Stedman Summaries #10
Om symboliken i valet av vantar, våld och yttrandefrihet, globala risker för mänskligheten, Xi Jinpings Kina, rationell optimism och trendiga appar
Det här är tionde utskicket av nyhetsbrevet Stedman Summaries. Det kommer ut varje söndag och består av korta kommentarer, citat och länkar till intressanta artiklar jag läst under veckan som gått. Kommentera gärna via knappen längst ner, eller kom med privat feedback. Vidarebefordra gärna till andra om du gillar det! Och det är helt gratis att prenumerera själv.
—Jacob
Vantar som symbolik
Senator Bernie Sanders fick mycket uppmärksamhet för sin bekväma klädstil under Bidens installation.
Hans särpräglade stil ledde till många virala memes:
Det ledde också till att han kunde samla in 15 miljoner kr till välgörenhet.
Alla är dock inte lika roade: Ingrid Seyer-Ochi, en högstadielärare i San Francisco, skriver att hon är besvärad över det "vita privilegium" som Sanders uppvisar:
I puzzled and fumed as an individual as I strove to be my best possible teacher. What did I see? What did I think my students should see? A wealthy, incredibly well-educated and -privileged white man, showing up for perhaps the most important ritual of the decade, in a puffy jacket and huge mittens.
I mean in no way to overstate the parallels. Sen. Sanders is no white supremacist insurrectionist. But he manifests privilege, white privilege, male privilege and class privilege, in ways that my students could see and feel. […]
Not so sweet? The blindness I see, of so many (Bernie included), to the privileges Bernie represents. I don’t know many poor, or working class, or female, or struggling-to-be-taken-seriously folk who would show up at the inauguration of our 46th president dressed like Bernie. Unless those same folk had privilege. Which they don’t.
Få saker verkar engagera — och ena — konservativa väljare i USA så mycket som vänsterliberaler som upplevs gå så långt i sitt rättvisetänk att de tappar perspektiv. En annan stor nyhet i veckan var att San Francisco ska byta namn på en tredjedel av stadens skolor, och där även namn som “Lincoln” och “Washington” anses för problematiska för att vara kvar.
Some parents said they were particularly angry that the name changes were announced just as they received an email from the district saying it was unlikely students would return for in-person learning this school year.
Dr. Adam Davis, a pediatrician in San Francisco who has a son in kindergarten and a daughter in second grade, said he was receiving text messages from friends in Boston ridiculing the changes.
“I don’t know anybody personally who doesn’t think it’s embarrassing,” Dr. Davis said. The renaming, he said, “is a caricature of what people think liberals in San Francisco do.”
Även skolan som uppkallats efter statens (demokratiska) senator Dianne Feinstein förlorar sitt namn, eftersom hon eventuellt såg till att en stulen sydstatsflagga utanför stadshuset ersattes för 37 år sedan medan hon var borgmästare.
Våld och yttrandefrihet
Apropå att undvika provocerande namn: under senare år har vissa progressiva amerikaner börjat hävda att provocerande uttalanden kan anses utgöra våld. Förra året debatterades detta t ex på Harvard:
Does hateful speech on campus constitute an act of violence? Yes, said psychology Professor Lisa Feldman Barrett, arguing that it inflicts measurable neurological damage. Ethical leadership Professor Jonathan Haidt disagreed, viewing it more as a necessary evil that arms students for the outside world.
Feldman Barrett har tidigare förklarat hur vissa provocerande uttalanden kan skapa neurologisk stress, och därmed borde stoppas, även om hon skiljer på långsiktig “trivial brutalitet” och att debattera obekväma åsikter:
Your body’s immune system includes little proteins called proinflammatory cytokines that cause inflammation when you’re physically injured. Under certain conditions, however, these cytokines themselves can cause physical illness. What are those conditions? One of them is chronic stress. […]
What’s bad for your nervous system, in contrast, are long stretches of simmering stress. If you spend a lot of time in a harsh environment worrying about your safety, that’s the kind of stress that brings on illness and remodels your brain. That’s also true of a political climate in which groups of people endlessly hurl hateful words at one another, and of rampant bullying in school or on social media. A culture of constant, casual brutality is toxic to the body, and we suffer for it. […]
On the other hand, when the political scientist Charles Murray argues that genetic factors help account for racial disparities in I.Q. scores, you might find his view to be repugnant and misguided, but it’s only offensive. It is offered as a scholarly hypothesis to be debated, not thrown like a grenade. There is a difference between permitting a culture of casual brutality and entertaining an opinion you strongly oppose.
