Category Archive: Thoughts

Considered thoughts and opinions on a variety of subjects.

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May 13, 2009

Evolution, Past and Future

Read two books last week, both on the subject of evolution although with very different points of focus.

The first was Jerry Coyne’s “Why Evolution Is True” which is by far the best defense of the Theory of Evolution I have seen in print. It would have been perfect if Coyne had included a chapter that explains our latest understanding of how bodies are formed based on genetics (and therefore how only small mutations are needed to produce significantly different forms). The book did successfully address a couple of my concerns with the current formation of evolution. (As noted, perhaps too frequently, on this blog – I have no problems reconciling evolution with my faith; but as an amateur scientist I do have questions that I think have yet to be addressed by the current formations of evolution).

The one big concern I still have with evolution for which I found Coyne’s presentation still lacking is an explanation of speciation – how we end up with many different species as opposed to a single (although diverse) gene pool. Coyne presents the best understanding that exists today – that most animal speciation is a result of geographic separation (there is another mechanism which accounts for the existence of many plant species). This is because where there’s a population of creatures that are not physically separated; any mutation that would limit what other creature they could breed with would tend to be selected against. Furthermore, to find those species living in the same area, the geographic separation must have been overcome. If you consider the number of different animal species you tend to find living together, that’s a whole lot of separation and reuniting going on. This might well prove to be a reasonable explanation; but I’d like to see more thorough modeling of this – is the amount of dynamic isolation needed for this to work supported by the geological, fossil, and timeline evidence?

Then from the practical to the speculative.

The second book I read was Ray Kurzweil’s “The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology”. The essential argument of this book is that the evolution of sentient intelligence naturally leads to biological evolution becoming surpassed by the evolution of non-biological life-forms – artificial intelligences and/or human intelligence transcribed into computer software. If evolution states that life-forms which are better adapted to produce fertile offspring will succeed over those less capable, then technological life will naturally succeed over biological life. A robot programmed with a human’s consciousness is “fitter” in the evolutionary sense.

What’s more, Kurzweil argues, this transition will be happening soon, perhaps in our lifetimes. He first makes the case that technology is accelerating at an exponential rate (Moore’s Law writ large). Based on that, laptop computers with more memory and processing power than a human brain are just around the corner. Likewise the ability to completely analyze and model a human brain is also on the way. Further, Kurzweil believe that true artificial intelligences are also close (although I personally found his arguments here weak), and once they exists they will tend to further accelerate the rate of technological innovation (you can have a computer rack full of artificially intelligent “scientists” working together on any problem for a fraction of the cost of a lab of real humans). The bottom line is that Kurzweil believes that artificial humans will exist by 2040, and by 2100 biological intelligences will be in the minority. And since the rate of change of technology is increasing exponentially, even if it is 10 times harder then he thinks, that only delays it by a decade or so.

I’ve read Kurzweil’s theories before (particularly in his “The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence”) which covers much of the same ground and I am of mixed feelings. On the one hand, while I can raise objections to some of his individual points, I can’t argue against the overall flow of his theory - it does seem inevitable (I am ignoring here the question of whether any part of consciousness is hosted in something other than matter). On the other hand, there’s a significant part of me that is frightened of such a future. I’ve actually done some fiction writing on my own to explore how I feel about this (nothing worthy of publishing, just a way to get my own thoughts in order), and should such a time come, I may in fact be one of the bio-luddites who objects to it.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 08, 2009

Theistic Ethics

OK, so I am a Jesus Follower and therefore my own personal sense of ethics starts with my understanding of God's commandments to love Him and to love people. However, "God said it, I believe it, that settles it" makes for a short post, so I'm going to approach this from a different direction.

In my last post I proposed how humanity can and does evolve a collection of memes that provide an ethical sense based on finding ways to live together in community, without having to resort to an absolute sense of right and wrong provided by God. So how would it make sense to adopt an ethical perspective provided by "god". To answer that question, I think you first need to ask how it would make sense for any community of individuals to adopt an ethical perspective from some other community.

I claim that in the general case this would be a bad idea. As I explained in my previous post, the process of evolving memes will tend (over time) to produce reasonably optimal ethics for a community given their context. The problem is that the context of another community will almost certainly be different and therefore their sense of ethics will not be optimal in a context in which those memes did not develop.

So, if humanity was to encounter sentient life from another solar system, two things will likely be true – their sense of ethics will be different from ours, and those differences will make their morality ill suited for humanity. Trying to adopt an alien morality for humans would be like introducing non-indigenous life-forms into an ecology. The results are almost never good for the indigenous life-forms. That's not to say there wouldn't be some common ground (one could imagine that prohibitions on murder would develop in many different contexts, although the details on what constitutes murder vs. justified killing would vary). IMHO this is an area that has been explored by too few Science Fiction writers. I'll note here quickly that examples of this failure can be seen in world history as European colonialists went out and tried to impose a set of ethics that evolved in the European context on the indigenous populations in the rest of the world.

So adopting the ethics employed by another life form would not be a good idea. Yet that's not quite what most religions propose. Most religions in fact make a distinction between what is ethical for "god" to do and what is ethical for people to do. Instead, what most religions propose is that "god" defines what is ethical for people separate from his/her/its own morality. So, the real question becomes: under what circumstances is it appropriate for a community to take someone else's recommendations for its own ethics?

I claim there are two basic requirements for that. The first is that there needs to be some reason to believe that the external source of ethics is able to produce a system which is superior to the one that the community has evolved on its own. This implies that the external party has vastly greater insight into not just the current context of the community; but also how that context will change over time. In religious terms, it means that we should not take ethical advice from "god" unless "god" is something close to all-knowing and all-wise.

I claim that the second requirement for a community to accept ethical advice from some external party is that the external party has the community's best interests at heart. One could easily imagine (or see in world history) examples of one community giving bad ethical advice to another for reasons of self-interest. It is therefore not enough for the external party to be smart enough to devise a superior ethical model, they must also be motivated to do so. In religious terms, it means that we should not take ethical advice from "god" unless "god" is loving and compassionate towards humanity.

Now as a Jesus Follower I do believe that God exists and that he fulfills both of these requirements. God is all-knowing, all-wise, all-loving, and all-compassionate. Based on that I am willing to look to Him for my understanding of what is right and wrong, trusting that He will lead me in the best way given my current context and whatever context I will find myself in the years ahead. But I do understand the need of someone else coming through a process like my own to come to those same conclusions.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

May 06, 2009

Atheistic Ethics

"The Big Question" forum by Eucharist seems to get me thinking, which means it also will tend to get me blogging. This past Sunday, the topic was the basis for ethics and morals, and included a discussion of theistic morals (those derived from some concept of a deity) and atheistic morals (those derived without recourse to deity). I have a lot to say on the subject (much, but not all, I was able to contribute to the meeting). I'll start with my views on atheistic morals and deal with theistic morals in my next post.

Unlike some Christians, I have no problem with the idea that one can derive a reasonable set of ethics without resorting to God, although I do believe the process by which this occurs will result in some differences with more theistic morals. Fundamentally, I think morals/ethics are "memes" (the idea-equivalent of genes) which will tend to evolve in any society of sentient beings. Once people come together to gain the benefits of community (economies of scale, specialization, etc.) then some principles become necessary for the community to work together cooperatively. A community will not last long if there is no sense that people can't kill each other for any reason.

So atheistic ethics/morals tend to evolve over times to allow a society to adapt to its context. New ideas spring up (the meme equivalent of mutations) and if they prove helpful to society they will gain acceptance as the norm. Those that are not helpful will tend to be discarded over time (although they may still be held by a minority of a population as long as the ideas are not too harmful – the equivalent of rare alleles of a gene).

The advantage of this scheme is that like all evolutionary processes, it tends to give optimal solutions given enough time. You can even explain "golden rule" type morals this way – there is a trade-off between the benefit gained to the individual by it being acceptable for them to do something to someone else, and a cost to it being acceptable for that thing to be done to them. As the population of a community increases, the number of people who would be interested in doing whatever it is to the individual will tend to grow faster than their ability to gain benefit by doing it to others. So as population grows, it becomes advantageous to say "it is bad ethics/morals to do to other people what you would not want done to you".

The disadvantage of this scheme is that like all evolutionary processes, it can be slow in responding to changes in the environment, and such periods of transition can be difficult. This is reasonable when the transitions are gradual; but as the pace of societal change increases, the ability of evolved ethics to keep up becomes a problem. In the biological realm, a rapid environment change will often result in large numbers of species being wiped out while other species that had been on the edge of the ecosystem may find themselves better suited and come to dominance. In the ethical realm, rapid societal changes will tend to result in the overthrow of long-cherished moral ideas while fringe views may suddenly become the norm. Readers are encouraged to look at what has happened in our culture over the last 40 years for examples of this in effect.

As a concrete (although intentionally controversial) example of the process of atheistic ethics at work, I would claim that history shows us that ethics that support slavery are advantageous in pre-industrial, agrarian society and therefore those memes are likely to flourish in such societies. The fact that the "slavery meme" was in fact quite successful around the world is proof that it had some advantage. Yet as societies became industrialized, the anti-slavery meme started to gain acceptance, although the transition was often fraught with conflict. I don't give this example to show how atheistic morals are bad, just how they tend to be adaptive to the environment.

Friday – some thoughts on theistic ethics.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

April 27, 2009

Grief

Grief

People in America don’t like to talk about grief. Love, anger, fear – they are all very public emotions; but grief seems to be a private matter, experienced behind the shutters of our minds; out of sight, where it is safe. People cry; but it is expected that they get over it and quickly move on.

Perhaps it doesn’t fit the American illusion of rugged individualism; for at its core, grief is about how interconnected we all are. Someone is a part of our life, and when they are gone they leave a hole that serves as a reminder that they were a part us, causing us to trip over that pothole in our soul from time to time.

I was very close to my mother and would regularly call her up to tell her new things that were going on in my life, particularly good thing. After she died my life went on, complete with yet more new, good things; but each such event became a reminder that I no longer had a mother I could call – adding a touch of bitterness to whatever joy I was experiencing. It was hard at first; but eventually it became another part of the complex taste of life – the knowledge that she was gone forever seasoning my experience of the world.

The individual bumps when we are reminded that someone is no longer in our life are the easy part of grief. The hard part is when we finally wrap our minds around the idea that those people will never be there again. This is harder to grasp because there are always times when someone is unavailable - we are used to calling people and not finding them home, or missing them at some gathering for one reason or another. It is easy for our minds to trick us into thinking that nothing is unusual, that we will catch them next time.

But there is always a point when we finally internalize that it is not just that they are not there now; but that they will never be there again. That’s what real grieving is about – realizing that not only is there a hole; but that it will never be filled. Sure, we may eventually establish some other relationship with someone else that serves a similar purpose; but the gap where the original person fit into our lives never goes away. Grieving is the process of embracing that truth.

I am reminded of the story Richard Feynman tells about losing his wife. While he loved her dearly, he initially didn’t feel much after she died. Then one day he saw a dress in a store window and for a brief moment he thought about buying it for her, and suddenly it all hit him – that he would never again buy another dress for his wife, or anything else; and there on the street he grieved.

As we grow older, our lives become more and more pitted with the absence of those people we have lost - family, friends, co-workers. Some holes are bigger (such as the place my mother used to fit into my life). Others seem larger because the suddenness or means of departure leaves a more ragged hole (I had an old friend who committed suicide). But everyone we are connected with who departs leaves some kind of gap. These absences tend to accumulate, until, finally, we all leave behind a collection of us-shaped gaps in other people’s lives.

It is all a part of the experience of life.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

April 15, 2009

Economic Systems (Part 2)

In my previous post I considered what economic system would work best for a “Generation Ship” which was taking several generations to travel between stars. I argued that a communist planned economy that tried to implement the motto “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs” will fail because of corruption and lack of motivation. I argued that free market capitalism would also fail because the later generations do not have a voice in the market and therefore the markets will not value goods correctly. I argued that socialism leads to the worst of both worlds – corruptions and a failed marketplace.

So what’s the solution?

The problem isn’t the economic system – it is human nature. Human beings are natural optimizers – we are constantly trying to get the “biggest bang for the buck”. If you limit what we get, then we strive to find ways to limit our investment to get the same benefit. If you limit our investment, we strive to find ways to maximize our benefits for that effort. This drive can accomplish great things – all of the marvelous innovations around us were a result of someone trying to optimize their environment in some way; but that same virtue is also a vice that leads to greed and sloth and eventually to failure of any economic system. I believe the bottom line is that no economic system will work unless you change human nature.

Fortunately, there is a way to do that – to change human nature.

It’s called Christianity.

Christianity is all about developing a relationship with God by which He can work in your life to change your nature – to change you into a better person. It isn’t (as many people believe) struggling under your own strength to follow a bunch of arbitrary rules. It’s about taking Jesus as your master and teacher, and letting him train you to be better than you used to be.

So what’s this have to do with economics?

Many people look at verses like Acts 2:44-45

All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.

and believe that Christianity supports communism. Others look at verses like 2 Thessalonians 3:10-12

For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat." We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat.

and believe Christianity supports capitalism. I believe neither is true.

I believe that true Christianity doesn’t care about the economic system, it cares about relationships. I believe the people described in the book of Acts who sold their belonging to give to others did so because they had compassion. There was no system to require them to give (see Acts 5:3-4 for confirmation of this). There was no economic model for the church. There were just people who cared enough about other people to voluntarily give of their wealth to support others. Likewise, Paul’s advice to the church in Thessaly was because people were hurting relationships (being “busybodies”) because they had too much free time. They needed to work so their energies would go into ways that built and support others rather than tearing them down.

I believe people who have been transformed by God can make communism work because they will be looking for how to help others rather than only looking after their own interests. I believe people who have been transformed by God can make the free market work because they will be thinking about those who cannot participate in the market and will act accordingly. I believe people who have been transformed by God can make socialism work because they will strive for excellence and honesty in all that they do.

The point is, if you are transformed by God, the economic system doesn’t matter; and without that transformation, any economic system is doomed to failure.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

April 13, 2009

Economic Systems (Part 1)

When I consider economics (or other aspects of philosophy), I often use thought experiments to test my ideas. The idea of a “generation ship” has proven to be one of the most useful mental laboratories. Physics tells us that we cannot build a spacecraft that travels faster than light, and in fact it is impractical to even get close to that speed. Therefore if mankind ever travels to the stars, it will be at speeds that will require at least decades if not centuries to get there. That leaves only two practical options for the crew: either they will need to be kept in some form of hibernation or suspended animation for the voyage; or the original crew doesn’t actually make it to the destination – their descendants do. This latter option involved what engineers call a “generation ship”. You build a very large spacecraft that can support a crew of several thousand indefinitely (complete with farms for food, etc.) and you send them out on the voyage with the understanding that they will live out the rest of their lives on board the ship, as will their children, and grandchildren, and so on for several generations until some later generation reaches the original goal.

What makes this interesting from an economics point of view is that in deep space between stars, there is no place to acquire additional resources (except, perhaps, hydrogen), and even when they reach some star it is not clear what supplies will be able to be replenished (certainly not wood, oil, or food; and even finding iron or silicon might be require significant effort). So, the question is: what form of government and economics would be most effective for such a voyage?

