Track and Trace Privacy Concerns Reduce Patient Compliance. Blockchain to the Rescue?
My initial response to the SARS2 outbreak in China was strongly impacted by the fact that I had just had a heart attack, and was feeling very mortal. I know we all saw the outrageous oppressions the CCP undertook and were horrified. People being welded into apartments, and whole apartment buildings having their doors blocked by tons of soil and rocks against them seemed surreal, and it was definitely alarming.
Scientific papers were being published with terrible fatality and transmission rates that had us all wondering if we'd be soon seeing scenes from Hieronymous Bosch paintings and the medieval plagues of Europe.
However, the accumulated data now suggests the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus is pretty mild, with CFR estimates well below 1%, similar to the seasonal flu.
But the early frightening numbers drove huge efforts to track and trace people who might have been exposed, and even though tracking and tracing folks isn't warranted by seasonal flu's CFR, Orwellian governments are still pushing invasive surveillance citing the need to track and trace.
As soon as I understood the creepy surveillance being implemented, I quit carrying a cell phone outside my home at all. This has been inconvenient (I had a pleasant walk out of a remote area where my vehicle broke down one day, to get to a phone), I reckon the invasive and deceptive nature of the surveillance to have become intolerable after I saw a video of a man being forcibly assaulted with a hypodermic needle against his will.
I'd really prefer not to have to prevent such an assault on me, much preferring occasional pleasant walks innawoods to armed confrontations.
Let's hope that reason soon prevails, as the CFR continues to drop, and the unreasonable imposition of surveillance for track and trace purposes is dropped when no pretense it is necessary is possible. But that's just not going to happen everywhere.
India seems particularly dedicated to tracking and tracing their hapless subjects officially (although many folks even here in the US are reporting that track and trace apps were installed on their phones without their consent), and the apps present extreme hazards to PII (Personally Identifiable Information), which is already a monumental problem in India today.
Some folks are trying to use blockchain tech to safeguard PII data yet still enable the creepy surveillance government is insisting on.
"One of the biggest issues in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic has been that people are hesitant to come out for testing due to privacy issues and social stigma of being labelled as a suspect case. Speaking to Inc42, Vaideeswaran Sethuraman, founder and CEO of blockchain startup Param Network, said that with the help of blockchain, testing centres could publish data pseudo-anonymously and track the positive cases. This would help the government quickly act on policies to quarantine and lockdown the affected neighbourhoods"
While I am more concerned about actual oppressive force than mere privacy issues, Indians may look differently at these matters than I do. Hell, almost everybody looks at these issues differently than I do, or Fakebook, Twatter, and Goolag wouldn't even exist anymore.
Anyway, here's a link to have a read at if you want to better understand the matter.
Personally, I'm tempted to go back to a landline. It's far too difficult to actually control what apps do what on cell phones now, and I can't use CDMA phones that aren't susceptible to the problem anymore.
IMHO smart is looking pretty dumb right now, and the invasion of privacy these devices are effecting has become utterly intolerable to me. I sure as hell don't want my fridge snitching to the CDC or the WHO about all the bacon and dairy products I eat. Pretty sure when this plandemic wears out, we'll be seeing bacon sniffing trucks roaming around looking for potential atherosclerotic victims to forcibly restrain and re-educate to a proper plant and cockroach milk based diet.
They can pry my bacon from my greasy, bloated, dead fingers.
lol nice try
Yeah the surveillance on people has been the worst part. It’s not much solace but I disabled all of the tracking stuff on my phone since this. I shut off location services completely. It’s kind of funny that they give you like 5 warnings trying to do it because they want it on so badly. One is to warn you if you lose your phone you won’t be able to use the tracer app to get it back. Then there’s cell tower optimization and some others. No thanks turn it all off.
What’s cdma I’m not familiar with that one
CDMA was the old cell phone standard that the 'G' standard has replaced. Phones based on that tech did not have apps, GPS, and etc. I used to carry one with me, but they don't work on modern networks anymore.
