---BREAKAWAY CIVILIZATION ---ALTERNATIVE HISTORY---NEW BUSINESS MODELS--- ROCK & ROLL 'S STRANGE BEGINNINGS---SERIAL KILLERS---YEA AND THAT BAD WORD "CONSPIRACY"--- AMERICANS DON'T EXPLORE ANYTHING ANYMORE.WE JUST CONSUME AND DIE.---
“The
door to the soul is unlocked; you do not need to please the doorkeeper,
the door in front of you is yours, intended for you, and the doorkeeper
obeys when spoken to.” -Robert Bly
What if
you found out there was a key that would enable you to open and close
your doors of perception at will, void of psychedelics? What if you
found out you not only held the key, but you were the key? Would you unlock the doors, or keep them shut?
Well, you
are the key, and whether or not you choose to enter through the doors is
a choice that, although invisible, is life changing. You are the
vehicle for the trip, consider this but a mere travel summary. And for a
detailed itinerary? Well, that can only be fetched by you -not the
part of you reading this, but the altered dream state part of your
consciousness that will travel beyond the doors of perception to the
wildness of the world where there is a livingness to all things- as it
can only be found in a place with exclusive access. A place where you
can travel, but no one may follow -not even the conscious, waking state
version of yourself scanning these very words.
If you
have experimented with psychedelics, you most likely know what it is
like to sense the type of “livingness” to all things of which I speak.
Even if you haven’t used psychedelics, though, you almost certainly have
still experienced this same livingness to all things in the world
around you to a noticeable degree at least once, but probably various
times as a child -a moment where the world around you took on a shimmery
glow, colours suddenly appeared brighter, sounds louder and clearer,
physical sensations amplified and, most notably, you could FEEL the
world around you.
I am not
referring to the physical, touching type of feeling, but to the
intangible, energy sense of feeling where you could almost feel the
luminosity of the world around you within, and you and the luminous
rested in harmony as if you were one. You were present, your perceptions
altered, your senses heightened. In short, your sensory gating
channels opened to some degree, a process more commonly referred to as
opening your doors of perception.
Sensory Gating Explained: The Science Behind the Doors of Perception
The “doors of perception” are the part
of our brain and central nervous system responsible for filtering input
from all external stimuli, involving all of your senses -feeling (both
physical and nonphysical), sight, sound, taste and smell. This process,
known as “sensory gating,”
enables us to decipher the difference between “me” and “not me.”
Through sensory gating, we are able to manage and comprehend the
constant stream of sensory data from the external environment. Without
it, we would be unable to filter out what matters and what doesn’t, and
all sensory data would touch us deeply and ultimately, we would become
overstimulated and overwhelmed and go “crazy” -according to modern
medicine, that is.
You see, many of the people who are now
referred to as “schizophrenics” have wide sensory gating channels that
they do not know how to close, causing an overload in stimulus. In
indigenous cultures, these people would have instead been called
SHAMANS, and would have been taught how to control their doors of
perception and open and close them as need be. There are ways to begin
opening the doors of perception, or sensory gating channels, without
using psychedelics. Of course, the experience will not be as intense or
immediate, but nor will it be short lived.
Rather, by utilizing practices that help
open your sensory gating channels to some degree by altering your state
of consciousness, you learn to open the doors of perception into the
metaphysical background of the world and continuously uncover deeper
truths to yourself and the world around you. In essence, playing with
the doors of perception in this manner, rather than through the use of
mind altering substances, allows you to do more than have a life
changing experience in which you see the deeper meanings to life for a
brief period of time (i.e. a “trip”), but to change your life where
every moment is an experience in a continuous journey into further,
unexplored depths of life.
Listen to
Aldous Huxley’s in depth description of the doors of perception, and the
mechanisms through which the mind opens and closes them here.
Hypnosis and Meditation
“ …those who have experimented with
hypnosis find that, at a certain depth of trance, it happens not too
infrequently that subjects, if they are left alone and not distracted,
will become aware of an immanent serenity and goodness that is often
associated with a perception of light and of spaces vast but not
solitary.”(Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudon 99).”
Practicing hypnotherapy and/or
meditation on a regular basis is an excellent way to begin dabbling into
the metaphysical backgrounds of yourself and of the world by tapping
into your subconscious, into otherwise ignored parts of your mind. These
practices help open doors in the mind where things such as past traumas
that are holding you back have remained imprisoned for years,
desperately waiting for you to free them and thus yourself. Meditation
and hypnotherapy are also great tools for getting in touch with your
intuition, helping you to see the bigger picture of current problems,
allowing you to focus on the deeper truths and lessons they withhold
rather than getting trapped in the mundane surface details of your
problems. In fact, when observed in this light, they eventually cease to
be problems and are instead rendered avenues of inner exploration and
growth. Here are some guided hypnosis and meditation sessions that may be of benefit.
The Sixth Sensory Channel: The Feeling Capacity
The 6th
sensory channel, also known as the feeling capacity, refers to the
ability of humans to feel, as opposed to touch. It refers to the
invisible
type of feeling, as opposed to the feeling sense of physical touch
embodying the ingredients of the five senses of human beings. One is
invisible and subjective, the other solely portrays the mostly objective
experience of physical touching, of feeling the texture of a person or
object. The feeling sense referring to the ability to feel the
invisibles describes the feelings that stir within as we encounter
various experiences in our day to day life, sometimes called a sixth
sense, or the sixth sensory channel. To better understand the sixth
sensory channel, consider the following example: you come home from work
and ask your partner what’s wrong.
“Nothing,” they brashly reply.
But, by
the tone of their voice, you know nothing means everything, and that you
better respond with something along the lines of, “please tell me what’s wrong,”
unless you want to endure a silent dinner -one that also evokes a
feeling sense, as the silence speaks volumes and is filled with tension,
making you uneasy- and sleep on the couch that night. Simply put,
awakening to the feeling sense that is not often spoken of as it is not
included in the five senses that we are taught we have, cultivates your
feeling capacity, your ability to feel the invisible, unspoken and
unseen meanings of situations, and of things both yourself and others do
and say.
In order to develop your feeling capacity, pay attention to the way things feel. Interpret
situations with your heart first, then your thoughts. For a deeper
understanding of the sixth sensory channel and how you can begin to
reclaim your feeling sense, consider listening to this in this interview with Stephen Buhner.
The Western media has attempted to portray Mark Zuckerberg’s
ambitious plan to get every human being online as altruistic at first,
but later revealed as simply what could be called “profitable empathy.”
In reality however, the truth is much more sinister, with Facebook
already revealed to be much more than a mere corporation run by
Zuckerberg and his “ideas”
Facebook is the pinnacle of
social engineering, an online operant conditioning chamber – also known
as a Skinner box – that is being used to track, trace, document, and
manipulate half of the entire online population. Despite users
attempting to utilize Facebook to connect and communicate with
individuals and organizations of interest, Facebook has turned its
features against users, insidiously manipulating their timelines to show
selected posts and updates while “soft censoring” others to manage public perception.
“Studies” have even been published proving the effectiveness of
Facebook’s unethical social engineering. In one study, the emotions of
users were successfully manipulated by selectively posting only negative
or only positive posts from individuals or organizations on users’
contact lists.
We show, via a
massive (N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can
be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to
experience the same emotions without their awareness. We provide
experimental evidence that emotional contagion occurs without direct
interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion
is sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues. Not
only are the findings troubling – illustrating that Facebook possesses
the ability to influence the emotions of its users unwittingly through
careful manipulation of their news feeds – but the invasive, unethical
methods by which Facebook conducted the experiment are troubling as
well.
In another experiment Facebook manipulated the news feed of some 2 million Americans in 2012 in order to increase public participation during that year’s US presidential election.
Facebook was also an official sponsor of the US State Department’s
training program preparing political subversion across North Africa and
the Middle East years before the so-called “Arab Spring” unfolded. The
very activists audiences around the world were told “spontaneously”
sprung up across North Africa and the Middle East were in fact trained,
funded, and equipped by the US State Department and various corporations
including tech giants Google and Facebook years beforehand. Turning a Network of Information into a One-Way Propaganda Pipeline
The implications of an Internet commandeered by a conglomerate of
Wall Street and Washington special interests is the mitigation of
user-driven content and the retrenchment of information consumerism.
