Welcome to economics and beyond. I'm Rob Johnson president of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. I'm here today with Kathy O'Neill Who has founded an organization called O'Neill risk consulting and Algorithmic audit She is author of the book weapons of Math destruction that's MATH not MA double S and And she's working on a book about shame She has looked through her Blog called math babe at many many different phenomena and trying to understand how technology quantitative analysis can be used for both good and evil and I want to thank you for joining me today Kathy here at the Institute for New Economic Thinking The religion about evidence-based analysis needs to be explored and I think you can help us do that I'm really glad to be here So we're talking here in June of 2020 Where the COVID-19 panic is all around The pandemic has unleashed and unmasked many things and many concerns about society From the legitimacy of our health systems quite obviously to the legitimacy of how we're governed To trust in expertise and science And I'm curious What you see as you look out at the world as a mother of three sons What what causes you heartache? What do you See that should be done that isn't being done and How I guess in the end how are we gonna get out of this place Eric burden and the animals have a song We got to get out of this place If it's the last thing we ever do Girl, there's a better life for me and you so why don't we start with What where are you concerned in and how do we get out of this place? Wow? I like how you start with the softball questions um Yeah, I mean I have I actually wrote a list of things. I'm worried about the other day um And as he said I have three kids so they're top of mind My oldest is in college.  I have no idea um at the same time They're very very privileged. They've had very good educations So I worry about um deepening inequality. I know that the jobs report Even though it looked better last week Did not look better for people of color um, I think I I wrote an article from bloomberg the other day that Makes the causal argument not approved because you can almost never prove uh causal claims with Data, I mean you all you can make the argument and I I did that inequality mass incarceration and racism are actually Causing the epidemic and I know that sounds weird because we're so used to thinking of Uh, co vid as a biological phenomenon, but it's not only that it's also It's also a social. It's a function of our social systems and to the extent that we We need certain people vulnerable whether it's The the immigrant women of color working in multiple nursing homes because they can't get enough Pay to work in only one job And they are not giving enough PPE. So that's one of the reasons that our nursing homes are so vulnerable to co vid or whether it's because um The service workers are all living in much more cramped Circumstances multigenerally generationally And in the context of places that have a lot of mass incarceration. There's a lot going on there But the point is that those Those aspects of our culture make us more vulnerable to pandemics So I think about that another story outside of our country is singapore. I wrote early on how um I was I was interested in the singapore story because it was about contact tracing that that was how it was framed in the western media That they had this wonderfully successful technology that was tracing people It turns out that that's not the story heard an interview by the um prime minister or the president I forget What it's called of singapore which explained that it was in fact No, we interviewed people who were sick and we found out who they talked to and we called those people It was just old-fashioned detective work. I mean use the technology to tell us what it wasn't It wasn't bluetooth technology like we're trying to make it out to be And because of that Unbelievable effort they really tamped down on the on early cases of co vid and that was a success story Flash forward to like two months later, which was like a few weeks ago And singapore had a major problem of co vid cases that were uncontrolled Not in that original situation contacts but in their like guest worker dormitories where they have 20 guest worker men to a room from Bangladesh Um, and they don't have they don't have social distancing. They don't have contact tracing. They don't you know It was a completely different system And it caused an outbreak So there's there's lots of evidence to this effect But to answer your question to to circle back to your question What do I worry about I worry That we are so short-sighted that we won't realize that we are actually all in this together That that pandemics are going to happen more and more. We're more and more interconnected It's just one example of things that are going wrong But it is a sort of a powerful one this idea of the next pandemic And if we wanted to immunize ourselves as it were If we wanted to make ourselves less vulnerable as a country What we should be doing is addressing these things like inequality like mass incarceration like racism That seem impossibly difficult and they are very difficult But are actually 100 required in order to make ourselves healthier Yeah, I I worked for a little bit on a film As a producer it's called amazing grace about aretha franklin And I got involved in visiting prisons Uh in particular went to sing sing and I talked to a number of clergymen who were working there and Just by by heightening My awareness of that environment I was filled with what I'll call like a haunted dream When the COVID virus came out because I can't imagine how people Who are incarcerated are going to be treated like humans And that I I just can imagine COVID going like wildfire in the prisons I saw you had written a piece on racism and mass incarceration For bloomberg recently. I think it was about the fourth of june. I'm curious what What have you learned as you study? What was the group measure of justice I had in my notes? Uh, what what is what is being illuminated there? Yeah, they did a study and that was the piece I was referring to the causal argument That mass incarceration causes pandemics. So measures for justice did a study in the Milwaukee area And they looked at neighborhoods and the extent to which that neighborhood had been affected by mass incarceration So like the rated which um people in that neighborhood were Were incarcerated um, and what they found was that that Statistically was a better signal for COVID cases than any other signal that they could come up with like including race including poverty including Unemployment rates. So if you're looking for the single strongest indicator That people in this neighborhood aren't going to get sick. It is how how much are they imprisoned? And it's not simply and there's another by the way, there's there's other studies that I've been Made aware of since I wrote that there's many multiple studies that are studying this kind of thing some of them do simulations Of like the actual interaction between people who are leaving prison entering prison the prison guards sort of trying to track and estimate synthetically But relatively realistically how fast COVID can will spread in those conditions This is not what the Milwaukee study was doing. Milwaukee study was was making the case that that the neighborhoods in question have been made fragile and weak After for from years and years of of mass incarceration that it's not something that just happened because oh people who left prison came home and got us sick That's of of course also happening. That's a secondary effect though What we're talking about is that the neighborhoods themselves can be seen as healthy or sick And that the COVID has exposed if you will the the the underlying level of health of our society And so when we see Certain neighborhoods getting decimated You know not only because they're the high-risk patients as in the the nursing homes, but for other reasons We should think of that not not as like oh those people had Cobra morbidities and they should have taken care of themselves better No, we should see that as we should have taken care of those people That that is on us Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's an old uh Kind of thing that Is done in economics Called economic justice and without going on too long If you're paid more than your productivity, you're being subsidized If you're paid less than your productivity You're being exploited if they're right in line It's fair and that's called economic justice But there's a problem with this which is Let's say all that stuff is true. I'm using Uh, I'll I'll call it a maintained hypothesis But what if your productivity Doesn't produce the kind of compensation that allows you to have health and nutrition And a family and shelter and all the basic things Well the tendency in economics is to say well It's that person's fault Yeah, but when things like health systems when things like educational systems Are our social products? We are all Complicit In economic justice not being human justice You can't you can't just attribute it to the individual And so yeah, I just I think I think it's a dreadful escape hatch For people who don't want to Address collective responsibility You uh, I had a very interesting, uh There's a group up at mit that was my undergraduate, uh college was working on uh Basically biosecurity and One of the things they've been very concerned about Is what is it going to mean in terms of health risk? When the colleges are short on cash flow and want to reopen Which creates How would I say less Distancing and I don't like the word social distancing. I I think it's physical distancing We can remain socially integrated so I'll always Challenge that phrase. But but my point my point is if you have everybody go back to college In order to serve what I'll call the cash flow machine that sustains the university That's got to be dangerous For those people meaning both the faculty and the students. Oh, I've been thinking about this very very consistently Thank