Most science fiction writers I have seen who have written about such craft have suggested that there would be a hierarchical crew would be responsible for assigning tasks to the people most skilled to accomplish them and distributing resources to keep everyone alive and healthy. I am certain that this approached is doomed to failure – yes, it might well work for the first generation of crew who chose to live on the ship for the rest of their lives; but their children will have other motivations. Some will see no value in making much effort to support the community since their own support is guaranteed. Others will work to rise through the ranks to gain power over others. Corruption will become rampant as people use their rank within the crew to distribute favors for personal gain. Why I am so confident of this failure? Because we have already seen it happen. The economic model here is essentially a communist command economy “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.” It is a well meaning system; but one which tends to fail within 2-3 generations.

So then is free market capitalism the solution? I also claim the answer to that is “no.” The problem is that free markets are a very effective way of determining the optimal value of something; but only if everyone who has a stake in the market is able to make informed decisions. In the case of the generation ship, all future generations have a stake in the value of the limited resources on the ship; but they have no way to participate in the market. So, assume there is a limited supply of some resource on the ship which cannot be synthesized. The first generation might well come to some agreement in the marketplace on the value of that resource to them and use it accordingly. Let’s say there are 10,000 boxes of it and the market will pay $1/box for it. Now consider generations later when there are only 10 boxes left, what price will they go for in a free market? $1000/box? 1,000,000? More? And if that is the case, what was the true value of those first boxes that sold for only $1? The free market failed to determine the true value of the goods because not everyone who would value it was able to participate in the market. What’s more, those with money have a greater voice in the market and can manipulate it to their own interests which might not serve the interests of the voyage as a whole. So wealth becomes power (sometimes via corruption) which is used to gain wealth and it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle which only by chance will leave the ship in a position to accomplish its mission at the end of the voyage.

How about socialism? Does it give the “best of both worlds” – allowing for a regulated market into which the government interjects the consideration of those who cannot directly participate and providing a safety net for those without money or power? Unfortunately, the result is often the worst, not the best, of both worlds. Socialism tends to invite the abuses found in both communisms and the free market. Those responsible for regulating the market are subject to corruption by those being regulated, and government involvement prevents the free market from developing optimal solutions.

So what is the answer? What economic system actually works? For my opinion on that you’ll have to wait for my next post.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 10, 2009

Ponzi Schemes

Bernie Madoff has been in the news the last few months for running the largest investment scam in history – a 64 Billion Dollar “Ponzi Scheme.” Ponzi schemes are fairly simple – you pay big returns to the initial investors (including yourself) out of the contributions of the later investors. So as an example, you find two investors and tell them that you have invested $1000 using a technique which will produce 100% return on investment in two months. They each give you $1000 to invest as well, and you then pay yourself their $2000 and say “see I got 100% return on my original investment”. Then you find 4 more investors, and use their $4000 to pay out to the initial two at the end of their two months. Now you have two people who can corroborate that your investment strategy works, and so it gets easier to get the next 8, and so on. The problem of course is that to keep this going you have to double the number of investors every two months, otherwise you run out of money to pay the earlier investors and the whole thing comes tumbling down. In the end, only half of the investors will get any money back, although the earlier investors tend to do well for themselves.

While illegal, the sad truth is that Ponzi Schemes are all around us – they just aren’t called that.

Consider the global consumer/industrial economy. It starts with the understandable and virtuous desire of people to see their children have a higher standard of living than they had (and those children will want better for their children, and so on). Nothing wrong with that by itself. But consider what “a higher standard of living” means. Their children get to work easier jobs and they have better things - better clothes, better houses, better food, better TV sets, etc. Making all those “better things” requires resources and also people to extract those resources and to work in factories building it all. Those jobs tend to be difficult and don’t fit the profile of “a higher standard of living”. So for each generation to have a higher standard of living than the previous ones, you need an increasing supply of resources and people willing to live at a lower standard of living to support them.

So (as one of many starting points for this) immigrants come to a prosperous country like America to seek a better life for their families. They work undesirable jobs (hard jobs, dangerous jobs) to earn enough to give their children a head start to being able to get better jobs and live better lives. But where do the resources and the people come from to support those better lives? Well, the resources come from “out west” or other places in the country that haven’t been exploited yet and the people come from the next wave of immigration. So the children of the original immigrants get the payout of a higher standard of living because next round of immigrants invest their lives in the promise that their children will also gain a higher standard of living. The contributions of the later investors are used to support the standard of living of children of the earlier ones.

Eventually, so many people have a high standard of living in the prosperous country that you can’t bring in enough immigrants to support it. Plus you start running out of resources in the country. How can you keep people improving their lifestyle? The answer Europe and America came up with is to spread the dream of a better life to other countries. So institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank were created to help “industrialize” Third World countries. The promise was (and is) that if they extract their resources and work in factories in their own countries building the better things that are needed to maintain the increasing standard of living in Europe and America, that subsequent generations of their citizens would enjoy a better standard of living just like the children of people in America and Europe did. So we went from one generation investing their lives on the promise of a higher standard of living for their children to countries investing lives of their citizens to maintain the higher standard of living in other countries on the promise that their children will also enjoy a better life. Countries that came to make this investment later are being used to fund the payout to the countries that came earlier.

And it works, to a point – the standard of living in the Third World countries is in fact increasing (slowly). But there’s a catch because the whole thing is one big Ponzi scheme. It assumes that we will keep finding resources and people to come in at the bottom to help lift everyone else up. But both resources and people are in finite supply. And here’s where it falls down. Eventually we will run out of people to support everyone else, and out of resources to make all of the better things that come with a better standard of living. This planet can only support a small percentage of its populating living at the standard maintained in America and Europe. There just are not enough natural resources to support everyone. And how do you get people to do the unpleasant jobs when it become clear that there is no way their children will be able to do any better because there isn’t enough people left around the world to do the hard work?

What’s worse is we may be on the brink of the collapse of the whole system.

The People’s Republic of China is in the midst of a massive industrialization campaign. They have a growing middle class who seek a lifestyle is not unlike that in Europe and America. But here’s the problem – even if you assume that China can only succeed a moving a third of their population into the middle class, that’s more than 400,000,000 more people trying to maintain a Euro-American standard of living. They, or perhaps their children (who will be expected to be able to have an even higher standard of living), will not be interested in working in coal mines or dangerous factories or living in a country with massive pollution problems, and China will likely be running out of indigenous resources anyway. So where will the resources and people come from to support their higher standard of living? At some point in the next generation, there will be no more “later investors” to use to support the payout of the nations that have already industrialized; and when that happens, there’s going to be a lot of problems.

So what’s the solution? People need to start thinking in terms of a “sustainable standard of living” instead of a “higher standard of living” – a standard of living that can be supported with the resources we can generate indefinitely instead of those we will run out of. We must also place a greater value on the hard and dangerous work that maintains everyone’s lifestyle. Perhaps instead of thinking in terms of skilled vs. unskilled labor, we need to think in terms of essential vs. elective labor and give greater honor to those who do the things we all depend on as opposed to those who do things which are optional aspects of our lives.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

December 12, 2008

An overwhelming thought

It is popular these days to talk about one's "carbon footprint" – how much carbon gets released into the atmosphere to keep you in your lifestyle? How much carbon is released to produce and transport your food, clothes, gadgets, etc. as well as how much carbon is released as you use your normal mix of transportation, home heating and electricity?

As a Christian, I think I am called to be good stewards of the environment, and so there is some value in considering my carbon footprint. However, for as much as God cares about my stewardship of the environment, he cares about people much more. This led me to ponder a much scarier question:

What is my Suffering Footprint?

How much suffering exists in the world to keep me in my lifestyle? How much suffering results from the processes that produce my food, clothes, gadgets, etc. as well as how much suffering exists as a result of other aspects of my lifestyle? How many people in the world are lacking food, water, medicine because it is more profitable for companies to sell that stuff to people like me?

My answer isn't very encouraging, and I suspect most Americans, if they were honest with themselves, would have equally dismal answers. While I don't directly exploit anyone, my lifestyle is the cause of a lot of exploitation around the world.

Anne and I have tried to improve this over the last couple of years – trying to buy more of our food from sources that certify how the workers are treated, trying to avoid buying clothes that are made in countries that use sweatshop (or worse, involuntary) labor. Trying to reduce our buying of gadgets in general since as you follow the supply chains back on almost anything, it is hard to avoid minerals and the like that are obtained using ill treated workers.

What we have found is that short of dropping out and living in a commune that makes all of its own "stuff", it is next to impossible to avoid these things (and I'm not ready to drop out quite yet). I find the whole idea quite overwhelming; but I don't know what to do about it other than to continue to take the small steps I am already taking. As an individual, it seems completely beyond me to make a difference.

I do however wonder what the Church as a whole could do if we were united behind the idea of ministering healing for the hurts of this world.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

November 12, 2008

Thinking

There's a bunch of ideas for blog posts that have been rolling around in my mind, unfortunately none of them have come to fruition for me to post today. A bunch of them are likely to end up as a long series that will run several months (not unlike the church series I did last year), occasionally interrupted by interesting life events.

While it may change form by the time I start posting it, the basic theme of the series is: "the first ten lessons I would teach if I were starting a new church". Essentially what are the core concepts I would want everyone to be on the same page on if I was starting something new.

Now I have a fairly clear idea of several of the later lessons and could write them now; but the first few are proving to be more challenging that I had expected. Part of the issue is that I am less certain these days of how to explain exactly what Jesus did on The Cross than I once was.

For almost all my Christian walk, I have been part of churches that taught "substitutionary atonement" – essentially that Jesus paid the penalty for our sins when he died on the cross; and I can explain the whole of the Bible based on that theological perspective. In fact, I wasn't even aware that there were other non-heretical points of view.

However, this past year I have come to appreciate that people like C. S. Lewis and the whole of the Eastern/Orthodox church have a different way to explain Jesus' work on The Cross (referred to by some as "Christus Victor" theology). The effect is the same; but the emphasis is different, sometimes in subtle but perhaps important ways.

I am therefore loath to write up a description of the meaning of The Cross (which strikes me to be something I would want to establish early) until I either resolve this or have some way to explain things that provides a bridge between "substitutionary atonement" and "Christus Victor" (which is what I'd really like to do).

Anyway, since I had no post today, I thought I'd at least explain why I have no post today, and thus create a post.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink

November 05, 2008

Change. . .

. . . in this case is good.

This year, early on, the presidential race was a tough decision for me. I actually have a great deal of respect for Senator McCain. He is someone who has shown a willingness to do the right thing even when it is not politically expedient. Unfortunately, my respect for 2008 Candidate McCain waned over the course of the campaign. The John McCain that ran in 2000 (the one who created the “straight talk express”) I would have voted for easily, no question; but as time went on I started to see more and more that the McCain who was running this year was a different person. It started to become clear to me that to win the Republican nomination, he had to compromise in too many ways to be the kind of man I would vote for.

The last straw for me was the selection of Governor Palin as his running mate. Presidents don’t personally make the majority of the decisions of their administration. Most of what any “President” does is actually done by their appointees, so one of the most important things to look at in any candidate is the kinds of people they surround themselves with. The selection of Governor Palin showed me that there was just too much of a risk that he would end up surrounded with more of the same kinds of people who surrounded George W. Bush, and I do not believe the United States can afford four more years of that.

And to be clear, I am not knocking Sarah Palin as a person. Were she a member of the church I go to (which is not inconceivable since I’ve attended churches similar to the one she goes to in Wasilla), I would probably get along with her quite well. But as a candidate, she stands for what I think are the worst elements of the current Republican Party.

And that is a sad thing for me to stay. I have been a registered Republican for most of the 30 years in which I have been eligible to vote; but the party has drifted too far away from the principles I had admired in it in the past for me to stay with the party any longer. I have no intention of becoming a Democrat – there is too much they stand for that I do not agree with – but I can no longer consider myself a Republican either. This election was not only a major transition for our nation; but also for me personally.

I’ve said a lot about why I couldn’t bring myself to vote for McCain. Lest you think my decision was only a “vote against” and not a “vote for”, let me say that I greatly admire Obama as a speaker. We have not had an orator in the oval office like him in many years. Now that may seem like a small thing; but his ability to inspire, to motivate, to encourage will serve our ailing, divided nation well over the next four years. Perhaps what we need most today is someone who can remind us all of the Dream that is America; and Obama may well be the best person to do that.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 13, 2008

Political Philosophical Musings, Informed Consent

As with my previous post, this is a collection of questions, not answers.

One consistent feature that has been a part of all my attempts at political philosophy has been some variation on the principle of "informed consent". I believe in any successful society, people need to be able to make their decisions based on accurate information. In commerce, the market is not really free if decisions are being made based on misinformation. The question then becomes, what role does government play in ensuring the accurate distribution of information?

The simplest answer is "none" – that the market will naturally exclude individuals who develop a reputation for deceitfulness. The problem is that many other individuals will be hurt before such a reputation is established. So I have always believed that at a minimum the government should have the right and responsibility to prosecute and punish those who are guilty of misrepresenting facts in the marketplace. Where things get interesting is evaluating if that is enough.

To answer that, one must first consider what other levels of involvement are possible. If we start with the principle of Honesty - "everything you say must be true", then the next step might be "and you must say everything you know" – i.e. the principle of "Full Disclosure". Should the government have the right and responsibility to prosecute and punish individual who stay silent on disadvantageous facts that they known? The next step after Full Disclosure might be Due Diligence – if you are required to expose all of the facts you have, how much effort are you required to invest in determining those facts for yourself? Can you simply not determine if something is safe and therefore be allowed to say nothing about its safety?

When I think about these questions, I often consider examples from two domains: pharmaceuticals and consumer products. Drug companies today are required to go through extensive trials to determine if their products are "both safe and effective". Furthermore they are required to provide to the consumer extensive details on possible side effects of taking the drug. What would society be like if this was not the case? What if the rule was Full Disclosure; but not Due Diligence? What if companies could market drugs without extensive testing as long as they were up-front about how much testing was done and what the outcomes were? I could imagine some kind of standard label (like a nutrition label) that explained how many people were tested, over what period of time were they observed, and what the outcomes were, with separate statistics for testing on adults, children, and pregnant women.

Now clearly this would require a great deal more effort on the parts of doctors and patients to inform themselves. Personally, I would be hesitant to take a drug that had only been tested on ten people last week, and nine of them actually lived! On the other hand, useful drugs might well be available sooner in such an environment and at a lower cost. Is the public interest better served by something like this, or our current model? I don't know; but the non-obviousness makes it an interesting question.

I will however say that taking this to the next step – Honesty but no Full Disclosure sounds like bad public policy. If a drug company that knows of a bad side effect is allowed to not disclose it, I can see no public benefit to that. So in my own political musings I find myself thinking that the role of government lies someplace between ensuring Full Disclosure and Due Diligence from participants in the marketplace.

Another factor in this is the availability of independent watchdogs. I have long been a member of Consumer's Union (the publishers of Consumer Reports). While the criteria they use to judge products is not always the criteria I would use, I have always respected how vigorously they maintain their independence and objectivity. Likewise Underwriters Laboratories has played a useful role in the marketplace. Given the value provided by such independent non-governmental institutions, can the role of the government be reduced? Which is more useful to the public – having the government ensure that some product is safe or having one or more independent parties that the consumer could go to in order to determine the safety of products? In the later case, the consumer has a choice in which they trust and how much effort (and perhaps money) they put into finding out.

