Scott Adams's Blog, page 337
November 5, 2012
The Privacy Illusion
Warning: This blog is written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view. It is written in a style that can easily be confused as advocacy or opinion. It is not intended to change anyone's beliefs or actions. If you quote from this post or link to it, which you are welcome to do, please take responsibility for whatever happens if you mismatch the audience and the content.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Privacy Illusion
It has come to my attention that many of my readers in the United States believe they have the right to privacy because of something in the Constitution. That is an unsupportable view. A more accurate view is that the government divides the details of your life into two categories:
1. Stuff they don't care about.
2. Stuff they can find out if they have a reason.
Keep in mind that the government already knows the following things about you:
1. Where you live
2. Your name
3. Your income
4. Your age
5. Your family members
6. Your social security number
7. Your maiden name
8. Where you were born
9. Criminal history of your family
10. Your own criminal record
11. Your driving record
12. Your ethnicity
13. Where you work and where you used to work
14. Where you live and where you used to live
15. Names of your family members
16. The value of your home now
17. The amount you paid for your home
18. The amount you owe on your home
19. Your grades in school
20. Your weight, height, eye color, and hair color
The government doesn't know your medical history. But your doctor does, and he'll give it to the government if they produce a warrant.
The government doesn't know your spending details. But your bank and your credit card company do. And the government can subpoena bank records anytime it cares enough to do so. The government can't always watch you pay for stuff with cash, but don't expect that to last. At some point in the next twenty years, physical currency will be eliminated in favor of digital transactions.
Your government doesn't know who you are having sex with, but only because it doesn't care. If the government started to care, perhaps because it suspected you of a crime, it could get warrants to check your email, text messages, phone records, and online dating account. It could also make your lover testify about your sexual preferences and practices. It did exactly that with Bill Clinton. Thanks to the government, I know Bill Clinton's penis has a bend in it.
When you're in any populated place, there's a good chance that video surveillance cameras are recording your every move. The government can examine those recordings anytime it produces a warrant. Some of those public cameras reportedly use FBI software for facial recognition.
In California, I have a device that allows me to go through toll booths without paying cash. It sits on my windshield and communicates with the toll booth which then charges my credit card. That means the government can know whenever I cross a bridge, if they care. You might not have one of those devices on your windshield, but I'll bet your toll booth is taking a picture of your license plate as you drive through. If the government needs to know where you've been, it has a lot of options.
Realistically, you can't lose your privacy to Big Brother because you already lost it decades ago. What you do have is the right to be boring and law-abiding at the same time. It just feels like privacy to you.
I'm overstating the case a bit. To be fair, you do have the right to take a dump with your bathroom door closed. You can also expect some privacy with your lawyer and your therapist. These minor exceptions are the crumbs that remain of your so-called right to privacy. And those crumbs remain because the government doesn't care about them. The government controls the most ferocious military power in the history of civilization and it knows where you live; it doesn't also need to know you have mommy issues.
Whenever I write on the topic of how our future will be awesome if only we would agree to transmit our personal-but-boring information - such as our physical locations - to a central database, I hear screams of BIG BROTHER! BIG BROTHER!
This fascinates me because I believe the phrase Big Brother has taken on some kind of meaning in our collective consciousness that is now long divorced from reason. If citizens had any substantial privacy now, it would make perfect sense to discuss the risks of trading that privacy for economic gain or convenience. But that's like arguing whether humans should take the risk of domesticating dogs; it's already ancient history. Sure, some people got mauled to death by dogs over the years, but canine domestication mostly worked out.
All reasonable people would agree that governments will abuse power. But have you ever had a problem that was caused by the government invading your privacy? Meanwhile, you enjoy the fact that your email works, thanks to a central database that stores your email routing information and another that stores your messages in the cloud. It's all there for Big Brother to see anytime he asks for a warrant. That's a tradeoff that has worked so far.
The Big Brother concept seems a lot like the bogey man. It isn't a real risk to law-abiding citizens; it just feels like one. Some would argue that while the government of the United States in its current form is unlikely to flagrantly abuse your private information and get away with it for long, that situation could change, as it did in Hitler's Germany. I would counter by noting that any argument that uses a Hitler analogy is self-refuting.
For the benefit of the absolutists reading this, I will agree that the odds of the U.S. Government becoming Nazi-like are non-zero. But you have the same odds of being hit by a meteor, and you don't modify your life to avoid meteors. Likewise, you probably shouldn't modify your life because you fear the government might go Nazi. Just relax, enjoy the promise of technology, and stop worrying about Big Brother. Realistically, he's been ass-raping you for years, and apparently he's not sufficiently endowed for you to have noticed. I don't see that situation changing.
I won't take any more of your time because today is election-day in America. If you are an adult citizen of the United States, and you already gave Big Brother your personal information when you registered, he wants to know more about your preferences in the voting booth.
Unless you think that's too risky, Hitler-wise.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Privacy Illusion
It has come to my attention that many of my readers in the United States believe they have the right to privacy because of something in the Constitution. That is an unsupportable view. A more accurate view is that the government divides the details of your life into two categories:
1. Stuff they don't care about.
2. Stuff they can find out if they have a reason.
Keep in mind that the government already knows the following things about you:
1. Where you live
2. Your name
3. Your income
4. Your age
5. Your family members
6. Your social security number
7. Your maiden name
8. Where you were born
9. Criminal history of your family
10. Your own criminal record
11. Your driving record
12. Your ethnicity
13. Where you work and where you used to work
14. Where you live and where you used to live
15. Names of your family members
16. The value of your home now
17. The amount you paid for your home
18. The amount you owe on your home
19. Your grades in school
20. Your weight, height, eye color, and hair color
The government doesn't know your medical history. But your doctor does, and he'll give it to the government if they produce a warrant.
The government doesn't know your spending details. But your bank and your credit card company do. And the government can subpoena bank records anytime it cares enough to do so. The government can't always watch you pay for stuff with cash, but don't expect that to last. At some point in the next twenty years, physical currency will be eliminated in favor of digital transactions.
Your government doesn't know who you are having sex with, but only because it doesn't care. If the government started to care, perhaps because it suspected you of a crime, it could get warrants to check your email, text messages, phone records, and online dating account. It could also make your lover testify about your sexual preferences and practices. It did exactly that with Bill Clinton. Thanks to the government, I know Bill Clinton's penis has a bend in it.
When you're in any populated place, there's a good chance that video surveillance cameras are recording your every move. The government can examine those recordings anytime it produces a warrant. Some of those public cameras reportedly use FBI software for facial recognition.
In California, I have a device that allows me to go through toll booths without paying cash. It sits on my windshield and communicates with the toll booth which then charges my credit card. That means the government can know whenever I cross a bridge, if they care. You might not have one of those devices on your windshield, but I'll bet your toll booth is taking a picture of your license plate as you drive through. If the government needs to know where you've been, it has a lot of options.
Realistically, you can't lose your privacy to Big Brother because you already lost it decades ago. What you do have is the right to be boring and law-abiding at the same time. It just feels like privacy to you.
I'm overstating the case a bit. To be fair, you do have the right to take a dump with your bathroom door closed. You can also expect some privacy with your lawyer and your therapist. These minor exceptions are the crumbs that remain of your so-called right to privacy. And those crumbs remain because the government doesn't care about them. The government controls the most ferocious military power in the history of civilization and it knows where you live; it doesn't also need to know you have mommy issues.
Whenever I write on the topic of how our future will be awesome if only we would agree to transmit our personal-but-boring information - such as our physical locations - to a central database, I hear screams of BIG BROTHER! BIG BROTHER!
This fascinates me because I believe the phrase Big Brother has taken on some kind of meaning in our collective consciousness that is now long divorced from reason. If citizens had any substantial privacy now, it would make perfect sense to discuss the risks of trading that privacy for economic gain or convenience. But that's like arguing whether humans should take the risk of domesticating dogs; it's already ancient history. Sure, some people got mauled to death by dogs over the years, but canine domestication mostly worked out.
All reasonable people would agree that governments will abuse power. But have you ever had a problem that was caused by the government invading your privacy? Meanwhile, you enjoy the fact that your email works, thanks to a central database that stores your email routing information and another that stores your messages in the cloud. It's all there for Big Brother to see anytime he asks for a warrant. That's a tradeoff that has worked so far.
The Big Brother concept seems a lot like the bogey man. It isn't a real risk to law-abiding citizens; it just feels like one. Some would argue that while the government of the United States in its current form is unlikely to flagrantly abuse your private information and get away with it for long, that situation could change, as it did in Hitler's Germany. I would counter by noting that any argument that uses a Hitler analogy is self-refuting.
For the benefit of the absolutists reading this, I will agree that the odds of the U.S. Government becoming Nazi-like are non-zero. But you have the same odds of being hit by a meteor, and you don't modify your life to avoid meteors. Likewise, you probably shouldn't modify your life because you fear the government might go Nazi. Just relax, enjoy the promise of technology, and stop worrying about Big Brother. Realistically, he's been ass-raping you for years, and apparently he's not sufficiently endowed for you to have noticed. I don't see that situation changing.
I won't take any more of your time because today is election-day in America. If you are an adult citizen of the United States, and you already gave Big Brother your personal information when you registered, he wants to know more about your preferences in the voting booth.
Unless you think that's too risky, Hitler-wise.
November 4, 2012
Guardians of Privacy
Sultans used eunuchs to guard their harems. The Vatican uses Swiss Guards for protection. In Harry Potter's world, goblins operate the Gingotts Wizarding bank. Apparently there is a right kind of guardian for every type of asset. I was thinking about this as I wondered about the best way to protect personal information. My suggestion is nuns.
I would trust nuns to guard my personal information in the cloud. I would also trust nuns to keep the government from getting my information and using it for evil. But I would limit the job to nuns who have been in the habit, so to speak, for at least twenty years. That sort of person is unlikely to suddenly turn evil and accept a bribe. And nuns don't fear death because they are sure the afterlife is an upgrade. I think nuns would be well -suited to resisting government pressure.
Now that we have trustworthy guardians of privacy, how can this arrangement make the world a better place? What useful applications would be possible if the government mandated that the location of your phone and your automobile must always be broadcast via Internet to a nun-protected database? Let's say the government gives the phone industry and the auto industry five years to meet this new location-awareness standard, including retrofitting old cars. And let's add some video cameras to the inside and inside of cars while we're at it.
