Jun 072013
 

transparencyI’m still hearing about the NSA “scandal”. Sigh.

 >some people don’t fancy being treated like a criminal

When we ask people to remove their veils/masks/whatevers for photo IDs, we aren’t treating them like criminals. This seems like the reverse of the “If guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns” argument. If everyone’s information is public, no one is being treated like a criminal. This would have the advantage of publicizing the same records of everyone who works at the NSA/FBI, lawmakers, etc. Radical Transparency isn’t about giving more power to the elite, it’s about spreading that same power to everyone.

 

>Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, “If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.

Society can end up being constructed in such a way that it is impossible not to break the law going about your daily business. In such a case if they want to get you they’ll get you anyway, unless you’re willing to go full-Taliban and live in caves/forests without any modern devices. Hiding under “anonymity” only gives a false sense of security and gives those at the top more power. Possible solutions include preventing such a state in the first place (unlikely), believing that the “jury of your peers” system works well enough to stop such crap (which we use right now, and seems to be working fairly well), and exposing everyone to such scrutiny so everyone realizes just how silly it is (the Radical Transparency option).

Really, allowing the hiding of transgressions in a society where everyone must break laws only strengthens the most powerful actors – those most able to hide their own transgressions and reveal the transgressions of others. The way to increase the power of the poor working class shmucks would be to spread transparency so the elites no longer have that ability.

May 232013
 

better ourselvesI said yesterday that a basic income guarantee should be considered in light of rising productivity. The most common argument against this is that living requires the consumption of resources, and as long as humans are producing as much or more than they consume than everything is fine, but guaranteeing everyone enough income to live on even if they produce nothing is a recipe for creating a society where no one creates anything at all and the entire system collapses.

I don’t think this would happen, and I think this because Existential Angst exists. People feel awful when they do nothing. And they feel great when they create. When they do things that make a difference in the world. Forging a knife, or composing a song, or organizing a con. People do these sorts of things simply to do them.

Scalzi’s Redshirts (review tomorrow!) explores existential angst. One character without any purpose gets in a motorcycle accident and is left brain dead. A plot event restores him to life just days before his family was poised to pull the life-support plug. Later he looks at himself and wonders if he would have been more useful to the world as an organ donor than he is as a person. This is the essence of existential angst, and the fact that so many people experience it is a great sign! Yes it’s painful, but it’s like a doctor telling you that it’s good you can still feel intense pain in your legs after a car accident because it means you aren’t paralyzed. The pain is a sign that things haven’t fallen below a much worse threshold.

That angst is what reassures me that a society with basic income will not devolve into humans mindlessly playing games, drinking, and fucking. We have a need to do something which will keep us producing, exploring, and refining long after we don’t have to anymore.

(although yes, this can’t be fully implemented until we get to the point were literally all menial labor is automated. We still need fifty pounds of nails bynext Tuesday after all)

May 222013
 

Robot FactoryYesterday I claimed that due to our ever-climbing productivity, we need far fewer factory workers than we are producing. That we need to retool our schools to produce creative, innovative, entrepreneurial people. I am not that sort of person. But I have, recently, gotten a taste of what it’s like to be that sort of person. The most intriguing thing I’ve found is that doing things feels good.

I’ve actually said that “being productive feels better than fun.” If I want to procrastinate I will often clean, because at least that’s a sort of productivity. I’d rather be cleaning than playing most games I can think of. Reading for my book club is more fun than reading for myself, due to the added element of getting something done. It’s been said that what the body experiences as “fun” is the Process Of Learning – which is why games cease to be fun once they’ve been mastered. The closest word I’ve heard to what the body experiences when in the Process Of Doing is “flow”. It’s a decent enough word I suppose, but most people don’t associate it with feeling great. I suspect many people never feel it at all. It’s hard to feel flow when you’re working a bolt-tightening station on a conveyor belt 8 hours a day. And the excitement of starting a brand new project that may fail dramatically? That’s something most people probably try to avoid.