That is both an advantage and disadvantage - an advantage because the quality of testing may well be superior because if such organizations loose consumer confidence they have nothing, so they are likely to try hard to maintain that confidence; a disadvantage because not all consumers will avail themselves of such resources. So what importance is there in protecting people who do not value protecting themselves? This becomes more complex if the independent watchdog requires payment to access their results. So the question remains – if you assume the existence of such independent testing organizations, does that effect what should be expected of the government?

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 11, 2008

Political Philosophical Musings, Property Rights

This post has no answers, just questions I am asking myself in my quest for a consistent political philosophy. Where I'd like to end up is with a small set of clear principles from which my political philosophy is derived; but the complexity of the real world has thwarted all such efforts.

Take this hallmark of Libertarian philosophy – an individual should be able to do whatever they'd like with their own private property as long as it doesn't prevent someone else from doing what they'd like with their property. Sounds obvious; but the details are devilish.

Now consider this scenario – an individual buys a tract of forested land. They then want to cut down all of the trees and burn them to heat their house. Sounds fair. However, having done so, they not only reduce the ability of the planet to absorb carbon dioxide; but they have also release addition C02 into the atmosphere. There are good arguments to say that this has a definite effect on everyone else on the planet and carried to an extreme, will certainly affect other people's abilities to do what they want with their private property. Many people are concerned with the inhabitants of the Amazon rainforest doing this very thing. The issue is that none of us are as isolated from each other as we would like to think we are. Even mundane actions can have consequences on those around us.

But what's the alternative? Government intervention in every action we take to ensure that we are not interfering with each other? That doesn’t sounds like a practical solution either.

Now take this one step further. I believe most political philosophers do not adequately take into account the time dimension in their consideration. Is it good enough to say our actions must not ill effect those around us today, or should we take into account the impact our actions will make on those who come after us? Is it acceptable to allow someone to use their private property in a way that does not impede those alive today; but has consequences beyond their lifetime? I may own something today; but assuming that I will eventually die, that property will eventually be someone else's. Should my impact on their ability to use "their property" (which is mine now) be taken into account? Do I have the right to destroy something and thereby deny my successors the right to use it?

An interesting variation on this theme is the allocation of finite resources. Free markets are excellent means for determining the value of something, as long as everyone with an interest in the commodity have the ability to bid on them. But that is often not the case with expendable resources since those who might use those resources in the future have no natural voice in today's market.

Consider fossil fuels – the market may in fact correctly determine their value to those who want to use them today. But what would the value of a barrel of oil be to someone alive a thousand years from now when, one might assume, all fossil fuels have been used up? If the laws of supply and demand apply, does the true value of any finite consumable resource tend towards infinity when considered over a long enough period of time? Of course, in the future we may well have perfected synthetic or renewable alternatives to fossil fuels, and their value may instead approach zero. So how do you take this into account?

A thought experiment I often consider when pondering these things is how to manage a generation space ship (one that travels between the stars at slower than the speed of light and therefore takes generations to get anywhere). The ship is sent out with a finite supply of everything. They may be able to replenish some supplies (minerals for instance) when they reach their destination; but until then, they have a finite quality of everything. How then do you set up an economy that takes into account the entire voyage? What form of government would be effective on such a voyage? And as the assumed size of the spaceship grows, is that scenario really any different from what we face on earth today?

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 12, 2008

Unchallenged Thought

Liam Kinnon had a wonderful post on his blog. I love the first paragraph:

Thinking is only thinking if it’s challenged, only then is it a verb. Unchallenged thinking is only a thought and that, left unchallenged, is prejudice. If you enter a conversation and there is no chance of anyone changing their perspectives it is a pointless exercise.

Now back to your regularly scheduled blog post:

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 23, 2008

Decision 2008

Days are ticking down to the California primaries and I am working to make my final decision on who I am going to vote for. As a preliminary for that I have been thinking this week about what issues are most important to me for the next 4 years. So here’s what I am looking for the next president to deal with (in rough priority order, most to least important to me).

Integrity

I want someone who has integrity in their position. I don’t want someone who will tell me what I want to know to get elected and then do whatever they want when they are in office. All of the rest of the issues don’t matter if the candidate isn’t honest about where they really stand. (Yeah, that eliminates most of them from the start).

The Deficit

I know there are people around the world who are looking for ways to hurt America and Americans; but in my opinion our growing national debt and the amount of that debt that is held by foreign investors is the biggest threat to America’s security and sovereignty. Unless we can balance the budget, pay down the debt, and somehow fund the various entitlements we have established; America’s peace and prosperity are heading to a brick wall even if we can somehow reign in terrorists and rogue states.

A Balance between National Security and Personal Liberty

While we need to invest vastly more in intelligence gathering to identify and address threats to the USA, we must be careful to not sacrifice what makes America worth defending in the process. Personal liberties of US citizens (at least) must be defended - we must find ways to make ourselves secure without violating those principles. I am looking for a president who opposes the Patriot Act and the Real ID act; but at the same time is willing to invest heavily in intelligence gathering around the world.

A More Moderate Foreign Policy

We need to back away from threatening to attack everyone who doesn’t like us; because by doing so we are simply increasing the number of countries that feel that way. I still support our intervention in Afghanistan – I only wish we had invested more in finishing the job there and not gone on to attack Iraq. Unfortunately, we did attack Iraq and so we have some responsibility to try and clean up the mess we created; but the next president better be one that will be more careful about the use of military force. If we are going to attack, we need to be sure that we will get our money’s worth in increased security (as opposed to spending billions and leaving us less secure).

Unfortunately, I don’t think there are any candidates that meet my criteria; so I’ll have to compromise (as usual); but at least I know what I am compromising on.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

January 08, 2008

Freedom Of, Freedom From

I’ve written about this before; but it remains the largest gap in my personal political theory and it concerns me since I can’t be sure that the rest of my views are consistent without coming to some conclusion on this. Fundamentally, I believe that governments have a responsibility to ensure personal freedoms. Consenting adults should be allowed to do whatever they want in the privacy of their own homes. As a Christian, my faith imposes additional limits on my own behavior; but I do not think that it is the government’s role to enforce such limits in other people who do not share my beliefs.

Now in terms of political theory the concept of “consenting adults” seems fairly clear to me. Where this gets interesting is when things move out of “the privacy of their own homes”. What should people be allowed to do in public? What happens when someone’s freedom to do something encounters someone else’s freedom to not be exposed to something? And, more critically, when does it become a government’s role to enforce any limits on such interactions? I have been thinking about this question for years and still have no model that consistently gives the answers I’d expect – I always seem to be able to come up with scenarios that produce undesirable results.

To make this more concrete, here are some of the kinds of scenarios I have been looking at:

- Does someone have a right to walk down a typical street (perhaps with their children) and not see people engaged in sexual intercourse in public?

- Does a Muslim man have a right to walk down a typical street and not see women with their hair, arms, or legs uncovered?

- Does an atheist have the right to walk down a typical street in December and not be exposed to Christmas decorations and greetings?

- Does a voting citizen have the right to not be exposed to political views they do not agree with?

I’ve come up with a lot of these scenarios over these years (many more than I can list here). I know what answer’s I’d like to get for each of them and the degree to which I think the government should be involved in enforcing things; but I have yet to come up with a model – a set of simple guiding principles - that consistently gives the answers I want. Until I have such a model my concern is that, perhaps, my fundamental perspective on freedom may be internally inconsistent and therefore flawed.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

January 02, 2008

Science Fiction vs. Fantasy

One of the easiest arguments to instigate at WorldCon (the World Science Fiction Convention) is the question: “How do you distinguish between Science Fiction vs. Fantasy?” Most book stores don’t even bother making the distinction – lumping all of the books together in one section. Is the distinction even useful or meaningful? Having read several Neil Gaiman “fantasy” stories last week, I started thinking of this question in the context of why I enjoy Neil’s work and not a lot of other modern fantasy.

The classic definitions that most people use follow the form that Arthur C. Clarke employs: “Science fiction is something that could happen – but usually you wouldn’t want it to. Fantasy is something that couldn’t happen – though you often wish it would.” The operative part of that definition being that if a story could in theory happen at some point in the future (or have happened at some point in the past), then it is science fiction because it is grounded in real-world science. If the story could not possibly happen because it violates some law of nature, then it is fantasy.

The problem with that definition is that it classifies almost everything as “fantasy”. Have a story about space ships traveling between stars faster than the speed of light? Fantasy (physics says it can’t happen). Teleportation? Fantasy. Time Travel? Probably Fantasy. In fact most of the classic “Sci Fi” tropes are all now known to be physically impossible, so you’d have to classify all of those stories as Fantasy. What’s more, this definition means that many stories are one scientific discovery away from being reclassified. There are stories that would have been determined to be Science Fiction when they were written; but new science has since proved them to be impossible. Likewise someone could always discover a new level of physics that enables one of these “impossibilities” under certain conditions. Not a very useful definition in my opinion.

All this led me to take a different approach. I started to think about the Science Fiction and Fantasy stories I really liked – what made “good” SciFi vs. what made “good” fantasy. I came up with a different definition, one that actually capitalizes on the other part of Clarke’s definition – the “you wouldn’t want it to”/“wish it would” part.

It is often said that “Science Fiction is the Literature of ideas”, and I think that cuts closer to the truth. Good Science Fiction makes the reader think. It asks questions. What would it be like if. . .? Would you still think that if. . .? What would happen if. . .? Science Fiction is written to engage the reader’s brain and to get them thinking about some issue. The actual science in the stories really only exists to help us suspend disbelief as we read. A story would not be effective at making us think if our first thoughts are always “that could never happen”, so enough of an explanation need to be given to get us past that and on to the real issues presented.

Then what about Fantasy? The fantasy stories I like the most are those that engage my heart. They make me feel something – hope, joy, fear, wonder, compassion, and so on. This is why fantasy stories can just use explanations like “it’s magic” because what you think about the story isn’t important. What matters is how it makes you feel. It doesn’t ask how you feel about something, it makes you feel something.

So to me, Science Fiction is Literature of the Mind. It uses artificial scenarios to make the reader think about something. Fantasy is Literature of the Heart. It uses artificial scenarios to make the reader feel something.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

May 02, 2006

A political thought experiment

I start with an observation: governments today do not rule people, they rule territory. A nation does not govern its citizens; it governs what takes place within its boundaries by citizens and non-citizens alike, and likewise does not govern what its citizens do while not within that geography. There are places in the world whose economy is entirely based on the fact that people can go there and do things which are illegal for them to do "at home".

I do not point this out because I see it as inherently bad; but it does leave me wondering if there are alternatives, and if there are alternatives, what are their advantages and disadvantages. Both Cory Doctorow and Neal Stephenson have written stories where nations are defined by people, not by territory. A person is a part of some group and is subject to the laws of that group no matter where they travel. The complications come when people from different "tribes" interact in ways which may be legal to one and not to another. Is there a way to resolve such disagreements that is both practical and beneficial?

Note, I am not suggesting that a transition from what we have today to something like this could be accomplished. The current model is too well ingrained in our culture to make such a change. As a SciFi fan, I tend to think of this in the context of the formation of an interstellar alliance between various "alien" species. This also eliminates the assumptions that can be built on the commonality that we are all human and therefore certain laws can be assumed as "universal".

So here's the thought experiment I pose to myself from time to time. A group of alien societies (including, if you like, the human race) come together to form an alliance for the purpose of trade, information exchange, and common defense. Each species is assumed to remain self-governing; but some concessions must be made to make travel to other worlds safe and practical. There needs to be some set of rules that ensure that a being traveling to another world will neither be subjected to unnecessary risks nor unnecessary legal entanglements. The more research and preparation required to safely travel, the fewer beings will travel and the value of the alliance will be diminished.

The key question, I claim, is reduced to the following proposition. If a creature from culture A (the Actor), does something to a creature from culture S (the Subject), which is witnessed by individuals from culture O (the Observer) (as well, obviously, by A and S) while traveling on a world governed by creatures of culture L (the Location) – how do you decide if the activity is legal? Today, in the real world, the answer is that culture L almost always makes that determination. But is that the only consistent solution? And what are the advantages and disadvantages of the various alternatives?

Consider our real world solution to this problem, does it really make sense if the activity is legal in cultures A, S and O, for it to be illegal for them do it just because they happen to be across some border (keeping in mind that as formulated, the only witnesses are those who also consider it legal)? Or if it is illegal in cultures A, S and O, it is really in the interest of the greater good for it to suddenly become legal when you cross the border? Whatever disadvantages may exist in other solution, it would be hard to argue that our current model is without flaws.

When thinking about this, keep in mind it is being proposed in the context of alien societies. So possibilities like a given activity being required by one culture's law and forbidden by another's should be taken into account. In fact very little can be assumed in terms of commonality between cultures.

By the way, I originally added culture O to the mix (the "observer" culture) to take into account the fact that most cultures have some form of censorship – things which it believe people should not be exposed to – and I wanted to take that into consideration as well. I discovered that it actually helped clarify some of my own ideas, and simplified my answers significantly.

Anyway, I'll share my own thinking in a later post, and then eventually extend that to what it would mean to have governments of people not land.

Posted by Steven at 07:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

April 21, 2006

The beginning of happiness

All the time I hear people making statements like "I'd be happy if only she would...", or "I'd be happy if only he wouldn’t...", or "If my employer would only...", or "If the government would only..." Of course, few of these people end up achieving the happiness they seek – the world never quite gets around to changing in the ways they want. Which leads me to the point of this essay – my observation is that the road to happiness starts the day a person begins to assume that no one else is ever going to change in ways they want.

Note, I am not saying that people don't change. We are all in the process of transformation from who we were to who we will become; but those occasions when we change in ways that meet someone else's desires are unpredictable. It happens; but betting your happiness on it is a long shot that is far more likely to leave you frustrated.

Nor am I saying that we should not communicate to others how we would like them to change. Whatever the odds are of them changing, at least for those who care about us those odds can be improved by better communication. However, asking someone to do something is very different from assuming they will do it, and my admonition is to plan your life as if they won't.

So what does that leave?

As soon as you discard the hope that other people will change to make you happy, what is left is the question of what can you do to be happy given that everyone else will stay the same (or at least will not change in the ways you want). For those who really "get it", this can be a very liberating realization because it means that we are ultimately responsible for our own happiness.

A very simplistic application of this idea says that if you are in a relationship where you will never be happy unless the other person changes, then perhaps it is time to get out of that relationship and find a new one. There is no doubt in my mind that there are occasions where this is exactly the correct response. However, real life is often more complicated than that. You can in fact view ending one relationship and starting a new one as the ultimate form of getting your partner to change how they behave - by replacing them with someone else with different behaviors. But this has all the same problems as trying to change your old partner – a person's ability to find and attract a partner whose behavior is exactly what you want is as uncertain as trying to change someone. If your happiness depends on that, it is at great risk.

Put another way, replacing your partner only works if the new partner does in fact provide a context in which you can be happy; but what if they don't? What if in fact there is no one you can change your partner to be with whom you can be happy? What if the issue is not with your partner, but with your expectations of them? This principle does not just apply to personal relationships; but to all aspects of life that affect our happiness. Changing jobs, churches, friend, homes, cars, even what lane you are driving in can only make you happier if there exists real-world situations with which you can be happy.

Which bring me to the second step to being happy. While we cannot rely on other people changing to please us, we can in fact work to change ourselves. We should all then be diligent in our self-improvement to strive towards the goal of maximizing the volume and variety of situations within which we can be happy.

