On the internet, we have relative anonymity. While perhaps we're giving away much more personal information than we would care to, at the same time in any given interaction there's not much known about personal details on one's life. This also has the added advantage of being able to hide those things that normally form part of our social interactions. For a large extent, unless one divulges otherwise, there's no age, no gender, no sexual preference, no ethnicity, no socioeconomic background, beyond what is present in the use of language itself that is.
Yet hiding behind the walls of text, we are still people who have those qualities. At the end of the day my writings are that of me, of my thoughts and experiences with all the contingencies that form my existence.
I wonder if it's a good thing that we're hiding behind the veil. On the one hand, we have that anonymity that enables us to treat people without respect to those contingent qualities. Yet on the other, those qualities are very much a part of who we are as people making the posts. Is the veil of ignorance a means to get past those cultural factors and treat each other equally, or does it hide the problem just out of sight that a flicker of wind will bring out?
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Sunday, 8 May 2011
Wednesday, 16 December 2009
Won't Somebody *Please* Think Of The Children?
Looks like the great firewall of Australia is going to go ahead. But it's okay, it's only blocking what we don't need to see anyway. Maybe no longer would we have to face the scourge of the hidden link to meatspin or lemon party, or nervously laugh at the contents of Encyclopedia Dramatica. And when a friend links to a disturbing video, we can be safe in the knowledge that it will be a dog eating its own faeces as opposed to two girls.
Maybe.
There's no doubt that the internet is has some pretty disturbing content. The seedy underbelly of a liberal society on display for anyone to see. And that seems to be the problem. While most of us can get by just fine without knowing what it's like to view the most vile disgusting behaviour humanity has to offer (I for one will die happy never seeing Paris Hilton naked), there's always someone who is willing to push the limits.
While some of the content proposed to be filtered I would love to see gone, I just can't support such a proposal as what is on offer. Beyond all else it is invasive and invasive to the freedom of adults to choose what is right for them. The principle of liberty, that the freedom to swing my fist ends when it connects with your mouth, this is what is at stake.
Taking on child abuse, rape, murder - where the liberties of one is being violated by another - maybe there's a case to be had. As there may be a case for voluntary filtering to assist parents. But mandatory filtering for all? No thank you. Helping parents to prevent a child from seeing a penis penetrating a vagina is different from banning the image for all.
Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way. A society is a society of law, and the law must be upheld to maintain society. By having products where one can subvert the law, it makes a mockery of democracy. So I hope that Mr Conroy will speak to the transport minister about implementing the same technology in motor vehicles.
Cars, trucks, motorbikes can sometimes do in excess of 200km/h! Now where on any of the roads can anyone do more than 110? What I propose is that all vehicles be fitted with devices that cut off the engine whenever a car exceeds 120km/h. It's the speed limit +10. Now I know that's risky, as it will give people the ability to drive up to 10km/h outside the law, but it's a good start.
Though it doesn't need to be only that way. With this new GPS technology around, we could stop speeding once and for all. The technology is there now to enforce the mandatory speed limit all over the country. It could stop many accidents and many lives!
After all, there's no reason why cars should go higher than the fastest that is permissible on the roads. And such measures to my mind would be much more beneficial than putting a filter on the internet. Yet why isn't such a device being proposed? Or for that matter, devices that ensure that anyone behind a wheel is sober? Maybe it's the cost of such a system.
More likely methinks is such a system is unnecessarily intrusive. And in this matter, it's actually directly relevant to the law. The internet filter is not going to do that, and any harm it does prevent is merely incidental. Instead it's just something the government can look to be doing in order to "help" in raising children. Though how blocking the internet of everyone will do that remains to be seen. If Joe-sixpack has no children or Joe-computernerd can protect his system up, then does it matter so much that they might enjoy trolling on 4chan? Or if they are into fetish porn, who am I to say they can't watch that just in case my hypothetical children might stumble across "Adam and Steve in Extreme Anal Bondage 7"
What the internet shows is an insight into humanity, and one that it seems that some can't stand the sight of. It's paradoxically simultaneously in ones home and for everyone to see. And if it turns out that society is not as "moral" as it was perceived to be, then obviously the disconnect needs to be blamed on something. And while any real evidence of the dangers of the internet or the effectiveness of a filter are lacking*, such empirical shortcomings don't stop in the way of hijacking sensationalism.
It seems odd that such a situation would be preferable to actually helping spread awareness or offering parents support. That the government is being misleading by pointing to other western countries as justification, conveniently omitting the optional nature of such filters, just goes to show that once again the group pushing for the moral high-ground are pushing moral bankruptcy. The least one should be able to expect on issues of ethical significance is openness. Cherry picking data, talking up the dangers that present to children and misleading the public about the nature of the systems are not something a liberal democracy should do.
There may be an issue to explore, there may be legitimate concerns, the interest of protection of some content in regards to the safety of individuals. But this is not playing out this way, sensationalism and the grab for morality is what is on offer; highlighting once again what an ineffective and weak opposition means in a democracy. No pressure to get this bill right, no means to keep this bill accountable - not that I expect the Australian conservatives to be any better sadly.
The paradox of the internet leaves it in a different situation from other media we consume. It's not just consuming, but also contributing. And because of the interactivity, that is reason alone to step very carefully around the technology. It does have privacy in a way that other media doesn't. It's an open forum, one that companies are spending much energies to make as safe as possible for children. Long story short, the net will give what people put into it. So much for free will...
*to my knowledge
Maybe.
There's no doubt that the internet is has some pretty disturbing content. The seedy underbelly of a liberal society on display for anyone to see. And that seems to be the problem. While most of us can get by just fine without knowing what it's like to view the most vile disgusting behaviour humanity has to offer (I for one will die happy never seeing Paris Hilton naked), there's always someone who is willing to push the limits.
While some of the content proposed to be filtered I would love to see gone, I just can't support such a proposal as what is on offer. Beyond all else it is invasive and invasive to the freedom of adults to choose what is right for them. The principle of liberty, that the freedom to swing my fist ends when it connects with your mouth, this is what is at stake.
