Reaching From The Margin: Why the "KISS Principle" is Just Plain Wrong

Many people in both the libertarian and the transhumanist cultures -- but far moreso in the libertarian -- feel that the amount of "pull" with society that we have is far, far less than it ought to be; that we have failed fundamentally to reach the popular mindset. Furthermor, it seems that if you put three libertarians in a room you'll get seven opinions as to why, five of which are mutually exclusive.

There is a statistic that gets thrown around the country with great frequency: it seems that roughly 9-14% of Americans hold libertarian political beliefs, according to Cato's analysis of public polling data from multiple sources. And yet, according to other polls, only 2% of people self-identify as libertarian. In terms of outreach, this is clearly an abysmal failure. And it is a well recognized one: libertarians spend a great deal of time and effort attempting to "get the word out". The Libertarian Party, for example, has for some time had as one of its major factions a group of people who attempt to use political offices as nothing more than preaching platforms from which to have their ideology heard by the masses.

The debate rages on and on, in both libertarian and to a lesser extent transhumanist circles: how do "we" get our message out to people, without having it misunderstood -- let alone rejected as pure fantasy? A recent commentor on my blog, one Kitty Antonik Wakfer, represents someone who, like myself, is both libertarian and transhumanist; and, as evidenced by the conversation, seems to have a strong grasp on the ideas she is espousing, which isn't really all that uncommon in either arena. She also brought up the work of her husband, Paul: "Social Meta-Needs*: A New Basis for Optimal Interaction". This is a clearly well-thought out and perhaps well-parsed essay. And in context, wholly appropriate: while I have not yet had the time to read through the entirety of the essay in the manner it deserves, I am certainly someone whom has the interest and am of the appropriate "target audience". So no problems there. However, what does this have to do with the debate of how to get the message out?

It seems that at the moment, that essay -- like so many others out there -- simply cannot be parsed. Hayek, Mises, anyone whom has attempted to define the term, "Technological Singularity", et al. -- they all have/had this issue. Comprehensive precision has its value and its place. Initial outreach isn't one such. But does this mean that the message need must be "watered down"? Are we condemned to the tyranny of the KISS principle? I say, "No!". The key, perhaps, can be found in an application of Occam's Razor, outside of the realm of logic debate. To do this, we must return somewhat to the original phrasing of Occam's Razor. Rather than, "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one", we must consider: "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity" (Trust me, it sounds "brainier" in latin -- but then, isn't that tautological? Everything sounds "brainier" in latin.)

It seems that in the drive to find a way to get their pet "message" out, everyone -- not just libertarians and transhumanists -- tends to forget the difference between the terms; "simple", and "fundamental". For brevity's sake, here's what came up from a google definition search of the word, "fundamental":

cardinal: serving as an essential component; "a cardinal rule"; "the central cause of the problem"; "an example that was fundamental to the argument"; "computers are fundamental to modern industrial structure"

being or involving basic facts or principles; "the fundamental laws of the universe"; "a fundamental incomatibility between them"; "these rudimentary truths"; "underlying principles"

the lowest tone of a harmonic series

far-reaching and thoroughgoing in effect especially on the nature of something; "the fundamental revolution in human values that has occurred"; "the book underwent fundamental changes"; "committed the fundamental error of confusing spending with extravagance"; "profound social changes"
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

This is, in fact, something that people such as Albert Einstein and Leonardo daVinci understood: simplicity as elegance is nowhere near the same as "dumbing down". Certainly, everybody today knows the idea,E=mC². For most people, that's enough to convey the idea once the terms are explained on their own. No further explanation need be given.

To stray from "pure" libertarianism or transhumanism for a short while, take for example the idea of renewable energy. This is clearly, on its face, such a good idea that one has to ask; why is it, precisely, that we aren't already using primarily such energy resources? The answer, we are told, lies in "economic factors". To the average person, this is a totally dense answer. They simply aren't interested in hearing, for example, just how much oil energy goes into growing one calorie's worth of ethanol or biodiesel. Nor are they interested in hearing how increased demand for foodstuffs as created by the increasing use and production of ethanol and biodiesel is driving food-prices up, thus making food-aid more scarce for areas such as much of Africa which has been painfully reliant on foreign aid for decades. Which of course draws us to foreign aid. The simple idea has been, "send Africa money & stuff. That'll help 'em." Hence Bono of U2's efforts. What's fascinating here is, for example, this interview with a premier Kenyan economist, James Shikwati. To quote Shikwuati on foreign aid: ".. for God's sake, please just stop."

Is Shikwati insane? Does he hunger for the poverty and misery of his fellow Kenyan, and of peoples across subSaharan Africa? His answer is complete, but can be fundamentally summarized as so: "Give a man a fish a day, and he will become a beggar for life. Teach a man to fish, and he will be fed for life." And that's the point: While "pithy", such tools are good opening points for the in-depth answer. And for those familiar with Shikwati's argument, that's a very good summarization of it -- yet I still have my breath left!

So, to all you libertarians, transhumanists, or just people with ideas you think need sharing: What is the fundamental essence of that idea? How do we capture, en brevis, the essence of that idea, without reams and reams of paper?

Too often, we focus on "Keeping it simple." I say, simple's not the answer; rather, "Fundamentalize." (Not to be mistaken with a fundamentalist's "proselytize".)