The key then is to look closely at why we are unhappy in various situations. It is easy to look at a situation and say, "I'm unhappy because they are being rude"; but why does their rudeness affect our happiness? What real harm is the tone of their voice and their choice of words doing? "But they are putting me down!" Yes, but what does it matter what they say about you? Or even what they think of you? What value do you place on their opinions? If your happiness depends on someone else changing their opinion of you, then you are back at step one.

The reality is that we all carry with us a lifetime’s worth of personal "baggage" and most of our unhappiness comes from when other people trip over our baggage, not from real harm to our person. Children may chant, "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me"; but most people are in fact sufficiently insecure in their own identity that words do in fact hurt. When we understand better who we are and are secure in that identity, then the ability for situations and other people to make us unhappy is reduced.

Having done that, what remains are situations that are truly harmful to us, or where we allow ourselves to be vulnerable to someone who is not disserving of our trust. In both cases, finding alternatives is much easier than finding situations where our copious baggage will not get in the way. Once you have dealt with your baggage and are still unhappy, that is the time to consider changing your environment.

Now I am not saying that someone who does these two steps will be happy. Happiness is far more complicated than that. I only claim that these steps are the beginning of happiness – that they are necessary to the process, not sufficient to complete it.

Posted by Steven at 09:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 29, 2006

Power and unintended consequences

Everyone has some set of ideas in their head for “how the world should work”. These range from opinions on deep moral issues governing how people should behave to practical matters like store return policies to mundane things like how words should be pronounced. Some of these ideas are informed by our religious or philosophical views. Some are informed by our sense of logic and efficiency. And some, whether we admit it or not, are informed by self interest (enlightened or otherwise). The result is that our separate visions for the “ideal world” are all different. Common ground can be found between groups of people; but differences always exist. This is a problem for governments that consider themselves benevolent because there is no one set of policies which will satisfy everyone.

What’s more, our natural tendency is that to the extent to which we have control of our environment, we try to order it to conform to how we think things should be. This is often not a matter of conscious plotting and conspiracy, human nature leads us to do it subconsciously. The manager who is a morning person schedules key meetings in the morning. They do so without the intent to “make” everyone else morning people, they just act in accordance with their own internal view of how thing should work. It takes an individual with extraordinary self awareness and restraint to avoid using their opportunities to reshape their environment in this way.

Thus giving an individual power often has unexpected consequences as they consciously or subconsciously take the opportunity presented by that power to reorder the world around them. Thus giving someone power almost always results in unintended and unexpected consequences.

Lord Acton is noted as saying “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely”; but I think that is a misrepresentation of the true scope of the problem. It is certainly true that to the extent to which an individual’s view of how the world should work is driven by self interest; that given power, they will use that power for their self interest. However, in my observation it is just as likely that an individual’s view of how the world should work is driven by religious or moral opinions and that they will use that power for what they at least would view as the general good. They may not do this as a deliberate, conscious act; but rather their natural tendency to want to see the world be a certain way will lead them to actions which have that effect. The problem of course is that only a minority of people will agree that the result of these actions is in fact a better world.

It is for this reason that we must be very careful what power we give to the government. The agents of any government are likely to be a diverse collection of individuals whose ideal visions of the world will reflect that diversity. Given the opportunity presented by power, most will lack the self awareness and restraint to avoid using that power to make the world conform (to the extent their power allows them) to their vision. It does not take conspiracy or even deliberate intent for this to happen, just human nature. The result is that giving power to governments always results in unintended and unexpected uses of that power.

Give government the power to detain people without due process, and people will be detained for reasons other than what you intend. Give government the power to examine private communications and communication will be examined for reasons other than what you intend. Often these reasons will be well meaning, intended for what the agent of the government sees as the general good; but there will always be agents whose sense of the common good is different from the view of the majority of citizens and there will always be agents whose view of how the world should be is driven, at least in part, by self interest.

This effect can be limited by constraining the power and how it can be used, but it can never be eliminated entirely. Given the nature of the problem, the best possible constraint is to require several diverse people to agree when power is used. Given that their opinions on how the world should work are unlikely to be the same, the chance of agreement to use power in an unexpected way is small. This is why rules like judicial review and writs of habeas corpus are useful limits on government and dangerous when waved.

It is for this reason that the current situation in the US concerns me. Too much power is being given to the government with too few checks and balances. It is inevitable that this power will be misused – not as part of some vast conspiracy, but by individuals who subconsciously see the opportunity to make the world closer to what they think it should be, whether for reasons they would see (if they were conscious of what they were doing) as the common good, or personal interest. It is in my opinion a dangerous state of affairs.

Posted by Steven at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 26, 2006

Green Libertarian

I am a software architect. One side effect of the mindset that has aided me in that career is that I tend to look at everything around me as a source of algorithms that I might use on the computer. For instance, evolution by selection (natural, intelligent, or otherwise) has proven to be a very powerful technique for solving certain kinds of computer problems. The application of evolution to software development is known as using "genetic algorithms" and has been used to design bridges and predict the stock market. Likewise, free market economies have been shown to be an efficient and powerful means to make many kinds of decisions, some completely unrelated to buying and selling goods. For instance, the Iowa Electronic Markets (IEM) has done a better job at predicting election outcomes than any polling organization by operating a "stock exchange" in which people invest in "candidate futures".

The catch however is to use evolution or a free market to solve a specific problem, you need to carefully construct the situation to essentially "ask the right question" of the technique. There is an infamous example when computer scientists were first dabbling with genetic algorithms where they thought they had managed to "breed" a very fast sorting algorithm. The problem was that the test cases they had used to determine the "fitness" of the algorithms (as in "survival of the fittest") where not as random as they thought, and rather than breeding a sorting algorithm, they only managed to breed an algorithm that knew how to re-order their specific test cases.

Which, believe it or not, leads me to my political philosophy.

I am what I like to think of as a "Green Libertarian". To start with, I believe that there are relatively few things which governments can do for people that they can not do better for themselves. One reason I believe that is that I also believe that a free market is a very efficient tool for finding sets of solutions that meet people's needs. It allows many possible solutions to be tried and rewards those solutions that are successful.

As a case in point I believe in school choice. I believe having a single government subsidized solution (as is the case in most communities in the USA) interferes with the proper working of the free market and results in a substandard education for all but those who are wealthy enough to afford other opportunities. I do appreciate the complexities of alternative solutions and would be willing to live with certain safeguards; but fundamentally, making sure everyone has viable (affordable) choices on where to send their children to school is in my opinion the best way to ensure a quality education for everyone because this is exactly the kind of problem free markets are good at solving. Even a very limited scheme – for instance saying: to get government money you can't select students based on ability (unfair because government schools have to accept everyone), you can't require additional money from the parents if you accept government money (again unfair), and students who are being funded by the government can't be required to attend religious instruction (avoids constitutional issues that exist in some people's minds) – even a limited scheme like that would almost certainly provide superior solutions.

So far, my position would seem to be well aligned with the Libertarian Party. As a starting point, I think the Libertarian Party has some very good ideas. Where I diverge from them is that I see many more problems than they for which the free market is not a good solution. Fundamentally, a free market works as long as all those affected by a decision are able to participate in that market. To the extent to which effected people have no voice in the market, the solution will be biased towards those who have a voice, and thus will be suboptimal.

The clearest example of this to me is the Libertarian Party's positions on ecology. While the Libertarian Party's stance has mellowed over the years (I remember the original Libertarian Manifesto making very clear that a person's right to do whatever they want with their own property included the right to dump toxic waste there if they chose), it remains the case that the Libertarian Party's views on ecology are biased towards allowing current free markets resolve these issue. I believe such solutions are fundamentally flawed because the nature of ecological issues makes it such that the majority of people who will be affected by these decisions are not yet born, and so no current free market will ever be able to find optimal and efficient solutions. I have seen proposals that try to artificially impose "future costs" into the market; but their very artificiality means that you are no longer gaining the benefits of the free market.

Ecology is not the only case where I think the Libertarian Party is not critical enough of what problems a free market can solve; but it is the most obvious. The bottom line to me is that you really need to understand why free markets work and then evaluate each kind of decision to determine if they can be trusted to the market or some other solution is required. As a result, my own political philosophy tends to be a kind of amalgam of Libertarian politics and those espoused by the Green Party. Hence, I am a Green Libertarian. This is already a super-sized post, so I think I'll stop here.

Posted by Steven at 06:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

November 15, 2005

Sharing space

I am currently reading Lynne Truss' book "Talk to the Hand" which is her take on manners in the same sense that "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves" was her take on punctuation. It is getting me thinking about the nature of civility in society.

I am intentionally making a distinction here between "civility" and "etiquette" (a point Truss also makes, although with different terms). I am not so much concerned with the arbitrary rules a society forms (most often to help distinguish between those who are "inside" and those who are "outside"). I don't care what fork people use when they are foolishly presented with more than one, or whether elbows belong on tables or feet upon sofas.

There are however other issues which concern me greatly – these relate to what I will refer to as "civility". I chose that word because of its relationship to the Latin word civicus "of the city, belonging to the city, citizenship". My starting point is simple – as soon as people began to gather together into communities (they became "civilized" in the literal sense), it was realized that as long as people needed to share space, they needed to yield some of their individual liberties while operating in those shared spaces lest the exercise of their freedoms impinge on someone else's freedom. Civility and thus civilization itself is then founded on a negotiation regarding what limits exist on what one can do in public that one might be quite free to do in private.

My concern here is not with the details of such negotiation, or the outcome; but the recognition that it exists at all. My observation is that in the United States at least, the move to individuality and individual freedom has led many people here to abandon the need to consider that one's public behavior might need to be at all different from ones private behavior. In short, I am concerned that America is becoming less civilized, and that this will eventually result in dire consequences.

The signs of this are all over. Boom-box cars that broadcast the driver's favorite tunes at such volume that people on the next block can hear them. People talking loudly on their cell phones in the most inconvenient places. Drivers who merge and change lanes without regard to who else might be on the road. Couples engaged in rather intimate behavior on subway trains. I could go on; but my point is not to catalog the behaviors which I feel should be forbidden; but rather to ask what is the root of such behavior? I believe the root is that people have stopped believing that they need to give up anything when sharing space with other people. To me, that means the end of civilization – people will not long be able to live with each other "in the city" if that is in fact the trend.

I think as long as people acknowledge the need to negotiate their behavior in public places, that there is hope. Individual rules may change, and I personally may not always be happy with the results; but part of any negotiation is recognizing that you won't always get everything you want.

The rules don't even need to be universal absolutes. In classic manners, the phrase "excuse me" was used initiate a renegotiation of the implied social contract. You want to do something that you realize pressed your freedom farther than expected into someone else's freedom, so you say "excuse me". This allowed the other person to acknowledge and accept your intrusion, or provide some kind of counter offer (including perhaps outright denial). My point is not to praise the specifics of this exchange (I am aware of other perfectly civilized cultures that handle it somewhat differently); but to make clear that true civility is not a fixed set of rules; but in fact a continuous negotiation one conducts with those around you – assuming of course that you see the need to do so at all.

Posted by Steven at 05:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

October 29, 2005

Where has the beauty of language gone?

I am not an ardent grammarian who measures the decline in language in double negatives and split infinitives. I have always believed that a language is what is spoken and understood, regardless of what those who sit in academic halls and national institutes may say. Language is the ultimate cultural artifact and is therefore the subject of constant evolution. Most people would be amazed at the elements of modern English which were considered scandalous degradations of the language in their day. So please do not mistake my meaning when I complain of decline of language, and think I am disturbed by mere rules being broken. My concern goes much deeper.

To me language is like a song, composed of both words and music, meaning and melody, one directed to the mind and the other to the heart; and if fitted together well, the combination communicates far more than either alone. But music is not required to accomplish this. Words, both spoken and written, have clear meaning which can be used to covey ideas; but language can be more than just meaning. There is meter, repetition, and rhymes of diverse kinds. There is cadence, alliteration, and patterns both overt and subtle. Words can be made to carry the reader gently along, or build to a climax that demands to be read. These tools are not part of the literal meaning of the text; but seduce us into becoming involved in what is being said – they provide a form of music that draws our hearts into the conversation.

It is a kind music I hear less and less often.

Consider the following statements:

"We have decided to go to the moon and more, because the difficulty of the challenge and the act of commitment will inspire us to excel".

Or

"The soldiers who fought here have already honored this location more than our speeches will."

The meanings of these statements are significant, and one could imagine people talking about the ideas expressed by them afterwards; but the words themselves are dead stones. I think most people, when talking about the subject, would simply rephrase such thoughts in their own words rather than taking the effort to quote these.

Now consider:

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."

Or

"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."

I acknowledge that these statements might well become lost in the flood of words that each of us face each day; but they do communicate something that goes beyond the literal meaning of the sentences – something that touches us in ways that the first versions did not, something which would make our own rephrasing of these ideas appear as poor imitations in their shadow, something that calls out to repeat not just the ideas; but the words themselves, something which is missing from public discourse these days.

I have no illusions that quotable speech was common in years past. I am aware that before Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address, the great orator Edward Everett spoke for two hours and yet the world has little noted nor long remembered what Everett said. Yet outside of fiction, no one seems to care these days how things are said, only what is said; and thus the beauty of language is lost. I fear that Martin Luther King Jr. may prove to be America's last great orator, for I have seen no one today who even cares to pick up that mantle from where it fell, much less put it on.

I see this issue not just in politics and public speaking; but also in writing. There are books from the past which have become classics not just because their ideas were great; but because the way the ideas were expressed were equally as great. But where are such books now? Who (outside of fiction) is writing quotable books today? There is, as I have alluded to, those who write fiction who keep alive the flame of the beauty of language; but those who write non-fiction seem only to be concerned with getting their facts right.

I think this change has come about because we as a people no longer seek the beauty of language, no longer demand it. We have grown distrustful of eloquence, fearing that it serves as a mask for people's motives; but in that fear we have lost the ability to be moved by words, to be drawn skyward by phrases that ennoble us.

Because of our distrust of language, we have failed to renew the bonds of words which hold us together; bonds which must be re-forged in each generation. We may hold certain ideals in common; but as we change, we must find new ways to express those ideals – common phrases that tie us not to the past; but to each other.

While all this concerns me, I don't know what can be done. For my part I practice my craft - writing, and studying what has been written to understand its beauty – and I encourage others to look for the beauty in words.

Posted by Steven at 04:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

October 27, 2005

The limits of Science

In 1931 Kurt Gödel proposed his incomplete theorems. In essence he proved that there can be no consistent axiomatic system of logic that can prove all things which are true. Any such system of proof with either have some true statements which it can not prove to be true or it will incorrectly identify some false statements to be true. For the layperson, what this means is that it is provable that not everything is provable by pure logic.

Now I recognize that Gödel's methodology can not be applied to non-axiomatic systems such as "the scientific method"; but I remain convinced in my own mind that the concept applies. I believe that there are things which are true in the universe which can not be proven to be true using the scientific method (or any such method of proof). I'm not talking about technological limits where we physically can't perform the test; but conceptually there are true things which can simply not be reached using such a methodology.

The question is what to do about that.

