> We live in an age of algorithmic decision-making. There are algorithms trading stocks on Wall Street (Patterson 2013); algorithms determining who is the most likely to be guilty of tax evasion (Zarsky 2013); algorithms assisting in scientific discovery (Mayer-Schonberger and Cukier 2013); and algorithms helping us in dating and mating (Slater 2013). This is just a small sample: many more could be listed (Siegel 2013). With the ongoing data revolution, and the transition towards the so-called “Internet of Things” this trend can only be set to grow (Kitchin 2014a; Kellermeit & Obodovski 2013; Rifkin 2014).

> The question raised by this article is whether the use of such algorithm-based decision-making in the public and political sphere is problematic. Suppose that the creation of new legislation, or the adjudication of a legal trial, or the implementation of a regulatory policy relies heavily on algorithmic assistance. Would the resulting outputs be morally problematic? As public decision-making processes that issue coercive rules and judgments, it is widely agreed that such processes should be morally and politically legitimate (Peter 2014). Could algorithm-based decision-making somehow undermine this legitimacy?

> In this article, I argue that it could. Although many are concerned about the hiddenness of algorithmic decision-making, I argue that there is an equally (if not more) serious problem concerning its opacity (potential incomprehensibility to human reasoning). Using David Estlund’s (1993; 2003; 2008) threat of epistocracy argument as my model, I argue that increasing reliance on algorithms gives rise to the threat of algocracy – a situation in which algorithm-based systems structure and constrain the opportunities for human participation in, and comprehension of, public decisionmaking. This is a significant threat, one that is difficult to accommodate or resist. 

> ... many value systems would agree that extinction is by no means the worst possible outcome, and that avoiding large quantities of suffering is of utmost moral importance.

> We should differentiate between existential risks (i.e., risks of “mere” extinction or failed potential) and risks of astronomical suffering (“suffering risks” or “s-risks”). S-risks are events that would bring about suffering on an astronomical scale, vastly exceeding all suffering that has existed on Earth so far.

> The above distinctions are all the more important because the term “existential risk” has often been used interchangeably with “risks of extinction”, omitting any reference to the future’s quality. Finally, some futures may contain both vast amounts of happiness and vast amounts of suffering, which constitutes an s-risk but not necessarily a (severe) x-risk.

> The Case for Suffering-Focused Ethics (previously in this sequence) outlined several reasons for considering suffering reduction one’s primary moral priority. From this perspective in particular, s-risks should be addressed before addressing extinction risks. Reducing extinction risks makes it more likely that there will be a future, possibly one involving space colonization and the astronomical stakes that come with it. But it often does not affect the quality of the future, i.e. how much suffering or happiness it will likely contain. A future with space colonization might contain vastly more sentient minds than have existed so far. If something goes wrong, or even if things do not go “right enough”, this would multiply the total amount of suffering (in our part of the universe) by a huge factor.

To quote SSC's summary of this article: "Remember how you had to learn cursive in elementary school even though it was clearly useless and inferior to other forms of communication? An Atlantic article argues that there was sort of a rational explanation – cursive was the most convenient form of writing for the obsolete pens of yesteryear, and it took a while for people to realize that better pens made it unnecessary."

> Medical science is also taking a closer look and finding that spirituality and recovery tend to go hand-in-hand, but not for the reasons most people assumed when AA originated in mid-20th century America.

> As John F. Kelly, professor of psychiatry at Harvard University, put it in an interview, prayer, like meditation, seems to have a protective effect against relapse.

> “Prayer is hope, and hope is a positive emotion,” he said. Studies have shown it lessens the effect of alcohol triggers and is a predictor of abstinence in teenage addicts. Spirituality also tends to increase over the course of recovery. Kelly compares this to the physics of light. Just as light separates through a prism into its constituent colours, so does spirituality separate into positive emotions: gratitude, hope, bliss, empathy, compassion, awe, etc. These, in psychiatric lingo, are the mechanisms of recovery.

> On this view, the literal truth of any spiritual belief is almost beside the point, and Kelly notes in a new paper that Bill Wilson, AA’s revered co-founder, sometimes talked about God as a “pragmatic recovery tool.”

> In the past few years, the devastating effects of hackers breaking into an organization's network, stealing confidential data, and publishing everything have been made clear. It happened to the Democratic National Committee, to Sony, to the National Security Agency, to the cyber-arms weapons manufacturer Hacking Team, to the online adultery site Ashley Madison, and to the Panamanian tax-evasion law firm Mossack Fonseca.

