#you expect others to infer it based on subjective social rules

[phoebelovingcare]

I feel more angry than I ever have in my life.

[awesomelephuoclocblog-blog]

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[ryan-sometimes]

Symptoms of being neurotypical:

You have immobile, frozen hands that do not fidget.

Your interests are shallow.

You read into phrases past their actual meanings.

You are unbothered by eye contact and enjoy staring into people's eyeballs.

You do not notice patterns in numbers and objects even when they are logically connected.

You don't mind doing things without planning them out first.

Instead of saying exactly what you think, you expect others to infer it based on subjective social rules.

It would be so funny if autistic people started describing allistic experience the same pathologised way doctors describe autism

[hunterenough]

December 4

Notes: For @notfunnydean Advent Challenge

December 4

When Sam stumbled into the kitchen the next morning, it was already after 8. There’d been no morning wake-up, and there was no coffee made. If he was honest, he was a little bummed. He’d been enjoying their new morning routine. His eyes slid to the crates. It looks like Santa was sneaky. He grinned. There was a silver package the size of a shirt box in each crate, and a note propped against the little perpetual calendar, obscuring the Christmas block. Evidently they were to start this on their own then.

“Cas? Dean left us a note today. Want to join me?”

The angel appeared by the coffee pot and seemed disappointed that it was empty. He turned toward Sam. “A note?” He didn’t mention the coffee. Sam gestured toward the crates.

“Grab it. I’ll start the coffee.”

Cas grabbed the note and rejoined Sam at the coffee pot. They opened the note while the coffee brewed.

Hey guys,

Santa’s having a sleep-in. Open your gifts and wake me at 9 for details. If you haven’t eaten, we’ll grab breakfast at the diner in town. There’d better be coffee!

Dean

P.S: Good morning! :)

Sam retrieved the packages from the crates. There was enough coffee in the pot for two cups, but neither made a move to pour. Dean hated when somebody took coffee from the pot before it was finished because ‘it made the whole rest of the pot weaker.’ Instead, they tore the paper off the gifts.

“Christmas ornaments?” Each held an identical set of twelve multicolored glass bulbs. “This could be fun.” Sam didn’t remember ever having a real Christmas tree. They’d done a Charlie Brown style tree a few times, more often when he was younger, but never an actual tree.

Cas was staring at his ornaments, head tilted.

“I’m guessing we’re gonna get a Christmas tree. Decorating could be fun. Dean did say if we wanted to give him gifts that we should put them under the tree.”

“I have never exchanged gifts. I cannot fathom what an appropriate gift would be for someone so… “ He let the sentence trail off still staring at the ornaments and appearing to be in deep thought. “My only experience with giving is receiving gifts from Dean. This…” he made a helpless gesture toward the crates. “And once Dean gave me a cassette of songs. I do not know how to choose a present that is appropriate for him.”

Sam raised an eyebrow at the mention of the cassette. Dean gave Cas a mixed tape?!

“Well, the best gifts are always the ones from the heart. Like yesterday, in general, cinnamon rolls and coffee are cool, but pretty common. But the effort that Dean put in? The research and the special shopping trip? That’s what made the meal so awesome. It really isn’t about giving a thing so much as showing someone how you feel. Do you know what I mean?” Trying to explain gifts from the heart to a divine being was… a unique experience.

“I believe I do. It is evident that Dean put great thought and care into choosing gifts for each day of his ‘advent’ calendar. And the meal was crafted specifically with our tastes in mind. I understand what the gift should convey. It is choosing the vessel to ‘show how I feel’ that I find intimidating.”

“I couldn’t agree more man. Good thing we still have most of the month. I still haven’t found anything either.”

The men slipped into silent consideration over the problem while they poured themselves coffee. Cas poured a second mug and gathered both into one hand. “It is 8:57. I will go wake Dean. I believe that he will enjoy having his coffee delivered.”

The contemplative look on Sam’s face was quickly replaced by a wicked grin. “I’m sure he would.”

~~~~~

Cas focused on keeping the coffee in the mugs as he navigated the hallway. His mind was racing with thoughts about appropriate gifts. He wanted to show Dean that he was worth at least as much effort as Dean was putting in to making their first really family Christmas. Sam’s words were also weighing heavy on him...gifts from the heart and showing someone how you feel played in a loop.

Feelings were still a funny thing for him. Angels shouldn’t feel, but angels also shouldn’t have or want to have free will. Over the course of so many years, he’d learned a lot about feelings. The Winchesters had taught him so much about the value of family, loyalty, true righteousness, trust...Dean in particular had elicited an ocean of feelings so vast that it was frequently overwhelming. Still, Cas knew that when it came to interpreting feelings from others, he had trouble “reading” social cues and body language. Dean’s own early lessons on personal space, for example, were quite clear in speech, but the hunter would often migrate toward Cas if he hadn’t initiated a close position to start. Sam had once tried to explain that often what one said was not what one actually meant. Not lying, just an unwillingness to admit to a feeling that made them feel shame. From this, Cas had inferred that while Dean might want to be close to the angel, he was ashamed of that desire. Cas sighed. He wanted to be very  close to Dean, and he wasn’t ashamed of that, but revisiting that line of thought was getting him nowhere in his consideration of gifts. Another matter for later consideration then.

~~~~~

Despite having properly prepared for sleeping in, Dean had been lying awake in since 7. He had no desire to leave his comfortable bed, but he’d be getting a wake up call any moment. He was excited about today. First, they’d grab breakfast, then hit the Walmart (the nearest being about an hour away) for a tree and more decorations. By the time they were done shopping and back home, they could have sandwiches for lunch and get to decorating. Before his year with Lisa and Ben, he hadn’t had a real tree since before...well, before they were hunters.

The knock on the door was so quiet he almost missed it.

“Come in!”

“Hello Dean. I’ve brought coffee.”

“Cas, man, you’re the best. I’d say you were an angel or a blessing, but that would be a little on the nose don’t you think?” He grinned as he gestured his angel closer. The man was carrying two mugs, maybe he’d sit with him for a bit. “C’mon in and sit down, let’s just enjoy this for a minute.”

Did I just invite Cas to hang out in bed and have coffee with me? WTF?

Cas just smiled. He obviously remembered relaxing protocol because he immediately set the mugs on the dresser, shrugged out of his trench and suit coats, and kicked off his shoes. Reclaiming the coffee, he handed a mug to Dean before rounding to the other side of the bed and propping himself up against the headboard next to him.

“We never get to do this Dean. I truly enjoy being able to spend time with you outside of a hunt.” His angel seemed to snuggle down into the pillows a little more before taking a sip of his coffee.

Dean knew he should probably feel self-conscious about sitting in bed practically shoulder to shoulder with the other man, especially when he was only wearing pajama pants and no one was sick or dying, but he just couldn’t bring himself to care. Simply put, there was nowhere else he’d rather be.

“So, since you brought coffee promptly at nine, and I heard Sammy stomping around earlier, I’m guessing you got my note. What do you think?”

“Sam and I speculate that based on today’s gift of ornaments, and your prior mention of a tree, that we will engage in a Christmas tree related activity. Sam is quite excited about having a real tree.”

“Just Sam?”

“Dean, every part of celebrating this holiday is new for me. I find it very…” Cas seemed to think about his words for a moment. “I am very happy that I get to experience this with you.”

Dean really wasn’t sure what to do with that. He wanted Cas to be happy. He wanted Cas to feel like a part of their family and like he belonged here.

“We also discussed gift giving. I would very much like to get you a gift. Sam as well of course. But I am unsure how I can go about this without violating the “no flapping off” rule.” He shrugged. “I am also unsure what would constitute an appropriate gift.”

“First, you don’t have to get me anything man. You’ve dragged my sorry soul out of hell for chrissake. Year after year you’ve helped me. You’ve saved my ass more times than I can count. I wouldn’t be alive without you.” Cas wants to get me a present!!

“Those things were not gifts. I have learned that those are simply what we do for family. I would say that you’ve given me as much, if not more, than I have given you in that regard Dean. You taught me to think for myself. I’ve learned to feel. I want to give you a Christmas gift so that you can share the feeling that I have when you give me a gift.”

Okay, we’re firmly in chick flick zone. I have no urge to change the subject, and my fight or flight hasn’t kicked in. We’re just going to put this down to my really comfortable mattress.

“How about this Cas. I’ll put in an exception to the sticking together rule. If you and Sammy need to go Christmas shopping, you can do that. I’d kinda appreciate it if you’d let me know before you fly away, because of some of the things I have planned, but we don’t need to be together every minute. I don’t expect you to give me a gift, but you could give me a rock and I’d be happy that you put the effort into getting me something. You capisce?”

“I capisce. Thank you Dean.”

“Now let’s get this show on the road. I’ve got a full day planned today.”

The angel seemed reluctant, but stood and moved to retrieve his outerwear. “I wish that we could do this more often Dean.”

~~~~~

Shopping for Christmas decorations was largely uneventful. Cas didn’t really have an opinion, and Sam was excited about everything. Dean settled on packing as much Christmas themed stuff into the cart as it would hold.

The tree, however, was a different matter. Sam wanted a real tree. Like the live kind.

“I know a live tree would be better Sam, but this way, we don't have to worry about burning down the bunker or something and we’ll already have the tree next year.”

Sam turned on his best puppy dog pouting face. Before Dean could cave like he usually did, Cas chimed in, “Plus, we are not killing a tree. I like this idea Dean.” Sam conceded the point. Dean might be able to be convinced on his own, but with Cas on his side, he wasn’t likely to bend.

~~~~~

Things were going exactly to plan. They’d made it back to the bunker with their holiday loot and lugged it all down the stairs. Dean hadn’t missed his opportunity to point out how much easier it was to bring the boxed tree down the stairs than it would have been with a live tree, of course, and Sam had responded only with Bitchface Number 13. Sandwiches had been eaten and more coffee brewed.

“Okay guys, let’s do this.” Dean clapped his hands together.

To be honest, this is where his plan kinda went a little hazy. None of them had any practical knowledge in tree decorating.

“Ummm, I guess we start by setting up the tree?” Sam suggested.

“Right, right. I’ll take care of that while you guys start unboxing the rest of this cr...stuff.”

The tree snapped together easily. Dean studied it. Being stuffed into the box had all of the branches kind of mushed together. He set about reorganizing the branches, aiming for the same fullness of the display tree they’d seen earlier. After he’d meticulously re-bent each twig, he stood back to assess his work. He judged it complete after a couple of tweaks and suddenly noticed the silence.

Cas and Sam had all of the tinsel, ornaments, and candy canes out of the box and ready to be added to the tree. They’d cleared the trash and settled in to… what? Watch him? Sam looked amused. Cas looked...he couldn’t really decide how Cas looked. His eyes were wide, his mouth was just slightly open, and when Dean met his glance, his tongue flicked out to wet the bow of his lower lip. He looks fucking HOT. Dean shook his head to clear it of the sudden flood of less than pure thoughts that tongue had jumpstarted.

“Right. Let’s decorate this bad boy.” Sam grabbed the tinsel, and Cas trailed after him toward the pre-lit tree. They stood on either side of the tree and passed the ropes of tinsel back and forth around the tree. After a brief discussion on the aesthetics of tinsel, they started a second round in the opposing direction. Dean helped himself to a candy cane.

I wonder if that purification blessing would work on these? He took a deep breath, whispered the spell, picked up the candy and joined the other men at the tree.

He set the boxes at the base of the tree and unwrapped a candy cane for each man. Without asking, he shoved one in first his brother’s then his angel’s mouths. Sam grunted. Cas raised an eyebrow.

That look...when the flavor registered for the angel his expression changed to one of bliss. No, THAT look. Holy fuck. Back down the rabbit hole of lust fueled images went his brain.

“I don’t remember these being this good. Must be a different brand.” Sam’s comment ripped Dean back from a particularly lewd image of licking the sweet mint flavor off Cas’s lips. He turned quickly to adjust himself under the guise of grabbing more ornaments. Get ahold of yourself man. Lusting after an angel has to be a one way ticket to hell. We’ve covered this a million times by now.

When he turned back to the tree, Cas had progressed from sucking on the cane to licking it delicately. Dean groaned. Sam laughed, a deep belly laugh, earning him a dirty look.

“Start decorating bitch.”

After that, Cas seemed to get with the program, allowing Dean to likewise regain his composure. It took less than half an hour to get all of the ornaments on the tree, then another fifteen minutes of rearranging, and the men were standing shoulder to shoulder to shoulder admiring their hard work.

“Get the lights Sam. Let’s light this thing UP!”

When the lights had flicked off, Dean plugged the tree in and silence fell over the room. Their tree really was something.

“Merry Christmas.” Dean whispered.

[gellcrt]

hc + durmstrang

HEADCANONS ;; some old meme where you send me hc + a word & I rant.

       Laughs bitterly,  becausethere are no words in the English language, nor in any other languages thatGellert has mastery of, to describe how much Gellert despised (and was ill-suited for ) that place ( you know how I sometimeswonder whether or not he would have turned out to be who he is in a moreliberal environment. I suppose that is a difficult point to assess, but Ibelieve that environment shapes you as much as biology does, and that you growto become who you are through your interactions… so…  ). Bitter feelingsaside, my view of Durmstrang Institute is heavily based on  the (generallyunpleasant) reality of the average 19th century learning institution… so let’sgo. 

i. Basic canon.

          Canonically, Durmstrang Institute is known to be a(n uplottable)four-story castle, therefore certainly smaller than Hogwarts. We can infer afew things from this, the most relevant being that the number of studentsattending the Institute is low. Why? Because the castle needs to include allthe necessary facilities for the students (classrooms, dormitories, etc.) andstaff, and other general-use spaces (great hall, library, storage, nursing wing, etc). Thispoint is further reinforced in canon, without being directly so: whileDurmstrang does accept international students, it does notaccept muggleborns, and it’s likely that mixed-blood families with very liberalviews will feel somewhat uncomfortable sending their children there, given theschool’s reputation.  ( But A, Viktor wasn’t a bloodpuritysupremacist and he came from Durmstrang!! me: sure, I’m not saying thateveryone shares the prejudice, andlet’snotforgetaboutKrum’sgrandfatherbeingmurdered. but it’s unlikely that families would send theirchildren to a school whose values weren’t, at least in part, shared by theinstitution. also, I like to think that the there was a bit of evolution inperceptions vis a vis muggles and muggleborns in the 1900′s, but that’s anotherhc for another time….). 

          Where was I - yes, ok, so. Few students. Also,given the limited space, you’re probably living in tight quarters witheveryone; so they’ll be in your business, and you in theirs. Lovely.

          Canonically, we also know thatDurmstrang is located next to mountains, at least two lakes ,and glacier(s)( !!! ). It’s plausible that it has an outlet to an open bodyof water, given their mode of transportation ( listen, how the heck Hogwarts’lake would be connected to it remains a mystery; seriously JKR, what are yousuggesting, inter-lake connections?? I mean… hm… I… I sort of likethis… ). Aaaand, that’s it. That’s the canon, and I wish there was muchmore of it, but so it is (there are a few other tidbits down below, but for thesake of clarity, I just merged them in). Moving onto my hc’s.

ii. Grounds.

        Durmstrang’s grounds are vast ——quite beyond those of Hogwarts, Forbidden Forest and all—— and are, in Gellert’s own not-so-humble, always-stubbornly-decided-and-god-help-you-if-you-try-to-alter-it opinion, the Institute’s only redeeming quality. He has lost countless hours wandering about the grounds, over the years, but many more would be required for a thorough exploration of the land. ‘Tis, from this prospect only, a pity that Gellert’s time at The Institute was cut short, as it was one way in which his time wasn’t waster. Really, if you’re going to cut class or ‘waste’ hours meant for sleep, you might as well spend them on something interesting ( which often meant books of his own choice or work of a more. .. .err, practical nature, but just as often, meant endless hours spent hiking, or getting lost ). 

         As I can only ever picture Durmstrang in Norway ( fite me!! where are my Norwegian followers?? ), I always tend to picture the landscape surrounding Tindefjellbreen and its magnificent views (1, 2, 3). The Tindefjellbreen glacier is actually situated in the Jostedalsbreen National Park, which seems a good/easy enough location for some powerful muggle-repellent charms, so I hc Durmstrang as being situated there.

iii. Architecture.

        Founded in early-to-mid-13th century, the castle is fashioned in thelatest architectural style of the time, which is to say thoroughly Gothic…  how apropos for a castle whose very name is derived from Sturm undDrang ( i.e. basically meaning ‘turmoil’ —— let’s forgetfor a moment that this phrase was only coined in the 17thcentury. I’m always happy to ignore points on which JKR makes no sense. at anyrate, this screams out what a happy, carefree place!! right? ).Nevertheless, some Romanesque influences can become visible if you have an eyefor them( e.g. in some areas of the castle such as the dormitories, the massivepillars and tiny windows distinctly resonate with this style ). In general, thecastle points to a preference of its architect (and likely its commissioner)for the early English Gothic style, rather than the French, or Merlin forbid,the flamboyant Italian style. Though listen,underneath its prim and proper, straight-spined and stick up the arse air…Durmstrang is freaking dramatic. Just look at these freaking doorways,like wtf. Man, that inyourface gothic style, asdfghjkl….!! Repeatafter me:  dra. ma. tic.