Taking on child abuse, rape, murder - where the liberties of one is being violated by another - maybe there's a case to be had. As there may be a case for voluntary filtering to assist parents. But mandatory filtering for all? No thank you. Helping parents to prevent a child from seeing a penis penetrating a vagina is different from banning the image for all.
Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way. A society is a society of law, and the law must be upheld to maintain society. By having products where one can subvert the law, it makes a mockery of democracy. So I hope that Mr Conroy will speak to the transport minister about implementing the same technology in motor vehicles.
Cars, trucks, motorbikes can sometimes do in excess of 200km/h! Now where on any of the roads can anyone do more than 110? What I propose is that all vehicles be fitted with devices that cut off the engine whenever a car exceeds 120km/h. It's the speed limit +10. Now I know that's risky, as it will give people the ability to drive up to 10km/h outside the law, but it's a good start.
Though it doesn't need to be only that way. With this new GPS technology around, we could stop speeding once and for all. The technology is there now to enforce the mandatory speed limit all over the country. It could stop many accidents and many lives!
After all, there's no reason why cars should go higher than the fastest that is permissible on the roads. And such measures to my mind would be much more beneficial than putting a filter on the internet. Yet why isn't such a device being proposed? Or for that matter, devices that ensure that anyone behind a wheel is sober? Maybe it's the cost of such a system.
More likely methinks is such a system is unnecessarily intrusive. And in this matter, it's actually directly relevant to the law. The internet filter is not going to do that, and any harm it does prevent is merely incidental. Instead it's just something the government can look to be doing in order to "help" in raising children. Though how blocking the internet of everyone will do that remains to be seen. If Joe-sixpack has no children or Joe-computernerd can protect his system up, then does it matter so much that they might enjoy trolling on 4chan? Or if they are into fetish porn, who am I to say they can't watch that just in case my hypothetical children might stumble across "Adam and Steve in Extreme Anal Bondage 7"
What the internet shows is an insight into humanity, and one that it seems that some can't stand the sight of. It's paradoxically simultaneously in ones home and for everyone to see. And if it turns out that society is not as "moral" as it was perceived to be, then obviously the disconnect needs to be blamed on something. And while any real evidence of the dangers of the internet or the effectiveness of a filter are lacking*, such empirical shortcomings don't stop in the way of hijacking sensationalism.
It seems odd that such a situation would be preferable to actually helping spread awareness or offering parents support. That the government is being misleading by pointing to other western countries as justification, conveniently omitting the optional nature of such filters, just goes to show that once again the group pushing for the moral high-ground are pushing moral bankruptcy. The least one should be able to expect on issues of ethical significance is openness. Cherry picking data, talking up the dangers that present to children and misleading the public about the nature of the systems are not something a liberal democracy should do.
There may be an issue to explore, there may be legitimate concerns, the interest of protection of some content in regards to the safety of individuals. But this is not playing out this way, sensationalism and the grab for morality is what is on offer; highlighting once again what an ineffective and weak opposition means in a democracy. No pressure to get this bill right, no means to keep this bill accountable - not that I expect the Australian conservatives to be any better sadly.
The paradox of the internet leaves it in a different situation from other media we consume. It's not just consuming, but also contributing. And because of the interactivity, that is reason alone to step very carefully around the technology. It does have privacy in a way that other media doesn't. It's an open forum, one that companies are spending much energies to make as safe as possible for children. Long story short, the net will give what people put into it. So much for free will...
*to my knowledge
Saturday, 10 October 2009
Reading Your Mail
The case involving copyright infringement and iiNet will be worth following to see what the outcome will be. We are now in a digital age and digital economy, any sense of ownership of information is quickly fading with the ease of use of replicating technology. The same convenience that allows these companies and individuals to make a greater profit also relinquishes control of the source material.
What to do to stop copyright infringement in the digital age is no easy solution. Copy protection (especially in the case of games) only draws ire from the consumer, suing is bad publicity and not a way to coerce behaviour. As I've discussed before, while they are by no means perfect, products such as Steam or Netflix show that there are ways to run a viable business in this digital age.
In this case, there seems to be an implicit consequence of such behaviour. Now our internet traffic is being screened for any illegal material. By creating a download culture, we have lost our privacy. So while the net can be used for personal and intimate communication, we have given an excuse for corporations and government to look at the information coming in.
This should be very concerning. Consider the same situation only with physical means of distribution, that the post office should check what the contents of someone's mail every time they suspected it could be copyrighted or illegal material. I'm guessing that very few would be okay with such a practice in place.
This tactic is not really going to work without bringing in draconian measures, by making the potential consequences overtake the convenience of piracy. It's worth noting that even given such consequences for drug posession / use that a large portion of the population still chooses to use illicit substances. Does that mean that everyone should be forced to have police search their house in order to eradicate the problem?
In practice the two examples are unfeasable. It would take so much more resource power than it is worth. The digital age however removes that barrier - what can be checked can be done so without anything more than software. Like the information itself being easy to copy, so can anything you do on the internet.
Questions of practicality aside, what ethical considerations do we have when considering the question of allowing individuals to be free on the internet? In the same sense that I would feel uneasy about having my mail read or police searching my house, I feel uneasy about governments and corporations scanning the information flowing to my computer.
The response which seems to follow is that if you had nothing to hide then it wouldn't be a problem. But that misses what the objection is to. I don't want others going through my things regardless of whether there is something to hide. The fact that I don't have drugs in my house does not mean that it's okay for police to search my house for drugs.
The technology has the potential for Orwellian surveillance, so legislation needs to be put in place not to monitor but to protect the infrastructure from being used in such a way. As for illegal downloads, surely it's coming to the point where the focus should be on being innovative with the technology as opposed to trying to protect an archaic means of distribution.
