I updated the compassion and edge cases section of “I’m Autistic. Here’s what I’d like you to know.” with selections from “The Intersectional Presidency – Tressie McMillan Cottom – Medium” and “Black Cyberfeminism: Intersectionality, Institutions and Digital Sociology by Tressie McMillan Cottom :: SSRN“.

By focusing on the parts of the system that are most complex and where the people living it are the most vulnerable we understand the system best.

Source: The Intersectional Presidency – Tressie McMillan Cottom – Medium

No one knows best the motion of the ocean than the fish that must fight the current to swim upstream.

Source: Black Cyberfeminism: Intersectionality, Institutions and Digital Sociology by Tressie McMillan Cottom :: SSRN

“Special” is a rank insult, horrifying to encounter, and it’s all over education.

We have a moral imperative to connect with the communities we serve and use the language they prefer.

The Segregation of Special

“But again, I don’t care. Why? Because the failures are so obvious compared to those of most algorithms. Dead people by the side of the road constitute public tragedies. They make headlines. They damage companies’ reputations and market valuations. This creates inherent and continuous pressure on the data scientists who build the algorithms to get it right. It’s self-regulating nirvana, to be honest. I don’t care because the self-driving car companies have to care for me.

By contrast, companies that own and deploy other algorithms – algorithms that decide who gets a job, who gets fired, who gets a credit card and with what interest rate, who pays what for car or life insurance – have shockingly little incentive to care.

The problem stems from the subtlety of most algorithmic failures. Nobody, especially not the people being assessed, will ever know exactly why they didn’t get that job or that credit card. The code is proprietary. It’s typically not well understood, even by the people who build it. There’s no system of appeal and often no feedback to improve decision-making over time. The failures could be getting worse and we wouldn’t know it.

Source: Don’t Worry About the Ethics of Self-Driving Cars – Bloomberg

“Parents don’t like the idea of standardized testing, so finding out the PL means test after test, day after day, does not play well in the market.

So instead, what you actually get is a software, computers, algorithm-selected teaching, teachers who aren’t really teachers any more, and school leaders who think this is a way to put 100 students in a single classroom (which is what the oxymoronic “personalized learning at scale” means).

Source: CURMUDGUCATION: How To Sell Personalized Learning

“I don’t use Facebook for ethical and moral reasons. As a service, it is a net negative to our society. It has helped amplify the polarization that has always existed. So why then should I own their stock?”

All I care is that we get some sort of a larger data regulation in place which doesn’t allow this and future Facebooks to abuse the rights of citizens. But given the state of our politics, that too is wishful thinking! After all, if a company can employ 500 people for its propaganda arm, you think they won’t hire a thousand to literally swamp the swamp.

Source: First $100 Billion (decline) is the hardest – Om Malik

“Race is connected to a story they are telling themselves. A story about how God gave them this country, how they are Chosen and loved, how they are Good. It is awkward to say that God gave you a country that you claimed by committing genocide (even if there is more than one Old Testament example of God doing exactly that). It doesn’t fit the narrative. Just like it doesn’t fit to say that you built that country on the backs of slaves, that the belief in the love of God simply did not translate to people who did not look like you. It is no accident, the things we say and the things we don’t. It is also no accident that 80% of white evangelicals voted for Trump this last election, and it is closely related. Though many of them may have said it was about abortion, the fact that they were able to close their eyes to the race and gender implications of a Donald Trump presidency says plenty about the path they’ve chosen.

Those of us white kids who were raised in this, whether we still believe it or not, it matters that we name the water we swam in and the impact it had on us. We learned lessons about ourselves, about who we are in the world, about who deserved what. It’s time to Name those things, it’s time to Know them, to Know ourselves. We were a part of perpetuating a white supremacist system, and even if we had no choice about being born into it, we have a choice with what we do now.

Source: Naming White Supremacy — Fundamentally Free