Musings Report #24 6-14-14 Here's Your Personality Profile (now what can we sell you?)

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Here's Your Personality Profile (now what can we sell you?)

A start-up by the name of Five Labs made a media splash this week with a free online tool that "examines the linguistic content of Facebook wall posts, pulling key words to make strikingly accurate estimates about individual personalities."

The company claims that it uses artificial intelligence (AI) to map "the big five" personality traits: extraversion, openness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and agreeableness.

"Bier says that the new app is "meant to hold a mirror to the growing trend of social applications mining data from user content. "Over the last few weeks, many academics and reporters have talked about how companies can now infer a great deal of information about users, especially with advances in machine-learning tools. This raises new concerns around consumer privacy,"

Bier told Business Insider. "In the case of our app, we chose the Big Five traits because it has been shown to be very predictive of real-life outcomes. I don't think we'll ever be at a point where our personality data will be used for determining car insurance premiums, but it could very well be used to target ads (and, most likely, is already in the works)."

Bier says that the Five Labs app is meant to provide personality snapshots that are fun as well as educational.

"People need to ask themselves a profound question: ‘How does my data portray me on public networks—and how might that be used?’”

I think people need to ask two equally profound questions: 1) what if this sort of analysis is intrinsically flawed and therefore inaccurate, and 2) what if advertisers are expecting these superficial and misleading snapshots to actually produce sales?

I think we know the answer to both questions: this sort of analysis is fundamentally flawed, and advertising based on it will likely perform as poorly as the rest of Internet-based advertising.

A Dangerous Question: Does Internet Advertising Work at All? The Internet was supposed to tell us which ads work and which ads don't. But instead it's flooded consumers' brains with reviews, comments, and other digital data that has diluted the power of advertising altogether.

The fundamental flaw in this sort of superficial analysis of word use is that it assumes users are not editing their language, and that any conscious editing cannot skew the results to the point of inaccuracy.

Another flaw is that the mapping uses only whatever data is available on Facebook. For many of the results I scanned, fewer than 500 words were used; for my own results, the program chewed through over 5,000 words extracted from my Facebook posts.

Can a sample of 187 words really be as accurate as one with 5,000 words? And what if (as in my case) those 5,000 words are carefully composed, edited and selected to fit a specific purpose, i.e. journalistic impact?

To save time and effort, I set Facebook to auto-post my Tweets, which are naturally composed to be punchy and declarative. Is there anything remotely natural about such posts? I don't think so.

How similar are posts designed for declarative brevity and impact to those describing a family photo/event or commenting on a selfie? Of course the language is as different as the purpose and the level of editing.

Many of us view Facebook and Twitter not as platforms for sharing personal bits of digital data but to promote our work. Given that I post essentially zero personal data on Facebook (partly because it's not my purpose, partly because my life is boring and partly because I see no value in mixing my personal life with my public life), then why should be surprised that the Five Labs analysis concluded I was "reserved"? How could I be otherwise, given my editing choices?

My Facebook audience is self-organizing. There are a few personal friends on the list but most are readers/correspondents. There are at least three different audiences in the list (and the same can be said of my 3,000+ Twitter followers) and as a result I only post material suitable to the largest audience--readers.

Though I may be abnormally rigorous in my editing/selection of words, I am sure many others are editing their comments with an eye on preserving privacy or pursuing a specific presentation or image.

It's easy to see why someone who posts are almost exclusively declarative statements with little hedging (because endless hedges dilute the thesis and look wishy-washy/academic) would be pegged as "stern" and also score low on agreeableness, which is defined as "A person with a high level of agreeableness in a personality test is usually warm, friendly, and tactful. They generally have an optimistic view of human nature and get along well with others. A person who scores low on agreeableness may put their own interests above those of others. They tend to be distant, unfriendly, and uncooperative."

I have many flaws, but I don't think anyone who's known me for decades would agree that "stern" is an accurate description.

I'm not sure what my personality profile typically desires in the way of worldly goods, but I doubt any advertiser who pays good money to target this profile will receive any value at all for their cash. The same can be said of anyone else attempting to draw conclusions from this sort of superficial reduction of digital data.

I think the claims being made for this technology far exceed its intrinsic accuracy or value.

Summary of the Blog This Past Week

The Generational Short: Banks, Wall Street, Housing and Luxury Retail Are Doomed 6/14/14

The Neofeudal-Neoliberal Arrangement: Since We Own What You Need, We Own You 6/13/14

Sorry, You're Not Allowed: Capital Segregation and Rising Inequality 6/12/14

One Overlooked Reason Why the Middle Class Is in Decline 6/11/14

The Stock Market Is Like a Fish Tank 6/10/14

What's the Source of Soaring Corporate Profits? Stagnant Wages 6/9/14

Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week

Hard to choose this week: I heard Gil Shaham play Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 2 (Michael Tilson Thomas conducting) (the link is to the magical 2nd movement; 10:54); walked through the redwoods of Northern California and enjoyed craft beer at Crux in Bend, OR with my beer-making brother-in-law Fred R. All three were revelations....

Market Musings: Oil

Oil is in the news this week, so let's call up a short-term and a long-term chart of the WTIC (light crude oil):

The short-term chart shows a breakout of a wedge, suggesting a continuation of the bullish trend.

The long-term chart has a resistance level at $110 that if broken would be bullish for a further advance.

Many analysts have predicted that oil "should" decline as the global economy weakens, but these charts suggest further advances in price are likely. ironically, if oil breaks out above $110/barrel, that would increase pressure on the global economy. T. Boone Pickens was quoted as saying $200/barrel was a possibility, and if the resistance line is broken in the long-term chart, this becomes if not likely then at least in the realm of possibility.

From Left Field

Why You Hate Work (via Joel M.) Excessive demands are leading to burnout everywhere.
"Just 30 percent of employees in America feel engaged at work, according to a 2013 report by Gallup. Around the world, across 142 countries, the proportion of employees who feel engaged at work is just 13 percent. For most of us, in short, work is a depleting, dispiriting experience, and in some obvious ways, it’s getting worse."

CAPITAL CONTROLS ROLLING INTO HIGH GEAR UNDER FATCA (via U. Doran)
The traditional banking system was already bad enough but now, with banks around the world rushing to comply with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) it is beginning to reach extreme levels.

The 12 Most Obvious Corporate Tax Havens (via Steve K.)

10 ways to fix America (via George B.)

The Forgetting Machine: Notes Toward a History of Detroit -- long and academic but interesting....

Further evidence of how weird hospital pricing is -- no transparency, no choice....

3-D Printing's Promise—and Limits: So Far It's Proving to Be Great for Prototypes and Small Production Runs, but Not So Much for Bigger Jobs
"3-D printing is also becoming invaluable for military applications, says Ms. Lewis of 3D Systems. Military hardware can have a working life of 30 years or more, so it's far less expensive to 3-D print parts as needed than to keep the necessary tooling around for the entire life cycle of the item."

How Vermont Could Become the Napa Valley of Hard Cider

After Fed, Bernanke Offers His Wisdom, for a Big Fee: (via Maoxian) Corruption is normalized. No one thinks about it or cares...

THE SECRET WARS OF THE CIA by John Stockwell (via U. Doran)

Amazingly beautiful nanoflowers (via lew G.)

Henry Giroux on 'Zombie' Politics (with Bill Moyers; 43 min) -- the systemic damage wrought by Casino Capitalism and more....

"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." Aldous Huxley

Thanks for reading--

charles