I would think that in this imagined future, transportation energy costs would drop by about 20%. I'll give you a few reasons why. For starters, all parking spaces could be wired with sensors so no one ever has to circle the block looking for a place to park. When your car enters a neighborhood, it accesses the parking database and displays the nearest available spots on its navigation screen.
Now imagine all cars have the new technology that lets you see your own car as if you are above it. I already have that feature on my car, thanks to side and rear cameras; it makes parking a snap. I literally park the car as if I'm playing a video game. I just look at the navigation screen and maneuver the animated depiction of my car into the actual space that my side and rear cameras are showing. Parallel parking is one clean motion every time. It's frickin' magic. Let's imagine that streetlights someday have cameras that your car can only view when you are directly below. That gives every driver a bird's eye view of street parking even without side and rear cameras.
We can get rid of speed traps in this future world. If your car exceeds the speed limit by ten miles per hour, your car gives you a warning that a ticket will be issued by email if you continue. If you continue anyway, you get an email within minutes advising you that your checking account or credit card has already been debited the amount of the ticket. That should save a lot of time and money for enforcement. And it will save on gas as well, since speeding uses more fuel than obeying the speed limit.
The offset to that savings might be higher average speed limits on all roads because driving would be so much safer with this new technology. I could imagine, for example, that in foggy conditions the speed limit would decrease automatically and notify all cars accordingly. Perhaps the system can even change speed limits dynamically depending on the driving records of everyone on the road at any given moment. During school hours, for example, you might find that the average quality of drivers is very high (because no kids are driving) and relatively few drivers are inebriated. So the system might bump up the speed limit for a few hours. Physical speed limit signs would be removed because your car would know where it is and what the speed limit is at any moment.
At some point it might be possible to eliminate traffic lights and stop signs in favor of having the Internet regulate all speeds as you approach intersections. The goal would be to keep all cars moving all the time but automatically adjust speeds so no cars collide. That would save a lot of gas, and lives too. Drivers would control their own speed until they approached an intersection, at which point the Internet would take control temporarily.
No one would ever get lost in this world. Over time, all cars would be retrofitted with GPS navigation. Retrofitting might be as simple as adding a dashboard screen that syncs to your smartphone. GPS navigation eliminates most wrong turns and thus saves gas.
Google's vision of driverless cars gets us to a similar place. But human psychology might prevent adoption of driverless cars. I hope I'm wrong because that would be awesome. The halfway version, in which each driver has a much smarter car that acts like a copilot seems more likely.
Carpooling would be easier in this imagined world. You could walk to any parking lot and your smartphone would tell you who is heading to your neighborhood in the next few minutes based on past driving patterns. Your phone would start negotiating for that ride as you entered the parking lot. If the intended driver has different plans, he sees the message on his phone and declines it. Your phone goes automatically to the next driver and even shows you a map in the parking lot so you can walk right up to the correct car. You arrive just as the driver is pulling out of his spot, already expecting you because he has tracked your location. He waves you to open the door. You hop in. No words are spoken. Your smartphone and the driver's phone record the trip distance as it happens, and transfer a preauthorized payment from the rider to the driver to compensate for gas. Video cameras in the rearview mirror keep the passenger from robbing and raping the driver, and vice versa.
Carpooling would also become more popular if each car has Internet access because it allows people to do work on the way to the office. I can imagine some progressive companies might start counting your commute time as work time as long as you have your laptop and you are not the driver. That would spread out the rush hour, reduce traffic, and save huge amounts of gas.
Hailing a cab would be convenient too. You'd always know where the nearest cab is and how long before it arrives. No one could steal your cab because the cab driver would automatically identify passengers by their phone. If the wrong person tries to climb in, the cab would sound a buzzer.
I have a theory that drunk driving could be nearly eliminated if cabs were convenient and - this next part is important - partly funded by health and auto insurance companies so the price is always reasonable. Perhaps the discount price only kicks in for people travelling to and from places that serve alcohol during certain hours of the day. That wouldn't stop all drunk drivers, but it would put a dent in it.
Now imagine your car knows its passengers by their smartphone locations. The car's radio could find music that matches the preferences of everyone in the car, possibly by checking each person's iTunes or other music collections in the cloud and looking for common songs.
Now imagine all traffic accidents are recorded on the car's video cameras and sent to the Internet in the event of a crash. That saves a huge amount of money in court cases because it will always be obvious who is at fault.
Imagine too that your car can identify in advance any cars on your road that are driving erratically or have recently come from a bar. You'd be able to keep your distance. That would help too.
There would be no more high-speed car chases in this future world. Police can stop any car's engine via Internet. Just plug in the license plate number and it rolls to a stop.
Imagine that you never have to reach for a key as long as your phone is in your pocket and knows its location. Doors would unlock when you approach, and even the lighting, heating, and entertainment in your home, office, or car would adjust to your preferences.
To enjoy all of these services, all you need to do is trust nuns with your location information. And let's say the nuns are not directly paid for their services. Rather, the payments from all of the industries using this common database go to the poor. It's a win-win.
My guess is that the coming wave of location-sensing applications will be as important to the global economy as the auto industry or the computer industry. It's a big deal, affecting every phone, computer, door, entertainment system, and auto. All we need is some visionary government leadership of the sort that helped bring us GPS satellites and the Internet. And we need nuns to keep the government out of our location data.
I would trust nuns to guard my personal information in the cloud. I would also trust nuns to keep the government from getting my information and using it for evil. But I would limit the job to nuns who have been in the habit, so to speak, for at least twenty years. That sort of person is unlikely to suddenly turn evil and accept a bribe. And nuns don't fear death because they are sure the afterlife is an upgrade. I think nuns would be well -suited to resisting government pressure.
Now that we have trustworthy guardians of privacy, how can this arrangement make the world a better place? What useful applications would be possible if the government mandated that the location of your phone and your automobile must always be broadcast via Internet to a nun-protected database? Let's say the government gives the phone industry and the auto industry five years to meet this new location-awareness standard, including retrofitting old cars. And let's add some video cameras to the inside and inside of cars while we're at it.
I would think that in this imagined future, transportation energy costs would drop by about 20%. I'll give you a few reasons why. For starters, all parking spaces could be wired with sensors so no one ever has to circle the block looking for a place to park. When your car enters a neighborhood, it accesses the parking database and displays the nearest available spots on its navigation screen.
Now imagine all cars have the new technology that lets you see your own car as if you are above it. I already have that feature on my car, thanks to side and rear cameras; it makes parking a snap. I literally park the car as if I'm playing a video game. I just look at the navigation screen and maneuver the animated depiction of my car into the actual space that my side and rear cameras are showing. Parallel parking is one clean motion every time. It's frickin' magic. Let's imagine that streetlights someday have cameras that your car can only view when you are directly below. That gives every driver a bird's eye view of street parking even without side and rear cameras.
We can get rid of speed traps in this future world. If your car exceeds the speed limit by ten miles per hour, your car gives you a warning that a ticket will be issued by email if you continue. If you continue anyway, you get an email within minutes advising you that your checking account or credit card has already been debited the amount of the ticket. That should save a lot of time and money for enforcement. And it will save on gas as well, since speeding uses more fuel than obeying the speed limit.
The offset to that savings might be higher average speed limits on all roads because driving would be so much safer with this new technology. I could imagine, for example, that in foggy conditions the speed limit would decrease automatically and notify all cars accordingly. Perhaps the system can even change speed limits dynamically depending on the driving records of everyone on the road at any given moment. During school hours, for example, you might find that the average quality of drivers is very high (because no kids are driving) and relatively few drivers are inebriated. So the system might bump up the speed limit for a few hours. Physical speed limit signs would be removed because your car would know where it is and what the speed limit is at any moment.
At some point it might be possible to eliminate traffic lights and stop signs in favor of having the Internet regulate all speeds as you approach intersections. The goal would be to keep all cars moving all the time but automatically adjust speeds so no cars collide. That would save a lot of gas, and lives too. Drivers would control their own speed until they approached an intersection, at which point the Internet would take control temporarily.
No one would ever get lost in this world. Over time, all cars would be retrofitted with GPS navigation. Retrofitting might be as simple as adding a dashboard screen that syncs to your smartphone. GPS navigation eliminates most wrong turns and thus saves gas.
Google's vision of driverless cars gets us to a similar place. But human psychology might prevent adoption of driverless cars. I hope I'm wrong because that would be awesome. The halfway version, in which each driver has a much smarter car that acts like a copilot seems more likely.
Carpooling would be easier in this imagined world. You could walk to any parking lot and your smartphone would tell you who is heading to your neighborhood in the next few minutes based on past driving patterns. Your phone would start negotiating for that ride as you entered the parking lot. If the intended driver has different plans, he sees the message on his phone and declines it. Your phone goes automatically to the next driver and even shows you a map in the parking lot so you can walk right up to the correct car. You arrive just as the driver is pulling out of his spot, already expecting you because he has tracked your location. He waves you to open the door. You hop in. No words are spoken. Your smartphone and the driver's phone record the trip distance as it happens, and transfer a preauthorized payment from the rider to the driver to compensate for gas. Video cameras in the rearview mirror keep the passenger from robbing and raping the driver, and vice versa.
Carpooling would also become more popular if each car has Internet access because it allows people to do work on the way to the office. I can imagine some progressive companies might start counting your commute time as work time as long as you have your laptop and you are not the driver. That would spread out the rush hour, reduce traffic, and save huge amounts of gas.
Hailing a cab would be convenient too. You'd always know where the nearest cab is and how long before it arrives. No one could steal your cab because the cab driver would automatically identify passengers by their phone. If the wrong person tries to climb in, the cab would sound a buzzer.
I have a theory that drunk driving could be nearly eliminated if cabs were convenient and - this next part is important - partly funded by health and auto insurance companies so the price is always reasonable. Perhaps the discount price only kicks in for people travelling to and from places that serve alcohol during certain hours of the day. That wouldn't stop all drunk drivers, but it would put a dent in it.
Now imagine your car knows its passengers by their smartphone locations. The car's radio could find music that matches the preferences of everyone in the car, possibly by checking each person's iTunes or other music collections in the cloud and looking for common songs.
Now imagine all traffic accidents are recorded on the car's video cameras and sent to the Internet in the event of a crash. That saves a huge amount of money in court cases because it will always be obvious who is at fault.