Ah ok thanks, so one of the old flip phones we all had back in the 2000's. Sucks that they don't work on the 3g 4g or 5g networks but planned obsolescence and their need for an easy tracking device have proven very fruitful in their adoption.
You can still purchase a "dumb" cell phone that doesn't support "apps".
Only ones I've seen are those I have, and CDMA phones don't work anymore.
muted ifla..g
I also had to do so. I think it's the only mute I have used. I reckon it should be the standard treatment of automated comments platform wide, myself.
Just as much as most people cannot seem to live without any a mobile phone, communication is essential to the elderly, especially when they are living alone. Mobile phones come very handy not only in staying connected with loved ones, but also during emergencies. Fortunately, there are a lot of senior friendly cellphones in the market with large screen display and very simple interface. Snapfon Ez One for instance caters to the market with large buttons and accessible SOS button. Samsung Jitterbug also takes pride in offering basic cellphone features to send messages and make and receive calls. LINK
I suspect those phones are surveillance friendly. Just because they don't offer apps that old folks have no idea how to use doesn't mean they aren't jampacked with apps to keep tabs on those folks.
I'll see if I can find more information on that aspect of these devices, but also note that they don't seem available in any market where I could purchase them.
Also, I have lived most of my life without cell phones, and don't see that as much of a hardship.
Thanks!
Good points. Even the "old" cell phones were traceable by the telecoms and government agencies (call logs and tower triangulation).
At least with these "dumb" phones you won't be adding any additional corporate trackers (or blutooth scammers).
All you have to do to take your cell phone with you without being traced is to shut it off and wrap it in tin foil before you leave....that way if an emergency does arise where your car breaks down you can unwrap it and call for assistance.
Maybe. I have not studied the utility of tinfoil as a Faraday cage. I am absolutely sure that not having a cell phone with me will prevent being tracked by my cell phone, and I am well able to handle the lack of communications from time to time.
I look forward to gaining the ability to manufacture my own communications devices, communicate over secure and uncensorable networks, and the demise of bad actors seeking to ever increase their power over me.
That really sounds nice, but Quantum Computing will soon make all "cryptography" obsolete (if it hasn't already).
And Artificial Hyper-intelligence will make (real-time) "tracking" obsolete (complex predictive modeling) (if it hasn't already).
In about a million years. It's absolutely ridiculous that any kind of general AI will arise in my lifetime. I will allow you to compare complex predictive modeling that would make surveillance obsolete with the complex predictive models presently in use for predicting pandemics and climate change.
Protip: they're absolute garbage, and there's no sign they'll ever get any better.
That's what they said about GO.
It's only 12 minutes,
Humans have advantages in general competence that researchers into AI still have failed to even grasp, much less encompass. No neural net yet approaches the complexity of our brains. Hell, we still don't grasp the extent of that complexity.
The target isn't even in view.
Additionally, the reasons we have our brains involve ~4byr of evolution. I submit it is farcical to compare our engineering competence with that legacy.
It is notable, and a core truth that supports my thesis, that GO mastering machines, or Wolfram natural language processing AI, or any AI anywhere, are incapable of even an infinitesimal fraction of the diversity of tasks faced by organisms. They can solve a particular puzzle they are designed to and tasked with admirably (we make good tools), but none of them can also tie shoes - unless you design them to do that specific task.
General AI just doesn't exist, and is unlikely to arise until long after I'm dead. We don't even comprehend our own complexity, and aren't competent to even compare what we can do to what our tools can do. We don't even understand ourselves, and it is undeniable that we can't even design a metric that can compare us to AI. Until we can define us, that will remain true, and that is a hurdle that AI development will first have to surmount before actually developing machines that can meet or exceed those attributes can be undertaken.
We literally don't even know what hyper intelligence means, much less approach creating it.
Let me know when someone develops an AI that can crunch the numbers on whatever task it's designed for, and also tie shoes. It'll be a while. Also, note that 'tie one's shoes' is a metaphor for basic tasks that people easily and naturally can learn and complete, not some magical standard that if a machine actually can be programmed to complete, will signify it's our equal. Brushing teeth, dressing, and other tasks we experience as facile and all but mindlessly easy, are all similarly beyond the conceivable reach of AI today.