          Onthe outside, the light-coloured stone and almost delicate architecture, withits steep roofs, exquisite details ( just look at those flying buttresses! they might as well belace-made-stone, asdfghjkl  ), pointed arches, and overall height leave animpression of grandeur rather than oppression.Although almost intimidating in its exterior beauty ( if one is inclined toappreciate architecture ), it isn’t forbidding. 

          Onceyou set foot inside the castle, especially in the winter months, yourenthusiasm for it might be taken down a notch. Although the great hall anddormitories do have fires burning for the comfort of the staffand students ( listen, one cannot have the promising scion of a noble familysuffer through such a trifling thing as dying from being subjected to inhumantemperatures. I don’t believe for a second that parents, no matter how strict,would put up with it - save that barbarous practice forthe muggles and muggleborns!! ), the rest of the castle is generally damp, andquite cool, if not downright freezing. There’s a particularly nastydraft in the northwestern wing, so cold it can turn your blood to ice on aDecember morning, as Gellert would sourly inform you. If you ever hadany….  ah, mild issues with a fellow,just vigorously aguamenti  at him on such amorning, in such a place, and let nature do the rest…. But we’re digressing.Generally speaking, cold temperatures? Shivering? Well, you’re expectedto suck it up. Strength of will in the face of adversitybuilds character, and all of that.

         The dormitories themselves are simple and utilitarian,without frills ( there is a complete lack of richly-coloured, hangingdraperies, of tapestries, of any decorations. the style isutterly spartan and meant to highlight the utility of theplace. this is not a place of enjoyment or comfort or bonding. itis a place that provides you with a bed to sleep in, andnothing else. you are not to expect luxury from it, lest you become prone toindolence. you are not to spend time ‘socializing’ before bed, lest you becomeprone to mischief. curfew is at 21:30, and you better be asleepby 21:31. this was not a particularly happy pairing to Gellert’s naturalinclination to generally stay awake at night, and even less so with his naturalinclination to break rules ).

         The hallways bear a large number of lancet windows ( tall, narrow windowswith sharp pointed tops ) - some of colourful cubic-mosaic stained glass(reserved for the most important, official venues), but mostof transparent glass, which do nothing to relieve theoppressive atmosphere. They are also tastefully decorated with chiseleddog-tooth moldings and rows of candles ( although in Gellert’s time,these were  already self-lighting, thus sparing a lot of inconvenience forthe castle’s inhabitants ).

        The classrooms aresurprisingly large, and allow for easy movement. Students sittogether at wooden tables, facing the professor’s desk. However, approximatelyhalf of the classes are conducted outside, rather than inside,especially those requiring physical activity.

iv. House System.

        The loose ‘house system’ was instilled several centuries after thefoundation of the school (in the 1400s, approximately), as a direct influencefrom ongoing communication with Hogwarts ( the house system was, at first, arather odd concept for them, what with being generalpractice in the UK and its colonies, without it being a widespread system in placesthat were not a part of the British empire ). The change was a matter of longdebate and disagreements, but finally survived the test of time for itspracticality. Still, it is in no way comparable to the system seen at Hogwarts(or in the Commonwealth in general). Students are split into five houses, thenames of which are of Thracian origin: skilas,  udrénas, semla, spinda,zvaka, and represent the five elements (because I like throwing in wiccanelements into my fiction, that’s why). At present, it is a common rumour that thehousenames were assigned by First Headmistress Vulchanova, in honour of herancestors. Given that she was of Bulgarian ethnicity, and therefore likely tobe of Daco-Thracian descent, this is not an unlikely hypothesis, although itcannot be confirmed by any written account ( this hypothesis is, in fact, false- what with the system being implemented centuries after her deathday.but history has a tendency to get facts distorted over time… ) 

         Thestudents do not bear specific house colours (their uniforms are the same), donot go through any special sorting ceremony (they are arbitrarily assigned to a‘house’ based on the principle of keeping the numbers equal), and aren’t evenrequired to share the same dormitories (which are assigned based onthe same principle, but separate the students by sex and age bracket (11-12, 13-14, 15+). Students in the same “house” are requiredto share a period of thirty minutes together per day, and the eldest areexpected to guide and bear responsibility for their younger housemates’behaviour. Thus, the ‘houses’ could almost be considered akin to‘study groups’, as well as a loose system of auto-regulatory surveillance groups ( what a pleasant thing to always be kept an eye on, both byadults and by your own peers. ). Of note: since the oldest students in each “house” are responsible for the younger’s behaviours, they also incur punishment when a housemate breaks the rules, or displays what could be considered “bad behaviour”. This makes them very… eager… to keep an eye out and correct such behaviour themselves, as they see fit. As long as it does not inconvenience the staff,  this is tolerated, and in subtle ways, even encouraged. ( It’s out of the scope of this small essay to describe some of the infamous happenings in boarding schools in that era, because this is already a small essay, but if you’re familiar with them – you can assume all of that was happening. )

          The ‘friendly competition’ amongst housesnever amounts to much. It isn’t rewarded, or even acknowledged beyond a brief mention at theend of the term reviewing general behaviour. Some houses claim bragging rights in the hallways (those are generally more than enough to stimulate the majority of students), but there is no point system in place, etc.

v. Curriculum.

          I could probably write another 2k on my hc’s on the curriculum alone, so I will only jot down a few notes here. I always imagined the curriculum at Durmstrang to be more practical  than that of ‘present day’ Hogwarts. This is not only due to the different time period, but also to the difference in values between the institutions, with Durmstrang encouraging students to acquire specific skillsets via firsthand experiences, and Hogwarts providing them a wider breadth of knowledge based on a more theoretical approach (i.e. it can be simmered down to a difference in do vs think type of philosophy). This isn’t a critique of either teaching style, just my own perspective on what “teaching philosophy” each school adopted. Therefore, subjects appearing as more “superfluous” or uncertain, such as divination (covered in ‘History’), astronomy (offered as a standalone course, but it’s dreadful), herbology (covered in ‘Potions’), care of magical creatures, etc., were less focused on. History may seem superfluous, but it was heavily focused on as a matter of pride and principle (and happened to be Gellert’s favourite subject, as I pretty much mention at every turn, welp; he just!! feels so strongly!! about this!! okay!! ). In turn, subjects that had direct, quick practical applications (transfiguration, charms, dueling, the dark arts and defence against, potions, rituals and curses) were more heavily focused upon (and were, obviously, mandatory). Language courses, runes, magical theory, etc., were offered as electives.

         Insofar as I see it, Durmstrang also strongly encouraged a healthy mind and body, and included a rigorous, mandatory morning exercise regime for all students, prior to breakfast. By their fourth year, students could opt to have these exercises covered in a ‘class’ (flying, navigation, etc.), as long as they adhered to it. The emphasis on ‘doing, rather than learning about it theoretically’  and on being physically fit is also seen in their dueling classes - Gellert’s dueling style is very active and dynamic as a result of this (the dramatic aspect is all his own doing, welp).

Random trivia.

I can’t stand some views I’ve seen suggesting that Durmstrang is extremely misogynistic, or doesn’t accept girls (wtf). First of all, the school had a First Headmistress. Secondly, this literally goes against canon. I think there would be some degree of misogyny as was common at the time, but if anything – hell, I see them as more progressive than anything. I don’t  know why some people take the whole ‘pureblood superiority’ and turn it into sexism like ???? why???

Corporeal punishment was not only accepted, but seen as necessary. A ruler across your palms or a cane across the back of the legs, like muggles, was the least of your problems. This was also a widespread attitude at the time, so….

There was no “dating” tolerated at school, and no PDA. Whatsoever. You better keep that secret or someone is bound to rat on you, and you won’t like the consequences.

If you opted to take navigation as phys ed., basically, you could get pretty darn good at sailing. It was also a really enjoyable class based on cooperation and teamspirit, and many students made genuine friends here! 

The school colours are red, gold, black, and white. ( The official banner has green in it but SHRUG;; )

All books in the library could be read by any student. Even those that could accidentally kill you. If it physically injured you, it was a lesson taught, and hopefully learned.

Casual reminder that  the political climate in Norway at the time was… interesting, as it only secured its independence in 1905. Gellert smiled at this when he first read the officially proclamation.

Ffs, the teachers were human, and not barbaric, not children-hating monsters. They were just very strict regarding rules and regulations, and they often bore the burden of ‘if anything goes amiss or if there is a complaint, it’s your fault and responsibility’. They worked in a pretty high-stress environment, with little support. StopdemonizingDurmstrangprofs,mostofthemdidokay. Some were, of course, jaded with their position and dgaf. That being said, they also did nothing about issues between students, bullying, etc., sat children down to understand their perspectives, etc.  The prevailing mentality was one of you listen to authority and deal with it. 

 Dueling was taught not only formally (in class), but also informally via a club, which held ranked competitions once per season. Students in the top three positions could be unofficially challenged by anyone, at any point, and these duels were a bit of a sensation.

Those furhats & co. are an absolute necessity.

You did learn the Unforgivables. What better way to defend yourself than to be prepared?

As is typical for Northern and inland Norway, food consisted more of meat and fish than of vegetables (excepting potatoes and onions). Fruit was rare, unless in season. Nevertheless, you never went hungry!

Two words: aurora borealis!!  ( it’s high up north, after all!)

Saturday afternoons and Sundays were free periods. Thank Circe.

[loyallogic]

Judicial Review of Administrative Action

This article is written by Sushmita Choudhary from New Law College, Bharati Vidyapeeth Deemed University. It deals with the judicial review of administrative action which is necessary for the prevention of misuse of the administrative powers.

Introduction

In today’s era, the administration plays an important role in every individual’s life. We have accordingly seen the subject of administrative law remarkably expanding to meet the changing demands of new political, economic and social conditions. 

Going by the words of Justice Quadri, “The essential difference between a Government of despots and a Government of democratically elected persons is that in the former case, there are no limitations on the powers or their exercise whereas in the latter case, the powers are defined and their exercise is regulated by law” the necessity of judicial review of administrative actions can be inferred. In a democracy like India which is governed by rule of law, the principle “be thou so high the law above you” is rightly implied. Judicial review is an essential component of the rule of law.

Meaning

Administrative action under administrative law

Administrative law was recognized as a separate branch of legal discipline in the mid 20th century in India. Until well into the nineteenth century, the responsibilities of the state were few and limited, consisting of the maintenance of public order, the conduct of foreign affairs and the disposition of the armed forces. Nowadays, it’s far different. In the interests of protecting the public and maintaining law and order, the state intervenes into the lives of its citizens to a very considerable degree. The actions which are carried out under the administrative law are called administrative actions. An administrative action is a legal action which is concerned with the conduct of a public administrative body. This kind of action can compel an authority to take a certain action. It does not decide a right though it might affect a right. The principles of natural justice cannot be ignored while exercising “administrative powers”.

Judicial Review

Judicial review has been recognized as a necessary and basic requirement for the construction of an advanced civilization to safeguard the liberty and rights of the citizens. The power of judicial review in India is significantly vested upon the High Courts and the Supreme Court of India. Judicial review is the court’s power to review the actions of other branches of government, especially the court’s power to deem invalid actions exercised by the legislative and executive as ‘unconstitutional’. 

Broadly speaking, judicial review in India deals with:

Judicial Review of Legislative Actions;

Judicial Review of Administrative Actions;

Judicial review of Judicial Actions.

We will be dealing with the second aspect i.e. judicial review of administrative actions. The judicial review ensures the legality of administrative actions.   

                             Click Above

Grounds of judicial review

The doctrine-ultra-vires is the basic structure of administrative law. It is considered as the foundation of judicial review to control actions of the administration. Ultra-vires refers to the action which is made in an excessive manner or outside the ambit of the acting party. 

Generally, the grounds for judicial review in India are as follows-

Jurisdictional Error;

Irrationality;

Procedural Impropriety;

Proportionality;

Legitimate Expectation.

The above grounds of judicial review were given by Lord Diplock of England in the case of  Council of Civil Service Union v. Minister of Civil Service(1984). Though these grounds of judicial review are not exhaustive, yet these provide an apt base for the courts to exercise their jurisdiction.

Jurisdictional Error

The term ‘jurisdiction’ means the power to decide. There might be a ‘lack of jurisdiction’, ‘excess of jurisdiction’ or ‘abuse of jurisdiction’. The court may reject an administrative action on the ground of ultra vires in all these three situations.

A case of ‘lack of jurisdiction’ is where the tribunal or authority holds no power or jurisdiction at all to pass an order. The court may review this administrative action on the ground that the authority exercised jurisdiction which it was not supposed to. The power of review may be exercised on the following three grounds-

That the law under which the administrative authority is constituted and exercising jurisdiction is itself unconstitutional,

That the authority is not properly constituted as the law requires, and

That the authority has mistakenly decided a jurisdictional fact and henceforth assumed jurisdiction which did not belong to it first.

A case of ‘excess of jurisdiction’ covers a situation wherein though the authority initially had the jurisdiction over a matter but then it exceeded and afterwards its actions become illegal. This can happen in the following situations when – 

An administrative body continues to exercise jurisdiction despite the occurrence of an event ousting the jurisdiction, and

When it is entertaining matters outside its jurisdiction.

All administrative powers must be exercised bonafide and fairly. If the powers are abused, it will give rise to a ground of judicial review. An ‘abuse of power’ may arise under the following conditions-

Improper purpose- When an authority uses its power for a different purpose

Error apparent on the face of record- When it can be ascertained by examining the record without having to recourse to other evidence.

In bad faith- Where an administrative authority has acted dishonestly by stating to have acted for a particular motive when in reality the decision was taken with some other motive in mind.

Fettering discretion- When an authority adopts a policy in the exercise of its powers,      which means that it is not actually exercising its discretion at all.

Non-consideration of relevant material- When a decision-maker does not look at the relevant matter.

Irrationality (Wednesbury Test)

A general established principle is that the discretionary power conferred on an administrative authority should be exercised reasonably. A decision of an administrative authority can be held to be unreasonable if it is so outrageous in its defiance of logic or prevalent moral standards that no reasonable person who had applied his mind to the subject could have arrived at it. 

‘Irrationality’ was developed as a ground of judicial review in the Associated Provincial Picture House v. Wednesbury(1947) case which later came to be known as the ‘Wednesbury test’. The court laid out three conditions in order to conclude the right to intervene-

In arriving at the decision, the defendant took into consideration the factors that ought not to have been taken into, or

The defendant failed to take into consideration the factors that ought to have been taken into, or

The decision was so unreasonable that any reasonable authority would never consider imposing it.

The court held that it could not intervene to change the decision of the defendant simply because it disagreed with it. 

Procedural Impropriety

It is a failure to comply with the laid down procedures. Procedural Impropriety is to cover two areas which are failure to observe rules given in statute and to observe the basic common-law rule of justice. 

Ridge v Baldwin(1963) is an exclusive case where procedural fairness shows its insistence on the judicial review irrespective of the type of body determining the matter. Ridge, the Chief Constable of Brighton was suspended on the charges of conspiracy to obstruct the course of justice. Despite the clearance of allegations against Ridge, the Judge made comments which criticized Ridge’s conduct. Following that, Ridge was dismissed from the force but he was not invited to attend the meeting which had decided his dismissal. Later, he was given an opportunity to be heard before the committee which had dismissed his appeal. Ridge then appealed to the House of Lords that the committee had totally violated the rules of natural justice. This case has been important because of the emphasis on the link existing between the right of a person to be heard and the right to know the case brought against him.

Proportionality

Proportionality means that the concerned administrative action should not be more forceful than it requires to be. The principle of proportionality implies that the court has to necessarily go into the advantages and disadvantages of the action called into question. Unless the so-called administrative action is advantageous and in the public interest, such an action cannot be upheld. This doctrine tries to balance means with ends.

Courts in India have been adhering to this doctrine for a long time but Courts in England started using it after the passing of the Human Rights Act, 1998. In the test of proportionality, the court quashes the exercise of discretionary powers in which there is no reasonable relation between the objective to be achieved and the means of achieving it. If the administrative action is disproportionate to the mischief, it will be quashed.

In Hind Construction Co. v. Workmen(1965), some workers called for a holiday and remained absent. They were later dismissed from service. The court held that the workers should have been warned and fined instead of abruptly being dismissed in a permanent manner. It was out of the question to think that any reasonable employer would have given such extreme punishment. The court held that the punishment imposed on the workmen was not only severe but also disproportionate.

Legitimate Expectations

This doctrine serves as a ground of judicial review to protect the interest when a public authority rescinds from a representation made to a person. A legitimate expectation arises in the mind of the complainant who has been led to understand expressly or impliedly that certain procedures will be followed in reaching a decision. The expectation has a reasonable basis. This doctrine has evolved to give relief to the persons who have been wronged because of the violation of their legitimate expectation and have not been able to justify their claims on the basis of law. Two considerations determine legislative expectations-

Where an individual or group has been led to believe impliedly or expressly that a certain procedure will apply.

Where an individual or group relies upon a particular policy or guideline which has previously governed an area of executive action.

In Regina v. Liverpool Corporation ex parte Liverpool Taxi Fleet Operators Association(1972), the Corporation had given undertakings to the effect that the taxi drivers’ licenses would not be revoked without their prior consultation. But the corporation acted in the breach of its undertaking. The court ruled that the taxi drivers had a right to be consulted.

