Ignorance-Paralysis

Ignorance-Paralysis:

An inability to act caused by one’s awareness of one’s own ignorance.

In the 1765 century, Romania’s Prince, and next-in-line, Leonhard III, went into meditation, and resurfaced with an understanding of core number theoretic principles. In his journal, prior to the episode, he described his struggles:

I cannot act. I must pay my dues. I have ideas, but lack the tools to deduce their merit.

He was 23 at the time, and he was an accomplished inventor, having created several ingenious wartime gadgets. He had developed a passion for mathematics at the age of 22. His meditative episode occurred 8 months prior to his death. A few of his close friends, amongst them mathematicians, mentioned that he was very bright. His mathematical potential remains a tiny, forgotten blip amongst the history of mathematics. It is unmentioned and lost outside of this essay.

There are two video essays that I can think of that I think highly of. What is the difference between an article written in an academic journal, an article written in the economist, and a video essay? Publications in academia are held to the highest standards; they exist in a rarified environment. Peer-reviewed. My question is: if someone is trying to do something other than entertain, why would they hold themselves to any lower of a standard? That is something that I have difficultly wrapping my head around.

There are things that I want to write about and projects that I want to work on, but I lack the knowledge to have certainty that these will live up to academic standards—-i.e, the highest standards. Even if it unrealistic for me to hold myself to those standards, if I am to act in good faith, it is what I have to do. So I find myself suffering from ignorance-paralysis. The situation is further complicated because:

• it is unclear whether an acceptable degree of certainty can be reached for these topics
• If I were to put in the necessary hours to become technically proficient in these topics, I would fear that I would abandon the projects, move onto something else, or talk myself out of the project. I will surely find flaws.

I have a fear of being a hypocrite. I have a fear of unintentionally pandering. The last thing that I want to do is be a part of the problem.

Due to this fear—-fear of embarrassment, I suppose—-I have not yet stated the topic that I am interested in. I am interested in media. In content of all forms. I would like to be able to distinguish between entertainment and other forms of media.

Entertainment: a) the act of providing amusement or enjoyment. b) Something diverting or engaging.

The second definition makes more sense. The word that sticks out is ‘diverting.’ What is it that entertainment diverts us from? It’s a subjective question. Maybe one answer is that it’s a diversion from what we ‘should be doing.’ That then raises yet another question: what should we be doing? And now we find in our hands an existential dilemma.

And so, I am confronted with ignorance-paralysis. Ignorance in that I have no first-hand knowledge of what it is that each one of us ‘should be doing.’ This brings to mind a funny excerpt from Norbert Wiener’s wikipedia page:

“The Theory of Ignorance”, a paper he wrote at the age of 10, he disputed “man’s presumption in declaring that his knowledge has no limits”, arguing that all human knowledge “is based on an approximation”, and acknowledging “the impossibility of being certain of anything.”

Due to my inability to truly put myself in the shoes of others, I cannot speak on people’s relationship to media in good conscience. All I can do is state facts:

1. I do not know what a healthy relationship with “entertainment” looks like for myself.
2. I would prefer to have more control and transparency into the algorithms of the major social media platforms that I use.
3. I think that information access can be optimized.
4. The entertainment industry was worth 2.5t USD in 2023. This seems low.
5. It is unclear how much user data is worth. Every business can benefit from access to client data.
6. It is unclear how much user data organizations have.
7. In addition to user data, there is also enterprise data.
8. Data is important.

Memory and knowledge are a form of data. Can algorithms be viewed as artificial intelligence trained on user data? Why are we giving AI our own data? How will AI evolve to come to better understand people at an individual level? What kind of relationship will we come to have with this form of AI? How should we approach managing this relationship? What should we strive towards? Are we developing this technology with intentionality?

These are questions that come to mind.

What conclusions can I come to given the limits of my intellect? One thing that makes sense is for me to build and create content for myself. To do otherwise would be to build on assumptions. That is to act on ignorance, which is unacceptable. Why should I impose on others when the given actions are motivated by speculation? That seems unethical to me. Building and creating for yourself and allowing people to find value on their own terms is what makes sense.