An Atheist's Message To "The Rapturites": "Leave Me Out Of This!"

If John Darby knew that when he began speaking on "The Rapture", that this would eventually lead to it being a term so ubiquitously known that it less than a century later, its definition need not be explained to the common American, one can only imagine that his heart would swell with a pious -- or not-so-pious -- pride. One could not fault him with failing to recognize his creation as being one of the greatest sources of modern existential risk; that his ideology could threaten the survival of the human race.

Now, normally this author attempts to avoid hyperbolistic writing. Unfortunately, despite the proclomation, "Belief in the Rapture could destroy the human race", there is no hyperbole here. There are times when seeing things in footage for yourself makes for a more viscerally appealing argument. With something as... contentious as this, then, such visceral appeal is a necessity. With that in mind, consider this the following video, "Rapture Ready", as pulled off of AlterNet (which is, of course, a deeply biased resource -- but in this case it is the message, not the messenger, that is significant.) Here we go:

On July 16, I attended Christians United for Israel's annual Washington-Israel Summit. Founded by San Antonio-based megachurch pastor John Hagee, CUFI has added the grassroots muscle of the Christian right to the already potent Israel lobby. Hagee and his minions have forged close ties with the Bush White House and members of Congress from Sen. Joseph Lieberman to Sen. John McCain. In its call for a unilateral military attack on Iran and the expansion of Israeli territory, CUFI has found unwavering encouragement from traditional pro-Israel groups like AIPAC and elements of the Israeli government.

[...]

Over a dozen CUFI members eagerly revealed to me their excitement at the prospect of Armageddon occurring tomorrow. Among the rapture ready was Republican Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

(Emphasis my own). As noted in the video, Mr. Hagee would have us believe that Christians for Israel only exists simply to "support" Israel in a positive, peaceful manner. If that were so, however, why would such language as this be fould on their front-page?:

Prophetic Lens of Scripture
By Henk Kamsteeg



Iran's president Mahmoud Amadinejad has said that the world would soon witness the destruction of the State of Israel. However, Amadinejad and Iran cannot curse Israel and escape God's judgment. "Jew-haters of the world need to know also that we have as much passion to support and defend Jewish lives as they have passion to destroy us". Read more...

One could truly wish that these people would start taking actual history lessons rather than holding to inductive reasoning derived from a single collection of books which were formally organized by no single agent nor with any concern for consistency. Take the difference between Canon and Apocrypha, and how they've been interchangeable over the centuries.

This idea of the end-times in our times is hardly new at all; one list in particular gives examples of such failed predictions from 30CE to 1990CE. While the only thing that differentiates Darby's predictions from that of William Miller's "Great Disappointment" is the lack of a specific date (or two, as the case may be), what is so dangerous about any of this? After all -- so what if the Christians for Israel group wants to speed up or "be prepared for" the Rapture?

It's simple enough: today, it is a rare individual who recognizes the origins of the modern conflict between the Arabic Middle East and the West. CNN has reported that it began with the foundation of Israel:

The search for peace in the Middle East dates back to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, a war following the invasion of the Jewish state by Arab countries, and the subsequent displacement of many Palestinian Arabs.

That certainly is a major demarcation point, but it is by no means the origin of "today's" Arab v. Occident conflict. That can be detailed back further to the establishment of the British colony, "Iraq", around 1917. And what, pray tell, were the british seeking in Iraq? Oil. The distrust goes back quite literally that far. And almost all attempts at pacification or conflict resolution, as engaged in by the UN, the US, and the rest of the "Western World" is by and large seen in the Arabic world as little more than a ploy to engender Israeli superiority; this is discussed in depth by a piece that can be found at the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA).

So where does this leave us? On the one hand we have extremist religious fanatics bent on obtaining the power to fulfil their believed divine mandate of global dominance, surrounded by what could otherwise be healthy, sane people with belief in a religion that proclaims itself the "religion of peace." On the other, we have... extremist religious fanatics bent on obtaining the power to fulfil their believed divine mandate of global dominance, surrounded by what could otherwise be healthy, sane people with belief in a religion that proclaims itself the "religion of peace." One side is backing those with nuclear weapons, egging them on to expand and in all manners be a belligerent state. The other side is different in only that its belligerent state lacks nuclear weapons -- we think.

So what, precisely, is the point of all this diatribe and rhetoric? To spell it out plainly: the world would be safer if John Darby had died in ignomy: the world would also be safer if enough people recognized the difference between anti-zionism and anti-semitism; but if if's and wishes could fill the belly, no one would starve. Should you be afraid of the "Rapturists"? That's a personal choice. But remember this: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. Are people who believe in the Rapture evil? Perhaps, this is a judgment call. But with movement leaders like Hagee and DeLay, the question of whether or not "Christians for Israel" is lead by evil is answered before it is asked: their corruption marks them for all to see; the answer to the first question is found in Burke's comment and the the willful blindness to such corruption.

These people need to be stopped. The question is -- how? "At gunpoint" is right out, and so is legislation. What else is left, that has any hope of working? This author, obviously, has chosen to entrust to the (digital) pen. I can only hope that you, who read this, will find yourself a route to the same goal.

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The New Axis of Evil: Russia, Canada, Israel, and Denmark?

There is a story that has been making its way around the globe, it would seem. Later last year, an individual by the name of Caroline Lucas -- an MEP for the Green Party of England and Wales -- began making claims that Global Warming denial should be treated as Holocaust Denial; and this in a country where Holocaust Denial is a felony. How, precisely, is the world to react to this?