Television “programming” could be perceived as both the process of
programming what will appear on TV, but also could be perceived as
programming the minds of those consuming television. TV, being a one-way
process, effectively eliminates competing ideas and limits the scope of
information down to only what those who control television networks
want audiences to see and hear. It is clear that Facebook is part of a
process to turn the Internet into a similar one-way experience.
As a result of Facebook’s successful experiments in social
engineering, including the very successful political subversion carried
out across the Arab World – subversion still ravaging the region to this
day – Facebook and the corporate-financier interests behind it seek to
put the entire planet within this increasingly insidious, pervasive,
and one-way network. The Bait and Switch Time Magazine’s article, “The Man Who Wired the World,”
claims Facebook’s “crusade” to get the entire human population online
is merely business. What is described however is a global campaign to
produce content offline users will care enough about to get online,
where Facebook believes it will be only inevitable that they end up on
Facebook as well to share that content. Time’s article would state
specifically (emphasis added):
Here’s the idea. First, you look at a particular
geographical region that’s underserved, Internet-wise, and figure out
what content might be compelling enough to lure its inhabitants online.
Then you gather that content up, make sure it’s in the right language
and wrap it up in a slick app. Then you go to the local cell-phone
providers and convince as many of them as possible that they should
offer the content in your app for free, with no data charges. There you
go: anybody who has a data-capable phone has Internet access—or at least
access to a curated, walled sliver of the Internet—for free.
This isn’t hypothetical: Internet.org released this app in Zambia in July. It launched in Tanzania in October. In Zambia, the
app’s content offerings include AccuWeather, Wikipedia, Google Search,
the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action—there’s a special emphasis on
women’s rights and women’s health—and a few job-listing sites. And
Facebook. A company called Airtel (the local subsidiary of an
Indian telco) agreed to offer access for nothing. “I think about it like
911 in the U.S.,” Zuckerberg says. “You don’t have to have a phone
plan, but if there’s an emergency, if there’s a fire or you’re getting
robbed, you can always call and get access to those kinds of basic
services. And I kind of think there should be that for the Internet
too.”
Already, these free applications include Western-driven agendas and
of course access to Facebook which is now confirmed to be insidiously
manipulating user perception.
Indeed, while “free Internet access” through such apps seems
“liberating” and “empowering,” Facebook does not let users freely share
content. Under the guise of managing cluttered timelines for users,
Facebook has already begun involuntarily filtering what posts users will
see from accounts they are following, indicating that their
manipulative experiments have now become a permanent matter of policy. Facebook’s own explanation of this policy is as follows:
Rather than showing people all possible content, News
Feed is designed to show each person on Facebook the content that’s most
relevant to them. Of the 1,500+ stories a person might see whenever
they log onto Facebook, News Feed displays approximately 300. To choose
which stories to show, News Feed ranks each possible story (from more to
less important) by looking at thousands of factors relative to each
person.
Facebook’s “world plan” then, seeks to plug the entire human
population into a highly manipulative Skinner box through a bait and
switch campaign to lure people online to seek what interests them before
Facebook takes over and displays information Facebook itself determines
“interests them.”
Far from a college kid with an overgrown corporation, what Facebook
is doing is the manifestation of every tyranny’s dream scenario since
the beginning of human history – a means by which to completely and
insidiously manipulate and control the minds of its subjects. Don’t Protest Facebook, Displace It
To counteract what is clearly the next step in Facebook’s unethical
and unchecked plague-like spread across the Internet, nations
individually should produce their own alternatives to Facebook and
work to get their populations online on their own terms before Facebook
and the interests driving it do. Likewise, locally, communities must begin devising their own information networks including
mesh networks and local Internets with local and open source
alternatives to Facebook, Google, and other corporations exercising the
same unwarranted power and influence online that bankers and
industrialist exercise over traditional society.
Seven Reasons Why the “Bad Guys” Keep Winning~ isn't it ...time we put r big boy pants on ,folks
Most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all.
Moral cowards … or people too lazy to learn how their own minds – and those of the bad guys – work.
All this was inspired by the principle–which is quite
true in itself–that in the big lie there is always a certain force of
credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily
corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than
consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of
their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small
lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but
would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never
come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not
believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so
infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be
brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will
continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the
grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has
been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this
world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.
Similarly, Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, wrote:
That is of course rather painful for those involved. One
should not as a rule reveal one’s secrets, since one does not know if
and when one may need them again. The essential English leadership
secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on
a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle
that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up
their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.
Science has now helped to explain why the big lie is effective.
As I’ve previously pointed out in another context:
Psychologists and sociologists show us that people will rationalize what their leaders are doing, even when it makes no sense ….
Sociologists from four major research institutions investigated why
so many Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, years
after it became obvious that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
The researchers found, as described in an article in the journal Sociological Inquiry (and re-printed by Newsweek):
Many Americans felt an urgent need to seek justification for a war already in progress
Rather than search rationally for information that either confirms
or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information
that confirms what they already believe.
“For the most part people completely ignore contrary information.”
“The study demonstrates voters’ ability to develop elaborate rationalizations based on faulty information”
People get deeply attached to their beliefs, and form emotional
attachments that get wrapped up in their personal identity and sense of
morality, irrespective of the facts of the matter.
“We refer to this as ‘inferred justification, because for these
voters, the sheer fact that we were engaged in war led to a post-hoc
search for a justification for that war.
“People were basically making up justifications for the fact that we were at war”
“They wanted to believe in the link [between 9/11 and Iraq] because
it helped them make sense of a current reality. So voters’ ability to
develop elaborate rationalizations based on faulty information, whether
we think that is good or bad for democratic practice, does at least
demonstrate an impressive form of creativity.
An article yesterday
in Alternet discussing the Sociological Inquiry article helps us to
understand that the key to people’s active participation in searching
for excuses for actions by the big boys is fear:
Subjects were presented during one-on-one interviews with
a newspaper clip of this Bush quote: “This administration never said
that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al-Qaeda.”The
Sept. 11 Commission, too, found no such link, the subjects were told.
“Well, I bet they say that the commission didn’t have any proof of
it,” one subject responded, “but I guess we still can have our opinions
and feel that way even though they say that.”
Reasoned another: “Saddam, I can’t judge if he did what he’s being accused of, but if Bush thinks he did it, then he did it.”
Others declined to engage the information at all. Most curious to the
researchers were the respondents who reasoned that Saddam must have
been connected to Sept. 11, because why else would the Bush
Administration have gone to war in Iraq?
The desire to believe this was more powerful, according to the researchers, than any active campaign to plant the idea.
Such a campaign did exist in the run-up to the war…
He won’t credit [politicians spouting misinformation] alone for the phenomenon, though.
“That kind of puts the idea out there, but what people then do with
the idea … ” he said. “Our argument is that people aren’t just empty
vessels. You don’t just sort of open up their brains and dump false
information in and they regurgitate it. They’re actually active
processing cognitive agents”…
The alternate explanation raises queasy questions for the rest of society.
“I think we’d all like to believe that when people come across
disconfirming evidence, what they tend to do is to update their
opinions,” said Andrew Perrin, an associate professor at UNC and another
author of the study…
“The implications for how democracy works are quite profound, there’s
no question in my mind about that,” Perrin said. “What it means is that
we have to think about the emotional states in which citizens find
themselves that then lead them to reason and deliberate in particular
ways.”
Evidence suggests people are more likely to pay attention to facts
within certain emotional states and social situations. Some may never
change their minds. For others, policy-makers could better identify
those states, for example minimizing the fear that often clouds a person’s ability to assess facts …
The Alternet article links to a must-read interview with psychology professor Sheldon Solomon, who explains:
A large body of evidence shows that momentarily [raising
fear of death], typically by asking people to think about themselves
dying, intensifies people’s strivings to protect and bolster aspects of
their worldviews, and to bolster their self-esteem. The most common
finding is that [fear of death] increases positive reactions to those
who share cherished aspects of one’s cultural worldview, and negative
reactions toward those who violate cherished cultural values or are
merely different.
And what about torture? Even after the Senate Intelligence report
said that torture didn’t do anything helpful – confirmed by America’s top interrogation experts and 1,700 years of history – the American public still believes the big lie.
And I would argue that the fact that the governments of the world have given trillions to the giant banks has invoked the same mental process – and susceptibility to propaganda -as the war in Iraq.
Specifically, many people assume that because the government has
launched a war to prop up the giant banks, it must have a good reason
for doing so.
