This week you didn’t have to look much further than J P Morgan to see what holding banks accountable does, well Jamie Dimon, CEO of J P Morgan gets a big raise. Did he tell shareholders he’s got some new models to roll out that will ensure profits? Is that any shape or form of accountability? It certainly does not have that appearance does it? Today everyone relies on some form of math business model or code
to run their business and when you reach the levels of big bank, insurers. credit agencies, big accounting agencies, etc. we’re not seeing much in this area at all. All the business they do relies on computer code. Banks and insurers over the last few years have morphed into huge software companies that control a lot of money and access to money. Actually at the link below myself and a banker agree with banks being “huge” software companies..a rare meeting of the minds, but it’s true.
You get a visual by looking at buildings that house banks and corporations but that’s only a 
shell, as it’s what happens inside or at off shore locations that’s running their businesses. As a matter of fact, not too long ago the CIO of Bank of America did an interview and nothing barred there, as he said “IT is their business”…if you need a quick translation of this “IT business = computer code and models”
Sure as a consumer you don’t get to see the math models and computer code but at least be aware it’s there and it all lives in propriety packages..you’ll never get to see it and much less understand it. It’s all in the way that they use it. Let’s go very simple here and use a Word document as a simple example. It’s great software and you can do a lot with it and it’s a great business standard, but let’s say you were to create a Word document that was full of slander, lies, and so on…there’s the other side of using software in a not so good fashion and this layers up all the way to the top with the same mode of thinking with everything that is out there…what you do with it.
So we can go back and visit the Sub Prime crisis…how did it happen..with computer code and models. Math models used by banks and companies are the next level up the ladder from software creation and a lot of the time is basis for the creation of software that runs certain processes. Nothing new in that respect but things have changed tremendously in the 
last few years with complexities and so has the software and the models. Way back when Microsoft and Bill Gates created windows, it was done to give us productivity and to allow everyone to fulfill the dream of having their own computer at home. Nobody back in the early days I don’t think could have ever dreamed the progression of what we have out there today as others jumped in the game and realized that software could go beyond just intelligence and productivity to actually “control” a lot of money and access.
Banks, insurers, and corporations get to just skate along and their only real concerns to deal with when it comes to the government is the fear that they will be prosecuted on the “end results” when the low hanging fruit of criminal investigations give law enforcement valid real world actions that everyone can see as a result of running math models and code, in other words, they never get to the source as mostly they don’t understand how it functions. As a matter of fact the video below has a video that makes a lot sense…with so many thinking that big data is some of “God” by the time you read of the media out there. Well maybe it is, but it’s also the devil too, so we have big data from God I guess and the big data from the devil, and yes both are out there. It’s still humans that write and create models and code…so numbers don’t lie, but people do. Software that informs us in advance can be great, but with banks armed with some of these technologies can be dangerous as it’s not all a proven facts out there…big errors.
Driving Ourselves Off the Cliff…
We are the “data” product as consumers and big business knows this. There’s a lot of good stuff out there as well but there’s a lot of confusion as to what has value. If you watched the video above you can see where “dashboards” can also be confusing…”people just love to put more data on the page”…and that of course makes you think about electronic medical records in that respect as that’s a big part of what goes on with those technologies for sure and where the meeting of the minds occurs all the time with doctors getting some pretty complex screens to use.
Back on track, I could write a simple piece of software that would people the “same” outcomes every time they use it and could market it with a formula made with simple algebra that substantiates my work. People would suck right in for a long time until someone would come along and really test me and call it a fake when the numbers don’t make sense or give a good decision making result. It’s would take a
while though as I would compile my work into “propriety” code so nobody can test it and well guess what, “they have to believe me as I would have taken great pride to hide all the code and not make it accessible to anyone.
That was a very simple example of course, but guess what, this exactly what happens and so computer code and what’s in it never gets held accountable and sure folks look at it and know something is wrong but they can’t touch me at all. So going back to banks and companies, you can’t see or touch their code either, same process but much more complex of course and there’s Quants and software teams doing it today. They know too that they can follow that same process and put an algebra formula out there and “bingo” it had credibility as someone who knows math made that formula, it’s give immediate credibility. We end up with this, quantitated justifications and believe things that are just not true. Scroll down and watch video #1 in the footer for more on this topic.
