Intuition Machines

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-68
Author(s):  
Linda Kronman
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Machine Vision ◽  
Environmental Security ◽  
First Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Vision Systems ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Decision

The urgency of environmental, security, economic and political crises in the early twenty-first century has propelled the use of machine vision to aid human decision-making. These developments have led to strategies in which functions of human intuitive processing have been externalized to ‘vision machines’ in the hope of optimized and objective insights. I argue that we should approach these replacements of human nonconscious functions as ‘intuition machines.’ I apply this approach through a close reading of artworks which expose the hid- den labour required to train a machine. These artworks demonstrate how human agency shapes the ways that machines perceive the world and reveal how values and biases are hardcoded into nonconscious cognitive machine vision systems. Thus, my analysis suggests that decisions made by such systems cannot be considered fundamentally objective or true. Nevertheless, artworks also exemplify how externalized intuitive processing can still be helpful as long as we refrain from blindly taking the results as a go-signal to take immediate action.

Foucault’s Folie et déraison: its influence and its contemporary relevance

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-358
Author(s):  
Andrew Scull
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
History Of Psychiatry ◽  
First Century ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Impact

Michel Foucault remains one of the most influential intellectuals in the early twenty-first century world. This paper examines the origins and impact of his first major work, Folie et déraison, on the history of psychiatry, particularly though not exclusively in the world of Anglo-American scholarship. The impact and limits of Foucault’s work on the author’s own contributions to the history of psychiatry are examined, as is the larger influence of Madness and Civilization (as it is known to most Anglophones) on the nascent social history of psychiatry. The paper concludes with an assessment of the sources of the appeal of Foucault’s work among some scholars, and notes his declining influence on contemporary scholars working on the history of psychiatry.

Theodicy Sociologised: Suffering Smart in the Twenty-First Century

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Fuller
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Attitudes ◽  
First Century ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Cosmic Order ◽  
The World ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Normative Order

Theodicy is the branch of theology traditionally concerned with justifying palpable injustices in the world that are presumably the product of a just deity. The classical sociologists appreciated theodicy's relevance in terms of different social attitudes towards human suffering: is it to be tolerated, minimised, redressed or somehow transcended? Each answer implies a different view about the place of humanity in some larger cosmic order. In modern political theory, the question is normally specified in terms of the problem of distributive justice. However, the re-negotiation of the boundary between biology and sociology in the early twenty-first century is forcing a re-engagement with theodicy in its original broad sense, especially as we are increasingly asked to set resource distribution policies that bind across generations of humans and non-humans alike. In this context, as humans acquire an increasingly ‘godlike’ perspective on the normative order, suffering may come to be seen in more strictly instrumental terms – indeed, as itself a resource that might be recycled to produce good in the long term. Thus, we may be entering an era of ‘moral entrepreneurship’.

Comparative Legal Families and Comparative Legal Traditions

2019 ◽  
pp. 422-441 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Patrick Glenn
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
First Century ◽  
Static State ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
System A ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The Common ◽  
Legal Normativity

For much of the twentieth century, comparatists have divided the world into ‘legal families’ (such as the civil law, the common law, socialist law, etc.) and assigned each (national) legal system a place in one of them. The chapter argues that this taxonomic enterprise has largely remained at the descriptive state, entailed a misleading division into fixed categories, and that is has failed to produce real comparison between laws. It is also too static, state-centred, and Euro-centric to be workable under conditions of late twentieth and early twenty-first century globalism. It should be replaced by the paradigm of ‘legal traditions’ which not only emphasizes the evolving nature of law, but also avoids dividing the world into clearly separated groupings. Instead, a ‘legal traditions’ approach focuses on the fluidity, interaction, and resulting hybridity of laws, thus facilitating their comparison. As it is not tied to Western-style national legal systems, it can easily capture the laws of the whole world, including the increasingly important non-state forms of legal normativity. Since the chapter was written by the late H. Patrick Glenn over a decade ago, the editors added a postscript bringing the reader up to date on the scholarship on, and the debate about, legal families and traditions.

Industrialization, Hubs, and Catch-up

2020 ◽  
pp. 145-161
Author(s):  
Deepak Nayyar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Rapid Decline ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The World ◽  
Catch Up

This chapter analyses the striking changes in the geographical distribution of manufacturing production amongst countries and across continents since 1750, a period that spans more than two-and-a-half centuries, which could be described as the movement of industrial hubs in the world economy over time. Until around 1820, world manufacturing production was concentrated in China and India. The Industrial Revolution, followed by the advent of colonialism, led to deindustrialization in Asia and, by 1880, Britain became the world industrial hub that extended to northwestern Europe. The United States surpassed Britain in 1900, and was the dominant industrial hub in the world until 2000. During 1950 to 2000, the relative, though not absolute, importance of Western Europe diminished, and Japan emerged as a significant industrial hub, while the other new industrial hub, the USSR and Eastern Europe, was short lived. The early twenty-first century, 2000–2017, witnessed a rapid decline of the United States, Western Europe, and Japan as industrial hubs, to be replaced largely by Asia, particularly China. This process of shifting hubs, associated with industrialization in some countries and deindustrialization in other countries in the past, might be associated with premature deindustrialization in yet other countries in the future.