Over and over again the catechism comes in: "The science is in... the science is in..."; one could be reminded far too easily of a bad zombie movie from the 50's: "Brains.... brains...". Regardless of whether it is or not, however, there is one overwhelmingly obvious statement to anyone with any comprehension of the scientific process: The day you make the process of questioning itself criminal, that same day your science becomes worthless. Recall: Despite the diameter of the earth having been measured -- to within a few miles! -- twice in BCE times, it was criminal within the Holy Roman Empire to question the church's canon that the Earth was flat, for quite some time. Similarly so treated was the idea that the Earth went 'round the sun.

Despite being well-meaning, the anthropogenic global warming advocates who agree with M. Lucas are committing that same sin against the human race; such a powerful precedent permits for the possibility -- even if they are not mistaken of a new Dark Age. Given the predilections of the "Dark Green" movement, which desires the outright abolition of all manufacturing technologies, this isn't precisely far off the mark. Google "Deep Ecology" and see what comes up for yourself, if you doubt this.

It makes one wonder: what would happen to the Henrik Svensmarks, the Nir Shavivs, the Tim Pattersons, and the Khabibullo Abdusamatovs of the world? Chances are, if you're like the average person, you've never heard these names before. What all four of these men have in common is that they are prominent scientists in their respective countries, and each believe that the earth is going to begin a period of global cooling within ten years, with a potential drop as great as 3 °C!

In the immortal words, however, of Kuntu Kinte -- Don't Take My word For It.

Abdusamatov's statement, via UPI:

MOSCOW, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- A Russian scientist predicts a period of global cooling in coming decades, followed by a warmer interval.

[...]

Abdusamatov and his colleagues at the Russian Academy of Sciences astronomical observatory said the prediction is based on measurement of solar emissions, Novosti reported. They expect the cooling to begin within a few years and to reach its peak between 2055 and 2060.

Tim Patterson's statements, via NCPA.org:

Climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. Ten thousand years ago, temperatures rose as much as 6 degrees Celsius in a decade -- 100 times faster than the past century's 0.6C warming, says Timothy Patterson, professor and director of the Ottowa-Carleton Geoscience Centre at Carleton University.

Given this variability throughout time, factors other than man-made CO2 emissions need to be considered as the driving force behind climate change. According to Patterson, one likely culprit is the sun:

• Many scientific papers have demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it, our star's protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the Earth's atmosphere.
• These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet.
• When the sun's energy output is greater, not only does the Earth warm slightly due to direct solar heating, but the stronger solar wind blocks many of the cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere; cloud cover decreases and the Earth warms still more.

Henrik Svensmark's statements, via Junkscience.com:

Such claims of solar variation insufficiency survive because indications of feedback mechanisms were supported only by historical records and statistical associations but were not empirically demonstrated (never mind that situation applies particularly to the enhanced greenhouse hypothesis, the simple fact is that hypothesis is currently politically correct and hence requires no evidentiary support). This situation has now changed because Svensmark and the team at the Danish National Space Center have experimentally demonstrated the very mechanism they proposed a decade ago.

How big a deal is this indirect cloud effect? Huge, actually. In just 5 years it was responsible for a 2% decrease in low clouds (the kind that reflect incoming solar radiation by day) which, in turn, equates to an increase in surface warming of 1.2 Wm-2 from incident radiation -- equivalent to some 85% of the IPCC's estimate for the effect of all carbon dioxide increase since the Industrial Revolution.

Significantly, the "Svensmark Effect" only operates in the lower troposphere because there is always more than sufficient ionization of the upper atmosphere to ensure no shortage of cloud nuclei. This is important since high, thin clouds do not reflect incoming sunlight and are a net warming influence while the reverse is true of low, bright clouds. The effect then directly influences cooling cloud cover.

Nir Shaviv's statements, via "Sciencebits.com", his self-hosted site:

In a later analysis, with Ján Veizer of the University of Ottawa and the Ruhr University of Bochum, it was found that the cosmic ray flux reconstruction agrees with a quantitative reconstruction of the tropical temperature (Shaviv & Veizer, 2003). In fact, the correlation is so well, it was shown that cosmic ray flux variations explain about two thirds of the variance in the reconstructed temperature signal. Thus, cosmic rays undoubtedly affect climate, and on geological time scales are the most dominant climate driver.

[...]

The implications of this link are far reaching. Not only does it imply that on various time scales were solar activity variations or changes in the galactic environment prominent, if not the dominent climate drivers, it offers an explanation to at least some of the climate variability witnessed over the past century and millennium. In particular, not all of the 20th century global warming should be attributed to anthropogenic sources, since increased solar activity explains through this link more than half of the warming.

Now, recall -- it is entirely irrelevant to the point being made in this article if these men are correct or if they are quacks. It is entirely irrelevant. The question is: Can we afford the price of locking up such men simply because they disagree with the IPCC?

Read More:
-- Can the Environment Survive the Environmentalists?
-- Converging Nano/Bio-tech, and the Energy Future
-- Clean Tech Investments Pull In 10 Percent Of US Venture Capital
-- Global Warming & The Scientific Process
-- A Hidden Truth
-- Thoughts on organization (What Anime Teaches us about Global Warming Environmentalism)
-- Articles On Global Warming
-- Articles On Secularism

Rhetoric: Dirty Word or the "Fourth R"?