It will take a new generation of businessmen to maximise the potential of the technology, it might mean a shift in what products make money and what it means to be a consumer, but these things will sort themselves out with time. The potential revenue loss gives them no more rights to check the internet than book companies have to monitor any interactions to make sure people aren't lending copyrighted books to others.
What to do to stop copyright infringement in the digital age is no easy solution. Copy protection (especially in the case of games) only draws ire from the consumer, suing is bad publicity and not a way to coerce behaviour. As I've discussed before, while they are by no means perfect, products such as Steam or Netflix show that there are ways to run a viable business in this digital age.
In this case, there seems to be an implicit consequence of such behaviour. Now our internet traffic is being screened for any illegal material. By creating a download culture, we have lost our privacy. So while the net can be used for personal and intimate communication, we have given an excuse for corporations and government to look at the information coming in.
This should be very concerning. Consider the same situation only with physical means of distribution, that the post office should check what the contents of someone's mail every time they suspected it could be copyrighted or illegal material. I'm guessing that very few would be okay with such a practice in place.
This tactic is not really going to work without bringing in draconian measures, by making the potential consequences overtake the convenience of piracy. It's worth noting that even given such consequences for drug posession / use that a large portion of the population still chooses to use illicit substances. Does that mean that everyone should be forced to have police search their house in order to eradicate the problem?
In practice the two examples are unfeasable. It would take so much more resource power than it is worth. The digital age however removes that barrier - what can be checked can be done so without anything more than software. Like the information itself being easy to copy, so can anything you do on the internet.
Questions of practicality aside, what ethical considerations do we have when considering the question of allowing individuals to be free on the internet? In the same sense that I would feel uneasy about having my mail read or police searching my house, I feel uneasy about governments and corporations scanning the information flowing to my computer.
The response which seems to follow is that if you had nothing to hide then it wouldn't be a problem. But that misses what the objection is to. I don't want others going through my things regardless of whether there is something to hide. The fact that I don't have drugs in my house does not mean that it's okay for police to search my house for drugs.
The technology has the potential for Orwellian surveillance, so legislation needs to be put in place not to monitor but to protect the infrastructure from being used in such a way. As for illegal downloads, surely it's coming to the point where the focus should be on being innovative with the technology as opposed to trying to protect an archaic means of distribution.
It will take a new generation of businessmen to maximise the potential of the technology, it might mean a shift in what products make money and what it means to be a consumer, but these things will sort themselves out with time. The potential revenue loss gives them no more rights to check the internet than book companies have to monitor any interactions to make sure people aren't lending copyrighted books to others.
Monday, 1 December 2008
Internet Censorship
Australia is going down the path of China, well sort of. It's not enough that Australia is bedfellows with such an oppressive regime, it now seems we are going down the path of the great firewall. Okay, I'm being a little extreme here. It's not going to be that bad, though the argument that those opposed to the censorship are enabling child pornography is a far worse slander. Clive Hamilton recently weighed in with his opinion, blasting the libertarian mantra on the issue. Here's a non-libertarian reply.
Won't someone please think of the children?
The may Dr Hamilton has constructed his argument makes for a sound rebuttal of the absolute libertarian position. That notion of absolute individualism is at odds with society and the restrictions we have when we play in it. But I can't help here to think his argument is a straw man, that by equating the libertarian argument to the protection of children he's making the same fallacy as anti-drug advocates do. You'd be hard-pressed to find a libertarian who would be against a voluntary filter, it's that it's mandatory where the problem lies.
Herein lies the false dichotomy presented by Dr Hamilton, it's either everything is permissible to everyone or the government should be allowed to censor for everyone. In writing his condemnation of the selfish individualists who are vehemently opposed to censorship, he's neglected the most fundamental principle of a liberal democracy: choice. There is a big difference between a voluntary and a mandatory system, and a voluntary system gives choice to those presented. It allows the government to help out the parents who need help, not everyone has the technical ability to censor their own system. But not everyone is a parent, not everyone needs to have their internet censored to protect children.
In Australia's film and literature classification system, we have grades depending on the content. There are certain films that are adults only and as a consequence only adults can view them. Arguing that the internet needs to be censored for all is like arguing that adult films shouldn't be allowed because children could watch them. The same argument too is against the R rating for computer games, the double standard in our society is explicit. There are plenty of exceptions that are made for adults, adults can drink, smoke tobacco, and they can gamble. They can read and view material that children can't. It's important to remember that even the opt-out option will still block material that's available to buy in certain stores.
Having the government help out having parents make informed choices should be part of a liberal democracy. Hamilton is right to rebuke those who argue that paternal responsibility doesn't have some social responsibility. This to me sums up his argument in a nutshell:
Technical feasibility
There are several factors to take into account: how many false positives there are, how many false negatives there are, the overall loss in bandwidth, and how easy it is to bypass the filter. Is having a browser based filter a better overall solution than a ISP-based filter? How can one objectively measure such claims? To me, if even a single legitimate page is censored then the filter is not doing it's job. But others would think differently and see that if a recipe containing chicken breast being blocked so a child doesn't see an exposed breast then the sacrifice was worth it. There's no way to objectively measure the effects of technology without appealing to some idealism. Freedom of speech and expression have been long touted as examples of Australia's freedom, so surely as an ideal it needs to play some role in being a base on which to make an objective measure.
Other technologies to consider are the different protocols that will not be affected at all by the filter. Peer-to-peer networks, cryptographic networks such as Freenet. There are plenty of cryptographic technologies and mechanisms to hide one's online identity. To push more users into these kinds of technologies will make a mockery of any filter - for not only will people have access to otherwise restricted content, there will be no way of having any enforcement. The open system allows for the catching of those who do view dangerous material like child pornography.
The internet is a global communications network, and Australia is but one hub on the network. Our laws can't control what is put on elsewhere in the world, but it's still accessible. Like companies that take advantage of tax breaks in other countries, the laws of one country can be bypassed by setting up shop in another. I wonder how politicians would feel about preventing the practice by banning any company from trade that goes offshore for tax breaks. I'm betting the take-up would be quite low. After all money talks. The point is that we operate on a global network every day including with unfavourable nations and business practices. China buys our iron ore and we turn a blind eye to the human rights abuses there, again money talks.
