#society

Stewardship of Global Collective Beahvior

src: (Bak-Coleman et al. 2021Bak-Coleman, Joseph B, Mark Alfano, Wolfram Barfuss, Carl T Bergstrom, Miguel A Centeno, Iain D Couzin, Jonathan F Donges, et al. 2021. “Stewardship of global collective behavior.” Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 118 (27): e2025764118.)

A well written call-to-arms for some sort of interdisciplinary effort to understand the possible pernicious effects of social media and more broadly the rapid pace of technological change affecting the way we communicate, form groups, digest information, and hopefully provide guidance on how to solve these problems (e.g. writing pieces specifically for regulators).

They use a term called crisis discipline which I like, the canonical example being climate (change) science: you have this incredibly complicated system that needs urgent research and attention (for catastrophic reasons), but you don’t necessarily have the time (or it’s just not possible given the complexities of the system) to be entirely systematic and sure about the conclusions. In other words, these kinds of disciplines call for a much more agile form of research.

What’s interesting to me is that they couch all this talk through the lens of [[complexity-theory]]. The idea is that, for instance, once you connect half the world’s population together through the internet, or social media, you’re going to get unaccounted-for emergent behaviour, very much like those studied in complexity science, except usually the subject is natural processes (like swarms of locusts or school of fish). The difference now is that we’re dealing with humans, social interactions.

A good example here is the flow of information. Usually when we think of information flow we think of communication networks, where we’re sending bits of data around. However, the real information flow networks, and those that matter the most right now from a catastrophic perspective, are the information flows that we humans create when we read and share news over social media, thereby enabling the incredible propagation of fake news that we see permeate the world today. And this isn’t just a simple process: once you incorporate humans (and human judgement) into this network, it becomes infinitely more complicated to model and predict.

I definitely feel like this is something that I’ve been trying to articulate, and so I’m happy to see it laid out in this clear manner (unlike the way my brain organises its information, if it does that at all). It also has the same sort of flavor as my [[project-fairness]] work.

Working From Home

src: NBER

One of the more fundamental changes of COVID-19, besides awareness of pandemics and the like, is a shift in the acceptance and future prevalence of WFH (and the consequences of a dramatic shift in people’s work habits).

We have seen a dramatic exodus of people in places like SF and NYC, which, pre-pandemic, was able to form a snowballing network effect, whereby having such a high concentration of talent and activity produced a self-perpetuating reality of ever-increasing rents and a matching demand for such rents. Entire ecosystems survived on catering to the maintenance and functioning of this concentrated enterprise, most of which effectively disappeared overnight.1 A while back there was a HN thread about whether or not the Silicon Valley folks that rely on this undercurrent of service (background) workers should support them during the pandemic. This sort of reminds me of the documentary we just watched, Sherpa, whereby it’s the Sherpas risking their lives, bringing the Westerner’s cargo and equipment to the next camp, that enables so many of them to ascend Mount Everest. Slightly different, since there we’re talking about people risking their lives, but given the almost subsistence-level income of these service workers, perhaps it isn’t too different. The key question is what is the permanent effect of this systemic shock (COVID-19) to such places?

The above paper, through longitudinal surveys, suggests that we’ll probably see more fractional WFH (i.e. generally better flexible working hours). On the other hand, it feels to me that this kind of flexibility is not actually the most efficient (unless you can reasonably predict rates). If everyone works from home, then you effectively do away with the office, perhaps transitioning to some kind of co-working/meeting space. If people are flexible, then your space requirements are at the whims of your employees, and so it becomes an optimization problem, with a penalty for going over-capacity. Obviously, providing the flexibility is a boon for individuals (more choice), but the best kinds of scenarios are win-win for everyone.

Frankly, I’m not qualified to talk much about the dynamics of office life (I doubt my life as an academic provides any insight there), as I have thus far managed to skirt such experiences. My experience with consulting provides personal evidence that, for certain kinds of jobs, with the right kind of people, a permanent WFH arrangement is entirely feasible. Though, again, things might change if everyone else in the team is working in the office. If you’re an employee, you’re definitely more likely to be passed up for promotions and the like.

Meanwhile, many people are dying to be back to the office. We’re lucky in that we have a large contingent at home, which keeps us sane and functioning. However, there’s the confounder of everyone simply being in lockdown – perhaps once everything opens up, people will prefer WFH when they can socialize during the other times.

Alone

via OpenCulture

This is Tarkovsky:1 Of Stalker, Solaris fame.

I don’t know… I think I’d like to say only that they should learn to be alone and try to spend as much time as possible by themselves. I think one of the faults of young people today is that they try to come together around events that are noisy, almost aggressive at times. This desire to be together in order to not feel alone is an unfortunate symptom, in my opinion. Every person needs to learn from childhood how to spend time with oneself. That doesn’t mean he should be lonely, but that he shouldn’t grow bored with himself because people who grow bored in their own company seem to me in danger, from a self-esteem point of view.

And here are some thoughts:

…our rapid-fire, pressure-cooker public discourse may grant us instant access to information—or misinformation—but it also encourages, nay urges, us to form hasty opinions, ignore nuance and subtleties, and participate in groupthink rather than digesting things slowly and coming to our own conclusions. It’s an environment particularly hostile to mediums like poetry, or the kinds of poetic films Tarkovsky made, which teach us the value of judgment withheld, and immerse us in the kinds of aesthetic experiences the internet and television, with their nonstop chatter, push to the margins.

While pondering the [[project-misinformation]], I can’t help but think about how here I am focusing on the technological solution, when there are much more insidious and difficult, existential questions of tectonic shifts in society causing us to be easier targets of disinformation.

Peloton