                    Remedies

Five types of writs are available for judicial review of administrative actions given under Article 32 and Article 226 of the Constitution of India.

Habeas Corpus

It means “have the body”. This writ is issued as an order calling upon the person who has detained another person to produce the detainee before the court of law. If the court finds out that the detention has been illegal or without legal justification, it will order for the immediate release of the detainee. The main objective of this writ is not to punish the detainer but to release the detainee from wrongful detention.

Mandamus

It means ‘to command the public authority’ to perform its duty. It is a command given by the higher courts (High Courts and Supreme Court) to the Government, Inferior courts, tribunals, corporations, authorities or any other person to do any act or refrain from doing an illegal act. The purpose of this writ is to compel the performance of public duties and to keep control over the activities of the administration. 

Quo Warranto

The word ‘quo warranto’ means by what authority. Such writ is issued against a person who usurps a public office. The court directs the concerned person to show by what authority he holds that office. The unauthorized or illegal usurper would be removed by judicial order and the right person belonging to it would be entitled to it.

Prohibition

Prohibition is issued by a superior court to an inferior court or tribunal or body exercising judicial or quasi-judicial functions to prevent them from exceeding their jurisdiction. It is based upon the maxim ‘Prevention is better than cure’.

Certiorari

This writ is issued by the Superior Courts (High Courts and the Supreme Court) to the inferior court or tribunal or body which may exercise judicial or quasi-judicial functions, for the correction of jurisdiction or error of law committed by them. If any order passed by them is illegal, then the Superior Court may quash or demolish it. Grounds of this writ are (a) excess or failure to exercise the jurisdiction (b) violation of the principles of natural justice (c) authority has failed to correct an error which has been apparent on the face of the record.

Conclusion

Judicial review of administrative action is, in a sense, the heart of administrative law. It is an excellent way of inquiring into the legal competence of a public authority. Judicial review is considered to be the basic feature of our Constitution. With the tremendous increase in powers of the administrative authorities, judicial review has become an important area of administrative law. The main purpose of judicial review is to protect the interest of its citizens from the excessive powers or illegal actions of the administrative authorities.

References

https://www.lawteacher.net/free-law-essays/constitutional-law/jurisdiction-of-the-supreme-court-constitutional-law-essay.php#:~:text=Judicial%20review%20is%20an%20essential,which%20is%20inherited%20from%20Britain.

https://www.ebc-india.com/lawyer/articles/2001v6a1.htm

https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/38174/8/08_chapter%202.pdf

https://www.lawctopus.com/academike/grounds-judicial-review-123/

https://indiankanoon.org/

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[tragedeys]

Best ways to do Branding on Social Media

Building your own picture by means of electronic systems administration media takes some work, yet it could get you your next opening for work or help you to energize huge affiliations. Seek after the ten phases underneath to ensure your online checking is working for you.

1. Totally Update Your Online networking Records

Pick which web-based life account(s) you are going to focus on, and delete any old records that you are never again using. For the frameworks, you will use, guarantee most of your information is done and precise. This will help you with structure traffic to the frameworks you have to include your work. It can similarly empty any potential "imperfect" content from years past that doesn't emphatically influence your master picture.

​2. Perceive Your Subject matter

Everyone's an authority at something - paying little mind to whether it's substance advancing or having a complete data of your favored television show up. Is it time for you to break down additional? What sort of substance have you made that your followers have responded to most? Okay, have the option to reproduce this with other similar substances? The more uncommon and attracting substance you make on your picked topic of capacity, the more your fans will start to think of you as a pioneer in your picked field.

3. Repudiate some basic standards with Your Logo, Hues, Picture

Use your logo and stamping for advantage. As opposed to organizing your logo subject to what you like or some imagined that you had self-ruling of your publicizing framework — plan your logo and brand purposely, in light of your gathering of observers.

Scan for plan opportunities to rise up out of the test. For example, various associations in the cash related industry use green and blue for their logos. You can rise up out of the pack by doing some examination on the ramifications of tones and select something that is absolutely not equivalent to the standard and that passes on the character of your brands, for instance, YELLOW, which routinely infers euphoria and motivation; an every now and again neglected shading and importance for associations that oversee money.

4. Be solid over each and every social medium stage; your name, association name, and delineation.

How frequently have you seen an association that has hardly different logos, literary styles, pictures or messages either by means of online systems administration media or, everything considered? Right, when your picture doesn't organize, it leaves a subtle, yet the negative effect on your potential customers.

One way to deal with disentangling this is to have what's known as a "style direct" or a "brand book". This is essentially a chronicle that you can confer to everyone (checking authorities, re-appropriated originators, and accomplices) that demonstrates exactly what your stamping takes after. It will fuse everything from the tints to printed styles and your logos in dull, white and each other attested mix.

5. Advance Yourself On the web

Notwithstanding whether you have uncommon substance, your gathering of onlookers ought to most likely show it to be successful at brand building.

You should keep up different online life profiles as channels to pass on your sites, Slide Offers, whitepapers, and advanced accounts. Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook are your go-to resources, anyway, you may in like manner consider Instagram and Pinterest - depending upon your expected intrigue gathering. Persistently remember that it takes 5-7 "contacts" before you build up an association and impact your picture.

6. Framework - On the web and as a general rule

Relationship with accomplices, influencers, and industry thought pioneers are fundamental to building your very own picture. Attract with them at show blenders and partake in the exchanges they're having through electronic systems administration media. Adventure each opportunity to spread your picture message.

7. Be a Ceaseless Understudy

In order to remain appropriate, you ought to be current. Things change quickly in the web age and what's floating today may be old news tomorrow. Including dated material in your message degrades your circumstance as a speculated pioneer. Stay current and refuse being destroyed by eating up all that you can about the focuses whereupon you hold yourself out as a subject ace

[confrontingbabble-on]

“The following  briefly describes some of the most common fallacies:

ad hominem: Latin for "to the man." An arguer  who uses ad hominems attacks the person instead of the argument.  Whenever an arguer cannot defend his position with evidence,  facts or reason, he or she may resort to attacking an opponent  either through: labeling, straw man arguments, name calling,  offensive remarks and anger.

appeal to ignorance (argumentum ex silentio) appealing  to ignorance as evidence for something. (e.g., We have no evidence  that God doesn't exist, therefore, he must exist. Or: Because  we have no knowledge of alien visitors, that means they do not  exist). Ignorance about something says nothing about its existence  or non-existence.

argument from omniscience: (e.g., All people believe  in something. Everyone knows that.) An arguer would need omniscience  to know about everyone's beliefs or disbeliefs or about their  knowledge. Beware of words like "all," "everyone,"  "everything," "absolute."

appeal to faith: (e.g., if you have no faith, you cannot  learn) if the arguer relies on faith as the bases of his argument,  then you can gain little from further discussion. Faith, by definition,  relies on a belief that does not rest on logic or evidence. Faith  depends on irrational thought and produces intransigence.

appeal to tradition (similar to the bandwagon fallacy):  (e.g., astrology, religion, slavery) just because people practice  a tradition, says nothing about its viability.

argument from authority (argumentum ad verecundiam):  using the words of an "expert" or authority as the  bases of the argument instead of using the logic or evidence  that supports an argument. (e.g., Professor so-and-so believes  in creation-science.) Simply because an authority makes a claim  does not necessarily mean he got it right. If an arguer presents  the testimony from an expert, look to see if it accompanies reason  and sources of evidence behind it.

Appeal to consequences (argumentum ad consequentiam): an argument that concludes a premise (usually a belief) as either true or false based on whether the premise leads to  desirable or undesirable consequences. Example: some religious people believe that knowledge of evolution leads to immorality, therefore evolution proves false. Even if teaching evolution did lead to immorality, it would not imply a falsehood of evolution.

argument from adverse consequences: (e.g., We should  judge the accused as guilty, otherwise others will commit similar  crimes) Just because a repugnant crime or act occurred, does  not necessarily mean that a defendant committed the crime or  that we should judge him guilty. (Or: disasters occur because  God punishes non-believers; therefore, we should all believe  in God) Just because calamities or tragedies occur, says nothing  about the existence of gods or that we should believe in a certain  way.

argumentum ad baculum: An argument based on an appeal  to fear or a threat. (e.g., If you don't believe in God, you'll  burn in hell)

argumentum ad ignorantiam: A misleading argument used  in reliance on people's ignorance.

argumentum ad populum: An argument aimed to sway popular  support by appealing to sentimental weakness rather than facts  and reasons. This can lead to bandwagon fallacies (see below).

bandwagon fallacy: concluding that an idea has merit  simply because many people believe it or practice it. (e.g.,  Most people believe in a god; therefore, it must prove true.)  Simply because many people may believe something says nothing  about the fact of that something. For example many people during  the Black plague believed that demons caused disease. The number  of believers say nothing at all about the cause of disease.

begging the question (or assuming the answer): (e.g.,  We must encourage our youth to worship God to instill moral behavior.)  But does religion and worship actually produce moral behavior?

circular reasoning: stating in one's proposition that  which one aims to prove. (e.g. God exists because the Bible says  so; the Bible exists because God influenced it.)

composition fallacy: when the conclusion of an argument  depends on an erroneous characteristic from parts of something  to the whole or vice versa. (e.g., Humans have consciousness  and human bodies and brains consist of atoms; therefore, atoms  have consciousness. Or: a word processor program consists of  many bytes; therefore a byte forms a fraction of a word processor.)

confirmation bias (similar to observational selection):  This refers to a form of selective thinking that focuses on evidence  that supports what believers already believe while ignoring evidence  that refutes their beliefs. Confirmation bias plays a stronger  role when people base their beliefs upon faith, tradition and  prejudice. For example, if someone believes in the power of prayer,  the believer will notice the few "answered" prayers  while ignoring the majority of unanswered prayers (which would  indicate that prayer has no more value than random chance at  worst or a placebo effect, when applied to health effects, at  best).

confusion of correlation and causation: (e.g., More  men play chess than women, therefore, men make better chess players  than women. Or: Children who watch violence on TV tend to act  violently when they grow up.) But does television programming  cause violence or do violence oriented children prefer to watch  violent programs? Perhaps an entirely different reason creates  violence not related to television at all. Stephen Jay Gould  called the invalid assumption that correlation implies cause  as "probably among the two or three most serious and common  errors of human reasoning" (The  Mismeasure of Man).

excluded middle (or false dichotomy): considering only  the extremes. Many people use Aristotelian either/or logic tending  to describe in terms of up/down, black/white, true/false, love/hate,  etc. (e.g., You either like it or you don't. He either stands  guilty or not guilty.) Many times, a continuum occurs between  the extremes that people fail to see. The universe also contains  many "maybes."

half truths (suppressed evidence): A statement usually  intended to deceive that omits some of the facts necessary for  an accurate description.

loaded questions: embodies an assumption that, if answered,  indicates an implied agreement. (e.g., Have you stopped beating  your wife yet?)

meaningless question: (e.g., "How high is up?"  "Is everything possible?") "Up" describes  a direction, not a measurable entity. If everything proved possible,  then the possibility exists for the impossible, a contradiction.  Although everything may not prove possible, there may occur an  infinite number of possibilities as well as an infinite number  of impossibilities. Many meaningless questions include empty  words such as "is," "are," "were,"  "was," "am," "be," or "been."

misunderstanding the nature of statistics: (e.g., the  majority of people in the United States die in hospitals, therefore,  stay out of them.) "Statistics show that of those who contract  the habit of eating, very few survive." -- Wallace Irwin  

non sequitur: Latin for "It does not follow."    An inference or conclusion that does not follow from established    premises or evidence. (e.g., there occured an increase of births    during the full moon. Conclusion: full moons cause birth rates    to rise.) But does a full moon actually cause more births, or    did it occur for other reasons, perhaps from expected statistical  variations?

no true Christian (no true Scotsman): an informal logical fallacy, an ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion. When faced with an example, rather than denying it, this fallacy  excludes the specific case without reference to any  objective rule. Example: Many Christians in history have started wars. Reply: Well no true Christian would ever start a war.  

observational selection (similar to confirmation bias):    pointing out favorable circumstances while ignoring the unfavorable.    Anyone who goes to Las Vegas gambling casinos will see people    winning at the tables and slots. The casino managers make sure    to install bells and whistles to announce the victors, while    the losers never get mentioned. This may lead one to conclude    that the chances of winning appear good while in actually just  the reverse holds true.

post hoc, ergo propter hoc: Latin for "It happened  after, so it was caused by." Similar to a non sequitur,  but time dependent. (e.g. She got sick after she visited China,  so something in China caused her sickness.) Perhaps her sickness  derived from something entirely independent from China.

proving non-existence: when an arguer cannot provide  the evidence for his claims, he may challenge his opponent to  prove it doesn't exist (e.g., prove God doesn't exist; prove  UFO's haven't visited earth, etc.). Although one may prove non-existence  in special limitations, such as showing that a box does not contain  certain items, one cannot prove universal or absolute non-existence,  or non-existence out of ignorance. One cannot prove something  that does not exist. The proof of existence must come from those  who make the claims.

red herring: when the arguer diverts the attention  by changing the subject.

reification fallacy: when people treat an abstract  belief or hypothetical construct as if it represented a concrete  event or physical entity. Examples: IQ tests as an actual measure  of intelligence; the concept of race (even though genetic attributes  exist), from the chosen combination of attributes or the  labeling of a group of people, come from abstract social constructs;  Astrology; god(s); Jesus; Santa Claus, black race, white race, etc.

slippery slope: a change in procedure, law, or action,  will result in adverse consequences. (e.g., If we allow doctor  assisted suicide, then eventually the government will control  how we die.) It does not necessarily follow that just because  we make changes that a slippery slope will occur.

special pleading: the assertion of new or special matter  to offset the opposing party's allegations. A presentation of  an argument that emphasizes only a favorable or single aspect  of the question at issue. (e.g. How can God create so much suffering  in the world? Answer: You have to understand that God moves in  mysterious ways and we have no privilege to this knowledge. Or:  Horoscopes work, but you have to understand the theory behind  it.)

statistics of small numbers: similar to observational  selection (e.g., My parents smoked all their lives and they never  got cancer. Or: I don't care what others say about Yugos, my  Yugo has never had a problem.) Simply because someone can point  to a few favorable numbers says nothing about the overall chances.

straw man: creating a false or made up scenario and then attacking  it. (e.g., Evolutionists think that everything came about by  random chance.) Most evolutionists think in terms of natural  selection which may involve incidental elements, but does not  depend entirely on random chance. Painting your opponent with  false colors only deflects the purpose of the argument. (From the email that I get on NoBeliefs.com this appears as the most common fallacy of all.)

two wrongs make a right: trying to justify what we  did by accusing someone else of doing the same. (e.g. how can  you judge my actions when you do exactly the same thing?) The  guilt of the accuser has no relevance to the discussion.

Use-mention error: confusing a word or a concept with something that supposedly exists. For example an essay on THE HISTORY OF GOD does not refer to an actual god, but rather the history of the concept of god in human culture. (To avoid  confusion, people usually put the word or phrase in quotations.

_______________________

Science attempts to apply some of the following criteria:

1) Skepticism of unsupported claims

2) Combination of an open mind with critical thinking

3) Attempts to repeat experimental results.

4) Requires testability

5) Seeks out falsifying data that would disprove a hypothesis

6) Uses descriptive language

7) Performs controlled experiments

8) Self-correcting

9) Relies on evidence and reason

10) Makes no claim for absolute or certain knowledge

11) Produces useful knowledge

Pseudoscience and religion relies on some of the following  criteria:

1) Has a negative attitude to skepticism

2) Does not require critical thinking

3) Does not require experimental repeatability

4) Does not require tests

5) Does not accept falsifying data that would disprove a hypothesis

6) Uses vague language

7) Relies on anecdotal evidence

8) No self-correction

9) Relies on belief and faith

10) Makes absolute claims

11) Produces no useful knowledge”

https://www.nobeliefs.com/fallacies.htm

[jmrphy]

Two cultures of radical politics

While many people on the left still pretend that “free speech” and “political correctness” are fake right-wing concepts, a number of us are beginning to realize the profound mistake of dismissive moral posturing. Get your popcorn ready now, because it’s going to be a fascinating mess as more and more people on the left begin to realize that the cultural politics of policing moral symbols has been fully exhausted and defeated.

The collective-emancipatory gains of genuine truth-seeking are now so massive compared to the rapidly diminishing marginal returns to the moral model, that there is no reason to spend much effort trying to convince the remaining moralists. First, If I am right that the truth-seeking model is better, then it will win because it is better, whether I convince anyone in a blog post or not. Second, I am practicing it, so if I am right then by simply thinking and doing what I am thinking and doing, you’ll see how it works in practice. If I’m wrong, my ideas will fizzle out and I’ll go away. In any event, what I would like to do here is simply unpack some of the notions I have been referring to in not-fully-explained shorthand. To begin, what do I mean when I refer to the “moral model” and the “truth-seeking” model?

