it was illegal because they didn't
announce it to the people who were
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technically members so I suppose editors
would should feel free to sue the
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Wikimedia Foundation for control for
example there's no statute of limitations
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on this particular thing that happened
but in general I would say from my
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tiny bit of experience doing grassroots
organizing an organization is something
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like a child it's you don't want to have
it live in your house its whole life and
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you don't want to be telling it to get up
and brush its teeth in the morning
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the measure of success should be
something more like it takes a life of its
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own it might be direction you didn't
consider and so to do that you have to
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devolve the power from yourself. Does that
answer the question? Okay all right well
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thank you so much for coming
I hope it was useful.
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postroll music
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