In the end, it all comes down to on an ethical level the best way to serve the interests of the vast majority of the population. The compromise between freedom and security is at the heart of this issue, how much freedom do we need to trade in to protect us from ourselves? More so, how much freedom do we need to sacrifice of ourselves for the security of others? How many people are on internet connections that do not need such protection? How many people do need protection and to what extent does that need to be there? Here it seems to be that mandatory censorship is problematic, it seeks to bypass asking those questions by giving a blanket effect on the ban. And if that mandatory filtering is going to have a false positive rate of 3% and reduce speeds by at least 11%, is it the best way for society to go for those who don't need such a ban?
The Infocalypse is nigh
Former Intel engineer and crypto-anarchist Timothy C. May talked of the Four Horsemen Of The Infocalypse: terrorists, paedophiles, drug dealers and money launderers. These horsemen are demons in our society that can be used to gain public support. In this debate, Stephen Conroy has invoked the horsemen "paedophiles". The tactic for using these horsemen is as follows.
All I'm hearing when I read through Clive Hamilton's prose was Mrs. Lovejoy off The Simpsons screeching "won't someone please think of the children?"
Won't someone please think of the children?
The may Dr Hamilton has constructed his argument makes for a sound rebuttal of the absolute libertarian position. That notion of absolute individualism is at odds with society and the restrictions we have when we play in it. But I can't help here to think his argument is a straw man, that by equating the libertarian argument to the protection of children he's making the same fallacy as anti-drug advocates do. You'd be hard-pressed to find a libertarian who would be against a voluntary filter, it's that it's mandatory where the problem lies.
Herein lies the false dichotomy presented by Dr Hamilton, it's either everything is permissible to everyone or the government should be allowed to censor for everyone. In writing his condemnation of the selfish individualists who are vehemently opposed to censorship, he's neglected the most fundamental principle of a liberal democracy: choice. There is a big difference between a voluntary and a mandatory system, and a voluntary system gives choice to those presented. It allows the government to help out the parents who need help, not everyone has the technical ability to censor their own system. But not everyone is a parent, not everyone needs to have their internet censored to protect children.
In Australia's film and literature classification system, we have grades depending on the content. There are certain films that are adults only and as a consequence only adults can view them. Arguing that the internet needs to be censored for all is like arguing that adult films shouldn't be allowed because children could watch them. The same argument too is against the R rating for computer games, the double standard in our society is explicit. There are plenty of exceptions that are made for adults, adults can drink, smoke tobacco, and they can gamble. They can read and view material that children can't. It's important to remember that even the opt-out option will still block material that's available to buy in certain stores.
Having the government help out having parents make informed choices should be part of a liberal democracy. Hamilton is right to rebuke those who argue that paternal responsibility doesn't have some social responsibility. This to me sums up his argument in a nutshell:
This argument for mandatory internet filters is in principle the same as the argument for the film censorship system. In the libertarian world where individual rights overrule social responsibilities we would have no film censor and kids could go to the cinema to watch whatever they liked. The film censorship system is pretty good at balancing the variety of viewpoints in the community.It's possible to be in favour of the ratings system and still want to be able to see R-rated films. The argument he is giving is that adults should not be able to see R-rated films because children can't either. By censoring the internet, you are taking away an adults ability to go and see an R-rated film. Parents can still buy or rent R-rated DVDs, and children could still watch them if they are unsupervised. What's to stop a child from watching an R-rated film that their parents have a copy of? It does come down to parenting in the end, and while the government can assist in choice, ultimately whether a child watches an unsuitable film is an element they can't control.
"The whole principle is wrong. It's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak." - Robert Heinlein on censorship
Technical feasibility
We need a community debate on the question of whether we should do it before we consider the question of whether we can do it because too many internet libertarians and industry spokespeople cover up their refusal to countenance any sort of regulation by insisting that it won't work.From an ethical perspective, maybe this idea has some validity. From a pragmatic perspective, it's a pointless discussion if it can't be done. Prohibition of alcohol is pointless because of how easy it is to make your own (I have some brewing right now.) To me the discussion is tied to the practicality of the measures, there's no point in talking about building an electricity grid on the assumption of superconductivity if there are no room temperature superconductors. So in that any argument for or against censorship on a practical level can only be done in the boundaries of what is possible.
There are several factors to take into account: how many false positives there are, how many false negatives there are, the overall loss in bandwidth, and how easy it is to bypass the filter. Is having a browser based filter a better overall solution than a ISP-based filter? How can one objectively measure such claims? To me, if even a single legitimate page is censored then the filter is not doing it's job. But others would think differently and see that if a recipe containing chicken breast being blocked so a child doesn't see an exposed breast then the sacrifice was worth it. There's no way to objectively measure the effects of technology without appealing to some idealism. Freedom of speech and expression have been long touted as examples of Australia's freedom, so surely as an ideal it needs to play some role in being a base on which to make an objective measure.
Other technologies to consider are the different protocols that will not be affected at all by the filter. Peer-to-peer networks, cryptographic networks such as Freenet. There are plenty of cryptographic technologies and mechanisms to hide one's online identity. To push more users into these kinds of technologies will make a mockery of any filter - for not only will people have access to otherwise restricted content, there will be no way of having any enforcement. The open system allows for the catching of those who do view dangerous material like child pornography.
The internet is a global communications network, and Australia is but one hub on the network. Our laws can't control what is put on elsewhere in the world, but it's still accessible. Like companies that take advantage of tax breaks in other countries, the laws of one country can be bypassed by setting up shop in another. I wonder how politicians would feel about preventing the practice by banning any company from trade that goes offshore for tax breaks. I'm betting the take-up would be quite low. After all money talks. The point is that we operate on a global network every day including with unfavourable nations and business practices. China buys our iron ore and we turn a blind eye to the human rights abuses there, again money talks.