you for bringing it up. I mean Number one. I have two college sons um number two My mother is a professor My mother is a 78 year old computer science professor at umas boston Wow, and you could be sure that she's not willing to go in person to teach at umas boston anytime soon um And so the question becomes very clearly are well, are you going to fire her? Are you going to force her to retire? Are you going to pay her without having her teach? There's a certain like web Web programming course that only she ever teaches. She's very very nerdy by the way. Um, she's wonderful. You should have her on too um, and uh at the same time like I think the way I think of it is that there's kind of three tiers of colleges And there's like that top tier which is to say like harvard Where they have well first of all, they have an endowment that they could be spending on like making the dorms much less dense If they really wanted to they could just you know rent out all of cambridge if they felt like it They claim that their endowments are tied up in other in other Other funds which which is kind of ironic since you know, you think of you think of an endowment as a buffer for hard times But I guess not Um, but really I would say that beyond their endowment which is an asset of theirs And of course the real estate that they own which is a huge asset of theirs Their faculty is their largest asset And they really cannot afford to put their faculty at risk And their faculty is old by the way. I mean and harvard is kind of an extreme outlier on the spectrum But it's not really in the sense that what we've had over the last 40 years is we've had The new faculty coming in at at older ages, but you know young people but you know slightly older and older as we have um, you know At least in mathematics for example had to take more and more postdocs before before we could land a professorship So you have the professors coming in they keep on staying young maybe getting a little bit older And in the meantime, you just the faculty don't retire the way they used to so you have the faculty remaining as long as possible So the average age of faculty As in the lead institute is is very high. Um, so they are very much at risk and then you have the middle tier Um colleges that I think are probably the most at risk Which are these these colleges without an endowment That really truly rely as you say on the tuition and they simply cannot function without it And so for them, this is an existential question. If they don't open they will have to close forever And there's going to be a lot of closures But there's also going to be a lot as you point out of Schools that are doing taking risk taking risk with both their students and their faculty Because they again it's essential and then there's a third tier of like Colleges that are commuter colleges. Um, which Um, which will have a little bit of an easier time of it I think because they will say hey what we are offering you is mostly Education not this sort of holistic social opportunistic type of um experience and then they they will be able to um segue into I think online classes more or smaller classes or you know And one part of that is because they they they will less they will have fewer students who actually live on campus So they'll have fewer sort of litigious Fears of of like parents who get um who sue because their kids got sick or brought home some sickness or something like that So I really think there are three different problems to solve here And my guess is that heart the the top elite schools will just um They'll do whatever they need to do. They'll have to spend some of their endowment, but they'll survive They'll protect their faculty the middle schools. I think will be decimated I know people who sit on the boards of many of what I'll call the liberal arts schools Like my son went to Pomona Friend of mine is involved with Oberlin Bard college in that tier And they seem to be under a great deal of stress My mother's school by the U. S. Boston is definitely in the third tier their commuter And she will be teaching online. I'm very sure of it But yeah, I worry my my son my son's well my yeah, my son's go to middle tier schools. So I'm worried when uh When you talk about that I've seen something particularly in the Boston globe uh about What do you mean we're all going to stay home and you're going to charge me full tuition Yeah, uh is is kind of the meta question Yeah, I actually wrote a blog uh wrote a Bloomberg call about this. I called it a game of chicken My theory is that most of these schools aren't going to really tell the truth to the parents and to the students until after the first big chunk of tuition has been paid August 1st and And or they're that's the game of chicken. They want that tuition deposit And the students want to know well, what's the situation? I don't want to come if you're not offering me this holistic experience And so I'm the question the big question for me is like are the students going to balk at paying that without knowing what they're getting into Or the parents or are is there going to be a negotiation on price? And I actually think there will be a negotiation on price for many of these schools I think they're going to figure out like we're going to lower the price to try to keep you here and it's going to suck for our like budget, but We're going to have to we're going to have to suck it up try to survive hold our breath for a year Yeah, it's I since I've seen a lot of articles in the united kingdom as well that are Portending this kind of stress and this tension Between what you might call the family's paying tuition and the services that can be provided in light of the pandemic. Yeah the What have in going back to prisons for a minute. Yeah Um Is there a movement afoot to let more people out of prison? Is there data now on on what's happening there? I'm really glad you asked that it's There are a few different suggestions and some of them are very problematic and sort of go to the very heart of my first book weapons of mass destruction Because they're trying to use what they're calling risk scores to decide who to let out This was you know, I'm not sure how many people actually got let out under this this proposed system But what I find so fascinating about it almost a philosophical level is what they mean by risk What do they mean by risk? Of course when you hear people are being let out depending on their risk level of prison because of covid you automatically or you'd be you'd be excused for automatically going to the assumption that High risk means people who will probably need hospitalization if they get sick But that's not at all what they mean what they mean is um crime risk And crime risk is of that's what they call it That's the term of art. It is not at all a crime risk. By the way, I'm going to tell you I'm going to correct the record as I always do because it's so problematic. It's so racist in particular Crime risk scores are algorithms and I'm an I'm an algorithm expert and And what I mean by that is I can actually I have like explain algorithms in a way that is understandable Whereas people who claim to be algorithmic experts Love to make make it sound like it's impossible to understand. It's not impossible to understand I'm going to explain this to your listeners really quickly algorithms Propagate the past they look for patterns in the past and then they Predict that the the pattern will repeat and in particular they look for patterns of initial conditions that led to success Where the success has to be very explicitly defined and they say people like you Were successful other people like you were not successful and what they do when they are Actually trying to predict for a new person they look at that person They say oh We're going to look for people who are close to you and there has to be some definition of what it means to be like Someone else or so so what does it mean to be close? And then we're going to look at examples of people that were like you were like these initial conditions Um and what happened to them? Were they successful or not if you know seven out of ten with them were successful Then we're going to give you a sign you a probability of seventy percent that you will be successful But just i'm just thinking it i'm just repeating myself to say that what all an algorithm does Is it looks for Similar type of examples in the past what which of these led to success or not? And so now we're going to tell you what a crime risk score actually does a crime risk score predicts who will be arrested People like you will be arrested other people like you will not be arrested Okay, so just thought experiment. What do you think is predictive of being arrested in this country? And the answers are Poverty mental health status Addiction status and race Maybe race first they don't actually ask the race In the questionnaires that these crime risk scores are using They only use proxies for race. They use things like did you graduate from high school? Were you suspended in high school? Do you have a job? Have you been married? Do you have gang friends and by the way gang friends? Is is a construction that is completely Defined by the police department of who used who's a gang member and who's not and you might expect and you will Be right that it is a very racialized Then they do ask the question. Do you have a mental health problem? Have you ever been addicted to drugs? Basically in all sorts of poverty proxies, so they're they're basically profiling somebody For their likelihood of being profiled by the police or otherwise arrested by the police So that's what a crime risk score is measuring and I just wanted Reiterate that this is not Actually measuring a criminality the inherent criminality of a human like unless you actually think that somebody who has untreated mental health problems is a criminal Then okay that we'll have another discussion But what we're really measuring and we're doing a pretty good job of it actually this is not an inaccurate algorithm we're doing a pretty good job of