Imagine too that your car can identify in advance any cars on your road that are driving erratically or have recently come from a bar. You'd be able to keep your distance. That would help too.
There would be no more high-speed car chases in this future world. Police can stop any car's engine via Internet. Just plug in the license plate number and it rolls to a stop.
Imagine that you never have to reach for a key as long as your phone is in your pocket and knows its location. Doors would unlock when you approach, and even the lighting, heating, and entertainment in your home, office, or car would adjust to your preferences.
To enjoy all of these services, all you need to do is trust nuns with your location information. And let's say the nuns are not directly paid for their services. Rather, the payments from all of the industries using this common database go to the poor. It's a win-win.
My guess is that the coming wave of location-sensing applications will be as important to the global economy as the auto industry or the computer industry. It's a big deal, affecting every phone, computer, door, entertainment system, and auto. All we need is some visionary government leadership of the sort that helped bring us GPS satellites and the Internet. And we need nuns to keep the government out of our location data.
October 30, 2012
Halloween Costumes
My Halloween costume this year was Lance Armstrong. All I needed was bicycle clothes, a necklace made of hypodermic needles, and a name tag. Feel free to borrow that one.
Do you have any other good Halloween costume ideas? Let's hear about them in the comments.
Happy Halloween!
Do you have any other good Halloween costume ideas? Let's hear about them in the comments.
Happy Halloween!
October 28, 2012
The Software Form of Government
Warning: This blog is written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view. It is written in a style that can easily be confused as advocacy or opinion. It is not intended to change anyone's beliefs or actions. If you quote from this post or link to it, which you are welcome to do, please take responsibility for whatever happens if you mismatch the audience and the content.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Most of my ideas are half-baked. This one is barely warm. But it's fun to think about, so I thought I'd share.
Today's thought experiment is to imagine a form of government with no employees, no elected officials, and no leaders. Imagine there are no government-owned buildings or other physical government assets either. This imaginary government exists only as software running on servers spread across multiple commercial sites, plus a bill of rights based on the American model. I'll add one extra right: The right to affordable high-speed Internet access.
Society would agree on only three rules:
1. New laws require a 51% majority.
2. Changes to existing laws require a 67% majority (for stability).
3. Votes are weighted based on test results.
That last rule means that voters must take an online test on any topic on the ballot before voting for it. A citizen's vote would be reduced in weight according to test scores. So if you scored only 50% on a test about the national budget, your vote on budget topics would be counted as one-half.
Your first reaction to the idea of a software based government is that it would leave too many essential services unattended. You'd have rampant crime, no one picking up trash, no business rules, no environmental standards, no schools, and so on. It would be chaos.
Or would it?
Nothing has ever surprised me more than the success of Wikipedia. Before Wikipedia, how many of us would have guessed that a crowd-maintained online encyclopedia would become a global treasure? Every instinct in my body says Wikipedia should have devolved into uselessness. I would have expected pranksters to spoil Wikipedia with false information, and I would have expected knowledgeable citizens to have better things to do with their time than donate it. I would have been very wrong.
The Wikipedia model makes me think a software-based government isn't 100% crazy. But for this system to work, one particular global trend needs to continue along its current path: Our desire for privacy has to keep shrinking. In the imaginary government-by-software, every citizen would have legal access to anyone else's medical, financial, employment, education or any other data. We're already seeing a rapid and voluntary disintegration of privacy. The only reason privacy exists at all is because it is often better than the alternatives. But once the alternatives to privacy become clearly superior, future generations will make rational choices to release on it. In general, every time we give up a little privacy we gain in other ways. When the benefits are large enough, privacy will seem a quaint relic from the past.
Once the public releases on its demand for privacy, crime will disappear fairly quickly. Private entities will have security cameras with facial recognition on every corner. The Internet will track the location of every automobile and every cell phone. In this future, cash will be banned in favor of electronic transactions, so the world will also know where you are by your purchases. And I wouldn't be surprised if someday we're all wearing location chips.
Ninety-nine percent of crime depends on being undetected long enough to escape. If you eliminate the possibility of being undetected, you eliminate most crime, and you eliminate the need for a police department. Don't worry that the bad guys have guns because everyone else will have one too. The bad guys will always be outgunned fifty-to-one. If someone tries to become a war lord, society can cancel their credit cards and starve them into compliance. With no privacy, no gun laws, and no untraceable cash, a life of crime will be a short one.
Ideally, an information-only government will be so healthy for the economy that potential criminals will simply get legitimate jobs.
Let's also assume that necessary functions such as education, the fire department, garbage removal, and environmental standards are all handled by organized volunteers or private companies. Everything will get done, but society will be free to attack any problem in any way it sees fit. Citizens won't be saddled with an antique government that was designed in pre-Internet times.
Homeland defense would be a big issue for a government made entirely of software. This imaginary government still needs a professional military run by generals. But the military could be subservient to the majority opinion in the country, just as it is now for all practical purposes. Generals could simply read the opinion poll data, add their own good judgment about timing, and act accordingly. There's no need for a civilian government to be in the middle, so long as the top generals can be fired by popular vote.
About halfway into writing this post I realized that the topic is too enormous for a blog. I'll just summarize by saying the existence of the Internet plus the trend toward less privacy might make it possible for citizens to self-organize without the need for a formal government. I don't predict it will happen, but the obstacles will be ones of psychology, fear of the unknown, and lack of imagination.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Most of my ideas are half-baked. This one is barely warm. But it's fun to think about, so I thought I'd share.
Today's thought experiment is to imagine a form of government with no employees, no elected officials, and no leaders. Imagine there are no government-owned buildings or other physical government assets either. This imaginary government exists only as software running on servers spread across multiple commercial sites, plus a bill of rights based on the American model. I'll add one extra right: The right to affordable high-speed Internet access.
Society would agree on only three rules:
1. New laws require a 51% majority.
2. Changes to existing laws require a 67% majority (for stability).
3. Votes are weighted based on test results.
That last rule means that voters must take an online test on any topic on the ballot before voting for it. A citizen's vote would be reduced in weight according to test scores. So if you scored only 50% on a test about the national budget, your vote on budget topics would be counted as one-half.
Your first reaction to the idea of a software based government is that it would leave too many essential services unattended. You'd have rampant crime, no one picking up trash, no business rules, no environmental standards, no schools, and so on. It would be chaos.
Or would it?
Nothing has ever surprised me more than the success of Wikipedia. Before Wikipedia, how many of us would have guessed that a crowd-maintained online encyclopedia would become a global treasure? Every instinct in my body says Wikipedia should have devolved into uselessness. I would have expected pranksters to spoil Wikipedia with false information, and I would have expected knowledgeable citizens to have better things to do with their time than donate it. I would have been very wrong.
The Wikipedia model makes me think a software-based government isn't 100% crazy. But for this system to work, one particular global trend needs to continue along its current path: Our desire for privacy has to keep shrinking. In the imaginary government-by-software, every citizen would have legal access to anyone else's medical, financial, employment, education or any other data. We're already seeing a rapid and voluntary disintegration of privacy. The only reason privacy exists at all is because it is often better than the alternatives. But once the alternatives to privacy become clearly superior, future generations will make rational choices to release on it. In general, every time we give up a little privacy we gain in other ways. When the benefits are large enough, privacy will seem a quaint relic from the past.
Once the public releases on its demand for privacy, crime will disappear fairly quickly. Private entities will have security cameras with facial recognition on every corner. The Internet will track the location of every automobile and every cell phone. In this future, cash will be banned in favor of electronic transactions, so the world will also know where you are by your purchases. And I wouldn't be surprised if someday we're all wearing location chips.
Ninety-nine percent of crime depends on being undetected long enough to escape. If you eliminate the possibility of being undetected, you eliminate most crime, and you eliminate the need for a police department. Don't worry that the bad guys have guns because everyone else will have one too. The bad guys will always be outgunned fifty-to-one. If someone tries to become a war lord, society can cancel their credit cards and starve them into compliance. With no privacy, no gun laws, and no untraceable cash, a life of crime will be a short one.
Ideally, an information-only government will be so healthy for the economy that potential criminals will simply get legitimate jobs.
Let's also assume that necessary functions such as education, the fire department, garbage removal, and environmental standards are all handled by organized volunteers or private companies. Everything will get done, but society will be free to attack any problem in any way it sees fit. Citizens won't be saddled with an antique government that was designed in pre-Internet times.
Homeland defense would be a big issue for a government made entirely of software. This imaginary government still needs a professional military run by generals. But the military could be subservient to the majority opinion in the country, just as it is now for all practical purposes. Generals could simply read the opinion poll data, add their own good judgment about timing, and act accordingly. There's no need for a civilian government to be in the middle, so long as the top generals can be fired by popular vote.
About halfway into writing this post I realized that the topic is too enormous for a blog. I'll just summarize by saying the existence of the Internet plus the trend toward less privacy might make it possible for citizens to self-organize without the need for a formal government. I don't predict it will happen, but the obstacles will be ones of psychology, fear of the unknown, and lack of imagination.
October 25, 2012
Machine Love
Yesterday I needed to see something in a darkened corner of my office. I reached into my pocket, pulled out my iPhone5, held the button that summons Siri, and said, "Flashlight."
Suddenly the corner lit up. Holy frickin' Apple genius! Siri found my flashlight app and turned it on.
My phone and I experienced. . . a. . . moment. I swear it felt like love. Literally. There was just something so accommodating and surprising about the flashlight working exactly as I hoped it would. I use Siri often, but usually just for setting an alarm or sending a quick text message. Those situations are cool and often convenient, but they do not feel like love. I expect Siri to do voice-to-text, and I expect it to set my alarm clock on command. What I didn't expect is that my command "Let there be light" would be obeyed. It made me feel godlike. In all seriousness, it was a rush.
I realize that this sounds like an Apple commercial, but I remind you of my history of despising most Apple products. Every Mac I've owned had been a lemon. My first iPhone was a total disaster. The iTunes interface is a mess that looks a Microsoft product from the nineties. My original version iPad pisses me off every day. Prior to the flashlight moment I had resisted Steve Jobs' Rasputin-like powers of seduction that now extend beyond the grave.