Haidt håller med henne om att yttrandefrihet kan påverka hjärnan negativt, och han stödjer vissa inskränkningar i yttrandefrihet (t.ex. det som i Sverige skulle kallas hets mot folkgrupp). Men han menar att det inte innebär att yttranden är våld: att få mycket skolarbete kan stressa hjärnan, men det innebär inte att stora mängder skolarbete är våld! Haidt varnar för att om man kallar yttranden för våld kan det leda till verkligt våld:
The implication of this expansive use of the word “violence” is that “we” are justified in punching and pepper-spraying “them,” even if all they did was say words. We’re just defending ourselves against their “violence.” But if this way of thinking leads to actual violence, and if that violence triggers counter-violence from the other side (as happened a few weeks later at Berkeley), then where does it end? In the country’s polarized democracy, telling young people that “words are violence” may in fact lead to a rise in real, physical violence.
Haidt menar också, i en tidigare artikel, att universitet har en skyldighet att träna sina studenter inför verkliga livet:
Rather than trying to protect students from words and ideas that they will inevitably encounter, colleges should do all they can to equip students to thrive in a world full of words and ideas that they cannot control. One of the great truths taught by Buddhism (and Stoicism, Hinduism, and many other traditions) is that you can never achieve happiness by making the world conform to your desires. But you can master your desires and habits of thought. This, of course, is the goal of cognitive behavioral therapy.
Parallellt med diskussion om ifall yttranden utgör våld finns också en annan debatt, där vissa debattörer hävdar att det inte är våld att förstöra egendom.
Hannah-Jones anser att termen “våld” bor reserveras för våldsbrott mot människor, och att man urvattnar begreppet om man också använder begreppet för “våld” mot saker. Den konservative debattören Jonah Goldberg håller inte med:
It is our good fortune that we have other words and concepts to make the distinctions she is blurring. Not all violence is equal, which is why we have words like “murder,” “homicide,” “assault,” “looting” and so on. They are all forms of violence, and it is not immoral to say so. In fact, I think it’s immoral not to say so.
Hannah-Jones is setting up an immoral straw man here. No one, to my knowledge, is saying that the two acts are equal, but she’s trying to bully people into not complaining about indefensible violent behavior that she condones, at least to some extent.
Så för att sammanfatta en sida av debatten: yttranden är våld, men våld är inte våld? Det gäller att hänga med i svängarna!
Globala risker
Apropå annat farligt: World Economic Forum har publicerat vad de ser som de största globala hoten under 2021. (De konstaterar att “infektionssjukdomar” bara kom på plats 10 förra året i termer av påverkan, men att teamet haft skäl att uppdatera sina bedömningar och nu ser det som årets största risk i termer av påverkan…)
En annan organisation som intresserar sig för att identifiera och motverka hot mot mänskligheten är Future of Life, en non-profit grundad bl a av fysikprofessorn Max Tegmark som är dedikerad till att hjälpa mänskligheten navigera potentiellt farliga innovationer. Det gäller framförallt AI, men även kärnvapen och bioteknik:
With less powerful technologies such as fire, we learned to minimize risks largely by learning from mistakes. With more powerful technologies such as nuclear weapons, synthetic biology and future strong artificial intelligence, planning ahead is a better strategy than learning from mistakes, so we support research and other efforts aimed at avoiding problems in the first place.
Under året som gått har de bland annat forskat kring “AI-lojalitet” — hur kan vi se till att smarta maskininlärningsmodeller är på kundernas sida?
And ultimately, it’s pretty clear that Alexa is essentially working for Amazon and Google is essentially working for Google. Neither of them is working for you the way a personal assistant, if you hired one, would. You would not expect that you hire a personal assistant, even from a personal assistant firm, say, and they would have that firm’s interest and put it above yours, you expect your interest to be primary.
So the question is, as we create more and more capable AI assistants, should they have this sort of responsibility? Should they ultimately be working for some giant tech firm and our interest is the only incidental, like they have to keep us happy in order to keep us engaged and using the system? Or should those systems be designed and required to act primarily in the user’s interest, the way that a human fiduciary would? […]
De intresserar sig också för existentiella risker, och har bland annat producerat den här filmen om riskerna med AI, kärnvapen och bioteknik:
Och de sätter covid-19 lite i perspektiv, och beskriver det som ett “best case scenario”!
it’s also important to note that COVID-19 as a global catastrophe was almost a best case scenario. It could have been dramatically worse. Imagine smallpox with its 30% fatality rate and high level of contagiousness or something like that emerging rather than less than 1% dying, 30% dying. And it’s not at all clear that our response and our capability and our management of that virus would have been that much better than what we did. We easily could have seen something just about as bad in terms of the number of people infected with a 30% fatality rate.