First, I am sure there are some who would dispute the point - who would say that in fact there is no truth in the universe which can not be proven by science. As I do not have the equivalent of Gödel's proof to make my case, there is little I can say in response beyond the fact that, technically speaking, science can rarely "prove" anything with absolute certainty (as can be done with axiomatic logic) - in most cases there always remains some chance that some edge case will eventually be discovered where a theory falls down. Most of the time science simply takes 99.99% certainty and call it "proven" out of convenience.

Second, there are those who acknowledge that some thing can not be proven; but recommend the philosophy that we should all act as if all unproven statements were false. The motivation is that since some of those un-provable statements are in fact false, the safest assumption for everyone to assume that they all are. This is a consistent and logical philosophy, and I can understand anyone who chooses to adopt it; but in essence this is saying we should not take risks in life because we may fail. My personal opinion is that much of the joy in life comes when we are willing to take risks, and that a philosophy which says "avoid the possibility of being wrong" will often avoid happiness as well.

Third, while I have never heard anyone advocate it as a position, I have certainly seen people who act as if they believe that all propositions are true until proven false, and therefore act as if the unproven is true. They swallow every theory they hear under the guise that "you can't prove it wrong". This is in my opinion a foolish stance if for no other reason that much of what has resisted scientific proof is mutually contradictory - simple logic can show that not all if it can be true. To accept ideas with no critical thought guarantees some of what you believe is wrong.

Finally, I believe there is a middle way - for each of us, when science is unable to settle a matter to our satisfaction, to use our own best (and logical) judgment and decide, however imperfectly, which propositions are true. Doing this we must accept the risk that we will be wrong some of the time; but do so hoping that this risk will bring things into our lives that will enrich us.

In this process we can be guided by the principles of science even if we are not allowing ourselves to be absolutely ruled by them. While science may not be able to provide objective proof for all to see, we can at least seek our own subjective proofs based on our experience. We can ask ourselves: Is what I believe logically consistent? Are there other explanations I should consider? Where might the flaws in my evaluation lay? To delve into the realm of the unproven we need not abandon science, merely recognize its limits.

Posted by Steven at 05:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

October 26, 2005

The Cardinal Virtues of Science

While professionally I am an engineer, I've always liked to think of myself as a scientist. One reason I desire that moniker is that I consider science (in its pure, abstract form at least), to be a noble calling, worthy of honor and respect, guided by virtues which I strive to build in myself - humility and openness

I claim the core of true science is humility.

Science is all about questions - asking questions yourself and allowing others to ask questions of you. Science never assumes that things are beyond inquisition - it recognizes that there is always the possibility of error; and that the only way to reduce that possibility is to allow free and open discussion. Newton's theories of motion had passed centuries of scrutiny so that we were willing to start calling them laws; but we kept asking questions and eventually discovered problems that led to Einstein's theory of relativity.

The simplest raw form of the "scientific method" is to say "I think this is true - can anyone confirm of deny it?" Papers must pass peer review before being published. To be a true scientist is to be humble - willing to be challenged, questioned, tested; and most important, willing to be shown to be wrong. To be a true scientist, one must be humble

True science is also about openness.

To be questioned is to be exposed. A scientist must be willing to let all their data "hang out" for everyone to see. Errors can often be hidden in the most unlikely of places, and so it is incumbent on scientists to allow others to dig into every nook and cranny of their thinking, looking for the hidden assumption on which their theory or experiment was built. To conceal data, particularly data which might mitigate your claims is the great sin in science. Being wrong is not an issue - it is expected - but hiding even a hint that you may be wrong is a capital offense.

These are virtues to be extolled not just in the lab or lecture hall; but also in life. We should all strive for this kind of humility, this kind of openness.

Of course, all of this is an ideal. Real science is conducted by real people with all those faults that are common to humanity - pride, bias, anger, fear, and so on. There is a lot of bad science out there, driven by pride, secrecy, dogma (whether it be religious, political, or otherwise). The best we can all do is keep asking the questions, whether they are welcome or not.

Posted by Steven at 05:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

October 17, 2005

Genius and Madness

This year, the book which has been most successful at keeping me thinking long after I finished reading it is definitely Jeff Hawkins' "On Intelligence". See here for my previous review.

The essence of Hawkins' theory is that the human brain is a very specific kind of pattern matching engine, and that all that we think of as "intelligence" is a byproduct of exactly how the brain goes about that task. An overly simplified version of his model is that the arrangement of cells in the brain is design to express things like "an X is an A and a B, followed by a C and a D", where A, B, C, D, and X can be anything - visual elements, sequences of sounds, abstract ideas, etc. The elegance of Hawkins' theory is that the same basic mechanism can be used for so many purposes.

A key piece of Hawkins' theory is that information flows both up and down the hierarchy of pattern matchers. In the abstract example above, the cells that identify "A's" signal up to the cells that represent "X is A+B then C+D". Those cells then signal down that they are expecting a "B". Now if there is no B, then nothing happens; but if the cells responsible for identifying "B's" had partially identified a "B", then the extra nudge from on-high that a "B" was expected might be enough to put the decision over the threshold to signal a "B". Then the "X" cells would signal down that they were now looking for a "C" and "D", and so on.

The point here is that the bidirectional communication allows for fuzzy matches - your brain might identify the first three notes of Beethoven's 5th Symphony; but the 4th note is slightly out of tune, yet you still hear the Symphony because the higher level pattern convinced the lower level pattern that the sound was a match even though it really wasn't.

To give a more complex example: I am a software engineer, so I have patterns in my head for algorithms like "binary search tree" and "hash table". I look at a problem and I see "this is the kind of problem that should be solved with a hash table." According to Hawkins this happens because I have cells in my head that represent the idea of "hash table" that match some set of complex criteria of characteristics of problems to be solved (represented by other cells). If I am a good engineer, those criteria will only trigger the "hash table" symbol if it is in fact the right solution. That process is however a negotiation between the levels of abstraction in my brain where the "hash table" symbol is constantly trying to encourage or discourage the lower level interpretation of things, depending on how well other parts of the puzzle match.

This fuzzy matching, according to Hawkins, is where most of what we think of as genius and creativity come from. Genius (in simple terms) is the ability to match patterns that to other people seem unrelated. To look at nature and see a solution to a software problem. To look at a boat on a curved river and see the solution to a mathematics problem. To look at a fisherman and see the solution to a philosophical problem. Those are the things that we call genius. In Hawkins' theory, this implies the ability to match patterns despite the imperfections in the stimulus - that the higher level pattern was able to convince the lower level patterns to signal match despite the fact that biology is not computer science, that rivers are not formula, and that fish are not emotions.

Which brings us at last to madness. We talk about people with various mental illnesses as seeing or hearing things that "aren't there". How might that occur if Hawkins' theory is correct? One possibility is that these people's illnesses at a biological level cause high level patterns to be more aggressive at signaling down (which, as I understand the theory, is possible since the cells that signal down use different neurotransmitters). In the example above, imagine if the "Beethoven's 5th Symphony" pattern started to signal down that it was expecting that 4th note even when the first three were not clearly signaled. The person might "hear" the symphony when in fact all that was coming in the ears was random noise. Their brains might well be matching patterns based on unrelated data.

But isn't that also what genius is? People have talked for ages about the fine line that separates genius and madness. Hawkins may well have proposed a theory that explains the connection. The only difference between a genius and madman is that the strange analogies generated by the brains of geniuses are useful, while those of a madman are not.

Posted by Steven at 05:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

October 14, 2005

Challenge vs. Adapt

We all face problems in our lives, some large, some small. Whether it is an unjust law, or a rude waiter, there are two broad approaches to addressing any problem – you can challenge the problem to try and make it go away, or you can adapt to the problem and find someway to get what you want within the limitations of the situation. It all comes down to who is going to change, the individual or the situation.

Neither approach is "right". There are situations in life that call out for change. These are often problems that effect many people and therefore expecting the people to all change is unreasonable. On the other hand there are situations that call out for individuals to adapt – whether it is because the situation can not be changed (for instance individuals learning to adapt to disabilities) or where the current situation is only a problem for a few and changing to accommodate them will discomfort a much greater number. Of course, most real problems fall in between – where the proper resolution isn't obvious and it is up to us as individuals to make a judgment call whether to fight the situation or adapt to it.

There have been social trends which bias people towards one solution or another. In the 60's and early 70's, the bias was to challenge – to fix the things that were broken in the world, whether they be big (prejudice, poverty) or small (dress codes, hair styles). In the late 70's and 80's, the bias was towards adaptation - self-improvement and learning how to use "the system" to one's advantage. I'm not entirely sure where the bias is today; but given the tendency for people to blame others for their problems, I think we may be back to a preference to challenge rather than adapt.

As an engineer, my personal bias has always been towards adapting. Engineering is all about being told "You have 8 rubber bands, 10 sheets of paper, 6 tooth picks, 3 feet of string, and an egg. Now build something that will let you drop the egg without cracking". When an engineer is presented with such a problem they know asking for a sheet of foam rubber is not an option. Engineering is all about dealing with constraints – even if the only constraints are time or money. The first step in any engineering problem is understanding what you have to work with, and then you figure out how to solve the problem with what you have. Occasionally you can get away with challenging the constraints you are given; but an engineer who does that too often is not respected. Real respect comes from solving a problem under constraints that everyone else thinks are impossible.

My observation is that spending years being paid to find ways to adapt to constraints at work has inevitably had an effect on my personal life. When I run into problems, my first reaction is to find some way to work around them – to take the limitations presented to me as a given and then find a way to get what I want despise those limitations. The idea of challenging the rules, asking other people to change, comes slowly to me, if at all. If someone's a jerk, I assume they will always be a jerk and find a way to work around them. The idea of complaining about them doesn't occur to me.

I'm not saying this is right – there are almost certainly times when I should be challenging my environment instead of adapting to it. My comment is only that I think I have come to understand where my personal bias comes from. It's an "engineer thing".

Posted by Steven at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

August 29, 2005

Extrapolation of human nature

Philosophers, as a whole, look for the "universal truths" of the human condition. The problem is – how do you know when something really is universal, as opposed to just common among philosophers?

Consider the proposition: people have an innate desire to find meaning for their lives – to find some context (religion, family, nationalism, invention, whatever) greater than themselves which makes their own existence meaningful. This is a position taken by a great many philosophers, although the significance of that desire has been interpreted in a variety of ways.

My question is – how does one decide if this is in fact a universal?

Obviously the philosophers who have come to this conclusion feel such a need (otherwise they would provide their own disproof); and since more than one have taken this position (including some who view this as a bad thing), it is clearly not an isolated behavior. Let's say a philosopher talks to a great many people, and discovers that while most folks say "I've never really thought about it", those that have thought about it agree with the observation. Can one then extrapolate from those conversations that the desire to find meaning is a human universal?

Or….

….instead, have you discovered that there is a subset of the population who thinks about the human condition (philosophers by inclination if not occupation), and that this subset has an innate desire to find meaning for their lives; but that most people don't spend time thinking about such things and really don't care if their lives have meaning? How can you tell?

I have come to the conclusion that one is not ready to consider deeply the universals of the human condition until one understands our differences.

I believe it is clear that there are fundamental differences in how people respond to the world – that there are a great many things which are not universal. Many models have been developed to categorize people into "personality types" – the Four-Temperaments model, the Myer-Briggs model, the Enneagram model, etc. All of these models define ways in which people are different. While I believe the spectrum of human behavior is too complex to allow people to be put in nice neat boxes, I do think these models are useful for understanding the ways in which we differ and it is only by having a deep understanding of our differences that we can successfully sort out those things which are in fact universal.

I believe to jump ahead and start looking for universals without an appreciation of these differences is like looking for someone in a funhouse maze of mirrors – it is easy to get confused by all of the reflections.

Posted by Steven at 09:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

August 11, 2005

Modern Myths and Loss of Control

A couple days ago I blogged on what myth patterns may be starting to evolve in our modern society. I mentioned two story patterns that seem to be getting repeated: The Frankenstein myth (man loses control of technology) and the Reluctant Hero myth (someone is given great power and struggles with the responsibility that implies).

I've continued thinking about these and have an additional observation: I claim both of these myths are about loss of control.

In the Frankenstein case, this is obvious – someone builds some piece of technology and literally loses control of it. It reflects societies' concern that, thanks to technology, things are changing too fast for them. Life is becoming too complex too quickly and no one is in control.

I think the Reluctant Hero myth is related to this. Such myths start with an individual expecting to live a normal life. They know what to expect and therefore have some degree of control over their lives. Then, suddenly, their life is changed and they are expected to become "a hero". To the character, the expectations of being a hero mean they have lost control over their lives, and the story comes out of their struggle against this loss of control.

Based on demographics of TV show audiences, this kind of story tends to be particularly popular with young adults. Perhaps modern society no longer adequately prepares individuals for adulthood, and faced with the sudden expectations places on them when they enter "the real world", they find they can relate to such myths.

So, is "loss of control" the central theme of modern myths? This is too few data points to make such a claim; but it is an interesting point to consider. It is certainly a distinctly "modern" concept to worry about. In most ancient cultures there was never an assumption that an individual was ever in control to begin with, it was always fate or "the gods" who were in control. To tell stories about people losing control would never have occurred to someone in those cultures. Yet in modern society we believe we should be in control of our lives yet face a world in which we often aren't. So perhaps we look for myths that at least express that confusion, and at best provide some context for knowing how to deal with it.

Posted by Steven at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 09, 2005

Of Myths, Memes, and the Modern

Back in the days of oral tradition, a young man or woman might here a multitude of stories told as they were growing up, and were likely to even here the same story told many times. When such a child grew up to become a storyteller themselves (as parent, shaman, bard, whatever), they would tend to repeat the stories which most impressed them in their youth. The version they would tell would tend to be some amalgamation of the best parts of the various versions they had previously heard; together, perhaps, with a few embellishments of their own. Their embellishments to the story would be repeated if they impressed other story tellers, and would be forgotten if not. The result is good stories were repeated more often and tended to improve with age, becoming more suited to their audience with each cycle.

One could view this process as evolution – it has all of the elements: selection, mutation, even combination to speed the process. Thus you can view myths and folktales as highly evolved stories – ones well suited to the society (the "ecological niche") in which they grew. Just as you can look at an animal and discern some thing about the environment in which it lived (webbed feet might indicate that it spent significant time in water); you can also look at the stories that are successful in a society and ask question like: why were they successful? What does the fact of their success tell us about the society in which they grew?

By the way - this concept of "idea as evolving organism" has been given the term "meme" (a combination of memory and gene). Of course, the idea of a "meme" is itself a meme which I have now spread to you all, so it clearly is a successful one as it has managed to propagate itself to me and now to you.

Back to stories – if you accept the idea that myths and folktales are highly evolved stories for the culture in which they thrived, then you might ask – what stories are evolving for our present society? And therein lay the rub. The problem is that starting with Gutenberg, the nature of technology has tended to slow down the evolution of stories by freezing them in place. A story, once captured in a book, does not lend itself to modification. Consider urban legends. Once they were repeated verbally and therefore were subject to selection, modification, etc. and thereby tended to evolve. However with the internet, passing on such a story is merely a matter of a few clicks. Few people would even think to modify the story before forwarding it on; and because the process of forwarding it is so easy, much less selection occurs as to what is worthwhile.

And despite this, I claim that that certain myths have begun to evolve in the modern age. Each story may itself be frozen; but the idea of the story – the core meme – is available to be retold in a new story in a new way. So one can ask, what story ideas are often repeated in our society? And what do they tell us about our society.