The moral model vs. the truth-seeking model of radical politics

By “left moralism” or any of the other cognate phrases I sometimes use to this effect, I am referring to the model of political activism that seeks to change society by enforcing moral prohibitions. I think this is far and away the most widely held mental model of how progressive social change can and should be achieved, in moderate as well as radical circles. Make a list of words and ideas and types of behavior that are good, and try to get people to identify with them, talk about them, and go to meetings around them. Sometimes these words seem very concrete and action-oriented (such as “strike”) but nonetheless, if you observe like an anthropologist would, you find that an overwhelming portion of the energy is organized around identification with certain words and ideas believed to be in some sense normatively good or desirable. Always curiously lacking is impartial assessment of effects. Also, make a list of words and ideas and types of behavior that are bad and politics means discouraging these by whatever means necessary. Radical politics means really strongly discouraging these things. An important feature of this model is that what, exactly, should be on the list of bad things is a question that is not in principle open to question or debate. It is a characteristic of the moralist model that questioning its basic premises is itself one of the bad things to be discouraged; “good politics” means granting the goodness of the list and it’s enforcement, simply because that’s the moral thing to do. In practice, today, what’s actually on the list of bad things is generally determined through reverse dominance hierarchy in which deference is given to the most institutionally dominated individuals and groups you happen to be around. To be clear, I don’t think this is a totally unreasonable model. It kind of makes sense: society oppresses people unequally so give some priority to oppressed people in defining what is bad and everyone try to stop the occurrence of those bad things from happening. Not necessarily perfect but fair enough.

I use the phrase “truth-seeking” as an informal and intuitive name for what I could just as well call “scientific method.” The problem with “scientific method” is that for a lot of people this will sound too grandiose for thinking and acting around everyday cultural questions. Not to mention a lot of people think “scientific method” applied to social questions is impossible or harmful to begin with (it’s not, it’s just harder to apply to social questions than to something like physical objects). But most people agree that our ideas about the world around us can be more or less accurate, more or less consistent with how things actually work outside of us, and most people can admit they have an inner sense of when their ideas are proven true by reality (something works as you expect it to), and when their ideas are proven false by reality (something you are doing produces unexpected, undesirable outcomes).

So when I talk about “truth-seeking,” all I mean is informally but seriously subjecting all of one’s beliefs, opinions, and mental models of the world to the basic guidelines of scientific method in an everday, intuitive fashion. Basically: everything you think is just a theory, and everything you observe at all times is data you compare to what your theory would have predicted; you need to actively consider all plausible alternative theories and you update your mental models of the world accordingly. You can, and should, have unique background experiences and feelings and creative quirks; scientific method in no way discourages or disqualifies any of that, as it is popular for naïve humanists to suggest. Indeed, truth-seeking is actually the only way to remain loyal to your unique experiences and quirks: the scientific method provides the key for translating your unique data into power over your unique environment, by subjecting your thoughts to objective rules that are guaranteed to give you the best possible command of your unique situation. So this isn’t just an academic protocol; it’s the only way to live a basically honest and mature life, and I would argue it’s a basic pre-requisite for anyone who would hope to contribute to the elimination of oppression by complex social structures.

So the “truth-seeking” model of radical politics is fundamentally opposed to the moral model. The moral model says to begin with what is currently defined as morally bad (typically through reverse dominance hierarchies), and devote yourself to discouraging and generally reducing the prevalence of those things. The moral model requires specifically that nobody question the fundamental goodness of that model, or the wisdom of certain items being placed on the list of prohibitions, because the whole strategy is based precisely on forcing conformity to Goodness. The truth-seeking model’s only rule is that you must be honest about your data and how you’re making inferences from that data, but otherwise everyone should just do their best trying to understand how oppressive structures function and how to think/speak/act with others in the precise ways that will predictably overthrow those structures in favor of equality and liberation. The moral model’s final endgame is a world in which all badness goes away through mass conformity with moral criteria. The truth-seeking model’s final endgame is, through diverse and totally free experimentation, we collectively unlock our true functional relationships to oppressive social machinery while immanently rewiring them into correctly-functioning liberation machines.

Why the moral model will not go down without a fight

The reason the opening of a free-speech cleavage on the left is going to be really messy is that a large number of people have so long schooled themselves in the cultural politics of moralism, and have for so long avoided the very different protocols of truth-seeking (i.e. scientific method), that such a paradigm shift will understandably be experienced as a mortal threat to their identity. And we know that human beings will sooner go to war than reasonably reflect on anything that threatens fundamental dimensions of their identity. People have staked years of effort and many of their social relationships on a model that is suddenly obsolete, so it’s reasonable for such people to be confused and fearful about their place in the future of radical politics, let alone society. Fortunately, scientific method has an extraordinary egalitarian feature that goes woefully under-celebrated in radical circles: it’s equally demonstrable (ultimately) to anyone who is willing to work at understanding it.

The whole politics of left-moralism is actively anti-egalitarian because it’s logic is not readily and equally available to all interested parties. There are many social and economic factors that make access to scientific method unequally distributed, of course, but it has the uniquely egalitarian-emancipatory feature of at least being intelligible and employable by all who can find their way to it. The protocols of the left-moral model are not only beset by the same basic problems of unequal access (this is why educational privilege is curiously the single non-demonized privilege in left-moral culture), but the protocols of how to think and act politically on the left-moral model are not available to all in principle. They are unequally accessible by definition, so even if they start out noble and true, there is no way for large groups of humans to hold each other accountable to them in a fashion equally consistent with their truth. The magical techniques of being an ideal ally in the moral war—in which, one day certain words are declared good and the next day they are designated impermissible, according to a logic that does not exist out of the declarations of those groups and individuals who happen to be at the top of constantly shifting reverse dominance hierarchies—is therefore inegalitarian in principle. This is not to cry woe for the exclusion of white men from power (as will be the immediate rejoinder to my point here), it is to cry woe for anyone anywhere who might like to enter revolutionary movements for liberation from diverse starting points. The left-moral model is inherently illegible for anyone who is not able to go through narrow, fickle, local person-driven power dynamics to receive the day’s edicts on what is good and bad. Scientific method, while beset by problems of unequal access as with everything under capitalism, at least has the egalitarian virtue of being written down, basically unchanging, and citable to all.

The two models represent two different bio-chemical equilibria

I think a lot of smart and genuinely good people on the left operate on this model simply because, as a really-existing cultural structure, it can always inflict very real punishments they are not personally able to risk at the moment (ostracism) and it really delivers rewards they are not personally able to forego at the moment (social stability, standing and status in the in-group, efficacy, purity, etc.)

But the whole point of being a radical or revolutionary is to actively cultivate a higher tolerance for social punishment than bourgeois normies, and less reliance on the everyday psychological payoffs that bourgeois normies require to make their sad lives livable.

The revolutionary life, the life that genuinely risks itself in the name of what it believes, operates on a totally different equilibrium. Through cultivated attitude and iterating behavioral practice, we push our social punishment tolerance to the human maximum (but no more), our reliance on disingenous bourgeois psychological tricks to the human minimum (but no less), but we set our truth-seeking and truth-speaking/behaving high enough that it becomes a unique and inviolable source of two key resources. First, it provides motivation/energy replacing that which is lost by foregoing the convential bourgeois channels, because any genuine process of truth-seeking is by definition interesting, inspiring, and endless. Second, it provides actual power, for oneself and for whoever you wish to share it with, insofar as increasing your understanding over the social average unlocks concrete pathways to change the world around you despite that most people are content to leave the world as it is. Read the biography of any well-known revolutionary in history (anyone whose life itself participated in world-historical effects), whether it be a political revolutionary or creative/cultural revolutionary, and you will find they are not just different or more extreme than their contemporaries. You will find they organized their life on this fundamentally different equilibrium, a qualitatively different organization of energy inputs and ouputs, which provide the sustainable bio-chemical basis necessary for producing systemically transformative truths despite extreme social punishment and very little bourgeois subjectivity-maintenance.

Conclusion

The left-moralist model will protest the new school loudly and insistently until one day you just don’t hear from it anymore. This day is probably much sooner than most people think. Very soon the whole fashion of generalized moral condemnation will be so fully outed as an intellectually disingenuous and practically conservative tendency, that everyone will soon be pretending they never engaged in that embarrasing old fad. And the new cool kids on the block will be all those who are currently risking themselves on truth-seeking, those who were willing to take a little bit of heat from sad moralists in favor of seeking what really works for producing large-scale liberation dynamics. The reason I know this is not because I’m special; quite the contrary, it is because some version of this pattern characterizes all epochal transformations. A scientific outlook makes you larger by making you smaller, for it allows you to find a humble but real role in a set of infinitely larger objective processes.

from Justin Murphy http://ift.tt/2pISIls

[abbymories]

The favored trinity of web based life advancement innovation, cell phones, and web based life has as a general rule made the world an overall town with organize no longer a freakish legend. One of the critical fields benefiting by this idea in the domain of educating application. From Facebook's Messenger, Instagram, Whatsapp and more to capable applications, for instance, Slack, visit applications are rapidly transforming into a need in near and dear and master life the equivalent. Be it a lot simpler applications for gaming, customers will as a rule scan for educating features in an adaptable application. One of the illuminating applications giving Whatsapp a run for its money is Telegram. Data amassing and security issues have placed these standard educating applications in the spotlight. This the truth is being changed on by educating applications, for instance, Telegram that don't rely upon outside resources for data amassing and have encoded illuminating as one of its middle features. Wire has more than 365 million lifetime downloads since its dispatch far and wide. A lot of new organizations and convenient application progression associations the equivalent are looking towards building relative illuminating applications as their next gigantic break. Contemplating how to develop your illuminating application like Telegram? Here's your broad manual for help you with it. Where to start?  The process of mobile app development, no matter the type of mobile app needs a structured flow of development from inception to execution. Here are a few steps that you can follow to get started with building your messaging app:

Research  It is perfect to consider the kind of versatile application that you will assemble your illuminating application concerning. Research about the Telegram application, it's functionalities, coding, and various frameworks. You ought to in like manner investigate other similar illuminating applications in the market and their functionalities to get contention. In like manner, measure the financing that you would require taking up this adaptable application progression adventure. You may need to obtain compact application builds remotely for the system. Plan  At the point when you are escalated with the Telegram application and have a terrible idea in regards to the kind of utilization that you should create, the resulting stage is to plan. Make a point by point motivation that consolidates Vital necessities Advancement stack Agreement Mobile application developer(s) required Spending limit required to enroll on demand application engineers How and when you would raise resources for the application Structure an execution plan subject to this with conceivable cutoff times. You can similarly enroll on demand application originators to help you with the equal. Similarly, diagram the age and diverse economics of your application customers close by the phases that you should dispatch your application on. Wire centers around different stages including iOS, Android and Web. Code  At the point when you have your financing, development stack and designers all set, start with the coding strategy. Guarantee that you make up for lost time with the flexible application progression association or the gathering each day and follow set time limitations. For your reference, Telegram uses an alternate advancement stack inferable from its multi-organize support. Here are the tongues used by Telegram: JavaScript Java Android SDK Target C C++ C Cocoa Touch for iOS Cocoa for the latest OS X model

Market  Make a quick and dirty flexible application exhibiting plan for your advising application. This will fuse picking an expected intrigue bunch that you may need to exhibit your application to, stages where you should get the word out and the exceptional substance. Dispatch  When your application is a great idea to go, attempted and sans bug, make a dispatch arrangement. You can make a beta or alpha version for test-driving before the essential dispatch plan. You can moreover scale it up subordinate accessible response including diverse pay models that you can furthermore complete to get from your application once your application is successful. These salary models join publicizing, in-application purchases, in-application portion move features, etc. Must-join Features for Your Messaging App  Before you set out to cause your advising application, to understand what features and functionalities that Telegram offers and what works, as referenced already. Here are two or three features that a better than average educating application requires: Confirmed Database  Encoded Messaging  Man-made insight blend as Chatbots Empowering API coordination with Other Social Apps In-application File Transfer Conveyed stockpiling Visit Groups Proficient tip: Apart from getting inspiration from the application with respect to features that you should fuse, in like manner base on your data storing and security system inside the educating application. Security is without a doubt a noteworthy stress among customers of the advising application. All the way encryption close by setting standards for data security can truly perceive your application. Creating a good messaging app like Telegram and successfully launching it in the market is not enough. An up and coming mobile app development company faces major competition with such a product. Along with maintaining good quality, marketing efforts are just as necessary. Creating an app such as Telegram with its own in-house data storage system and diverse functionalities might cost you a few more bucks than an app like Whatsapp. You can balance it out with mixed revenue models in the future. Keep innovating and scaling up with newer more exciting functionalities within the app.

Gain constant feedback from your users, analyze reviews and keep updating your app based on the reviews for a successful app.

[jbpaulsrud]

ELA Lesson Plan

Description

Date of Lesson: Monday, October 28, 2019

Grade/Subject:  3rd Grade/ELA

Classroom Composite:  25 students: 12 Girls, 13 Boys, 2 IEPs, 1 ELL

          (80% Caucasian, 12% Hispanic, 4% Asian, 4% African American)

Teacher: Ms. Jessica Paulsrud

Guiding Tenets:

·       Lead by Example

o   Demonstrate patience and positive attitude

o   Manage classroom in a fair and equitable manner

o   Use Workshop Model for lesson

·       Accommodations

o   Reasonable accommodations and adaptations for IEPs and ELL students

o   Reasonable accommodations for struggling students

o   Be flexible and keep students engaged (UDL – Multiple Means of Engagement)

o   Provide extra time and attention for those who need or require it

o   Social-Emotional check-ins with students

·       Student Expectations

o   Reiterate classroom rules and agreements at the beginning of each day

o   Classrooms agreements are:

§  Respect self and others

§  Listen with our ears

§  Raise quiet hands for questions

§  Be prepared to participate and do your best

o   Set appropriate expectations and use positive reinforcers for students to meet them

Common Core Standard: Use information gained from illustrations (e.g., maps, photographs) and the words in a text to demonstrate understanding of the text (e.g., where, when, why, and how key events occur).

Student Learning Goal/Target: After this lesson, students will be able to identify and describe details of fiction and non-fiction stories based on context clues and critical adjectives.

CA Common Core Standard: Use information gained from illustrations (e.g., maps, photographs) and the words in a text to demonstrate understanding of the text (e.g., where, when, why, and how key events occur). (CCSSI ELA Standards, p. 14).  

Daily Target (Objective): Listening, reading and speaking activities will help students identify, infer and describe key details and adjectives to illustrate understanding of text through context clues

Overarching Objective (Goal): This lesson will help students use descriptive adjectives to create and utilize visual content to demonstrate understanding context

Materials & Tools

For Teacher:

·       Computer

·       Overhead projector

·       Descriptive readings from appropriate stories

·       Illustrations/pictures from relevant stories

For Students:

·       Handouts of descriptive paragraphs from appropriate stories

·       Worksheets

·       Chromebooks

·       Drawing paper

·       Pencils, pens, markers, crayons

Activities

1.     Mini-Lesson (10-20 minutes):

·      Recap with students the components that make up a story (point of view, settings, characters, etc.) (Bloom’s Taxonomy: Remembering).

·      Discuss what adjectives are and why they are used (Bloom’s Taxonomy: Understanding).

·      Teacher to read out loud section of a story and then discuss what details students can decipher from the content (UDL – Multiple Means of Representation).

                       Guiding questions

·       What did you hear?

·       Where do you think this takes place? Why?

·       When during the day, do you think this happened? Why?

·       Whose perspective do you think this is? Why?

2.     Group/Individual Work (Bloom’s Taxonomy - Applying) (10-15 minutes):

·      Using overhead projector collectively as a class, write all the details students deciphered from the story.

·      Have students use class materials (drawing paper, pens, pencils, markers, crayons, OR Chromebook) to illustrate as many of the details they came up with (UDL – Multiple Means of Representation & Expression, Bloom’s Taxonomy – Creating).

·      Call on students to share their drawings with the class

3.     Individual Work (Bloom’s Taxonomy ~ Applying) (5-10 minutes):

·      Using overhead projector, display appropriate picture or illustration from another part of the story (UDL – Multiple Means of Representation).

·      Have students list as many adjectives and details they can come up with from the image (Bloom’s Taxonomy – Analysis).

·      Call on students to share their list with the class.

Guiding questions

·       What do you see?

·       Where do you think this takes place? Why?

·       When during the day, do you think this happened? Why?

·       Whose perspective do you think this is? Why?

**Teacher to work with a small group of students who need special accommodations.         

**Allow students who need special accommodation to use stories from personal library.

4.     Share-out and Closure/Homework (10-20 minutes):

·       Reflect on the importance of details and adjectives and reiterate how they help in understanding context (Bloom’s Taxonomy – Evaluating).

·      For homework, pass out descriptive paragraphs and have students list what they think are essential descriptive details and create an illustration based on them (UDL – Multiple Means of Expression, Bloom’s Taxonomy – Creating).

Reflective Assessment and Evaluation

·       During the lesson, the teacher will gauge and listen to what the students are describing and, if appropriate, to content and context.

·       Ask appropriate probing questions to see if students understand.

·       Propose alternative interpretations and discuss with class why or why not appropriate for given context (UDL – Multiple Means of Engagement)

·       During group and individual work, walk around and check for understanding and answer questions.

Classroom Management Instructions

·       Discuss the schedule for the day at the beginning of class.

·       Do a quick “temp check” of the room - who needs to drink water, who needs a quick snack, who needs a restroom break, who needs to resolve an outside issue, who has questions before we start learning.