In the end, it all comes down to on an ethical level the best way to serve the interests of the vast majority of the population. The compromise between freedom and security is at the heart of this issue, how much freedom do we need to trade in to protect us from ourselves? More so, how much freedom do we need to sacrifice of ourselves for the security of others? How many people are on internet connections that do not need such protection? How many people do need protection and to what extent does that need to be there? Here it seems to be that mandatory censorship is problematic, it seeks to bypass asking those questions by giving a blanket effect on the ban. And if that mandatory filtering is going to have a false positive rate of 3% and reduce speeds by at least 11%, is it the best way for society to go for those who don't need such a ban?
The Infocalypse is nigh
Former Intel engineer and crypto-anarchist Timothy C. May talked of the Four Horsemen Of The Infocalypse: terrorists, paedophiles, drug dealers and money launderers. These horsemen are demons in our society that can be used to gain public support. In this debate, Stephen Conroy has invoked the horsemen "paedophiles". The tactic for using these horsemen is as follows.
How to get what you want in 4 easy stages:
1. Have a target "thing" you wish to stop, yet lack any moral, or practical reasons for doing so?
2. Pick a fear common to lots of people, something that will evoke a gut reaction: terrorists, pedophiles, serial killers.
3. Scream loudly to the media that "thing" is being used by perpetrators. (Don't worry if this is true, or common to all other things, or less common with "thing" than with other long established systems - payphones, paper mail, private hotel rooms, lack of bugs in all houses etc)
4. Say that the only way to stop perpetrators is to close down "thing", or to regulate it to death, or to have laws forcing en-mass tapability of all private communications on "thing". Don't worry if communicating on "thing" is a constitutionally protected right, if you have done a good job in choosing and publicising the horsemen in 2, no one will notice, they will be too busy clamouring for you to save them from the supposed evils.All I'm hearing when I read through Clive Hamilton's prose was Mrs. Lovejoy off The Simpsons screeching "won't someone please think of the children?"
Saturday, 1 March 2008
The Art Of Being Wrong
Knowing where to begin is always a difficult question, when writing it is vital to capture the readers attention with the first few words, and then from that they'll work out whether it's worth your time. Indeed in a society where any chump can give his opinion, we work towards an instant gratification of our own senses and time. If one blog can't provide it, we can immediately switch to another that will. Now that technology is available for mass consumption we are seeing a shift away from the written word and towards video blogging, where any wanker can rattle on and post absolute nonsense that somehow satisfies the masses. In short, the written prose is a dying art. Podcasts, Youtube videos, things that require a little more than the ability to ramble on in a semi-coherent manner, we can see it and digest it without really having to think about it. The written word thus is marginalised.
Not to say that video blogs are a bad thing. I listen to podcasts, scour Youtube for my quick fix. There are some real gems hidden within the usual crap on there. When used properly the tools are incredibly powerful, very effective and quite convincing. Therein lies the danger. The otherwise worthless opinions of people who could scarcely make a living as a coat rack and being paraded as heroes and maestros, brilliantly laying down proofs and destroying the other side. But to anyone with a functioning brain, they are the overwhelming evidence that society is going down the shithole. So what does this have to do with the art of being wrong?
Instant Gratification Society
What this has to do with being wrong is a simple procedure called confirmation bias. Basically putting it, confirmation bias is counting the hits and ignoring the misses. We see this happening all the time, everyone is guilty of it. And with a society where gratification comes so instantly, we are often put in a position where the bias not only happens, but happens in such a way that is manufactured. In effect the media shapes our mind by being selective in what is broadcast. Try condensing the events in the world down into a 22 minute program, leaving enough time for sports and weather and there is very little about what can be broadcast. And thanks to the need for ratings, it seems to more and more follow the idea of "if it bleeds, it leads". The net poses an interesting twist to this where the choice is now yours. You can in effect choose how you filter, something that is wonderful. But there is a great danger in that in most cases people look purely for items that confirm whatever they already believe in. By filtering personally, they are ensuring that any dissenting voice is silenced. This way minds become very polemic.
So thanks to the internet we have come to expect things instantly. Right now I'm sitting at work annoyed that I'll have to wait another 4 hours to go home and download the new NIN CD (and yes, I am paying for it!). It's that kind of immediate response I'm talking about. TV shows that previously took months to come onto Australian television are able to be downloaded at the touch of a button, why should we wait anymore? At least TV networks are trying to correct this and are showing episodes almost as they appear in the US. The home DVD market has revolutionised how we watch TV, instead of tuning in and putting up with ads, we simply throw on a DVD. So when shows are only shown here at ungodly hours, on pay TV or not at all, it's a lot easier for us to have an alternate means of watching some of these programs.
So that is the society we live in now. One were fad diets come and go faster than magazines can cover them. Where miracle pills and surgery are favoured opposed to hard work. Where we expect immediate results for our actions, why read a book when we can watch the movie instead? This is a society where bookstores dedicate more shelf-space for religion & spirituality than science. Where someone can make a DVD like The Secret and can rake in a fortune. No regard to the truth of the matter, the promise of the spectacular from no work seems far more appealing to our natures than the truth behind it. We are a society that wants what we can get here and now, and for a species that is prone to confirmation bias, that creates even more problems.
The Secret and other lies
It seems the perfect tie-in to this discussion, something I've wanted to rant about for quite a while. Endorsed by the likes of Oprah and with a seemingly never ending stock of DVDs & books on the shelves for people to buy, The Secret embodies everything that we have come to expect from "new age" spiritualism; hollow fluff, promising the world, mixing consumerism and material worth all in a convenient package. I'd like to say now I really don't care about how people spend their money, it's theirs to waste. I certainly waste enough of mine on mind altering purchases. What I hope to achieve here is write a coherent explanation of how it works so we don't need to rely on superstitious nonsense as a means of answering. In short, The Secret is bullshit. And here's why:
There are countless testamonials to The Secret's authenticity. People believe it works, so it must work correct? Well no. There are two aspects here that ensure that people will believe. Firstly, one of the steps is belief. There are three steps to The Secret.
