Braintrust

"Braintrust , by the neuroscientist Patricia Churchland. This book is about the neuroscience of morality. It was published in 2011. This is a brand new field of science, and new discoveries are happening all the time. Morality is the most basic of societal pressures, and Churchland explains how it works. This book tries to understand the neuroscience behind trust and trustworthiness. In her own words: “The hypothesis on offer is that what we humans call ethics or morality is a four dimensional scheme for social behavior that is shaped by interlocking brain processes: (1) caring (rooted in attachment to kin and kith and care for their well-being), (2) recognition of other’s psychological states (rooted in the benefits of predicting the behavior of others) (3) problem-solving in a social context (e.g., how we should distribute scarce goods, settle land disputes; how we should punish the miscreants) and (4) learning social practices (by positive and negative reinforcement, by imitation, by trial and error, by various kinds of conditioning, and by analogy).” Those are our innate human societal pressures. They are the security systems that keep us mostly trustworthy most of the time – enough for most of us to be trusting enough for society to survive. Of course not. There are two parts to the question. One: Are we doing the right thing? That is, does it make sense for America to focus its anti-terrorism security efforts on airports and airplanes? And two: Are we doing things right? In other words, are the anti-terrorism measures at airports doing the job and preventing terrorism? I say the answer to both of those questions is no. Focusing on airports, and specific terrorist tactics like shoes and liquids, is a poor use of our money because it’s easy for terrorists to switch targets and tactics. And the current TSA security measures don’t keep us safe because it’s too easy to bypass them. There are two basic kinds of terrorists – random idiots and professionals. Pretty much any airport security, even the pre-9/11 measures, will protect us against random idiots. They will get caught. And pretty much nothing will protect us against professionals. They’ve researched our security and know the weaknesses. By the time the plot gets to the airport, it’s too late. Much more effective is for the US to spend its money on intelligence, investigation and emergency response. But this is a shorter answer than your readers deserve, and I suggest they read more of my writings on the topic . Like everything else, cloud computing is all about trust. Trust isn’t new in computing. I have to trust my computer’s manufacturer. I have to trust my operating system and software. I have to trust my Internet connection and everything associated with that. I have to trust all sorts of data I receive from other sources. So on the one hand, cloud computing just adds another level of trust. But it’s an important level of trust. For most of us, it reduces our risk. If I have my email on Google, my photos on Flickr, my friends on Facebook and my professional contacts on LinkedIn, then I don’t have to worry much about losing my data. If my computer crashes I’ll still have all my email, photos and contacts. This is the way the iPhone works with iCloud – if I lose my phone, I can get a new one and all my data magically reappears. On the other hand, I have to trust my cloud providers. I have to trust that Facebook won’t misuse the personal information it knows about me. I have to trust that my data won’t get shipped off to a server in a foreign country with lax privacy laws, and that the companies who have my data will not hand it over to the police without a court order. I’m not able to implement my own security around my data; I have to take what the cloud provider offers. And I must trust that’s good enough, often without knowing anything about it. Seven."