I own Apple stock because it seems underpriced, but I've never been a fan of the products despite buying them far too often. The iPhone5 changed that. It is an extraordinary feat of engineering. I am not kidding when I say I feel emotion for it. The designers and engineers at Apple have crossed some sort of psychological barrier that will someday be recognized as one of the great transitions in civilization. They literally engineered love. And by that I mean they created a device that stimulates my body chemistry in a way that feels somewhat similar to love. And I think that accomplishment will someday be seen as a bigger deal than we recognize today.
Suppose someday an industry standard is created to promote this sort of machine-generated love. The standard would simply allow anything in your environment - from your automobile to the rooms in your home - to respond to you individually, immediately, and sometimes surprisingly, the way an iPhone5 does. And perhaps the environment could be interacting with the smartphone in my pocket to make some of those actions a reality.
Suppose you had an industry standard for light bulbs and light switches that allowed any room to sense who is in it and convey that information to the electronics and other appliances in the home. Wifi-enabled light bulbs already exist, so this isn't a stretch. Let's say your light switch can detect motion and heat, so it knows when a room is occupied. It can also do facial recognition via its Internet connection. It knows who belongs in the house, including friends. It can pick up Bluetooth signals from phones that come near. Your phone also uses its GPS to tell the room it is near. The cloud holds my list of personal preferences, so as I move from room to room, my environment conforms to me.
The lighting adjusts to my preferences when I enter, and shuts off when I leave. If more than one person is in the room, the system intelligently negotiates priorities. For example, if one person is located in a bed, the room light will stay off when a new person enters.
My heating and cooling adjust according to who is in the house and what time it is. Even the curtains are automated.
According to my profile in the cloud, my television turns on if I am near it in my house between 9 pm and 11 pm in the evening. The screen goes to the DVR recording page and shows only the shows I liked enough to record. As I walk from room to room, the show follows me to each TV and pauses while I'm in hallways or the bathroom.
I walk to my computer and it knows who I am before I even touch it. No password needed. The screen pops to attention as I approach it.
Someone rings the doorbell and both my phone and TV present a picture of who is at the door. No cameras needed. The doorbell sensor identifies the visitor, either by facial recognition or by his phone's signal, and his profile picture is sent to the TV and my phone. His phone and mine are automatically connected through the cloud. I just say, "Come on in, Bob. The door is unlocked." It's not actually unlocked until I say it. The home listens to me, understands the context, and unlocks the door electronically.
When Skype-like functions are on every television, and there's a flat screen on every wall, all you need is your Bluetooth earpiece and the walls will seem to respond to you. Say, "Call Shelly" and the nearest TV fires up a Skype call. Whatever room Shelly is in, anywhere in the world, fires up the nearest TV screen and connects my call. If she's walking down a public street, the street cams show on my TV, switching from one to another as she walks and talks.
My dog's collar also has a location sensor and a speaker. I say aloud, "Where is the dog" and the house says, "The dog is in the kitchen."
Most of what I described is unsurprising to any sci-fi fan. It's the sort of thing we've seen predicted for decades. All I'm adding to the conversation is two notions:
1. Done right, the user will feel something closer to love than simple convenience. Apple has shown that to be possible.
2. To get to that awesome future, the world probably needs some sort of an industry standard for sensing human locations, identifying people, accessing each person's profile in the cloud, and negotiating preferences when there is more than one person in the room. And you probably need some standards for user interfaces that are common across all devices.
This is one case in which I'd like to see an activist government organizing industry players to create such a standard. Imagine the economic growth that could happen as the world transitions from our current heartless environment to one in which every room and every device shows you love the way an iPhone5 does.
I also think this future world of machine loving will be a partial cure for loneliness. This will seem like a stretch, but hear me out. When I lost my ability to speak for over three years, I felt lonely even in a room full of people. It turns out that you can only cure loneliness by feeling heard, not by hearing others. My iPhone5 hears me and does its best to understand and respond. When my entire environment starts acting the same way, I think I'll feel less lonely even when no other human is in the room. I'll feel heard, even if only by a set of connected machines.
I think the future for senior citizens will be bleak until this sort of technology arrives. Every elderly person I know is severely bored and lonely. It is human nature for young people to prefer spending time with other young people and to limit their time with the old. I think it will be a huge boon to the elderly to live in a machine-love world in which their environment responds to them, and they can connect to any living person with just a verbal command.
Machine love: It's the future.
Suddenly the corner lit up. Holy frickin' Apple genius! Siri found my flashlight app and turned it on.
My phone and I experienced. . . a. . . moment. I swear it felt like love. Literally. There was just something so accommodating and surprising about the flashlight working exactly as I hoped it would. I use Siri often, but usually just for setting an alarm or sending a quick text message. Those situations are cool and often convenient, but they do not feel like love. I expect Siri to do voice-to-text, and I expect it to set my alarm clock on command. What I didn't expect is that my command "Let there be light" would be obeyed. It made me feel godlike. In all seriousness, it was a rush.
I realize that this sounds like an Apple commercial, but I remind you of my history of despising most Apple products. Every Mac I've owned had been a lemon. My first iPhone was a total disaster. The iTunes interface is a mess that looks a Microsoft product from the nineties. My original version iPad pisses me off every day. Prior to the flashlight moment I had resisted Steve Jobs' Rasputin-like powers of seduction that now extend beyond the grave.
I own Apple stock because it seems underpriced, but I've never been a fan of the products despite buying them far too often. The iPhone5 changed that. It is an extraordinary feat of engineering. I am not kidding when I say I feel emotion for it. The designers and engineers at Apple have crossed some sort of psychological barrier that will someday be recognized as one of the great transitions in civilization. They literally engineered love. And by that I mean they created a device that stimulates my body chemistry in a way that feels somewhat similar to love. And I think that accomplishment will someday be seen as a bigger deal than we recognize today.
Suppose someday an industry standard is created to promote this sort of machine-generated love. The standard would simply allow anything in your environment - from your automobile to the rooms in your home - to respond to you individually, immediately, and sometimes surprisingly, the way an iPhone5 does. And perhaps the environment could be interacting with the smartphone in my pocket to make some of those actions a reality.
Suppose you had an industry standard for light bulbs and light switches that allowed any room to sense who is in it and convey that information to the electronics and other appliances in the home. Wifi-enabled light bulbs already exist, so this isn't a stretch. Let's say your light switch can detect motion and heat, so it knows when a room is occupied. It can also do facial recognition via its Internet connection. It knows who belongs in the house, including friends. It can pick up Bluetooth signals from phones that come near. Your phone also uses its GPS to tell the room it is near. The cloud holds my list of personal preferences, so as I move from room to room, my environment conforms to me.
The lighting adjusts to my preferences when I enter, and shuts off when I leave. If more than one person is in the room, the system intelligently negotiates priorities. For example, if one person is located in a bed, the room light will stay off when a new person enters.
My heating and cooling adjust according to who is in the house and what time it is. Even the curtains are automated.
According to my profile in the cloud, my television turns on if I am near it in my house between 9 pm and 11 pm in the evening. The screen goes to the DVR recording page and shows only the shows I liked enough to record. As I walk from room to room, the show follows me to each TV and pauses while I'm in hallways or the bathroom.
I walk to my computer and it knows who I am before I even touch it. No password needed. The screen pops to attention as I approach it.
Someone rings the doorbell and both my phone and TV present a picture of who is at the door. No cameras needed. The doorbell sensor identifies the visitor, either by facial recognition or by his phone's signal, and his profile picture is sent to the TV and my phone. His phone and mine are automatically connected through the cloud. I just say, "Come on in, Bob. The door is unlocked." It's not actually unlocked until I say it. The home listens to me, understands the context, and unlocks the door electronically.
When Skype-like functions are on every television, and there's a flat screen on every wall, all you need is your Bluetooth earpiece and the walls will seem to respond to you. Say, "Call Shelly" and the nearest TV fires up a Skype call. Whatever room Shelly is in, anywhere in the world, fires up the nearest TV screen and connects my call. If she's walking down a public street, the street cams show on my TV, switching from one to another as she walks and talks.
My dog's collar also has a location sensor and a speaker. I say aloud, "Where is the dog" and the house says, "The dog is in the kitchen."
Most of what I described is unsurprising to any sci-fi fan. It's the sort of thing we've seen predicted for decades. All I'm adding to the conversation is two notions:
1. Done right, the user will feel something closer to love than simple convenience. Apple has shown that to be possible.
2. To get to that awesome future, the world probably needs some sort of an industry standard for sensing human locations, identifying people, accessing each person's profile in the cloud, and negotiating preferences when there is more than one person in the room. And you probably need some standards for user interfaces that are common across all devices.
This is one case in which I'd like to see an activist government organizing industry players to create such a standard. Imagine the economic growth that could happen as the world transitions from our current heartless environment to one in which every room and every device shows you love the way an iPhone5 does.
I also think this future world of machine loving will be a partial cure for loneliness. This will seem like a stretch, but hear me out. When I lost my ability to speak for over three years, I felt lonely even in a room full of people. It turns out that you can only cure loneliness by feeling heard, not by hearing others. My iPhone5 hears me and does its best to understand and respond. When my entire environment starts acting the same way, I think I'll feel less lonely even when no other human is in the room. I'll feel heard, even if only by a set of connected machines.
I think the future for senior citizens will be bleak until this sort of technology arrives. Every elderly person I know is severely bored and lonely. It is human nature for young people to prefer spending time with other young people and to limit their time with the old. I think it will be a huge boon to the elderly to live in a machine-love world in which their environment responds to them, and they can connect to any living person with just a verbal command.
Machine love: It's the future.
October 23, 2012
The Value of Ideas - Update
An attractive young woman went out for a long run. She picked her route carefully, avoiding sketchy neighborhoods. But despite her best precautions, she could never feel completely safe in New York City, miles from her apartment, especially after dark.
Her 110 pound frame sliced through the night leaving nothing but the sound of her running shoes on the pavement. If necessary, she knew she could outrun almost any pursuit that came on foot. Assailants generally give up before the twenty-mile mark. It bothered her that she even had to have such thoughts. She kicked it up a notch.
Parked cars and lamp posts whizzed by. She thought she saw something that looked out of place, but it was just a rogue napkin blown by the wind. Settle down, she told herself. Don't be concerned about random motion in the night. Keep running. Get your miles. It's the only way you can sleep tonight.
