Ranking and Rating in for All

As they say, “With great power comes great responsibility”. Information and computation is one the biggest powers of humans in the era we live in. Data about almost everything is available for those who seek. So, it is right to say that laws should be made (or updated) in accordance with the available resources in order to assure progress and safety for all. Knowledge is key to all, good or evil. We can’t stay without considering the importance of imposing laws regarding how knowledge is use, if we want good from knowledge.

Nowadays, the race to gathers money is above everything and everyone. The same way schools are rated and ranked according to factors that lead school leaders to focus less on students, humans themselves are rated according to unrelated factors. For humans, it is more about who is (or can) be happy? The answer is usually: the rich and famous people. The way to become rich or famous is not taken into consideration, you only need to rich the final destination, being rich or famous. Most of the time the theory of survival of the fittest as a reason why the poor are poor are poor and the rich are rich. While it more about who ever walking on other people’s bodies to get to where you want to be, whether it is “necessary” or not, it never is. Whoever succeeds in that is the “fittest”. At the end of the day, it doesn’t make one happy.

As gathering and manipulating data has become central to everything in the world, it has also is a weapon. The few people with access to data use it for their own good regardless of how it affects others. That’s one reason why Cathy O’Neil describes some Machine Learning Algorithms as “Weapons of Math Destruction”. An example she talks about in her book is how the Advertisement industry helps companies hunt, harass, manipulate, and put a class of people into misery and despair.