Does government ever dig this far, of course not as they believe it too and this comes back around to the Big Dupe, which I call AlgoDuping and I put together a collection of videos and links that I think do a good job of explaining this, most all at layman level, from folks who are a lot smarter than me and have worked creating models and software. Scroll on down to the footer of this blog anytime and I have 4 of them right here as well.
So we have all of this knowledge out there and why don’t we act on it? It’s a very good question as I described above people get confused in where the value lies with decision making software and what we are marketed that has “real” value. To make the point here and I have said this a few times 
when it comes to data value, I can’t eat a “tweet” for breakfast, nor can I drive a “like” to get to work and even more I can’t sit on a Pinterest “toilet” either. Sure there’s value with social networks but not to what you have been lead to believe of course as Wall Street and the Silicon Valley with all the hype tell you every day, these are the cat’s meow. They’re not, but they have a place and value but not where the “virtual value” has been placed today. It’s virtual as all you have is bunch of servers with data running a bunch of algorithms that connects to other data…zero in the tangible world.
By comparison let’s go back to toilets for a moment…the Gates Foundation does help create toilets, a very basic need for all and they use technology and research to make better ones..so again look at the value the Pinterest toilet is just a nice picture someone put up there, but doesn’t do me any good in the real world; however the ones that the Gates Foundations are working, yeah, I can sit on one of those and take care of an every human basic need:) Better toilet technology too is a challenge as along this pathway were get this too, ones that explode.
Are you beginning to get this as far as where true value lies…I was hoping that topic could arise at the WEC in Davos as you can go all the way up the ladder to CEOs, they don’t get it either. With due respect the CEO of Pepsi with her comments was a blazing example beating up the press. She’s confused, stuck out like a sore thumb when it came to where she placed value. She spent a lot of time beating up the media who as we all read today are struggling to find new revenue sources to keep news out there for us. She just didn’t like what was out there and she stopped right there. Now where can she contribute to help make things better…she’s stuck. Below is the video from the Gates Foundation…a vision with using technology to make a better place. When it comes to value and finding a use the crap we all produce, that’s right up there and the product that Pepsi makes is one ingredients of it (grin).
Get Our Crap Together–Gates Foundation
As we all know the news is what drives stock prices up and down and well guess what Pepsi has that, stock that people buy in her company right? Well if you want to support the media and make sure they are around and have good humans working with machines to get accurate news out there, throw some serious money their way and spend some substantial money on advertising for one. If not, automation in media will continue to grow and more bots will take over and we will end up with news content farms there too, and how happy will she be when that occurs with large margins for errors..do want humans in there overseeing quality of news or do you want to let a bot take over, and that’s exactly what will happen.
CEO of Pepsi, sucked right in and confused in not seeing the whole picture here of 
how computer code and automation works in business so when stock goes down and the bots are in control…well you get the picture there and it brings me around to how computer code works and accountability today.
So being what I said above, where’s the value…what comes first the toilet or the Pepsi? The toilet taking care of a bi-product produced by Pepsi and so I would think there could be an interest there maybe in what the Gates Foundation is doing here right?
Banks and companies use a lot of Quantitated Justifications today for that code that runs on servers 24/7 making life impacting decisions about all of us…and the the second bi-product here is another data disease that runs out there too with the data selling epidemic…is all the data created for sale going to have real decision making impact..no..but it will have value to allow banks and companies to create that vision so they can mine and analyze it and have you snowed that it all has value, it does not. A lot of it could easily be flushed down that Gates Foundation toilet for that matter (grin). This is where the marketing spin comes in that tells you every day that every stick of code has value, it does not. It could be pure bunk but if you are sold and sucked in, well look a the world today…a sold and sucked in world for a lot of stuff that is not real and has over inflated values. What good is that Pinterest toilet going to do me when I need a real toilet? So think of it that way as we need tangibles to live and exist and the technologies that make those better for us.
Banks and companies are hiring more and more Quants and Data Scientists today. You can look at the classifieds and see a serious uptake with the health insurance industry. They are all looking to find the non linear magic to make money versus looking for the magic that can make better tangibles for us. Here’s a good example of marketing, a new term calling folks “unbanked”..what the heck is that you might say…it’s marketing and the post below
goes into a bigger dissertation on privacy. It’s kind of a waste right now as everyone talks about it and yes does nothing with a process that would allow some kind of regulation..you need an index and nobody gets that. You issue licenses to group of people who drive cars, who get married, practice medicine, practice law, own a dog..and so on.