However I don’t think simply teaching those sorts of skills is enough. There is a huge barrier in that right now society ties a person’s worth directly to their economic output. Their very right to exist is dependent on having a job. I am exaggerating a bit, no one (sane) in the US actually starves to death, or dies of exposure. But the implication is always there, and it’s going to become a major problem as machines continue to get smarter and better at working with fewer human handlers needed. Already we can run the essential parts of our economy with a fraction of the labor force. What do we do when a hundred thousand people can run the whole show? What does the mass of humanity do?

Yes, create things and services that those other people are willing to pay for, sure. But with so many people vying for the surplus of so few, exceptionally low prices can be demanded by those buyers. Robin Hanson asserts that child labor laws, the 40-hour work week, and minimum wages are all efforts to restrict the labor pool so those who remain can bid up their wages. These all appear to be good partial solutions, but they leave those who’ve been cut out without a means of support. They also seem to be beating around the bush of the “prevent exploitation of the starving by those with money” problem rather than cutting to the root of the matter.

It’s been mentioned by many people for decades, but a basic income guarantee seems like a very plausible solution. A combination of a small unconditional transfer (like that tried in India recently) along with universal healthcare may give people enough grounding to actually be able to try new ideas and make new products, without fear that if it doesn’t work they’ll be left destitute.

Maybe we’re not quite there yet. Maybe right now we can get by on the old system, if we just alter our education system to produce more innovators and entrepreneurs. But eventually human labor will be unnecessary. Right now we’re getting a small preview of that day, and we’re being given the chance to start planning for it.

May 202013
 

no fate but what we makeSo, assuming that the Final Boss is Learned Helplessness. What can be done? I’m going to outline a strategy for an attempt. Seeking feedback, if anyone has any to give.

First, cut out a lot of media. Anything that you can’t change can be safely jettisoned. Stop watching the news and reading the paper. Eventually comedy and satire may be ok. Regular news can be phased back in once you learn to quickly shut-off any triggers.

Second, it may be important to accept that there are some things you cannot care about, and learn how to care about them less. This is closely tied to the first point. Yes there’s people dying in India. You can’t do anything about it directly, so don’t watch that exposé on corruption in the Indian government.

Third, and most importantly, do something that alters your future. Don’t do anything grand. This is not the time for grandiose gestures! In my case, I had just lost 20 lbs due to outside circumstances and I decided I wanted to keep it off. Simply not going back to my previous weight was my goal. You can build from there. Decide to lose a few extra pounds maybe. Join a book club (even if you have to take two shots of vodka before you walk in the door). Anything at all. Just do something that’ll have some small impact on the future around you.

Don’t worry about the rest of the world. It’s too big for one person to change it all. Can you lift one person that fell into a ditch? Sure. But you can’t lift ten. You lift the person next to you, and you trust that he will lift the person next to him, and so on. You can’t do everything by yourself, you can only be the type of person that would cooperate with themselves.

I already know the problem with #3 though. The problem is that when nothing matters, you cannot motivate yourself to do something. You can’t motivate yourself to do anything. There is no point. I have no idea how to overcome this problem, and I’ve been racking my brain and googling for days* . All I can say is that “finding your passion” and “searching for your meaning” is bullshit. Don’t bother trying to find something you are passionate about, it’ll only lead to greater disappointment when you realize there’s nothing to be passionate about. Just say “Yes” the next time someone on Facebook asks for a favor. Start small.


*btw, a common answer is “get professional therapy”. I strongly support that, but 1. it’s probably not enough, and 2. a lot of people can’t afford it

Feb 122013
 

thirteenth-floorMy life’s gotten pretty darn good lately. I am more healthy, fulfilled, and happy than I have been in any point of my life that I can remember. This worries me. The odds that I would be this happy are very remote. I am a white male in the richest country in the world during a time of relative peace. None of this was under my control. When I look back on all the things that could have gone wrong to prevent me from ending up here, I’m left speechless. And while I’ve overcome a number of hardships to get here, none of them were unrecoverable disasters. The universe did not hit me with small pox before there was a treatment. The fact that I did face obstacles and did overcome them adds to my feelings of happiness with my life, so I can’t even say they were, on balance, terrible.

