Wednesday, October 29, 2014
On certainty
If it were the common practice to speak only when one is certain, then the only people speaking would be the idiots.
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Social media and the suppression of creativity
"The world in general disapproves of creativity, and to be creative in public is particularly bad. Even to speculate in public is rather worrisome ...[I]ndividuals must, therefore, have the feeling that the others won’t object.” - Isaac Asimov
What does this mean for us now that our entire lives are spent in the public eye? Isn't recycling an old idea I expect to be 'liked' a better social strategy than venturing something new, untested, and unsettled as a matter of public good taste?
What does this mean for us now that our entire lives are spent in the public eye? Isn't recycling an old idea I expect to be 'liked' a better social strategy than venturing something new, untested, and unsettled as a matter of public good taste?
Some words for my students on Yik Yak, freedom, and personal responsibility
As new things are wont to do, they scare the crap out of old people.
As old people are wont to do with new things they don’t understand, they try to take them away from those who they perceive as less responsible than them.
Personally, I’m glad you have a place like this, where you can feel somewhat secure in your anonymity to say anything you want. In this post-911 world—your world, the only world you have ever known—these sorts of places are becoming worryingly few.
Virtually anything we say or do now is potentially under the eyes of surveillance, which means all is under surveillance. There is no relevant difference here.
I’ve surveyed Yik Yak a bit on my own. In my opinion most of it is trivial, some of it beautiful, and some of it ugly. But this is the nature of speech, is it not?
And who is to judge? Me? Some administrator? Your parents?
Though the knee-jerk reaction of many is to bend these rules, the laws of this land still guarantee adults certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
But children are not afforded these rights.
Let me remind you of something because there are those who will tell you, or at least treat you otherwise---You are not children. You are adults. To be an adult means you make decisions for yourself, the fruit as well as the consequences of which shall be yours alone.
You are adults like the world has never seen—a generation unique to this time, this place, your own histories. Old people will understand you more than you think, but less than they think.
They will look to you as the source of degeneration in the world. But since when have they done any better? You live in the world they made for you. Is it perfect?
In these years of college the world will be rent open for you, its inner-workings exposed for you to inspect. You, as all previous generations, inherit the world’s problems to solve in the way you see best.
Perhaps in their advanced age, your elders now feel that their time to make the world a better place has run short and their work left incomplete. Hence, they fear control slipping away from them to you.
So stubbornly they grip tighter, grab and pull what is yours by rights and is the simple fact of the matter.
You are adults. It’s your world and you own it. Your choices make the world of tomorrow—the good ones and bad ones.
I will not tell you whether or not you are permitted to use Yik Yak or what to do with it, and I will do what little I can to see to it others don’t either.
But ultimately this is your free speech and thus your responsibility to protect it. And they will come for it. The first time somebody uses it for something dastardly, they’ll commandeer all of the airwaves, the copper, and the fiber to make sure everybody sees it—to make people afraid, to convince other old people that they need to protect their children, and to convince you that you must be protected like a child.
So we all make a devil's trade—an ounce of security for a pound of liberty.
And thus, the world of tomorrow is created by our choices, our actions.
As old people are wont to do with new things they don’t understand, they try to take them away from those who they perceive as less responsible than them.
Personally, I’m glad you have a place like this, where you can feel somewhat secure in your anonymity to say anything you want. In this post-911 world—your world, the only world you have ever known—these sorts of places are becoming worryingly few.
Virtually anything we say or do now is potentially under the eyes of surveillance, which means all is under surveillance. There is no relevant difference here.
I’ve surveyed Yik Yak a bit on my own. In my opinion most of it is trivial, some of it beautiful, and some of it ugly. But this is the nature of speech, is it not?
And who is to judge? Me? Some administrator? Your parents?
Though the knee-jerk reaction of many is to bend these rules, the laws of this land still guarantee adults certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
But children are not afforded these rights.
Let me remind you of something because there are those who will tell you, or at least treat you otherwise---You are not children. You are adults. To be an adult means you make decisions for yourself, the fruit as well as the consequences of which shall be yours alone.
You are adults like the world has never seen—a generation unique to this time, this place, your own histories. Old people will understand you more than you think, but less than they think.
They will look to you as the source of degeneration in the world. But since when have they done any better? You live in the world they made for you. Is it perfect?
In these years of college the world will be rent open for you, its inner-workings exposed for you to inspect. You, as all previous generations, inherit the world’s problems to solve in the way you see best.
Perhaps in their advanced age, your elders now feel that their time to make the world a better place has run short and their work left incomplete. Hence, they fear control slipping away from them to you.
So stubbornly they grip tighter, grab and pull what is yours by rights and is the simple fact of the matter.
You are adults. It’s your world and you own it. Your choices make the world of tomorrow—the good ones and bad ones.
I will not tell you whether or not you are permitted to use Yik Yak or what to do with it, and I will do what little I can to see to it others don’t either.
