Information is its Own Reward

Here is a little food for thought for those who think collections of data in the hands of public officials is a benign matter. Here is a "hate map," which shows the point of origin of tweets that contain "hate speech." I have zoomed in to a few locations, and I am please to report that people in NJ are not very hateful. Where I live it's not hateful at all. What a relief!

This map is a project is the work of Monica Stephens, assistant professor of geography at Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif. She had the help of three graduate students, who read the tweets and categorized them.

Here is what I find interesting. All of the tweets came from geotagged accounts. The sample is small and skewed in many ways little doubt. Put all that aside.

Look at the platform and think like a politician or law enforcement official. It makes you want to get a larger data cohort doesn't it? You can use different search queries. Maybe you can figure out how to associate non-geotagged Twitter accounts to people in a particular location. Maybe you can add email communications, if you know the location who is writing them. Cellphones conversations with voice recognition would be a great one to add. Then you can find clusters where people are engaging in certain types of speech.

I would think that if you could get such information you might be rewarded. You might even become the Director of IRS’ Affordable Care Act office.

Backstabber Alert

Here's a portion of what's contained at FRNJ's blog that I assume was posted by its creator. If I'm wrong about that, I apologize ahead of time.

FR mentioned at the end.

Saturday, May 4, 2013
- More Milton Friedman, Less Rush Limbaugh

You all remember, in the wake of the most recent electoral defeat for Republicans, I went on at length about how we need to speak to liberals in a language they understand? I maintain that we need to stop saying things that make us feel better about our positions and instead say things that people who think differently than we do would find persuasive.

We complain that our country isn't being run by adults. But the fact of the matter is, if there is going to be an adult in this discussion, it's going to have to be us. And if we want the kids to modify their behavior, we need to tell them so in language that they understand.

** For those of you who don't know, Freerepublic is a venue by conservatives for conservatives. For all the liberals that have ever been persuaded by what they have read there, it might as well be printed in Chinese. That doesn't make it wrong of course. It's a venue designed to support conservatives not win over liberals. And there is certainly a place for that kind of discussion. But the problem is that it's become the only way that conservatives know how to make their arguments, and we need to learn to persuade again as well.

~~~~~~~~~~~~UPDATE~~~~~~~~~~~~

I long ago learned not to do this, but since I mentioned them in the piece and some reader posted it, I went and took a look at the Freerepublic comments that this piece drew. You would think that FR would be the perfect audience for a piece like this because those people are the ones on the right least likely to say anything to a liberal that would persuade them.

What I learned there was that I (the author) am an illiterate, and imbecile, and that Rush Limbaugh is "way better" than Milton Friedman. Really. Even in the context of this piece, someone thought the most productive thing they could say about it was that I was an "illiterate imbecile". I had to laugh that someone could so perfectly (and ironically) miss the point. The moral of this story is, never try to teach a pig to sing. It's a waste of your time and annoys the pig.

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