predicting what the police will do But not what the criminality of a human being is And yet those crime risk scores are used to sentence people to longer in prison or not To give people parole or to deny parole and to keep people incarcerated pre-trial So these crime risk scores are are used as if they are in fact measuring the criminality of somebody Let somebody with a higher score deserves to be longer in prison Whereas I would argue that somebody with a higher score deserves more support Like for example mental health support or addiction treatment It's really a reflection of All of our problems and all of the problems that we've been seeing in protests this the last couple weeks All of those problems that we have been just shifting on to the police force as if they would be better Dealing with mental health problems than like social workers or actual therapists We've just been giving that problem to the police because we don't want to deal with it as a society What's happened is that they've been embedded in these algorithms and these algorithms Believe it or not are the ones that are deciding who gets to go home during covid from prison Who gets to go home as people who are low risk? Not the people that are high risk because that again, there's a double There's a double meaning here and the high risk scores Are interpreted as people who are dangerous to society Um, so those people who are blacker poorer at worse mental health and worse addiction status Are being kept in prison Um, even if they're old by the way, one of the things that absolutely Enrages me about this all of it enrages me, but one of the things that enrages me is that they're static So a 17 year old who had an impulsive episode it goes to prison for it and is kept in prison for 40 years When they're when they're 57 their score is the same as when they were 17 Even though we we have much better information And know that 57 year olds just do not commit crimes at the same rate as 17 year olds It's just completely ridiculous, but the the point i'm trying to make is It is in fact not at all measuring who is at higher risk for covid if we were to do that If i if i were to ask by the a prison system to develop a covid risk score to decide who gets to leave prison It would actually be almost the opposite Of what i just described because as we know people of color are at much higher risk Of covid and have higher mortality rates at least that's what the data is telling us Although we can talk another conversation about covid data and how much we can't trust it Um, which is a lot, but the point is that these risk scores. It's like it's a philosophical nightmare to say to hear that oh, we're we're letting people out of prison based on risk and i'm like what risk The wrong risk the risk that they will be they will be harassed And arrested by cops yeah, the uh, I i'm taking notes here listening to your uh Your different perspectives and try to relate it to uh The first is the notion What sti sti now i understand you have a phd in mathematics from harvard yourself So you're not outside looking in you you've been down into The boiler room of how mathematics works in and What economists or econometricians call ergodic stability? Meaning when you analyze something With data you presume a stable structure whereby the past Is prologue That you can count on that And I think in some of the natural sciences One can employ such a thing like when you drop a tennis ball off a 15-story building Adjusting for the wind you get how many seconds it takes to hit the ground and it's Reasonably stable but You worked I worked in the hedge fund industry. I worked with george soros's firm for years and and you worked With de shaw I recall The idea that statistical analysis of subjective psychological expectations embodied in price Is ergodically stable is absurd It's used as a parable So that you can say government doesn't need to supervise Analyze constrain or what have you so that people Can do what they want in the financial sector and then Which amount I'll give all kinds of campaign contributions and things to make sure they Have that unbridled and unrestricted status But the idea that it's justified because Value at risk and all these things are stable And predictable Is not science. It's scientism And what they call in economics radical uncertainty meaning The outcomes are unknowable and the probabilities are unassignable Is how would I say uh It's hard for people in the quantitative science who want to show that their methods do help To accept that And but it's a kind of form of demagoguery. It's a kind of form of Of what you might call pretending and know what you don't And I can see that In this kind of social dynamics that people At times may Yorn for certainty when they're anxious But it doesn't mean you can provide them that certainty Because the the systems are not structurally stable, particularly when they involve subjective human psychology and object and subject being How do you say the same thing? So I don't And then I you know taking this to the levels of poverty mental health addiction and race What we do in race is quite inhuman But when society Creates poverty. They're creating the risk And not wanting to pay the price of making society safer But anyway, I've been talking for a bit here, but but I just some I'm trying to bounce this off of what my economics audience is familiar with and But you're really cutting right into it And let me respond to you I mean, I I have a name for this in my book. I refer to it as the authority of the inscrutable Which we which we use as quants. I mean, I saw that during the crisis when I worked at hedge fund I did to yasha and then by the way, I have a story for you I I quit to yasha and I went to risk metrics because I was still under the impression that we could do better if we just did better math And I worked for value at risk firm the risk metrics I've invented that Was that the firm that came out of jp morgan? Yes. Yeah So we did we did the risk portfolio for all of the big banks and many of the hedge funds and And in particular, I was assigned to revamp the credit default swap risk model Um, and guess what? Um, I found that the assumed return distribution was normal Because everything was that way in that model And so I invented a An alternative assumption for credit default swaps because the credit market was far from normal It was much more like double exponential, which is to say much more fat-tailed And I saw that because by looking empirically at the data and again, like I'm not claiming that I we can really Really tell in advance what's happening, but you can do better than stupid assumptions And so I introduced this new way of looking at credit default swap risk And guess what happened rob? That they didn't want to hear it because guess what what it said It said that if you have a local measurement of volatility You cannot assume that you that the market's not going to move because this is a very very Fat-tailed distribution that credit default swaps actually follow And it's and a local measurement of small volatility doesn't keep you safe So your risk is much bigger than it seems with the old model So why don't you move to my bigger my my new model and be honest about your credit default swap risk? And as you can imagine nobody wanted to be honest about their credit default swap risk Because that's not the game that we're playing when we work in hedge funds events We want to maximize Our returns and minimize our risk because that improves our sharp ratio, which is how we get our our bonuses Long story short like I am both absolutely with you that people hide behind this authority of mathematics the authority of science It's not really science Um, we we don't like uncertainty. So we just pretend that things are explainable using these models In fact, I'll go further. I I think most of the examples of my book weapons of math destruction I could argue our Deft political moves to avoid a difficult conversation A difficult conversation about race about criminality what we why we have prisons a difficult conversation about Whether a teacher is a good teacher because it's hard to agree on what it means to be a good teacher So we don't want to have this conversation. So we replace those conversations with these sort of clean looking hygienic sanitized algorithms Where we don't explain them and we hide behind their authority Mm-hmm Yeah, there's an old article from the 1920s Called the dismal science H. L. Menken who was kind of a gadfly Wrote about it and he said in essence I think the only people I trust Less than theologians are economists Because they are not free They use their methods and they use the kind of dance or ritual of their methods to intimidate Create a sense of awe But he said the problem is The consequences of your analysis vis-a-vis powerful people and institutions are something that you could anticipate And therefore when you analyze something honestly You may be which my call silent and not express it if it has those ramifications for your career Yeah, where on the other hand if you're reinforcing The legitimacy of power etc You're you're online for promotions and chairs and high level government positions and for the ambitious we uh Who have those yearnings They're not really providing which you might call analysis for the public good And I find this uh very haunting that this man wrote this so lucidly and he was not A left-wing guy or anything. He was just saying You've got to look at the contextual process in which analysis is done In the incentive systems around the people doing it to understand and I I've said this a couple times one of my board members is julian tett Very fine writer for the financial times. Who's a phd in cultural anthropology? And at the onset of inet she said to me I said julian, what should I do? We had lunch and she said rob as an anthropologist. I'm gonna tell you Go out And study the silences because if you have the map of what's not said You'll understand the structure of power that your profession is grappling with I just wrote an