Dominic Cummings is part of Sage

[pontypridd]

The mystery scientific advisory body

But but but we were following 'The Science'! As if science were some fixed homogenous thing that we should blindly follow without thinking.
There's a good article in the guardian this week where Prof Devi Sridhar says she hopes she never heres a politician say that again because it is utterly unscientific.
DC being on SAGE explains so much.

Hears* autocorrect gone wrong!

Not sure i am disagreeing with you wise, there is masses of spin.

No I don’t think we’re disagreeing.

I agree. ICU capacity has been expanded massively. At its height a week ago we had >25 level 3 patients, our capacity is normally 8 plus a smallish hdu. We have requisitioned 4 different wards/theatre and much of their staff/equipment to cope. For the last few weeks it has been incredibly busy. It is now quietening down but reading some of the threads there's a misconception that we've coped and it was all a bit of an overreaction The only reason we've got through this is because of a mammoth group effort involving 100's of staff, often working outside their comfort zones, and massive disrruption to routine functioning.

Learning that Cummings is playing such an integral part in ‘the science’ suddenly explains the chaos we are in - to me anyway.

Mixed messages, chaos, lack of respect for the intelligence of the public. It’s all starting to add up.

What is he aiming for? What’s his agenda in all of this?

Ooh I didn’t know this [Apple/Google data privacy]

Apple has generally been quite hot on data privacy. Google were a bit cavalier, but in areas have upped their game - arguably because of reputational damage.

As Perking says up thread - Cummings is both a eugenicist and a disaster capitalist, for that philosophy disasters are opportunities. The opportunity here is to use the disaster to hijack vast amounts of dark/untapped data to exert control on influence. The billionaires who back Cummings will always make money out of a disaster, they have the assets to ride it out and exploit it.

This is exactly what the companies I mentioned upthread specialise in and they are being brought in as "experts" under the guise of saving the world. None of them need to be involved, the expertise is available from individuals and companies with a better track record in ethics.

There is a huge amount of money to be made simply out of health data in this country. The NHS data sets are the richest, most complete set in the world because of the nature of the health service. Cummings has already exploited this in questionable ways, its unsurprising that he would use the crisis to extend his reach. Then there is all the data held on us by Telcos, HMRC, DWP etc...

You don't need to be Chairman Xi to want to use data to control people for financial and political gain.

How does the use of this data affect us on an individual level?

I tend to shrug my shoulders at this stuff, thinking ‘I’ve got nothing to hide, they can have all my data’

But I know that’s because of ignorance and a wish not to be stressed.

What does all this mean for us on a personal level?

The more data an organisation has on you, the better it can profile you, know your want, needs and emotional reactions, the better to manipulate you.

For example, this is what Cambridge Analytica did with data.

(CA happen to have been hired by the pro-Brexit campaign and Trump campaign – but they could as easily have been hired by the opposition. And anyway, other organisations can do the same tricks.)

Cambridge Analytica: how did it turn clicks into votes?
www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/06/cambridge-analytica-how-turn-clicks-into-votes-christopher-wylie

Cambridge Analytica could, Wylie says, craft adverts no one else could: a neurotic, extroverted and agreeable Democrat could be targeted with a radically different message than an emotionally stable, introverted, intellectual one, each designed to suppress their voting intention – even if the same messages, swapped around, would have the opposite effect .

Wylie brings up the anodyne political statement that a candidate is in favour of jobs. “Jobs in the economy is a good example because it’s a meaningless message. Everyone’s pro-jobs in the economy. So in that sense, using just the message of ‘I am in favour of jobs in the economy’, or ‘I have a plan to fix jobs in the economy’, you cannot differentiate yourself from your opponent.

“But one of the things that we found was that actually when you unpack what is a job for different people, different people engage with constructs with different motivations and value sets that are interrelated with their dispositions.”

What that means in practice is that the same blandishment can be dressed up in different language for different personalities, creating the impression of a candidate who connects with voters on an emotional level. “If you’re talking to a conscientious person” – one who ranks highly on the C part of the Ocean model – “you talk about the opportunity to succeed and the responsibility that a job gives you. If it’s an open person, you talk about the opportunity to grow as a person. Talk to a neurotic person, and you emphasise the security that it gives to my family.”