But ultimately this is your free speech and thus your responsibility to protect it. And they will come for it. The first time somebody uses it for something dastardly, they’ll commandeer all of the airwaves, the copper, and the fiber to make sure everybody sees it—to make people afraid, to convince other old people that they need to protect their children, and to convince you that you must be protected like a child.
So we all make a devil's trade—an ounce of security for a pound of liberty.
And thus, the world of tomorrow is created by our choices, our actions.
Saturday, October 11, 2014
I want to explore the Darknet.
I don't know what's there. I have every right to be there.
I won't violate intellectual property rights or view child porn.
But if I don't do anything illegal, they are doing something illegal.
This isn't the Soviet Union and I'm not going to start acting like it.
Because if we all started acting like it was, it mind as well be.
I'm a political scientist, and have both the right and a legitimate reason.
Not that I need a legitimate purpose, because my right is already sufficient.
I'm interested in ISIL propaganda. I'm a scholar. I want to study it.
I'm also afraid of going to the sorts of websites I'd need to go to in order to view it.
Do you know what that means?
That means America is broken.
Freedom is broken.
The first stage is of censorship is self-censorship
The scary thing, I think, is something that we all know.
In the scope of human civilization, freedom is the anomaly.
The default state of human society over the centuries has been tyranny.
We achieved something rare, hard gained and lost relatively easily.
Should we lose it now, how many tens, hundreds, or even thousands of years will it be before it regained?
Saturday, September 27, 2014
An atheist monk's prayer.
We are a nation of Atheist monks only pretending to know Jesus.
Me, I'm just learning to fit in.
I have stuff now. It's great. It means I exist.
My existence is made tangible, apprehensible. I am knowable to others by the quality and form of my possessions.
I have furniture I don't even use. It's just there to fill the empty space.
The empty space that was in my soul is now physical volume, and can be filled with stuff.
Stuff is like food. You fill up on it and you're satisfied for a while.
When the pangs return you take another meal. Stuff is food for the soul.
And only stuff guarantees a modicum of afterlife, for we live on in the form of our estates.
Me, I'm just learning to fit in.
I have stuff now. It's great. It means I exist.
My existence is made tangible, apprehensible. I am knowable to others by the quality and form of my possessions.
I have furniture I don't even use. It's just there to fill the empty space.
The empty space that was in my soul is now physical volume, and can be filled with stuff.
Stuff is like food. You fill up on it and you're satisfied for a while.
When the pangs return you take another meal. Stuff is food for the soul.
And only stuff guarantees a modicum of afterlife, for we live on in the form of our estates.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Evolution of Universes
The suitability of our universe for the evolution of life is incredibly unlikely, which means there were, or are, many failed (or failing) universes.
This implies that a diversity exists in universes, such that some support life and others don't--or perhaps suitability for life falls along a spectrum.
If it's somehow possible to create universes, and it must be possible since there are universes, then it's possible that the life in some universes will figure out how to do it.
Universes in which life learns to create new universes will likely create them to be similarly hospitable.
Such hospitable universes, as such, would then, over "time" increases as a proportion of all universes.
Given enough time, virtually all universes may be hospitable to life.
If the universes most suitable to life create universes faster still, as they might since there will be more life within them to do this, then given enough time any given universe can be assumed to be teeming with life.
Given the immensity of the cosmos, it would be incredibly unlikely that we should happen to exist at it's relative youth.
This point is further emphasized by the exquisite harmonies we find in our own universe, and thus we may assume it to be the most "recent" in a very, very old line of progenitor universes.
We know this universe is suitable for life. But what's even more fascinating is that our best guess is that it isn't even rare. Rather, our universe is likely to by one among countless others that are teeming with it.
This implies that a diversity exists in universes, such that some support life and others don't--or perhaps suitability for life falls along a spectrum.
If it's somehow possible to create universes, and it must be possible since there are universes, then it's possible that the life in some universes will figure out how to do it.
Universes in which life learns to create new universes will likely create them to be similarly hospitable.
Such hospitable universes, as such, would then, over "time" increases as a proportion of all universes.
Given enough time, virtually all universes may be hospitable to life.
If the universes most suitable to life create universes faster still, as they might since there will be more life within them to do this, then given enough time any given universe can be assumed to be teeming with life.
Given the immensity of the cosmos, it would be incredibly unlikely that we should happen to exist at it's relative youth.
This point is further emphasized by the exquisite harmonies we find in our own universe, and thus we may assume it to be the most "recent" in a very, very old line of progenitor universes.
We know this universe is suitable for life. But what's even more fascinating is that our best guess is that it isn't even rare. Rather, our universe is likely to by one among countless others that are teeming with it.
