"Everybody Lies" the book about data

"Everybody Lies" is the title of a recent book by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. The subtitle is "Big Data, New Data and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are". It's a quick and easy read and I found the subject fascinating both for the voyeuristic content as well as the implications and uses for the future of data analysis.

Stephens-Davidowitz analyzes massive amounts of data that he pulls from internet usage, primarily what people search for, and compares it with other databases. For example, he looked at how many people report they use condoms with the number of condoms sold. (There are far fewer condoms sold than people reporting they use them) He has a lot of examples like that, hence the title of the book.

What was particularly interesting to me was the rise and fall of specific searches after events. After the shooting in San Bernardino in December, 2015 the number of searches related to Muslims and negative words (words indicating harm, hate or revenge, terrorists, extremists)spiked. And then President Obama spoke about the attack in what was a well regarded message reminding Americans that this event did not mean Muslims were bad and exhorting us to treat each other fairly. The negative searches about Muslims spiked again. A couple of months later Obama spoke again but this time talked about Muslim Americans who were firefighters, doctors, soldiers and teachers. This time there was no increase in searches for negative terms regarding Muslims and in fact there was a spike in positive or neutral searches regarding Muslims.

The author explains this, "When we lecture angry people, the search data implies that their fury can grow. But subtly provoking people's curiosity, giving new information, and offering new images of the group that is stoking their rage may turn their thoughts in different, more positive directions."

This is important, especially as we confront people with radically different ideas than ours. There is too much violence, in word and deed, already. This is a better way to bridge the divide.

Envy

I am almost 54 years old and sometimes I feel like a two and half year old saying, "I want, I want, its mine, I want it." When will I grow out of it, when will I mature, when will I be content, when will I learn?

The things I want aren't necessary and sometimes aren't even objects. I want decent affordable portable medical insurance so I'm not tied to my current job. I want a great backyard patio without mosquitos or overuse of chemicals, I want a canoe, I want more books, I want more time to read books, I want more people with whom to talk about books,I want new bedding, I want a new refrigerator with an ice-maker, I want to be debt free, I want, I want, I want.....

And then I start seeing what other people have and I want even more. This person's house is always clean and organized, this person has the library of my dreams, this person has a houseboat, this person got a huge bonus at work, this person has travelled so much more than me.. I want, I want, I want......

Aristotle says, "Envy is pain at the good fortune of others."

In the book, The Geography of Bliss, the writer, Joseph Epstein, is quoted from his writing on envy as saying, "Once unleashed, envy tends to diminish all in whom it takes possession."

And the Bible, in Proverbs 14:30, "A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh but envy makes the bones rot."

Strong words.

Envy. It is a beast that lurks within and must be guarded against. I know better. I have no excuse.

the DREAM Act

Lately I've been thinking a lot about immigrants--mainly people who come from Mexico. I just finished a book, "Just Like Us" by Helen Thorpe. The author followed four Mexican teenage girls through their senior year of high school and then through four years of college. Two of the girls were in the US legally and two were not, though they had been here for most of their lives.

The book was excellent in identifying how complicated an issue this is. In the girl's families, it wasn't unusual for some of their siblings to be American citizens; for a parent to be deported--leaving the children here in turmoil; to graduate at the top of your class yet not be eligible for any scholarship or financial aid; not be able to fly on any commercial airline or rent a car or rent a movie or get a fishing license or anything else that requires a state issued ID--the list goes on and on.

What really struck me is that these girls excelled in school, they were accepted for admission to University of Denver (not an easy school to get into) and the three that went there graduated in four years (the fourth girl went to a different university)--but the two that are here illegally now have very few options.

These girls were both brought here illegally by one or both of their parents as small children and have been here since. But as the law stands now there is no way for them to become citizens. Congress is considering a bill that addresses this--it is called the DREAM Act. It provides a path for citizenship for aliens that were brought here as minors, have been here for five or more continuous years, have graduated from high school (or GED), have good moral character and have completed at least two years in higher education or armed forces.

DREAM stands for Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act. I don't know how to address all the issues of immigration--but I do think this is a step in the right direction.

Am I a "Antisocial Misanthrope"?

In the April 20 issue of Newsweek there was an article, by Jennie Yabroff, about reading. Apparently, fiction reading is on the rise but there are some people, labelled in the article as the "self-appointed literary police" who are concerned that the fiction that people are reading is too easy, not good enough (in a literary sense) or too commercial. The article talks about the "gateway drug" theory of literature--"that once introduced to the pleasures of reading, a child (and maybe an adult) will work her way through increasingly difficult and, presumably, increasingly more edifying texts....implicit in this theory is the idea that at some point reading should stop being a pleasurable diversion and start being work."

I have to confess that I've been guilty of that kind of thinking. I have a good friend who reads nothing but romance novels. She reads one to two of them a week and I tease her mercilessly about it. Let me try to lay out the plot for you girl meets boy, they run into a bit of trouble but fall in love and live happily ever after--EVERY SINGLE TIME!!!! My sister and I love mysteries. And just like romance books, the plot is always the same. Someone gets killed, someone else figures out who did the killing and why.

My kids don't read as much as I always dreamed they would (this would be the same pre-natal dreams where they never talked back, kept their rooms clean, dressed in clothes I approved etc...). But when they do read I have to hold myself back from suggesting or being too opinionated about what they "should" read. Maybe they subscribe to Mikita Brottman's theory she put forward in "The Solitary Vice: Against Reading" "Brottman challenges the accepted wisdom that reading is inherently uplifting, arguing that it turns us into antisocial misanthropes who would do better to be out in the world than home with a book."

I say, maybe the world is better off without us.

What's in a name?

Doubt is good. There are so few things in life that I am 100% sure about and I'm always amazed when others present themselves as absolutely certain about their ideas. My dad gave me a book, maybe 15-20 years ago, called "The Myth of Certainty" by Daniel Taylor and I remember that I liked the book but what has really stuck with me is the title. It gave me "permission" in my Christian faith to be comfortable with the questions and doubts that kept pestering me-- without feeling disloyal or less faithful to God. What a relief. Having spent a lifetime in a more liberal arm of the Protestant church and two years at a Bible college, its possible that that information had been presented to me in some form before but with this book it finally sunk in.



So here I am, this many years later, still reminding myself that questioning is okay, uncertainty is normal and doubt is good.