I wished you'd pushed me harder to read this book. I'm not finding any new information in it, but her style of communication is extremely novice-friendly. I've already inflicted it on three people and I'm only on Chapter 5.

Perhaps it's because I've read a bunch of Selingo, as well as Graeber and a few others. My window into the book is slightly different. For me, the takeaway has been that large problems are more likely to experience algorithmic solutions, and that the more privileged you are the less likely you are to encounter someone else's math-shaped policy. I take Ms. O'Neil's point to be that algorithms aren't inherently evil but they also aren't inherently magical.

I grew up alongside computers. "OK Cupid" when I was in 9th grade was "Answer these 20 multiple-choice questions, hand the sheet to 4H, pay a dollar and get your top five dating recommendations." It took rented server time to collate 1200 Meyers-Briggs responses and the results were on dot-matrix. So I guess it comes more naturally to me to note that normie humans have been a lot more skeptical about the wisdom of black box data, have inherently known that it is naturally used for oppression.

I think Facebook is teaching us all - in real time - how easily data is weaponized. That doesn't mean all data is a weapon, it means if you don't demand your counterparty show his work you're gonna get screwed.