Teamet verkar nöjda med att det gångna året lett till en ökad medvetenhet om att dåliga saker kan hända och att mänskligheten måste vara mer på sin vakt:
And if there’s anything that I would like us to really bring into 2021 from 2020, it is this recognition of the reality of low-probability, high-risk events. COVID-19 was not even a global catastrophic risk, and we’re quite lucky for that, but it does remind us that low-probability, high-risk events do occur.
Kina under press
En annan sak Max Tegmark nämner, apropå existensiell risk, är att han upplever att den geopolitiska risken ökat, och i synnerhet i relation till Kina:
A second area where I feel things have gotten worse in 2020 is geopolitics. Since the early ’70s, after Nixon travel to China, we’ve had a pretty harmonious relationship between the US and China. In 2020, things have gotten dramatically worse, of course, and I think it’s going to be very valuable for the future of humanity if this deterioration can be halted and gradually turned around in 2021.
Även tankesmedjan Atlantic Council pekar på Kina som en ökande risk för västvärlden:
The single most important challenge facing the United States and the democratic world in the twenty-first century is the rise of an increasingly authoritarian and aggressive China under Xi Jinping.
På vilket sätt är Kina auktoritärt och aggressivt? Låt oss till exempel se på fallet Jack Ma. Ma, Alibabas grundare, är inte bara en av världens rikaste män, utan också en inhemsk stjärna — en slags Bill Gates — som den kinesiska regeringen gärna lyft fram.
Men vinden har vänt. På en konferens i oktober jämförde han kinesiska banker med osofistikerade pantbanker som är beroende av pant och säkerheter. En vecka senare efter slog kinesiska myndigheter tillbaka och stoppade börsnoteringen av Alibabas finansiella dotterbolag Ant Financial. Jack Ma försvann ur offentligheten i flera månader, fram tills nyligen:
But the listening cadres were infuriated. On Nov. 2, Ma was summoned by Chinese authorities for questioning. The next day, the $37 billion IPO of Alibaba’s fintech arm Ant Financial—touted as a record-breaking offering—was nixed by China’s securities watchdog despite it earlier having received a green light. By late December, regulators had instructed Ant Group to restructure its operations to adhere to new anti-monopoly rules, shaving billions off its valuation. Then, late last week, Ma was replaced by another Alibaba executive for the televised final episode of a business talent contest he had been helming, with his picture scrubbed from the gallery of judges. Ma has now not been seen in public for at least two months.
Time Magazine beskriver ett Kina där President Xi inte tolererar någon som utmanar honom:
Yet it’s clear that the CCP under President Xi will not countenance any challenge to its authority. Given a slowing Chinese economy and mounting geopolitical headwinds, Beijing is nervous about systematic financial risks and rising debt. This is no time to be calling, as Ma did, for a loosening of the system. And just as seemingly unassailable titans of real estate, finance and show-biz previously discovered, China’s tech champion is learning that loyalty comes first in Xi’s China. “There is no so-called [Ma] era,” read a recent headline in the CCP mouthpiece People’s Daily, “but only an era that has [Ma] in it.”
Även tidningen The Atlantic (ingen koppling till tankesmedjan) målar upp en liknande bild:
Under [Xi’s] rule, China’s economic and military clout have expanded rapidly; he has overseen the mass incarceration of Uighur Muslims in the western region of Xinjiang; and Beijing has significantly stifled the free press and criticism of the Chinese Communist Party, both on the mainland and further afield. Under his watch, freedoms have been drastically curtailed in Hong Kong, an ostensibly autonomous city. Indeed, during a 2017 visit, he presided over the biggest military parade held in the metropolis since the handover.
Det tycks tydligt att Kina intar en mer aktiv roll i sin omvärld, t.ex. genom att försöka driva opinion över sociala medier genom botar och falska konton:
Since August 2019, ProPublica has tracked more than 10,000 suspected fake Twitter accounts involved in a coordinated influence campaign with ties to the Chinese government.
Även stora kinesiska företag använder liknande strategier för att nå ut med sitt budskap, t.ex. Huawei som kritiserats för att använda samma strategier som ryska regeringen:
To the casual Twitter user, the fake accounts looked legitimate. They included bland profile pictures along with career information. Many had more than 1,000 followers. But on closer inspection, investigators identified problems with the accounts. Many of their followers appeared to be bots. And the pictures had the hallmarks of being created by artificial intelligence software, with perfectly centered photos but small imperfections, like asymmetrical glasses. Online businesses sell these kinds of photos of fake people, which can avoid the risk of detection that using pictures of real individuals can bring.
(Twitter har bland annat responderat genom att stänga av tusentals falska konton, och introducera etiketter för konton som kopplats till regeringstrogna medier.)