Why else would trillions in taxpayer dollars be thrown at the giant
banks? Why else would the government say that saving the big boys is
vital?
And I would argue that the fear of another Great Depression (an
economic death, if you will) is analogous to the fear of death triggered
in many Americans by 9/11.
This creates a regression towards old-fashioned thinking about such
things as banks and the financial system, even though the giant banks
actually do very little traditional banking these days.
In other words, the big lie appears to be as effective in financial as in military warfare. Reason Number 2: The Urge to Defend Bad Systems
Psychiatrist Peter Zafirides, M.D sent us an excellent article explaining why good people defend bad systems:
From the bust of the housing bubble and mortgage meltdown
to Bernie Madoff and Jerry Sandusky, to political candidates and
campaigns, it seems not a week goes by before another story of
corruption and scandal breaks. And very predictably, the following
questions always seem to follow:
“How could they get away with this?”
- or -
“Why didn’t someone say or do anything about it?”
In trying to answer these questions, we have to first understand a
bit about both individual and group psychology. The answers may
potentially surprise or frighten you, but it is through this
understanding, that any real (and lasting) change can occur. Beyond
these obvious questions lies another stark reality: good people tend to
continue to defend bad systems.
Why does this happen? What is going on here?
Why do we stick up for a system or institution we live in—a
government, company, or marriage—even when anyone else can see it is
failing miserably? Why do we resist change even when the system is
corrupt or unjust? A new article in Current Directions in Psychological Science,
reveals the conditions under which we’re motivated to defend the status
quo—a psychological process called “system justification.”
The Power of the Status Quo
In system justification theory, people are motivated to defend the
status quo. There is a need to see it as being good, just and/or
legitimate. People not only want to hold a favorable view of themselves
and the groups they associate with, but they also hold favorable views
of an entire, overarching social system. There is a lot at stake here on
an individual psychological level that may not have anything to do with
the particular candidate, or government or social issue.
There are consequences for trying to buck the system. What will
happen if you try to introduce a different type of political or economic
system? You tend to be mocked, marginalized or completely ignored.
People need to believe that the systems they believe in are legitimate.
But this can cause bias and very dangerous blind spots when it comes to
the issue of corruption in these systems.
“Now this is not the same as acquiescence,” says Aaron C. Kay, a
psychologist at Duke University, who co-authored the paper with
University of Waterloo graduate student Justin Friesen. “It’s
pro-active. When someone comes to justify the status quo, they also come
to see it as what should be.”
According to the research, four particular situations significantly
increased the likelihood that system justification would occur:
1. When a threat to the system occurred.
2. When one is dependent on the system.
3. When there is no potential escape from the system.
4. When one has low personal control of their lives.
Threat
When we’re threatened we defend ourselves—and our systems. Before
9/11, for instance, President George W. Bush was sinking in the polls.
But as soon as the planes hit the World Trade Center, the president’s approval ratings soared.
So did support for Congress and the police. During Hurricane Katrina,
America witnessed FEMA’s spectacular failure to rescue the hurricane’s
victims. Yet many people blamed those victims for their fate rather than
admitting the agency flunked and supporting ideas for fixing it. In
times of crisis, say the authors, we want to believe the system works.
This bias is real. The problem is, it may not even be consciously in our
awareness.
Dependency
We also defend systems we rely on. In one experiment, students made
to feel dependent on their university defended a school funding
policy—but disapproved of the same policy if it came from the
government, which they didn’t perceive as affecting them closely.
However, if they felt dependent on the government, they liked the policy
originating from it, but not from the school.
Inescapability & Loss of Control
When we feel we can’t escape a system, we adapt. That includes
feeling okay about things we might otherwise consider undesirable. The
authors note one study in which participants were told that men’s
salaries in their country are 20% higher than women’s. Rather than
implicate an unfair system, those who felt they couldn’t emigrate
chalked up the wage gap to innate differences between the sexes. “You’d
think that when people are stuck with a system, they’d want to change it
more,” says Kay. But in fact, the more stuck they are, the more likely
are they to explain away its shortcomings.
Finally, a related phenomenon: The less control people feel over
their own lives, the more they endorse systems and leaders that offer a
sense of order.
Change Is Possible!
The research on system justification should not be overwhelming or
demoralizing. If anything it can really help to enlighten those who are
frustrated when people don’t rise up in what would seem their own best
interests. The awareness of this psychological tendency in all of us is
the first step in trying to minimize its impact. Awareness is critical
if one hopes to meaningfully change systems.
According to Dr. Kay, “If you want to understand how to get social
change to happen, you need to understand the conditions that make people
resist change and what makes them open to acknowledging that change
might be a necessity.” This is true whether the change one desires is
individual or societal.
But do not despair! Whether on an individual or societal level,
change absolutely happen. Awareness and knowledge is the first part of
the process.
Never give up the fight.
Never doubt how truly powerful you are.
Reason Number 3: Assuming that the Super-Elite Are “Like Us”
The super-elites are not like us:
Vanderbilt researchers have found that the brains of psychopaths have
a dopamine abnormality which creates a drive for rewards at any cost,
and causes them to ignore risks.
As PhysOrg writes:
Abnormalities in how the nucleus accumbens, highlighted
here, processes dopamine have been found in individuals with
psychopathic traits and may be linked to violent, criminal behavior.
Credit: Gregory R.Samanez-Larkin and Joshua W. Buckholtz
The brains of psychopaths appear to be wired to keep seeking a reward
at any cost, new research from Vanderbilt University finds. The
research uncovers the role of the brain’s reward system in psychopathy
and opens a new area of study for understanding what drives these
individuals.
“This study underscores the importance of neurological research as it
relates to behavior,” Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National
Institutes of Health, said. “The findings may help us find new ways to
intervene before a personality trait becomes antisocial behavior.”
The results were published March 14, 2010, in Nature Neuroscience.
“Psychopaths are often thought of as cold-blooded criminals who take
what they want without thinking about consequences,” Joshua Buckholtz, a
graduate student in the Department of Psychology and lead author of the
new study, said. “We found that a hyper-reactive dopamine reward system
may be the foundation for some of the most problematic behaviors
associated with psychopathy, such as violent crime, recidivism and
substance abuse.”
Previous research on psychopathy has focused on what these
individuals lack—fear, empathy and interpersonal skills. The new
research, however, examines what they have in abundance—impulsivity,
heightened attraction to rewards and risk taking. Importantly, it is
these latter traits that are most closely linked with the violent and
criminal aspects of psychopathy.
“There has been a long tradition of research on psychopathy that has
focused on the lack of sensitivity to punishment and a lack of fear, but
those traits are not particularly good predictors of violence or
criminal behavior,” David Zald, associate professor of psychology and of
psychiatry and co-author of the study, said. “Our data is suggesting
that something might be happening on the other side of things. These
individuals appear to have such a strong draw to reward—to the
carrot—that it overwhelms the sense of risk or concern about the stick.”
To examine the relationship between dopamine and psychopathy, the
researchers used positron emission tomography, or PET, imaging of the
brain to measure dopamine release, in concert with a functional magnetic
imaging, or fMRI, probe of the brain’s reward system.
“The really striking thing is with these two very different
techniques we saw a very similar pattern—both were heightened in
individuals with psychopathic traits,” Zald said.
Study volunteers were given a personality test to determine their
level of psychopathic traits. These traits exist on a spectrum, with
violent criminals falling at the extreme end of the spectrum. However, a
normally functioning person can also have the traits, which include
manipulativeness, egocentricity, aggression and risk taking.
In the first portion of the experiment, the researchers gave the
volunteers a dose of amphetamine, or speed, and then scanned their
brains using PET to view dopamine release in response to the stimulant.
Substance abuse has been shown in the past to be associated with
alterations in dopamine responses. Psychopathy is strongly associated
with substance abuse.
“Our hypothesis was that psychopathic traits are also linked to
dysfunction in dopamine reward circuitry,” Buckholtz said. “Consistent
with what we thought, we found people with high levels of psychopathic
traits had almost four times the amount of dopamine released in response
to amphetamine.”
In the second portion of the experiment, the research subjects were
told they would receive a monetary reward for completing a simple task.
Their brains were scanned with fMRI while they were performing the task.
The researchers found in those individuals with elevated psychopathic
traits the dopamine reward area of the brain, the nucleus accumbens, was
much more active while they were anticipating the monetary reward than
in the other volunteers.