At LessWrong HonoreDB wrote:

 Geese will instinctively gorge themselves when winter is coming on.  Eat a goose right after it’s fattened itself up for the winter, and you get a delicious treat that died happy.  The problem is that geese will only do this if they believe food may become scarce during the winter (or their instinct to gorge only kicks in when the environment is such that that would be a reasonable inference; it’s not clear whether it’s the goose or evolution doing the analysis).  If they realize that food will remain available during the winter, they eat normally.  And there are quite a few possible clues–farmers trying to replicate Sousa’s setup have discovered that cheating on any part leads to unfatted livers.

  • Even as chicks, geese cannot be handled by a human, or encounter other geese who have been.
  • There can be no visible fences.
  • Geese cannot be “fed,” rather a variety of food must be distributed randomly throughout a large space, with the placement constantly changing, so that the geese happen to come across it.

This seems to mirror my life up to now. Things are great, I’m happy, and it feels like this is due to a combination of luck and skill, and not any outside manipulation. This makes me suspicious. Life is too good, especially for an impartial uncaring universe. I am increasing my probability estimate that I exist in a simulation, and the creators of this simulation are Friendly enough to human intelligences that they ensure we have decent lives. Which would also require that people who’s lives are terrible – the Dalit slumdog in India – don’t actually exist, they’re only weakly emulated to make our lives seem better by comparison. If we’re going that far, it’s possible that almost no one else actually exists, just as that geese’s environment was almost entirely fabricated.

I don’t take this solipsism very seriously. It seems like a good way to slip into complacency, to allow your fellow man to suffer because he isn’t real, and to slack off in the fight against Death because it won’t actually happen. But it still worries at the back of my mind sometimes, a persistent niggling feeling that this is literally too good to be true and nothing is real.

(to any benevolent AI’s monitoring my life for happiness – I’m not actually complaining. This shit is pretty awesome, don’t throw me any tragedies just to try to convince me this is real, thanks. :) )

Jan 182013
 

ThundercatsPicture1aChildren have no taste at all. It is why they are constantly successfully marketed cheap crap. You don’t realize this until your taste grows. As a kid, I loved ThunderCats. A couple years ago, I decided to go back and watch it again. Word of warning to anyone thinking of doing this – just keep your happy memories. Upon review you will be sorely disappointed that what you loved so much is actually complete garbage.

Food is the same way. Kids love simple globs of stuff that are high in fat and/or sugar. Most candy simply tastes bad (can PixieStix even be called a “candy”?). I used to like McDonalds food – even just ten years ago! Now I can barely eat it. And conversely, I used to hate a lot of things that I now eat regularly.

I’m sure this doesn’t ever stop… currently I don’t taste much difference between wines, a $10 bottle is as good as a $40 bottle. Eventually this will probably change, and I hope I have more disposable income when that happens. :)

Why am I dissing on kids out of nowhere? Well, I had forgotten that I hadn’t quite finished my thoughts on value drift. I was reminded by a reply to a long-passed comment about Permutation City. I consider it a horror novel, because one of the major messages I got from it was thus: even if you never physically die, eventually over eternity one of these two things will happen –

1) your utility function will drift enough, and your memories fade and change enough, they you will be unrecognizable as the person you were. You as you are now will effectively be dead.

2) you will successfully resist change, and will be stuck thinking and doing the same things endlessly in a loop. You might as well be dead. Or preserved as a memory-diamond statue.

Even if we defeat death, living long enough is essential death anyway. You are doomed, there is no escape.

Wei Dei replied:

Isn’t that just due to the author’s inability to imagine/describe a mind capable of becoming increasingly and unboundedly complex without losing its identity?

Which is also the conclusion I eventually came to. The six-year old who liked ThunderCats is dead. The teenage who liked McDonalds is dead. Even the mid-twenties guy who loved World of Warcraft and disliked physical exercise is dead. Not one of them would have chosen to die so that I could live. But looking back, those lives are poorer and less valuable than the life I have now. And I have little doubt that the more complex person who will take my place will have an even richer and more valuable life than I do.