The inability of all who want privacy to leave this one little item out as far as creating a index to regulation is amazing..they can’t connect an IT infrastructure to beginning with stage one in creating an index to identify who need to be regulated and it’s a big mix, just like the mix of an index of those who drive cars. Data selling epidemic is a big cause and effect for lack of privacy. If the data wasn’t worth anything, would anyone bother?
If folks really want to do something, step one is important, otherwise accept the fact that there’s people and companies a lot smarter than you and put and shut up and face that the fact that privacy advocates can’t create a model, but just spend a lot of time with awareness, and it all ends right there. Banks and corporations have the code and use it to make big money while privacy folks can’t create a model to attack it. Even with the federalconsumer financial agency they are going after the low hanging fruit there too where computer code and math doesn’t have to be addressed, God forbid the words “computer code” gets in there (grin), and again the case of one more attorney, Richard Cordray stuck on verbiage while computer code runs hog ass wild.
The other side with banks and corporations has tons of models with selling our data for huge profits..so again there’s the consumer side with not understanding where the virtual software worlds get your money and we get left with the end results in the real world with errors, being denied access and money and so on. The money making data selling code runs hog ass wild out there and about the best you can expect anymore is reading yet one more article saying “we need privacy”. I get tired of the news myself and would like to see something done but privacy if folks can’t a built a model (or realize that the need one), thus so Wall Street and others continue to profit off our backs…I see it, but few others can get their heads around it so banks and corporations win again as nobody is asking about their proprietary money making computer code. 
It’s a great rip on consumers as the banks and corporations have “free labor” to fix the errors, and that would be us as we get stuck with no access when their errors attack us…Attack of the Killer Algorithms.
If you go back to video number one above, the humorous but relative example of how one guy is gay according the the data analytics and his television choices with machine learning data told him so. Not holding banks and corporations accountable for their code and and proprietary software is a crime. We will see more and more members of Congress with digital illiteracy meltdowns taking place as they just don’t get it…and seem to fight every element of learning and understanding this and that’s relative and seen all the the time when what we see in the news delegates down to some Senator reading Dr. Seuss and another playing poker on his cell phone during session…it’s over their heads and they don’t want to even think about going there and requiring responsibility for proprietary code that is at the root of a lot of our problems…but damn it makes for good soap opera news from DC, and we have that factor in there too with reporters now being on pay for performance too on how many clicks the stories get and this is important as it goes down to media profits on how many ads you are exposed to. Reporters work for the ad services that generate income for newspapers if you will as without other companies supporting them they need to have income from somewhere. 
Amazing I have pounded a drum as a positive effort to help Congress help themselves with restoring the office of technology assessment to help them.ignored…let’s just stay with verbiage as that’s easier for them, right? Code runs hog ass wild all around them..and we suffer.
So that’s part of the reason why the face of news is changing with reporters and it’s not their fault as they have the same old business model that healthcare tossed in there for doctors with pay for performance, and it not worked well there either. So with reporters needing those clicks to generate their income, they go furiously to the OMG and soap opera articles that bite you in the jugular and create commenting forums to get you to jump in there and add more data in the form of comments or taking surveys, etc.. Forbes has their media platform up for sale and about 2- to 25 percent of their articles are contributed and posted by bots. You can search the web and read about it, there’ no secrets there and the articles published by companies who pay them for some bot written news get mixed in with the reporter news. The ads on those pages now as I read is about 25% of their ad revenue so run bots and increase your ad revenue is a lot of what is going on and of course this impacts what you read in another way.
So I come back to my post I wrote before Davos..we have issues with folks not being able to determine where the virtual fantasy worlds have their value and how they intersect with the the real world. Right now virtual worlds of software and algorithms are sadly winning as people everywhere from CEOs to Congress to most of the folks at Davos can’t see the lines on where virtual worlds need to unite and the other side of where virtual worlds need to be removed from the damage they are doing to the real world.