The Study of Human Decision-Making: A Cautionary Tale from the World of Experimental Gaming

1981 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 173 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. S. Huxham ◽  
P. G. Bennett ◽  
M. V. Lozowski ◽  
M. R. Dando
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Decision

scholarly journals Photoblogs: the immediate need to document early twenty-first century photography practices

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Atwood
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Hard Copy ◽  
Digital Cameras ◽  
Collections Management ◽  
Camera Phones ◽  
The People ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The World ◽  
Twenty First Century

This thesis attempts to suggest ways in which museums might better understand and make informed decisions about acquiring, preserving, and cataloguing photoblogs, which are an early twenty-first century photography practice. Photographers can now use the World Wide Web to show and share their images, because of the advent of digital cameras, camera phones, and cheap, open-source photo-blogging tools available to the general population. This thesis will help museums to better understand and be comfortable in acquiring digital artefacts, such as photoblogs, that will enrich their photographic collections for future generations. Acquisition tools and preservation methods are defined and discussed. The process of cataloguing photoblogs in current collections-management databases is not much different from cataloguing hard-copy photographs. The "People of Walmart" photoblog is used as an example and an illustration to clearly define the difficult technical jargon separating curatorial and collections management departments from information technology departments.

Pluralizing Global Governance

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
World Order ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The World ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Regional Perspective

The concluding chapter summarizes the four main findings of the volume. The first concerns a certain retreat from global governance despite the multilateral and unstable nature of the world order in the early twenty-first century. Second, contributions to this volume highlight the power but also the problems that a regional perspective yields in our efforts to decentralize and pluralize our understanding of global governance. Third, that our critical approach to global governance has to cultivate an element of self-reflexivity. Just as we question the western-centric domination in discussions on global governance, when adopting decentralized, regional views we need to keep this element of self-reflexivity and plurality alive. This is no simple enterprise. And fourth, that the agent of global governance remains elusive. Doing away with the state leaves us with a rather fuzzy constellation of different types of institutions with different levels of aspiration and capacity to govern transnationally.

Dementia, Selves, and Stories

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars-Christer Hydén
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Physical World ◽  
First Century ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Self And Identity ◽  
Over Time

This chapter provides information on the social and cultural background of dementia from the early twentieth century into the early twenty-first century. The chapter presents an overview of the discussions about dementia, self, and identity, with a particular emphasis on research on narrative and dementia. The ideas around identity in dementia, from Kitwood to Sabat and Kontos, are discussed, together with research on storytelling in dementia. A general conclusion from this chapter is that although persons with dementia over time will become increasingly challenged as storytellers, they are still active meaning-makers. They are obviously still engaged in the never-ending activity of making sense of their social as well as physical world—events in the world, as well as what people are saying and doing. Telling stories is central to this endeavor, which entails “world-making” as well as “self-making” through constructing, presenting, and negotiating a sense of self and identity.

The Prime Minister

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Trollope
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
First Century ◽  
Political Life ◽  
British Society ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The World ◽  
Twenty First Century

‘Though a great many men and not a few women knew Ferdinand Lopez very well, none of them knew whence he had come.’ Despite his mysterious antecedents, Ferdinand Lopez aspires to join the ranks of British society. An unscrupulous financial speculator, he determines to marry into respectability and wealth, much against the wishes of his prospective father-in-law. One of the nineteenth century’s most memorable outsiders, Lopez’s story is set against that of the ultimate insider, Plantagenet Palliser, Duke of Omnium. Omnium reluctantly accepts the highest office of state; now, at last, he is ‘the greatest man in the greatest country in the world’. But his government is a fragile coalition and his wife’s enthusiastic assumption of the role of political hostess becomes a source of embarrassment. Their troubled relationship and that of Lopez and Emily Wharton is a conjunction that generates one of Trollope’s most complex and substantial novels. Part of the Palliser series, The Prime Minister’s tale of personal and political life in the 1870s has acquired a new topicality in the early twenty-first century.

Decision-Making Cognitive Process

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Thais Spiegel ◽  
Ana Carolina P V Silva
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Cognitive Process ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Time Constraints ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Cognitive Limitations ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Decision ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Rationality Theory

In the study of decision-making, the classical view of behavioral appropriateness or rationality was challenged by neuro and psychological reasons. The “bounded rationality” theory proposed that cognitive limitations lead decision-makers to construct simplified models for dealing with the world. Doctors' decisions, for example, are made under uncertain conditions, as without knowing precisely whether a diagnosis is correct or whether a treatment will actually cure a patient, and often under time constraints. Using cognitive heuristics are neither good nor bad per se, if applied in situations to which they have been adapted to be helpful. Therefore, this text contextualizes the human decision-making perspective to find descriptions that adhere more closely to the human decision-making process. Then, based on a literature review of cognition during decision-making, particularly in healthcare context, it addresses a model that identifies the roles of attention, categorization, memory, emotion, and their inter-relations, during the decision-making process.

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