> This style of attack is known as organizational doxing. The hackers, in some cases individuals and in others nation-states, are out to make political points by revealing proprietary, secret, and sometimes incriminating information. And the documents they leak do that, airing the organizations' embarrassments for everyone to see.

> In all of these instances, the documents were real: the email conversations, still-secret product details, strategy documents, salary information, and everything else. But what if hackers were to alter documents before releasing them? This is the next step in organizational doxing­ -- and the effects can be much worse. [...]

> Forging thousands -- or more -- documents is difficult to pull off, but slipping a single forgery in an actual cache is much easier. The attack could be something subtle. Maybe a country that anonymously publishes another country's diplomatic cables wants to influence yet a third country, so adds some particularly egregious conversations about that third country. Or the next hacker who steals and publishes email from climate change researchers invents a bunch of over-the-top messages to make his political point even stronger. Or it could be personal: someone dumping email from thousands of users making changes in those by a friend, relative, or lover.

> Imagine trying to explain to the press, eager to publish the worst of the details in the documents, that everything is accurate except this particular email. Or that particular memo. That the salary document is correct except that one entry. Or that the secret customer list posted up on WikiLeaks is correct except that there's one inaccurate addition. It would be impossible. Who would believe you? No one. And you couldn't prove it.

> Playing one-shots of traditional RPGs, I quickly discovered that I could put the scenarios into four distinct categories: meandering messes, spectator-mode railroadfests, awesome gaming experiences, and almost-awesome gaming experiences. To see all scenarios I played fall squarely within one of those four categories puzzled me, and I tried to understand why that was by designing one-shots of my own.

> Quickly, I came to the conclusion that railroadfests were, well, too railroady. More interestingly, I came to the conclusion that meandering messes were not railroady enough, and as a result failed to tell a compelling story. It became pretty obvious, then, that awesome and almost-awesome gaming experiences fell somewhere in-between.

> On the Left (e.g. Metafilter and Twitter), many expressed surprise that [Trump's harassment-bragging video], appalling as it may be, is the bridge too far for the Right, and are spinning hypotheses as to why this, and not any of the other reprehensible things he's been recorded saying, is what provoked the Right's rejection. [...]

> How one hears what is in that audio recording depends on at least two things. One of them is what one believes constitutes unacceptable sexual behavior. [...]

> For most of human history men were people and women were either the property of people or unclaimed property, like a lost $100 lying on the ground. Here in the US, we inherited English common law, under which the doctrine of coverture a wife was legally a "chattel" of her husband. "Chattel" is a confusing word for moderns. It's a technical legal term meaning "property that's not real estate", and has passed into discussions of history as a euphemism. Since most people don't know the technical definition of "chattel" the term serves well to allow people to discuss the historical legal status of women without actually confronting the ugly truth that word indicates: women were property.

> In societies in which women legally are (or socially are regarded as) property, their value is reckoned in terms of their value as livestock: the labor they can perform, the obedience they demonstrate, and, above all, the offspring they can produce. Since the value of those offspring to their owners in such patriarchal societies is mediated by the certainty of those offsprings' paternity, men in such societies or otherwise of that mindset understand themselves, both individually and as a demographic, to have enormous interest – financial interest – in controlling women's sexual contacts. This results, obviously, in various attempts to control women's sexual behavior, and curtailing women's liberty in general. But – and I think this is much less obvious to modern liberal Westerner – it also shaped legal and moral policy around men's conduct: Thou, presumed male audience, shalt not covet thy (also presumed male) neighbor's wife, neither shalt thou covet his house, his male slave, nor his female slave, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.

> Rape has approximately always been illegal. But it has only recently in the West become regarded as a crime of violence against the person, usually female, it is done to. Historically, it was primarily a property crime, against the person who owned the person it was done to. To put it crudely, rape was the crime of unlawful breeding of someone else's livestock. Rape was a crime because it spoiled the incontestability of paternity of any subsequent offspring – it ruined, for the owner, the carefully cultivated sexual containment of their breeding stock. [...]

> A lot of women (and a lot of men) seem surprised to see Republicans object to women being treated as Trump describes treating them in that recording. That seems to be way more consideration for women than they ever expected to see on the Right. Don't worry: in many cases, it is not consideration for women at all.

> Many – not all, but Mitt Romney, I'm looking right at you – men on the Right who are recoiling in righteous indignation aren't doing it because Trump did something to a woman, or even (as some observed) a white woman.

> Oh, you sweet summer children. He did it to a married woman.

> The line too far is that he macked on some other bro's bitch.