essay today Uh, and I if my editor just sent me an edited version while we were speaking on Missing data and and I I think I called it. Well, he always changes the title, but I called it something like um dangerous Line spots because I think the danger in data sets almost always lurks in the blind spot And whether that's police accountability data like You know, we just saw Cuomo say that he'd be willing to sign a repeal of 50a which allows police personnel records and disciplinary records to be secret um Or badge numbers You know badge numbers that were being hidden during the protests like all sorts of the powerful protect their data It is the powerless whose data gets scraped Yes There's a famous old historian named e.h. Carr And he wrote a lot about the period between the first and second world war including the depression called the 20 years crisis his most famous book And in that book Oh, no, excuse me in another book that he writes about the methodology of being a historian. It's called what is history? He says facts are like sacks You got to put something in them or they don't stand up And the idea that there isn't an interpretive dimension of what facts you collect what facts you focus on Or how you interpret them Uh has this What you might call false consciousness of being value free. Yes and this is uh This is haunting to me Because we went from a time Call it prior to adam smith's wealth of nations 1770s Where the church got in trouble by being a partner with the oppressors the landed era stochracy the feudal lords and we moved away through the industrial revolution to a form of governance Where moral and ethical discourse was the currency or the language of policymaking to creating a value free scientific technocratic mode Uh How they say of expression and and I can give people a little bit of slack Which is if the church was really corrupt and the population knows it You go in and talk moral and ethical language and they think he's part of the wrong team And if the earnest people trying to do better, but I think the staleness Of this moral and ethical Discourse being absent and pretending these are all objective value free things is very very dangerous and things in your work Particularly like we were just talking about with the The prisons and who should be let out so these these are these are just immersed In human values and the tension between economic process money And human safety is another dimension that You know like the closing of the universities or not. There's they're just enormous moral and ethical issues. Yes Hiding in plain sight right now Yeah, I sometimes think that science You know often Is exactly what you just described. It's sort of like a way of pretending We don't have we don't it doesn't come down to an ethical or moral choice And I feel like I'm you know, I'm like I'm lucky. I'm very lucky Because I do have a phd in math I have learned data science like I can see that the the veneer of sophistication around a lot of these algorithms Is just that it's it's a veneer. It's hiding A much more interesting and more critical conversation And that's one of the reasons I you know I decided to quit to quit my job and and to go on this quest of sort of trying to get people to to question To to discard blind faith in in in this technology. I think it's I think by the way that has largely been settled I I think people are much less Uh, you know, they're they're much less trusting of algorithms and I'm glad to see it. Of course That begs the question Um, what what next, you know, like can we um, can we do better? and because after all like To back up a little bit the karma scores were introduced Because judges were known to be racist and classists. They were known to throw throw the book at poor and darker people and so the question We need to ask ourselves next is like well if we can't use algorithms to solve all our problems and make things fair What can can we do? We can't go back to humans Or maybe we can but I don't I don't know and so one of the things I've been working on Because I I'm a hopeful person believe it or not. I might sound like I'm only angry and sometimes I do feel that way but I always want there to be a hope and So that's that brings me to my algorithmic auditing work where I I really do what I find is that algorithms Are inherently are racist because they're trained on historical racist data But we can actually adjust for that. We don't have to accept whatever comes out hope off we can Just as just as pollsters account for the fact that they didn't really talk to enough people of a certain demographic and so they can Like reweight the answers that they have to to sort of Create a mosaic that is more realistic to the populace. We can do that as well Whereas it's not we don't particularly want a realistic picture. What we want is probably For algorithms to follow the values that we state the the stated values Our firm of our society or what have you now? What what have I just described? I've described that algorithms should follow values Which is to say that the conversation around values has to come first and that is the difficult conversation I was referring to earlier. We must actually have That conversation in order to make the algorithms work well in particular for prisons we have to actually decide what prisons are for And if we decide that prisons are To you know to ruin people's lives and to especially ruin poor people's lives and people of color Then we're doing great But if we have a better View a better vision Then we can we can use algorithms. We can use data. We can actually theoretically at least Do that we can optimize to success where success actually is an agreed upon definition of success rather than what we're doing Which is actually extremely destructive I uh How would I say I think you just in that last passage you just spelled the notion that you're only angry very convincingly Uh, I think you have a very constructive Sensibility And I want to move a little bit now in the direction of the book On shame that you are working on because in some level Economists act like You have what are called preferences And the preferences are kind of icy and they're They're just there rational And they're rational and they're structural And then with that you Build something from preferences called demand and then the market serves Your needs And in sometimes In some circles it's kind of romanticized the market becomes deified Yeah, but what concerns me Is that I see an awful lot of energy being spent Trying to shape Your values and your preferences Exactly You know you go to business school. They don't let you not take marketing So they obviously think persuasion is in play And so I I'm I guess I'm coming at the notion of shame Yeah, which is you trying to impart to people What is right and wrong to think and How would I say that you will be rewarded or penalized For expressing Things that are what you might call a braid those structures But Tell me tell me what inspired you to write a book on shame. Okay. Well, yeah Lots and lots of responses. I'm having all at the same time. I'll try to sort them through So the first thing is I actually was inspired To write this book because Because I'm always I'm fascinated by power And what I saw was a a connection between two events that seemed very different to me But were connected by shame By the power of shame. So the first one was Um, I was talking to a teacher who had been fired based on what's called the value added model score And this is from my first book It was it was a terrible so-called teacher accountability tool I put that in air quotes, which was itself not accountable It was you should think of it as a random number generator because it really was almost a random number generator It was part of the no child left behind thing and it was awful And it was also inexplicable and high stakes because again teachers got fired and I was asking this teacher You know What well, what how does it work? And they and their answer was why I tried to find out but they told me it's math. You wouldn't understand it And I was like, oh my god like That would never work on me But what I realized was like that is math shaming that was in a very explicit Shame tactic and it was in fact the same thing we were talking about earlier It's it's an authority of the inscrutable. You're not smart enough to understand this is too complicated for you In fact, of course your job on the line So you have every right especially as a civil servant to know exactly what how it works But this line was given not just to my friend This teacher but to many many teachers. It was a common tactic. It was in fact probably Um a suggested deployed tactic. So that's the first story and the second story is I I'm an overweight woman.  