·       Classrooms agreements are:

o   Respect self and others

o   Listen with our ears

o   Raise quiet hands for questions

o   Be prepared to participate and do your best

·       Set high expectations for the students and encourage them to set achievable goals.

·       There will be a positive discipline (Jane Nelsen) approach to behavior management and redirection.

Reflection

Writing this lesson plan, I kept in mind the age and attention of the class I observed, as well as how well the “Workshop Model” worked for their ELA period. From the feedback I received, I made modifications to the “Student Learning Target,” expanded on the “Teacher” element with guiding tenets, clarified special accommodations, and pinpointed UDL and Bloom's Taxonomy throughout the lesson. During this process, I consistently put myself in the mind of a 3rd grader and what would keep my attention. Additionally, I put myself in the position of what I would need and want to know if I were the substitute teacher to carry out the objective of this lesson effective and efficiently. Unpacking the common core standard was the most challenging part of this assignment but gave me a greater appreciation and grasp on how lesson plans come to fruition.

References

Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects. Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/wp-content/uploads/ELA_Standards1.pdf

Burden, P. R. Methods for Effective Teaching. [National University]. Retrieved from https://nu.vitalsource.com/#/books/9780133955705/

Gordon, D. Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice. [National University]. Retrieved from https://nu.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781930583542/

Designing Effective Learning Maps. PowerPoint. National University. ITL 608.

Ferguson, B. 2011. Assessment Basics and Evaluation. National University. ITL 608. PowerPoint

Bloom’s Taxonomy for Teachers Revised. (2017, Dec 19). YouTube Video Retrieved from https://cdnapisec.kaltura.com/index.php/extwidget/preview/partner_id/1700302/uiconf_id/32654372/entry_id/0_oh9mq00h/embed/dynamic

SDAIE Teaching Strategies. Retrieved from https://www.csus.edu/indiv/l/limb/314/pdf/sdaie.pdf

[technicalsolutions88]

Is Facebook trampling over laws that regulate the processing of sensitive categories of personal data by failing to ask people for their explicit consent before it makes sensitive inferences about their sex life, religion or political beliefs? Or is the company merely treading uncomfortably and unethically close to the line of the law?

An investigation by the Guardian and the Danish Broadcasting Corporation has found that Facebook’s platform allows advertisers to target users based on interests related to political beliefs, sexuality and religion — all categories that are marked out as sensitive information under current European data protection law.

And indeed under the incoming GDPR, which will apply across the bloc from May 25.

The joint investigation found Facebook’s platform had made sensitive inferences about users — allowing advertisers to target people based on inferred interests including communism, social democrats, Hinduism and Christianity. All of which would be classed as sensitive personal data under EU rules.

And while the platform offers some constraints on how advertisers can target people against sensitive interests — not allowing advertisers to exclude users based on a specific sensitive interest, for example (Facebook having previously run into trouble in the US for enabling discrimination via ethnic affinity-based targeting) — such controls are beside the point if you take the view that Facebook is legally required to ask for a user’s explicit consent to processing this kind of sensitive data up front, before making any inferences about a person.

Indeed, it’s very unlikely that any ad platform can put people into buckets with sensitive labels like ‘interested in social democrat issues’ or ‘likes communist pages’ or ‘attends gay events’ without asking them to let it do so first.

And Facebook is not asking first.

This is going to be a big battleground. We talk about inferred special category data in the context of the Article 29 Working Party guidelines on profiling here > https://t.co/TjCHqOvcBA (open access) https://t.co/XZB5ypjELs

— Michael Veale (@mikarv) May 16, 2018

Facebook argues otherwise, of course — claiming that the information it gathers about people’s affinities/interests, even when they entail sensitive categories of information such as sexuality and religion, is not personal data.

In a response statement to the media investigation, a Facebook spokesperson told us:

Like other Internet companies, Facebook shows ads based on topics we think people might be interested in, but without using sensitive personal data. This means that someone could have an ad interest listed as ‘Gay Pride’ because they have liked a Pride associated Page or clicked a Pride ad, but it does not reflect any personal characteristics such as gender or sexuality. People are able to manage their Ad Preferences tool, which clearly explains how advertising works on Facebook and provides a way to tell us if you want to see ads based on specific interests or not. When interests are removed, we show people the list of removed interests so that they have a record they can access, but these interests are no longer used for ads. Our advertising complies with relevant EU law and, like other companies, we are preparing for the GDPR to ensure we are compliant when it comes into force.

Expect Facebook’s argument to be tested in the courts — likely in the very near future.

As we’ve said before, the GDPR lawsuits are coming for the company, thanks to beefed up enforcement of EU privacy rules, with the regulation providing for fines as large as 4% of a company’s global turnover.

Facebook is not the only online people profiler, of course, but it’s a prime target for strategic litigation both because of its massive size and reach (and the resulting power over web users flowing from a dominant position in an attention-dominating category), but also on account of its nose-thumbing attitude to compliance with EU regulations thus far.

The company has faced a number of challenges and sanctions under existing EU privacy law — though for its operations outside the US it typically refuses to recognize any legal jurisdiction except corporate-friendly Ireland, where its international HQ is based.

And, from what we’ve seen so far, Facebook’s response to GDPR ‘compliance’ is no new leaf. Rather it looks like privacy-hostile business as usual; a continued attempt to leverage its size and power to force a self-serving interpretation of the law — bending rules to fit its existing business processes, rather than reconfiguring those processes to comply with the law.

The GDPR is one of the reasons why Facebook’s ad microtargeting empire is facing greater scrutiny now, with just weeks to go before civil society organizations are able to take advantage of fresh opportunities for strategic litigation allowed by the regulation.

“I’m a big fan of the GDPR. I really believe that it gives us — as the court in Strasbourg would say — effective and practical remedies,” law professor Mireille Hildebrandt tells us. “If we go and do it, of course. So we need a lot of public litigation, a lot of court cases to make the GDPR work but… I think there are more people moving into this.

“The GDPR created a market for these sort of law firms — and I think that’s excellent.”

But it’s not the only reason. Another reason why Facebook’s handling of personal data is attracting attention is the result of tenacious press investigations into how one controversial political consultancy, Cambridge Analytica, was able to gain such freewheeling access to Facebook users’ data — as a result of Facebook’s lax platform policies around data access — for, in that instance, political ad targeting purposes.

All of which eventually blew up into a major global privacy storm, this March, though criticism of Facebook’s privacy-hostile platform policies dates back more than a decade at this stage.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal at least brought Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg in front of US lawmakers, facing questions about the extent of the personal information it gathers; what controls it offers users over their data; and how he thinks Internet companies should be regulated, to name a few. (Pro tip for politicians: You don’t need to ask companies how they’d like to be regulated.)

The Facebook founder has also finally agreed to meet EU lawmakers — though UK lawmakers’ calls have been ignored.

Zuckerberg should expect to be questioned very closely in Brussels about how his platform is impacting European’s fundamental rights.

Sensitive personal data needs explicit consent

Facebook infers affinities linked to individual users by collecting and processing interest signals their web activity generates, such as likes on Facebook Pages or what people look at when they’re browsing outside Facebook — off-site intel it gathers via an extensive network of social plug-ins and tracking pixels embedded on third party websites. (According to information released by Facebook to the UK parliament this week, during just one week of April this year its Like button appeared on 8.4M websites; the Share button appeared on 931,000 websites; and its tracking Pixels were running on 2.2M websites.)

But here’s the thing: Both the current and the incoming EU legal framework for data protection sets the bar for consent to processing so-called special category data equally high — at “explicit” consent.

What that means in practice is Facebook needs to seek and secure separate consents from users (such as via a dedicated pop-up) for collecting and processing this type of sensitive data.

The alternative is for it to rely on another special condition for processing this type of sensitive data. However the other conditions are pretty tightly drawn — relating to things like the public interest; or the vital interests of a data subject; or for purposes of “preventive or occupational medicine”.

None of which would appear to apply if, as Facebook is, you’re processing people’s sensitive personal information just to target them with ads.

Ahead of GDPR, Facebook has started asking users who have chosen to display political opinions and/or sexuality information on their profiles to explicitly consent to that data being public.

Though even there its actions are problematic, as it offers users a take it or leave it style ‘choice’ — saying they either remove the info entirely or leave it and therefore agree that Facebook can use it to target them with ads.

Yet EU law also requires that consent be freely given. It cannot be conditional on the provision of a service.

So Facebook’s bundling of service provisions and consent will also likely face legal challenges, as we’ve written before.

“They’ve tangled the use of their network for socialising with the profiling of users for advertising. Those are separate purposes. You can’t tangle them like they are doing in the GDPR,” says Michael Veale, a technology policy researcher at University College London, emphasizing that GDPR allows for a third option that Facebook isn’t offering users: Allowing them to keep sensitive data on their profile but that data not be used for targeted advertising.

“Facebook, I believe, is quite afraid of this third option,” he continues. “It goes back to the Congressional hearing: Zuckerberg said a lot that you can choose which of your friends every post can be shared with, through a little in-line button. But there’s no option there that says ‘do not share this with Facebook for the purposes of analysis’.”

Returning to how the company synthesizes sensitive personal affinities from Facebook users’ Likes and wider web browsing activity, Veale argues that EU law also does not recognize the kind of distinction Facebook is seeking to draw — i.e. between inferred affinities and personal data — and thus to try to redraw the law in its favor.

“Facebook say that the data is not correct, or self-declared, and therefore these provisions do not apply. Data does not have to be correct or accurate to be personal data under European law, and trigger the protections. Indeed, that’s why there is a ‘right to rectification’ — because incorrect data is not the exception but the norm,” he tells us.

“At the crux of Facebook’s challenge is that they are inferring what is arguably “special category” data (Article 9, GDPR) from non-special category data. In European law, this data includes race, sexuality, data about health, biometric data for the purposes of identification, and political opinions. One of the first things to note is that European law does not govern collection and use as distinct activities: Both are considered processing.

“The pan-European group of data protection regulators have recently confirmed in guidance that when you infer special category data, it is as if you collected it. For this to be lawful, you need a special reason, which for most companies is restricted to separate, explicit consent. This will be often different than the lawful basis for processing the personal data you used for inference, which might well be ‘legitimate interests’, which didn’t require consent. That’s ruled out if you’re processing one of these special categories.”

“The regulators even specifically give Facebook like inference as an example of inferring special category data, so there is little wiggle room here,” he adds, pointing to an example used by regulators of a study that combined Facebook Like data with “limited survey information” — and from which it was found that researchers could accurately predict a male user’s sexual orientation 88% of the time; a user’s ethnic origin 95% of the time; and whether a user was Christian or Muslim 82% of the time.

Which underlines why these rules exist — given the clear risk of breaches to human rights if big data platforms can just suck up sensitive personal data automatically, as a background process.

The overarching aim of GDPR is to give consumers greater control over their personal data not just to help people defend their rights but to foster greater trust in online services — and for that trust to be a mechanism for greasing the wheels of digital business. Which is pretty much the opposite approach to sucking up everything in the background and hoping your users don’t realize what you’re doing.

Veale also points out that under current EU law even an opinion on someone is their personal data… (per this Article 29 Working Party guidance, emphasis ours):

From the point of view of the nature of the information, the concept of personal data includes any sort of statements about a person. It covers “objective” information, such as the presence of a certain substance in one’s blood. It also includes “subjective” information, opinions or assessments. This latter sort of statements make up a considerable share of personal data processing in sectors such as banking, for the assessment of the reliability of borrowers (“Titius is a reliable borrower”), in insurance (“Titius is not expected to die soon”) or in employment (“Titius is a good worker and merits promotion”).

We put that specific point to Facebook — but at the time of writing we’re still waiting for a response. (Nor would Facebook provide a public response to several other questions we asked around what it’s doing here, preferring to limit its comment to the statement at the top of this post.)

Veale adds that the WP29 guidance has been upheld in recent CJEU cases such as Nowak — which he says emphasized that, for example, annotations on the side of an exam script are personal data.

He’s clear about what Facebook should be doing to comply with the law: “They should be asking for individuals’ explicit, separate consent for them to infer data including race, sexuality, health or political opinions. If people say no, they should be able to continue using Facebook as normal without these inferences being made on the back-end.”

“They need to tell individuals about what they are doing clearly and in plain language,” he adds. “Political opinions are just as protected here, and this is perhaps more interesting than race or sexuality.”

“They certainly should face legal challenges under the GDPR,” agrees Paul Bernal, senior lecturer in law at the University of East Anglia, who is also critical of how Facebook is processing sensitive personal information. “The affinity concept seems to be a pretty transparent attempt to avoid legal challenges, and one that ought to fail. The question is whether the regulators have the guts to make the point: It undermines a quite significant part of Facebook’s approach.”

“I think the reason they’re pushing this is that they think they’ll get away with it, partly because they think they’ve persuaded people that the problem is Cambridge Analytica, as rogues, rather than Facebook, as enablers and supporters. We need to be very clear about this: Cambridge Analytica are the symptom, Facebook is the disease,” he adds.

“I should also say, I think the distinction between ‘targeting’ being OK and ‘excluding’ not being OK is also mostly Facebook playing games, and trying to have their cake and eat it. It just invites gaming of the systems really.”

Facebook claims its core product is social media, rather than data-mining people to run a highly lucrative microtargeted advertising platform.

But if that’s true why then is it tangling its core social functions with its ad-targeting apparatus — and telling people they can’t have a social service unless they agree to interest-based advertising?

It could support a service with other types of advertising, which don’t depend on background surveillance that erodes users’ fundamental rights.  But it’s choosing not to offer that. All you can ‘choose’ is all or nothing. Not much of a choice.

Facebook telling people that if they want to opt out of its ad targeting they must delete their account is neither a route to obtain meaningful (and therefore lawful) consent — nor a very compelling approach to counter criticism that its real business is farming people.

The issues at stake here for Facebook, and for the shadowy background data-mining and brokering of the online ad targeting industry as a whole, are clearly far greater than any one data misuse scandal or any one category of sensitive data. But Facebook’s decision to retain people’s sensitive personal data for ad targeting without asking for consent up-front is a telling sign of something gone very wrong indeed.

If Facebook doesn’t feel confident asking its users whether what it’s doing with their personal data is okay or not, maybe it shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.

At very least it’s a failure of ethics. Even if the final judgement on Facebook’s self-serving interpretation of EU privacy rules will have to wait for the courts to decide.

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2Go73fj Original Content From: https://techcrunch.com

[endenogatai]

Facebook faces fresh criticism over ad targeting of sensitive interests

Is Facebook trampling over laws that regulate the processing of sensitive categories of personal data by failing to ask people for their explicit consent before it makes sensitive inferences about their sex life, religion or political beliefs? Or is the company merely treading uncomfortably and unethically close to the line of the law?

An investigation by the Guardian and the Danish Broadcasting Corporation has found that Facebook’s platform allows advertisers to target users based on interests related to political beliefs, sexuality and religion — all categories that are marked out as sensitive information under current European data protection law.

And indeed under the incoming GDPR, which will apply across the bloc from May 25.

The joint investigation found Facebook’s platform had made sensitive inferences about users — allowing advertisers to target people based on inferred interests including communism, social democrats, Hinduism and Christianity. All of which would be classed as sensitive personal data under EU rules.

And while the platform offers some constraints on how advertisers can target people against sensitive interests — not allowing advertisers to exclude users based on a specific sensitive interest, for example (Facebook having previously run into trouble in the US for enabling discrimination via ethnic affinity-based targeting) — such controls are beside the point if you take the view that Facebook is legally required to ask for a user’s explicit consent to processing this kind of sensitive data up front, before making any inferences about a person.

Indeed, it’s very unlikely that any ad platform can put people into buckets with sensitive labels like ‘interested in social democrat issues’ or ‘likes communist pages’ or ‘attends gay events’ without asking them to let it do so first.

And Facebook is not asking first.

This is going to be a big battleground. We talk about inferred special category data in the context of the Article 29 Working Party guidelines on profiling here > https://t.co/TjCHqOvcBA (open access) https://t.co/XZB5ypjELs

— Michael Veale (@mikarv) May 16, 2018

Facebook argues otherwise, of course — claiming that the information it gathers about people’s affinities/interests, even when they entail sensitive categories of information such as sexuality and religion, is not personal data.

In a response statement to the media investigation, a Facebook spokesperson told us:

Like other Internet companies, Facebook shows ads based on topics we think people might be interested in, but without using sensitive personal data. This means that someone could have an ad interest listed as ‘Gay Pride’ because they have liked a Pride associated Page or clicked a Pride ad, but it does not reflect any personal characteristics such as gender or sexuality. People are able to manage their Ad Preferences tool, which clearly explains how advertising works on Facebook and provides a way to tell us if you want to see ads based on specific interests or not. When interests are removed, we show people the list of removed interests so that they have a record they can access, but these interests are no longer used for ads. Our advertising complies with relevant EU law and, like other companies, we are preparing for the GDPR to ensure we are compliant when it comes into force.

Expect Facebook’s argument to be tested in the courts — likely in the very near future.

As we’ve said before, the GDPR lawsuits are coming for the company, thanks to beefed up enforcement of EU privacy rules, with the regulation providing for fines as large as 4% of a company’s global turnover.

Facebook is not the only online people profiler, of course, but it’s a prime target for strategic litigation both because of its massive size and reach (and the resulting power over web users flowing from a dominant position in an attention-dominating category), but also on account of its nose-thumbing attitude to compliance with EU regulations thus far.

