Archive for the ‘Computing’ Category

Why do we drive like jerks, and behave like assholes on the internet?

Some of the more seemingly sophisticated arguments for God (or some type of higher power) revolve around the mysterious nature of human morality. Dismissing evolutionary explanations for morality, some people believe that we simply cannot explain traits like altruism through the evolution of selfish motives. They believe that reciprocity is only a small part of what we like to think of as decent behavior. However, if this is the case, why do we behave like jerks when we obtain a small amount of anonymity?

To the best of my understanding, the current theory is that we evolved altruistic tendencies in response to our social environments. Just as speed, strength and agility can confer a survival advantage in a natural environment, so can altruistic behavior and honesty¹ confer a survival advantage in a social environment. In turn, the reciprocal relationship in any social environment confers a survival benefit in most natural environments. Because evolution and natural selection will operate to select for traits in any type of environment, our morality is merely a product of our evolution in our given social environment.

However, the idea of reciprocity breaks down when you become an anonymous actor. If the evolutionary theory of morality is correct, then our morality works in such a way (or at least initially involved in such a way) that we behave in certain ways towards other people in the hopes that they will return the favour. For example, we do not lie to other people in hopes that they will be truthful with us, and we do not steal from them in the hopes that they too will not steal from us. The reciprocal relationship does not even have to be symmetrical, which is why somebody might endanger themselves in order to save another person. They do not necessarily expect the same in return from the person they saved, but rather do so in the hopes that they might receive help if they were ever in need of saving. The key to this reciprocal relationship is that the people or society we are behaving kindly towards in turn must know to whom they should reciprocate. If we act in an anonymous fashion, they would not know to whom they “owe” their reciprocal action. Similarly, we would not have to fear harmful reciprocation should we do something inappropriate or harmful.

Interestingly, this matches the behavior that we see in social atmospheres when people are granted anonymity. As mentioned at the start of this post, people are (or at least perceive themselves to be) anonymous when they are in their cars, or on the internet. When in these situations, people tend to behave like jerks; and do thinks that they would never think of doing to somebody’s face. However, when you keep the environment constant, but take away the factor of anonymity – say on a social networking site like Facebook -the behavioral differences seem to vanish².

So why do we drive like jerks, and behave like assholes on the internet? Because our morality evolved in a system of reciprocity, and when placed in an anonymous environment where reciprocity becomes irrelevant, our moral instincts break down.

The BBC has published this follow-up on the legality of Google Street View in the UK, which I had previously written about here. Thankfully, the Information Commissioner has ruled on the side of sanity by upholding Britain’s privacy laws as they are written, as opposed to how they are sometimes interpreted by certain police officers and concerned citizens on the lookout for terrorists.

The project drew criticism from privacy campaigners worried it could breach data protection laws.

But the Information Commissioner said it was “satisfied” that Google had put in place safeguards to avoid risking anyone’s privacy or safety.

In a lot of places, but especially in the UK, there seems to be a growing gap between how the people on the street interpret privacy laws, and how the judicial and institutional levels of government uphold them. For now, the opinion of the latter group seems to be prevailing, but all it could take is a strong push of public opinion for the laws to change. It is of the paramount importance that free democratic societies not lose such basic rights as the ability to take pictures and video in public. Privacy laws making it illegal to do these things could strike a crippling blow to our freedom of speech, and more specifically, the free press. Privacy laws exist to protect citizens from surveillance and observation by their government; not to allow the government to censor free activity.

It said the safeguards Google was putting in place, such as blurring faces and registration plates, were sufficient to allay worries about privacy.

The statement said: “Although it is possible that in certain limited circumstances an image may allow the identification of an individual, it is clear that Google are keen to capture images of streets and not individuals.”

It’s refreshing to see that somebody is finally recognizing that Google Street View is not a sinister plan to go around violating people’s privacy by catching them in embarrassing situations and profiting off of their images, but rather an attempt to catalogue images of streets.

Every once in a while some sort of consumer/privacy watchdog group decides to criticize Google over matters of privacy, not fully appreciating how far Google goes to protect the privacy of their users. Naturally, privacy issues are going to arise when you’re in the business of collecting and sorting through information, but none of Google’s past actions have shown them to be a threat to anybody’s privacy. Fears that Google will pull an AOL are completely unwarranted.

“We’ve always said we will not launch in UK until we are comfortable Street View complies with local law,” they added, “and that we will use technology, like face-blurring, license plate blurring and operational controls, such as image removal tools, so Street View remains useful and in keeping with local norms wherever it is available.”

I won’t delude myself into thinking that as a company, Google can do no wrong. At the end of the day, they’re still a for-profit organization looking out for their interests, and the interests of their shareholders. However, Google is smart enough to know that its success in the information trade depends almost exclusively on its ability to keep user information confidential. The only reason it can compile as much information as it has is because people trust Google with that information; and the instant they do anything to betray that trust, their user base will instantly evaporate. So we don’t have to trust that Google will behave in a moral fashion out of the goodness of their hearts; we know that they’ll do it, because it’s good for business.

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• BBC.co.uk: Google Street View gets go ahead
• Lintbox.com: Quit Touching My Privacy
• BBC.co.uk: Innocent photographer or terrorist?
• Wikipedia.org: AOL Search Data Scandal

Privacy advocacy group ‘Privacy International’ in the UK is all up in arms about Google Street View’s recent endeavor to start mapping out the streets of England. The BBC writes about it here.

Privacy debates are always interesting to me, because despite the legitimate points that can be raised on either side of the issue, I find that arguments are always riddled with false analogies and fallacies galore¹. Take this argument, for example:

“In our view they need a person’s consent if they make use of a person’s face for commercial ends,” said Simon Davis of the group.

The problem with this argument is that Google does not intend to use peoples’ faces for commercial ends. If anything, the people (and their faces) are in the way of what the Street View teams are trying to accomplish — the faces are incidental to the purpose of the project. This is an example of a false premise; Privacy International is assuming that the purpose of Street View is to take pictures of people to use commercially, when they are actually taking pictures of streets and buildings to use commercially. Furthermore, you can always ask Google to remove your image if you don’t like all of the fame and wealth associated with being an internet celebrity. I’m fairly certain that the people over at Privacy International are aware of the false premise, but they will continue to make this argument because it’s one that will allow them to challenge Google on a legal basis (if it ever comes to that).

However, what really takes the cake is this next section:
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Today I had two hard drives (one of them was my system drive) fail on me at the same time. With computers, it is common knowledge that if something is going to go wrong, then a bunch of things are going to go wrong all at the same time.

Of course, that’s not true. Computers constantly have problems, and usually the problems are easy to fix when they happen in isolation. All it usually takes is a few minutes of tinkering, or a fresh install of the OS, and all of my problems go away. However, the times that I tend to remember are the ones where multiple things go wrong all at once. These problems are usually more serious, result in a lot longer repair period, and usually mean a bunch of lost data (and a lot of inconvenience). It isn’t that these situations are more common, it’s just that they’re more memorable. This phenomenon applies to all events that we remember and not just computers (think, “When it rains, it pours”).

Now of course, there might be a certain amount of truth to correlations between computer components failing at the same time. Computers are large and complex systems, and for a component to function properly, it often depends on other components. Hardware malfunctions can cause software to appear corrupted, and one broken piece of equipment can sometimes damage other pieces of equipment. This is especially true when dealing with software where one corrupt program (especially if it is the OS) can cause a whole host of other problems; sometimes these failures are clustered. However, usually this is not the case.