Quants hired by banks and corporations create the models for these virtual worlds and they are good at it but they are not always accurate and the models that the banks and companies want may not be the accurate ones but rather the models that make money..and we have no clue what computer and formula codes their models hold, it’s all proprietary under lock and key…so again until the Pandora's box of models and codes gets unlocked and held accountable in the financial and healthcare worlds, those serving us as lawmakers just look like a bunch of suckers. They are so busy with their verbiage and not incorporating any IT Infrastructures in the laws that it make it’s a easy challenge for the Quants and Data Scientists to create new models that can circumvent and find loop holes with verbiage and yet can still run and make money with hiding risks, sure don’t change that portfolio, just change the risk as we have proprietary code and nobody gets to see it, so there’s the spot where you go write some nasty models and subsequent algorithms and code to keep it rolling.
Banks and corporations have huge arsenals of both Quants and Lawyers, all we get is lawyers on the the government side and the recent roll out of Healthcare.Gov is prime example of how there’s a huge fear to go there with getting folks on board that help them understand how the other side works as just any old executive head has enough data mechanics logic to handle such a project (grin), aka known as the “Sebelius Syndrome” and it lives in other agencies and with other politicians too. You better believe banks and corporations use both, that’s their profit, the proprietary compute code. If you read and listen, well they kind of brag about it too, the Bank of American CIO did. IT is business but around government it’s only verbiage and with Quants that are extremely talented, they know how to write proprietary code that nobody gets to see that can stay within the verbiage for sure. Here’s MasterCard wanting into your internet pants…do you need a credit persona….(grin)…heck no just quit selling my data and keep the fees low. Quants and marketing people create all of this and kind of sad too that with all the data breaches they are choosing to spend more money on marketing than security. I have been reading some articles other have written about where they are spending money.
You want to talk about inequality? Not changing as nobody attacks the code..good effort and talk by the President but code rigs the system..and again get lawyers out to word on that verbiage and let that code and those math models run hog ass wild.
Another great article from a journalist at Reuters who sees this as well. Felix Salmon can’t make it any clearer with this quote from his article…so there you go, models that encourage cheating…anyone ever going to ask about the models and code? Probably not, there’s too much verbiage to look at to think about this side that executes everything (grin).
“Once quants disrupt an industry, they often don’t know when to stop—and they create systems that encourage cheating.”
“On a managerial level, once the quants come into an industry and disrupt it, they often don’t know when to stop. They tend not to have decades of institutional knowledge about the field in which they have found themselves. And once they’re empowered, quants tend to create systems that favor something pretty close to cheating. As soon as managers pick a numerical metric as a way to measure whether they’re achieving their desired outcome, everybody starts maximizing that metric rather than doing the rest of their job—just as Campbell’s law predicts.”
“Campbell’s law: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making,” he wrote, “the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”
Back to the first video above and an excellent example of folks using data to drive themselves off the cliff with ignoring the real world and common sense…folks using GPS and they know there’s a cliff there but GPS says that’s the way go..you can read about how stupid people get with data…prime example where the virtual software world and the real world realities need to meet…again more of that quantitated justification stuff that fools you, literally here. Nothing personal but I have written about the Sebelius Syndrome here and she’s the perfect example and we hear in public from here with yet another foot in mouth episode all the time as she’s stuck there and and just has some really goofy off the wall perceptions and should be quiet sometimes.
This week on Twitter, some one caught another one saying we don’t’ need to learn from other countries on healthcare technologies, we have it all here in the US..you listen to that and say “WTF”…we all learn from everywhere..what a bit of stuck snob could be a translation there…so again she’s just out there broadcasting right and left and is one of those “who runs for the hills’ when math and code
comes up and she makes horrific statements and decisions as she want those algorithm fairies to run in and save they day and gets kind of ridiculous in public speeches when the fairies don’t do it for her (grin).
You absolutely have to roar when you hear of Sebelius asking the OIG to audit how the website project was done as the OIG needs Red Hat, Oracle, MarkLogic and several other technology experts to do that and last remember when Healthcare.Gov needed help.