We've all heard it before; "That's just empty rhetoric," or "Rhetoric and lies!" For the common person, to call someone else's statement 'rhetoric' is to refute that other person's statement. It's become a pejorative, a 'dirty word' -- one that one doesn't use in polite conversation.

Here's an interesting tidbit -- that rhetoric now has negative connotations is practically 'public domain' knowledge: everyone knows it, but nobody seems to know why or when that happened. The average man-on-the-street doesn't even know that once upon a time, rhetoric was viewed as the highest of callings: a skill to be exercised and refined for its own sake.

In today's world, this is something that is more and more troublesome to this author. As the political machinations and engines of the world's nations move inexorably towards that which is yet to come, the continued degeneration of "old-school" rhetorical knowledge leaves the public-at-large ever more vulnerable to said machinations. To provide somewhat of a decent basis, please consider the following, taken directly from the Wikipedia entry, "Rhetoric":

Rhetoric (from Greek ῥήτωρ, rhêtôr, orator, teacher) is generally understood to be the art or technique of persuasion through the use of spoken language; however, this definition of rhetoric has expanded greatly since rhetoric emerged as a field of study in universities. In this sense, there is a divide between classical rhetoric (with the aforementioned definition) and contemporary practices of rhetoric.

[...]

The Romans, for whom oration also became an important part of public life, saw much value in Greek rhetoric, hiring Greek rhetoricians to teach in their schools and as private tutors, and imitating and adapting Greek rhetorical works in Latin and with Roman examples. Roman rhetoric thus largely extends upon and develops its Greek roots, though it tends to prefer practical advice to the theoretical speculations of Greek rhetoricians.

The following bears repeating:The Romans, for whom oration also became an important part of public life. Rhetoric is quintessentially a lost art -- except in the hands of those whom are the most dangerous with it: our politicians & political figures.

Consider the use of rhetoric something like playing chess; if you don't know the way the pieces move -- let alone the strategies based on how they move -- then you haven't a chance in hell of winning the game. And so it is in today's political venues & media resources. We have fallen so far that all a "talking head" need use is what is referred to as "Ad Captandum". Again, from Wikipedia:

In rhetoric an argument ad captandum, "for capturing" the gullibility of the naïve among the listeners or readers, is an unsound, specious argument, a kind of seductive casuistry. The longer form of the term is ad captandum vulgus (Latin, 'to win over the crowd'). The ad captandum argument may be painfully vivid in sound bites from politicians on TV news programs. Like most perceptions of logical transgressions, the ad captandum assessment may not be neutral and at the same time may be quite accurate.

No right-thinking person could disagree with that.

-- Rev. Ian Paisley, House of Commons, London, 2 January 2004, referring to a statement by Lord Hutton about the undesirability of lying

The police are totally opposed to it, as are all right-thinking people.

-- David Maclean, House of Commons, London, 9 February 1995 (referring to legalisation of cannabis)

I think that all right-thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary, decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired... I'm certainly not! But I'm sick and tired of being told that I am.

-- parody of ad captandum statement, from Monty Python

Yes, that's practically the entire article for "Ad Captandum". Note the Monty Python reference; for those who don't know, Monty Python was a British sketch comedy which aired episodes in the late 60's -- four decades ago.

So long as society at large continues to define rhetoric as "palaver: loud and confused and empty talk; "mere rhetoric"" or "grandiosity: high-flown style; excessive use of verbal ornamentation; "the grandiosity of his prose"; "an excessive ornateness of language"", this vulnerability will only increase over time.

Here's an example that is near-and-dear to the current political climate: Should the government provide health-care to all citizens of our nation? Apparently, what you word that condition as has powerful implications on the answer to the question. Take, for example, the google-search results for the term, "Socialized Medicine": not one single entry that made it to the first page was positive to this. Not One. The answer changes to a somewhat more moderate stance when you use the term "Universal Healthcare" instead: on the first page, something like half of the entries were more positive -- or at least neutral. This is a debate which has a great deal of sentiment running quite high on both sides of the conversation. On the one you have such figures as Michael Moore running with his 'documentary', "Sicko". On the other you have the vigorous research of private individuals, such as can be found here, and you also have serious, dedicated economically-educated groups such as the think-tank "Cato"; all of which are adamantly and diametrically opposed to the development of government-provided/mandated/granted healthcare for all citizens of this country.

This article is not meant to persuade anyone, however, on the issue of how healthcare ought to be run in this nation (that's the US for those of you in other countries reading this). It is quite likely that you, the reader, came to this article with your opinions on the matter already formed -- and that they won't be changing anytime soon. The key point here is simply this:

Rhetoric is not a "dirty word". It is not a pejorative. It is not a means of debunking someone else's statement or point. It is an absolutely vital technique and skill -- one that continues to be actively researched by modern-day scientists! -- that the common man needs in order to even begin to notice when he is being lied to with the truth. By way of demonstration, this link will take you to a site which purports to offer up some of the most common logic fallacies and rhetorical devices for artificially engendering agreement with your position. It is worth noting, however, that nothing much said here in this article should be that shocking or revelatory to you, the reader: how many times have we all complained about the empty promises of politicians? Here's an example: Which side -- the Blue-o-crats or the Red-icans -- are the ones who desire "Affordable, Comprehensive Health Insurance For All"?