Nicholas Kristof på NY Times är orolig att USA på sikt kan vara på väg mot en väpnad konflikt, givet den kinesiske presidentens kaxighet och risktagande:
The first thing to say is that a war with China probably won’t happen.
Yet if it does, it might begin in an obscure place few have heard of, like Pratas or Kinmen Islands. Both are controlled by Taiwan but are closer to China, and some Chinese and Americans alike worry that Chinese President Xi Jinping might invade one island or the other to pressure Taiwan. […]
The coming years represent the greatest risks since I began covering U.S.-China relations in the 1980s, partly because Xi is an overconfident, risk-taking bully who believes that the United States is in decline.
Atlantic Council, tankesmedjan, är också inne på att president Xi är problemet och att USA:s policy borde vara att försöka utnyttja oenighet i det kinesiska ledarskapet:
US strategy and policy toward China must be laser-focused on the fault lines among Xi and his inner circle–aimed at changing their objectives and behavior and thus their strategic course. Communist Party elites are much more divided about Xi’s leadership and vast ambitions than is widely appreciated.
The foremost goal of US strategy should be to cause China’s ruling elites to conclude that it is in China’s best interests to continue operating within the US-led liberal international order rather than building a rival order, and that it is in the Chinese Communist Party’s best interests to not attempt to expand China’s borders or export its political model beyond China’s shores. […]
How should the success of this new US China strategy be measured? […]; that Xi has been replaced by a more moderate party leadership; and that the Chinese people themselves have come to question and challenge the Communist Party’s century-long proposition that China’s ancient civilization is forever destined to an authoritarian future.
Även Kristof pekar på vikten att skilja på ledaren och landet, och försöka driva en kil mellan dem:
Let’s distinguish between Xi and China, criticizing the former without demonizing the latter. Senior Chinese officials and their family members in private denounce Xi to me in scathing terms (one told me a few days ago that Xi is “a crazy person”). So we should avoid insulting the entire country and forcing officials to rally around their leader.
Rationell optimism och trendiga appar
Låt oss lämna risken för världskrig och avsluta med något mer jordnära: trendiga appar i Silicon Valley.
Gränsen mellan tech- och mediebolag har ju på många sätt suddats ut sista åren. Och nu ska en av Silicon Valleys största techinvesterare, Andreessen Horowitz (“A16Z”) — Marc Andreessen var med och skrev Netscape, en av världens första webbläsare — starta en internetbaserad “plattform” om framtiden:
we are building a new and separate media property about the future that makes sense of technology, innovation, and where things are going — and now, we’re expanding and opening up our platform to do this on a much bigger scale. We want to be the go-to place for understanding and building the future, for anyone who is building, making, or curious about tech.
Som investerare kommer de, kanske naturligt, ta en mer positiv bild av teknikens möjligheter — “rationell optimism”:
Margit Wennmachers said in that introductory post that “Our lens is rational optimism about technology and the future”; as a long time subscriber of the New York Times, I think it is fair to call their lens rational skepticism about technology and its effects.
A16Z har för övrigt investerat i appen Clubhouse, som fick sitt genombrott i veckan. Clubhouse är ett socialt nätverk (just nu endast för inbjudna), där medlemmar kan lyssna in på mer eller mindre spontana gruppsamtal om intressant ämnen. I söndags gästade Elon Musk och intervjuade Vlad Tenev, VD för Robinhood, den tradingplatform som använts av många av småspararna som drev förra veckans GameStop-rally:
[…] the absolute novelty of the world’s richest man lightly interrogating the CEO of the week’s most controversial company in a live, free broadcast. From Facebook to Twitter to Twitch, streaming video tools have been available for years now, but we’ve never seen them used quite like this. There’s something more approachable about an audio-only broadcast that seems to have enabled entirely new uses. [….]
Today we are absolutely awash in podcasts. By now it seems that every person of note has been interviewed by every other person of note on one podcast or another. And yet if you want to reach the sort of person who listens to podcasts, starting a regular podcast and building up its audience over time has really been your only option.
That’s fine for dedicated podcasters. But if you’re Elon Musk, and just want to ask Vlad Tenev a few questions in front of an audience? Well, now you go on Clubhouse. Like Medium, it’s there when he needs it, and never needs to be thought about otherwise. It offers him all the distribution upside of a podcast without the planning or editing that recording an actual podcast would entail.
Det kanske inte går att ersätta Spotify genom att bygga ett bättre Spotify, men även ledande tjänster som “alla använder” kan utmanas med rätt idéer.
Det var allt för idag.
Vidarebefordra gärna nyhetsbrevet till dina vänner om du gillar det, och prenumerera om du inte redan gör det (det är helt gratis!). Vi hörs nästa söndag. Ha en bra vecka!
—Jacob