Airbrushing Reality — Variables, Weekly
Yesterday my cousin uploaded a picture of his mum on Facebook and I was immediately repulsed by the quality. This morning a thought came to me as I was dressing up for work: ‘Why exactly did I dislike the picture?’. If anything, it was a closer approximation of reality than any edit he could have mustered up. In real life, everybody does not look like Kim K. And yet here I was, not enthralled by the aesthetic value of the image, though it was conveying the simple message of motherly love.
I am going to resist the urge to go into a tirade about conventional beauty standards and how internet filters have affected the way we process aesthetics. And on that note, I bid you welcome to this week’s entry into Variables, Weekly.
First I want to share something interesting I came across. Something from a publication called Stearsng titled ~ You’ve been framed: Why narratives matter — Link
While I agree with most of the article, I wanted to say a little something on the opening remarks which I will quote below:
How many times have you seen a headline similar to this — “Nigeria loses $34 billion to tomato/fish/toothpick imports?” If you’re Nigerian, you’ve heard an assertion like this at least once. And how does it make you feel? Angry, right? How could we be losing so much money by importing these items?
If you share this or a similar reaction, you’ve been framed.
Nigeria does not “lose” money when it spends on a foreign good. Why? It receives a good or service in return. If we were to spend ₦34 million purchasing military weapons to counter a terrorist insurgency, would this be described as a loss of ₦34 million or simply a transaction where we parted with ₦34m and gained valuable weapons
While I get the logic, I also think when Nigerian politicians speak like this, they are mostly alluding to the fact that we’re paying for services and consumables we could have produced ourselves but aren’t. So the loss in this case is highlighting that money is leaving the economy, whereas if we were producing all this mundane stuff, the proceeds would get re-invested back into the country. This ‘frame’ works on the assumption that the money we ‘pay’ for services doesn’t get reinvested in the country, which basically sums up the general relationship between the first and third world.
So while I agree with the article, I think it’s just one ‘frame’ and there are other ways to look at the matter. And of course the media will exaggerate claims, and air-headed politicians will try articulate points they do not remotely understand, those are constants.
Last week I went on a short twitter monologue, thoughts? — Link
That should somewhat set the stage for what comes next. Enjoy!
When truth becomes a commodity — Link
The reproducibility problems of scientific research rears its ugly head again ~ How reliable are cancer studies? — Link
The Exploitation of MLK’s legacy by white supremacy — Link
Does Donald Trump move around with cheerleaders? ~ This is Psychological Warfare — Link
Beware the scam of tribalism — Link
The Inside Story of BitTorrent’s Bizarre Collapse — Link
Is Artificial Intelligence permanently inscrutable? — Link
UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCES OF SELF DRIVING CARS — Link
Sergei Brin on the future of machine learning and Google —
Netflix is on a quest for world domination — Link
“The Selfishness of La La Land” — Link
“How Did the Oscars Get Not So White?” — Link
This is an interesting one, it talks about an alternative view of evolution and borrows from the law of large numbers and the second law of thermodynamics. It is definitely something you should enjoy ~ What’s driving the evolution of everything? — Link
“How to Explain Deep Learning using Chaos and Complexity” — Link
“6 areas of AI and machine learning to watch closely” — Link
The Multiple Multiverses May Be One and the Same — Link
Thanks for reading. See you next week.