1. Ask the universe for what you want
2. Believe that the universe will grant it to you
3. Receive the gift
It's all about positive thinking, if you don't believe hard enough that you'll get what you want, it's your fault it didn't happen. In effect this makes The Secret self-confirming, a tautology designed to fit nicely with the second reason that ensure people believes... yes you guessed it: confirmation bias. So if it doesn't work often we just ignore that, but when it hits it's testimony to it working. Now we have a very simple way of determining the truth of someone's claims, it's called a double blind study. We set up an unbiased way to conduct the experiment in controlled conditions and gather accurate statistical results. If The Secret did work, it would pass. If not, it would be like any other hack nonsense that is fundamental in the modern mix of consumerism and belief.
Now this isn't to say that positive thinking doesn't do someone good. It would be hard to argue otherwise. But that isn't what The Secret is promoting. It's advocating that the universe will respond and reward that positive thinking. Like attracts like. In effect The Secret boils down to almost exactly the same idea as a personal god, only without the anthropomorphic connotations. The comfort that the universe will reward for the right mindset must be staggering. The universe cares about them and what they think, it's God in a metaphysical form. Only without rewarding in an afterlife, it's rewarding now. Though this is starting to become an all too common idea of God in some evangelical communities, but that is something I'll get to in a minute. There is just a bit more left to destroy of The Secret first.
As I was saying before, The Secret is all about personalising the universe. They make such ambiguous claims like it's ancient wisdom. Ancient wisdom is itself a contradiction, but it gives the illusion to the user that it's been tested and demonstrated. It was also ancient wisdom that the earth was flat and the sun orbited the earth. Not to say that anything in the ancient world is unfounded, just that these days we have ways of testing their claims. It's called progress for a reason. It claims like attracts like, which in physics it's the opposites attract. Just use a magnet to find this out. But there is no force that attracts our thoughts as spiritual vibes to manipulate the universe to our whim. That form of psychokinesis is simply an absurd notion. What happens if two people are competing for that same parking space? There's only one there, they both are using positive thoughts... Bet it will be the one who is in the right place at the right time. When we have perfectly rational explanations for something, why should we even consider an irrational one?
Alternative medicine should not be trusted. It doesn't stand up to double blind tests, in fact most treatments refuse to subject themselves to a double blind study, though by doing so it could validate the process. The danger of invalidating though is far too great, not to mention the absurd notions of their explanations would not stand up to scientific scrutiny. There is a great danger in avoiding conventional medicine for the sake of these placebos and that is death. It's not uncommon to hear about people who shunned regular treatment for entirely treatable diseases and as a consequence hit an early grave. That is sad, but it's that persons own fault. What ticks me off the most is that people make a profit from another's suffering. I have no doubt that most of these charlatans believe what they are saying is right. But believing something is right doesn't make it right. They aren't lying, but they are wrong. (finally we made it)
Wilful ignorance
It's time to lay into the more conventional sycophants, namely creationists. So you might be alongside us sceptics in condemning alternative medicine, but with your faith healing, you are no better. Again, there is the claim of the miraculous, anecdotal evidence, confirmation bias, a tautology in case it fails ("the lord works in mysterious ways") so where do you creationists get off calling New Ageism nonsense? That really gets me about religious nuts criticising the beliefs of other religious nuts. It's quite laughable, at least to me because all of their ideas are crazy. Yes, god made us out of clay, then put a tree in a garden which we ate that made us aware of sin then spent 4,000 years waiting for God to come down in human form and forgive us on the proviso that we believe that we should be forgiven. Forgive the snickering you hear, it's my reason circuit malfunctioning.
Now I can say assuredly that creationists are wrong. Again, I'm sure they believe that what they are saying and doing is true. But belief that it's true doesn't make it true. It's one of the same old arguments you hear for the bible's account of Jesus' life. The people who wrote it down believed it was true and what reason would they have to lie? Well none, but not-lying doesn't equate to telling the truth. I can believe with all my heart that a dragon is flying above my house providing heat with it's fire breath, and winter simply is when the dragon hibernates, but no matter how much I believed that to be true, and no matter if I were able to convince others it were true, it wouldn't make it true. I can't prove it false, but I can come up with a rational explanation for how the seasons work. It's to do with the Earth's tilt and orbit around the sun. So why would I go with the dragon one? It flies in the face of reason.
But that is exactly what creationists do. They aren't all idiots, they just love the idea of God. Love it so much that anything that flies in the face of that must be wrong. This is what I call wilful ignorance. The evidence that evolution is the cause of our species is immense, to say it's false is to spit in the face of reason. The bible is inerrant, the bible says that God created us from clay, we must be created from clay. Right? Well wrong. The bible is not inerrant. It doesn't take much of a look to see it contradict itself, make absurd statements, write about a history that is not backed up by other cultures histories or archaeological evidence, to see that it's a bunch of stories, parables and allegories designed to help a society gel and for the individual to have a closer experience with God. But some people can't have the metaphor without the literal and we get an intellectual backwash where ID is being promoted at the expense of real science. Not that I think many of those who support ID know what ID is about, just that it sounds good.
So when they spread their assertions and their propaganda, they are spreading falsehoods deeply entrenched in their heads as fact. And we'll see the same arguments over and over again.
* Evolution doesn't pass the 2nd law of thermodynamics (yes it does)
* Evolution is only a theory (Only?!?)
* There is no evidence for evolution (yes there is)
* Carbon Dating is unreliable (Bullshit!)
* Evidence of the great flood is the Grand Canyon (You still want me to take you seriously?)