She could see the shadowy outlines of three young males in the distance. They didn't look like trouble, necessarily, but she crossed the street anyway and planned her escape routes just in case. One of the men said something and the other two laughed. It sounded as if a comment had been directed at her. She kept her head down and put the three men in her past.
As she crossed the five-mile mark, she couldn't help wondering what would happen if someone with evil intent grabbed her. How long would it be until her husband knew she was in trouble? How long does an adult have to be missing before the police take it seriously?
She had her smartphone with her, but who has time to dial a number and make an emergency call during an attack? It takes time to get to your phone. Then you have to concentrate to get to the right mode. Are you wearing gloves? If you get the gloves off, do you have time to dial 911, explain your situation, and give your location?
She had these thoughts every time she ran, which was nearly every day. And she knew that others must sometimes feel the same way. There are some environments that feel unsafe no matter what precautions you take. As she ran, she tried to work out a solution. What she needed was a quick way to activate her phone in an emergency. And once activated, it needed to call for help automatically and give her location. But how?
At this point in the story you need to know that the runner's father is an electrical engineer living in California. The runner and her dad talked about the problem and brainstormed a variety of solutions. The best of the ideas turned into a patent application, a prototype, and now a business that just launched. The product is called MyRingGuard.
It's a ring that pairs with your Android phone (iPhone version will follow) via Bluetooth. If you're out by yourself, and you encounter trouble, just press the button on the ring to send an emergency text message via your phone to whoever you pre-designate. The text message will say you're in trouble and it will give your GPS coordinates. Obviously that won't stop an attack in progress, but at least you'll know help is on the way, and the help will have a good idea where to find you.
To me, the interesting part of this story is how two people starting with nothing but an idea can form a company that designs, manufactures, and markets a consumer product. I'm fascinated by the fact that none of the components of the business are physically in the same place. Most of it was outsourced by contract.
CEO (the runner): New York City
Engineer (the runner's dad): California
Industrial design: Argentina
Tooling design: Australia
Prototype: China
Electronics design: Romania
Firmware design: Hungary
App design: Hungary
Production: China (by a New York based company)
This sort of everywhere-at-once company structure would have been impractical ten years ago. In the old days, ideas were worthless and implementation was everything. We're entering a phase where implementation is a commodity that is universally available at a reasonable price. The real value is shifting to the quality of ideas. It's not a complete shift - someone still has to coordinate all of the disparate parts - but you can see the trend: If your idea kicks ass, and you have access to the Internet, you have the entire world to help with implementation. You can even crowdsource part of the funding, as the runner and her father did.
Along these same lines, a few weeks ago I teased you by saying I had a valuable idea I would try to "sell" to a venture capitalist - for someone else to implement - just to test my hypothesis that even unpatented ideas are beginning to have economic value. I can report to you today that the result of my experiment is a qualified success. I was able to find a highly capable investor willing to form a company around my idea and grant me an equity position in return for my contribution, which will be mostly around defining the idea in more detail. That's not quite "selling" an idea, and there is a lot of distance between deciding to form a company and actually creating something of value. I'll also end up doing some actual work, but that should be manageable. (My idea will need to stay secret for now. Sorry!)
Implementation will always be important, but the shift to an ideas-based economy is underway.
Disclosure: The runner and her dad are friends of mine and I have an interest in the company's success. The opening story has some literary flourishes but it's accurate in a "based on a true story" way.
Her 110 pound frame sliced through the night leaving nothing but the sound of her running shoes on the pavement. If necessary, she knew she could outrun almost any pursuit that came on foot. Assailants generally give up before the twenty-mile mark. It bothered her that she even had to have such thoughts. She kicked it up a notch.
Parked cars and lamp posts whizzed by. She thought she saw something that looked out of place, but it was just a rogue napkin blown by the wind. Settle down, she told herself. Don't be concerned about random motion in the night. Keep running. Get your miles. It's the only way you can sleep tonight.
She could see the shadowy outlines of three young males in the distance. They didn't look like trouble, necessarily, but she crossed the street anyway and planned her escape routes just in case. One of the men said something and the other two laughed. It sounded as if a comment had been directed at her. She kept her head down and put the three men in her past.
As she crossed the five-mile mark, she couldn't help wondering what would happen if someone with evil intent grabbed her. How long would it be until her husband knew she was in trouble? How long does an adult have to be missing before the police take it seriously?
She had her smartphone with her, but who has time to dial a number and make an emergency call during an attack? It takes time to get to your phone. Then you have to concentrate to get to the right mode. Are you wearing gloves? If you get the gloves off, do you have time to dial 911, explain your situation, and give your location?
She had these thoughts every time she ran, which was nearly every day. And she knew that others must sometimes feel the same way. There are some environments that feel unsafe no matter what precautions you take. As she ran, she tried to work out a solution. What she needed was a quick way to activate her phone in an emergency. And once activated, it needed to call for help automatically and give her location. But how?
At this point in the story you need to know that the runner's father is an electrical engineer living in California. The runner and her dad talked about the problem and brainstormed a variety of solutions. The best of the ideas turned into a patent application, a prototype, and now a business that just launched. The product is called MyRingGuard.
It's a ring that pairs with your Android phone (iPhone version will follow) via Bluetooth. If you're out by yourself, and you encounter trouble, just press the button on the ring to send an emergency text message via your phone to whoever you pre-designate. The text message will say you're in trouble and it will give your GPS coordinates. Obviously that won't stop an attack in progress, but at least you'll know help is on the way, and the help will have a good idea where to find you.
To me, the interesting part of this story is how two people starting with nothing but an idea can form a company that designs, manufactures, and markets a consumer product. I'm fascinated by the fact that none of the components of the business are physically in the same place. Most of it was outsourced by contract.
CEO (the runner): New York City
Engineer (the runner's dad): California
Industrial design: Argentina
Tooling design: Australia
Prototype: China
Electronics design: Romania
Firmware design: Hungary
App design: Hungary
Production: China (by a New York based company)
This sort of everywhere-at-once company structure would have been impractical ten years ago. In the old days, ideas were worthless and implementation was everything. We're entering a phase where implementation is a commodity that is universally available at a reasonable price. The real value is shifting to the quality of ideas. It's not a complete shift - someone still has to coordinate all of the disparate parts - but you can see the trend: If your idea kicks ass, and you have access to the Internet, you have the entire world to help with implementation. You can even crowdsource part of the funding, as the runner and her father did.
Along these same lines, a few weeks ago I teased you by saying I had a valuable idea I would try to "sell" to a venture capitalist - for someone else to implement - just to test my hypothesis that even unpatented ideas are beginning to have economic value. I can report to you today that the result of my experiment is a qualified success. I was able to find a highly capable investor willing to form a company around my idea and grant me an equity position in return for my contribution, which will be mostly around defining the idea in more detail. That's not quite "selling" an idea, and there is a lot of distance between deciding to form a company and actually creating something of value. I'll also end up doing some actual work, but that should be manageable. (My idea will need to stay secret for now. Sorry!)
Implementation will always be important, but the shift to an ideas-based economy is underway.
Disclosure: The runner and her dad are friends of mine and I have an interest in the company's success. The opening story has some literary flourishes but it's accurate in a "based on a true story" way.
October 18, 2012
Interesting Day
Yesterday was a fascinating day for me. I wrote a little blog post earlier in the week in which I said President Obama should be fired for putting resources behind medical marijuana prosecutions in California. And then the Internet puked on my shoes. (See my post below for all of the fun.)
It seems some clarifications are in order.
Sorry I Confused Some of You
You can see from the many comments on this blog, and on the other Internet sites that linked to it, that people had very different interpretations of what I wrote. The people with good reading comprehension correctly understood my point: Jailing an American citizen for no reason other than political gain is a firing offense.
The people with bad reading comprehension, and the people who saw nothing but the confused summaries and tweets from those people, interpreted my argument as saying Romney is likely to be softer on drugs than Obama. And based on that misunderstanding, people concluded that my endorsement of Romney was the stupidest opinion in the galaxy. They'd be right if that had been my reasoning.
The fascinating thing here is that I believe the source of confusion is that people literally don't recognize objectivity when they see it. I got a lot of comments along the lines of "You say X is true and then in the same paragraph you say Y." What I actually said is "X is likely to be true, but here's an argument for Y." That's how objective people talk. They make a prediction and then explain why it might be wrong. That's the only way you know all sides have been considered. Partisans and non-thinkers say, "My prediction is 100% certain."
If I were to say the weather in California is good, but today it is cold and foggy, about 20% of readers would say, "Make up your mind! First you say the weather is good and then you say it is cold and foggy! You make no sense!"
Bad Analogy People
The people who aren't good with analogies waded in next, pointing out that President Obama killed U.S. citizens abroad because those citizens were part of a terrorist organization bent on the destruction of the United States. While that situation is worthy of discussion, it misses the central point of my post. There's a big difference between protecting the country and expecting some political gain from doing so versus jailing a small businessman in California for political gain while not even pretending it benefits the country. I expect my president to do some nasty stuff in my best interest. I don't expect him to do nasty stuff to citizens for no reason other than his own reelection interests. The latter is a firing offense.
The Law is the Law
The next thing that fascinated me is the number of people who said President Obama is obligated to pursue legal action against medical marijuana dispensaries in California because the law is the law and we can't have our leaders picking and choosing which ones they support.
To the people who hold that view, I wonder what country you have been living in. In the real world, legal resources are always limited, and leaders at every level of the legal system make choices every day about what is important enough to pursue and what is not.
As I write this, every police chief in every district is looking at his resources, looking at all the work his office is charged with doing, and deciding that something on the order of 50% of what the legal code asks him to do is simply impractical. So he focuses his resources on the 50% that are his highest priorities.
While the law is the law, the more important fact is that the budget is the budget. We elect our leaders to set priorities and act accordingly. The point of my post is that President Obama is using the country's limited resources to shut California dispensaries - possibly the country's lowest priority - for no reason other than political gain. In the process, he's putting a small businessman in jail for 10 years to life. That's a firing offense.
On my side of this debate is a Harvard-trained lawyer by the name of President Obama. During his first campaign for president he promised he wouldn't waste limited government resources pursuing medical marijuana cases. I'm not a Harvard-trained lawyer so I will take his word for it that a president can choose to ignore low-priority prosecutions without violating his oath.