Thanks to the networked nature of modern campaigning, in theory all these messages can be delivered simultaneously to different groups.

OP “ I tend to shrug my shoulders at this stuff, thinking ‘I’ve got nothing to hide, they can have all my data’ ”

Please don’t go down that road. We’ll become China.

Tbh the Cambridge Analytica stuff was no surprise because people seem to give away so much information online. It’s one thing to use data to influence. Soon it will become the way basic rights are handed out. Be very careful with your data.

I thought, all along, they’d taken advantage of this to do an exercise in behavioural control.

It’s really important that we don’t just sit and take it. I’ve got friends who are happy to download the symptoms app - insanity.

Jamie Bartlett's done some good work on this.

It's worth watching the first of the vid excerpts, "What your 'likes' reveal" (it's about 2 min, and very illuminating if this stuff is new to you).

Will big data and social media destroy democracy?
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2WyPqhdbcpHDN9z0KdBt5Tp/will-big-data-and-social-media-destroy-democracy

Michal Kosinski, who describes himself as a computational psychologist and big data scientist, demonstrated an algorithm he created to Jamie Bartlett. Taking seemingly innocuous information about his cultural tastes from Facebook, like his fondness for The Sopranos and Kate Bush, it was able to accurately predict Bartlett's job and religious background.

In his new book The People Vs Tech Bartlett writes: "I left Michal's office with the sensation that this sort of insight was very exciting but also a new source of power that we barely understand, let alone control."

I don’t know if anyone here can advise me. I’m wondering what we can do to stop the march of this crap.

I was against things like Streetview and google earth but no one else seems to care. It’s like Edward Snowden said “hey, I’m a whistleblower, look what’s happening” and the world said “meh”.

C8H10N4O2

Friends of friends of friends, wouldn't surprise me.

Why are so many people so trusting and uninquisitive? Even the daily press briefing lets them all off the hook, with the same bland replies to the same bland questions.
I'm grateful to this thread for making more concrete some of the vague disquiet I often feel about people being told not even a fraction of the truth by those in positions of power. I suppose it was ever thus, but it feels more dangerous this time.

Barely a day goes by when I don't ponder the good fortune we have to have Trump and Boris in charge elected by the people for the people. With them at the helm what could go possibly wrong.

I'd like to know that too, LilacTree1.

The technology is out there, and more being developed all the time. Until recently our laws –and their enforcement – have been weak, although the eyewatering fines brought in under the GDPR may change that a little.

Pretty much the only way I know not to have personal data about you passed around is, not to have it created in the first place.

When this means not uploading your life to Facebook, the solution is easy enough. But there's an obvious conflict when it comes to essential medical research. I'd love to be part of medical research, but not with these people in charge. I'm gutted that Cummings is back in the driving seat, but of course he's not the only one, so it was merely an illusion of safety while he was gone.

Just as an example, here's the moment Dr Ben Goldacre, previously an enthusiast for the beneficial uses of medical data, realised what was actually going on in 2014.

Care.data is in chaos. It breaks my heart
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/28/care-data-is-in-chaos

I am embarrassed. Last week I wrote in support of the government's plans to collect and share the medical records of all patients in the NHS, albeit with massive caveats.
[...]
Now it's worse. On Monday, the Health and Social Care Information Centre admitted giving the insurance industry the coded hospital records of millions of patients, pseudonymised, but re-identifiable by anyone with malicious intent, as I explained last week. These were crunched by actuaries into tables showing the likelihood of death depending on various features such as age or disease, to help inform insurance premiums.
[...]
To summarise, a government body handed over parts of my medical records to people I've never met, outside the NHS and medical research community, but it is refusing to tell me what it handed over, or who it gave it to, and the minister is now incorrectly claiming that it never happened anyway.

There are people in my profession who think they can ignore this problem. Some are murmuring that this mess is like MMR, a public misunderstanding to be corrected with better PR. They are wrong: it's like nuclear power. Medical data, rarefied and condensed, presents huge power to do good, but it also presents huge risks. When leaked, it cannot be unleaked; when lost, public trust will take decades to regain.

