Good article. I came to similar conclusions! I may do a follow-up on this breaking down political temperament and opinion on data analytics.
I think the term social justice has been hijacked by the left-wing to mean some contentious things. It can mean equality of outcome (on many paradigms, such as gender distribution in STEM fields even though there is no evidence of actual ‘utility’ ( http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617741719?journalCode=pssa), racial diversity in job types and income-distribution). It can mean the prohibition of free speech (based on ill-defined ‘hate’), to ensure nobody is offended.
I think this goes to show that politics will remain a huge part of the conversation. However, It’s well-documented that political orientation is a representation of personality difference. (Source https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f6f2/7543241293daa6e3cd415a3737f493b816d1.pdf). Based on this, perhaps we could shift the conversation to high sophistication, accepting that depending on how we are psychometrically situated, we will feel ‘x ‘ about this issue. From there discourse can look like —
Sam:
“Because I am high in openness, I think data analysis should flow freely because I see so much possibility.”
Jeremy:
“I am higher in neuroticism and think that data analysis could be used to harm me and therefore should flow restrictively.”
Verdict :
Allow the flow of information based on the security rating of platform
Furthermore, there are problems with the term wellbeing. Perhaps everyone wants to arrive there, but it is not clear how we should actually do that.
Some scenarios
- Achieve well-being by making everyone feel safe, therefore less likely to encounter harm.
- Achieve well-being by making everyone brave, therefore less susceptible to inevitable harm.
Indeed this data problem will ignite the interest of many fields in academia (politics, psychology, philosophy, economics — to name a few). I am excited to be part of the conversation.