“It may be that because of these exaggerated dopamine responses, once
they focus on the chance to get a reward, psychopaths are unable to
alter their attention until they get what they’re after,” Buckholtz
said. Added Zald, “It’s not just that they don’t appreciate the
potential threat, but that the anticipation or motivation for reward
overwhelms those concerns.”
Has anyone tested the heads of the too big to fails for this dopamine abnormality?
What are the odds that they have it? And if they have it, what are
the odds that they will voluntarily start acting responsibly, especially
given the broken incentive system?
Experts also tell us that many politicians also share traits with serial killers. Specifically, the Los Angeles Times noted in 2009:
Using his law enforcement experience and data drawn from the FBI’s behavioral analysis unit, Jim Kouri has collected a series of personality traits common to a couple of professions.
Kouri, who’s a vice president of the National Assn. of Chiefs of
Police, has assembled traits such as superficial charm, an exaggerated
sense of self-worth, glibness, lying, lack of remorse and manipulation
of others.
These traits, Kouri points out in his analysis, are common to psychopathic serial killers.
But — and here’s the part that may spark some controversy and
defensive discussion — these traits are also common to American
politicians. (Maybe you already suspected.)
Yup. Violent homicide aside, our elected officials often show many of
the exact same character traits as criminal nut-jobs, who run from
police but not for office.
Kouri notes that these criminals are psychologically capable of
committing their dirty deeds free of any concern for social, moral or
legal consequences and with absolutely no remorse.
“This allows them to do what they want, whenever they want,” he
wrote. “Ironically, these same traits exist in men and women who are
drawn to high-profile and powerful positions in society including
political officeholders.”
***
“While many political leaders will deny the assessment regarding
their similarities with serial killers and other career criminals, it is
part of a psychopathic profile that may be used in assessing the
behaviors of many officials and lawmakers at all levels of government.”
When their bets came up craps, they had the gall to hold
the American people hostage for trillions in bailouts. Their fellow
psychopaths in Congress gladly forked over the money. Rather than mend
their ways, these evil men have returned to their excessive risk taking
and continue to pay themselves billions in compensation, while the
American middle class is smothered to death under mountains of debt.
These evil Wall Street geniuses have shown no remorse as seven million
people have lost their jobs and millions more have lost their homes due
to the greed and avarice displayed on an epic scale.
Wall Street bankers exhibit the epitome of psychopathic behavior,
showing lack of empathy and remorse, shallow emotions, egocentricity,
and deceptiveness. Psychopaths are highly prone to antisocial behavior
and abusive treatment of others. Though lacking empathy and emotional
depth, they often manage to pass themselves off as average individuals
by feigning emotions. These Wall Street bankers will never willingly
accept responsibility for their actions. They continue to use their
wealth and power to control the politicians in Washington DC and the
misinformation propagated by the corporate media they control. They own
and control the Federal Reserve and will print money until the whole
system collapses in a spectacular implosion that destroys our financial
system. They only care about their own wealth, influence and status.
They have no shame.
The idea of nobless oblige or trickle-down economics,
certain versions of it, is bull,” Keltner added. “Our data say you
cannot rely on the wealthy to give back. The ‘thousand points of
light’—this rise of compassion in the wealthy to fix all the problems of
society—is improbable, psychologically.”
Those in the upper-class tend to hoard resources and be less generous than they could be.
Given that many in Congress and top government posts are multi-millionaires, the study might help explain why politicians seem only to work to make themselves wealthier and to help their wealthy buddies.
We will remain disempowered if we assume that the super-elites are
“like us”. Unless we learn to spot “wolves in sheep’s clothing”, we will
continue to fall prey to their scams.
This is not to say that all rich or powerful people are psychopaths.
There are some great men and women who are affluent or who serve in
Washington, D.C. But many do have psycopathic tendencies. Reason Number 4: The Life-Or-Death Struggle to Defend Our Beliefs
Alternet points out:
When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.
***
In 2006, Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler at The University of
Michigan and Georgia State University created fake newspaper articles
about polarizing political issues. The articles were written in a way
which would confirm a widespread misconception about certain ideas in
American politics. As soon as a person read a fake article, researchers
then handed over a true article which corrected the first. For instance,
one article suggested the United States found weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq. The next said the U.S. never found them, which was
the truth. Those opposed to the war or who had strong liberal leanings
tended to disagree with the original article and accept the second.
Those who supported the war and leaned more toward the conservative camp
tended to agree with the first article and strongly disagree with the
second. These reactions shouldn’t surprise you. What should give you
pause though is how conservatives felt about the correction. After
reading that there were no WMDs, they reported being even more certain
than before there actually were WMDs and their original beliefs were
correct.
They repeated the experiment with other wedge issues like stem cell
research and tax reform, and once again, they found corrections tended
to increase the strength of the participants’ misconceptions if those
corrections contradicted their ideologies. People on opposing sides of
the political spectrum read the same articles and then the same
corrections, and when new evidence was interpreted as threatening to
their beliefs, they doubled down. The corrections backfired.
Once something is added to your collection of beliefs, you protect it
from harm. You do it instinctively and unconsciously when confronted
with attitude-inconsistent information. Just as confirmation bias
shields you when you actively seek information, the backfire effect
defends you when the information seeks you, when it blindsides you.
Coming or going, you stick to your beliefs instead of questioning them.
When someone tries to correct you, tries to dilute your misconceptions,
it backfires and strengthens them instead. Over time, the backfire
effect helps make you less skeptical of those things which allow you to
continue seeing your beliefs and attitudes as true and proper.
***
Psychologists call stories like these narrative scripts, stories that
tell you what you want to hear, stories which confirm your beliefs and
give you permission to continue feeling as you already do.
***
As the psychologist Thomas Gilovich said, “”When examining evidence
relevant to a given belief, people are inclined to see what they expect
to see, and conclude what they expect to conclude…for desired
conclusions, we ask ourselves, ‘Can I believe this?,’ but for
unpalatable conclusions we ask, ‘Must I believe this?’”
***
What should be evident from the studies on the backfire effect is you
can never win an argument online. When you start to pull out facts and
figures, hyperlinks and quotes, you are actually making the opponent
feel as though they are even more sure of their position than before you
started the debate. As they match your fervor, the same thing happens
in your skull. The backfire effect pushes both of you deeper into your
original beliefs.
***
The backfire effect is constantly shaping your beliefs and memory,
keeping you consistently leaning one way or the other through a process
psychologists call biased assimilation. Decades of research into a
variety of cognitive biases shows you tend to see the world through
thick, horn-rimmed glasses forged of belief and smudged with attitudes
and ideologies.
***
Flash forward to 2011, and you have Fox News and MSNBC battling for
cable journalism territory, both promising a viewpoint which will never
challenge the beliefs of a certain portion of the audience. Biased
assimilation guaranteed.
***
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion draws all
things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater
number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these
it either neglects and despises, or else-by some distinction sets aside
and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious
predetermination the authority of its former conclusion may remain
inviolate
- Francis Bacon
It is very difficult for anyone to really listen to evidence which
contradicts our beliefs. But unless we learn how to grit our teeth and
do so, we will forever be victims to the divide-and-conquer game which ensures that we have politicians who will ignore our demands,
we will be so wedded to one investment strategy that we will forever
lose money on our investments, and we will generally be weak and
disempowered people. Reason Number 5: Forgetting that We Don’t Live in Tribes
Our brains are wired for tribal relationships:
Biologists and sociologists tell us that our brains evolved in small groups or tribes.
As one example of how profoundly the small-group environment affected our brains, Daily Galaxy points out:
Research shows that one of the most powerful ways to
stimulate more buying is celebrity endorsement. Neurologists at Erasmus
University in Rotterdam report that our ability to weigh desirability
and value doesn’t function normally if an item is endorsed by a
well-known face. This lights up the brain’s dorsal claudate nucleus,
which is involved in trust and learning. Areas linked to longer-term
memory storage also fire up. Our minds overidentify with celebrities
because we evolved in small tribes. If you knew someone, then they knew
you. If you didn’t attack each other, you were probably pals.
