Adsei.org News
Comment on The Toddler Guide to the Broligarchy by Dr Linda McIver
https://adsei.org/2025/01/31/the...In reply to <a href="https://adsei.org/2025/01/31/the-toddler-guide-to-the-broligarchy/comment-page-1/#comment-6637">Paul Coldrey</a>.
This is an interesting take, and did give me pause for a moment. Wiktionary defines the broligarchy as: A small group of ultrawealthy men who exert inordinate control or influence within a political structure, particularly while espousing views regarded as anti-democratic, technofascist, and masculinist.
So the fact that they are run by men is not the issue. The fact that they are run by ultrawealthy, entitled men who think the world owes them all the things is the problem. I never say all men - I am married to an excellent man, and am raising another excellent man, and have excellent male friends. But the broligarchy is a specific sub category of men whose toxicity is rooted at least partly in sexism. So I stand by the term. If I wrote a "Toddler guide to Men", that would be very different.
31.1.2025 06:25Comment on The Toddler Guide to the Broligarchy by Dr Linda McIver
https://adsei.org/2025/01/31/the...Comment on The Toddler Guide to the Broligarchy by Paul Coldrey
https://adsei.org/2025/01/31/the...I found the use of the word Broligarchy oddly out of place and pointlessly pejorative in this article (noting that the article itself it great). Is the issue with Telsa and Facebook really all down to the fact they are run by men,... maybe,... but there is nothing in the article that supports this contention. Actually this implied conclusion seems to be an instance of the hasty generalisation fallacy. As a counterpoint, Anthropic are mentioned - and from context tainted with the Broligarchy brand - but 2 of their 4 board members are Women.
I am always concerned about what we teach our sons when we conflate everything that is bad in the world with male terms - particularly when there does not seem to be any relevance or evidence to support the use of gendered terms in the article.
It is entirely likely that this was an oversight (just as it may also have been very deliberate) but I think it is always good to step back and consider the larger effect that the use of casual and baseless sexist language may have.
31.1.2025 06:17Comment on The Toddler Guide to the Broligarchy by Paul Coldrey
https://adsei.org/2025/01/31/the...Tipping Points
https://adsei.org/2025/01/12/tip...Years ago, while worrying about climate change, I took both comfort and alarm from the idea that there would come a point where everything climate scientists had been predicting for decades would come to pass, and no one would be able to ignore climate science or dismiss climate change anymore. At that point, surely, we would act, and act fast. That, if nothing else, would be our tipping point.
12.1.2025 05:19Tipping Points
https://adsei.org/2025/01/12/tip...Comment on What do we value? by Manjula
https://adsei.org/2024/12/04/wha...Brings to my mind: teaching to assess or assessing to teach, something I have followed. Also we need to be always asking, what do we want our kids to get from the assessment? It's not just about numbers and grades.it certainly as you said, are the kids able to or are we teaching them to finding time and opportunity to guide them to critically evaluate their work and make improvements.
Great reading!
4.12.2024 22:24Comment on What do we value? by Manjula
https://adsei.org/2024/12/04/wha...Comment on Informed Consent by Cor Faber
https://adsei.org/2024/10/07/inf...Dear Dr. McIver,
One of the flaws of our society (which has always been there) is the lack of interest by that same society. In short: we do not really care. AI is the new religion and we are not aware of the weight of AI. Most of us are unaware of the interest of companies that develope AI. Unfortunatly the same goes for organisations that use that AI. They do not know and they do not seem to care. It is there and we will use it, regardless of the ethics.
Not just AI but the whole of ict and the internet is a blackbox for most people. We fail to see the interests of companies such as Google, Meta, etc. are not always our interests. Maybe it was like that in the beginning, but as soon as their impact on us has gotten such a level where we can not surive without their systems, they put the weight on THEIR interest. We fail to see this (or do not want to see).
I have been working in ict and I have seen this development take place. Also houw ict has become chaos. We keep building and building and connecting al sorts of systems, at some point (if ever) nobody knows how systems work anymore. If something fails it might end up in a domino-effect (we had some events like that here in The Netherlands recently).
The future...? Like deaths in traffic are concidered normal, we will have to get used to 'accidents' in ict and the internet. I am glad I do not work in ict anymore. I do not want to be guilty in building more chaos.
Cheers, Cor Faber
7.10.2024 09:23Comment on Informed Consent by Cor Faber
https://adsei.org/2024/10/07/inf...The difference between climate change and the threat of nuclear war
https://adsei.org/2024/08/01/the..."I grew up under the threat of nuclear war. Carl Sagan told us it was inevitable. It didn't happen, and we're not worried about nuclear war anymore, so obviously panicking about climate change is the same - in a few years we'll realise there was nothing to be scared of. It's not the crisis we think it is."
I completely understand the attractiveness of this theory. "We are under threat. That's scary. But we were under threat before and that turned out to be nothing, so this one will too, right? RIGHT? PLEASE??"
