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Autiste à Vaud L'eau Locked account

Autiste_VaudLeau@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 3 months ago

==ENGLISH== My pseudo is a pun on a French expression, "À vau-l'eau", meaning "kind of adrift", and the name of the Swiss Canton (State) where I live, Vaud, which is pronunced the same as "vau". The whole thing means "Adrift autist from Vaud". Until about 10 years ago, I was a pretty rabid reader, although I would often read the same book again and again and again (up to 100 times). But then, I went through a sever burn-out and reading, which had always been a way for me to restore my emotional and cognitive capaicities suddenly became a heavy weight, that kept reminding me of the time when things were much better and that I could never return to that. I was still reading from times to times, but only academic books of the type I had been reading during my studies. But I couldn't open a fictional novel anymore. SInce, I haven't been able to find any activity that could really replace reading for restoring my mind, I have progressively decided to get back to reading novels I used to read, but which are not too related to specific period of my life, especially not my childhood. Now, I alternate between so-called "academic" reading and novels, especially the fantasy type (like Mists of Avalon).

Although I'm fairly fluent in English, I do tend to publish a lot in French.

==FRANÇAIS== Comme indiqué dans mon nom de profil, je suis autiste et un peu perdue! J'étais une grosse lectrice jusqu'à ce qu'il y a quelques années, je perde le goût de lire des livres, pour me focaliser uniquement sur des articles. Cette période a correspondu aussi à mon burn-out. Progressivement, je reprends goût à la lecture, même si c'est plutôt des ouvrages de type "académique", c'est-à-dire, de la philosophie, de la sociologie, de l'anthropologie, de l'histoire et des sciences-po. Ceux-ci me sont en grande partie inspirés par les débats que je suis en ligne, notamment chez de nombreux vidéastes, aussi passionnants que talentueux, qui abordent des thématiques qui m'ont toujours intéressée et le font en profondeur, avec beaucoup de références à lire. Mais, je commence aussi à apprécier de nouveau certains romans que je lisais à la fin de mes études.

Mastodon: tooting.ch/deck/@ariane Diaspora: diaspora-fr.org/people/e5b681d0854b013a59800025900e4586

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Frédérique Matonti: Comment sommes-nous devenus réacs? (French language, 2021)

Court essai sur les raisons qui ont permis au conservatisme de dominer l'espace grand public …

J'ai commencé à lire "Comment sommes-nous devenus réacs?" de Dominique Matonti, dans l'idée de trouver des pistes de réflexion sur ce qui m'apparaît comme une forme de droitisation de la gauche dans nos démocraties occidentales, notamment en France, mais pas seulement.

Hervé Barreau: L'épistémologie (Presses Universitaires de France - PUF)

J'ai décidé de reprendre à zéro mes réflexions sur les questions d'épistémologie et donc de repartir à la base. Malheureusement, cet ouvrage, en plus du style assez lourd et ampoulé, ne correspond pas du tout à mes besoins. J'ai donc arrêté de le lire à partir du chapitre 2. J'ai survolé le reste pour me rendre compte que ce n'est vraiment qu'un résumé de connaissances qui sont supposées déjà acquises par l'auteur. Il s'agit plus de fournir des références rapides en cas de "trou de mémoire" que d'introduire les gens à l'épistémologie. Je le reprendrai peut-être plus tard.

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Cathy O'Neil: Weapons of Math Destruction (Paperback, 2017, Broadway Books)

A former Wall Street quant sounds an alarm on the mathematical models that pervade modern …

An excellent demonstration of the devastating pervasiveness of Big Data

This book takes you on a journey through all areas of life and shows how Big Data systems cause harm in all of them. Through the examination of these case studies, it also gets to the fundamental issues with Big Data and proposes ways to change our perspectives on it.

This book is really good. It is clear, understandable for a layperson and very well-rounded. I would give it a 5/5 if there weren't these two points:

  • it is completely US-centric. The case studies are all domestic. This weakens its explaining power for the rest of the world, imo. (this isn't to say that it doesn't make sense or that it's wrong for a US citizen to only write about the US)
  • it's 8 years old now, and while it's analyses are not at all outdated, the world of Big Data has evolved since 2016. I often wondered what ended …
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Cathy O'Neil: Weapons of Math Destruction (Paperback, 2017, Broadway Books)

A former Wall Street quant sounds an alarm on the mathematical models that pervade modern …

Big Data processes codify the past. They do not invent the future. Doing that requires moral imagination, and that’s something only humans can provide. We have to explicitly embed better values into our algorithms, creating Big Data models that follow our ethical lead. Sometimes that will mean putting fairness ahead of profit.

Weapons of Math Destruction by  (Page 204)

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Cathy O'Neil: Weapons of Math Destruction (Paperback, 2017, Broadway Books)

A former Wall Street quant sounds an alarm on the mathematical models that pervade modern …

Weapons of Math Destruction

O'Neil is an excellent guide to the world of algorithms and how they impact our lives in ways large and small. To me one of the most depressing lessons of the book was that the people creating these systems which analyze data have almost no interest in the knock-on effects that their work has on people's lives. They are so focused on whatever particular goal they have that they have total blinders as to the damaging effects that their work might have. As with any book about technology the companies have changed a bit since O'Neil wrote the book, but the underlying problems have not changed; thus this continues to be a worthy guide to the challenges that our society will face as we continue to be enmeshed in algorithms which may not have our best interests at heart.

Hervé Barreau: L'épistémologie (Presses Universitaires de France - PUF)

Un Que sais-je pour ceux qui savent déjà

Cet ouvrage n'est pas vraiment une introduction à l'épistémologie, mais avant tout un abrégé de références pour les gens qui connaissent déjà bien le sujet. Il n'y a aucune explication et pratiquement aucune définition.

Par ailleurs, le style ampoulé et lourd rend la lecture encore plus difficile. Voilà pourquoi je ne peux lui accorder que deux étoiles.

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