03 May 2018
Transgenders & Discipline
The military runs on discipline. Transgender people have demonstrated their unwillingness to accept determination of their gender by the most final of rulers—fate (God). That alone is enough to make them unfit for military service.
Data Ethics
When I first was introduced to the techniques of data
analysis, I wondered at the possibilities and prospects of using those tools to
learn about the world around me. Of
course, by now, fifty or more years later, I realize that I completely ignored
the opportunity that the collection of data offered to manipulate people,
either politically or commercially. Is
that a reason not to collect data or not to allow the collection of it?
For example, census data is collected, supposedly,
anonymously, in order to prevent its being used for personally harmful
purposes; but, of course, it can still be used for geographically
discriminatory purposes. FaceBook and
other social media perhaps never anticipated how willing people would be to use
those apps to share very personal information with each other. Apparently it took manipulators little time
to realize that hacking that data offered them a wonderful and rich
resource.
Much if not all of this data could be discovered through the
use of traditional polling techniques and statistical analysis, although
probably at a higher cost. Nevertheless,
those in charge of the social media do bear responsibility for notifying their
naïve users that their personal data could and probably would be used for
purposes other than communication with their intended correspondents. By now, users all may be aware of that
risk. However, it is not clear that
either the purveyors of social media or the manipulators of their collected
personal data committed a crime by taking advantage of the modern wish for
contact among isolated individuals.
Perhaps it won’t be so easy in the future, although some will believe stiffer
protection of data privacy to be a net loss to social cohesiveness.