1.8.2024 04:58The difference between climate change and the threat of nuclear war
https://adsei.org/2024/08/01/the...Dr Melissa Humphries on statistics, social media, and many many things!
https://adsei.org/podcast-downlo..."Every decision that we make, whether we're thinking about climate change, poverty, you know happiness, agriculture... how do we feed everyone, how do we clothe them, all of that is underpinned by data and mathematics.
1.7.2024 07:29Dr Melissa Humphries on statistics, social media, and many many things!
https://adsei.org/podcast-downlo...The little chatbot that couldn’t
https://adsei.org/2024/06/27/the...Chatbots are not capable of understanding, or analysis, or even differentiating between truth and fiction. All they can do is fit together something that looks like language. Which makes it desperately worrying when teachers use them for marking, lawyers use them for coming up with arguments to use in court, or they get used for anything requiring analysis or accuracy.
26.6.2024 23:49The little chatbot that couldn’t
https://adsei.org/2024/06/27/the...Teacher Guide to AI – please help!
https://adsei.org/2024/05/17/tea...We must educate ourselves, and our children, to be in a position to be rationally sceptical of technological hype. As a society, we need some inoculation against magical technological thinking.
But where do teachers and schools start? Without a background in Artificial Intelligence, how can we expect teachers to inoculate our kids against the hype? How do we teach them to be more savvy and compassionate consumers and makers of technology?
That’s where we come in. Laura Summers from Debias AI and Dr Linda McIver from the Australian Data Science Education Institute are putting together a teacher’s guide to AI, but we need your help to make sure the guide is exactly what you need. To that end we’ve put together a survey. We would love it if you could fill it out and share it with all of your teacher friends.
16.5.2024 23:11Teacher Guide to AI – please help!
https://adsei.org/2024/05/17/tea...Learning to be wrong
https://adsei.org/2024/05/03/lea...When you penalise wrong answers, you build in a sense of shame and failure to being wrong that most people never get over. It leads to cheating, to covering up of mistakes, and to avoiding doing things where being wrong is a possibility.
How about, instead, we make it the default that you assume that you will be wrong in numerous ways. We make it a fundamental part of the process to figure out those ways, and even reward the finding of those mistakes. In doing so, we give people the freedom to explore, to try new things, and, above all, to learn without fear.
3.5.2024 04:30Learning to be wrong
https://adsei.org/2024/05/03/lea...Comment on Covid Experience Dataset by Sam
https://mastodon.social/@samohTm...<a href="https://adsei.org/author/lindamciver/" rel="ugc">@lindamciver</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/COVID" rel="nofollow ugc">#COVID</a> Thank you for sharing!This partly answers a question I have had. And it aligns with the experience of people I know. For this data set, small as it is, in four years people on average have been infected:5 times +/- 1.2. 2.4% no timesMy expectation based on modeling was 1.2-1.6 times per year. This is 1.25. With the latent impacts on immune health, and aging, this bodes very poorly for the future. That cannot now be changed.~1 person in 30 may be ok in 3 yrs
29.4.2024 01:48Comment on Covid Experience Dataset by Sam
https://mastodon.social/@samohTm...Axes of awful
https://adsei.org/2024/02/15/axe...This is another example of how there are no absolute rules in data science (except for: there's no such thing as a perfect dataset - that one holds inviolable!). Everything is context. The y-axis not starting at 0 is sometimes ok. Pie charts are sometimes a great way to compare values. A line graph is sometimes useful for discrete data.
15.2.2024 00:49Axes of awful
https://adsei.org/2024/02/15/axe...What is wrong with this data analysis?
https://adsei.org/2024/02/02/wha...So someone is using quantitative data to justify something. How can you figure out whether the analysis is valid, or whether there are holes in it you could drive a truck through? It's not always easy. Sometimes it's not even possible, without access to the raw data! But here are some starter questions you can ask about the data analysis, to help figure out where the issues are.
2.2.2024 06:09What is wrong with this data analysis?
https://adsei.org/2024/02/02/wha...Rule me out
https://adsei.org/2024/01/05/rul...I get that we can't go questioning all the rules all of the time, because we'd never get anything done. But if there is something that would make your life easier, healthier, or more fun, and it wouldn't harm anyone, but it's "not the done thing", maybe ask yourself whether you could make it the done thing, simply by doing it!
5.1.2024 05:30Rule me out
https://adsei.org/2024/01/05/rul...Grant Ennis
https://adsei.org/podcast-downlo..."So like while we would never believe that if we saw a stone rolling down a mountain, that if we all just stared at it and willed it back up the hill, it would do that, we do tend to believe that if we all individually do our part for the environment or ask people to just individually act that because people want that to be so and want that to work, that it just will, we believe that if we give people more information than then somehow just spontaneously they will change their behaviour, which really is quite fanciful."
20.12.2023 02:42Grant Ennis
https://adsei.org/podcast-downlo...What is Education For?
https://adsei.org/2023/10/30/wha...Everything we do sends a signal about who we are, and what we value. Nowhere is that more evident, or more neglected, than in education. My son has his final year 12 exams today. Every step of the process has made me angrier and angrier about the ways in which we try to ensure "objectivity", and wind up causing immense distress, and entrenching disadvantage in the system.