The company has faced a number of challenges and sanctions under existing EU privacy law — though for its operations outside the US it typically refuses to recognize any legal jurisdiction except corporate-friendly Ireland, where its international HQ is based.

And, from what we’ve seen so far, Facebook’s response to GDPR ‘compliance’ is no new leaf. Rather it looks like privacy-hostile business as usual; a continued attempt to leverage its size and power to force a self-serving interpretation of the law — bending rules to fit its existing business processes, rather than reconfiguring those processes to comply with the law.

The GDPR is one of the reasons why Facebook’s ad microtargeting empire is facing greater scrutiny now, with just weeks to go before civil society organizations are able to take advantage of fresh opportunities for strategic litigation allowed by the regulation.

“I’m a big fan of the GDPR. I really believe that it gives us — as the court in Strasbourg would say — effective and practical remedies,” law professor Mireille Hildebrandt tells us. “If we go and do it, of course. So we need a lot of public litigation, a lot of court cases to make the GDPR work but… I think there are more people moving into this.

“The GDPR created a market for these sort of law firms — and I think that’s excellent.”

But it’s not the only reason. Another reason why Facebook’s handling of personal data is attracting attention is the result of tenacious press investigations into how one controversial political consultancy, Cambridge Analytica, was able to gain such freewheeling access to Facebook users’ data — as a result of Facebook’s lax platform policies around data access — for, in that instance, political ad targeting purposes.

All of which eventually blew up into a major global privacy storm, this March, though criticism of Facebook’s privacy-hostile platform policies dates back more than a decade at this stage.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal at least brought Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg in front of US lawmakers, facing questions about the extent of the personal information it gathers; what controls it offers users over their data; and how he thinks Internet companies should be regulated, to name a few. (Pro tip for politicians: You don’t need to ask companies how they’d like to be regulated.)

The Facebook founder has also finally agreed to meet EU lawmakers — though UK lawmakers’ calls have been ignored.

Zuckerberg should expect to be questioned very closely in Brussels about how his platform is impacting European’s fundamental rights.

Sensitive personal data needs explicit consent

Facebook infers affinities linked to individual users by collecting and processing interest signals their web activity generates, such as likes on Facebook Pages or what people look at when they’re browsing outside Facebook — off-site intel it gathers via an extensive network of social plug-ins and tracking pixels embedded on third party websites. (According to information released by Facebook to the UK parliament this week, during just one week of April this year its Like button appeared on 8.4M websites; the Share button appeared on 931,000 websites; and its tracking Pixels were running on 2.2M websites.)

But here’s the thing: Both the current and the incoming EU legal framework for data protection sets the bar for consent to processing so-called special category data equally high — at “explicit” consent.

What that means in practice is Facebook needs to seek and secure separate consents from users (such as via a dedicated pop-up) for collecting and processing this type of sensitive data.

The alternative is for it to rely on another special condition for processing this type of sensitive data. However the other conditions are pretty tightly drawn — relating to things like the public interest; or the vital interests of a data subject; or for purposes of “preventive or occupational medicine”.

None of which would appear to apply if, as Facebook is, you’re processing people’s sensitive personal information just to target them with ads.

Ahead of GDPR, Facebook has started asking users who have chosen to display political opinions and/or sexuality information on their profiles to explicitly consent to that data being public.

Though even there its actions are problematic, as it offers users a take it or leave it style ‘choice’ — saying they either remove the info entirely or leave it and therefore agree that Facebook can use it to target them with ads.

Yet EU law also requires that consent be freely given. It cannot be conditional on the provision of a service.

So Facebook’s bundling of service provisions and consent will also likely face legal challenges, as we’ve written before.

“They’ve tangled the use of their network for socialising with the profiling of users for advertising. Those are separate purposes. You can’t tangle them like they are doing in the GDPR,” says Michael Veale, a technology policy researcher at University College London, emphasizing that GDPR allows for a third option that Facebook isn’t offering users: Allowing them to keep sensitive data on their profile but that data not be used for targeted advertising.

“Facebook, I believe, is quite afraid of this third option,” he continues. “It goes back to the Congressional hearing: Zuckerberg said a lot that you can choose which of your friends every post can be shared with, through a little in-line button. But there’s no option there that says ‘do not share this with Facebook for the purposes of analysis’.”

Returning to how the company synthesizes sensitive personal affinities from Facebook users’ Likes and wider web browsing activity, Veale argues that EU law also does not recognize the kind of distinction Facebook is seeking to draw — i.e. between inferred affinities and personal data — and thus to try to redraw the law in its favor.

“Facebook say that the data is not correct, or self-declared, and therefore these provisions do not apply. Data does not have to be correct or accurate to be personal data under European law, and trigger the protections. Indeed, that’s why there is a ‘right to rectification’ — because incorrect data is not the exception but the norm,” he tells us.

“At the crux of Facebook’s challenge is that they are inferring what is arguably “special category” data (Article 9, GDPR) from non-special category data. In European law, this data includes race, sexuality, data about health, biometric data for the purposes of identification, and political opinions. One of the first things to note is that European law does not govern collection and use as distinct activities: Both are considered processing.

“The pan-European group of data protection regulators have recently confirmed in guidance that when you infer special category data, it is as if you collected it. For this to be lawful, you need a special reason, which for most companies is restricted to separate, explicit consent. This will be often different than the lawful basis for processing the personal data you used for inference, which might well be ‘legitimate interests’, which didn’t require consent. That’s ruled out if you’re processing one of these special categories.”

“The regulators even specifically give Facebook like inference as an example of inferring special category data, so there is little wiggle room here,” he adds, pointing to an example used by regulators of a study that combined Facebook Like data with “limited survey information” — and from which it was found that researchers could accurately predict a male user’s sexual orientation 88% of the time; a user’s ethnic origin 95% of the time; and whether a user was Christian or Muslim 82% of the time.

Which underlines why these rules exist — given the clear risk of breaches to human rights if big data platforms can just suck up sensitive personal data automatically, as a background process.

The overarching aim of GDPR is to give consumers greater control over their personal data not just to help people defend their rights but to foster greater trust in online services — and for that trust to be a mechanism for greasing the wheels of digital business. Which is pretty much the opposite approach to sucking up everything in the background and hoping your users don’t realize what you’re doing.

Veale also points out that under current EU law even an opinion on someone is their personal data… (per this Article 29 Working Party guidance, emphasis ours):

From the point of view of the nature of the information, the concept of personal data includes any sort of statements about a person. It covers “objective” information, such as the presence of a certain substance in one’s blood. It also includes “subjective” information, opinions or assessments. This latter sort of statements make up a considerable share of personal data processing in sectors such as banking, for the assessment of the reliability of borrowers (“Titius is a reliable borrower”), in insurance (“Titius is not expected to die soon”) or in employment (“Titius is a good worker and merits promotion”).

We put that specific point to Facebook — but at the time of writing we’re still waiting for a response. (Nor would Facebook provide a public response to several other questions we asked around what it’s doing here, preferring to limit its comment to the statement at the top of this post.)

Veale adds that the WP29 guidance has been upheld in recent CJEU cases such as Nowak — which he says emphasized that, for example, annotations on the side of an exam script are personal data.

He’s clear about what Facebook should be doing to comply with the law: “They should be asking for individuals’ explicit, separate consent for them to infer data including race, sexuality, health or political opinions. If people say no, they should be able to continue using Facebook as normal without these inferences being made on the back-end.”

“They need to tell individuals about what they are doing clearly and in plain language,” he adds. “Political opinions are just as protected here, and this is perhaps more interesting than race or sexuality.”

“They certainly should face legal challenges under the GDPR,” agrees Paul Bernal, senior lecturer in law at the University of East Anglia, who is also critical of how Facebook is processing sensitive personal information. “The affinity concept seems to be a pretty transparent attempt to avoid legal challenges, and one that ought to fail. The question is whether the regulators have the guts to make the point: It undermines a quite significant part of Facebook’s approach.”

“I think the reason they’re pushing this is that they think they’ll get away with it, partly because they think they’ve persuaded people that the problem is Cambridge Analytica, as rogues, rather than Facebook, as enablers and supporters. We need to be very clear about this: Cambridge Analytica are the symptom, Facebook is the disease,” he adds.

“I should also say, I think the distinction between ‘targeting’ being OK and ‘excluding’ not being OK is also mostly Facebook playing games, and trying to have their cake and eat it. It just invites gaming of the systems really.”

Facebook claims its core product is social media, rather than data-mining people to run a highly lucrative microtargeted advertising platform.

But if that’s true why then is it tangling its core social functions with its ad-targeting apparatus — and telling people they can’t have a social service unless they agree to interest-based advertising?

It could support a service with other types of advertising, which don’t depend on background surveillance that erodes users’ fundamental rights.  But it’s choosing not to offer that. All you can ‘choose’ is all or nothing. Not much of a choice.

Facebook telling people that if they want to opt out of its ad targeting they must delete their account is neither a route to obtain meaningful (and therefore lawful) consent — nor a very compelling approach to counter criticism that its real business is farming people.

The issues at stake here for Facebook, and for the shadowy background data-mining and brokering of the online ad targeting industry as a whole, are clearly far greater than any one data misuse scandal or any one category of sensitive data. But Facebook’s decision to retain people’s sensitive personal data for ad targeting without asking for consent up-front is a telling sign of something gone very wrong indeed.

If Facebook doesn’t feel confident asking its users whether what it’s doing with their personal data is okay or not, maybe it shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.

At very least it’s a failure of ethics. Even if the final judgement on Facebook’s self-serving interpretation of EU privacy rules will have to wait for the courts to decide.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425 https://ift.tt/2Go73fj via IFTTT

[sheminecrafts]

Facebook faces fresh criticism over ad targeting of sensitive interests

Is Facebook trampling over laws that regulate the processing of sensitive categories of personal data by failing to ask people for their explicit consent before it makes sensitive inferences about their sex life, religion or political beliefs? Or is the company merely treading uncomfortably and unethically close to the line of the law?

An investigation by the Guardian and the Danish Broadcasting Corporation has found that Facebook’s platform allows advertisers to target users based on interests related to political beliefs, sexuality and religion — all categories that are marked out as sensitive information under current European data protection law.

And indeed under the incoming GDPR, which will apply across the bloc from May 25.

The joint investigation found Facebook’s platform had made sensitive inferences about users — allowing advertisers to target people based on inferred interests including communism, social democrats, Hinduism and Christianity. All of which would be classed as sensitive personal data under EU rules.

And while the platform offers some constraints on how advertisers can target people against sensitive interests — not allowing advertisers to exclude users based on a specific sensitive interest, for example (Facebook having previously run into trouble in the US for enabling discrimination via ethnic affinity-based targeting) — such controls are beside the point if you take the view that Facebook is legally required to ask for a user’s explicit consent to processing this kind of sensitive data up front, before making any inferences about a person.

Indeed, it’s very unlikely that any ad platform can put people into buckets with sensitive labels like ‘interested in social democrat issues’ or ‘likes communist pages’ or ‘attends gay events’ without asking them to let it do so first.

And Facebook is not asking first.

This is going to be a big battleground. We talk about inferred special category data in the context of the Article 29 Working Party guidelines on profiling here > https://t.co/TjCHqOvcBA (open access) https://t.co/XZB5ypjELs

— Michael Veale (@mikarv) May 16, 2018

Facebook argues otherwise, of course — claiming that the information it gathers about people’s affinities/interests, even when they entail sensitive categories of information such as sexuality and religion, is not personal data.

In a response statement to the media investigation, a Facebook spokesperson told us:

Like other Internet companies, Facebook shows ads based on topics we think people might be interested in, but without using sensitive personal data. This means that someone could have an ad interest listed as ‘Gay Pride’ because they have liked a Pride associated Page or clicked a Pride ad, but it does not reflect any personal characteristics such as gender or sexuality. People are able to manage their Ad Preferences tool, which clearly explains how advertising works on Facebook and provides a way to tell us if you want to see ads based on specific interests or not. When interests are removed, we show people the list of removed interests so that they have a record they can access, but these interests are no longer used for ads. Our advertising complies with relevant EU law and, like other companies, we are preparing for the GDPR to ensure we are compliant when it comes into force.

Expect Facebook’s argument to be tested in the courts — likely in the very near future.

As we’ve said before, the GDPR lawsuits are coming for the company, thanks to beefed up enforcement of EU privacy rules, with the regulation providing for fines as large as 4% of a company’s global turnover.

Facebook is not the only online people profiler, of course, but it’s a prime target for strategic litigation both because of its massive size and reach (and the resulting power over web users flowing from a dominant position in an attention-dominating category), but also on account of its nose-thumbing attitude to compliance with EU regulations thus far.

The company has faced a number of challenges and sanctions under existing EU privacy law — though for its operations outside the US it typically refuses to recognize any legal jurisdiction except corporate-friendly Ireland, where its international HQ is based.

And, from what we’ve seen so far, Facebook’s response to GDPR ‘compliance’ is no new leaf. Rather it looks like privacy-hostile business as usual; a continued attempt to leverage its size and power to force a self-serving interpretation of the law — bending rules to fit its existing business processes, rather than reconfiguring those processes to comply with the law.

The GDPR is one of the reasons why Facebook’s ad microtargeting empire is facing greater scrutiny now, with just weeks to go before civil society organizations are able to take advantage of fresh opportunities for strategic litigation allowed by the regulation.

“I’m a big fan of the GDPR. I really believe that it gives us — as the court in Strasbourg would say — effective and practical remedies,” law professor Mireille Hildebrandt tells us. “If we go and do it, of course. So we need a lot of public litigation, a lot of court cases to make the GDPR work but… I think there are more people moving into this.

“The GDPR created a market for these sort of law firms — and I think that’s excellent.”

But it’s not the only reason. Another reason why Facebook’s handling of personal data is attracting attention is the result of tenacious press investigations into how one controversial political consultancy, Cambridge Analytica, was able to gain such freewheeling access to Facebook users’ data — as a result of Facebook’s lax platform policies around data access — for, in that instance, political ad targeting purposes.

All of which eventually blew up into a major global privacy storm, this March, though criticism of Facebook’s privacy-hostile platform policies dates back more than a decade at this stage.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal at least brought Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg in front of US lawmakers, facing questions about the extent of the personal information it gathers; what controls it offers users over their data; and how he thinks Internet companies should be regulated, to name a few. (Pro tip for politicians: You don’t need to ask companies how they’d like to be regulated.)

The Facebook founder has also finally agreed to meet EU lawmakers — though UK lawmakers’ calls have been ignored.

Zuckerberg should expect to be questioned very closely in Brussels about how his platform is impacting European’s fundamental rights.

Sensitive personal data needs explicit consent

Facebook infers affinities linked to individual users by collecting and processing interest signals their web activity generates, such as likes on Facebook Pages or what people look at when they’re browsing outside Facebook — off-site intel it gathers via an extensive network of social plug-ins and tracking pixels embedded on third party websites. (According to information released by Facebook to the UK parliament this week, during just one week of April this year its Like button appeared on 8.4M websites; the Share button appeared on 931,000 websites; and its tracking Pixels were running on 2.2M websites.)

But here’s the thing: Both the current and the incoming EU legal framework for data protection sets the bar for consent to processing so-called special category data equally high — at “explicit” consent.

What that means in practice is Facebook needs to seek and secure separate consents from users (such as via a dedicated pop-up) for collecting and processing this type of sensitive data.

The alternative is for it to rely on another special condition for processing this type of sensitive data. However the other conditions are pretty tightly drawn — relating to things like the public interest; or the vital interests of a data subject; or for purposes of “preventive or occupational medicine”.

None of which would appear to apply if, as Facebook is, you’re processing people’s sensitive personal information just to target them with ads.

Ahead of GDPR, Facebook has started asking users who have chosen to display political opinions and/or sexuality information on their profiles to explicitly consent to that data being public.

Though even there its actions are problematic, as it offers users a take it or leave it style ‘choice’ — saying they either remove the info entirely or leave it and therefore agree that Facebook can use it to target them with ads.

Yet EU law also requires that consent be freely given. It cannot be conditional on the provision of a service.

So Facebook’s bundling of service provisions and consent will also likely face legal challenges, as we’ve written before.

“They’ve tangled the use of their network for socialising with the profiling of users for advertising. Those are separate purposes. You can’t tangle them like they are doing in the GDPR,” says Michael Veale, a technology policy researcher at University College London, emphasizing that GDPR allows for a third option that Facebook isn’t offering users: Allowing them to keep sensitive data on their profile but that data not be used for targeted advertising.

“Facebook, I believe, is quite afraid of this third option,” he continues. “It goes back to the Congressional hearing: Zuckerberg said a lot that you can choose which of your friends every post can be shared with, through a little in-line button. But there’s no option there that says ‘do not share this with Facebook for the purposes of analysis’.”

Returning to how the company synthesizes sensitive personal affinities from Facebook users’ Likes and wider web browsing activity, Veale argues that EU law also does not recognize the kind of distinction Facebook is seeking to draw — i.e. between inferred affinities and personal data — and thus to try to redraw the law in its favor.