Maybe what I am after is a simulacrum of this conclusion that this essay has been building towards: that everyone should think for themselves. People should not impose their assumptions on others. In other words, data should be proprietary. Each individual is an ends in and of themselves (hi Kant). Ergo Proxy, algorithms should reflect your own assumptions about yourself, rather than someone else’s. You should have control over them.

Here is another fact:

• Social media platforms with algorithmitized content are making assumptions about what you want to see.

Thus they are making an assumption about who you are.

All entities should be sovereign. The data they produce should be viewed as an extension of themselves, as their property. By this definition, our private property is being infringed upon. This is mostly unintentional. Technology has developed rapidly and so we do not have the vocabulary to deal with this. We have not even explicitly begun the conversation. It is in the peripheral of the public consciousness (I’m not a conspiricy theorist, but I wonder if defensive capabilites are baked into algos against these ‘unprofitable’ ideas).

Here are some questions that help clarify the issue:

• When we use web browsers, how are our digital fingerprints being synchronized to our activities? How much can browser providers deduce about our identities?
• Cookies are now optional, but when opted in for, how much of that data is being stored by organizations? How do organizations use that data? Do they sell it?
• How much of our user data is accessed and used by our apple devices when we are connected to their servers?
• When we log into accounts (clear digital fingerprints), how much of the data that we are creating is being utilized by organizations? We are giving the platforms that we sign up for extensive information on ourselves. Is this information being sold? Should enterprises have the right to sell this information?
• What would an alternative data ecosystem look like? From an entity based perspective (organizations and individuals both treated as sovereign entities).

These questions are also relevant to our usage of generative AI, as we are often providing valuable, and at times compromising data in its usage.

One thing that I want to explore, and that I hope I will be able to explore in my career is: as AI becomes better at understanding entities, what societal frameworks will be used for passing that data onto AI? Surely AI should not have free access to knowledge of ourselves? Think about how much information you have provided about yourself through your online, traceable activities, and think about how many people you have relationships with who know you at that level. Does it make sense that anyone who you interact with physically can gain all of this information? Why would we not treat online disclosure of personal information the same way that we treat offline disclosure of information?

For the average person, no one would care enough about you to go through all of your online personal information. Now, we can automate data extraction, and we can automate personality analysis. AI is, or will be, a person obsessing over you and finding every piece of online information they can find on you in order to better understand you. For this reason we either need to be both more mindful of the information that we put online, and intentional about data policies.

Entities will be able to leverage compute to both web scrape personal information, and use that information to build a profile. There are both political and commercial ramifications to this. Access to compute is relevant. Entities with access to more compute will hold leverage.

This essay is partially a product paranoia. As I write it, it reads to me like some kind of cyberpunk bullshit literature. This connects back to ignorance-paralysis. I fear that I am not knowledgeable enough to know whether I am an idiot for exploring these topics. I do not have enough technical knowledge to feel comfortable in this respect. The industry is moving fast; it will be hard to keep pace.

That sentence too is subject to ignorance-paralysis. If I knew more, I would maybe be able to say whether it is possible to keep pace or not.

The issue is that there is much that I need to learn to be able to take action on these topics, and I also need to build a career. Given that I want to hold myself to high standards, is my working making a significant contribution to resolving this issue realistic? Maybe the more realistic route for myself would be to surround myself with experts so that I can expedite my learning, then try to place myself in a financial position to pursue related projects. If I never acquire those means and I still want to pursue this, though, I will have to gamble. I will have to act in ignorance (act in, not on ignorance). The more rosy-eyed crowd will call that naïveté. It is ignorance. It is gambling without knowing the probabilities. Oftentimes this enables action (in the context of startups), but, ultimately it is gambling. It is gambling with my time and reputation. The more I know, the less of a gamble it will be. But how much can I know before I run out of time to act?

Ignorance-paralysis persists.

I watched fireworks in Vietnam on Sunday and drank coffee and ate ice cream. The next day we got attacked and we lost 103 bodies. I am in the Southern base now and I have been playing Blackjack. I made $93 dollars today.