I've always been fat. I Came to terms with being fat after a lots and lots of fat shaming as a child But I you know got married had three beautiful kids felt good about myself Then my my older brother was diagnosed with diabetes my father You know passed away recently and for diabetic reasons I really don't want diabetes and I don't I didn't have diabetes But I was finding myself You know with all the risk factors for diabetes and I'm I was gaining weight and having trouble exercising Which I knew was like the only real way I could avoid it. Anyway, long story short. I decided to get a A bariatric surgery, which by the way, I will be writing about in my shame book Unbelievable miraculous surgery, which I did end up getting But the the hoops I had to climb through Rob to get this surgery and the reactions I got from people Because again, I I didn't feel particularly fat shamed at that point in my life But it all reoccurred like I got fat shamed explicitly multiple times Because I wanted to get this surgery Even by fat friends of mine who are like, oh if I ever lose weight, I'm going to do it The honest way, you know, there's all I can't even tell you it's just like it's actually outrageous Anyway, so it really the power of that fat shame over me, which I thought I had been ignored to It was not I was not I was very vulnerable to it because shame is powerful And so it was like that was the connection. I was like, wait a second I thought my getting a surgery had nothing to do with algorithms But what the commonality is that the power of shame is unbelievably potent and it has nothing to do with the economic rational choice theory And so the second point I wanted to make in response to your Your references to economics is like Economists, I I think they cheat and I'm not an economist, but you know, I think they cheat I think they basically say We believe that you know people's preferences are as they are and then we decide that the value of something is how much people are willing to pay for it And like it's all like a circular argument. Um, so they never actually have to discuss value um, and to that point like Mark and you also mentioned marketing and I'm being a slightly inarticulate But I think it'll come together at the end In business school, they tell you how to market things. They tell you how to persuade But one of the things one of the most sort of historically Winning ways of persuading someone is shaming them So there was this effort for example by a soap or shaving company to get Japanese women To be ashamed of their hair Because they weren't buying enough razors So they need to make women ashamed of the hair on their legs So that they'd buy more razors and it worked That is a persuasion But it so so then women these Japanese women were like, oh, I should go buy a lot of razors because of my shameful hair Is that Does that mean those razors were suddenly worth more because they're there's the shame had been increased into buying them They didn't need those razors in the first place, but because they felt shame they started buying them Do you see what I'm saying here? It's like a really aesthetic manufactured concept of value Which means for me that it actually has has no value Mm-hmm.  It makes you fashionable or cool or whatever at one point in time. Yes It is so I can say and there's like there's a lot of examples like that.  If the structure of society makes you Feel anxious feel Like how would I say you want to turn off the fear? You can be very vulnerable to all of this pressures psychological pressures related to values and behavior. Okay, please so So potent because it makes you question your own value as you say it makes you question your value as human It is so potent that it creates a kind of cognitive dissonance and and there's nothing that Makes us do more crazy impulsive things than than cognitive I mean my theory is that most of the Conspiracy theories that are pushed around are Almost directly due to this cognitive dissonance. We need a new set of facts Going back to the question of what is what is a fact? We need a new set of facts so that It, you know, so that it wasn't in an unacceptable behavior inappropriate behavior for those cops to push down that 75 year old peace protester Let's make it that he's a member of antifa so that he was the bully You know, that's that's a cognitive dissonance because we were we're accusing the police of being Doing something shameful having shameful behavior and the people who want to protect that Assumption that police aren't shameful They have to build an entire universe of alternative facts in order to make that case the Structure you shared with me as we were preparing of the different types Of shame. I remember there were three types that you Illuminated and sort of Reacting to authority Talking down But why don't you why don't you elaborate for audience on on all three? Yeah, I well Right. Um, I by the way haven't finished the book yet. Um, so I I'm not even sure when it'll come out But like maybe we'll come back we'll come back and do another session when the book's ready to go I guarantee and I hope we still you know, I still have the same opinions about shame by by that But yeah, I have three different types of shame and called punching down Punching up and punching nowhere And punching up as you say is sort of holding powerful to account And by the way, you know, you could you know If you heard me talk about shame in the last 20 minutes You might have assumed that I think of shame is a bad thing. No shame is an essential tool But like algorithms, it's a tool that could be bad or could be good. It depends on how we use it Sometimes I when I with with respect to algorithms people say, well, how do I know if an algorithm is good or bad? You know, it's it's very contextual a given algorithm could be used for good or used for bad Um, but if it but the general way I think about it is if it makes unlucky people Unluckier and makes lucky people luckier That's probably the wrong way to do it.  You have, you know, and you're in a position To do that and we want we're going to watch you and we want you to do better And so that's sort of like every civil rights movement ever That was punching up because it's holding powerful people to account And then finally there's punching nowhere Which is when you're trying to punt when you're trying to shame people and correct them with respect to a norm that they don't even agree to So when we try to shame white supremacists for racism It's punching nowhere because they are they don't actually agree to the norm that racism racism is bad That is actually the opposite of what they think I make the case that punching nowhere is not only useless. It is actually counterproductive in the book Uh Well, Kathy you've covered on an awful lot of ground today your organization It's called orca and I must say I had a whale of a good time I think you're gonna have to come back because there's so much more to explore but Everybody should read weapons of bad destruction and wait with baited breath for your book on shame Thank you very much. Let's uh, let's talk again soon and uh, but mostly thank you for today Thank you And check out more from the institute for new economic thinking at inet economics dot org


The purpose of today's news conference and supportive rally is to draw attention to the fact that the silent majority of British Columbians actually favor responsible and sustainable resource development. Well today I think you saw from communities who have really been supportive of moving a liquefied natural gas industry forward in the province. I think that today you saw them come here to Victoria, the steps of the legislature, to share their gratitude first of all for the federal government decision, but also to recognize the importance of well-paying, family-supporting jobs that this industry could bring, especially to the Northeast. So from our perspective it's a chance for them to tell their story about resource extraction, how well we do it, and the validation that in fact the federal government decision has given them.


Joseph West lives in Tucson, Arizona with his three children and his partner Catherine Kincaid. Together they own and operate private group psychotherapy practices in both Tucson and Salt Lake City. This the practice specializes in psychedelic integration and psychedelic assisted therapies. Joseph is passionate about creating safe contexts for the use and exploration of sacred medicines and technologies both natural and synthetic. In past years Joseph spent time working as a real estate professional, an accountant, a stay-at-home parent, and a sociologist. His social scientific research on early Mormon history was published in the journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. Joseph is a co-founding member of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. Joseph West. Psychedelic medicine should be understood as a sacred technology and as a relatively safe and contextually reliable means to the experience of personal revelation understood in terms of Mormon belief and discourse. Stepping back for a moment to frame the talk in terms of the conference theme I want to talk about Joseph Smith and the problem of centralized authority and centralized access to revelation from God. I begin with a throwback reference to a talk given in 2013 at this conference by Don Bradley called Joseph Smith and the Technologies of Seership where Bradley argued that Joseph Smith understood his seer stones as technological tools. I jump off here because for one reason is that it introduces the idea of technologically enabled access to the divine which I'd like to say more about later and second the use of seer stones in early Mormon history illustrates and demonstrates how the problem of centralized authority began as a problem of decentralized access to revelation and I'm referring here to the story of Hiram Page who in 1830 the year the church is organized shows up with his own seer stone and was receiving alternative revelations to Joseph Smith and in response Smith announces that he had received revelation which basically stated that he's the only one authorized to receive revelation and so this story kind of illustrates the problem. Joseph Smith's solution to the problem was to centralize access to communal revelation and to mandate the pursuit of personal revelation in the affirmation of that which is revealed to the authoritative figure. Okay so revelation in Mormon theology I want to talk briefly about this concept and say there's two key ingredients to the experience of revelation. First is a non-ordinary state of consciousness. This is a term that psychologists use sometimes but I give some examples from the scriptures of instances of revelation that kind of illustrate that and then the second thing and more important that I want to talk about is this phrase from John the Revelator the spirit of revelation is the testimony of Jesus and the testimony of Jesus I assert should be understood as a disposition towards faith in the atonement of Christ where the atonement of Christ is understood in authentically Mormon terms to refer to the work we do when we take the name of Christ upon ourselves and participate in the labor of reconciling reconciling conflicting desires towards greater mutual fulfillment and joy seeking to knit our hearts together in