It's time that we, as a people, understood enough about the tricks and techniques of language that we could start -- as a people and as individuals -- to hold our political leaders & media representatives up to a vastly higher standard; that we tell them, "No more free lunches!" They've simply had it too easy for too long.

Read More:
-- What You Know -- It Just Ain't So: Why Facts Can't Win Arguments.
-- Singularitarianism: The True Religion?
-- Can the Environment Survive the Environmentalists?
-- Sicko & Sicker: Why Socialized Healthcare May Be Better, But Isn't Best
-- Libertarianism vs. Libertarians

"There Aughtta Be A Law Ahgin' It!"

A dead journalist, H.L. Mencken once said, "The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it." A funny truth about this: there really aren't that many people who have this urge who recognize it as such -- yet the overwhelming majority exemplify this maxim none-the-less.

Nowhere is this more true than in politics. The very idea of "live-and-let-live" has no place in the political arena these days. In all honesty, it hasn't had one for decades. Many sources could be attributed to this decline -- and decline it is, let's not kid ourselves, folks -- but in the end, there really aren't all that many people whom are not contributing to this decline. This author is no more immune to this tautological statement than are you, the reader.

There is an idea, a term, used in sociology and psychology -- it's something that really nobody can avoid; "cognitive bias":

A cognitive bias is any of a wide range of observer effects identified in cognitive science and social psychology including very basic statistical, social attribution, and memory errors that are common to all human beings. Biases drastically skew the reliability of anecdotal and legal evidence.

Such biases can come in any number of forms, but the fundamental element to know is this: There is not one person in this world -- not one -- who is without such biases. The people who believe themselves least biased are, in general, the most so. Overcoming such biases is something like a labor of Sisyphus -- something that must be attempted, but can never be acheived. Every time we get the boulder close to the top of the hill, it slips us once again. By way of allegory, take this example of successfully avoiding one particular kind of cognitive bias -- the "Insider Bias" -- as discussed by the author of the blog appropriately named, "Overcoming Bias":

Instead of watching fireworks on July 4, I did 1500 piece jigsaw puzzle of fireworks, my first jigsaw in at least ten years. Several times I had the strong impression that I had carefully eliminated every possible place a piece could go, or every possible piece that could go in a place. I was very tempted to conclude that many pieces were missing, or that the box had extra pieces from another puzzle. This wasn't impossible - the puzzle was an open box a relative had done before. And the alternative seemed humiliating.

But I allowed a very different part of my mind, using different considerations, to overrule this judgment; so many extra or missing pieces seemed unlikely. And in the end there was only one missing and no extra pieces. I recall a similar experience when I was learning to program. I would carefully check my program and find no errors, and then when my program wouldn't run I was tempted to suspect compiler or hardware errors. Of course the problem was almost always my fault.

The following is an example of poor segue skills: Clearly, simply giving in to such biases is exactly how we got here, as it were. If you doubt this, consider the following: we currently live under a "conservative" Administration, here in the good ol' U-S-of-A. Conservative politics has been traditionally defined, very simply, as follows:

Any shade of political opinion from moderately right-of-center to firmly right-of-center. Of the two major parties in the United States, the Republican Party is generally considered to be the more conservative. “Political” conservatives in the United States usually support free-market economic principles and low taxes, and distrust federal, as opposed to state and local, government power. “Cultural” conservatives may be opposed to abortion or to the excesses of popular media.

Free-market economic principles and low taxes -- that's a conservative government, right? And yet, nothing could be further from the truth where this conservative government is concerned: Domestic, non "security"-related spending has been increasing at a rate which compares to -- or possibly excels -- the single greatest expansion of government spending acknowledged in our nations' history: the "New Deal" of FDR. More amazing yet, unlike that wave of expansive government, our current expansion seems to be totally un-noticed by the everyday, common man. The last expansion, we are told, got us out of the worst depression this nation has seen. Were the same logic to apply, why is it -- precisely -- that I don't have my golden atomic-powered skycar?

Would liberals do any better? Well, the indicators seem to say, "no". By way of equinamity -- since I defined conservatives, selectively, via google -- here's a selected definition of "liberal" that, one would imagine, few liberals would disagree with:

Political view that supports gradual change and government spending to assist lower classes in society

[...]

Traditionally, the word liberal means to be open to new ideas and tolerant of others. To be liberal politically, is to emphasize political and economic freedom. They tend to favor gradual changes in society and promote government programs to solve problems.

This tolerance, this freedom of civil liberties, we are told, is the hallmark of the liberal.

But again, let's examine this trend in a historian's lense: liberals are responsible for banning smoking in just about all public places, across the country-- thereby telling Joe Sixpack what he can and cannot do when sitting on public property; a curtailment of a civil liberty. Amongst the primary liberal "talking points" today is the advocacy of universal -- read: socialized -- healthcare. While certainly compassionate in terms of providing access to good health to those who have no access, such an approach would come at a cost: the inability to purchase better care. No matter how you cut it, that is another curtailment of one's liberties -- if Joe Millionare cannot bankrupt myself to get rid of this metastasized lung-cancer, then how is that fair to his freedoms? The main "battle-cry", if you will, in this author's perceptions of the liberal political movement is "equality". Always and again: "Equality in the workplace." "Equality in education." "Equality in healthcare." What is left out is how that equality will be acheived: By the heavy boot of government: by curtailing the freedom to be other than equal. Is this necessarily, however, a bad thing? That is the question when discerning the appropriateness of such an approach. Rather than make a personal case, I will allow a different scenario to speak out. Drawn from a research paper which attempted to discern exactly why it is that Foreign Aid to Ethiopia is and has been for decades such an abysmal failure:

Emergency needs assessment methodologies are often developed by organizations based
in the global North for use in the global South.