Monday, May 5, 2014
Open letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler
May 5, 2014
Dear Chairman Wheeler,
Ordinary Americans have had a hard run over the last 13 or 14 years. We’ve seen economic bubbles burst, our retirements and savings lost, and our tax dollars squandered on expensive foreign wars. Successive waves of banking and media consolidations have left banks too big to fail and the media with interests conflicting with those of the public. In this time we’ve been compelled to accept increasingly invasive security measures in our airports, in our shopping centers, and even our schools and homes. With each passing month, new leaks of classified documents add evidence for the regrettable conclusion that we, the United States of America, are now a surveillance state. And now a series of landmark Supreme Court decisions have irreversibly shifted the balance of ultimate authority in this country from the broad base of the public to a small, but deep-pocketed and well-connected elite. The one thing we really had going for us has been the widespread adoption and of the greatest tool for the promotion of intellectual freedom, free thought and free speech, since the movable-type printing press: the Internet.
In no time in history has human kind ever come so close to realizing John Stewart Mill’s ideal of an efficient marketplace of ideas. All that we have achieved in this venture, from the vast repositories of universally accessible knowledge to communication tools which have given voices to the voiceless, have been made possible through the historic enforcement of so-called Net Neutrality rules. It is the digital expression of the democratic ideal that something revolutionary, something wonderful, can come from anyone anywhere. And time after time it has.
Mr. Chairman, as you consider the adoption of new rules undermining the principle of Net Neutrality, please keep in mind that this decision could very well be the hammer that drives the nail into the Democracy’s coffin. The long term consequences of such an institutional change are always difficult to predict, but we know that enormous corporations lobbying for the changes will be in a position to remake the Internet in a way that disproportionately reflects their narrow economic interests. We can expect fewer people making decisions over what and how people access information, which will inevitably translate into diminished access for the little guys. Perhaps worse, the presence of such “gate keepers” creates opportunities for corruption and collusion between large power brokers who desire to influence the content of public discourse to suit their interests.
Our legislators are unresponsive, now firmly in the grip of corporate power and can no longer be counted on to do anything in the public interests that runs against the interests of their patrons. In court, our rights are only as good as our lawyers, and they have better ones. So many of us don't even realize how important this issue is the future of our country. Not coincidentally, the cable and public airwaves are dominated by a handful of unimaginably wealthy companies that control virtually everything that passes through them, save the Internet. It’s our last bastion of true equality and freedom. Save the Internet. No "fast lanes". Treat all data equally
Thank you for your time.
Submit your own comment to the FCC (14-28) proceeding number : http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/upload/display?z=hvz4a
Dear Chairman Wheeler,
Ordinary Americans have had a hard run over the last 13 or 14 years. We’ve seen economic bubbles burst, our retirements and savings lost, and our tax dollars squandered on expensive foreign wars. Successive waves of banking and media consolidations have left banks too big to fail and the media with interests conflicting with those of the public. In this time we’ve been compelled to accept increasingly invasive security measures in our airports, in our shopping centers, and even our schools and homes. With each passing month, new leaks of classified documents add evidence for the regrettable conclusion that we, the United States of America, are now a surveillance state. And now a series of landmark Supreme Court decisions have irreversibly shifted the balance of ultimate authority in this country from the broad base of the public to a small, but deep-pocketed and well-connected elite. The one thing we really had going for us has been the widespread adoption and of the greatest tool for the promotion of intellectual freedom, free thought and free speech, since the movable-type printing press: the Internet.
In no time in history has human kind ever come so close to realizing John Stewart Mill’s ideal of an efficient marketplace of ideas. All that we have achieved in this venture, from the vast repositories of universally accessible knowledge to communication tools which have given voices to the voiceless, have been made possible through the historic enforcement of so-called Net Neutrality rules. It is the digital expression of the democratic ideal that something revolutionary, something wonderful, can come from anyone anywhere. And time after time it has.
Mr. Chairman, as you consider the adoption of new rules undermining the principle of Net Neutrality, please keep in mind that this decision could very well be the hammer that drives the nail into the Democracy’s coffin. The long term consequences of such an institutional change are always difficult to predict, but we know that enormous corporations lobbying for the changes will be in a position to remake the Internet in a way that disproportionately reflects their narrow economic interests. We can expect fewer people making decisions over what and how people access information, which will inevitably translate into diminished access for the little guys. Perhaps worse, the presence of such “gate keepers” creates opportunities for corruption and collusion between large power brokers who desire to influence the content of public discourse to suit their interests.
Our legislators are unresponsive, now firmly in the grip of corporate power and can no longer be counted on to do anything in the public interests that runs against the interests of their patrons. In court, our rights are only as good as our lawyers, and they have better ones. So many of us don't even realize how important this issue is the future of our country. Not coincidentally, the cable and public airwaves are dominated by a handful of unimaginably wealthy companies that control virtually everything that passes through them, save the Internet. It’s our last bastion of true equality and freedom. Save the Internet. No "fast lanes". Treat all data equally
Thank you for your time.
Submit your own comment to the FCC (14-28) proceeding number : http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/upload/display?z=hvz4a
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