unity and love one towards another as it's put in Mosiah 18. The testimony of Jesus or disposition towards faith in the atonement of Christ is an enabling factor that enables creative vision of possible futures in which conflicting desires are reconciled. Okay and just related I want to read one part this is just one part of the Mormon transhumanist affirmation. We are disciples of the gospel of Jesus Christ which is to trust in change toward and fully immerse our bodies and minds in the role of Christ to become compassionate creators as exemplified and invited by Jesus. Okay that's all the theology for now. I want to talk about psychedelics. What are psychedelics? The term psychedelic is translated to mean soul or mind revealing. It's usually it's a chemical substance a medicine that's ingested in somewhere or another and usually the intent is to induce a non-ordinary state of consciousness. Other names like hallucinogens, plant medicines and entheogens. An entheogen means generating the divine within and I did want to give us a little bit of a sense of what's some practical things. At our practice we offer psychedelic integration services which is when clients integrate past psychedelic experience with a trained or licensed therapist and then there's also psychedelic assisted therapies which is when clients integrate ingest the medicine with practitioners and the only psychedelic assisted therapy that we offer currently is ketamine due to legalities but there's there's all kinds of research and trials on a psilocybin and MDMA and and we use the protocols that are developed in this research you know in what we're doing and kind of like how we do the the therapy. Okay some research findings where is the clock okay here we go. So okay there's so there's too much research to highlight but I'm gonna just give a couple highlights of the research on the use of side psychedelic medicine for the betterment of well people so there's lots of research about how psychedelics can treat extreme conditions like PTSD and trauma but I'm talking about that's a term that's used in advocacy is psychedelic medicine for the betterment of well people and I want to plug this talk if you wanted to look it up it's an hour long but the statistics that I get mostly come from this it's a very recent and this is what I want to say about that. So the the study that I'm going to talk about is over you over several years has been eventually been hundreds of participants what he calls healthy volunteers I'm sure that's like a psychological profile and they they administer the medicine which is psilocybin they you kind of like lay there on a couch or a comfortable chair with an eye mask and headphones and then you have this experience and most of the data they're collecting is it so it's a very internal experience this particular research and the data they're collecting is like surveys after the fact okay and so I want to just highlight my some of my favorite findings in the majority of healthy persons studied psilocybin occasion mystical type experiences associated with enduring positive changes in attitudes mood and behavior one month after the initial trial 78% of participants reported that it was among the five most personally meaningful experiences of their lives 83% reported that it was among the top five most spiritually meaningful experiences of their lives so this is after a month of processing it and they still think this and these positive effects are sustained in most subjects for at least 14 months probably longer and then this is kind of like a side little statistic but it's one of my favorites that I that I found which is the majority of persons who go into this this ceremony or study identifying as atheists no longer identify as atheists one month after having the experience so that gives me kind of like a slight shodden Freud feeling for my atheist friends if you're interested in retaining your atheist identity I you should avoid psychedelic medicine but anyway okay so we've talked about theological underpinnings and research findings and I'd like to tie the theology and science together by describing what scientists think is happening in the brain during the psychedelic experience think about the discussion on revelation revelation is the experience of a non-ordinary revelation is the experience of a non-ordinary state of consciousness in which practical clarity towards atonement with and by Christ is attained okay so in the brain there's a part of the brain called the default mode network and the default mode network plays a crucial role in the development of social functionality the perception of time remembering the past and simulating the future and the separation of self and other within the default mode network is the singulate cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex which are both rich in serotonin receptors and which also happen to be the post-synaptic site of the psychedelic activation under the influence of a psychedelic these two areas do something called decoupling under acute psych psychedelic doses when these two areas within the default mode network lose integrity or decouple from each other the subject the subjective experience generally falls into a category some scientists call oceanic boundlessness which is a feeling of oneness that refers to the dissolution of ego boundaries and associated with positive emotions ranging from heightened mood to sublime happiness and serenity or grandiosity this sense of oceanic boundlessness is also part and parcel of the mystical experience which has been defined by psychedelic scientists according to various criteria including a sense of oneness transcendence of time and space and no edit quality in a deeply felt positive mood okay so the non the non ordinary state of consciousness normally attained through psilocybin use in this case psychedelic use is just by the nature of the experience conducive to what I was talking about this this the testimony of Jesus or this disposition towards faith in Christ which enables a creative vision of the future and I'm saying that's kind of what revolution revelation is so let's see oh well it's just my last slide it's not going but there we go okay in conclusion Mormonism mandates the pursuit of personal revelation as an answer to the problem of centralized community communal authority psychedelic medicine offers a safe and reliable means of experiencing deeply revelatory states of consciousness Mormons interested in receiving either personal or communally authoritative revelation should therefore understand psychedelic medicine as a sacred technology a tool that can be used in the quest to understand the divine thank you hello hello thank you Joseph would you also include less sexy psychedelic medications like antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications and bipolar medications in this realm or do you have I don't want to use a nasty word like puritanical but like a purity problem with those types of things because they're not as natural oh well I'm a natural versus synthetic no I don't think they're I don't there is a there's a lot of people that think the natural substances like mushrooms that psilocybin is like the the pure thing and the synthesized things like LSD is not I'm I don't feel that way but in terms of the antidepressants and other kinds of medications I think that those aren't defined those don't fall under the scope of the definition of psychedelic medicine hallucinogenic there's a couple things I should probably know some of the list be able to list some of the features but but yeah so no I don't think that antidepressants are considered psychedelic medicine just by definition not by uppity nuts or anything how do normal people get signed up for psilocybin trials like that yeah no I think that it's a the it's really hard I mean there's only been a few hundred people in these trials so so you know I think there's a legalization process there's cultural movement towards that but no they're not accessible I mean even the ketamine assisted psychotherapy that we do you have to be indicated that it's a prescription and and so yeah there's an accessibility issue with that for sure that's where my question was going we have a new law passed in Utah just to this latest legislative session to try to open up to some experimentation at least here in the state of Utah and of course Oregon has its laws but I was wondering how you operate in Arizona because I'm not aware of any such law in Arizona yeah well so we're a licensed practice and so we're not we don't do anything that is illegal so we have a ketamine a cap clinic ketamine assisted psychotherapy and we're you know developing protocols there in anticipation for other medicines as they become available hopefully but yeah that's a big a big time open question I mean if we were involved with a trial a research trial that was approved we may be able to do some of the work at our practice but we haven't pursued that really yet so thanks Joey


No fewer than 24 suspects, including those who allegedly killed the staff of the Independent National Electric Commission, INEC, late Emmanuel Igui, and abducted his wife Igui Charity along the Umpu Isiago Expressway have been paraded by the police in a Boeing state. It was learned that some other suspects paraded on Friday were arrested over alleged kidnappings, attacks on police stations, and killings of police officers in the state. The commission of police, Fahayah Olaleye, who briefed newsmen on the arrest noted that the arrest of the suspects who were paraded are the command's headquarters in Abakleiki, followed intelligence-driven and community-based policing in the state.  But I want to tell you that we have successfully rescued the wife and we neutralized some of them in Lokpanta, Lokpanta in Abia state. And we have arrested nine of them. They are part of this 24. We are parading today. My PRO will give you the breakdown of all the arrests we have made and you can even have access to talk to them.  We have engaged them and we have succeeded. Thank you very much.