[...]

The “new” methodology is thought to satisfy international donor governments’ demands for accuracy, transparency and rigor. However, its pilot testing with Ethiopian experts revealed numerous problems, which the Ethiopian experts felt would be difficult to resolve. The foreign consultants who led the pilot testing interpreted this as the inability of the Ethiopians to understand the methodology, but another way to interpret the Ethiopian reaction is as resistance to the external imposition of an international organization.

So what does this mean? Simply put: neither the liberal nor the conservative path to governance has any hope of pulling our society out of this quagmire. It is as simple as that. No matter which approach you take, you continue to fall victim to the inherent flaws of a "technical government". Society as a whole, however, also suffers from problems of bias -- so neither placing power collectively in the hands of "the people" nor placing power in the hands of a select few will approach making things work out.

This, you see, is the core of the libertarian argument: When left to their own devices, without the ability to impugn upon the choices (or persons) of others around them, the most effective approaches to any given problem will inevitably "rise to the forefront." This is, essentially, the Austrian economic argument painted with broad strokes across the forum. For so long, however, we have been told -- by people who genuinely believed it -- that "There ought to be a law!" that no other approach to fixing problems is now seriously considered.

That's not to say that there ought be no laws at all. That's the anarchist argument, which is to libertarianism what communism is to liberalism and fascism is to conservativism: the end philosophical result of extreme ideologues. The trick is to figure out which laws "ought to be laws" and which laws "ought not." The only way we can do that is to step outside of the vicious cycle, get more of this and a whole hell of a lot less of this.

Read More:
-- What You Know -- It Just Ain't So: Why Facts Can't Win Arguments
-- Can the Environment Survive the Environmentalists?
-- Sicko & Sicker: Why Socialized Healthcare May Be Better, But Isn't Best
-- Egalitarianism At Gunpoint? A Guaranteed Abundance
-- Scientific Experiment to Disprove God?
-- Libertarianism vs. Libertarians
-- Articles on Secularism
-- Articles on Global Warming

Ron Paul: Libertarian's Best Choice for *Republican* President

To just about any libertarian you'll meet out there, you will find universal consent with the following statement: Ron Paul would be the perfect Republican candidate. Many have made -- and continue to make -- the arguments that Ron Paul ought to receive the Libertarian candidacy regardless of wether he wins the Republican nod or not.

This author, for one, is left with the striking feeling that this would be, quite possibly, one of the worst moves our (Author's Note: Read the 'by-line' of the blog, folks!) party -- and movement -- could make. There's a few reasons why, but to start here's a bit of reference for those not already familiar with the situation. Steve Kubby, one of the leading candidates for the Libertarian presidential nod, inasmuch as anybody is 'leading' right now, had this to say on the issue of the goodly Doctor Paul:

Fort Bragg, CA -- Citing overwhelming support from his own party's members and lackluster response to Libertarian presidential campaigns, Steve Kubby today endorsed US Representative Ron Paul's campaign for the Republican Party's 2008 presidential nomination. Kubby, a candidate in his own party's presidential contest, made the endorsement in an interview from his home in Mendocino County, California.

"I am not, and have never been, a Republican," says Kubby, 60, best known for his work for cannabis legalization and on behalf of medical marijuana patients. "For me, the Libertarian Party has always been, and remains, our last best hope for achieving freedom through the American political process. And until recently my position was that the Libertarian Party needed to stick to its own guns, stake out its own territory. But sometimes a special situation comes along."

Recent polling shows Paul garnering the support of about 70% of LP members -- and the LP's front-runners, including Kubby, clustered together in the 2-3% range among those same members. That polling, Paul's much higher media profile, and fundraising reports showing that Paul has raised nearly 100 times as much money as any of his Libertarian competitors, convinced Kubby that this is just such a situation.

So we have something of a "two-fer" here -- Kubby, one of the most "left-wing" people accepted by the majority of libertarians as a "pure" libertarian -- i.e.; nobody questions his credentials, when the "inside" movement is considered -- is endorsing Paul simply due to the breadth of his success. This kind of solidarity is absolutely what we need. Even so, Kubby continues to recognize the need for him -- or someone who could be his political twin -- to continue to strive for the LP nod.

And for the record, Paul's success is not just an internet phenomenon, at least not anymore -- so descriptions such as this, from a month ago, no longer truly apply (from Wired Magazine):

When Texas Congressman Ron Paul entered the race for next year's Republican presidential nomination, few political analysts paid much notice.

Paul has no backing from political bigwigs or any campaign war chest to speak of. As the Libertarian Party presidential nominee in 1988 he won less than one-half of 1 percent of the national vote.

Yet despite his status among the longest of the long shots, the 71-year-old has become one of the internet's most omnipresent –- and some say most irritating -– subjects.

[...]