“Facebook say that the data is not correct, or self-declared, and therefore these provisions do not apply. Data does not have to be correct or accurate to be personal data under European law, and trigger the protections. Indeed, that’s why there is a ‘right to rectification’ — because incorrect data is not the exception but the norm,” he tells us.

“At the crux of Facebook’s challenge is that they are inferring what is arguably “special category” data (Article 9, GDPR) from non-special category data. In European law, this data includes race, sexuality, data about health, biometric data for the purposes of identification, and political opinions. One of the first things to note is that European law does not govern collection and use as distinct activities: Both are considered processing.

“The pan-European group of data protection regulators have recently confirmed in guidance that when you infer special category data, it is as if you collected it. For this to be lawful, you need a special reason, which for most companies is restricted to separate, explicit consent. This will be often different than the lawful basis for processing the personal data you used for inference, which might well be ‘legitimate interests’, which didn’t require consent. That’s ruled out if you’re processing one of these special categories.”

“The regulators even specifically give Facebook like inference as an example of inferring special category data, so there is little wiggle room here,” he adds, pointing to an example used by regulators of a study that combined Facebook Like data with “limited survey information” — and from which it was found that researchers could accurately predict a male user’s sexual orientation 88% of the time; a user’s ethnic origin 95% of the time; and whether a user was Christian or Muslim 82% of the time.

Which underlines why these rules exist — given the clear risk of breaches to human rights if big data platforms can just suck up sensitive personal data automatically, as a background process.

The overarching aim of GDPR is to give consumers greater control over their personal data not just to help people defend their rights but to foster greater trust in online services — and for that trust to be a mechanism for greasing the wheels of digital business. Which is pretty much the opposite approach to sucking up everything in the background and hoping your users don’t realize what you’re doing.

Veale also points out that under current EU law even an opinion on someone is their personal data… (per this Article 29 Working Party guidance, emphasis ours):

From the point of view of the nature of the information, the concept of personal data includes any sort of statements about a person. It covers “objective” information, such as the presence of a certain substance in one’s blood. It also includes “subjective” information, opinions or assessments. This latter sort of statements make up a considerable share of personal data processing in sectors such as banking, for the assessment of the reliability of borrowers (“Titius is a reliable borrower”), in insurance (“Titius is not expected to die soon”) or in employment (“Titius is a good worker and merits promotion”).

We put that specific point to Facebook — but at the time of writing we’re still waiting for a response. (Nor would Facebook provide a public response to several other questions we asked around what it’s doing here, preferring to limit its comment to the statement at the top of this post.)

Veale adds that the WP29 guidance has been upheld in recent CJEU cases such as Nowak — which he says emphasized that, for example, annotations on the side of an exam script are personal data.

He’s clear about what Facebook should be doing to comply with the law: “They should be asking for individuals’ explicit, separate consent for them to infer data including race, sexuality, health or political opinions. If people say no, they should be able to continue using Facebook as normal without these inferences being made on the back-end.”

“They need to tell individuals about what they are doing clearly and in plain language,” he adds. “Political opinions are just as protected here, and this is perhaps more interesting than race or sexuality.”

“They certainly should face legal challenges under the GDPR,” agrees Paul Bernal, senior lecturer in law at the University of East Anglia, who is also critical of how Facebook is processing sensitive personal information. “The affinity concept seems to be a pretty transparent attempt to avoid legal challenges, and one that ought to fail. The question is whether the regulators have the guts to make the point: It undermines a quite significant part of Facebook’s approach.”

“I think the reason they’re pushing this is that they think they’ll get away with it, partly because they think they’ve persuaded people that the problem is Cambridge Analytica, as rogues, rather than Facebook, as enablers and supporters. We need to be very clear about this: Cambridge Analytica are the symptom, Facebook is the disease,” he adds.

“I should also say, I think the distinction between ‘targeting’ being OK and ‘excluding’ not being OK is also mostly Facebook playing games, and trying to have their cake and eat it. It just invites gaming of the systems really.”

Facebook claims its core product is social media, rather than data-mining people to run a highly lucrative microtargeted advertising platform.

But if that’s true why then is it tangling its core social functions with its ad-targeting apparatus — and telling people they can’t have a social service unless they agree to interest-based advertising?

It could support a service with other types of advertising, which don’t depend on background surveillance that erodes users’ fundamental rights.  But it’s choosing not to offer that. All you can ‘choose’ is all or nothing. Not much of a choice.

Facebook telling people that if they want to opt out of its ad targeting they must delete their account is neither a route to obtain meaningful (and therefore lawful) consent — nor a very compelling approach to counter criticism that its real business is farming people.

The issues at stake here for Facebook, and for the shadowy background data-mining and brokering of the online ad targeting industry as a whole, are clearly far greater than any one data misuse scandal or any one category of sensitive data. But Facebook’s decision to retain people’s sensitive personal data for ad targeting without asking for consent up-front is a telling sign of something gone very wrong indeed.

If Facebook doesn’t feel confident asking its users whether what it’s doing with their personal data is okay or not, maybe it shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.

At very least it’s a failure of ethics. Even if the final judgement on Facebook’s self-serving interpretation of EU privacy rules will have to wait for the courts to decide.

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New Post has been published on https://usviraltrends.com/does-autism-arise-because-the-brain-is-continually-surprised-science/

Does autism arise because the brain is continually surprised? | Science

By George Musser, SpectrumMar. 9, 2018 , 9:00 AM

Originally published on Spectrum

Satsuki Ayaya remembers finding it hard to play with other children when she was young, as if a screen separated her from them. Sometimes she felt numb, sometimes too sensitive; sometimes sounds were muted, sometimes too sharp. As a teenager, desperate to understand herself, she began keeping a journal. “I started to write my ideas in my notebooks, like: What’s happened to me? Or: What’s wrong with me? Or: Who am I?” she says, “I wrote, wrote, wrote. I filled maybe 40 notebooks.”

Today, at 43, Ayaya has a better sense of who she is: She was diagnosed with autism when she was in her early 30s. As a Ph.D. student in the history and philosophy of science at the University of Tokyo, she is using the narratives from her teen years and after to generate hypotheses and suggest experiments about autism — a form of self-analysis called Tojisha-Kenkyu, introduced nearly 20 years ago by the disability-rights movement in Japan.

In Ayaya’s telling, her autism involves a host of perceptual disconnects. For example, she feels in exquisite detail all the sensations that typical people readily identify as hunger, but she can’t piece them together. “It’s very hard for me to conclude I’m hungry,” she says. “I feel irritated, or I feel sad, or I feel something [is] wrong. This information is separated, not connected.” It takes her so long to realize she is hungry that she often feels faint and gets something to eat only after someone suggests it to her.

She has also come to attribute some of her speech difficulties to a mismatch between how her voice sounds to her and how she expects it to sound. “Just after she speaks, her own voice feeds back to her ears, and she tends to notice the difference,” says her collaborator Shin-ichiro Kumagaya, a pediatric neurologist at the University of Tokyo who studies autism using Tojisha-Kenkyu. The effect is like the awkward echo on a phone line that makes it difficult to carry on a conversation — except that for Ayaya, it’s like that almost all the time.

Ayaya’s detailed accounts of her experiences have helped build the case for an emerging idea about autism that relates it to one of the deepest challenges of perception: How does the brain decide what it should pay attention to? Novelty captures attention, but to decide what is novel, the brain needs to have in place a prior expectation that is violated. It must also assign some level of confidence to that expectation, because in a noisy world, not all violations are equal: Sometimes things happen for a reason, and sometimes they just happen.

The best guess scientists have for how the brain does this is that it goes through a process of meta-learning — of figuring out what to learn and what not to. According to this theory, biases in the meta-learning process explain the core features of autism. The theory essentially reframes autism as a perceptual condition, not a primarily social one; it casts autism’s hallmark traits, from social problems to a fondness for routine, as the result of differences in how the mind processes sensory input.

All experience is controlled hallucination. You experience, in some sense, the world that you expect to experience.

Andy Clark

Consider what happens when we are new to a situation or a subject. Every detail — every bump on a graph, every change in a person’s tone of voice — seems meaningful. As we gain experience, though, we start to learn what the rule is and what the exception. The minutiae become less salient; the brain shifts its focus to the big picture. In this way, the brain masters one challenge and moves to the next, keeping itself at the cusp between boredom and frustration. Autism might represent a different learning curve — one that favors detail at the price of missing broader patterns.

Unlike other ‘unified theories’ of autism — those that purport to explain all aspects of the condition — this one builds on a broad account of brain function known as predictive coding. The premise is that all perception is an exercise of model-building and testing — of making predictions and seeing whether they come true. In predictive-coding terms, the brain of someone with autism puts more weight on discrepancies between expectations and sensory data. Whereas the typical brain might chalk up a stray car horn to chance variation in a city soundscape and tune it out, every beep draws conscious attention from the autism brain. “It provides a very parsimonious explanation for the cardinal features of autism,” says Karl Friston, a neuroscientist at University College London who helped develop the mathematical foundations of predictive-coding theory as it applies to the brain.

For now, the model is vague on some crucial details. “There’s many loose pieces,” says Katarzyna Chawarska, an autism researcher at Yale University. And some question whether a single model could ever account for a condition as heterogeneous as autism. Yet proponents say this very diversity argues for a unified theory. Understanding a fundamental cause might yield treatments that are equally broad in their reach. “If prediction truly is an underlying core impairment [in autism], then an intervention that targets that skill is likely to have beneficial impacts on many different other skills,” says computational neuroscientist Pawan Sinha of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Predictive coding 101:

The basic premise of predictive coding goes back to the mid-19th century German physicist and psychologist Hermann von Helmholtz, and arguably to the philosopher Immanuel Kant, both of whom maintained that our subjective experience is not a direct reflection of external reality, but rather a construct. “All experience is controlled hallucination,” says Andy Clark, a cognitive scientist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. “You experience, in some sense, the world that you expect to experience.”

One reason we rely so much on expectation is that our perceptions lag behind reality. Much of what we do, from playing sixteenth notes on the guitar to adjusting our stance on a jerking subway train, happens faster than the 80 milliseconds or longer it takes our conscious minds to register input, let alone act upon it. And so the brain must always be anticipating what comes next. It generates a model of the world, makes decisions on that basis, and updates the model based on sensory feedback. In the language of probability theory, the brain is a Bayesian inference engine, merging prior expectations with current conditions to assess the probability of future outcomes.

Predicting and updating needn’t be — and usually aren’t — conscious acts; the brain builds its models on multiple subconscious levels. Nearly 20 years ago, researchers showed how the visual cortex works in a hierarchical and predictive fashion. The primary visual cortex generates a prediction for small-scale image patterns such as edges. It refines its prediction to match the incoming signals from the retina, but if this localized fine-tuning is not enough, it passes the buck to the secondary cortex, which revamps its expectations of what larger-scale geometric patterns must be out there. And so it goes up the hierarchy, evoking ever more sweeping changes, until the buck stops at the highest level: consciousness. (Neuroscientists adopted the term ‘predictive coding’ from communications engineering, which in the 1950s developed the idea of transmitting discrepancies rather than raw data, to minimize the amount of information a network needs to carry.)

Alexander Glandien, for Spectrum

When the brain perceives a discrepancy, it can respond by either updating its model or deeming the discrepancy to be a chance deviation, in which case it never swims up into conscious awareness. “You want to attenuate fake news,” Friston says. Or there is a third alternative: Faced with a discrepancy between model and world, the brain might also update the world — say, by moving an arm or flexing a hand to make the prediction come true. “One can reduce prediction errors not only by updating the model but by performing actions,” says Anil Seth, a neuroscientist at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. In this way, predictive coding can be not just a system for perception, but also for motor control.

But which of these three responses should the brain take? In the predictive-coding model, the brain decides among them by assigning its predictions a precision — the statistical variability it expects from the input. Precision is the brain’s version of an error bar: High precision (low variance) plays up discrepancies: “This is important. Pay attention!” Low precision (high variance) downplays them: “Just a fluke, never mind.”

Suppose the brain consistently set the precision higher than conditions called for. It would be as if Google Maps understated its uncertainty about a person’s location and drew that approximate blue circle around them too small. Random variations in the signal that cause the estimated location to jump around would look like real motion. One might well watch it and wonder what could possibly be causing that person to hop around like that: Where others saw noise, you’d see signal.

That same sort of miscalculation may occur in people with autism. “Maybe autism spectrum disorder involves a kind of failure to get that Bayesian balance right, if you like, or at least to do it in the neurotypical way,” Clark says.

Extreme precision:

Although the ideas underlying predictive coding date back at least 150 years, it came of age as a theory in neuroscience only in the 1990s, just as machine learning was transforming computer science — and that’s no coincidence. The two fields have cross-fertilized each other.

Many machine-learning systems have a parameter called the ‘learning rate’ that plays the role of predictive precision, Friston says. An artificial neural network learns by trial and error; if it classifies a puppy as a kitten, it tweaks its internal connections to do better next time, and the learning rate dictates the amount of tweaking. The system can adjust the learning rate to optimize its training and avoid problems such as overfitting the data — recognizing every kitten and puppy it has already encountered, but failing to grasp the general features that distinguish these pets. The learning rate is often high at first but decreases over time. In the predictive-coding model, the typical brain, too, starts with a high precision and gradually dials it down, possibly by adjusting the concentrations of chemical messengers such as norepinephrine and acetylcholine. “The belief is that precision is usually encoded by neuromodulators in the brain — chemicals that change the gain on cortical responses,” says Rebecca Lawson of the University of Cambridge in the U.K. When it’s time to initiate another round of learning, the brain cranks up the precision again.

In people with autism, however, the precision may have a tendency to jump to a high level or get stuck there — for whatever reason, the brain tends to overfit. This general idea was first put forward in 2010 by Columbia University neuroscientists Ning Qian and Richard Lipkin. Inspired by machine learning, they suggested that the autism brain is biased toward rote memorization, and away from finding regularities or patterns. “We can think about the difficulties of training people with [autism] as a mismatch between the learning style and the tasks,” Qian says.

The following year, another team put forth the first Bayesian model of the condition, proposing that in individuals with autism, the brain gives too little credence to its own predictions and therefore too much to sensory input. In response, two groups — one including Friston and Lawson — suggested that predictive coding could provide the mechanism for the imbalance between predictions and sensations. And in 2014, Sinha and his colleagues proposed that in autism, the brain’s predictions aren’t underweighted but simply inaccurate, which becomes especially apparent in cases where prediction is intrinsically difficult. For example, when one event follows another only slightly more often than expected to by chance, a person with autism might not notice any connection at all. A world that seems at least somewhat predictable to typical people can strike those with autism as capricious — or, as Sinha puts it, “magical.”

In autism, rather than being adaptively surprised when you ought to have been surprised, it’s as if there’s mild surprise to everything.

Rebecca Lawson

Although these groups focused on different parts of the predictive process, they described much the same principle: For a person with autism, the world never stops being surprising. “That is a very common narrative in individuals with [autism],” Kumagaya says. “They tend to be surprised more frequently than neurotypicals.” In a way, this view of the world facilitates some kinds of learning. For instance, studies show that people with autism do well at tasks that involve sustained attention to detail, such as spotting the odd man out in an image and identifying musical pitches. Also, they are less likely to see visual and multisensory illusions that presume strong expectations within the perceptual system.

But hyperawareness is exhausting. “You’re forever enslaved by sensations,” Friston says. Giving too much attention to the mundane would explain the sensory overload that people with autism commonly report. Some people with autism say they remain acutely conscious of buzzing lamps and rumbling air conditioners, and studies confirm they are slow to habituate to repeated stimuli.

Also in support of the predictive-coding model, people with autism can have trouble with tasks that are predictive by nature, such as catching a ball or tracking a moving dot on a screen. The problem is amplified when dealing with the most unpredictable things of all: human beings. To predict what someone will do in a given context, you may need to make a guess based on what they or someone like them did under different circumstances. That is hard for anyone, but more so for people with autism. “It’s very common, for example, for [people with autism] to get into social interactions and have difficulty taking what they’ve learned from situation A and bringing it to situation B,” Lipkin says. A lack of predictability can lead to acute anxiety, a common problem in people on the spectrum. Many features of autism, such as a preference for routine, can be understood as coping mechanisms. “When you see most of the repetitive movements, they are actively retreating to shield complexity in the natural world,” says Sander van de Cruys of the University of Leuven in Belgium.

In addition to offering explanations for a range of autism traits, predictive coding might also make sense of the confusing links between autism and schizophrenia. The theory accounts for schizophrenia as, in some ways, autism’s mirror image. In autism, sensory data overrides the brain’s mental model; in schizophrenia, the model trumps data.

Consider schizophrenia’s distinguishing feature: having auditory verbal hallucinations (hearing voices). Last year, Philip Corlett of Yale University and his colleagues studied the origin of these hallucinations by inducing mild versions in 30 people who reported hearing voices on a daily basis (half of whom had been diagnosed with psychosis) and 29 who didn’t. To do so, the researchers borrowed a trick from Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov. They showed the participants checkerboard images while playing a tone, so that the participants came to expect the two together. Then the researchers stopped playing the tone. The participants who hadn’t reported hearing voices quickly caught on, but those who were hallucination-prone were more likely to report that they still heard the tone. The team interpreted this difference in terms of predictive coding. “People with auditory verbal hallucinations have very, very precise expectations about the relationships between visual and auditory stimuli in our task, so much so that those beliefs sculpt new percepts from whole cloth,” Corlett says. “They make you hear things that weren’t actually presented to you.”