4 billion years of evolution is a lot of refinement. We have no idea just what that entails, and a lot less idea of how to surpass it.
BTW, don't get me wrong. I'm a huge fan of AI. I use lots of AI every day. It's on this computer, on my phone, in my truck. I look forward to AI that can automate many more tasks, like watering my garden, or feeding my chickens.
Those are why we need AI. Those kinds of things are what AI is good at. Not being chickens. Chickens kick every AIs ass at being chickens today, and will for as long as I can foresee.
Here's what I think you're missing.
Alpha GO only plays GO. Right. It was trained by mid-tier human GO experts. And managed to defeat a top tier GO player. A task that was very widely considered IMPOSSIBLE IN OUR LIFETIME.
Alpha ZERO can beat ANY GAME. It trains itself. All you have to do is plug it into an input/output device.
Alpha ZERO destroyed Alpha GO.
Alpha ZERO trained itself.
AI has defeated the top human players in POKER (which was also believed to be "impossible").
AI has defeated the top human players in DOTA2 (which was also believed to be "impossible").
Any task that can be "gamified" can be destroyed by AI.
What is economic competition if not an elaborate game that keeps score with $$$ ?
The CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA demonstration showed that a very brief survey of human attitudes and online habits (not even considered "sensitive information") can be leveraged to identify and INFLUENCE people to VOTE FOR YOUR CANDIDATE OF CHOICE.
Which breaks the "game" we call DEMOCRACY.
And they've done this in multiple markets and even in countries that don't commonly use a lot of technology.
NOT TO MENTION GOO.GLE'S QUA.NTUM SUP.REMACY (which just makes everything I just said about 10,000 times worse).
Democracy was broken from it's inception. It was never meant to provide rational governance, but merely obfuscation of corruption. Morons break democracy daily.
The machine you speak of can play games. It can't direct digestion, performing the toilet and hygiene tasks requisite upon our daily awakning, and ad infinitum. The complexity of genomes reveals the incalculability of biology. Massive decentralized computations are still necessary to unfold a single protein, and the requisite understanding to leave to any singly neural net the responsibility to reckon and successfully negotiate all of them is presently inconceivable.
As I said, we have today only a vague idea of that complexity, much less so the ability to measure and program a device to surpass the performance of biological systems. Playing a game is utterly laughably simple compared to just digesting your breakfast. We don't even need to think about it because of ~4byr of evolution. We cannot make a machine to do that, and will not be able to for the foreseeable future.
Solving these equations in the conventional way requires massive high-performance computing resources (months of computing time) which is typically the bottleneck to the computational design of new purpose-built molecules for medical and industrial applications. The newly developed AI algorithm can supply accurate predictions within seconds on a laptop or mobile phone. LINK
...
Effectively designing proteins might require a quantum computer with 1,000 stable qubits, Mulligan says. But even before that day comes, the protein designers in my lab expect breakthroughs. We’re focusing for now on a class of proteins called cyclic peptides, which are easier to design because they’re tiny. Many natural cyclic peptides have appealing medicinal properties. They are bigger than the molecules in conventional drugs like aspirin, but less complex than large protein therapeutics like antibodies.
“Once we can do peptides,” says Mulligan, “we can use the same algorithms to design any protein. We’ll just be waiting on hardware.” LINK
...
In the human brain, the information that we create and calculate is not always correct. We make mistakes over and over again. But the machines don’t make mistakes like that. Even the information replicated into so many times the result still be accurate. That is a huge advantage of artificial neural networks. The human brain is much slower when we compare with ANN. It is working really fast and gives accurate results. That is why nowadays ANN become so trendy. And also it can consume a lot more time and manpower. Artificial networks can train properly and can replace human functions. Just imagine! How the advanced technology designated by humans to replace the tasks of humans? That is a massive revolution in this modern era. LINK
...
We're currently at 53 qubits with a detailed plan to scale to 5000. LINK
Then we will always be superior to our tools, because we will make mistakes we learn from. Once I made a mistake and cut my thumb on a broken shell. As undesirable as that may have seemed, it has become the reason I do not suffer from pain as I would had I not cut my thumb. Pain is just input. Suffering is a choice.