This breaks my heart. I love big medical datasets, I work on them in my day job, and I can think of a hundred life-saving uses for better ones. But patients' medical records contain secrets, and we owe them our highest protection. Where we use them – and we have used them, as researchers, for decades without a leak – this must be done safely, accountably, and transparently.

Want to know what DC's after? Go and read his blog to see how his mind works. It's like James Joyce on magic mushrooms. Go and look up his background (mum was a behaviour expert of some kind). And go and look up his in-laws.

I haven't investigated yet if he tried for Oxbridge and was rejected but it would account for some of his attitudes. And professed hatred of the elite. Though it didn't stop him marrying one of their daughters, who's connected to the ultra-right-wing Spectator. And his obsession with Brexit didn't stop him taking hundreds of thousands of pounds in farming subsidies for a farm he (part?) owns. I think he genuinely thinks he's some kind of new breed of superhuman and above any human laws. (He's still in contempt of parliament.) To him, the rest of us are expendable pawns on a chessboard.

Just some of what he's after - depopulation; a smaller, "elite" population; eradication of physical money; elimination or as near as dammit of the civil service (which seems to include the NHS, in his world - doctors and nurses and other health professionals are one of the groups that consistently argue with the government and have science and evidence on their side); increased food security. That'll do for starters. Though I'm sure world domination and a fluffy white cat are in there somewhere too.

Anyone can't see the even more sinister undercurrents might like to go and look up his other family connections. And if you think you can trust the government to look after us, ask yourself - would you buy a used car from these people?

My dad taught me how to play cards when I was very young. Only, he wasn't really teaching me how to play cards. He was teaching me about body language, strategy, and how to spot a liar. Watch the body language on those government broadcasts. And then ask yourself again, would you buy a used car from these people?

Perking thank you for that.

I don’t think the solution is that easy. I’m job hunting and not wanting to put your CV on LinkedIn is a problem for many places. I think that’s a particularly worrying one.

I’ve got a dumb phone etc and after this, will be using cash whenever possible.

But things like Google Earth, they’re just unstoppable, unless we somehow protest. I think younger people are rejecting tech a bit are they, that’s what I hear.

The next step, I think, will be the NHS is saved for the poorest and we’ll need to pay health insurance and they’ll want data from Fitbit etc. I suppose one answer is don’t have insurance.

Empress I don’t see Cummings as much different than the usual sociopaths who want power.

The next step, I think, will be the NHS is saved for the poorest and we’ll need to pay health insurance and they’ll want data from Fitbit etc.

That's exactly what I think will happen.

@LilacTree1 He's not. He's just more insidious. And even more hypocritical. I know it was fictionalised, but Brexit: The Uncivil War is interesting if only 25% of it is deadly accurate.

@PerkingFaintly and @LilacTree1 I see the next step as flogging the NHS to the USA, lock, stock, and profitable barrel. "See how efficient and wonderful the NHS is, American insurance companies, with our empty A&Es [as everyone's too afraid to attend now] and all our vulnerable folk and elders dead and gone....so we're not going to be needing all those pesky nurses and doctors any time soon. Besides, we've now softened up the populace nicely, with all those fundraisers, gotten them accustomed to the idea of paying. Also, Big Pharma, look how much data we can give you about what's likely to be profitable."

It gets more like Black Mirror every day....

And eventually we'll end up with a system like America, where they'll treat you, if you're poor, but then you'll end up bankrupted if you dare to get sick. Erin Brockovich is one of the fictionalised accounts of what can go wrong (based on a true story) and there are countless stories all over the Internet of American people literally ending up destitute due to healthcare bills. One of the reasons I despise Richard Branson's bottomless begging bowl so much is the damage Virgin Healthcare did to parts of the NHS.

I hope people reading this will consider chucking out Fitbits etc.

One thing that makes me laugh about fitness trackers

Some women tell them when their period is due....so the Fitbit can tell them when their period is due?!

The only reason we've got through this is because of a mammoth group effort involving 100's of staff, often working outside their comfort zones, and massive disrruption to routine functioning. Don't forget the old people infected with Covid who were sent into homes to infect dozens of other old people with many of them dying. Deliberately killing people is normally called murder, now it is what?

Empress, I find that interesting and I’d love to learn to play cards

I’m never sure about the body language thing though. A lot of use body language deliberately and then we have to factor in that observers might know we’re doing that.