Our minds still work this way, giving us the idea that the celebs we
keep seeing are our acquaintances. And we want to be like them, because
we’ve evolved to hate being out of the in-crowd. Brain scans show that
social rejection activates brain areas that generate physical pain,
probably because in prehistory tribal exclusion was tantamount to a
death sentence. And scans by the National Institute of Mental Health
show that when we feel socially inferior, two brain regions become more
active: the insula and the ventral striatum. The insula is involved with
the gut-sinking sensation you get when you feel that small. The ventral
striatum is linked to motivation and reward.
In small groups, we knew everyone extremely well. No one could really
fool us about what type of person they were, because we had grown up
interacting with them for our whole lives.
If a tribe member dressed up and pretended he was from another tribe,
we would see it in a heart-beat. It would be like seeing your father in
a costume: you would recognize him pretty quickly, wouldn’t you.
As the celebrity example shows, our brains can easily be fooled by
people in our large modern society when we incorrectly ascribe to them
the role of being someone we should trust.
As the celebrity example shows, our brains can easily be fooled by
people in our large modern society when we incorrectly ascribe to them
the role of being someone we should trust.
The opposite is true as well. The parts of our brain that are
hard-wired to quickly recognize “outside enemies” can be fooled in our
huge modern society, when it is really people we know dressed up like
the “other team”.
***
Our brains assume that we can tell truth from fiction, because they
evolved in very small groups where we knew everyone extremely well, and
usually could see for ourselves what was true.
On the other side of the coin, a tribal leader who talked a good game
but constantly stole from and abused his group would immediately be
kicked out or killed. No matter how nicely he talked, the members of the
tribe would immediately see what he was doing.
But in a country of hundreds of millions of people, where the
political class is shielded from the rest of the country, people don’t
really know what our leaders are doing with most of the time. We only
see them for a couple of minutes when they are giving speeches, or
appearing in photo ops, or being interviewed. It is therefore much
easier for a wolf in sheep’s clothing to succeed than in a small group
setting.
Indeed, sociopaths would have been discovered very quickly in a small
group. But in huge societies like our’s, they can rise to positions of
power and influence.
As with the celebrity endorsement example, our brains are running
programs which were developed for an environment (a small group) we no
longer live in, and so lead us astray.
Like the blind spot in our rear view mirror, we have to learn to
compensate and adapt for our imperfections, or we may get clobbered.
Grow Up
The good news is that we can evolve.
While our brains have many built-in hardwired ways of thinking and processing information, they are also amazingly “plastic“. We can learn and evolve and overcome our hardwiring – or at least compensate for our blind spots.
We are not condemned to being led astray by [banksters and power-hungry sociopaths].
We can choose to grow up as a species and reclaim our power to decide our own future.
Reason Number 6: Pretending We Know
People who don’t know much about a subject tend to over-estimate their understanding.
Ironically, experts in any subject tend to underestimate their
abilities (because the more you know, the more you realize that you
don’t know.)
Moreover, people who don’ t much about a subject are more hesitant to learn about it than people who know something about it.
(This may be learning a sport or a musical instrument. When you get
decent at it, it becomes fun … and learning how to improve is
pleasurable. On the other hand, if you make nails-on-chalkboard noises
while learning how to play electric guitar or fall a lot while you’re
learning how to ski, it isn’t as fun … and it is tempting to give up and
avoid it if your friends try to “drag you along”. The same dynamic
might apply to learning as well.)
If we realize that we are resisting learning new information – either
because we assume we already know it all, or because we want to avoid
the embarrassment of being a beginner – we will remain stuck where we
are, and we will never grow wiser or more powerful. If your mind is
already “full”, you can’t fill it any more. Indeed, one of the secrets
of really smart people is to adopt a “beginner mind”, so that they are
open to learning new information. Reason Number 7: Apathy
The CIA notes that, public apathy allows government officials to ignore their citizens. While it is easy to slip into apathy, we will as a people be ignored by our politicians unless we remain involved. Reason Number 8: The CIA and Other Government Agencies Control Media, Movies, TV and Video Games
You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month.
The Church Committee found that the CIA submitted stories to the American press:
CIA Admits Using News To Manipulate the USA (1975)
The New York Times discusses in a matter-of-fact way the use of mainstream writers by the CIA to spread messages.
The government is paying off reporters to spread disinformation.
A 4-part BBC documentary called
the “Century of the Self” shows that an American – Freud’s nephew,
Edward Bernays – created the modern field of manipulation of public
perceptions, and the U.S. government has extensively used his
techniques.
The Independent discusses allegations of American propaganda.
One of the premier writers on journalism says the U.S. has used widespread propaganda.
Indeed, an expert on propaganda testified under oath during trial that the CIA employs THOUSANDS of reporters and OWNS its own media organizations (the expert has an impressive background).
Of course, the Web has become a huge media force, and the Pentagon and other government agencieshave their hand in that as well. Indeed, documents released by Snowden show that spies manipulate polls, website popularity and pageview counts, censor videos they don’t like and amplify messages they do.
The CIA and other government agencies also put enormous energy into pushing propaganda throughmovies, tv and video games.
We intentionally listed propaganda last, because we only fall for
propaganda to the extent we fail to learn the first 7 lessons … i.e. to
wake up and think for ourselves.
As Michael Rivero notes:
Most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all.
Moral cowards … or people too lazy to learn how their own minds – and those of the bad guys – work.
David A. Schweidel introduces his book, which considers
the role that individual consumers, innovators and government will play
in shaping tomorrow's data economy.
While there has been a lot of discussion around the term “Big Data,”
much of the discourse treats this as an abstract idea rather than a
system in which we are all active participants. While the term has
become ubiquitous, interest in the topic has not waned. A Google search
for the term turns up approximately 13.7 million search results. A
snapshot of Google Trends reveals the meteoric rise of queries for Big
Data beginning in 2011 and increasing ever since then.1
Searching archived Twitter messages using Topsy reveals more than three
million tweets referencing Big Data and in excess of two million tweets
mentioning #bigdata. Some contend that this marks a dramatic shift in what businesses and
organizations are capable of doing. Others deride or critique it. Author
and Duke University professor Dan Ariely likened Big Data to teenage
sex: “Everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it,
everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are
doing it.”2
Whether you’re an ardent believer that the Big Data revolution is the
best thing since sliced bread or you’re skeptical of the buzzword, there
is no disputing the fact that more attention is being paid to the
topic. This attention isn’t just coming from corporate broom closets where
statisticians are huddled over computers and poring over the output from
complex analyses. Instead, data and analytics are garnering attention
in the C-suite. In some companies, these topics fall under the purview
of the CIO, whereas they are part of the CMO’s responsibilities for
other companies. We’ve also seen the emergence of the chief data
officer. Although you might expect to see this position at a financial
institution or a company based in Silicon Valley, advertising juggernaut
Ogilvy and Mather appointed its first global chief data officer in
August 2013.3 The interest in capitalizing on the abundance of data extends beyond
the boardroom to the public sphere. Microtargeting in political races
was used as early as 2004. Local governments are also getting in on the
act, with Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter naming the city’s first
chief data officer in 2012 and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg
appointing the city’s first chief analytics officer in 2013.
Searching for the Next Generation of Quants
Why are companies, campaigns, and governments focusing on individuals
with a knack for data? Probably the same thinking that led Hal Varian,
an emeritus economics professor from the University of California at
Berkeley and chief economist for Google, to proclaim in 2009 that “the
sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians.”4
If you’re able to extract insights and act upon them, they can provide a
strategic advantage. Across different types of organizations,
statisticians can contribute immensely to improving operations, from
increasing efficiency and cutting costs to increasing revenue. However,
being well versed in statistics isn’t enough. What many organizations
are seeking is a data scientist with the holy trinity of skills: someone
with expertise in a particular field, coupled with knowledge of
sophisticated statistical tools, and the technical expertise to develop
and implement these algorithms on a large scale. This is often depicted
as a Venn diagram (see Figure 1.1).