Autism resembles schizophrenia in some ways, Corlett says. Although hearing voices is not common, people on the spectrum have elevated rates of delusions — fixed beliefs they hold in the face of all evidence to the contrary, such as being manipulated by aliens or paranormal forces. Corlett suggests that these delusions occur when sensory data are given too much weight and install a new set of beliefs, which then become lodged in place.

Looking ahead:

There is still much about autism that predictive coding doesn’t explain, such as what exactly accounts for the autism brain’s hesitancy to dial back predictive precision as the brain gains experience. Researchers are still investigating which is askew: the prediction, the sensory input, the comparison of the two or the use of a discrepancy to force a model update. And what types of predictions are involved — all kinds, or just some? Our brains make predictions on many levels and timescales. People with autism do just fine with many of them.

Some researchers are skeptical that problems of prediction are the root cause of autism. Psychologist James McPartland, also at Yale, says he is partial to explanations that give primacy to the condition’s social traits. If one thing characterizes autism, he says, it’s social difficulties, suggesting that researchers should focus on the mental machinery we need to interact with other people, such as face recognition. He says he finds a social explanation no less biologically plausible than a perceptual one. “We have a really clear idea where in the brain faces are processed,” he says. He also wonders about the direction of causation: Instead of predictive problems explaining social difficulties, the relationship might work in reverse, because so much of the brain’s predictive capacities are developed through social interactions. “Is social information a critical kind of information for the normative development of predictive coding?” he says.

Predictive-coding researchers themselves acknowledge that they are just beginning to test the theory in autism. “Those initial papers, they’re sort of just-so stories, in that they are post hoc — explaining data that was already collected,” Lawson says. But she and others have been conducting experiments that probe the predictive mechanisms more specifically. Many involve associative-learning tasks, in which people have to figure out the rule that governs some series of images or other stimuli. Every so often, the experimenters change the rule in a way that’s not immediately obvious and see how quickly their participants catch on.

Last year, for example, Lawson and her colleagues brought two dozen people with autism and 25 controls into the lab. They played a high or low beep, showed a picture of a face or house, and asked participants to press a button for ‘face’ or ‘house.’ At first, a high tone presaged a house 84 percent of the time, then a low tone did, then tones had only a 50-50 relation to image type, and so on. The controls slowed down whenever a run of violated expectations convinced them that the rule must have changed, but the participants with autism responded at a more consistent rate, which was slightly slower overall. The researchers concluded that the participants with autism responded as if each deviation — a house when the tone augured a face, say — signaled a change of rule, whereas typical people were inclined to write off the first few deviations as probabilistic happenstance.

Alexander Glandien, for Spectrum

For about half the participants, the researchers also measured pupil size, because pupils dilate in response to norepinephrine, one of the chemicals thought to encode predictive precision. Interpreting these results was tricky because each person followed a slightly different learning curve and formed different expectations. To determine whether a given event would seem surprising, the researchers had to model each person’s pattern of responses individually. The upshot was that the pupils of participants with autism seemed to be on a hair trigger. “In autism, rather than being adaptively surprised when you ought to have been surprised, it’s as if there’s mild surprise to everything — so, it’s sort of saying, well, that was mildly surprising, and that was mildly surprising, and that was mildly surprising, and that was mildly surprising,” Lawson says.

One intriguing approach is to build the predictive-coding theory into computer models, even robots. Artificial neural networks that embody theories of brain function could serve as digital lab rats. Researchers could tweak the model parameters to see whether they reproduce the traits of autism, schizophrenia or other conditions. In 2012, computational scientist Jun Tani and a colleague programmed a robot to simulate schizophrenia. By adding noise to the robot controller’s calculations, they led it to miscalculate the discrepancy between its expectation and its sensory data. The spurious error — a robotic hallucination, if you will — propagated up the robot’s cognitive hierarchy and destabilized its operation. “The robot shows disorganized behaviors,” says Tani, professor at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan. He and others are beginning to apply predictive coding to autism in this way.

If predictive coding holds up as a model for autism, it might also suggest new directions for therapies. “Different kids with autism may show impairments in somewhat different parts of that predictive chain,” Chawarska says, which might call for a range of clinical approaches. When she meets with parents, she uses the idea of prediction to help them understand their child’s experience of the world, telling them: “Your child really has tremendous difficulties understanding what’s going to happen next,” she says. “It’s something that really comes through, particularly with these very, very young kids. Their anguish and difficulty in relating to events is that they simply don’t know where they fit.”

If nothing else, predictive coding might offer the insight some young people crave — as Ayaya did when she was a teenager. “I noticed the differences between me and other kids, and I was thinking, why was this going on?” she recalls. As an adult, she says, her anxiety has abated, not just because of the self-knowledge she has achieved, but also because of the awareness shown by her peers and friends. Often, the typical people she spends time with know about her condition, she says. “They know me. [So] I feel more free to ask, ‘I got surprised, but didn’t you?’”

This article was reprinted with permission from Spectrum, the home of autism research news and analysis.

[aurriii]

15 Essential Books To Get You Through College

  From finance to public speaking, these self-help reads will get you through college… and life in general.

A Mind For Numbers

The companion book to COURSERA®’s wildly popular massive open online course “Learning How to Learn”

Whether you are a student struggling to fulfill a math or science requirement, or you are embarking on a career change that requires a new skill set, A Mind for Numbers offers the tools you need to get a better grasp of that intimidating material. Engineering professor Barbara Oakley knows firsthand how it feels to struggle with math. She flunked her way through high school math and science courses, before enlisting in the army immediately after graduation. When she saw how her lack of mathematical and technical savvy severely limited her options—both to rise in the military and to explore other careers—she returned to school with a newfound determination to re-tool her brain to master the very subjects that had given her so much trouble throughout her entire life.

In A Mind for Numbers, Dr. Oakley lets us in on the secrets to learning effectively—secrets that even dedicated and successful students wish they’d known earlier. Contrary to popular belief, math requires creative, as well as analytical, thinking. Most people think that there’s only one way to do a problem, when in actuality, there are often a number of different solutions—you just need the creativity to see them. For example, there are more than three hundred different known proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem. In short, studying a problem in a laser-focused way until you reach a solution is not an effective way to learn. Rather, it involves taking the time to step away from a problem and allow the more relaxed and creative part of the brain to take over. The learning strategies in this book apply not only to math and science, but to any subject in which we struggle. We all have what it takes to excel in areas that don’t seem to come naturally to us at first, and learning them does not have to be as painful as we might think!

Brain Rules

Most of us have no idea what’s really going on inside our heads. Yet brain scientists have uncovered details every business leader, parent, and teacher should know—like the need for physical activity to get your brain working its best.

How do we learn? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains? Why is multi-tasking a myth? Why is it so easy to forget—and so important to repeat new knowledge? Is it true that men and women have different brains?

In Brain Rules, Dr. John Medina, a molecular biologist, shares his lifelong interest in how the brain sciences might influence the way we teach our children and the way we work. In each chapter, he describes a brain rule—what scientists know for sure about how our brains work—and then offers transformative ideas for our daily lives.

  Confessions of a Public Speaker

In this hilarious and highly practical book, author and professional speaker Scott Berkun reveals the techniques behind what great communicators do, and shows how anyone can learn to use them well. For managers and teachers — and anyone else who talks and expects someone to listen — Confessions of a Public Speaker provides an insider’s perspective on how to effectively present ideas to anyone. It’s a unique, entertaining, and instructional romp through the embarrassments and triumphs Scott has experienced over 15 years of speaking to crowds of all sizes.

With lively lessons and surprising confessions, you’ll get new insights into the art of persuasion — as well as teaching, learning, and performance — directly from a master of the trade.

  Debt-Free U

This book can save you more than $100,000.

These days, most people assume you need to pay a boatload of money for a quality college education. As a result, students and their parents are willing to go into years of debt and potentially sabotage their entire financial futures just to get a fancy name on their diploma.

But Zac Bissonnette is walking proof that this assumption is not only false, but dangerous-a class con game designed to rip you off and doom your student to a post-graduation life of near poverty . From his unique double perspective-he’s a personal finance expert (at Daily Finance) AND a current senior at the University of Massachusetts-Zac figured out how to get an outstanding education at a public college, without bankrupting his parents or taking on massive loans.

Armed with his personal knowledge, the latest data, and smart analysis, Zac takes on the sacred cows of the higher education establishment. He reveals why a lot of the conventional wisdom about choosing and financing college is not only wrong but hazardous to you and your child’s financial future. You’ll discover, for instance, that:

* Student loans are NOT a necessary evil. Ordinary middle class families can- and must-find ways to avoid them, even without scholarships.

* College “rankings” are useless-designed to sell magazines and generate hype. If you trust one of the major guides when picking a college, you face a potential financial disaster.

* The elite graduate programs accept lots of people with non-elite bachelors degrees. So do America’s most selective employers. The name on a diploma ultimately won’t help your child have a more successful career or earn more money.

  Deep Work

One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming increasingly rare. If you master this skill, you’ll achieve extraordinary results. Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way.

In DEEP WORK, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four “rules,” for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill.

A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, DEEP WORK takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories — from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air — and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. DEEP WORK is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world.

  How To Win At College

The only guide to getting ahead once you’ve gotten in—proven strategies for making the most of your college years, based on winning secrets from the country’s most successful students

What does it take to be a standout student? How can you make the most of your college years—graduate with honors, choose exciting activities, build a head-turning resume, and gain access to the best post-college opportunities? Based on interviews with star students at universities nationwide, from Harvard to the University of Arizona, How to Win at College presents seventy-five simple rules that will rocket you to the top of the class. These college-tested—and often surprising—strategies include:

• Don’t do all your reading • Drop classes every term • Become a club president • Care about your grades, Ignore your GPA • Never pull an all-nighter • Take three days to write a paper • Always be working on a “grand project” • Do one thing better than anyone else you know

Proving that success has little to do with being a genius workaholic, and everything to do with playing the game, How to Win at College is the must-have guide for making the most of these four important years—and getting an edge on life after graduation.

  Make It Stick

To most of us, learning something “the hard way” implies wasted time and effort. Good teaching, we believe, should be creatively tailored to the different learning styles of students and should use strategies that make learning easier. Make It Stick turns fashionable ideas like these on their head. Drawing on recent discoveries in cognitive psychology and other disciplines, the authors offer concrete techniques for becoming more productive learners.

Memory plays a central role in our ability to carry out complex cognitive tasks, such as applying knowledge to problems never before encountered and drawing inferences from facts already known. New insights into how memory is encoded, consolidated, and later retrieved have led to a better understanding of how we learn. Grappling with the impediments that make learning challenging leads both to more complex mastery and better retention of what was learned.

Many common study habits and practice routines turn out to be counterproductive. Underlining and highlighting, rereading, cramming, and single-minded repetition of new skills create the illusion of mastery, but gains fade quickly. More complex and durable learning come from self-testing, introducing certain difficulties in practice, waiting to re-study new material until a little forgetting has set in, and interleaving the practice of one skill or topic with another. Speaking most urgently to students, teachers, trainers, and athletes, Make It Stick will appeal to all those interested in the challenge of lifelong learning and self-improvement.

  Personal Investing

Did your investments take a hit in the recession? You’re not alone. Between 2007 and mid-year 2009, the average 401K lost 31% of its value. Ouch. It’s time to take control of your investments with Personal Investing: The Missing Manual. Financial experts agree that with the right guidance, consumers can make investments better than many professionals. This lively and easy-to-understand guide gives you the confidence, tools, and insight you need to evaluate financial products and make smart investments that target success over the long term.

You’ll learn how to set long-term goals for critical, high-cost events such as retirement, your children’s education, and future health care needs. Then you’ll learn what types of investments will best help you achieve those goals. In step-by-step fashion, this book shows you how to research mutual funds, stocks, bonds, and other financial products to create a portfolio of diversified investments.

Get crystal-clear, practical advice from personal finance expert Bonnie Biafore, author of Missing Manuals on the Quicken personal-finance program and QuickBooks business finance program Understand why you need to invest — Biafore shows you how savings accounts simply won’t outpace inflation or give you the returns you need for long-term goals Learn how to evaluate and buy traditional investments, such as stocks, bonds, and mutual funds Discover lesser-known investments, such as index funds and exchange-traded funds, which cost you less and provide more tax advantages Choose the best funds offered by your employer for your 401K, and learn how to get the greatest tax advantages

  Smarter Faster Better

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of The Power of Habit comes a fascinating book that explores the science of productivity, and why managing how you think is more important than what you think—with an appendix of real-world lessons to apply to your life.

At the core of Smarter Faster Better are eight key productivity concepts—from motivation and goal setting to focus and decision making—that explain why some people and companies get so much done. Drawing on the latest findings in neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics—as well as the experiences of CEOs, educational reformers, four-star generals, FBI agents, airplane pilots, and Broadway songwriters—this painstakingly researched book explains that the most productive people, companies, and organizations don’t merely act differently.

They view the world, and their choices, in profoundly different ways.

  So Good They Can’t Ignore You

In this eye-opening account, Cal Newport debunks the long-held belief that “follow your passion” is good advice. Not only is the cliché flawed-preexisting passions are rare and have little to do with how most people end up loving their work-but it can also be dangerous, leading to anxiety and chronic job hopping.

After making his case against passion, Newport sets out on a quest to discover the reality of how people end up loving what they do. Spending time with organic farmers, venture capitalists, screenwriters, freelance computer programmers, and others who admitted to deriving great satisfaction from their work, Newport uncovers the strategies they used and the pitfalls they avoided in developing their compelling careers.

Matching your job to a preexisting passion does not matter, he reveals. Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.

With a title taken from the comedian Steve Martin, who once said his advice for aspiring entertainers was to “be so good they can’t ignore you,” Cal Newport’s clearly written manifesto is mandatory reading for anyone fretting about what to do with their life, or frustrated by their current job situation and eager to find a fresh new way to take control of their livelihood. He provides an evidence-based blueprint for creating work you love.

  Sorted

Recipes and tips for healthy living while in college; written by students for students. Includes practical help and advice for many aspects of student life.

  The 4-Hour Workweek

The New York Times bestselling author of The 4-Hour Body shows readers how to live more and work less, now with more than 100 pages of new, cutting-edge content.

Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan–there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, or earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, The 4-Hour Workweek is the blueprint.

This step-by-step guide to luxury lifestyle design teaches: • How Tim went from $40,000 per year and 80 hours per week to $40,000 per month and 4 hours per week • How to outsource your life to overseas virtual assistants for $5 per hour and do whatever you want • How blue-chip escape artists travel the world without quitting their jobs • How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours using the principles of a forgotten Italian economist • How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and frequent “mini-retirements”

  The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

This twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Stephen Covey’s cherished classic commemorates the timeless wisdom of the 7 Habits.

One of the most inspiring and impactful books ever written, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has captivated readers for 25 years. It has transformed the lives of Presidents and CEOs, educators and parents— in short, millions of people of all ages and occupations.

  The Happiness Equation

The new book from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Book of Awesome that “reveals how all of us can live happier lives” (Gretchen Rubin).

What is the formula for a happy life? Neil Pasricha is a Harvard MBA, a New York Times–bestselling author, a Walmart executive, a father, a husband. After selling more than a million copies of the Book of Awesome series, wherein he observed the everyday things he thought were awesome, he now shifts his focus to the practicalities of living an awesome life.

In his new book The Happiness Equation, Pasricha illustrates how to want nothing and do anything in order to have everything. If that sounds like a contradiction in terms, you simply have yet to unlock the 9 Secrets to Happiness. Each secret takes a piece out of the core of common sense, turns it on its head to present it in a completely new light, and then provides practical and specific guidelines for how to apply this new outlook to lead a fulfilling life.

Once you’ve unlocked Pasricha’s 9 Secrets, you will understand counterintuitive concepts such as: Success Does Not Lead to Happiness, Never Take Advice, and Retirement Is a Broken Theory. You will learn and then master three brand-new fundamental life tests: the Saturday Morning Test, The Bench Test, and the Five People Test. You will know the difference between external goals and internal goals and how to make more money than a Harvard MBA (hint: it has nothing to do with your annual salary). You will discover that true wealth has nothing to do with money, multitasking is a myth, and the elimination of options leads to more choice.

The Happiness Equation is a book that will change how you think about pretty much everything—your time, your career, your relationships, your family, and, ultimately, of course, your happiness.

The Happiness Equation Want Nothing Do Anything have Everything

  Thinkertoys

Rethink the Way You Think

In hindsight, every great idea seems obvious. But how can you be the person who comes up with those ideas? In this revised and expanded edition of his groundbreaking Thinkertoys, creativity expert Michael Michalko reveals life-changing tools that will help you think like a genius. From the linear to the intuitive, this comprehensive handbook details ingenious creative-thinking techniques for approaching problems in unconventional ways. Through fun and thought-provoking exercises, you’ll learn how to create original ideas that will improve your personal life and your business life. Michalko’s techniques show you how to look at the same information as everyone else and see something different.

With hundreds of hints, tricks, tips, tales, and puzzles, Thinkertoys will open your mind to a world of innovative solutions to everyday and not-so-everyday problems. Thinkertoys A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques

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