"The people who are actually working for the campaign are a little overwhelmed with what's happening," says Alex Wallenwein, a supporter who organized two of the 362 Meetup.com groups dedicated to Paul.

Certainly, the Ob/Gyn from Texas has nowhere near the levels of recognition -- nor, to be frank, the odds of success -- of any of the so-called "leading candidates" for success from either party. The party machinations are simply too strong for outsiders to overcome them easily. But none of this really represents what this article is attempting to convey: Paul is the libertarian's ideal Republican President, but not the ideal Libertarian President. There's a few reasons why that is, but to start we must examine some of the discrepancies between Paul and the Libertarian Platform.

Take, for example, immigration. From Ron Paul's official platform:

• Physically secure our borders and coastlines. We must do whatever it
  takes to control entry into our country before we undertake complicated
  immigration reform proposals.



• Enforce visa rules. Immigration officials must track visa holders
  and deport anyone who overstays their visa or otherwise violates U.S. law. This
  is especially important when we recall that a number of 9/11 terrorists
  had expired visas.



• No amnesty. Estimates suggest that 10 to 20 million people are
  in our country illegally. That’s a lot of people to reward for breaking
  our laws.


• No welfare for illegal aliens. Americans have welcomed immigrants
  who seek opportunity, work hard, and play by the rules. But taxpayers
  should not pay for illegal immigrants who use hospitals, clinics, schools,
  roads, and social services.



• End birthright citizenship. As long as illegal immigrants know their children born
  here will be citizens, the incentive to enter the U.S. illegally will remain strong.

The idea of birthright citizenship being removed is anathema to this libertarian. It's as simple as that. It's certainly not something the majority of libertarians agree with, either -- take the LP's platform for immigration:

Solutions:Borders will be secure, with free entry to those who have demonstrated compliance with certain requirements. The terms and conditions of entry into the United States must be simple and clearly spelled out.

[...]

Transitional Action:Ensure immigration requirements include only appropriate documentation, screening for criminal background and threats to public health and national security. Simplifying the immigration process and redeployment of surveillance technology to focus on the borders will encourage the use of regular and monitored entry points, thus preventing trespass and saving lives. End federal requirements that benefits and services be provided to those in the country illegally. Repeal all measures that punish employers for hiring undocumented workers. Repeal all immigration quotas.

Notice the differences, boys and girls? Paul wants illegal immigrants kicked out. The LP's platform calls for them to, essentially, be "swept under the rug" -- it bypasses the issue. Paul wants Visa rules enforced vigorously. The LP's platform calls for visa restrictions to be practically abolished.

Oddly enough, the one area where both Paul & the LP agree is the one where it is absolutely the most irrelevant: Welfare & Social Security benefits for illegal immigrants. The reason why is simply two-fold.
1)Illegal immigrants cannot gain social security benefits without being legal residents of this country, by law:

In February 2004, Congress passed H.R. 743, the Social Security Protection Act, which includes a provision authored by Senator Grassley (R-Iowa), Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, that prohibits aliens (and their spouses and dependents) from claiming social security credit for work performed while in the United States illegally unless the alien obtains legal status at some point.

2)Illegal immigrants pay into the system, by something like 7 billion dollars more than they could possibly pull out:

Last year, Mr. Martínez paid about $2,000 toward Social Security and $450 for Medicare through payroll taxes withheld from his wages. Yet unlike most Americans, who will receive some form of a public pension in retirement and will be eligible for Medicare as soon as they turn 65, Mr. Martínez is not entitled to benefits.

He belongs to a big club. As the debate over Social Security heats up, the estimated seven million or so illegal immigrant workers in the United States are now providing the system with a subsidy of as much as $7 billion a year.

That's 10% of the "surplus" by the way, folks.

Yet again, however, this does not truly touch on why it is so vital that we not make the mistake of pushing Ron Paul for the Libertarian nod. While he was appropriate back in 1988, the landscape has changed. It is worth noting that even Lew Rockwell recognized this fact, back in 2005. Somewhat taken out of context from LewRockwell.com:

It is as important for libertarians to be anti-socialist as it is for them to be anti-fascist. But first we need to recognize that fascism is a reality, not just a smear term.

The sad, sad truth is this: historically speaking the libertarian movement has always been frankly quite poor at reaching out to the left, and as a result the political left has continuously slid further and further down the road of statism and government control. It has now reached the point where the overwhelming majority of "democrats" and "liberals" just cannot conceive of a scenario where private action would be better than government control and regulation. From the environment to healthcare to education to personal relationships, to today's liberal -- and the liberal of fourty years ago -- more government equals better future. In many, many ways, this can be construed as an abject failure of the libertarian movement.

And it's painfully simple, folks: Ron Paul on a 2008 Presidential ballot with an "(L)" after his name would be one of the poorest tactical choices we could make to even attempt to get that Sisyphean boulder up on it's hilltop. Think about it: So long as statements like "Real conservatives have always supported low taxes and low spending." are the loudest outreach we have to the general public, when -- if ever -- are we ever going to even make a dent in the blue half of this country's voting block?

Malthusian Methuselahs? The Coming "Longevity Crisis"

Picture, if you would, the first one-hundred-and-fifty year-old man. Just imagine that image. If you're like most people, you're probably imagining a bed-ridden frail, wrinkly collection of skin and bones.

