The Conquest of Fortune: On the Machiavellian Character of Algorithmic Judgment

Abstract

The Conquest of Fortune:On the Machiavellian Character of Algorithmic Judgment Daniel Doneson (bio) Faber quisque fortunae propriae.1 —Francis Bacon ([1605] 1857–74, 454) at the heart of contemporary data science and any discussion of the algorithms it employs stands modern probability theory. The modern theory of probability is usually dated to the second half of the seventeenth century; its emergence is attributed to the famous Pascal-Fermat correspondence of 1654, and its completion is heralded in Jacob Bernoulli's Ars Conjectandi (published in 1713 but written and discussed long before). Ian Hacking's The Emergence of Probability famously proposed that the sudden growth of the theory of probability happened then and so rapidly because of a profound conceptual change in the way people thought about chance and evidence ([1975] 2006). In short, the modern theory of probability emerged when it did because only then did anyone possess the modern concept of probability. Others, notably Garber and Zabell, argue against Hacking's view, showing that many of the concepts that he believes constitute the core of the modern notion of probability were present long before the mid-seventeenth century. They instead favor a psychological or sociological explanation for the heightened interest in games of chance at that time (1979). Only with [End Page 871] the development of the mathematical theory of games of chance, along with the natural extension of the concept of probability to include these mathematical theories, did the rigorous and numerical theory of anything probabilistic emerge. I will not take a stand on this fascinating historical debate. Rather, I wish to argue that a more original and profound innovation was at work. It is found not in the new and visibly successful theory of one kind of probability that moved games of chance from the fringes of the notion of probability to its center, but in the radical new philosophical teaching on Fortuna and Virtu first adumbrated in the writings of Niccolò Machiavelli and then in the works of the youth movement he inspired, modern philosophy. In short, the spirit of algorithmic judgment is nothing algorithmic, mathematical, or even scientific, but rather "a wholly new" moral and political teaching that bewitched at first a few minds, then nations, and eventually the whole world. THE ASPIRATION FOR RATIONAL CONTROL Any user of Netflix, Amazon, Match.com, Tinder, or Uber has experienced firsthand the results of machine learning and algorithmic judgment. These companies all use algorithms to offer product recommendations or matches based on your viewing, driving, and purchase history. Feed them more data, and the recommendations can be more personalized. Google Translate works the same way, not by understanding human language but by extracting patterns through statistical analysis of a huge corpus of text. The concomitant buzzword is "big data," and today's companies have a rapacious appetite for data under the assumption that more data creates more value. "But," in the words of the investor Peter Thiel, "big data is usually dumb data" (2014, 149). Computers easily and swiftly find patterns that elude human beings, but they do not know how to compare patterns from different sources or how to interpret complex behaviors. What they all share is a minimal need for any human virtue or excellence. Indeed, the presumption of the algorithms is that human [End Page 872] actions are done in self-interest. Given that there is always a chance you might not perform a particular action at all, or might perform an action inefficiently, the algorithms must take this fact into account. The point is always the same: to save you the inconvenience of having to be mindful, exert effort, or use your judgment. Everyone is characterized according to a quantifiable average and is treated predictably as if we were all always absentminded—on the likely chance that some of us actually, are. The fact that algorithms are embedded into our very privacy, which is to say, into our control of our own lives or, to put it more precisely, into our virtue, reveals the comprehensive Machiavellian aspiration of rational control or conquest of fortune (cf. Mansfield 2006; 2016). And as the Florentine well knew, like all such instruments of rational control, they...