One interesting feature of our minds is that we can choose what they are, what we perceive, and whether we are happy or not. It is not what happens to us that makes us happy. It is not what happens to us that makes us suffer. We choose those things.
Every good thing you are is something you have learned to be from making a mistake you did not intend to make, and no one would have programmed you to make. It is our weaknesses that most strengthen us, and how much so is unquantifiable.
It is a qualitative difference between us and machines, and that isn't just a matter of more qubits.
Also, I'm not talking about one protein. I'm talking about the dance of them that results in our actions. That complexity is absolutely as simple as possible, with all extraneous crap shaved from the bone during ~4Byr or evolution. That degree of complexity is utterly beyond our present conception, and that must precede our improvement over that general utility in the engineering of an AI that can improve on it's performance.
You manipulate humans every day.
I manipulate humans every day.
The con-artists and mobsters of the world manipulate millions of people every day.
Humans aren't "magical".
Most of them are Pavlovian dogs.
Imagine what you could do with a computer advisor that could beat any "game"?
What goal would you aim it towards?
Self-sufficiency?
Imagine how it might advise you to achieve that goal?
I can but disagree that some gaming computer could manipulate me. I do not manipulate people daily, or at all if I can help it. There are negotiations, but that is not manipulation. It's important to understand little differences when propagandists are trying to sway your reason with subtle bludgeons like words.
I, were I a programmer, could seek to turn the gaming AI into useful AI to dispense feed to my tilapia in my aquaponics system, or something similar, but I have no interest in coercion, compulsion, or conning others. I expect to live and die from my hard work.
In a catastrophic event, such as 2021 is shaping up to be, I expect the worthless and the worthy to be valued accordingly, and live or die based on their value to society - which isn't gaming computers. Folks capable of better but living as slaves will either attain better or suffer the consequences of sloth in busy times.
Death cures all diseases.
INTERACTION = MANIPULATION
I'm not communicating with you "for no reason".
You're not communicating with me "for no reason".
We'd like to think it's for "our mutual benefit", but that's not really anyone's primary motivation.
I disagree that all interaction is manipulation.
It doesn't matter that benefits inure to the parties interacting. Benefiting is not only the result of manipulation.
Mutualism is a thing. Parasitism is not the only way. Sovereign people can interact without being manipulated. Even the deliberate attempt to manipulate does not automatically cause it to happen. Free people are free to do what they will, despite what anyone else does, or does not do.
I am kinda sad that you see things that way. We live in a much larger world than we can imagine, and closing off our ability to grasp significance by asserting that all interactions are manipulation is reducing the full panoply of human society to a grim, grey overcast.
I am not manipulating you.
All I seek is to edify you, and be edified in turn.
Let the sunshine of your sovereign freedom illuminate your dark cage of mental confinement. It's really shining bright, and creates all sorts of pretty colors and beautiful forms.
Have you ever met one of these "sovereign people"?
I've always believed them to be some sort of idealistic pipe-dream or mythical beast.
It sometimes makes our ontological imprisonment slightly more tolerable to pretend we're "free", but the cold bars of cause-and-effect can never be dissolved.
Humans only get paid to solve gamified puzzles.
These game solving machines will make human intellectual (and most physical) work obsolete in short order.
I know the thumbnail is off-putting, but please take a few minutes to watch this,
In 22 minutes,
I will not be replaced by a machine anytime soon. I won't even be replaced by a human anytime soon. I overheard a guy I was working for today tell his neighbor "...everyone else quit, but @valued-customer."
Being willing to do the really shitty jobs for low pay means job security =)
Hain't watched the video yet, but lemme just say now that UBI is a trap. The money is bait, the snap is dependence. If one is aware of that going in, and does not become dependent, UBI is great.
Buy tools if you get some, and do shitty jobs no one else wants to do, so that if the threat of withdrawal of UBI is used to attempt to coerce you to do something undesirable, you can simply refuse and walk away from UBI without suffering.
