Overview: Politics

the psychology of warnings - why some warnings get heard, why many are ignored and the pitfalls of being a prophet.... a vicious cycle ... As the planet warms, the permafrost thaws... dead animals and plants and fungi start to decompose. More decomposition means more carbon released ... means warmer temperatures... even more melting of the permafr…

Celebrating a small milestone for the K4P project on Medium.

Every government has bureaucrats, who are by nature unelected. The EU, with about 33,000 civil servants, is dwarfed by the British ... 400,000. ... many senior ones are appointed rather than elected; yet this, too, is true of all governments.... the 28 commissioners ... are nominated by member countries and approved by the European Parliament, whi…

A workshop proposal for EuroPCom 2018 with @albawhitewolf, Mike Galsworthy (@Scientists4EU) and the original Captain Europe, reposted to Facebook by popular demand.

Latest on the K4P Medium Publication

political scientist Lilliana Mason ... new book, Uncivil Agreement ... we actually agree about most things... “our conflicts are over who we think we are, rather than reasoned differences of opinion... Our opinions can be very fluid... if we wanted to come to a compromise we could, if there were not these pesky identities in the way... we disagree…

the next iteration of technology applied to politics will be a huge leap forward with a greater ability to target people... address each of the 156 million of registered voters on the US with personalized messages.... a falsehood delivered in a personalized way is likely to be more efficient but less visible than a blatant lie put on Twitter; it w…

Technology has altered the foundations of news and media, and as trust in media continues to decline, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and algorithms have come to play a critical role not only as threats to the integrity and quality of media, but also as a source of potential solutions. The core threats to information quality associated …

talk-show hosts like journalists ... know how to grab the brain’s attention and stimulate fear, sadness or anger.... We value the ancient power of storytelling, and we get that good stories require conflict, characters and scene. But in the present era of tribalism, it feels like we’ve reached our collective limitations... I met psychologists, med…

If Facebook is to thrive ... it’ll need to evolve. Here’s where we think it’s heading… developers and platforms ... will be unable to post content on behalf of personal Facebook profiles... can only post to business profiles and pages on both Facebook and Instagram... Facebook might be hoping that more unique content shared by users, reaching mor…

“So I and fellow Australian-in-Brussels Richard Medic decided to ask some friends to help answer a couple of questions: How can the EU support its superheroes, without destroying their credibility in the process? And under what conditions should it even try?”

The most powerful engine of elitism is the European Union... Founding Fathers of Europe deliberately removed a great deal of decision-making from the hands of the (nation-bounded and short-sighted) public... Confronted with popular revolts against the rule of experts they have simply dug in their heels... For the EU, technocratic decision-making …

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the Knowledge Pyramid... DIKW pyramid, it features data as the basis and shows how information is built on it, then knowledge, and finally wisdom.... implies that the higher you go the better things get... What’s not to like? Well, just about everything.

To counter disinformation and revalue quality journalism we need a competitive ecosystem of credibility indexes to stimulate innovation and avoid a Ministry of Truth, de facto or otherwise.- more on Medium

May, 2018: the EU Commission’s cross-EC Knowledge4Policy platform for evidence-based policymaking goes live in Beta mode.

The endless search for rewards of the tribe, and the variability that often comes with it, are key components of ... Stack Overflow... over 5,000 questions are posted and answered daily... Many of these answers take hours to complete and require a high degree of technical expertise.... the site’s creators ... put usage limitations ... fear of crea…

the IFG publication charts ... are always topped by MINDSPACE – our guide to applying behavioural insights to policy... has attracted much overseas interest and has even inspired the establishment of a unit in the intellectual home of 'nudge' - the US... are people right to be concerned about the increasing interest of governments in applying beha…

Cambridge Analytica conducted data research for one of the leading Brexit campaign groups and then misled the public and MPs over the work ... the work with Leave.EU involved analysis of data provided by Ukip... Nix has repeatedly denied there was any involvement... "We have not undertaken any paid or unpaid work for them, OK?”... Leave.EU did no…

How should policies be made? Ideally by policy makers making decisions after weighing the facts and reconciling the different values that exist in plural democratic societies.Reality often looks different! Operating at both sides of the science-policy interface is made challenging due to the over-supply of knowledge on one side and the complexity …

undoing radicalization is not as simple as filling people’s heads with “accurate” facts. A radicalized person will not — cannot — accept them... you need to first make the radicalized person... capable of not feeling threatened, unsafe, and wounded ... It’s very, very hard. It takes social bonds to be restored somehow — oft through therapy, educat…

The episode fits an established pattern of sloppiness towards privacy, tolerance of inaccuracy and reluctance to admit mistakes... the chances of a regulatory backlash are growing... Facebook needs a full, independent examination of its approach to content, privacy and data... role in the 2016 election and the Brexit referendum... Facebook and o…

With 700 or 800 million Chinese internet users and fewer data protection rules, China is as rich in data as the Gulf States are in oil... Chinese commentators have embraced the idea of a coming singularity... AI development will be conducted by AI itself, creating exponential feedback ... the human mind will be unable to keep pace with robotized w…

Wylie ... the gay Canadian vegan who somehow ended up creating “Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare mindfuck tool”.... In 2014 Steve Bannon ... was Wylie’s boss. And Robert Mercer... Republican donor, was Cambridge Analytica’s investor... to bring big data and social media to an established military methodology – “information operations” – then t…

Confirmation bias is the human tendency to seek, interpret and remember information that confirms pre-existing beliefs.... insidious. It affects every choice you make. Every. Single. Day. ... without you noticing. Confirmation bias affects you in 3 ways... Why? You seek evidence that confirms your beliefs because being wrong ... means you’re not …

Managing a Medium Publication to share our the journey as we build Knowledge4Policy: "share our experiences … as transparently as possible, and invite ideas and perspectives from experts in evidence-based policymaking around the world"

the capacity to spread ideas ... no longer limited by access to expensive... infrastructure. It’s limited instead by one’s ability to garner and distribute attention. And right now, the flow of the world’s attention is structured... by just a few digital platforms:... tincreasingly stand in for the public sphere itself... at their core... They’re …

most forms of political persuasion seem to have little effect at all... Field experiments testing the effects of online ads on political candidates and issues have also found null effects... Here’s what you should look for in evaluating claims about vast persuasion effects from dubious online content: How many people actually saw the questionable…

Which did the ad industry choose?... It tried to ignore technology and automation... when that didn’t work, it bought the machines.... It didn’t invest in research, development, innovation... develop new services, new ways, new formats, new ideas, whole new ways of helping institutions and people relate, connect, and bond... So the broken relatio…

the solution to both crises facing journalism may come from the same technological root: blockchain... An ecosystem of micropayments... as the holy grail for online journalism... Blockchain technology can create both chains of authenticity and a level of security... Sludge is one of the “first fleet” of around 20 newsrooms ... on a new blockchai…