My values will drift, and I will become a different person. But I will be a better person. My morals will be better than those of my predecessors, my knowledge will be less wrong, and my contributions more valuable. That is a good thing.

Nov 122012
 

Racist Teens Forced to Answer for Tweets About the ‘Nigger’ President

I have some mixed feelings about this. Obviously it is good that they are being held to account, we can’t tolerate this kinda shit in our society. Honestly, it’s probably best for them to get this smack down right now, while they are still young and can learn these lessons without long-lasting effects on their lives. Right now they just get disapproval and reprimands from adults, once they’re considered of majority they can lose a lot more.

An acquaintance commented that “since their legal names were used, that’s going to suuuuck when future employers look up their names for jobs, or college applications.”

I think this is one of the things people fear about radical transparency. In a transparent society, people will have to be much more understanding and empathetic. I recognize that they are just stupid high school kids, probably just acting out. They must change, and demonstrate they’ve changed, but for this to be held against them for decades is unreasonable. No one is perfect. When people recoil in fear of a transparent society, this is what they’re afraid of. “I’ve made mistakes, and I’ve managed to hide them fairly well. Thank goodness no one knows how I stupid I was.” The secrecy is a shield so we can all go on pretending we’re perfect to each other, and most people are afraid that once their shield of secrecy is broken, they’ll be torn apart by the ravenous hounds of society.

But those hounds only exist because they have shields that let them pretend to be perfect as well. Transparency breaks ALL shields. When everyone’s flaws are exposed, people stop throwing stones. While his homosexuality was a secret, Ted Haggard struck with fury at all those who were openly gay, cloaking himself in secrecy. Now he’s open and happy (or happier anyway), and that minority has one less zealot persecuting them. A google search for a kid’s name with idiot remarks like these won’t automatically disqualify him if the employer knows his own stupid high school fuck-ups are out there for everyone to see as well.

The problem is self-righteousness, which is fueled by hypocrisy. People seem to think the defense is to hide everything they do that someone might criticize, to live in the shadows. But playing defense only allows the aggressors to make the rules. The solution isn’t to be more hidden and wrap yourself in a straight-jacket of secrecy, it is to have transparency pierce every aspect of society so that hypocritical posturing of righteousness will become impossible.

Oct 312012
 

I FB-shared this article because, as Irin Carmon says “Dear everyone asking what it is about Republican candidates and their clumsy talk about rape: This is a feature, not a bug.”

The title of the article is “Does God Want You To Be Raped?” I didn’t comment any further, because that was the message and I didn’t want to derail it with unrelated thoughts. That’s what my blog is for.

So, to derail – Of course that’s what god wants!

Or rather, if you believe in an omnipotent and omniscient god, then he is at least OK with it.

It’s this sort of ethical quandary with Liberal Christians that throws me into fits. The Fundamentalists are morally repugnant, but they are intellectually honest. They say “Yeah, god’s fine with that. He does want you to get raped, because the clothes you’re wearing offended him,” or some shit. I can engage these sorts of monsters head-on.

Liberal Christians are, in day-to-day life, cool with me. I want to encourage the people who have to be religious to be so in the least damaging way possible. One that respects human rights, defends the Enlightenment, and supports science. I can’t be an advocate of drug legalization and be unwilling to live in a society with some drug use. These are good people, we all have our vices, and it’s a pleasure to live alongside them. But then they ask the rhetorically stupid question “Does God Want You To Be Raped?” It’s very hard not to engage them and tell them YES. According to your beliefs, HE DOES. So don’t try to use that to score any points!

And that leads me to my ethical conundrum. I want the world to have less bad people (Fundies) and more good people. I consider liberal christians to be good, so where possible it’d be desirable to step them down from fundamentalism to liberalism. But that feels like lying to them. Ok, screw feels like, that IS lying to them. It’s very hard for me to do that. It’s all I can do it keep my mouth shut when a liberal preacher is trying to make points. Hell, this blog post is proof I can’t even do that, I have to rant about it somewhere, even if it’s just in the privacy of my blog.