As an example, consider the plot line: a scientist in search of knowledge to benefit people creates some new thing which the scientist then loses control of and instead of helping people is does them harm, usually killing the scientist in the end. This is the "Frankenstein myth"; but one which has been told many times in many ways (Michael Crichton has built a career of writing variation of this myth – Prey, Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, etc). An interesting side note is to consider – if you could only present one version of the Frankenstein myth to someone, which version do you think best captures the essence of the myth?

Another I have identified is the reluctant hero – someone is given extraordinary abilities; but all they want is to live a normal life. Yet "with great power come great responsibility", and the story is about that struggle between responsibility and normalcy. Obviously I put Spider Man into this camp (along with a few other comic book heroes), as well as Buffy and "The Greatest American Hero" on TV. I find this particular one interesting because it is so clearly modern. No story with such reluctant heroes would have ever been deemed fit enough to survive in ancient cultures – individuals with power did not shirk from using them (counterexamples are welcome). So why do stories with reluctant heroes resonate enough now that they have been told many times?

Posted by Steven at 08:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

August 03, 2005

Linguistics

Long before Anne got her masters degree in linguistics, I loved the science of words. To put it into the standard formula for "thing Steve loves" – I am fascinated by the process of how sequences of symbols and sounds become translated into meaning.

One question I keep investigating – catching up on current thinking in the field as I am able – is: "what are the universals of language?" What concepts are common to all languages, and (conversely) what concepts are particular to specific languages. I'm currently reading a book ("The Atoms of Language" by Mark C. Baker) which tries to define all of the variations in the structures of human language into a small number of parameters. Individual "words" (or equivalent) vary greatly between languages; but how those linguistic elements are assembled to express thoughts have more limited variations (modifiers either come immediately before or immediately after the words they modify, etc.).

Even as a dilettante in linguistics, I quickly came up with some counter-examples to the theory presented by the book; but as a means to get me thinking on this topic again, the book was wonderful. In particularly the book gives some excellent examples of extremely "non English like" languages, which I always enjoy.

This fascination of mine is an old one. While in high school tried to design my own "artificial" language. The results were far too English-like for my tastes now – at the time I assumed far too many things were "universal" and were unaware of the alternatives. It is however somewhat embarrassing that, for the length and depth of my interest in linguistics, I have never actually learned a foreign language. I have always skimmed new languages, looking for interesting structures; but never diving in deep enough to be able to actually use another language.

I am also working to correct that omission. Anne and I bought the "Rosetta Stone" program for French-1, and I am slowly working my way through. This is a back-burner task, and I'm not sure if I will be able to give it the time it needs; but so far I have been making steady process through the lessons.

I also find myself linking about artificial languages again – perhaps I'll take another pass at my own language.

Posted by Steven at 09:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

July 28, 2005

Truth and Opinion

For many years, the signature on my EMails contained the lines:

The Truth is The Truth
My Opinions are My Opinions
Which are Which is Unclear

I stand by that philosophy. For many issues, there is in fact an objective truth out there – statement A is correct, and therefore statements B (and C, and D, etc.) are incorrect. There may well be legitimate reasons to doubt if my own understanding of that objective truth is correct; but that doesn't change the fact that the truth in fact exists. In the vast majority of the cases, only one of the statements "X" and "not X" can be true, and we should not hide from that fact.

I mention this because I am getting increasingly concerned by people who, in the name of "multi-culturalism", "non-judgmentalism", and assorted other 'isms, are taking the stance that saying "I believe in X" is a bad thing if X implies not-Y where other people believe Y. Freedom of speech implies the freedom to state your own opinions, no matter how they may conflict with opinions of other people. I believe a multi-cultural society is one in which one individual can say they believe X and another can say they believe not-X and neither has reason fear retribution. I believe a non-judgmental society is one where each person is allowed to use and express their own best judgment while understanding that everyone else is doing the same thing and therefore may come to different conclusions. We must be allowed to state our own opinions while understanding and respecting that other people may have very different opinions.

I do agree that in a civil society there are reasonable expectations on the means by which one states an opinion. Sensitive opinions should only be expressed in a calm and compassionate manner. Incitement to violence against people who don't agree with your opinion is never appropriate. But in the end, we must provide a means for people to state what they believe the truth is no matter how small of a minority may agree with their point of view.

For me as a Christian, I am enjoined to "Speak the truth in love". I believe it is my responsibility to express my understanding of the world, God, etc; but I need to do it in a loving manner – one that takes into account the feelings and opinions of others. That doesn’t mean I don't talk about things which are controversial; but rather that when I do speak of such things I must do it with compassion and respect. I believe that God has given mankind free will (I say that, understanding that some Christians believe in predestination), and if God has allowed people to make up their own minds, who am I to do otherwise?

Posted by Steven at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 12, 2005

What is intelligence?

Is analogy the essence of intelligence and creativity? Is it the ability to deal with increasingly abstract forms of "A is like B" that makes something intelligent/creative? Jeff Hawkins (see previous post "On Intelligence") believes he has discovered the mechanics of intelligence in the brain in the form of what is essentially a hierarchical analogy engine.

The idea is the manifestation of Einstein's intelligence is that we was able to see that being pushed back in a chair when one accelerated was "like" gravity and then formed the model in which they were the same thing. Or that Robert Burns' creativity was the ability to see that his love was like a red, red rose and then wrote a poem to explain how. In each case the "working out of the details" can also be explained in terms of sets of analogies.

Certainly when I think about the times when I have felt particularly clever, it was either when I was able to spot some pattern (I see: A is like B is like C is like D…) or I realized that the problem I faced was similar to a problem I previous has solved (this is just like the time I…). Both are forms of analogy.

What is interesting about this formulation is that something could be very "intelligent" and fail a Turing Test (the standard test in computer science to determine if we have finally achieved "Artificial Intelligence"); and that there is no inherent requirement in the Turing Test to employ analogies (and therefore intelligence?), so something could pass the test and not actually be intelligent.

Posted by Steven at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 07, 2005

London, 2005/07/07 08:51

What can you say on a day like this?

I've been thinking all day about what to blog on this. Most of it seems too obvious or too trite.

- Yes, it is a tragedy, and I grieve for the wounded and the families of all of the victims.
- No, this is not the work of true Muslims. Despite what many think, Islam is very strict about when violence can be used and against whom, and in no way was this act in accordance with those teachings.
- Yes, it is sad that there are people who can be fooled into thinking this is appropriate behavior; and yes, the people who talked them into it are evil.

England at least has a long history of dealing with terrorism on their own soil, and while they have grown complacent since the peace accords in Ireland, many people know how to handle such threats, and most of the infrastructure remains in place.

I guess the question becomes – what can be done about this? More specifically, can terrorism be prevented? And can terrorists be caught?

On the first question, I think the answer is "no." You may be able to catch more terrorists before they act than we do now (although do we really know how many are caught by various intelligence agencies?); but I do not believe you can stop a terrorist who wants desperately enough to inflict mayhem on a society. Consider America's own Eric Rudolph who, because of his twisted vision of Christianity, set bombs in abortion clinics and Atlanta's Olympic park. I do not think there was anything anyone could have done to have stopped Rudolph from planting his first bomb.

Some would say "make explosives harder to get"; but I believe that only provides false security. First, it is quite easy to make explosives out of fairly mundane chemicals. Remember, Timothy McVeigh used fertilizer and fuel oil, neither of which could practically be banned – at best the government has made it harder to buy large quantities, which merely means new terrorists need more patience. Second, someone who is planning on setting off a bomb is not worried about breaking the law, and when has a law ever actually made something unavailable to a society? Drugs are illegal; but are commonly available. Prohibition was a failure. Gang members have illegal guns and ammunition. No matter what you make illegal, a criminal will certainly find a way to get it.

On the question of "Can terrorists be caught?" – that likely depends on how much privacy and civil liberties you are willing to give up. If there were cameras and microphones in every room of every building. If people were required to carry LoJack style devices on them at all time (and there were sensors that detected people who did not have a device). If you were willing to let the government search any location at any time, then you could probably collect enough information that you could catch any terrorists after the fact. But would you really be willing to live like that? Note, I do not suggest that all of the precautions could prevent the terrorist from acting since the volume of data is too big to analyze.

I think at some level, the unfortunate truth is the terrorists are one of the prices we need to accept for living in a free society.

Posted by Steven at 06:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

July 01, 2005

Skepticism vs. time

I was recently looking at the message boards for the new TV series "30 days" on FX (which, BTW, it quite good – I'll probably post on it later). This week's show was about a Christian (who didn't know a lot about Islam) living as a Muslim for 30 days. What I found quite depressing was the number of "christians" posting on the message board how the show misrepresented Islam, and then going on to make totally unfounded statements about what "Muslims believe". Things like Muslims worship the moon-god, or that the "Koran" teaches that Muslims who are friends with Christians should be killed (neither of which are true – just in case you didn't know that).

Obviously these are "facts" that these people heard from leaders (pastors, preachers, commentators, etc.) that they accepted without challenge and the decided to repeat to the world on a message board. Frankly, the experience left me depressed for the future – the truth is so fragile and lies are so easy to propagate.

It did however get me thinking. I know better because I am a skeptic and spend at least some energy double-checking things I hear to see if they are true. I also maintain that no-one is infallible and therefore not subject to skeptical inquiry. I recently double checked a story my pastor told in a sermon which didn't match what I thought was true. (As it turns out, we both were right – events he described happened much earlier than what I was thinking about).

On the other hand, with finite time, I can't check every fact I hear. There are many things I hear which I at least tentatively accept without verification simply because I don't have the time to check them all. The internet has made things easier – every version of a fact is accessible in moments. The problem then becomes trying to figure out which version of a fact is true. But that's better than having to spend hours finding information and then still having to decide who to believe when there is a conflict.

So, the question then becomes – what facts should a responsible skeptic spend the time to check, and which can they afford to let pass? My personal rules are: don't repeat facts you haven't checked, and don't base important decisions on facts you haven't checked.

Before I teach a lesson, reply to an email, post a blog, etc. I always make sure I am not including some fact that I haven't checked at some point. There has already been one blog post I trashed because I couldn't find enough supporting evidence for a key part of it (I still think it is true; but wasn't satisfied with my ability to prove it); and another I re-wrote because I discovered the story wasn't quite what I had been told at first. I'm sure I'll still make mistakes; but I do try.

Likewise, whenever I go to make an important decision (one that will cost significant money or which will have consequences for a significant amount of time), I ask myself – is there any part of this decision I am basing on something I heard; but never verified?

Still even with those standards, my mind must be filled with facts that I just accepted as-is. The times (thankfully infrequent) when I have corrected myself before teaching something is ample proof of that. If it is depressing to think about the number of falsehoods being blindly passed around the net; how much more depressing it is to think about the number of falsehoods still running around my own head.

Posted by Steven at 02:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 30, 2005

Why do people bother?

As far back as I can recall into childhood, I believed in at least a generic God – someone who created the universe with some purpose. At Age 10, I made an explicit and intentional decision to become a Christian, and while I have certainly refined my definition what it means to be a Christian many times, there has never been a point at which I did not believe that there was a meaning and a purpose to the universe.

I'm thinking about that because with the movie of "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" having come out this year, I have been re-watching the original BBC TV show. Now for those who have only seen the movie (which has an unfortunate happy ending tagged on to it), the original British story was an exercise in pure, unadulterated nihilism. The whole point of "42" and all that was that the universe didn't have any meaning, and everyone one was just fooling themselves into thinking there was one.

I think this is best captured in the patter of the Master of Ceremonies at Milliways – the Restaurant at the End of the Universe (I'll note that the American movie ended before they got to Milliways). Here's a sample:

"Thank you ladies and gentlemen!" he cried, "thank you very much. Thank you so much."
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "The Universe as we know it has now been in existence for over one hundred and seventy thousand million billion years and will be ending in a little over half an hour. So, welcome one and all to Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe!"
"I am your host for tonight," he said, "my name is Max Quordlepleen and I've just come straight from the very very other end of time, where I've been hosting a show at the Big Bang Burger Bar - where I can tell you we had a very exciting evening ladies and gentlemen - and I will be with you right through this historic occasion, the End of History itself!"
"So, ladies and gentlemen," he breathed, "the candles are lit, the band plays softly, and as the force-shielded dome above us fades into transparency, revealing a dark and sullen sky hung heavy with the ancient light of livid swollen stars, I can see we're all in for a fabulous evening's apocalypse!"
Even the soft tootling of the band faded away as stunned shock descended on all those who had not seen this sight before.
A monstrous, grisly light poured in on them,
- a hideous light,
- a boiling, pestilential light,
- a light that would have disfigured hell.
The Universe was coming to an end.
For a few interminable seconds the Restaurant span silently through the raging void. Then Max spoke again.
"For those of you who ever hoped to see the light at the end of the tunnel," he said, "this is it."
"And as the photon storms gather in swirling crowds around us, preparing to tear apart the last of the red hot suns, I know you're all going to settle back and enjoy with me what I know we will find all an immensely exciting and terminal experience."
"Believe me, ladies and gentlemen," he said, "there's nothing penultimate about this one."
"This," he said, "really is the absolute end, the final chilling desolation, in which the whole majestic sweep of creation becomes extinct. This ladies and gentlemen is the proverbial `it'."
"After this," he said, "there is nothing. Void. Emptiness. Oblivion. Absolute nothing ..." And for once," he cried cheerily, "you don't need to worry about having a hangover in the morning - because there won't be any more mornings!"
"It's marvellous though," he rattled on, "to see so many of you here tonight - no isn't it though? Yes, absolutely marvellous. Because I know that so many of you come here time and time again, which I think is really wonderful, to come and watch this final end of everything, and then return home to your own eras ... and raise families, strive for new and better societies, fight terrible wars for what you know to be right ... it really gives one hope for the future of all lifekind. Except of course," he waved at the blitzing turmoil above and around them, "that we know it hasn't got one ..."

I quote all this because it represents exactly what science teaches.

There are really only two possible outcomes to the universe as understood by science. Either the gradient of the universe is greater than or equal to zero (i.e the universe will either continue to expand infinitely, or will asymptotically approach some maximum size), in which case entropy will event result in a frozen universe without life. Or the gradient or the universe is negative in which case it will eventually collapse in on itself into a flaming singularity. The bottom line in either case is there will eventually be a time when the universe will be unable to support life of any kind. There are no other solutions supported by science. At least as far as "lifekind" is concerned there will eventually be an end to the universe.

So, if your faith is only in science, why bother?

What value is there in raising children, building a better world, creating monuments, etc. Yeah, you might make things better for some number of generations; but eventually there will be no more generations. People may be able to see your monument for many years; but eventually there will be no one left to see them. It doesn't matter if mankind expands beyond this planet, or if some new lifeform evolves and discovers what we have left behind. Eventually they too will die out since science says that the eventual end is universal and inevitable. If the consequences of anything you do is guaranteed to be of limited duration, then why look past your own lifetime? Or your own life?

Frankly, if I didn't have faith – if someone came up with an absolute proof that there is no God and that the universe is a random accident, I could see myself becoming an amoral hedonist. I'd live for my short-term pleasure. I wouldn't break any big laws because I wouldn't want to risk wasting time in prison, and I would be careful not to be so nasty to anyone that they might take harmful action against me; but beyond that – anything goes. If nothing I do matters in the long term – if you think in long enough terms - (and that is the real lesson of science), then why not?