Are they searching for mythical unicorns? Not necessarily. Both
presidential campaigns in 2012 had chief data scientists. According to
the vice president of Big Data products for IBM, a data scientist is
“part analyst, part artist.”5
It’s not enough to crunch numbers in the background. The findings from
advanced analytics are only as good as the way in which the insights are
communicated to key decision makers. When we talk about using marketing
analytics to guide strategy, we’re not just talking about a set of
curve-fitting exercises. Instead, we’re talking about storytelling,
informed by data, which has the potential to inform decision makers. Are these three skills all essential, or can we get by with someone
who is lacking one of them? With knowledge of statistics and the ability
to code, a researcher can make data sing. However, although this may be
sufficient from the standpoint of conducting research, what practical
decisions can they support? Without a sufficiently deep understanding of
the domain in which they’re operating, the impact of the insights on
strategy will be limited. Meanwhile, someone who understands statistical
models and knows the domain in which they operate is valuable from the
standpoint of producing insights, but they are limited in their ability
to convert those insights into a scalable solution. We similarly run
into problems if individuals are fluent computer scientists but lack
knowledge of the statistical models that are often used for evaluating
business decisions. Universities are making an effort to address the significant talent
gap. Many have started to offer programs that tap into the interest in
Big Data and data science. North Carolina State University, through its
collaboration with SAS, launched the Institute for Advanced Analytics
and offers an M.S. in analytics. At New York University, you’ll find the
Center for Data Science offering an M.S. in data science, as well as an
M.S. in business analytics offered by NYU Stern School of Business. The
marketing department at the Wharton School of the University of
Pennsylvania houses the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative, while the
operations and information management department offers a track in
business analytics. Northwestern University offers an M.S. in predictive
analytics through the School of Continuing Studies, while Northwestern
Engineering houses the M.S. in analytics. You’ll also find an M.S. in
analytics offered by the University of San Francisco and an M.S. in
marketing analytics at the University of Maryland. From this small sampling of the programs and the initiatives that
have developed in higher education around analytics, you can start to
see why it’s difficult to prepare students for the roles that
organizations are seeking to fill. There’s a fundamental question about
where the appropriate training for dealing with data takes place. The
two logical schools in which programs focusing on Big Data would emerge
are business schools, where the insights have the potential to guide
decisions, and computer science and engineering departments, where the
technical tools may take center stage rather than strategic decisions.
From Big Data’s Past to Its Future
The two sides of the Big Data coin may go back as far as the origin of the term. According to The New York Times story by Steve Lohr, author Erik Larson wrote a piece for Harper’s Magazine in 1989 that was subsequently reprinted in The Washington Post.6
In it, Larson discusses the direct marketing industry and its practice
of merging different facets of consumer data. Decades before data
privacy and transparency came into the vernacular, Larson suggests that
the “keepers of big data” will “track you for the rest of your consuming
life—pitch you baby toys when you’re pregnant, condos when you’re
fifty.”7 Interestingly enough, Lohr doesn’t ascribe credit for the term “big
data” to Larson. Instead, he argues that credit should go to John
Mashey, chief scientist for Silicon Graphics in the 1990s. When queried
about the use of the term, Mashey told Lohr that “I was using one label
for a range of issues, and I wanted the simplest, shortest phrase to
convey that the boundaries of computing keep advancing.” Lohr’s logic in
giving Mashey credit for coining the term was that it “should go to
someone who was aware of the computing context.” Regardless of to whom you feel credit is due, this exercise into the
ancestry of one of today’s most common phrases within technology and
business circles offers a curious perspective. Larson exposes the
potential benefits and risks associated with compiling disparate pieces
of data. Like a jigsaw puzzle, each individual piece of data does not
reveal much about the person who produced it. But assemble enough of
these pieces, and the full picture begins to emerge. The image that
Larson describes is one based on mortgage and tax records, consumer
surveys, and records from the Census Bureau. Compared to what we’re
capable of seeing today, what Larson envisioned may appear to look like a
five-year-old’s finger painting tacked onto a refrigerator, hanging
next to a digital photograph taken with the latest digital SLR camera on
the market today. The possibilities that he described pointed in the
direction of the path that we eventually traveled. However, we have gone
leaps and bounds beyond what many would have imagined in the past. For that, credit is certainly due to technology. Dramatic increases
in processing power have paved the way for sophisticated marketing
analysis to be conducted on desktop computers instead of mainframes.
Rather than speaking in terms of census tracts, we can now talk in terms
of individual households or, better yet, members of the household.
Retail purchase records from scanners in grocery stores, once heralded
as a major advance for the marketing profession, pale in comparison to
the amount of data produced by consumers visiting websites and making
purchases online. None of what we are talking about today would be
possible were it not for technological advances. At the same time,
credit should be given to those who had the foresight and saw potential
opportunities to put such granular data to use. These two forces,
working in parallel, heralded the age of Big Data.
Characterizing Big Data
One of the most frequent ways in which Big Data is defined is in
terms of the 3 V’s: volume, variety, and velocity. As the term implies,
anything falling under the umbrella of Big Data is large in size. Some
have taken this to mean anything that is too voluminous to be stored on a
desktop computer. Multiple students have expressed interest in studying
Big Data, which I’ve generally taken to mean that they are interested
in using software that can handle more rows than a single spreadsheet in
Microsoft Excel can accommodate. (Excel has a current limit of just
more than one million rows—a vast improvement to the 65,536 rows of the
previous version of the software.) In addition to the size of the data
being stored, Big Data often comprises a variety of formats. On top of
the quantifiable data (or “structured data”), Big Data encompasses
“unstructured data” such as text comments, images, and multimedia file
types. Perhaps the most important of the 3 V’s is velocity. It is the
velocity with which the data are collected and must be processed that
can separate Big Data problems from those that simply involve large
quantities of data. One illustration of problems that require data to be
collected and processed rapidly is real-time marketing. Whether it is
an auction to determine the order in which advertisements will appear
alongside search results or targeted messages based on an individual’s
mobile browsing history and current location, such problems require that
data be processed rapidly. Walt Disney World maintains an underground bunker called the Disney
Operational Command Center to ensure that the theme park operates
smoothly. Its staff may attempt to increase the speed with which
visitors are moving through the queue of a ride if they find that it is
too long, or dispatch costumed employees to entertain guests while they
wait.8
If visitors are moving through rides more efficiently and having a more
pleasant experience at the park, they’re apt to have more time during
which they can visit stores and restaurants in the amusement parks,
which provides Disney with additional revenue from its visitors. Phil
Holmes, vice president of the Magic Kingdom, noted that “if we can
increase the average number of shop or restaurant visits, that’s a huge
win for us.” While the majority of cases discussed in this book focus on marketing
applications, perhaps one of the most important applications of Big
Data today is security. Although Disney’s objective may be to minimize
wait times or maximize visitors’ expenditures, imagine if we could apply
similar approaches to law enforcement? Consider the FBI’s development
of its Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, which will explore
the use of facial recognition tools.9
Such a system could be used after crimes have been committed, comparing
the footage from security cameras to databases that have been compiled
previously. If such technology could be deployed more rapidly, it has
the potential to reduce the resources that need to be committed to
pursuing offenders. For such tasks, time is of the essence. Faster
processing of the available data can contribute not only to cost
reductions but also to improvements in public safety. Although the 3 V’s are common to problems that fall under the
auspices of Big Data, they ignore at least two other critical factors.
First, there are issues as to the veracity of the data. No one questions
that there is a lot of data available, but organizations trying to cut
through the noise and identify the signal must ask themselves if they
can trust the different data streams available. When decisions are being
based on the results of data analysis, the findings are meaningless if
the data on which they are based is biased in some way. This has been one of the concerns raised by marketers about the
potential use of social media data. Although such data are generally
available, do the comments scraped off the Web reflect the thoughts of a
brand’s entire customer base? Neglecting to account for known biases in
social media data could contribute to problems such as overestimating
the importance of an issue to consumers or failing to capture shifts in
brand sentiment.10 Second, and more important, is the value of the data. Many
organizations talk about having a Big Data strategy. If they’re
referring to a plan to warehouse and access data relevant to their
organization, there’s nothing wrong with this statement. In fact, more
organizations would probably benefit from having a well-thought-out
strategy that integrates the IT function with the appropriate business
processes. The problem is, though, that they’re often not referring to
how data will be stored and made available to users. Instead, they’re
using the term “Big Data” as a crutch. Rather than thinking through what
they are trying to achieve and gathering data that are appropriate to
addressing those goals, they believe that they have a foolproof
strategy: track “everything.”
Is Big Data a Strategy?
Here’s the problem with this so-called strategy. Suppose that reams
of data are captured. All that we’ve done is kick the can down the road.