Welcome back to the tea of the day today. I've got fresh blue lagoon rosemary. Mm-hmm, so it's rosemary, but it's just a different variety This is an example of how I still make some small mistakes I kind of forgotten that rosemary is one of the more potent ones So just like sage you probably only want to go about three to five minutes with this Otherwise it gets a little bit bitter and I went longer than that. So this guy's just a little bit punchy and on that bitter side so That's the thing I'm trying to get past for the taste right now But otherwise it's it's a perfectly good rosemary one I think it's actually just a little bit stronger than a regular rosemary So it has that going for it if you find regular rosemary just a little bit too light So you might like this one just because the fact that it's just a little bit stronger, but blue lagoon rosemary Enjoy have a nice tea day


Each hour, there are 80,000 data that are stolen and go to hackers hands Small businesses loses per year 20,000 data because of data leaks and hackers and 80% of all the cyber attack in the world are focused on small business Why because small business? Cannot afford expensive corporation great security experts or professional hardware We can still cost several thousand dollars per year What they can do is subscription software But that means several products to install and manage and cancel cost over $50 per month To solve this problem. They need three simple things an Antivirus a firewall and a VPN forgive them An antivirus a firewall and a VPN in a very different way An antivirus a firewall and a VPN in one device Three security solutions in one device welcome to revolution It's simple just like the iPhone no installation needed touch stream management intuitive My grandmother could use it and she did It's a hardware and software device that you plug into a router in order to secure your internet environment And all the devices that get connected to internet Machine learning devices talk to each other and become smarter every day Hackers and no chance. This is patented technology. This will change the 200 billion cybersecurity market Why? Because all of us we use every day Internet blindly without knowing anything about our surfing to who we are talking to if our surfing is safe That's why with the selling device now, you're not blind anymore You can see in real time the origin of your connections And even the device will give you some tips in order to upgrade your security level We'll have already 290 case in revenue three million in letter of intense of Such biggest brand like orange and Amazon the product is very unique I think that everyone understood that but our business model is very unique as well because we sell hardware on subscription $29 per month giving us 60% profit margin The product today cost $150 But after the funding round the price will go down to 44 And in only two months we get the money back In order to meet the alloy term and scale we're raising one million To help us with that we have pre-committed investors for 100,000 K And we hope that the slush syndicate will join us because we're making history here And if we win we're going to take the money for sure We have a really unique approach in how we build our team Our funding team has a very specific and rare Expertises in digital forensic hacking cryptography scripting We're working with white hats In order to anticipate and understand the threats because our goal is to beat the threats Security is not an option is a right. Thank you. Wow. So that sounds really disruptive Congrats. So one one question I would have is, you know kind of security or cyber security is like a very complex Topic and you know, you have a bunch of companies tackling it and focusing only on certain features of what you're doing So, yeah, how do you make sure that you're always going to the latest Step of technology right because it's not like a static device that you give out and you know Then everyone is secured because you know hackers are smart and are going to find new ways to hack into companies How do you make sure you're always up to date and then latest tech? Very smart question Thank you product was made to beat hackers the better to beat hackers hackers themselves so our This is why I'm going to talk to you about our team and how we build it because I think that like that I will answer your question our team You see the best the top best experts in cyber security in cyber attacks of the world the best They don't know each other We split in blocks all the threats They updated in real-time the threats and this way the product is constantly hacked and constantly in advance According to hackers so this way Our product is unhackable and we have already 133 clients and this has never been had before and this is not true for any one other product Yeah, it's a really powerful statement. I was just Skiing with the guy from SF secure and they were kind of a admitting very openly that actually every system is hackable But the way they actually deal with it is that they Detect the animal and normalities within the the network or their customers database or system So why are you doing that one as well because I'm getting worried like because I don't think there is a Silver skin on on any solution. I completely understand your question and it's very normal to have that the point is that before that we put this kind of device in our clients desk or small businesses we Have you know all our community because we'll contract them up the hackers and As is a community we check That doors are not open and the door can be open just with an IOT device for instance a connected lamp or Even you know an Apple watch Very simply so they check before and the real point is that our solution is very different from the other one because The other guys take care of you know the other part of the circle And we're just in the middle of the circle and we broke everywhere because as we work with hackers and They cannot Know exactly how the other ones are going to do to hack them, but they will anticipate Knowing techniques and closing doors and this is you know in console into real time So it's all day working on the product I don't know enough about retail group your your previous company But I'd love to hear why you and your co-founder decided to tackle this problem. Of course so I Work with him for eight years Before I was marketing director for this group and of 40 450 million Revenue and the point is that with that We said together that we knew each other for eight years that I had all these skills in marketing sales and recruitment and business And my partner David is a autistic genius But he's an insider in the hacker community and we never Why we did that is because we never when we were outside our desk feel secure You know consulting our emails or sending any an email in a restaurant or even in the hotel So that was a real response to a need that we had and I think that all of us will need it as well Because our goal of course is to go to the B2C market It's a 200 billion dollars market and in three years we want to penetrate this market and For that we're we want to raise one million because we want to core the team as well and Why not would you have a software only version as well or not? No very good question as well No, no that all this device, you know, we have a vision for the company so this is the V1 and The software is updated in real time But for the B2C and B2B the needs are different So we have different versions and according to hackers and according to our team This will be updated all the time. So the point is just very simple has this plug-and-play The consumers and users cannot see that is updated. You see it's done That's it. They have nothing to do and just see if something gets wrong or not and in the future I can share something with you our product is very powerful because with the IoT devices It would be able for instance to detect if a connected toy has been, you know hacked I explain you why in one second just because it's a real case in France a child Seven years old was in his bedroom his mom told him okay go to bed and after that his mom found him in the Garden why because a pervert turned on the connected toy start playing with a boy exactly and Told him that in the garden was a treasure The boy of seven years old didn't knew how to open and unlock the door the pervert told him So when the mom found his son in the middle of the night in the garden just because of the you know the sensor of the light That the garden turned on She requests him, but what are you doing in pyjama here at 2 o'clock in the morning in the middle of the garden? I'm looking for the treasure my toe told me that I was looking for the treasure You see an open door is everywhere and in two years The market will be in the market will be 50 billion of IoT devices unless of 2% of them are secured Thank you


We are going to be going to the Inspire event in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada. I'm going to be doing some interviews live on the floor while they're so we thought that we would take this time to practice my interviewing skills. And what a good time because everyone in the office is swapping their Dell computers out for Surface computers, including me. I'm getting an updated Surface computer and it's going to be awesome and it's getting set up right now. I'm using Windows Autopilot and all that jazz. Alright, let's go interview some people. Evan. Hey. Isn't it true that you recently switched to a Surface computer? I did. It's right here.  Yep. Everything works great. It works fantastic. I don't feel like I'm really carrying anything or it takes up any space, but I can do the same amount of work. Boop. Why do you guys sort through it? Because you got a cold? Uh-huh. And how did you get that cold? So whoa. Hey. Can't use that. Can't use any of that. How do you like your Surface? I love it. This is everything I need to go to work and I can move anywhere so I'm working today in this office because it's bigger and has a larger screen. Hey, Chris. We've been replacing everyone's computers with Surface's. Right. And I see you're still using your old computer. Right. That's because I couldn't get mine right. Why couldn't you get yours right? How do you explain? Well, I'll let you know something about Chris. He doesn't like change very often. I do like change very often. I mean, there was a particular vehicle that he drove. Uh-huh. For the longest of time. It's a delayed change and that's the reason why he hasn't embraced the Surface yet. But you know what? I think we can get him to make a commitment that today will be the day that I get to wipe that machine and he gets to start using the Surface. You know, I'm still waiting on my Surface. Day one after using the Surface. How are you feeling about that? As much as I hate to say it, I love it. Uh-huh. What do you love about the Surface? Our old computer is the Dell. And she's been issued a new Surface, but she hasn't adopted to it yet. And the main reason is because she likes to set up with the three monitors and the keyboard and the mouse, right? Yes. And the big thing about the keyboard since you're accounting is you want to have a 10 digit keypad, right? Correct. I mean, that's your speed, right? Yes. So there really isn't an issue if you switch into Surface if you had the same setup if you had a keyboard and three monitors, which Surface will do. There would be no issue at all. It's light. It's easy to use. And I really like the mouse pad on the keyboard. And the keys feel right. What did you do? Did you use it for work? Yeah. I did QuickBooks. I just entered some deposits and checks and stuff like that. Yeah. No, it was perfect. This is the other Surface mouse here. So you got this. It's like a cell phone. It fits in your pocket while you're on the move. When you turn it on, you just click it like this. But yeah, this is what she was talking about. No buttons. So there is a right click, left click. You got your scrollie. These two fingers work well. Then you turn it off. That's fabulous.  Yes. How do you enjoy the Surface? I love it. This is because it's so light and small. It's versatile. It has power, which is basically the same kind of computer processor as you'd find on a laptop. The battery life lasts a long time. It's got inking features. It has all the latest hardware. Windows is designed for the Surface. It takes advantage of all the features. Windows Hello, the inking ability, detachable keyboards, all the things that you would see in a tablet. It wakes up in Windows 10. The price, it's comparable to any other computer except you're getting a tablet as well. And the last thing is just sexy. Right? Right.