The White House had to go find those folks, so again, another foot in mouth and lack of data mechanics logic thinking it was possible to pass that buck to the Office of the Inspector general when they don’t have the resources and one that really hacked off a lot of folks in the Health IT business was the big cheating letter that HHS and DOJ sent out, clearly out of some insecurity or again lack of logical thinking here. That kind of stuff is out there all over the place sadly with those who are stuck in the verbiage world and can’t bring themselves to get that IT infrastructures are attached almost laws out there. Shoot having Kurt DelBene work for Sebelius is kind of silly as the role should be reversed, she should be working for him by all means as Health IT has eaten 
her alive just as I said it would
But what do I know (grin)…I said way when she was nominated in 2009 that give it a few years and Health would eat her up…anyone want to dispute that? Who knows if Daschle would have paid his taxes if it would have been much different (grin). We have same issues at the SEC relating to the power of code and no challenges there either in areas where there should be with Mary Jo White choosing not to publicly keep putting her foot in her mouth with some whacked out perceptions that are not logical like we have at HHS.
I think next month at the big HIMSS Health IT convention the smart folks who understand how models and algorithms work will be over there lining up to get a copy of Dr. Halamka’s (Harvard Medical CIO & #1 expert in Health IT technologies) book he wrote with all his blog posts with great information and insight, rather than listening to what HHS might have to say at this point as they are struggling all over the place themselves with a lot of quantitated justifications and problems and errors with their analytics, although it’s the law and we all have to abide by what’s there of course. I don’t know why they don’t get heavy duty quants on board as the actuaries don’t have enough impact as most of them don’t write code and rather work with a lot of the tools created by quants and other software developers. Here’s the reality of Obamacare..it’s all about how that code and those algorithms play with each other along with your information that determines 
what kind of an experience you will have.
So coming full circle here digital illiteracy is killing us and the fact that nobody seems want to add accountability for proprietary code running out there is not going to change much as there’s the root of a lot of problems. It’s like this PLOS one Study stated and yes I have referred to it in jest a bit but the study is real and perhaps it’s all this physical pain that stands in the way here (grin). From what I am seeing there’s a lot of pain out there and if that’s the case with lawmakers and other executives in government, they might want to see if they can do something with their “Pain” as we feel it even more when accountability for propriety code in the financial and healthcare worlds is allowed to run hog ass wild…and we just can’t seem to expand any horizons out of the verbiage world out there for all to understand how they connect and basically keep inequality rolling ahead. I think even Bill Gates could maybe have an interest in this study…if the fear of math and pain is what’s seriously holding us back(grin).
“SUMMARY: When anticipating an upcoming math-task, the higher one’s math anxiety, the more one increases activity in regions associated with bodily threat detection and the experience of visceral pain itself (INSp). Given our findings were specific to cue-activity, 
it is not that math itself hurts; rather, merely the anticipation of math is painful. Anticipatory anxiety about math is grounded in the simulation of visceral threat and even pain. These results also provide a potential neural mechanism to explain the observation that HMAs tend to avoid math and math-related situations, which in turn can bias HMAs away from taking math classes or even entire math-related career paths”.
“Our data go beyond these results and suggest that even anticipating an unpleasant event is associated with activation of neural regions involved in pain processing.”
It’s that big math model and “code elephant” out there crapping in everyone’s living room it seems and you just can’t shovel up after it fast enough and even the Gate Foundation alone can’t create a toilet big enough to capture it all…time to wake up folks and come out of the quantified world of spoofing and think about what code on servers is doing out there for true accountability. BD
reading levels of 5th graders. 
justifications with a lot of marketing and a lot of computer code out there. I wrote about that a couple months ago and observing some of this long before the movie came out. I’m totally logical though and that’s what drives my thinking. Learning how to write code did that to me, not on purpose at all, just a by product. 
to be a problem as people don’t know when the virtual world leaves off and the real world begins and the same with the values. I watch people that go nuts on Twitter and re-tweet every stat or infographic they see…and some are good of course but you really need to be a skeptic on some of this. Good essay here on being a skeptic from a former Wall Street Quant who knows all about how financial models lie and hide risk. 
tell you how it works and you don’t listen, then you get stuck with not knowing how to apply and work with technologies in the real world. 
ct off the market, which occurs by just filing the lawsuit. So Is Sanofi buying time here with preventing Lilly from producing a generic version of the drug Lantus? 
the 
HHS that still seem to think that algorithm fairies exist and those examples have been numerous in the press the last couple of years (i.e. 
do you have in surveys? You can can a lot of what rolls out of Social Networks based on this…sorry folks for all of you that spend your time with queries and algorithms trying to sell it:) “Did Joe Biden embarrass himself”…
about with both employer and individual accounts. 
