It's well established that people distort recall of facts, weighing of evidence, etc. to prove their ideas correct. This study seems to just say "what if the facts being distorted came from a scientific paper" and "what if the ideas were political (free market solves everything, we could get rid of all guns by making them illegal)."

It's such an unsurprising result that I'm amazed they ran the study.

How else can we ensure that the algorithms actually do what their vendors claim?

Well, it's predictive, so the only way would be to match predictions with final outcomes. No need to open the box. In fact, it would probably distract people to do so.

It's more complicated than that. Poor or middle class people who worked really hard for what little they have hate the idea of someone who "did nothing" catching up with them. After all, they did do a lot of work. And they were promised a reward for it.

So, in a way, the paying shit wages saved the rich twice over, once in not having to pay their employees, and again in lower taxes cause "screw the lazy bums.

Whereas if middle class people felt like thy had extra, they wouldn't mind programs that saved money overall, by, I dunno, feeding the homeless and giving them preventative care.

But I do find your point of view of how this attitude originated to be a really interesting take on things. Is there a book or something you can recommend that expands upon it?

Why would you be opposed to big data finding out when you take a dump in the morning, as long as its voluntary?

What does "voluntary" mean in this context? Seriously, the point of Big Data is to take things you want to reveal about yourself, and convert them into things you do not. So, are you saying it's okay as long as Big Data uses what you are offering up freely? Or are you saying it's okay as long as what Big Data reveals are things you were planning on offering for free anyway?

If you do all your internet activity through tor, and don't subscribe to cable TV, and find non-identifiable ways to obtain your video entertainment, the only thing big data can work with is your bank account, credit card, library card, and social security number. (And cash payments can limit what your credit card can say about you.)

Well, and if you don't live in your parent's basement, utilities, bank accounts, your job, what other people say about you/tag you at on Facebook, plane and hotel reservations, bars record IDs as you use them, mass transit cards, and a lot more.

It won't keep you safe from the NSA, but big business isn't holding a gun to your head (yet).

Big Business is far more aggressive than the NSA. Hell, the NSA just insisted that business shares what it collects with them

Surely any judge would issue a warrant in a millisecond after seeing that horrific video

Scary thing you said one: The video should no bearing on the issuance of a warrant. As a rule, warrants should be issued on how reasonable a search it is, and likely to turn up evidence. Not, how horrifying the crime is.

Scary thing you said two: You think a warrant would be necessary. The data is not the suspects, but the car company's. And the car company has no rights to privacy vis-a-vis that data to protect. So the government can just take it. See also, the metadata surveillance program.

I think this is a pretty shady practice, don't get me wrong, but it's not quite as "secretly" as the summary made it out to be.

It depends on whether it is, "Here is the GPS consent form, saying we will track you til you pay the care off" or "Here, sign this 82 pages of forms and you can drive off now" where people miss clause 18.f.ii

Now, people should read what they sign. But the way people react when I read waivers, etc, you'd think I'm the only one.

Rates go down when insurance companies can reduce risk.

Yes, cost savings in an oligopoly are always passed promptly along to the customers. That is a real thing that economic theory or practice says happens.

Some insurance companies may but there will always be at least one who will not. There will always be a customer base who prioritize privacy over rates and there will always be at least one company to serve that client base.

Insurance is an area where death spirals are common as the least risky leave the pool, driving up average risk. The issue is there is no way to distinguish "privacy guy" from "shitty driver guy". So all the people in that pool are given "shitty driver prices". But those shitty driver prices cover the average shitty driver. So, at timestep n+1, the least shitty drivers without the devices comply with monitoring to save money. At timestamp n+m, where m is likely to be a couple of years, the deathspiral is complete and there is no way to distinguish between privacy and people who intentionally crash into trees.

At that point, compliance, or opting out of the system, become mandatory.

But lest you still think that people prioritizing privacy are catered to in the market, I'd like to know what cell phone you use? what carrier? what ISP? (I invite the rest of Slashdot to ask more leading, and saddening, questions along these lines.)

Which at least a known cost.

Yeah it's a lot, almost doubling the unit cost. But, if we ship a dozen together...

Does ANYONE think that this would be happening if the gov agencies didn't think they could get something from it ?

You mean like make money (it will be profitable) and aiding their citizens (cheaper goods) and keep money in Australia (better Australian economy) and lowering the cost of trade with Australia (general trade = good arguments here)? Because, yeah, I mean, I do think the government does things for any one of those purposes.