Deep in the recesses of the warehouse we’ve built, in the multitude of
haystacks we’ve collected, is the golden nugget that we’ve been looking
for. The problem is that we now have to go through each of those
haystacks. And, more likely than not, we’ll find something. Whether we
can do anything with what we find is another story. The focus on
collecting more and more data has obscured what we should have been
asking ourselves from the start: What actions are we going to take? It’s true that data are necessary to derive insights, and those
insights inform the actions we take. However, thinking strategically
requires that we work backward. Asking first what it is that we’re
trying to do, we can then identify the insights needed to inform such
actions. Based on the insights we need, we can back into the data that
are needed to yield such insights. If we start blindly by compiling data
without considering where we’re trying to end up, we run the risk that
we’ve created more work for ourselves because we now have to sift
through mountains of irrelevant data that have been captured in our
dragnet. The challenges faced by many organizations, from city governments to
publically traded corporations, don’t require Big Data. Rather, these
organizations should be taking a look at the key issues they’re facing
and considering how those issues can be investigated. It’s not that more
data are necessarily better. Sometimes more data are just more. What the conversation should be focused on are the data that will
lead to bigger insights. Sometimes this does in fact require more data
or different types of data. In other cases, it requires rethinking the
assumptions we currently hold and applying a different type of analysis.
In specific circumstances, Big Data may be the raw fuel powering these
insights. However, on its own, Big Data doesn’t tell us what we should
be doing. It doesn’t tell political campaigns in which media markets to
place advertisements. It doesn’t tell retail stores to whom to send
coupons. It doesn’t tell city agencies how best to use their limited
resources. Making such recommendations is where the artistry in data
science comes into play. If Big Data is a natural resource, then the
advanced statistical tools employed by analytic professionals and data
scientists serve as the means of extracting and refining the raw
material into something of value. A colleague has suggested that Big Data is like “rocket science.”
There are actually people who are doing rocket science, but the common
use of the phrase extends beyond the well-credentialed few. There are
indeed organizations that are knee deep in Big Data, but the phrase has
become a catchall for most things involving data. Like it or not, we are
living in the age of Big Data.
Data Versus Insights
For all the interest in Big Data, this is not a book about Big Data.
This book is about what can be done with Big Data. More accurately, it’s
about what can be done with data, both the good and the bad. When
Larson first mentioned the “keepers of big data” back in 1989, companies
such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon.com
didn’t exist. And yet, marketing analytics and targeting were alive and
well—perhaps not as efficiently as they are implemented today, but the
ability to draw a portrait of a person based on multiple data sources
was practiced by Claritas, Inc., which was eventually acquired by
marketing research behemoth Nielsen. The insights produced to serve marketers didn’t hinge on the amount
of data available to them. Instead, it was based on understanding how
the available data could be put to use. Larson tees up ideas that are
relevant even today, if not ahead of their time, such as
permission-based marketing and consumers receiving compensation in
exchange for their data. And yet, he determines that he isn’t concerned
because the organizations involved in direct marketing and the entities
that provide organizations with access to consumer data “don’t really
know what they’re doing—at least not yet.” What makes the present day different from 1989? For one thing,
organizations are much more versed in what can be accomplished with the
right data. In addition to knowing what can be done with data, there’s
also more data available. The data exhaust—the digital trail produced by
consumers through their everyday activities—is a potential goldmine.
Although there are ample opportunities for organizations to leverage
available sources of data, let’s not assume that consumers are victims.
Consumers have options at their disposal, and their choices have the
potential to separate the winners from the losers. Organizations of all stripes can be developed or refined based on the
insights afforded by consumer data. As organizations have come to
realize the tremendous potential that can be extracted from consumer
data, the winners will be determined by those who have access to the
data they need—that is, those who provide a compelling reason for
consumers to share this data with them. Focusing on businesses, this is
predicated on an exchange. Neither party has a gun to the head of the
other. Consumers and organizations are both willing participants in this
data economy.
Data and Value
As with other economic systems, at the heart of the data economy is
value. As we will discuss, organizations have made it clear that they
see tremendous value in consumer data. Some have explicitly said as
much. Others have revealed it through their actions. Depending on the
organization we’re discussing, there are a number of ways in which
detailed data have been turned into value. Collecting and storing data should be viewed as an investment. As
with other investments, the question that organizations should be able
to answer is, what is the payoff associated with compiling databases?
Police forces, for example, have turned to predictive analytics. In
addition to the hardware and software investment, there’s a cost
associated with hiring the analytic talent to conduct the necessary
analyses. Here, the payoff can be viewed as increased public safety, as
manifested through a reduction in crime. Google demonstrated that certain search terms are correlated with flu activity.11
From a public health perspective, such information could be useful in
determining when it is most essential to ramp up efforts to encourage
individuals to get vaccinated. Health insurance providers may take such
efforts upon themselves, looking at the potential savings associated
with reducing the number of hospitalizations. Employers may also promote
vaccinations, hoping to curb the amount of worker productivity that is
lost due to workers taking time off to recuperate. Viewing this problem
from another perspective, pharmaceutical companies could identify the
value of such data if it would enable them to make more efficient use of
their marketing budgets. As you can see from this one example, the
potential value associated with a particular piece of data depends on
the organization’s goals. Although these two illustrations demonstrate what can be gained by
organizations turning to data that is generally available, consider
briefly data that may not be available for public consumption: a
consumer’s purchasing habits. Consider simply the question of how
strongly you prefer Coca-Cola to Pepsi. If Coca-Cola knew which
consumers were only interested in its products, which consumers were
only interested in Pepsi’s product, and which consumers did not have a
strong preference, it might change the way it approached marketing to
each of these different consumers. It might decide, for example, to spend just enough on marketing to
loyal Coca-Cola consumers to encourage them to purchase more frequently.
For these consumers, though, the company is not worried about them
switching over to their competitor. For those consumers loyal to Pepsi,
it may not make sense for Coca-Cola to exert any effort marketing toward
these individuals. If their brand preferences are so strongly in favor
of Pepsi over Coca-Cola, there’s little that Coca-Cola would be able to
do to sway them. For the consumers in the middle, perhaps that’s where
Coca-Cola’s (and Pepsi’s) marketing efforts have the potential to have
the biggest impact. Coca-Cola and Pepsi, as well as all other publically traded
companies, are in the businesses of what’s best for their shareholders,
but we could also apply the same thinking to the presidential election.
Across the country, there are states that are deep blue and there are
states that are deep red. Although a candidate could pour money into
advertising in those states where his party has not fared well
historically, barring a huge shift in the demographics of the state,
such advertising expenditures are not expected to yield much of a
payoff. Instead, what we are left with is a deluge of advertising
concentrated in battleground states, specifically in counties where the
advertising is expected to yield the biggest impact. As we’ll discuss in more depth, not all data are equally valuable.
Detailed data about the television programs viewed by a voter who lives
in Wisconsin’s Dane county are likely to be of less value compared to
the same data about a voter who lives in Ohio’s Hamilton county. Some
pundits considered both Ohio and Wisconsin to be battleground states, so
why the difference in the likely value of data from voters in these two
counties? Dane county leans heavily to the left, as reflected by the
71.1% of the vote received by President Obama. In contrast, President
Obama received only 51.8% of the votes coming out of Hamilton county.
Political advertising can exert some sway on voters, but there’s a limit
to its effectiveness. Given the strong leaning of Dane county, not much
could have been done there by either party to sway voters. Hamilton
County, in contrast, was identified as one of the seven most important
counties in the 2012 election by The Washington Post.12
If campaigns knew the programs that different types of voters in
Hamilton county were watching, such data could be used to ensure that
advertising occurred in the programs viewed by the voters they were most
interested in reaching. Regardless of context, the determining factor
in how much data are worth to an organization is based on what the
organization can do with the data and whether having the data can
potentially further the organization’s goals. Although the ability to take actions that affect consumer behavior is
necessary for data to be of value, a few other conditions will affect
just how valuable an individual’s particular data are to an
organization. First, there needs to be a sufficient number of consumers
who are “like you” with regard to your preferences and attitudes. If
your outlook is so idiosyncratic that an organization can’t identify
other consumers who are similar to you, it’s simply too inefficient for
that organization to acquire your data and take actions tailored to you.