30.10.2023 06:27What is Education For?
https://adsei.org/2023/10/30/wha...Kate Carruthers on Data Governance and the people side of data
https://adsei.org/podcast-downlo..."Behind every business problem is a human being with some kind of need. And if we understand that, we can solve it and increasingly now every business is a data driven business, but you can't let data be the only thing you need to, we need to focus in on the human problems we're trying to solve. And that's probably one of the things that is making me really think about this AI revolution that's happening now. And a lot of people seem to be putting forward crazy solutions and not keeping the human being with a real problem and real needs in mind with their solutions."
18.10.2023 04:55Kate Carruthers on Data Governance and the people side of data
https://adsei.org/podcast-downlo...If you see something, say something
https://adsei.org/2023/10/14/if-...It's easy to give in to despair - I admit, I've done at times that with The Voice. I've been so appalled, and at times actually frightened, by the lies and the vitriol that I've given up, bowed my head, and accepted defeat. But truth is not breakable. It does not decay. It can't be destroyed. It's up to us, as citizens of the world, to keep teaching. To tackle the lies, to take down the misinformation.
14.10.2023 02:25If you see something, say something
https://adsei.org/2023/10/14/if-...What if…
https://adsei.org/2023/10/09/wha...Imagine if there was a disease that became endemic. A virus that was unavoidable, that everyone gets, over and over. And imagine if that virus, if it didn't prove fatal, stole just a little every time. A bit of energy here. A bit of immune function there. A bit of cognitive function somewhere else. Imagine what the impact of that might be on society, on workplaces, on people. Then look around you. What do you see? Do you see a new level of struggle? Of systems, and people, cracking under the strain?
9.10.2023 04:55What if…
https://adsei.org/2023/10/09/wha...Comment on Greg Jericho on communicating with data by shyamsunderdm07
https://adsei.org/podcast/greg-j...Obtaining an understanding of the topic is possible for every user through the reading of this superb blog post.
Greg Jericho's discussion on data communication is both insightful and eye-opening. His emphasis on the simplicity of a good graph resonates, reminding us that data isn't just about complex math. His journey of digging into spreadsheets and constructing data himself showcases the power of independent data analysis. Jericho's perspective challenges traditional journalism and highlights how data can tell the story. It's refreshing to see someone like him break away from the norm. Kudos to the author for sharing this thought-provoking conversation!
https://www.analyticspath.com/data-science-training-in-hyderabad/
14.9.2023 11:08Comment on Greg Jericho on communicating with data by shyamsunderdm07
https://adsei.org/podcast/greg-j...One year and 21 fascinating data conversations
https://adsei.org/2023/07/27/one...21 guests and one year later, Make Me Data Literate is breaking new ground.
Don't be afraid of data. It can be an extraordinarily powerful tool in any field, and you don't need wildly technical skills in order to make sense of a spreadsheet. Imagine if we all had the power to ask for evidence, and to critically interrogate that evidence. That's the world I'm working towards, and I'm so grateful to all of my Make Me Data Literate guests who are helping me along the way!
27.7.2023 06:01One year and 21 fascinating data conversations
https://adsei.org/2023/07/27/one...We need to demand better from tech
https://adsei.org/2023/07/18/we-...We suffer from a combination of shiny toy fever and an entirely hallucinatory dream that the tech industry is operating for our benefit, rather than to extract ever increasing rivers of money (and power) from us regardless of ethics, environment, or compassion. In the face of countless examples of sociopathic behaviour, our attitude towards tech remains bizarrely positive.
18.7.2023 06:46We need to demand better from tech
https://adsei.org/2023/07/18/we-...Comment on Polly Hemming on the ways Climate Data is misused by flonkeropterous
https://adsei.org/podcast/polly-...Infuriating, exasperatiing, disillusioning all yes, even when one is across the underlying facts. If the world was intent on resolving the climate crisis, we would have updated our targets in line with latest data which, according to the IPCC, requires a 45% reduction in emissions this decade rather than 43% since 2005. This would erase the 22% stated progress vs 1.8% actual emissions reduction since 2005 and start from 2019 then requiring 7.5% per year from then (against little over 0.1% per year achieved since 2005).
With the political climate wars only now lessening a little, it seems we are still far from the day we get a leader who will openly, honestly and perhaps emotionally espouse the real situation and what is needed to reset the baseline for efforts going forward rather than irresponsibly using fictitious data around business as usual near 20 years old as a reference.
Until it is clear to the layperson what stacks up and what doesn't, we can't even start to have a sensible debate about how we want to proceed as we can't let go of the so many easy options that don't.
By not having a plan we're planning to fail - not just us but the next 100 generations
21.6.2023 07:45Comment on Polly Hemming on the ways Climate Data is misused by flonkeropterous
https://adsei.org/podcast/polly-...