That's my current plan.
Edit: watched it. It's a trap. Take the cheese if they offer it, but don't get caught.
The most common job for adult men is "driver" and those jobs are going to become obsolete very shortly.
The most common job for adult women is "retail clerk" and those jobs are going to become obsolete very shortly.
Even the "ditch digger" and "construction worker" will be made obsolete by computerized construction bots.
When the planet reaches 80% unemployment, then 90% unemployment.
How do you expect people to pay their rent and buy food?
Sure it would be nice if everyone could grow their own gardens and feed themselves, but they need cash to pay their land taxes (rental fee).
Will we all be living in prisons?
How long do you think our OWNERS will try to keep the poor idiots alive once they've become obsolete?
Seriously, robotic police drones won't have any problem slaughtering protesters.
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. If the Lord taketh away driver or clerk jobs, serve people in another way. I'm a finish carpenter, but I was trenching with an axe yesterday. Be flexible, but useful.
I expect the forced injection of Bill Gates patented SARS2 DNA altering 'vaccine' to begin ~January 2021. However, the soft martial law has already begun, and Fed.Gov is sending federales into big cities right now: Operation Legend. As soon as there is some vaccine, forced injections could begin (as early as October). It's more likely that the willing will be injected first, and then the plaint that not enough have been willing will be used to make it mandatory, and the troops will already have been on the streets for months by then. They'll go door to door with armed forces to compel compliance.
That will be the beginning of the cull.
Only protestors will be slaughtered by police drones at protests, or idiots that happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I suggest deploying some of the means people in the ME have been using to disrupt drones. Certain water pumps, for example, produce so much electrical interference that drones fall from the sky, or at least fail to surveil. The solution to tech is better tech. Really bad tech, as the water pump example, is really good for disruption purposes. Very, very poorly shielded microwave ovens would burn cops trying to bust down your door in the middle of the night, if you decided to make some popcorn and watch the show.
You can think of more good examples of bad tech yourself.
Regarding rent and food, I expect people will transact outside the system as necessary to live, defy the system when it is too onerous, or die. I do not expect this to be easy, nor for everyone to survive, but I expect people to do everything possible to live before they die.
However, I do not expect to survive 2021. I have not become able to manufacture the ~dozen or so medications that keep me alive, and that is a chain around my neck that will strangle me to death, when they want to yank on it. I am obstreporous and will resist capture and injection robustly. It will be far easier to inject me with hot lead than DNA vaccine.
I hope you do become able to manufacture the goods and services you need, to trade with others for those you can't, and survive, free and well.
This is going to be one hell of a high-stakes game of musical chairs.
It's just going to be war, mass enslavement, and dehumanizing the common people, just like has always been the SOP when tyrannies are imposed on free people throughout history.
Right, and yet, materially "worse" than the current status-quo.
Individual human psychology is significantly LESS COMPLEX than your pandemic and climate change examples.
AND even iff the OWNERS had truly accurate predictive systems, it would seem to be in their best interest to pretend they were relying on "incomplete and or faulty data".
What you neglect is that our grasp of that psychology is utterly puerile. Psychology is not a science at all. It is impossible today to predict what an individual will do faced with a set of environmental constraints. Science is only competent to predict the most basic of physical events, like light passing through a pair of slits - and even so remains utterly incapable of grasping why light acts the way it does. The multiple layers of increasing complexity between such simple physics and psychology is literally inconceivably impenetrable scientifically today, and psychologists naught but con artists.
More of import is that our psychology is only surficially of impact to our behaviour. Most of what we do has nothing to do with our consciousness. It's innate behaviour genetically determined, and we don't even know which behaviour, what genes produce it, or why.
We can't even conceive of a machine that can do this, much less make one better at it than us.
This statement is provably false.
Edward Bernays and Cambridge Analytica are proof positive that Humans can be and are being very accurately predicted and influenced.
In 2 minutes,
Also, please watch this [other] informative documentary [regarding cointelpro] for free, no sign-up, LINK
While we certainly can be predictable, and manipulated thereby, it is not at all a scientific grasp, but intuitive. Some statistics can be derived, but outliers always exist and confound our ability to formulate laws that rule our consciousness.