There just isn’t the scale for this to be viable. Fortunately, it turns
out that consumers are not as different from one another as they might
think. Or, more precisely, they are similar enough that they can be
grouped together into consumer segments, enabling organizations to pick
and choose the segments on which they want to focus their efforts. In addition to there being enough consumers like you, how much an
organization is willing to spend on your data hinges on how valuable you
(or the segment to which you belong) are to the organization. Frequent
travelers are of interest to the airline and hotel industries because of
the volume of business they generate, so they may provide these
individuals with a separate telephone number for customer service,
express check-in, or other perks. Casinos pay particular attention to
their high rollers and provide them with a number of complimentary
offerings to attract and retain their business because the amount that
the casino stands to gain from the individual’s gambling activities can
be quite substantial. Undecided voters in swing states are targeted
because they can decide which presidential candidate receives the
state’s electoral votes. In short, the segment has to matter to the
organization. With all these factors in place, ultimately the value of your data to
organizations depends on how readily available such data are from other
consumers. Although all consumers may be distinct from each other, the
intent in forming a small number of market segments is to identify
groups of consumers who are similar enough to each other and
sufficiently different from other consumers. Claritas put this into
practice with its Potential Rating Index for Zip Markets (more commonly
referred to as PRIZM) segmentation scheme. Members of the Executive Suites segment, for example, tend to place orders at barnesandnoble.com, play golf, and watch Saturday Night Live.
This segment consists of upper-middle class singles and couples who
typically work white collar jobs. In contrast, although the Bohemian Mix
segment falls into the same age range, they are more inclined than the
Executive Suites to live in cities and more likely to have children at
home. Their media and lifestyle habits also differ—they express an
interest in foreign films, are more likely to rent rather than own their
home, and are more likely to read GQ. Organizations must determine which of the segments are of interest to
them so that they may focus their efforts on those segments. Once that
has been determined, though, it doesn’t matter which particular
individuals from the segment provide data to the organization. If other
consumers like you are willing to share their data with organizations at
no cost, then that’s how much the organization should be willing to
spend on data acquisition. However, if each individual in a segment has
determined that there is a minimum the organization must offer for
someone to be willing to share the data, then it may be in the
organization’s interests to invest in acquiring this data.
Value for Value
The ideas being put forth here are not new. The core ideas that we’ll
discuss are at least 20 years old. However, since these ideas were
first introduced into the public sphere, the landscape has irrevocably
changed. Disturbingly, some of the ways in which these changes have
occurred may have gone unnoticed. First, consider the digital marketing platforms available to
organizations today. Although consumers may be most familiar with Google
as a search engine or a “free” email provider, at the end of the day,
Google is an advertising platform. Likewise, although we may think of
Facebook and Twitter as social networking products, these too are
advertising platforms. We don’t pay a monthly fee or a one-time charge
for the rights to use these tools. Rather, we pay every time we use the
tools—each query entered into Google, each time we send an email
message, each time we view a video on YouTube. With every Facebook post
and each tweet we send, we’re paying these companies. Online platforms will give way to the Internet of Things and
connected devices. The notion of the “quantified self” is only beginning
to become concrete, with fitness products and other forms of wearable
technology. In exchange for what we learn about ourselves based on the
data we generate, perhaps in pursuit of our personal goals, we adopt
technology and share our data with the developers of the technology. In
doing so, we’re paying with our actions, with the data that we produce.
And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, so long as we’re aware
of what we’re doing. Consumer awareness took on broader significance with the revelations
offered by Edward Snowden’s disclosure of documents that detailed the
surveillance activities undertaken by the National Security
Administration (NSA). Many had talked in vague terms about “big brother”
watching us. Set in the aftermath of 9/11, the CBS drama Person of Interest
presents a machine that can identify those involved in crimes before
the events take place, gathering data through traffic cameras and other
devices. In 2008’s The Dark Knight, Batman builds a machine
that turns every cell phone into a microphone, allowing him to build a
citywide surveillance system to aid him in finding where the Joker is
located. Like these fictitious examples, the NSA’s surveillance
activities may have been well intentioned. However, in the wake of the
information that has come to light, there is increased interest in
organizations being transparent about the data they are collecting and
how such data are being put to use. The interest in data transparency permeates the marketing field, as
well as the regulatory environment in which companies must operate. In
2012, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued orders to a number of
companies to disclose information about data collection and usage
practices.13
In a March 2012 report, the FTC urged companies to improve transparency
in their data collection efforts. In the same report, there is a call
to increase consumers’ knowledge about the data practices in which
companies engage. Despite the growing interest and potentially increased scrutiny, how
exactly will organizations’ data collection and usage practices change
from what they have been historically? And, more important, do consumers
care? Whereas the answer to the first of these questions is something
of a moving target, the second question is more important. After all, to
what extent do consumers need protection against large organizations’
data-hording activities if they are informed of such activities and are
not fazed by it? Forrester examined the second of these questions in a 2012 study.14
Distinguishing between behavioral data (such as your online browsing
history or your purchase history at a retailer) and individual data (for
example, your address or Social Security number), it found that all age
groups were more concerned about how companies used individual data,
with older consumers more wary than younger consumers. The study also
found that exclusive deals attract a majority of young consumers to
share their data with companies, but the appeal of such incentives do
not attract older consumers nearly as much. Mirroring this, the study
found that a larger share of older consumers do not complete an online
transaction because of something they read in the company’s privacy
policy. So what can be gleaned from these findings? It turns out that
consumers are actually concerned with how companies are making use of
their data. Although that might seem like a dark cloud hanging over
marketing, it’s important to note that consumers’ concerns vary with the
type of data being collected and across different consumer groups—and
these data collection practices do appear to impact consumer
expenditures. As we’ll discuss, one option for organizations is to collect the data
about which consumers are less sensitive and hence more willing to
share. However, the key is for the organization to engage consumers like
they would approach another collaborator. The consumers have something
that is of value to the organization. With access to such information,
organizations may change their practices. Marketing expenditures may be
made with increased precision. Product lines may expand or contract.
Consumers may see a more targeted message. New businesses may develop to
meet the consumers’ needs. All these practices may rely heavily on
access to the right consumer data. If we’re willing to share data with companies, consumers have much to
gain, as do the businesses that develop if they are successful. It is
simply a matter of an exchange—consumers are more willing to share their
data if it is clear what they are getting in return. That payment may
be in the form of financial compensation or access to a product or
service. The idea of an exchange, where value is traded for value, is
straightforward enough. However, as recent events have revealed, a host
of issues are related to conducting such a transaction. At the same time, there are also issues focused on the protections
that must be in place for consumers. Questions about the information
that organizations should present to consumers and the measures that
should be taken to ensure that consumers’ data are secure need to be
addressed. Just as there is the potential for businesses to grow larger
than we would have imagined, fueled primarily by innovative thinking
about how consumer data can be used, there is also potential for such
data to be exploited and considerable harm levied against consumers. And
because of this, there is a legitimate question as to what the role of
the government should be. Is a watchdog agency akin to the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau needed to oversee such exchanges?
Alternatively, should market forces dictate who will and will not have
access to consumer data and how much it is worth? The next few chapters look at success stories that have emerged in
business, where a good part of the companies’ successes have been thanks
in no small part to the data provided by their consumers. We’ll also
see how existing businesses have refined their practices by leveraging
more detailed information about consumers. In addition, we’ll see the
benefits that the public has accrued through the innovative work of
government agencies using many of the same tools employed by businesses. With these exemplars of what is possible as a backdrop, we’ll cast a
critical eye on the current exchange in which consumers and
organizations participate. Although this model functions well in some
regards, we put forth reasons that suggest that it may be in need of
updating. There are some signs that these revisions are already
underway. Based on these harbingers, we’ll discuss the structure that
may be needed to support the burgeoning data economy. Taking into account the events that have unfolded in recent
years—from Internet giants and social networking sites coming on the
scene, to interest in data, infographics, and statistics going
mainstream—this book is not an attempt to predict what course we’ll
chart in the near future. However, given how we have seen organizations
use data and current activities, there are indicators that suggest a
potential direction—one in which consumers, businesses, and the public
all stand to benefit.
Posts
type of feeling, as opposed to the feeling sense of physical touch
embodying the ingredients of the five senses of human beings. One is
invisible and subjective, the other solely portrays the mostly objective
experience of physical touching, of feeling the texture of a person or
object. The feeling sense referring to the ability to feel the
invisibles describes the feelings that stir within as we encounter
various experiences in our day to day life, sometimes called a sixth
sense, or the sixth sensory channel. To better understand the sixth
sensory channel, consider the following example: you come home from work
and ask your partner what’s wrong.