Posted by Steven at 06:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

June 21, 2005

What do "priorities" mean?

Conventional wisdom is that people should prioritize all of the things which vie for their time and "work on the highest priority task first". On face value that sounds like really good advice, and certainly many people spend way too much of their time on tasks which are in fact unimportant to them.

The problem is that this simple model of "work on priority #1 until it is done, then work on #2" breaks down once you introduce tasks which either never complete or which have specific deadlines. Here are two examples:

- The classic statement "my family is higher priority than work". So that that mean you should quit your job and spend all of your with your family? Well, no….. So what does it really mean to prioritize family vs. work?

- Let's say you have two tasks: Task A which will take 1 week and is due in 3 weeks, and Task B which will take 8 weeks and is due in 10 weeks. Now let's say it is much more important that you get task B done than task A. Does that mean task B is higher priority and you should work on it until it is done, by which time it will be too take to work on task A? What if you are not sure if Task B will take 8 or 10 weeks, so you aren't sure if you have time to do task A as well? How do you prioritize them now?

I think real life requires more complex ways to think and talk about priorities.

First, I think all priorities should always be stated as goals with specific deadline. You should not set as a priority "write my first novel"; but rather "write my first novel by the time I am 30". That allows you to really think about how important it is to do someone by that point in time. It also allows you to have a task in your priority list multiple times. It might be a middle priority to "write my first novel by the time I am 30"; but a very high priority to "write my first novel by the time I am 60". Having both statements on your priority list I think is quite useful, and helps priorities other tasks which might aid those goals (like taking writing classes).

Second, I think ongoing priorities (like family) can be looked at as recurring goals. While it is hard to know how to apply a statement like "family is more important than work", I think it is easier to prioritize "spend 20 hours with family each month" vs. "work overtime to complete project X on time". Again, you might have the same task listed twice with different granularity. You might have the goals to "spend 5 hours each week writing" and also "spend 20 hours each month writing"? While they may have the same effect over the long haul, there may be things which are more important to you for an individual week which are not more important than making monthly progress.

Posted by Steven at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 09, 2005

International News

I am frustrated with how hard it is to get real international news in the USA. It seems that the only international stories which get covered by the major news outlets are either ones that directly involve the USA (Iraq), or are of such magnitude that they can't be ignored (last year's tsunami).

This is certainly true for the TV networks. Even CNN and Fox News (both of whom have excellent international news channels shown overseas) follow this pattern in the US. I was disappointed this week when CNN announced an hour show every weekday which was supposed to provide global news; but the only stories they showed which were not about America were a soccer match and the world weather report.

It is perhaps not surprising the America's foreign policy is so often ill advised when so few American are exposed to real information about what is happening in the world. Its very easy to assume you are the center of the universe when all you hear are stories about yourself.

Posted by Steven at 09:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

June 04, 2005

Going to the extreme

Natural systems tend toward equilibrium. Things, on average, tend to average out. Measure most things in the real world and you get a nice bell curve with a few items out on the edges with extreme values, but most clumped together in the middle.

My observation however is that the opposite is true is human opinions. I used to think that the majority of people were "moderates" on any given subject, and it was only a few people who took extreme positions; but I am starting to wonder if that is true. The more I look at history, the more I think there is some force at work which naturally polarizes people into opposing camps on any subject, where each camp becomes more and more extreme in their convictions as time goes by and where the "middle ground" becomes less and less populated as each side recruits members and few ever revert back to moderation.

A while back I worked on a game design intended to present an abstract version of "politics". The board represented the space of political views, and there were pieces on the board which represented the general population. Each player also had a piece on the board that represented themselves as a politician. The actions you could take could have several effects including: moving your piece on the board (refining your "position"), moving an opponents piece on the board (for instance, characterizing them as an extremist by moving them closer to the edge), moving people on the board (advertising to change the population's opinions), and marking population pieces to be loyal to you, or removing their loyalty to another player. There was a lot of detail I'm skipping here.

What I noticed in my own playing with the partially complete system was that the best strategy was for the players to take opposing positions about a quarter of the way in from the edge. So with three players, they would form a triangle on the board, each half-way between the middle and the edge and as far apart from each other as they could get. As game progressed, it was in each player's interest to try and move population away from the middle towards their edge of the board, and the winner was basically the one who did that the best. When I tried to play a "centrist" politician to own the middle of the board, that 'player' always lost because all of the more extreme 'players' were fighting against them, pulling their natural constituency away. The interesting trick was for one of the other players to try and reposition the centrist off-center toward the side of the board claimed by the otherwise leader, so their vote would tend to get split.

At the time I thought these outcomes were aberrations which represented some flaw in my game design; but in hindsight I'm less certain of that. Perhaps my simulation was actually working better than I expected.

Posted by Steven at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 31, 2005

Still Turning

I am still thinking through the book "The Fourth Turning" (see yesterday's post). Here's my quick summary of the cycle:

1. An event drives people band together for the common good. Individualism is (voluntarily) set aside for reasons of efficiency. Civic institutions are built up to strengthen the community.

2. A strong, conformist and efficient society becomes materially prosperous but spiritually weak. Non-conformity is treated harshly. Civic institutions reach their peak of power and prestige.

3. An event drives people to seek spiritual enlightenment. Civic institutions are challenged and torn down. Individualism is encouraged, and personal growth is valued over material gain.

4. An individualistic, but inefficient society supports spiritual development (as defined by the individual) but is materially weak - often a balloon waiting to burst. Remaining civic institutions are torn apart by culture wars because of such diverse and passionate views.

1(again). An event drives people band together for the common good....

BTW – according to their theory, what we were living in (at least up until 2001, perhaps later) was/is the equivalent of the roaring 20's, and we are at the start the equivalent of the cultural change that occurred during the great depression and WWII. They are not predicting a depression or a war, only that some event (my guess from hindsight is 9/11) will begin a cascade of changes in society which will increase government power, increase censorship, strengthen institutions over individuality, etc. Remember this was written in the 90's

Posted by Steven at 05:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

May 29, 2005

Rushing Union

So, the French people have rejected the EU constitution with 55% of the vote. The Netherlands are expected to follow suite on Wednesday with an even greater margin. Germany has approved it; but they never asked their people what they thought – Germany's "yes" vote was a purely legislative action.

Personally, I think a united, federal Europe is inevitable; but the leaders of the European Union are in too much of a rush and the current plans are doomed to failure.

When thirteen separate colonies in American decided to unite under a federal government, things were quite different. None had more than 200 years of independent existence. None had actually waged war against another. At least half the people spoke a common language.

In contrast, Europe has nations which have an independent history stretching over 1000 years; European countries have fought wars against each other within the lifetime of current citizens, and there is no common language. These are in my opinion significant barriers to overcome in a single generation.

Economic union is proving to be enough of a challenge for the time being. European leaders should focus on perfecting that before moving towards further political unity. Let the next generation, who will grow up with an economically united Europe, take the next steps toward a true federal Europe. I believe if people are patient, this fruit will fall when the time is right. Rushing it will only build resentment which will slow down the process.

Posted by Steven at 08:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

May 25, 2005

Passion: Virtue of Vice?

I saw Star Wars, Episode III recently.

Short review: good film. I haven't seen Empire Strikes Back recently, so it is hard to say which is better; but they are at least in the same league. The only problem with Revenge of the Sith is that you need to watch Episodes I and II to set it up.

It did however get me thinking (what doesn't?). One of the main subtexts of the movie is that "Passion" inevitably leads to "Evil". The Sith gain their power by drawing on their passion, and this leads them to the "dark side". The Jedi however guard against all kinds of passion and therefore stay on the path of the light side. In all three of the prequel episodes, Anakin is cautioned against passion – even love – as those kinds of attachments lead to fear and anger which lead to evil. We see this with his mother in Episode II, and with Padme in Episode III.

I'm old enough to have seen the original Star Wars in the theatre, and I remember one reviewer (I think it was someone at the New York Times) who commented that this was a film where "the humans talked like robots and the robots talked like humans". While I have always chalked that up to bad writing and acting, I'm starting to wonder now. If "passion" leads to evil, then it would follow that our heroes in the film would need to be relatively passionless. Unfortunately, "passionless" is very close to "boring". I note that the two films which stand out as superior are those in which the protagonist, at least temporarily, gives in to passion: Luke abandoning his training to save his friends, and Anakin to try and save Padme.

So, what's so wrong with passion anyway? I have served as a manager for much of my career, and hired many people. I have always been very explicit about trying to hire "passionate" people. I want to be surrounded by people who are emotionally involved in their work. I'll admit that one result of this is that one should not bring flammable materials to a design meeting of a team I built (and having sound proof rooms is an advantage); but I stand by my belief that once we do all agree on a design, the result is amazing and well worth all of the effort.

I have a sneaking suspicion that if I lived in a "galaxy far far away", I would be a sith and not a jedi.

Posted by Steven at 09:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 23, 2005

A message on the medium

This weekend, the local newspaper left copies of their Sunday edition on everyone's doorstep in our neighborhood, regardless of whether they were subscribers. I assume this was a promotion mechanism, trolling for new subscribers.

I used to be an avid newspaper reader – reading every issue of both the Wall Street Journal and the local paper. I did this to the exclusion of watching new programs on the TV (although there was a time when I would watch Headline News over breakfast). The newspapers provided me with something which was at one point unique – a high volume of information that I could access on demand. TV news provided a much smaller amount of information, and I had to watch it when and in what order they chose to provide it.

Of course, what changed my newspaper-reading habits was the internet. I now get all of my news from web sites that aggregate news stories form other sources (like news.yahoo.com), and I ignore both TV and paper news. The Internet provides an even greater volume of information, and finding those few stories I want to read is even easier. For me, print news media is dead.

That got me thinking about other media.

Radio is still very much alive to me; and despite one threat, I expect it to remain so for a long time. What radio provides is background. I can listen to the radio while I am engaged in some other activity, such as driving. It does not demand my attention; but provides stimulus to the exact degree to which I am willing and able to pay attention. There is a clear place for such a medium in my life.

The one threat to radio is my iPod, which provides a similar experience profile. When Anne and I drove across the US a couple years ago, the soundtrack of that experience came almost entirely from Anne's iPod as it allowed us to drive without constantly having to find new stations (we do not have an XM satellite radio system). Yet even though I own an iPod, I still use the radio. I think the reason is because radio provides access to new content, while my iPod is full of content that I already know I like, and in simple terms, there are times I want to rest in the comfort of the known and there are times I want to experiment with the new. I am also aware of the existence of "pod casting" (new content created to be downloaded into an iPod and listened to at your leisure); but I just find it easier to turn on a radio when I am looking for something new.

This brings us to TV, which anyone who reads this blog knows is certainly "alive" for me. TV is where I go for dramatic presentations. I think however that this is just a matter of production economics and not any inherent superiority of the medium. I already watch DVDs on my computer, and have enjoyed watching dramatic presentations on the internet when they are available (see Atom Films for a great source). However, people are still working out how to make real money publishing dramatic content on the web, and until that is clear, most content will still be available only (initially?) on TV. This will however inevitably change – someday people will find a good model for funding real productions to be distributed on the web, and when that happens, TV may well go the way of newspapers.

I also realized while writing this entry that just as Radio and my iPod serve related but complimentary purposes, TV is complimented by… DVDs. I have a fair collection of DVDs of both movies and TV series, and I do watch them when I want something "comfortable" – something I already know I enjoy. I also pull out DVDs when I want to re-experience an emotion that I know a show inspired in me – very much like playing an album on my iPod that matches my mood. TV of course is where I go to look for new content (some of which will inevitably be added to my DVD collection in time).

Posted by Steven at 09:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 20, 2005

Political Theory and the right to travel

What reasonable limits should exit to someone's right to travel?

Imagine you were setting up a global federation which respected each country's right to govern itself, while at the same time recognized an individual's right to choose what government to live under. This question actually came from a story idea I worked on once. The situation there was a bit more complicated; but I think I can pose the questions without going into more detail.

I started with two principles:
1) A government should have the right to determine who can enter its territory
2) A government has no right to limit someone's ability to leave their territory

That sounded like a good start. Bad governments would be limited in their ability to survive, because people would just leave. People may not always be able to live where they want (the best government would likely need to impose access limits); but they should be able to find reasonable places to live.

Then I hit a problem – criminals. The simple statement of rule 2 implies that a government could not limit all of its criminals from simply leaving. OK, such people might find it hard to find another country to allow them in, so perhaps the solution is:

2) A government has no right to limit someone's ability to leave their territory as long as those individuals have a destination where they will be accepted.

If course, for this to be effective, there would also need to be rules prohibiting governments from interfering with someone's ability to seek asylum elsewhere. This was starting to get complicated; but not impossible.

Then I hit a bigger problem – spies and operatives supported by foreign governments. With the rules above, if a government arrested someone for performing an assassination on behalf of a foreign power, they couldn't hold them because the assassin would simply request and get asylum from their home government. That's not good.

The problem was to find a set of principles which would allow reasonable prosecution of foreign agents while at the same time not allowing a tyrannical government from simply declaring its whole population to be criminals and therefore ineligible to depart. Obviously you could do this by establishing a whole legal code at the federal level – defining what offenses were "legitimate" and which were not, but that would represent a significant limit to each governments own autonomy, and I was wanting to avoid that.

What I ended up planning to use in the story (and I was never happy with this) was that the federation actually maintained a "prison colony". Individuals could petition to serve whatever sentence they had been given at the federation's colony instead of in the country in which they were convicted. The federation could not change the sentence that had been given to an individual; but would ensure that the prisoners were humanely treated. I think it would have worked in the story (which I still have never written); but at a political philosophy level, I'm not happy that that's the best solution I could come up with.

Posted by Steven at 01:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 16, 2005

Self deception vs. Self Improvement

It is generally considered a bad thing when people pretend to be something they are not. Phrases like "living a lie" and "self deception" come up. On the other hand, it is generally considered to be a good thing when someone tries to improve themselves – changing who they are to become someone better. My question is – how do you draw the line? What makes one person "deceived" and another person "improved"? Is a shy person who tries to be outgoing denying their nature or enhancing themselves? How about an angry person who tries to be more peaceable?

My own answer is that it depends on two factors – self knowledge and motivation. First, for it to be a good thing to try and behave differently one must start with an understanding of you are. Simply acting in some manner because you believe (for whatever reason) "you should" without understanding how that relates to who you really are is deception because it does not recognize your current true nature. Second, for it to be a good thing to try and behave differently, you have to be motivated by your own choice, not someone else's preference. To act some way because your parents, or spouse, or friends, or co-workers think you should act that way is deceiving everyone as to who you are. It is only when you take a clear and honest assessment of yourself and choose to change for your own reasons does it become "Self Improvement".

Posted by Steven at 09:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

May 15, 2005

America the fearful?

In 1943, Abraham Maslow proposed that people were driver by a hierarchy of needs that ran (from bottom to top) physiological, safety, belonging, esteem, and actualization. The idea being that if someone's physiological needs were not met (they were not fed, they couldn't sleep, etc.) the person would ignore their other needs until those most fundamental needs were met. If their physiological need were met, they would concern themselves with safety, if they had their physiological needs and their need for safety met, they would concern themselves with the need to belong (which often manifests itself as the need for love); and so on. Only people who feel secure in the realms of physiological, safety, belonging, and esteem spend their energies on self-actualization, including issues which are only matters of principle.