The President Doesn't Personally Put People in Jail
Some commenters mocked me by arguing that the President doesn't control federal law enforcement at the granular level. You can't blame him for every decision made in the field. He's not personally slapping handcuffs on perps. True enough. But in the case of California dispensaries, he authorized the flip-flop in policy from ignoring the situation to going after them. Holding him innocent from the logical repercussions of his policy is like saying history should cut some slack for Pol Pot because he didn't personally kill anyone.
The Lesser Evil Argument
Supporters of President Obama argue that firing the President FOR ANY REASON means accepting a devastating alternative in a Romney presidency. While I applaud the complete dismissal of morality in the interest of practicality, let's take a minute to see if the practicality argument is so cut and dried.
My observation is that voters often - perhaps usually - don't get what they think they voted for. Nixon surprised everyone by getting cuddly with China. Bush Junior turned from isolationist to military adventurer. Obama went from weed-friendly to badass destroyer of state-approved dispensaries. Some fiscal conservatives have blown up the budget while some free-spending Democrats balanced it. If you think you can predict how a candidate will act in office, you might need a history lesson, or perhaps a booster shot of humility.
Now consider Mitt Romney, the most famous chameleon of all time. I submit that a hypothetical Romney presidency would be nearly impossible to predict with any accuracy. In each of his past leadership roles he has morphed into whatever the job required. During the primaries, his job required him to be far right. In the general election we see him drift toward the center, or as his advisor famously said, "Shake the Etch-a-Sketch." It would be naïve to assume Romney wouldn't shake it again once elected, given that even non-chameleon presidents do so.
Romney knows that the electorate is full of idiots and he needs to be a gigantic liar to win their votes. I totally get that. The funniest part is his budget plan that he promises to describe in detail after he gets elected. Dumb people see this as "He has an awesome fiscal plan!" Democrats see it as "He's a liar with no plan!" I see it as "You know I'm a brilliant and experienced turnaround guy. I know how to do this sort of thing. And if I give details now it just paints a target on my back. So chill."
In any event, Congress will be the ones who decide on the next budget. It will probably look similar no matter who gets elected. I don't believe, for example, that a Romney budget would overfund the military. Congress would moderate that, and Romney probably doesn't mean it anyway. Remember, his job today is to lie to get elected. His job once elected is quite different.
I also have no faith in my ability - or yours - to compare Obamacare (essentially a Romney plan) to how healthcare might change under a Romney administration. If you think you know the answer to that question, you're kidding yourself.
Some Democrats say the biggest risk in a Romney presidency involves Supreme Court nominees. But I think we saw after the unexpected opinion from Justice Roberts on the Obamacare ruling that the court has a built-in safety net against being too blatantly partisan and destroying its own credibility in the process. I think the risk of a conservative-heavy Supreme Court ruining the country by adhering too slavishly (irony!) to the Constitution is low. You might not like some of their rulings, but they probably won't kill you. And if we are being objective, a court with too many lefties would have its own risks.
You're Endorsing Romney to Cut Your Rich Guy Taxes, Bastard!
Some folks suspect that I'm a weasel-bastard who is using the California dispensary issue as a smokescreen for bobbing to the right so I can save on taxes under a Romney administration. There's no defense against an accusation that I have secret motives, but let me describe the economics as I see them.
Over my career, my net worth has moved in lockstep with the overall economy. So whatever plan is good for the entire country is probably the one that helps me most, no matter what my tax rate is. And realistically, given a choice between taxing the rich, including myself, versus taxing people with no money, I don't see a choice. Even Romney knows we can't grow our way out of the problem. He's not an idiot; he's just a guy who needs idiots to vote for him.
So no, I don't see a scenario in which someday I am flying my diamond-encrusted helicopter over the rioting masses of starvation-crazed ex-middle-classers and thinking to myself that things worked out well for me. I don't see the option of living the good life at the expense of the 99%. That's not even a thing. I stopped working to satisfy my personal cravings years ago. Everything I produce and everything I earn these days is for the benefit of others. So I don't mind higher taxes on the rich if it makes sense for the country. With the exception of M.C. Hammer, the rich get richer no matter what the tax rates are. I'm afraid that won't change regardless of who gets elected.
It seems some clarifications are in order.
Sorry I Confused Some of You
You can see from the many comments on this blog, and on the other Internet sites that linked to it, that people had very different interpretations of what I wrote. The people with good reading comprehension correctly understood my point: Jailing an American citizen for no reason other than political gain is a firing offense.
The people with bad reading comprehension, and the people who saw nothing but the confused summaries and tweets from those people, interpreted my argument as saying Romney is likely to be softer on drugs than Obama. And based on that misunderstanding, people concluded that my endorsement of Romney was the stupidest opinion in the galaxy. They'd be right if that had been my reasoning.
The fascinating thing here is that I believe the source of confusion is that people literally don't recognize objectivity when they see it. I got a lot of comments along the lines of "You say X is true and then in the same paragraph you say Y." What I actually said is "X is likely to be true, but here's an argument for Y." That's how objective people talk. They make a prediction and then explain why it might be wrong. That's the only way you know all sides have been considered. Partisans and non-thinkers say, "My prediction is 100% certain."
If I were to say the weather in California is good, but today it is cold and foggy, about 20% of readers would say, "Make up your mind! First you say the weather is good and then you say it is cold and foggy! You make no sense!"
Bad Analogy People
The people who aren't good with analogies waded in next, pointing out that President Obama killed U.S. citizens abroad because those citizens were part of a terrorist organization bent on the destruction of the United States. While that situation is worthy of discussion, it misses the central point of my post. There's a big difference between protecting the country and expecting some political gain from doing so versus jailing a small businessman in California for political gain while not even pretending it benefits the country. I expect my president to do some nasty stuff in my best interest. I don't expect him to do nasty stuff to citizens for no reason other than his own reelection interests. The latter is a firing offense.
The Law is the Law
The next thing that fascinated me is the number of people who said President Obama is obligated to pursue legal action against medical marijuana dispensaries in California because the law is the law and we can't have our leaders picking and choosing which ones they support.
To the people who hold that view, I wonder what country you have been living in. In the real world, legal resources are always limited, and leaders at every level of the legal system make choices every day about what is important enough to pursue and what is not.
As I write this, every police chief in every district is looking at his resources, looking at all the work his office is charged with doing, and deciding that something on the order of 50% of what the legal code asks him to do is simply impractical. So he focuses his resources on the 50% that are his highest priorities.
While the law is the law, the more important fact is that the budget is the budget. We elect our leaders to set priorities and act accordingly. The point of my post is that President Obama is using the country's limited resources to shut California dispensaries - possibly the country's lowest priority - for no reason other than political gain. In the process, he's putting a small businessman in jail for 10 years to life. That's a firing offense.
On my side of this debate is a Harvard-trained lawyer by the name of President Obama. During his first campaign for president he promised he wouldn't waste limited government resources pursuing medical marijuana cases. I'm not a Harvard-trained lawyer so I will take his word for it that a president can choose to ignore low-priority prosecutions without violating his oath.
The President Doesn't Personally Put People in Jail
Some commenters mocked me by arguing that the President doesn't control federal law enforcement at the granular level. You can't blame him for every decision made in the field. He's not personally slapping handcuffs on perps. True enough. But in the case of California dispensaries, he authorized the flip-flop in policy from ignoring the situation to going after them. Holding him innocent from the logical repercussions of his policy is like saying history should cut some slack for Pol Pot because he didn't personally kill anyone.
The Lesser Evil Argument
Supporters of President Obama argue that firing the President FOR ANY REASON means accepting a devastating alternative in a Romney presidency. While I applaud the complete dismissal of morality in the interest of practicality, let's take a minute to see if the practicality argument is so cut and dried.
My observation is that voters often - perhaps usually - don't get what they think they voted for. Nixon surprised everyone by getting cuddly with China. Bush Junior turned from isolationist to military adventurer. Obama went from weed-friendly to badass destroyer of state-approved dispensaries. Some fiscal conservatives have blown up the budget while some free-spending Democrats balanced it. If you think you can predict how a candidate will act in office, you might need a history lesson, or perhaps a booster shot of humility.
Now consider Mitt Romney, the most famous chameleon of all time. I submit that a hypothetical Romney presidency would be nearly impossible to predict with any accuracy. In each of his past leadership roles he has morphed into whatever the job required. During the primaries, his job required him to be far right. In the general election we see him drift toward the center, or as his advisor famously said, "Shake the Etch-a-Sketch." It would be naïve to assume Romney wouldn't shake it again once elected, given that even non-chameleon presidents do so.
Romney knows that the electorate is full of idiots and he needs to be a gigantic liar to win their votes. I totally get that. The funniest part is his budget plan that he promises to describe in detail after he gets elected. Dumb people see this as "He has an awesome fiscal plan!" Democrats see it as "He's a liar with no plan!" I see it as "You know I'm a brilliant and experienced turnaround guy. I know how to do this sort of thing. And if I give details now it just paints a target on my back. So chill."
In any event, Congress will be the ones who decide on the next budget. It will probably look similar no matter who gets elected. I don't believe, for example, that a Romney budget would overfund the military. Congress would moderate that, and Romney probably doesn't mean it anyway. Remember, his job today is to lie to get elected. His job once elected is quite different.
I also have no faith in my ability - or yours - to compare Obamacare (essentially a Romney plan) to how healthcare might change under a Romney administration. If you think you know the answer to that question, you're kidding yourself.
Some Democrats say the biggest risk in a Romney presidency involves Supreme Court nominees. But I think we saw after the unexpected opinion from Justice Roberts on the Obamacare ruling that the court has a built-in safety net against being too blatantly partisan and destroying its own credibility in the process. I think the risk of a conservative-heavy Supreme Court ruining the country by adhering too slavishly (irony!) to the Constitution is low. You might not like some of their rulings, but they probably won't kill you. And if we are being objective, a court with too many lefties would have its own risks.
You're Endorsing Romney to Cut Your Rich Guy Taxes, Bastard!
Some folks suspect that I'm a weasel-bastard who is using the California dispensary issue as a smokescreen for bobbing to the right so I can save on taxes under a Romney administration. There's no defense against an accusation that I have secret motives, but let me describe the economics as I see them.