Everyone’s experience from all the way around is being based on how the algorithms come to play and interact with each other..and it’s a complex issue. I have been talking about that for quite a while now. 
integrating another software product they purchased a couple years back that cost the CEO his job? A couple years ago people were not looking at computer code but now they do. It’s either done and ready to go or not and you don’t project sales on work and code that is not ready to rock and roll as a lot can happen in the development process to cause delays, etc. 
The report suggests the post office could be selling pre-paid credit cards and why not, as JP Morgan is getting out of that business. This is interesting as the post office would have the opportunity to model and build their “own” infrastructure to handle this. 
The certification guide will still be provided as that appears to be a large part of the new focus with education efforts as well.
can’t rip the carpet out from underneath it as it stands today.
fairies are part of the issue and her perceptions. I had that with doctors all the time so I know it well and had to explain it is not as you perceive it, you think you do but you don’t really. This is the world we live in, the continuous rise and fall of the machines, insurers built most of the complexities as it would allow greater profits for them. 
technically tear the whole thing down and hope for a rebuild, could not be done what so ever by any sane contractor or integrator without a model for sure. 
the last few years. It’s kind of an interesting re-insurance program and it’s with same company as before. Vitality Re V Limited is a Cayman Island domiciled insurance company. This is an insurance linked security. 
have had both care and insurance under one umbrella and this the model that others are trying to go to. Outside of a closed system, trying to recreate that model is not easy either. Four hospitals in Northern California and two in the Los Angeles area will be sold as they are strapped for money. On the other side of the coin we have UPMC having excess profits of one billion a year with the 
s and find alternatives, if possible, to cope with the shortage, officials and executives said. Officials have not yet heard of any facilities running out of the solutions, “but we know that hospitals are still reporting that they may only have a few days supply,” said Valerie Jensen, associate director of the drug shortages program at the Food and Drug Administration. 
another company. Now we have this emerging into to the field of marketing. Next time you go for an interview, get a Phantom of the Opera mask to wear and torture the algorithms with only partial information (grin). 
shell, as it’s what happens inside or at off shore locations that’s running their businesses. As a matter of fact, not too long ago the CIO of Bank of America did an interview and nothing barred there, as he said “IT is their business”…if you need a quick translation of this “IT business = computer code and models” 
last few years with complexities and so has the software and the models. Way back when Microsoft and Bill Gates created windows, it was done to give us productivity and to allow everyone to fulfill the dream of having their own computer at home. Nobody back in the early days I don’t think could have ever dreamed the progression of what we have out there today as others jumped in the game and realized that software could go beyond just intelligence and productivity to actually “control” a lot of money and access. 
while though as I would compile my work into “propriety” code so nobody can test it and well guess what, “they have to believe me as I would have taken great pride to hide all the code and not make it accessible to anyone. 
when it comes to data value, I can’t eat a “tweet” for breakfast, nor can I drive a “like” to get to work and even more I can’t sit on a Pinterest “toilet” either. Sure there’s value with social networks but not to what you have been lead to believe of course as Wall Street and the Silicon Valley with all the hype tell you every day, these are the cat’s meow. They’re not, but they have a place and value but not where the “virtual value” has been placed today. It’s virtual as all you have is bunch of servers with data running a bunch of algorithms that connects to other data…zero in the tangible world.
how computer code and automation works in business so when stock goes down and the bots are in control…well you get the picture there and it brings me around to how computer code works and accountability today. 
goes into a bigger dissertation on privacy. It’s kind of a waste right now as everyone talks about it and yes does nothing with a process that would allow some kind of regulation..you need an index and nobody gets that. You issue licenses to group of people who drive cars, who get married, practice medicine, practice law, own a dog..and so on. 
It’s a great rip on consumers as the banks and corporations have “free labor” to fix the errors, and that would be us as we get stuck with no access when their errors attack us…
Amazing I have pounded a drum as a positive effort to help Congress help themselves with restoring the office of technology assessment to help them.ignored…
comes up and she makes horrific statements and decisions as she want those algorithm fairies to run in and save they day and gets kind of ridiculous in public speeches when the fairies don’t do it for her (grin). 
her alive just as I said it would 
what kind of an experience you will have. 