Comments on: Book review – Rage Inside The Machine: The Prejudice of Algorithms, and How to Stop the Internet Making Bigots of Us All/2019/12/03/book-review-rage-inside-the-machine-the-prejudice-of-algorithms-and-how-to-stop-the-internet-making-bigots-of-us-all/Reviewing fascinating science books since 2017Thu, 30 Nov 2023 19:16:45 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.com/By: Book review – The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a Warning | The Inquisitive Biologist/2019/12/03/book-review-rage-inside-the-machine-the-prejudice-of-algorithms-and-how-to-stop-the-internet-making-bigots-of-us-all/comment-page-1/#comment-49423Sat, 18 Jun 2022 09:09:49 +0000http://inquisitivebiologist.wordpress.com/?p=3918#comment-49423[…] how it is addictive, erodes deep thought, undermines business and politics, turns us into bigots, and has made a business model out of mining the natural resource that is your […]

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]]>By: Book review – A Polar Affair: Antarctica’s Forgotten Hero and the Secret Love Lives of Penguins | The Inquisitive Biologist/2019/12/03/book-review-rage-inside-the-machine-the-prejudice-of-algorithms-and-how-to-stop-the-internet-making-bigots-of-us-all/comment-page-1/#comment-12751Mon, 07 Sep 2020 13:13:21 +0000http://inquisitivebiologist.wordpress.com/?p=3918#comment-12751[…] If it seems I am harping on about this, I ended up questioning how much Walsh has relied on second-hand information for this book. Although I trust that as a reporter he can judge sources for their reliability, I worry that he sometimes misses out on subtleties. A point in case is the extinction of the dinosaurs, where he sketches as dissenters those who blame massive volcanic eruptions. Although the evidence for impact is by now undeniable, the relative importance of each remains hotly debated (recent examples of palaeontologists airing different views in their books are The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs and The Dinosaurs Rediscovered). And the idea of a global conflagration following impact is not supported by research on fossil charcoal. Similarly, the fear of AI running rampant has its share of dissenters. […]

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]]>By: Book review – End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World | The Inquisitive Biologist/2019/12/03/book-review-rage-inside-the-machine-the-prejudice-of-algorithms-and-how-to-stop-the-internet-making-bigots-of-us-all/comment-page-1/#comment-10080Sat, 30 May 2020 16:13:54 +0000http://inquisitivebiologist.wordpress.com/?p=3918#comment-10080[…] If it seems I am harping on about this, I ended up questioning how much Walsh has relied on second-hand information for this book. Although I trust that as a reporter he can judge sources for their reliability, I worry that he sometimes misses out on subtleties. A point in case is the extinction of the dinosaurs, where he sketches as dissenters those who blame massive volcanic eruptions. Although the evidence for impact is by now undeniable, the relative importance of each remains hotly debated (recent examples of palaeontologists airing different views in their books are The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs and The Dinosaurs Rediscovered). And the idea of a global conflagration following impact is not supported by research on fossil charcoal. Similarly, the fear of AI running rampant has its share of dissenters. […]

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]]>By: Book review – How to Predict Everything: The Formula Transforming What We Know About Life and the Universe | The Inquisitive Biologist/2019/12/03/book-review-rage-inside-the-machine-the-prejudice-of-algorithms-and-how-to-stop-the-internet-making-bigots-of-us-all/comment-page-1/#comment-9790Tue, 26 May 2020 11:53:03 +0000http://inquisitivebiologist.wordpress.com/?p=3918#comment-9790[…] universe? Should we fear the rise of artificial intelligence? (“Yes!” say some.”No!” say others. A third group, including Bostrom provides a more balanced argument.) How likely […]

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]]>By: Book review – Everything is Fucked: A Book about Hope | The Inquisitive Biologist/2019/12/03/book-review-rage-inside-the-machine-the-prejudice-of-algorithms-and-how-to-stop-the-internet-making-bigots-of-us-all/comment-page-1/#comment-8669Sat, 28 Mar 2020 16:20:03 +0000http://inquisitivebiologist.wordpress.com/?p=3918#comment-8669[…] The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember and my review of Rage Inside the Machine: The Prejudice of Algorithms, and How to Stop the Internet Making Bigots of …). Or as Manson puts […]

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]]>By: Book review – The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread | The Inquisitive Biologist/2019/12/03/book-review-rage-inside-the-machine-the-prejudice-of-algorithms-and-how-to-stop-the-internet-making-bigots-of-us-all/comment-page-1/#comment-8668Sat, 28 Mar 2020 15:59:44 +0000http://inquisitivebiologist.wordpress.com/?p=3918#comment-8668[…] Meanwhile, in the “real world”, many of these mechanisms play out, often amplified, in how society at large forms their beliefs. The authors highlight journalism – its ethical framework of fairness and representing-all-sides-of-a-debate can backfire spectacularly. In the UK, for example, the BBC has been lambasted for giving equal weight to lobbyists and scientists in its coverage of climate change, creating the illusion of a debate where there is none. And online social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook can isolate us in so-called filter bubbles (see The Filter Bubble: What The Internet Is Hiding From You, but also Are Filter Bubbles Real?), though I found the authors’ coverage of the algorithms driving these sites fairly limited (for introductions see e.g. Outnumbered: From Facebook and Google to Fake News and Filter-bubbles – The Algorithms That Control Our Lives and my review Rage Inside the Machine: The Prejudice of Algorithms, and How to Stop the Internet Making Bigots of …). […]

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