You've got to wonder how they get away with saying that stuff over and over. They are wrong, they are very wrong. But when we get propaganda websites like Answers in Genesis writing pseudo-scientific nonsense that sounds accurate to the uneducated. By taking myth as fact, we are seeing an attempt to rewrite history at the expense of accumulated knowledge. Is there a god? I don't know. I lean to the side of probably not. But will a global flood be proof of one? No. Yet the two are intricately tied together so that by proving the flood you prove the God. Though by believing in God, it's proof of the flood... it's all very circular.
The art of being wrong
So now is the point where I try and tie all this in, wrap in up in a few short sentences that are a great summation of my arguments. The truth is I ranted on a bit, the previous text is nowhere near as concise I would have liked. There is just too much to rant about and rip apart, and although I don't feel like making something this long is a good way of communicating, I feel that anything shorter would have missed stuff out. Hell, even now I feel I've only scratched the surface and I would probably write a whole book about it. Though there are already many other authors out there who have done so, and done so in a way much more proficient, accurate and in an elegant manner.
I'm sitting here now, listening to Ghosts I-IV on my iPod, it's been a few days since I started this entry but I really felt I needed the time to embellish and explore the ideas on the issue. This is as focused as I can get on an issue, it took a lot of restraint not to go off on tangents, like I said enough to write a book. And who has time for books these days? The internet age is all about conveying as much information is as short a space as possible. Something I can't do because I feel the urge to explain myself. Maybe in the future I should just videotape me talking for 5 minutes. Though I can't think of anything more mundane. But in a society where volume is greater than quality, the art of being wrong has never been easier.
Not to say that video blogs are a bad thing. I listen to podcasts, scour Youtube for my quick fix. There are some real gems hidden within the usual crap on there. When used properly the tools are incredibly powerful, very effective and quite convincing. Therein lies the danger. The otherwise worthless opinions of people who could scarcely make a living as a coat rack and being paraded as heroes and maestros, brilliantly laying down proofs and destroying the other side. But to anyone with a functioning brain, they are the overwhelming evidence that society is going down the shithole. So what does this have to do with the art of being wrong?
Instant Gratification Society
What this has to do with being wrong is a simple procedure called confirmation bias. Basically putting it, confirmation bias is counting the hits and ignoring the misses. We see this happening all the time, everyone is guilty of it. And with a society where gratification comes so instantly, we are often put in a position where the bias not only happens, but happens in such a way that is manufactured. In effect the media shapes our mind by being selective in what is broadcast. Try condensing the events in the world down into a 22 minute program, leaving enough time for sports and weather and there is very little about what can be broadcast. And thanks to the need for ratings, it seems to more and more follow the idea of "if it bleeds, it leads". The net poses an interesting twist to this where the choice is now yours. You can in effect choose how you filter, something that is wonderful. But there is a great danger in that in most cases people look purely for items that confirm whatever they already believe in. By filtering personally, they are ensuring that any dissenting voice is silenced. This way minds become very polemic.
So thanks to the internet we have come to expect things instantly. Right now I'm sitting at work annoyed that I'll have to wait another 4 hours to go home and download the new NIN CD (and yes, I am paying for it!). It's that kind of immediate response I'm talking about. TV shows that previously took months to come onto Australian television are able to be downloaded at the touch of a button, why should we wait anymore? At least TV networks are trying to correct this and are showing episodes almost as they appear in the US. The home DVD market has revolutionised how we watch TV, instead of tuning in and putting up with ads, we simply throw on a DVD. So when shows are only shown here at ungodly hours, on pay TV or not at all, it's a lot easier for us to have an alternate means of watching some of these programs.
So that is the society we live in now. One were fad diets come and go faster than magazines can cover them. Where miracle pills and surgery are favoured opposed to hard work. Where we expect immediate results for our actions, why read a book when we can watch the movie instead? This is a society where bookstores dedicate more shelf-space for religion & spirituality than science. Where someone can make a DVD like The Secret and can rake in a fortune. No regard to the truth of the matter, the promise of the spectacular from no work seems far more appealing to our natures than the truth behind it. We are a society that wants what we can get here and now, and for a species that is prone to confirmation bias, that creates even more problems.
The Secret and other lies
It seems the perfect tie-in to this discussion, something I've wanted to rant about for quite a while. Endorsed by the likes of Oprah and with a seemingly never ending stock of DVDs & books on the shelves for people to buy, The Secret embodies everything that we have come to expect from "new age" spiritualism; hollow fluff, promising the world, mixing consumerism and material worth all in a convenient package. I'd like to say now I really don't care about how people spend their money, it's theirs to waste. I certainly waste enough of mine on mind altering purchases. What I hope to achieve here is write a coherent explanation of how it works so we don't need to rely on superstitious nonsense as a means of answering. In short, The Secret is bullshit. And here's why:
There are countless testamonials to The Secret's authenticity. People believe it works, so it must work correct? Well no. There are two aspects here that ensure that people will believe. Firstly, one of the steps is belief. There are three steps to The Secret.
1. Ask the universe for what you want
2. Believe that the universe will grant it to you
3. Receive the gift
It's all about positive thinking, if you don't believe hard enough that you'll get what you want, it's your fault it didn't happen. In effect this makes The Secret self-confirming, a tautology designed to fit nicely with the second reason that ensure people believes... yes you guessed it: confirmation bias. So if it doesn't work often we just ignore that, but when it hits it's testimony to it working. Now we have a very simple way of determining the truth of someone's claims, it's called a double blind study. We set up an unbiased way to conduct the experiment in controlled conditions and gather accurate statistical results. If The Secret did work, it would pass. If not, it would be like any other hack nonsense that is fundamental in the modern mix of consumerism and belief.
Now this isn't to say that positive thinking doesn't do someone good. It would be hard to argue otherwise. But that isn't what The Secret is promoting. It's advocating that the universe will respond and reward that positive thinking. Like attracts like. In effect The Secret boils down to almost exactly the same idea as a personal god, only without the anthropomorphic connotations. The comfort that the universe will reward for the right mindset must be staggering. The universe cares about them and what they think, it's God in a metaphysical form. Only without rewarding in an afterlife, it's rewarding now. Though this is starting to become an all too common idea of God in some evangelical communities, but that is something I'll get to in a minute. There is just a bit more left to destroy of The Secret first.
