Mois : janvier 2018

Homo Deus – The data religion

« Dataism » – this religion doesn’t venerates neither gods nor man – it worships data.

Dataism declares that the universe consists of data flows and expects electronic algorithms to eventually decipher and outperform biochemical algorithms.

Dataism is most entrenched in its two mother disciplines: computer science and biology.

If humanism can be considered a single data-processing system, its output will be the creation of a new and even more efficient data-processing system, called the Internet of All Things.

Homo Deus: Techno-humanism

Just as socialism took over the world by promising salvation through steam and electricity so in the coming decades new techno religions may conquer the world by promising salvation through algorithms and genes.

The techno religions are :

  • techno-humanism
  • data religion

Techno-humanism still sees humans as the apex of creating but agrees that Homo sapiens as we know it has run its historical course and will no longer be relevant in the future. Technology should be used to create Homo deus – a much superior human model that will retain some essential human features, but will enjoy upgraded physical and mental abilities that will enable it to hold its own event against the most sophisticated non-conscious algorithms.

As Sapiens organised in larger groups they lost some skills and aptitudes (smell, paying attention – Fear Of Missing Out, ability to dream). For the economical and political system it was worth it.

The attention helmet – the overuse of it my cause us to lose our ability to tolerate confusions, doubts and contradictions. That means, techno-humanism can end up by downgrading humans. They would lack some really disturbing human qualities that hamper the system and slow it down.

Humanism always emphasised that it is not easy to identify our authentic will. It demands us to listen to the inner messages even if they scare us. Technological progress wants to control the inner voices.

The dilemma: how we can live with such technologies as long as we believe that the human and the human experiences are the supreme source of authority and meaning?

 

Salary transparency

When negotiating, the less information your opponent has, the better. If you know how much everyone else in your role earns you will hold at that amount. If you have no idea, you might accept less. Making this information publicly could:

  • close the gender wage gap
  • help everyone to wheel, deal, demand and self-advocate

When a company hire another employee they have no idea how much value that person will add to the company. Salary transparency ensures that the employee knows what the company makes and the company knows what he makes which may help level salaries and eliminate discrimination.

 

Homo Sapiens – the useless class

Most important question of the twenty-first-century economics: what to do with the superfluous people after we will have highly intelligent non-conscious algorithms that can do almost everything better?

As long as machines competed humans merely in physical abilities, there were countless cognitive tasks that humans performed better. What will happen once algorithms outperform us in remembering, analysing and recognising patterns?

Over the last few thousands years we humans have been specialising. For AI to squeeze humans out of the job market it needs only to outperform us in the specific abilities a particular profession demands. The crucial problem is not to create new jobs but to create new jobs that humans perform better than algorithms.

Very soon the traditional model where life was divided into two main parts,a period of learning followed by a period of working, could become utterly obsolete and the only way for humans to stay in the game will be to keep learning throughout their lives and to reinvent themselves repeatedly.

 

 

Objects and data structures

A class should not push its variables out through getters and setters. It should expose abstract interfaces that allows its users to manipulate the essence of the data without having to know its implementation. We want to express data in abstract terms.

Procedural code (code using data structures) makes it easy to add new functions without changing the existing data structures. Object oriented code makes it easy to add new classes without changing existing functions.

Not everything is an object.

The Law of Demeter – a module should not know about the innards of the objects it manipulates. A method f  of a class C should call only the methods of these:

  • C
  • an object created by f
  • an object passed as an argument to f
  • an object held in an instance variable of C

Talk to friends, not to strangers.

Data Transfer Objects – a very useful structure with public variables and no functions used especially when communicating with database which often become the first in series of translatio stages that convert raw data in a database into objects in the application code.

Active Records – a special form of DTO with navigational methods like save or find and are direct translations from database tables.

Objects expose behavior and hide data making it easy to add new kinds of object without changing existing behaviors. It also hard to add new behaviors to existing objects.

Data structures exposes data and have no significant behavior. That makes it easy to add new behaviors to existing data structures but makes it hard to add new data structures to existing functions.

Choose the right approach:

  • objects – the flexibility to add new data types
  • data structure – the flexibility to add new behaviors

 

 

Functions

A function (method) is a the first line of organisation in any program.

Rules for making the functions communicate their intent:

  • not small but very small
  • do one thing – can you extract another method from it with a name that is not a restatement?
  •  use descriptive names
  • number of arguments: niladic, monadic,  dyadic, triadic (to avoid)
  • no side effects, no hidden things, do only what you promised in the name
  • do something (change the state of an object )or answer to something (return some information about the object), not both
  • use exceptions instead of error codes
  • Don’t Repeat Yourself – duplication, the root of all evil.

Homo Sapiens – free will

Can humans give a meaning to the world?

How do biotechnology and AI threaten humanism?

Who might inherit humankind and will replace humanism?

The contradiction between free will and contemporary science. Scientists say there is no soul, no free will and no « self », but genes, hormones and neurons and the electrochemical brain processes are either deterministic or random. Free will exists only in the imaginary stories humans created.

Humans act according to their desires meaning they have free will, but also do the dogs or chimpanzees. The question would be: can they control their desires? At least, they don’t get the choose them.

 

Man in the middle

A man-in-the-middle attack occurs when someone eavesdrop remotely and undetected on unsecured chatter between people and website. To intercept or possibly alter the website traffic a hacker can set up an unsecure WiFi hotspot (evil twin attack), installing a malware on the user’s PC or using a sniffer to intercept the traffic (network sniffer).

Evil twin attacks can be prevented by carefully considering networks before connecting. Oddities like frequent disconnects, promises of fast WiFi networks or strange WiFi locations can signal an evil twin attack.

A network sniffer is used to monitor the network traffic, view details of unencrypted requests or detect network vulnerabilities.

Websites often communicate with web browser over HTTPS which uses cryptography. So, two important measures to use a secure connection would be:

  • connect to a familiar, secured WiFi network
  • ensure the website uses HTTPS

Path traversal

Path traversal attack exploits improper handling of filenames in a website’s query string. Typically, the hackers are looking for private files not intended for user browsing, files that may contain sensitive data (payment data, server configuration elements, etc).

A way to prevent this kind of attack is by segregation. Public and private files are kept in different locations. For examples, the public files are on server A, the private files would be either in a secure partition on server A or on a secure file on server B.

Another way to prevent is to restrict permissions on the server. The principle of least privilege – systems operate with the least amount of privilege necessary.

Other measures are: keeping the server OS up-to-date, sanitizing paths for illegal character patterns or not relying on user input for filenames.