Over my career, my net worth has moved in lockstep with the overall economy. So whatever plan is good for the entire country is probably the one that helps me most, no matter what my tax rate is. And realistically, given a choice between taxing the rich, including myself, versus taxing people with no money, I don't see a choice. Even Romney knows we can't grow our way out of the problem. He's not an idiot; he's just a guy who needs idiots to vote for him.
So no, I don't see a scenario in which someday I am flying my diamond-encrusted helicopter over the rioting masses of starvation-crazed ex-middle-classers and thinking to myself that things worked out well for me. I don't see the option of living the good life at the expense of the 99%. That's not even a thing. I stopped working to satisfy my personal cravings years ago. Everything I produce and everything I earn these days is for the benefit of others. So I don't mind higher taxes on the rich if it makes sense for the country. With the exception of M.C. Hammer, the rich get richer no matter what the tax rates are. I'm afraid that won't change regardless of who gets elected.
October 16, 2012
Firing Offense
Warning: This blog is written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view. It is written in a style that can easily be confused as advocacy or opinion. It is not intended to change anyone's beliefs or actions. If you quote from this post or link to it, which you are welcome to do, please take responsibility for whatever happens if you mismatch the audience and the content.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let's say a CEO does a great job for stockholders; he increases profits five-fold, treats the employees well, and causes the stock price to skyrocket. He's a superstar. One day the public learns that the CEO killed a guy to get ahead in his career, but the CEO doesn't get convicted because his clever attorney gets him off on a technicality. Assume in this hypothetical situation that the public correctly believes the CEO killed a guy to advance his career. Should the board of directors allow the superstar CEO to keep his job? Or is killing a guy to advance your career always a firing offense?
Okay, keep your answer in mind.
The next question is for supporters of President Obama. Let's say your political views map closely to the President's positions. He's your guy. But suppose you found out he once killed an American citizen in the United States to help his reelection. And assume, as with the CEO example, that the facts of the killing are undisputed and the President found a legal means to avoid prosecution. In that hypothetical case, would you still vote for President Obama? Or would you say it is a firing offense for a President to kill a citizen to advance his career?
I predict that every one of you favored firing the hypothetical CEO for killing a guy to get ahead. My second prediction is that every Republican reader of this blog favored firing President Obama in the hypothetical and imaginary case of him murdering a citizen to get elected. My third prediction is that supporters of President Obama will quibble with the hypothetical example, or my comparison to the CEO, or say President Obama is still a better option than Romney. In other words, for most supporters of President Obama, I don't think there is such a thing as a "firing offense."
For the record, President Obama did not technically kill anyone to get elected. That was just a hypothetical example. But he is putting an American citizen in jail for 10 years to life for operating medical marijuana dispensaries in California where it is legal under state law. And I assume the President - who has a well-documented history of extensive marijuana use in his youth - is clamping down on California dispensaries for political reasons, i.e. to get reelected. What other reason could there be?
One could argue that the President is just doing his job and enforcing existing Federal laws. That's the opposite of what he said he would do before he was elected, but lying is obviously not a firing offense for politicians.
Personally, I'd prefer death to spending the final decades of my life in prison. So while President Obama didn't technically kill a citizen, he is certainly ruining this fellow's life, and his family's lives, and the lives of countless other minor drug offenders. And he is doing it to advance his career. If that's not a firing offense, what the hell is?
Romney is likely to continue the same drug policies as the Obama administration. But he's enough of a chameleon and a pragmatist that one can't be sure. And I'm fairly certain he'd want a second term. He might find it "economical" to use federal resources in other ways than attacking California voters. And he is vocal about promoting states' rights, so he's got political cover for ignoring dispensaries in states where medical marijuana is legal.
So while I don't agree with Romney's positions on most topics, I'm endorsing him for president starting today. I think we need to set a minimum standard for presidential behavior, and jailing American citizens for political gain simply has to be a firing offense no matter how awesome you might be in other ways.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let's say a CEO does a great job for stockholders; he increases profits five-fold, treats the employees well, and causes the stock price to skyrocket. He's a superstar. One day the public learns that the CEO killed a guy to get ahead in his career, but the CEO doesn't get convicted because his clever attorney gets him off on a technicality. Assume in this hypothetical situation that the public correctly believes the CEO killed a guy to advance his career. Should the board of directors allow the superstar CEO to keep his job? Or is killing a guy to advance your career always a firing offense?
Okay, keep your answer in mind.
The next question is for supporters of President Obama. Let's say your political views map closely to the President's positions. He's your guy. But suppose you found out he once killed an American citizen in the United States to help his reelection. And assume, as with the CEO example, that the facts of the killing are undisputed and the President found a legal means to avoid prosecution. In that hypothetical case, would you still vote for President Obama? Or would you say it is a firing offense for a President to kill a citizen to advance his career?
I predict that every one of you favored firing the hypothetical CEO for killing a guy to get ahead. My second prediction is that every Republican reader of this blog favored firing President Obama in the hypothetical and imaginary case of him murdering a citizen to get elected. My third prediction is that supporters of President Obama will quibble with the hypothetical example, or my comparison to the CEO, or say President Obama is still a better option than Romney. In other words, for most supporters of President Obama, I don't think there is such a thing as a "firing offense."
For the record, President Obama did not technically kill anyone to get elected. That was just a hypothetical example. But he is putting an American citizen in jail for 10 years to life for operating medical marijuana dispensaries in California where it is legal under state law. And I assume the President - who has a well-documented history of extensive marijuana use in his youth - is clamping down on California dispensaries for political reasons, i.e. to get reelected. What other reason could there be?
One could argue that the President is just doing his job and enforcing existing Federal laws. That's the opposite of what he said he would do before he was elected, but lying is obviously not a firing offense for politicians.
Personally, I'd prefer death to spending the final decades of my life in prison. So while President Obama didn't technically kill a citizen, he is certainly ruining this fellow's life, and his family's lives, and the lives of countless other minor drug offenders. And he is doing it to advance his career. If that's not a firing offense, what the hell is?
Romney is likely to continue the same drug policies as the Obama administration. But he's enough of a chameleon and a pragmatist that one can't be sure. And I'm fairly certain he'd want a second term. He might find it "economical" to use federal resources in other ways than attacking California voters. And he is vocal about promoting states' rights, so he's got political cover for ignoring dispensaries in states where medical marijuana is legal.
So while I don't agree with Romney's positions on most topics, I'm endorsing him for president starting today. I think we need to set a minimum standard for presidential behavior, and jailing American citizens for political gain simply has to be a firing offense no matter how awesome you might be in other ways.
October 14, 2012
Living in a Computer Simulation
Physicists in Germany think they might have a way to find out if our reality is just a computer simulation. At least I think that's what this article in MIT's Technology Review says. It's a bit hard to penetrate.
In my view, the odds are in favor of our perceived reality being a computer simulation. Allow me to make my lawyerly argument in defense of that view. Sure, I've blogged on this topic before, but not so convincingly.
When I was a kid, I dreamed of one day growing up to be a world-famous cartoonist. When your actual life conforms to your childhood fantasy, it makes you question the basic nature of reality. Did I really beat million-to-one odds, or is something else going on?
One explanation for my experience is that I'm extraordinarily lucky. For this discussion I'm defining luck to include my genetic composition, upbringing, and environment, since I didn't have much control over any of that. Let's say the odds of getting to this point of my career by luck alone is somewhere in the range of one-in-a-million.
A second explanation for my perceived life is that I'm insane and I have delusions that I'm a cartoonist. An estimated 1.1% of the population is schizophrenic. Rounding off, let's say the odds that my life is a hallucination are a hundred to one against. And yet, so far, that's the best explanation.
A third explanation is that I live in a simulation that was designed to satisfy my ambitions. That seems plausible to me on several levels. Let's begin by assuming scientists are correct when they say there are probably lots of planets in the universe with life. Add the power of evolution plus several billion years of percolation and you have a universe peppered with intelligent beings.
If you wait long enough, almost any species will die off from one sort of natural disaster or another. Maybe a sun explodes, a rogue meteor hits, or a new virus springs up. So if it's true that the universe created lots of life on various worlds, it's probably true that many advanced species have already died off. Some of them probably saw it coming in time to project their personalities, hopes, and dreams into computer simulations that would run forever, as sort of an artificial afterlife.
I think it is likely that for every "real" and intelligent being in the universe there might be hundreds or even billions of expired civilizations that figured out how to port their essence to computer simulations before checking out.
Summarizing the three explanations for how my actual life could so closely conform to my childhood fantasies:
Luck: million-to-one against
Insanity: hundred-to-one against
Simulation: million-to-one in favor
It's really no contest. In my specific case it would be irrational to believe I am anything but a simulation.
One feature of our so-called reality that makes me scratch my head is the consistency of the rules of physics. One might expect a "natural" universe - one that came from an explosion - to be nothing but randomness on every dimension, including the rules of physics themselves. Any sort of consistency to our perceived reality feels like a "tell" from the simulation creators.
If you were the designer of this simulation you would need to strike a delicate balance. You want the characters to have your curiosity and intelligence but you also need to prevent them from realizing their true nature within the simulation. That means creating boundaries that don't look like boundaries. For example, you might program the simulation to have an infinite size (as if that even makes sense), but limit the maximum speed of things to the speed of light, making it impossible for the simulated people to examine the edges of their universe.
As a designer, you'd also need to make the quantum world totally freaky and endlessly puzzling. What are the tiniest particles in the universe made of? Answer: waves. What is a wave? Answer: Something that makes sense only in the realm of math. When you look for the boundaries of reality you always bump into a wall that defies common sense so aggressively that it looks intentional.
Another hint that we are simulations modeled after our programmers is that we are suspicious about the possibility. If the creators modeled us after themselves, they created simulations that could imagine someday creating their own simulations. That means we might be - wait for it - the simulations of other simulations.
Keep in mind that the perceived passage of time for people in a simulation does not have to map to any "real" time in the universe. So perhaps I am experiencing my trillionth simulated life. Perhaps each of us gets to experience every life and every time period of our alleged reality. The entire simulation would only take a few seconds in the outside world if the processor is fast enough.
If even one civilization in the real universe created a simulation that could create its own simulations, the odds of any particular "sentient" creature being real are perhaps worse than a trillion to one. That assumes the alien processors are fast and our perceived time doesn't need to match any real time in the actual universe.
Ladies and gentleman of the jury, I rest my case. And I predict you have been programmed to disagree with my conclusion.