We aren't machines.
We are sacred.
When we are utterly maintaining that in our awareness, we become immune to influence - if we intend to be. We are far more than we realize we are. What is true is that the more we know about our minds and consciousness, the more we realize there is to know that we don't.
As long as this is true, hyperintelligent general AI will remain impossible to create. What intelligence is will remain undefinable, and thus unattainable by our engineering. We can make tools, not minds.
This guy understood that.
I used to think I was immune to influence (advertising and other con-games) but now I realize that there is a subtle cumulative effect that is nearly impossible to mitigate.
The only way to become immune to influence is to be deaf, blind, and mute (and physically numb).
I must remain unable to agree. It is not nescience that alone enables one to determine one's course, but determination to do so, regardless of the flames.
This is true.
And this is what makes Humans so easy to predict.
People are predictable when they set out to be. They don't always do that. Is everyone in Baghdad a terrorist? How can you tell? We can predict there are some, maybe even get close to how many there are, but no one can predict when you will go over the edge and commit acts intended to terrorize others, or whether you will.
All humans terrorize other humans.
It's only a small matter of degree.
"Hi. Welcome to Guantanamo. I'm Boss Gerard, and I'll be your guard tonight."
Your "conscious mind" is merely fabricating ex-post-facto "explanations" for your very simple animal instincts.
Explained in 5 minutes,
I think that is true to an extent. Human beings are cognitively unpredictable to a degree. This is why inventions arise, art is created, and reason deployed.
It is an interesting situation. I also try to keep in mind that what I believe informs what I perceive. If I don't believe something is possible, even if I see it before my eyes, I may not actually see it for what it is, but my brain may manufacture some other explanation. I also sometimes force myself to acknowledge that I don't know what I am seeing, and like to think that I would not explain why I was holding the Rubik's Cube if I wasn't actually holding it.
I also have experienced lucid dreams where there are actually three of me present: the Dreamer, the Dreamee, and the lucid consciousness I am when awake that was watching me dream, both the receipt of the dream and the act of composing the dream.
When I was 8 or so, I was using limpets for bait to catch sculpins by hand in the tide pools on the beach of Baranof Island. One of the limpet shells shattered when I scooped the limpet out of the shell with my thumb, but I noticed nothing wrong, so I dropped the bait into the pool, and lurked above, ready to pounce on my dinner.
I saw a droplet fall into the pool, and noticed it was blood. I looked at my thumb, and it was deeply lacerated from the razor sharp shell fragments.
Suddenly, it hurt.
That was extremely educational, and remains of import to me in my daily life. It's why I am able to work construction as I have more than two decades after suffering injury to my back. Today I spent hours trenching with an axe in one hand and a sledge hammer in the other. I am able to decide to suffer or not from the pain I experience, and still be able to judge whether I am injuring me from doing stuff that I shouldn't.
After the work is over, I let the pain free from the oblivion I keep it in while I work.
Thanks!
Excellent examples.
Why reinvent the wheel?....just make sure the right message gets sent out.
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Thanks for the suggestion!
A few more covid cases in Melbourne, Victoria and they're practically locking people in their apartment blocks for refusing to be tested. Hopefully they don't go as far as welding them in.
I've given up worrying about being tracked any more. There are that many cameras tracking cars here and it turns out South Australia has everyone's driver's licences on a facial recognition database ready to swing into action.
I do not suggest worrying. I recommend carefully considering how to remain able to live despite tyrannical impositions of oppressive lockdown that I foresee continuing to increase in severity going forward.
While worry will do you no good, complacency might do you great harm. Acting to secure your future isn't worrying. It's how to prevent worrying.
Glad you got rid of fear, @valued-customer :)
Fear is my buddy. It is my best friend in all the world, keeping me on my toes, alerting me to danger. However, like anyone, it is a terrible master, and I have used reason to overcome my fear. I control my actions, not fear, and this is why it is my friend, and neither my master nor ignored and without my attention.
Well stated.