While the formalization of the hierarchy was new, the ideas behind it had been understood by governments and sales people from time immemorial. If you want to get someone's attention, make them believe their more fundamental needs were threatened. Convince someone their sense of belonging is threatened (because their breath smells, or they don't buy the same beer as all the cool people, or people are changing the traditional values of the country so they won't belong any more), and they will listen to you – at least until someone else convinces them that their sense of safety is threatened (because a burglar is going to break into their home, or they are going to fall and not be able to get up, or people are going to attack their country).

Governments have always been very good at using threats to people's needs to get popular support (and to distract them from ethical issues which are at the top of Maslow's hierarchy). Actually making the citizenry happy is quite difficult; but making them afraid is easy. Some will read this as an indictment of the current administration – it isn't. Yes, I believe the Bush administration has been very adept as using people's fears to gain support and to distract them from moral questions; but they are far from alone in that behavior. I am hard pressed to come up with an administration in my lifetime that didn't play "the fear card". Perhaps President Carter avoided that; which may explain why his administration was relatively ineffective – he tried to appeal to America at the level of self-actualization – abstract ideas of right and wrong – when too many people were already concerned with more fundamental issues.

The news media also understands this well. The way to get someone to tune into your new broadcast or buy your newspaper is to promise to inform them about threats to their needs; and the lower the need in Maslow's hierarchy, the more people you will attract (if you only present threats to someone's esteem, you won't attract people who are already focused on belonging and safety). The result is with a press that is free to publish what they want, but who needs to attract money to pay for that ability, the best stories are those that describe threats to people's safety – crime, war, product safety, terrorism.

The result is that for at least the last generation (and clearly longer than that), the American people have been fed a steady diet of communication from government and media that they are not safe, and information is like food – you become what you eat. American's have become a frightened people. We are no longer the proud country we once were (pride is a matter of esteem, and it has been at least 50 years since the national discourse has worked at that level). Michael Moore has put forward the hypothesis that this is why American has become such a violent country. While I disagree with Moore on a great number of topics, I think he is right on that point. To be afraid is to be ready to defend yourself at a moment's provocation – violence naturally follows.

I don't know how to fix this. Given a free press and democracy, this may be the inevitable outcome. Alexis De Tocqueville thought so. I am just concerned that my generation may be the last one to experience a proud America that hold its head up high, as opposed to a cowering America striking out at any perceived threat without regard to the consequences.

Posted by Steven at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

May 12, 2005

What type are you?

Given that I'm an introspective kind of person, I love personality tests and personality type systems. I'll love taking the tests and seeing if they provide any insight into who I am. And there are a whole lot of personality type systems out there. Most are developed by one institute or researcher, and tend to be used by a very small group of people. While I'll sample these, I'm always concerned that without independent verification of results, the chances of their being flawed are significant.

There are only three systems I have discovered which are sufficiently wide spread that there is extensive 3rd party literature to support them.

The first is the "four temperaments" model. The bottom line for me that with only 4 options, it is way to granular to be of much use. Too many people with too many variations get grouped together for it to be very interesting. I think it is a good system to simply teach someone that not everyone is alike, but beyond that I wouldn't bother.

The second and by far the most popular is the Myers-Briggs type indicator (MBTI). With 16 options (even though they are not evenly distributed in the population), the groups start getting small enough to actually be useful, and there is a multitude of books and web sites about MBTI. The problem I have had with MBTI is that it never seems to tell me anything about myself that I didn't already tell it. I'll answer questions like: I do A instead of B, I do C instead of D, and I do E instead of F. It will then tell me that I'm an "INTP", and when I look at the literature of what it means to be an INTP, it says "INTP's are people who do A, C, and D." Well, I already knew that – I told the system that much! As a means for personal insight, I have just never found MBTI to be very useful.

On the other hand, there is a lot of useful literature on how different MBTI types interact. If you are an INTP manager with an ENTF employee – what should you do to effectively manage them? If you are an ESTJ husband with an ISFP wife, what should you keep in mind? MBTI is excellent for that kind of insight.

The third system is the Enneagram model. Enneagrams have 9 main categories with 2 subcategories each, so there are really 18 different personality types (although if you look at the model closely, the personality types are actually in a continuum where any angle of a circle is actually a distinct type, but the testing methodology can only distinguish roughly 20-degree differences). Enneagrams also have extensive literature (although the system has been adopted by some new-age groups, so you may need to sift out the psychobabble). The fundamental difference between MBTI and Enneagrams is that MBTI is predominantly a model of different types of behavior – kind of an outside-in model; while Enneagrams is a model of different kinds of motivations that drive people – it models from the inside-out. The result is that it is very good for people who are trying to achieve self-knowledge since it goes a level deeper than MBTI. As with MBTI there is also extensive literature on how different Enneagrams interact at home and in the workplace.

The main problem with Enneagrams is that because the tests are trying to analyze not what you do but why you do it, it can be difficult to get a good reading on your Enneagrams type without professional help. Unless you understand yourself already, it is easy to mislead the tests. Some Enneagrams tests try to get around that by trying to derive your motivation from your actions, but that also is flawed. The first Enneagrams test I took ended up putting me in completely the wrong category. However, once I did identify my correct type, it was well worth it – the descriptions provided a lot of information I had never thought of before; but proved to be exceptionally accurate in hindsight.

A good place to start to learn about Enneagrams is the Enneagram Institute.

Oh, and by the way, I am a very balanced between a Four and a Five (in the terms of the system I am either a Four with a very strong Five wing, or a Five with a very strong Four wing.) Looking at myself either way has provided useful insights.

Posted by Steven at 08:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 07, 2005

Saying Farewells

Being middle age now, those individuals who I appreciated for their contributions to culture and society when I was young, have begun to depart this realm with increasing frequency. This is just the nature of things.

What I noticed today however was my disparate reaction to the deaths of various kinds of people.

When a politician I admired passes away, I tend to summarize their contribution in my mind; but there is no sense of loss. Perhaps it is because most have (or should have) retired by the time they die, so there is no sense of "what they might have done"; but even with those who died young, there is gratefulness for what they did; but no emotions bound to what they left incomplete..

In much the same way, when an actor dies, it is a time for me to recall their great performances; but the fact that there will be no "next movie" or "next show" doesn't seem to effect me much.

On the other hand, when a songwriter I have liked dies, I do tend to feel some sense of loss – that there will never be another song by them. My strongest reactions however are reserved for when authors I have loved pass on. The sense that there will be no "next book" tends to weigh very heavily on me. I recall when I heard that Roger Zelazny (one of my youthful favorites) had died, that it brought me to tears. To never hear the end of the Madwand saga – that, for me, was loss. The death of Robert Forward, even though I knew he was failing, was also a sad moment for me.

I think the difference is in the uniqueness of individual voices in the different media. In politics, no cause moves forward unless there are many people speaking with a common voice, so the loss of one voice, however eloquent, does not end the cause. Actors, by the nature of their job, speak with someone else's voice, so their uniqueness is lost in the role. Songwriters do have their own voice; but so many songs get reinterpreted by different musicians that that uniqueness gets blurred somewhat.

Books however always remain the clear and unique voice of the author (or authors). While they may get adulterated in TV or film, the original book will always continue to speak clearly in a way that only that author could have produced; and when you have grown to love that voice, to know it has been silenced forever is difficult to process.

Or perhaps it is just that books are a more intimate form of interaction – Author to Page to Reader, which lull you into thinking of the author as a friend where more collaborative ventures, like film, keep their distance.

Posted by Steven at 05:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

May 01, 2005

The right to control what you hear

I recently started to a think in depth about my political views and try and put together a consistent political philosophy of my own. This is largely driven by my disappointment in the candidates put forward by the various political parties (not just the Republicans and Democrats; but even the smaller parties). I decided that before I complain any more, I should have a clear idea of what I really believe and why.

There are a lot of issues that I have already settled in my own mind, and I think I have a set of consistent principles from which those opinions are derived; but my philosophy is not yet complete. There are issues I am still trying to figure out how to bring under control. Until I have them resolved, I fear that there may be some flaw in the edifice I am building which will result in its eventual collapse.

The issue I am currently struggling with is an individual's right to be free from exposure to those things they find objectionable. Now it is clear to me that as far as governments are concerned people should have the right to do whatever they want as long as it only affects other consenting adults. Readers will probably read into that statement issues of intimate behavior; but it applies just as well to religious practices, politics, and a great many other things. So, for instance, I feel I should be able to say anything I want in my blog. If people don't like it, they don't have to read it.

The problem comes with activities which people can not reasonably avoid being exposed to – activities in public places for instance. Things done in public affect more than consenting adults, so the rule above does not apply. Here are some of the questions for which I have no answer yet:

Does an atheist have a right to walk to work and not hear someone preaching on a street corner? Or does a Christian have a right to walk to work and not hear people swearing on a street corner? Do people have the right to walk to work and not see posters or bumper stickers that expression political views they find objectionable? Are those all equivalent rights? If not, why? If the criteria is that "as long as people can avoid it, then it does not impinge on their rights", does the amount of effort to avoid it matter? Is changing the channel on TV too much effort? Is having to cross the street? Is getting a different job? While it is clear to me that people have a right to express their opinions, does that right imply a right to have those opinion heard? What if people don't want to hear them? How does one balance the "right to be heard" with "the right to listen to what I want"?

And the bottom line question – what of any of these rights (assuming that some of them are rights) is it the government's role to protect? Are these merely moral ideals which good people in a civil society should aspire to, or should the government enforce that people should not be required to be exposed to some thing and be required to be exposed to others?

Rather than case by case answers, I am looking for a small set of consistent principles by which questions like this can be answered. I still haven't found a solution I like.

Posted by Steven at 08:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 18, 2005

Existentialism and the art of file system design

Existentialism and the art of file system design
I am a software engineer, and on a couple of occasions in my career I have been involved in developing "file systems" (that portion of the "operating system" (i.e. "Windows", "Macintosh", "Linux", whatever) that is responsible for storing, organizing, finding, and retrieving your documents). When you save a document in a folder (or a file in a directory) you are using the file system; and I may have written the software that made that possible.

It was while I was working on one of these projects that I made an observation based on the differences between two ways different companies had approached developing their file systems.

The observation I made is central to the questions of existentialist philosophy.

First, there is the venerable "Unix(tm)" file system. Unix is (by industry standards) a very old operating system which was used by many universities and therefore is well known by most software engineers since they learned programming using Unix.

Now in the Unix file system keeps track of files using a piece of data it calls an "inode". You don't need to understand the details of this beyond the following – the inode contains all of the descriptive information about the file (who created it, when it was created, where the data is, etc.), except the inode does not contain the name of the file. The way the file gets a name is that there are other pieces of data – called directories – which say essentially "the file described by inode X appears in this directory/folder with the name Y". Now the neat advantage of that is that you can have the same file appear in more than one directory, and have it can even have different names in different directories.

Furthermore, in classic Unix file system, the way you kept track of the kind of data that was in a file was by using the name. File names had "extensions" – a period followed by a few letters to tell you the kind of file it was. A file named "foo.txt" was a text file. A file named "foo.exe" was an executable file. A file named "foo.sh" was a shell file (don't worry about executable files and shell files are – just understand that how the system knew what was in a file was by its name, and a file could have different names in different directories)

Now this is in contrast to the way the Macintosh file system worked. With the Mac, there was also a data structure, like an inode, which kept track of the information about the file; but unlike with Unix, the Mac's inode-like-thing included the name and the type of the file. The only information in the Mac's directory-like-thing was the list of files (as identified by their inode-like-things) which were in the directory. When Apple wanted to add the ability to have files appear in more than one place, they had to create a new mechanism (Aliases, or what Windows calls Shortcuts), which are stand-ins for a file that is someplace else. The file is always really in one place; but you could place these aliases in other places which tells the software "Oh, the file you are looking for here, it is really over there".

So, what's all that got to do with existential philosophy? Everything.

One of the key questions raised by the existential philosophers is – do objects have meaning in unto themselves, or do they only (and temporarily) have those meanings we imbue them with? Is meaning intrinsic or extrinsic?

Or put another way – is the name of the file an intrinsic property, or does it only have a name by virtue of its context in a directory? Is the type of a file intrinsic or can it too be changed depending on the context?

And why stop there? What about the "modification date" (the time when someone last changed the file)? Is that intrinsic – updated now matter how you found the file to modify it? Or does it matter what folder you found the file in? Or might you want to know both? What about permissions? Can you only read the file if you are looking it in folder A; but also modify it if you found it in folder B? What about the data in the file? Could it be different in different directories? Or does that violate the idea of being "the same file"? What makes a file itself, and what is merely meaning applied to it from context? I helped develop a file system once which provided a great deal of flexibility as to what information you wanted to treat as intrinsic vs. extrinsic to the file. The results were… interesting.

But the really interesting questions are not about file systems; but rather about the world around us? What about people? Which of our characteristics are inherent and which are (temporarily) give to us by our relationships with other things? Am I Steven? Am I "sigh"? Am I Anne's husband? If you strip away all contexts, what is the "I" that remains? That is the question the existential philosophers struggle with.

Think about it.

Posted by Steven at 09:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

April 05, 2005

Morality in media (TV, games, etc.)

I watched a program on Peter Molyneux (designer of games like 'Populous,' 'Black & White,' and 'Fable') which got me thinking about the grand debate in the U.S. on morality in the media. The case has been made by many that media content is moral if it only depicts moral behavior and that if it depicts any kind of immoral behavior, then the TV show, game, etc is immoral. I believe this is a flawed analysis (after all, by that standard, the Bible is an incredibly immoral book!)

My personal belief is that what makes a particular piece of media moral or immoral is not the behavior characters; but whether the consequences of those behaviors are reasonably depicted. I'm not talking about immediate artificial consequences created to show a point; but rather realistic consequences which play out over time. That’s one reason I have enjoyed shows like "Babylon 5" by Straczynski and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" by Weadon – both show the character’s actions having consequences episodes or even seasons later (as they would in real life).

In my opinion, this is even more important in video games, where it is the player’s own actions which should have consequences. As an interesting case in point – I am currently playing "Knights of the Old Republic II". Actually I am playing it twice in parallel – once with a good Jedi character following the light side of the force, and again with an evil Sith character that is racing toward the dark side of the force (I play each side leapfrogging the other, so I get to do parts of the first from each perspective). The game is in fact designed to allow for consequences of taking the light or dark path; and it is interesting to see what the developers have implemented.

My biggest surprise so far has been when I found myself in the living quarters of some guards who protect a nascent Jedi academy (I'm trying to not drop spoilers here; my point is that these were people who were supposed to be on the side of good). I did this section first as my bad-boy, and I was quite happy to pillage all of the guards’ rooms for their possessions. The surprise was when I played though this with my good character. As an experiment, I opened the containers and took the contents – and nothing happened. This made me think back to so many Role Playing Games I played where going into people's homes and taking things had no consequences whatsoever. Those games weren’t immoral because they depicted magic, violence, etc. (pick your favorite soapbox). They were immoral because they taught that it was OK to steal!

Which bring me back to Peter Molyneux. He is the one game developer I have seen for whom consequences of actions is an integral theme to his games (in fact it may be the only theme of Fable). While I may disagree at times with details of his moral vision, I applaud that he at least types to establish a moral tone in his games by having all actions have consequences for the players.

Posted by Steven at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)