I think maybe this is the way to go. I’m usually able to not interfere in public. Maximizing Obama Christians while minimizing Phelps Christians is good, yeah? Just release the pressure in private. It’s like fighting in WWI. You may want to knock the silly-looking Beret right off that French dude’s head, but he’s there in the trenches with you fighting against the Krauts. Just complain about it in private back at the English Pub and be happy those guns are on this side of No-Man’s-Land.

Oct 232012
 

I’ve been sick over the past week, which reminds me again just how much we’re just biological machines.

In my previous life I had dismissed the importance of a bodily incarnation entirely. I am my mental processes, what do I care for the meat life-support system I’m stuck in? I didn’t much care what went into it so long as it kept my brain running. I couldn’t wait for the day I could replace all my organic bits with cybernetic variants, which would last longer, work better, and be easier to repair. In my ideal world I’d be able to become an entirely disembodied intellect, possibly running on a computer network.

Once I decided to get in shape and started caring for my body, I suddenly realized how much of who I am depends on the meat I’m composed of. I’m more assertive now, and quite a bit more pro-active. Before I would complain about having to do anything that required manipulating the physical world, now I stand up and get shit done.

While I was sick I naturally couldn’t do much physically. But the change to my mental patterns was far more pronounced than it had any right to be. I was gloomy and irritable. I started dwelling on the suckitude of humanity, and how we’re all doomed anyway, so what the hell is the point of anything? I was reverting back to my previous self. Not for long, and not nearly as extreme, but in occasional sharp bursts before I got it back under control.

I realize a lot of being an Agent is figuring out how to hack your body and your mind so that you can direct them into doing what YOU want, rather than what the Elephant wants. Episodes like this make me worry. It was ridiculously easy to unseat my Rider with a viral invasion. Could I have altered my tactics to overcome this, given enough time? Or once I become old an frail will I succumb to permanently becoming a less happy person?

Part of this blog’s purpose is finding out. I’m leaving a permanent record I can compare my future states to, and see how much has changed.

It also leaves me wondering – would an emulation of me without this dependence on a bio-machine be a good enough copy to consider it truly me? Are Humans 1.0 doomed to forever be stuck on top of unwieldy unconscious systems that they have to fight against? Is that part of what it means to be human? Only one way to find out…

It seems like the claim of some deaf that getting a cochlear implant will forever fundamentally change what it means to be them, and that it is an assault on all of deaf culture. Maybe this is true. Maybe Deaf Johnny is a different enough person from Hearing Johnny that Deaf Johnny can be said to be dead. But if we wouldn’t choose to deafen people, we have a case for saying that Hearing could be a good thing. I’m certainly glad I’m fit now, and I wouldn’t chose to become fat again, and I’m not sad that Fat Eneasz is dead. Frankly, Fit Eneasz is better.

So if post-humans were to make the case that life is much better after abandoning the seething mess of urges we’re built on… hell, why not? Gotta keep changing and growing, or you’ll be left behind with the Amish.

Sep 242012
 

While I’m going on about Among Others, I have a thought about morality that can be pulled from it.

“I went into Woolworths where I pinched a bottle of talc and a Twix […] I wouldn’t take a book though, or rather, I would from Woolworths, if they had any, but I wouldn’t from a bookshop, not unless I was desperate.”

There’s a lot of dystopic settings in SF/F that show how morality goes out the window in extreme situations. I could have taken any of them as an example. But I think this hits much closer to home, and it shows degrees both in when we’re willing to steal and who we’re willing to steal from. It’s very easy to be moral when you have a decent steady income. I buy every book I read*, because I can and I know others can’t. If I was unable to buy the books I would still read them somehow, and hope that someone in a better position than me could buy them to make up the difference. A lot of us are good simply because we can afford to be.

The solution to this is fairly obvious – to create better people, create more wealth. Scientific and economic progress doesn’t just make us better off, it makes us better people. In the aggregate, the researchers at Bell Labs have done more to make the world a better place than any prophet.

 


* When possible. Some aren’t available