In my view, the odds are in favor of our perceived reality being a computer simulation. Allow me to make my lawyerly argument in defense of that view. Sure, I've blogged on this topic before, but not so convincingly.
When I was a kid, I dreamed of one day growing up to be a world-famous cartoonist. When your actual life conforms to your childhood fantasy, it makes you question the basic nature of reality. Did I really beat million-to-one odds, or is something else going on?
One explanation for my experience is that I'm extraordinarily lucky. For this discussion I'm defining luck to include my genetic composition, upbringing, and environment, since I didn't have much control over any of that. Let's say the odds of getting to this point of my career by luck alone is somewhere in the range of one-in-a-million.
A second explanation for my perceived life is that I'm insane and I have delusions that I'm a cartoonist. An estimated 1.1% of the population is schizophrenic. Rounding off, let's say the odds that my life is a hallucination are a hundred to one against. And yet, so far, that's the best explanation.
A third explanation is that I live in a simulation that was designed to satisfy my ambitions. That seems plausible to me on several levels. Let's begin by assuming scientists are correct when they say there are probably lots of planets in the universe with life. Add the power of evolution plus several billion years of percolation and you have a universe peppered with intelligent beings.
If you wait long enough, almost any species will die off from one sort of natural disaster or another. Maybe a sun explodes, a rogue meteor hits, or a new virus springs up. So if it's true that the universe created lots of life on various worlds, it's probably true that many advanced species have already died off. Some of them probably saw it coming in time to project their personalities, hopes, and dreams into computer simulations that would run forever, as sort of an artificial afterlife.
I think it is likely that for every "real" and intelligent being in the universe there might be hundreds or even billions of expired civilizations that figured out how to port their essence to computer simulations before checking out.
Summarizing the three explanations for how my actual life could so closely conform to my childhood fantasies:
Luck: million-to-one against
Insanity: hundred-to-one against
Simulation: million-to-one in favor
It's really no contest. In my specific case it would be irrational to believe I am anything but a simulation.
One feature of our so-called reality that makes me scratch my head is the consistency of the rules of physics. One might expect a "natural" universe - one that came from an explosion - to be nothing but randomness on every dimension, including the rules of physics themselves. Any sort of consistency to our perceived reality feels like a "tell" from the simulation creators.
If you were the designer of this simulation you would need to strike a delicate balance. You want the characters to have your curiosity and intelligence but you also need to prevent them from realizing their true nature within the simulation. That means creating boundaries that don't look like boundaries. For example, you might program the simulation to have an infinite size (as if that even makes sense), but limit the maximum speed of things to the speed of light, making it impossible for the simulated people to examine the edges of their universe.
As a designer, you'd also need to make the quantum world totally freaky and endlessly puzzling. What are the tiniest particles in the universe made of? Answer: waves. What is a wave? Answer: Something that makes sense only in the realm of math. When you look for the boundaries of reality you always bump into a wall that defies common sense so aggressively that it looks intentional.
Another hint that we are simulations modeled after our programmers is that we are suspicious about the possibility. If the creators modeled us after themselves, they created simulations that could imagine someday creating their own simulations. That means we might be - wait for it - the simulations of other simulations.
Keep in mind that the perceived passage of time for people in a simulation does not have to map to any "real" time in the universe. So perhaps I am experiencing my trillionth simulated life. Perhaps each of us gets to experience every life and every time period of our alleged reality. The entire simulation would only take a few seconds in the outside world if the processor is fast enough.
If even one civilization in the real universe created a simulation that could create its own simulations, the odds of any particular "sentient" creature being real are perhaps worse than a trillion to one. That assumes the alien processors are fast and our perceived time doesn't need to match any real time in the actual universe.
Ladies and gentleman of the jury, I rest my case. And I predict you have been programmed to disagree with my conclusion.
October 11, 2012
Modernizing the Constitution
If you were going to modernize and redesign the constitution of the United States, what changes would you make?
You and I have two huge advantages over the Founders. We have the benefit of a few hundred years of track record to see what worked and what didn't, and we have the Internet. It's hard to imagine that Franklin, Jefferson, Madison and the rest would design the constitution the same way if they were starting now.
Our biggest political problem at the moment is that we have two powerful political parties, and two is a bad number for getting anything done. Every issue becomes an endless slap fight with no clear winner.
So what is the optimum number of decision-makers?
If you have only one decision-maker, you have a dictatorship. That would be terrific if your dictator happens to be awesome. But no one wants to take that sort of risk. Dictators are rarely awesome.
A many-party system, such as Israel, has its own set of problems. You don't want too many parties all pulling in different directions.
The ideal number of decision-makers for any sort of organization is three. When you have three votes on any issue, the result is always a decisive 2-1 or 3-0. Obviously that only works if the decision is a yes-no type. The worst case would be three parties with three different plans.
So how do you design a system that has the benefits of three decision-makers without the risk of getting three different plans for each issue?
My proposed constitutional change is to allow three - and only three - political parties, as follows:
1. Liberal Party
2. Conservative Party
3. Science Party
Each party - no matter how many members - would get one collective vote in Congress on each bill. All bills would be decided on a 2-1 or 3-0 vote. So you always get a result that looks decisive to the public. That's the first benefit.
Now let's say the Science Party is all about data and rational thought. The party would recruit scientists, engineers, and other quantitative types. The Science Party would be allowed to vote, as a block, on every bill, but they wouldn't be allowed to introduce their own legislation. That prevents a situation where there are three plans for the three parties and nothing but deadlock. The Science Party would only be allowed to vote for the liberal or the conservative plan. But the Science Party would have tremendous influence on those plans because the other parties would understand they have to get the Science Party vote to succeed.
With this arrangement, the Science Party is on the winning side of every vote. The public would always have the benefit of knowing that the facts mattered. That doesn't mean the Science Party is always right. It just means the decisions are always informed by reason. Realistically, the Science Party would usually be settling for the lesser of evils.
The risk is that the Liberal Party or the Conservative Party would each try to get their moles elected in the Science Party. But if that were a huge risk, you would see it happening under other Democratic systems, and you don't. I think well-defined parties would do a good job of filtering out the pretenders.
The Science Party would need the power of abstaining in case the other parties produce two thoroughly unworkable plans. So you still have gridlock if you need it. But members of the Liberal and Conservative parties would have a hard time getting reelected if they kept disagreeing with the Science party. Challengers would use it as a hammer.
I would also tweak the constitution to make it illegal to combine different topics into one bill. That gets rid of the pork projects.
The Science Party would be charged with keeping the public informed via Internet. Unlike the other two parties, the Science Party would fully explain the counterpoint to every argument and lay out all of the data and reasoning behind each issue.
I would also make voting mandatory, and require that it be done by Internet, assuming proper safeguards could be put in place to avoid voter fraud.
If the Founders had the technology we have today, and they had a robust scientific and analytical community to draw on, as we do, I think they would have designed the Constitution to take advantage of those assets.
What do you think?
[Note: Going forward, I'll be pruning out any commenters who are taking over the comment section. You know who you are.]
You and I have two huge advantages over the Founders. We have the benefit of a few hundred years of track record to see what worked and what didn't, and we have the Internet. It's hard to imagine that Franklin, Jefferson, Madison and the rest would design the constitution the same way if they were starting now.
Our biggest political problem at the moment is that we have two powerful political parties, and two is a bad number for getting anything done. Every issue becomes an endless slap fight with no clear winner.
So what is the optimum number of decision-makers?
If you have only one decision-maker, you have a dictatorship. That would be terrific if your dictator happens to be awesome. But no one wants to take that sort of risk. Dictators are rarely awesome.
A many-party system, such as Israel, has its own set of problems. You don't want too many parties all pulling in different directions.
The ideal number of decision-makers for any sort of organization is three. When you have three votes on any issue, the result is always a decisive 2-1 or 3-0. Obviously that only works if the decision is a yes-no type. The worst case would be three parties with three different plans.
So how do you design a system that has the benefits of three decision-makers without the risk of getting three different plans for each issue?
My proposed constitutional change is to allow three - and only three - political parties, as follows:
1. Liberal Party
2. Conservative Party
3. Science Party
Each party - no matter how many members - would get one collective vote in Congress on each bill. All bills would be decided on a 2-1 or 3-0 vote. So you always get a result that looks decisive to the public. That's the first benefit.
Now let's say the Science Party is all about data and rational thought. The party would recruit scientists, engineers, and other quantitative types. The Science Party would be allowed to vote, as a block, on every bill, but they wouldn't be allowed to introduce their own legislation. That prevents a situation where there are three plans for the three parties and nothing but deadlock. The Science Party would only be allowed to vote for the liberal or the conservative plan. But the Science Party would have tremendous influence on those plans because the other parties would understand they have to get the Science Party vote to succeed.
With this arrangement, the Science Party is on the winning side of every vote. The public would always have the benefit of knowing that the facts mattered. That doesn't mean the Science Party is always right. It just means the decisions are always informed by reason. Realistically, the Science Party would usually be settling for the lesser of evils.
The risk is that the Liberal Party or the Conservative Party would each try to get their moles elected in the Science Party. But if that were a huge risk, you would see it happening under other Democratic systems, and you don't. I think well-defined parties would do a good job of filtering out the pretenders.
The Science Party would need the power of abstaining in case the other parties produce two thoroughly unworkable plans. So you still have gridlock if you need it. But members of the Liberal and Conservative parties would have a hard time getting reelected if they kept disagreeing with the Science party. Challengers would use it as a hammer.
I would also tweak the constitution to make it illegal to combine different topics into one bill. That gets rid of the pork projects.
The Science Party would be charged with keeping the public informed via Internet. Unlike the other two parties, the Science Party would fully explain the counterpoint to every argument and lay out all of the data and reasoning behind each issue.
I would also make voting mandatory, and require that it be done by Internet, assuming proper safeguards could be put in place to avoid voter fraud.
If the Founders had the technology we have today, and they had a robust scientific and analytical community to draw on, as we do, I think they would have designed the Constitution to take advantage of those assets.
What do you think?
[Note: Going forward, I'll be pruning out any commenters who are taking over the comment section. You know who you are.]
Scott Adams's Blog
- Scott Adams's profile
- 1258 followers
Scott Adams isn't a Goodreads Author
(yet),
but they
do have a blog,
so here are some recent posts imported from
their feed.