Or do you mean nutter "if it weren't for this, how would customs officials have the right to open packages coming into the country on clearly marked USPS/UPS/FedEx shipments?"

On a personal note, this is great. Overseas shipping is such a complex beast my company was not planning on shipping to Australia (at least until we grew larger). Saying to Australians, "you can purchase our product through a ShipMate account" will help my company with more sales, and Australians who want to buy our product.

Just to be clear, you have asked people that you know not to tag you in photos that they post and they do so anyway?

Yeah. And I've given people pictures that I took and asked them not to put them on Facebook and they do it anyway. Or they take photos and put it up without really letting you know. It's creepy.

But even if they don't, they allow Facebook to scrape their phone of all the contact numbers, so Facebook knows who my friends are because, well, the same 10 people who are friends with one another all have my phone number.

Why wouldn't people in the PR or DC be able to vote? I mean, they don't have senators or reps. Okay, the PR gov. get's elected at the same time as the US President, but the DC voters just got to cast a ballot for the mayor.

Your case seems hard to believe. A passport is pretty much the sine non qua of official IDs (and includes your address) - I'd be interested in any state that forbid their use; federal law protects the voting rights of both people who are homeless and people who are spending a decade abroad'; Your daughter was eligible to vote at her parent's (your) address while going to college... attending college doesn't change your residency unless you actively do it. If so, she would have been eligble to vote wherever her college was. And while travelling could have maintained that residency for voting purposes.

It sounds like you know two Americans who couldn't be bothered registering to vote.

I wish more people who couldn't be bothered to learn about the candidates also couldn't be bothered to learn how to vote.

It seems like this kind of runoff voting will benefit third parties. After all, there may be 3 or 4 major party candidates splitting the vote for that party, whereas a minor party will likely only field one candidate in the general primary. Also, the number of "straight ticket" style voters devoted to one of the two major parties is less likely to turn out on primaries, which have far lower turnout and is mroe driven by getting people to the polls.

Therefore, it seems more likely that the final vote will have a minor party candidate end up in the top two this way, than if there were three candidates R,D,other.

Seriously? First, read what he was in response to. Some fairly minor critique about libertarianism. He starts his post with:

Some key illuminating points to look into:

He is not being sarcastic, ironic or presenting the end result of a slippery slope. He is actively defending all those things. The reason his entire second point is about the gold standard is the parent said how libertarians stupidly support the gold standard, and he was acting like that was an idea worth defending.

You:

This is why I think you didn't comprehend him. He is clearly not advocating that a line-item veto on tax forms should exist, so showing that that would be a stupid idea does not refute him at all. If he is really an anarchist as you suspect, he wouldn't be advocating that tax forms exist at all. But he's not directly advocating for anarchism or the abolition of all taxes there,

Him

The reason I pay taxes is I don't want to have someone steal my shit, throw me in jail, and/or shoot me. Not because I think it's right or I support what's being done with my money. I think most people, if they had a real view of most of what's being done with their tax dollars, wouldn't support it either.

The guy is a libertarian. His ideas are stupid. A line-item taxpayer veto, which he advocates while recognizing that it will end government, is stupid.

And at this point you're either willfully ignorant of what he said, or are trolling. Or, I'll made this allowance, I'm willing to believe I misread him. But you're going to have to do something besides mere assertion.

Now, you seem to be at least sympathetic to the libertarian side yourself (drawn from the connotation of your "predictable responses" to "what if I don't want to pay taxes", as well as the fact that you take the non-aggression principle seriously). If you want to discuss that on it's merits, I'm more than happy to. But let's not pretend that there is some deeper issue.

He's not arguing that anyone should take that position, but that it's the logical consequence of really taking the non-aggression principle to heart.

He most certainly is saying that the Libertarian position is being misrepresented, and that it really is X, and that he thinks it's important enough to go on and on about. Furthermore, there are no attempts to distance himself from the points. I feel safe asserting that he actually believes these points.

Second, he does mention, in all the mass of words, a line-item veto for taxpayers:

So I do the math on the percentage of the federal tax intake that will be spent on this program, I reduce my 2015 taxes paid by this percentage, and include a note saying that I choose not to fund that program, and to please use the rest as they see fit but not to use my dollars for that purposes.

That is the point I choose to address, because while I find many of his ideas incorrect, I find this one particularly easy to refute, yet attractive sounding before any analysis is performed. As opposed to the non-aggression principle (which takes longer to refute) or the gold standard (which is so obviously dumb as to not be worth refuting).