the demand in access to education and limitation for various colleges and great ever bring up to those to be found a beautiful instance of that of learning. University applications are subject to meticulous screening by admission committee which entails a question of candidates undesirable in entrance examination in developing country like Nigeria. So the advent of ICT has information communication technology in education curriculum and education of learning brought this access to knowledge with the use of social media and other electronic devices. This time learning already gained popularity among other nations. This system used the combination of traditional classroom instruction and technology and has teachings in teaching processes conveyed knowledge to students as throughout 2019. Consequently the importance of alternative mode of education in today's world cannot be undermined. This alternative mode is expected to provide opportunities for open education for prospective students who are not eligible for admission to academic institution. Key factors to the emergence of open education is rigid timetable, tuition costs and miscellaneous school fees. Some students come from indigent programs and may not be able to afford the cost of enrollment in the university or have a full time to dedicate themselves to the fixed learning schedule of higher education institutions. Additionally the motive behind the positive of knowledge by students in ever homogeneous is respected with their age. Statements of the problem education is a fundamental human rights and every nation strives to ensure our citizens are well educated. However education is still beyond the reach of a significant amount of students with a thirst for knowledge. This issue gains more prominence in developing nations such as Nigeria where education is of low significance as reflected by the national budgets. The UNESCO international benchmark for educational funding is 15 to 20 percent but in Nigeria it is just 5.6 percent according to the 2021 budget which drastically reduced by 9.3 percent. You get that from Nigerian premium time 2021. Open education resources therefore offer the educational bridge to those students of low income background and it is imperative to examine how to foster a sustainable culture of open education in Nigeria. Therefore the research examined the literature on the culture of building a sustainable education with specific focus in Nigeria. The main purpose of the study is to examine the literature on the culture of building and sustaining open education with specific focus in Nigeria and the specific focus is to examine the strategies of building and sustaining a culture of open education to identify the best practices of building and and Sustainable Culture of Open Education, to state the policies of building and sustainable culture of open education and to highlight the evocations needed in building and sustainable culture of open education, why the challenges that in that effectively of building and sustainable education was looked at. The significance of the study, the study is similar to all professionals, policy makers and researchers, governmental bodies and prior status. The building, strategies, best practices, policies and advocacy of sustainable open education. Open education has come to save me 21st century. It is by no means of superior alternative or substitutes for a traditional means of higher education. In elementary perspective, open education is not a competition with traditional higher education, but it acts more as a supplementary avenue to extend the reach of education and foster lifelong learning. Higher learning institutions require highly qualified staff, conducive environment, infrastructure and a host of facilities. The aforementioned entities also required constant maintenance, hybrid and staff training as at 20. It is inevitable that all these attributes to the high cost of obtaining an accredited degree from traditional education institution. This is why open education caters to different category of students. It ensures that the knowledge accessible is made possible, even to those who are not financially buoyant and to those who cannot speak up with physical attenders in schools. Building strategies continues, the best practices, policies and advocacy of sustainable open culture. The global education remains a key element of modern activity, modern society. Many nations in the world have adopted open education and established open education in open universities. In 2002, UNESCO organized a meeting called the Forum on the Impact of Open Education, an open causeway for higher education in developing countries. The value of open content was officially recognized and the term open education resources was established and defined as the open provision for educational resources, and which enabled by information and communication technology for consultation, for use and adaptation by community of non-commercial purposes. Global education remains the key element of modern society. Many nations in the world have adopted an education and established open education in universities. UNESCO international benchmark for education, which is 15 to 20%. Look at that of Nigeria in the statement of the problem, which is just 5.6%. And it's 9.53% reduced, that is only from the normal one. You get that from Nigerian Freedom Times, and you don't see. Over to five open access courses in 200 universities have been made freely accessible to them. This illustrates an upward trend in the advocacy for open education resources movement in the higher education environment. Sustainable of open education has always been a critical issue for the government towards the continuous free education access. In the previous years, millions of dollars have been donated by prestigious philanthropic foundation, such as the William and Flora LS Foundation to fund the investment based on open education resources. The methodology used for this research examines the review of relevant literature of culture, of building and sustainable and open education with specific focus on developing culture in Nigeria. The significant challenges that may be in the development of open education are the question of quality assurance, which has always been persistent in using an open education. The open education resources is a welcome development, but without peer-reviewed content, the initiative can fail not. All open education resources may be subject to infrequent updates and little added copy editing support. However, with several open education resources repository available, free based content does not directly infer the high number of online education resources without questionable quality. Local or international learning institution of notable reputation are not immune to providing free education material lacking solid education value. All year are being subjected to infrequent updates and little added copyright editing, safety, accuracy, credibility and effectiveness, which are top features for developing open education resources. The solution from research conducted by Dalor for 2006, we developed six models to boost the stability and longevity of open education programs, which are the replacement model, the volunteer model, the conversion model, the segmentation model, the donation model and the contribution model. In conclusion, open education resources comprise of open education resources, which teaches and in teaching and learning materials in various electronic form, in a huge account and discounts or even free to be accessible to home. So open education helps to bridge knowledge gap for the underprivileged students and promote the lifelong learning. Despite this, open education suffers some set bad damage in that it's there. Therefore, it's mandatory for stakeholders to provide, to be proactive towards the smooth running of open education resources. This paper attracts scholars' attention towards the long-term benefit of open education to posterity, improving lives and designating knowledge. Currently, College and University is verifying knowledge of open education to the limited financial flow for open education resources. For that, one should be explored by high education institutions, which include institutional programs, program professional, society and consortium. The recommendation of open education, of open education should be based on rationale that education should be made