As I was saying before, The Secret is all about personalising the universe. They make such ambiguous claims like it's ancient wisdom. Ancient wisdom is itself a contradiction, but it gives the illusion to the user that it's been tested and demonstrated. It was also ancient wisdom that the earth was flat and the sun orbited the earth. Not to say that anything in the ancient world is unfounded, just that these days we have ways of testing their claims. It's called progress for a reason. It claims like attracts like, which in physics it's the opposites attract. Just use a magnet to find this out. But there is no force that attracts our thoughts as spiritual vibes to manipulate the universe to our whim. That form of psychokinesis is simply an absurd notion. What happens if two people are competing for that same parking space? There's only one there, they both are using positive thoughts... Bet it will be the one who is in the right place at the right time. When we have perfectly rational explanations for something, why should we even consider an irrational one?
Alternative medicine should not be trusted. It doesn't stand up to double blind tests, in fact most treatments refuse to subject themselves to a double blind study, though by doing so it could validate the process. The danger of invalidating though is far too great, not to mention the absurd notions of their explanations would not stand up to scientific scrutiny. There is a great danger in avoiding conventional medicine for the sake of these placebos and that is death. It's not uncommon to hear about people who shunned regular treatment for entirely treatable diseases and as a consequence hit an early grave. That is sad, but it's that persons own fault. What ticks me off the most is that people make a profit from another's suffering. I have no doubt that most of these charlatans believe what they are saying is right. But believing something is right doesn't make it right. They aren't lying, but they are wrong. (finally we made it)
Wilful ignorance
It's time to lay into the more conventional sycophants, namely creationists. So you might be alongside us sceptics in condemning alternative medicine, but with your faith healing, you are no better. Again, there is the claim of the miraculous, anecdotal evidence, confirmation bias, a tautology in case it fails ("the lord works in mysterious ways") so where do you creationists get off calling New Ageism nonsense? That really gets me about religious nuts criticising the beliefs of other religious nuts. It's quite laughable, at least to me because all of their ideas are crazy. Yes, god made us out of clay, then put a tree in a garden which we ate that made us aware of sin then spent 4,000 years waiting for God to come down in human form and forgive us on the proviso that we believe that we should be forgiven. Forgive the snickering you hear, it's my reason circuit malfunctioning.
Now I can say assuredly that creationists are wrong. Again, I'm sure they believe that what they are saying and doing is true. But belief that it's true doesn't make it true. It's one of the same old arguments you hear for the bible's account of Jesus' life. The people who wrote it down believed it was true and what reason would they have to lie? Well none, but not-lying doesn't equate to telling the truth. I can believe with all my heart that a dragon is flying above my house providing heat with it's fire breath, and winter simply is when the dragon hibernates, but no matter how much I believed that to be true, and no matter if I were able to convince others it were true, it wouldn't make it true. I can't prove it false, but I can come up with a rational explanation for how the seasons work. It's to do with the Earth's tilt and orbit around the sun. So why would I go with the dragon one? It flies in the face of reason.
But that is exactly what creationists do. They aren't all idiots, they just love the idea of God. Love it so much that anything that flies in the face of that must be wrong. This is what I call wilful ignorance. The evidence that evolution is the cause of our species is immense, to say it's false is to spit in the face of reason. The bible is inerrant, the bible says that God created us from clay, we must be created from clay. Right? Well wrong. The bible is not inerrant. It doesn't take much of a look to see it contradict itself, make absurd statements, write about a history that is not backed up by other cultures histories or archaeological evidence, to see that it's a bunch of stories, parables and allegories designed to help a society gel and for the individual to have a closer experience with God. But some people can't have the metaphor without the literal and we get an intellectual backwash where ID is being promoted at the expense of real science. Not that I think many of those who support ID know what ID is about, just that it sounds good.
So when they spread their assertions and their propaganda, they are spreading falsehoods deeply entrenched in their heads as fact. And we'll see the same arguments over and over again.
* Evolution doesn't pass the 2nd law of thermodynamics (yes it does)
* Evolution is only a theory (Only?!?)
* There is no evidence for evolution (yes there is)
* Carbon Dating is unreliable (Bullshit!)
* Evidence of the great flood is the Grand Canyon (You still want me to take you seriously?)
You've got to wonder how they get away with saying that stuff over and over. They are wrong, they are very wrong. But when we get propaganda websites like Answers in Genesis writing pseudo-scientific nonsense that sounds accurate to the uneducated. By taking myth as fact, we are seeing an attempt to rewrite history at the expense of accumulated knowledge. Is there a god? I don't know. I lean to the side of probably not. But will a global flood be proof of one? No. Yet the two are intricately tied together so that by proving the flood you prove the God. Though by believing in God, it's proof of the flood... it's all very circular.
The art of being wrong
So now is the point where I try and tie all this in, wrap in up in a few short sentences that are a great summation of my arguments. The truth is I ranted on a bit, the previous text is nowhere near as concise I would have liked. There is just too much to rant about and rip apart, and although I don't feel like making something this long is a good way of communicating, I feel that anything shorter would have missed stuff out. Hell, even now I feel I've only scratched the surface and I would probably write a whole book about it. Though there are already many other authors out there who have done so, and done so in a way much more proficient, accurate and in an elegant manner.
I'm sitting here now, listening to Ghosts I-IV on my iPod, it's been a few days since I started this entry but I really felt I needed the time to embellish and explore the ideas on the issue. This is as focused as I can get on an issue, it took a lot of restraint not to go off on tangents, like I said enough to write a book. And who has time for books these days? The internet age is all about conveying as much information is as short a space as possible. Something I can't do because I feel the urge to explain myself. Maybe in the future I should just videotape me talking for 5 minutes. Though I can't think of anything more mundane. But in a society where volume is greater than quality, the art of being wrong has never been easier.
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