This image, no matter what line of reasoning you're using, just isn't correct. To listen to the primary researchers in the field of life-extension is to be inundated with anti-agapic ideas; such men -- and women -- differ greatly from the 'traditional' perspective of medicine; for some time now the focus has been on "quality of life" rather than "longevity." Yet there are still a few "stragglers" out there, whom are focused on getting the most "quality of life" that they can -- for as long as possible. One such group -- a major one, at that, is the Immortality Institute (catchy name, no?) According to the Wikipedia article on said institute, it can be described as follows:

The Immortality Institute (sometimes abbreviated "ImmInst") is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization with the mission "to conquer the blight of involuntary death." The organization hosts an online forum, publishes books^{[1] [2]}, creates films, and sponsors conferences in order to advance life extension research. It is supported by donations and the membership fees it charges, monthly, annually, or through a lifetime membership. It encourages gathering together all information, fields of research, individuals, and organisations that could contribute towards enabling people to avoid death, either in the short and long term.

Nothing necessarily wrong with this, no?

To hear the bio-luddites in the world, there most assuredly is. They base this belief on a combination of two factors. One, of course, is the population growth rate (Birth rate (b) − death rate (d) = rate of natural increase (r)). Such individuals believe, quite honestly, in the predictions of Thomas Malthus, who wrote back in the late 18th century of the idea that agriculture will eventually fail to keep up with the hunger demands, to the point where society will collapse. From the Wikipedia article, "Malthusian Catastrophe":

Malthusian catastrophe, sometimes known as a Malthusian check, Malthusian crisis, Malthusian dilemma, Malthusian disaster, Malthusian trap, or Malthusian limit is a return to subsistence-level conditions as a result of agricultural (or, in later formulations, economic) production being eventually outstripped by growth in population.

Now, this blog is hardly the first to answer this dilemma. Many such refutations are actually quite scholarly in nature. But it is worth noting that the basis of such "Malthusian fears" from our friendly neighborhood neo-luddites of the world are, in fact, relatively well-grounded: our planet isn't getting any bigger, and every year there's more and more mouths to feed. It's simple enough -- take that growth rate formula and reduce the "death rate" -- what do you get? A higher rate of increase. That's the fear, plain and simple. It's no joke, either: already the UN estimates that our population will reach well above 9 Billion people within 50 years. If you take out the "death factor" in that, the number becomes vastly greater. Imagine a population increase of 1 billion people every year. How could we possibly keep up with such growth?


This is the struggle going on between the "bio-luddites" and the "transhumanists. The bio-luddite position has been fairly-well presented, by now. And to give equal airtime:

When transhumanists seek to extend human life, they are not trying to add a couple of extra years at a care home spent drooling at one’s shoes. The goal is more healthy, happy, productive years. Ideally, everybody should have the right to choose when and how to die – or not to die. Transhumanists want to live longer because they want to do, learn, and experience more; have more fun and spend more time with loved ones; continue to grow and mature beyond the paltry eight decades allotted to us by our evolutionary past; and in order to get to see for themselves what wonders the future might hold.

(Emphasis mine) Again -- seems harmless enough. Perhaps these people simply don't realize the enormity of what they propose, eh? Simple, misguided idealism -- poor dreamers. Just nod your head and let them think we're listening; they'll wear themselves out eventually.

Right.

The trick to the matter is, of course, that "Immortalists" don't actually propose this growth in an absolute vacuum of other technologies. There are a wide, wide number of potential solutions to this problem. One, amongst the 'simpler' -- is the development of "Arcologies" -- massive superstructures (buildings with one or more dimension greater than 1 kilometer) designed to further increase the comfortable population density. Already there are designs to implement this in Tokyo, for example. This is, of course, a natural result of the trend of human population migration: this century, for the first time in human history, a majority of the population now resides in urban centers. Combine this with arcology-esque multi-leveled greenhouses (as discussed in the article, "Farming 2.0" by this blog) and the results become clear; there's plenty-enough room for many-times over the population we currently have on this planet. And do keep in mind that the level of conjecture here is extremely low: Dubais is already building a 'farming skyscraper', and the Sky City project in Tokyo has already bought out a great deal of land in preparation for their first tower. The population density pressure in Tokyo specifically is great enough to legitimize such a venture in the eyes of the majority of their populace, so -- no wild theorizing here.

Another 'drastic measure', to stray from the natural trends based on economic projects already underway, would be the implementation of orbital colonies. To make such a project feasible would require a few things. One: obviously, the ability to grow radiation-safe environments in space in a manner conducive to long-term human residence. Barring radical technology advancement, this means spinning colonies. There are literally dozens of serious suggestions on how to accomplish this; this author won't waste the time of his readers in presenting them all. The second requirement would be the low-cost ability to safely exit and re-enter the earth's gravity well. Burt Rutan's winning the Ansari X-Prize got "us" a good deal of the way there -- it reduced human exospheric flight from costing hundreds of millions of dollars to less than 5 million per flight. (Far less, in fact.) Even so, however, for this proposition to be economical, something drastically less costly would be required. Although likely now defunct, there was a company dedicated to the creation of the world's first "space ladder" by the year 2020 -- they apparently had financial issues due to inventive fund-raising techniques. The science behind their idea was simple enough; create a flexible 'ribbon' some hundreds of miles long, connect it to the ground, and then also connect it to an orbital satellite, with a secondary one further out to provide metronomic counterbalancing. Where this idea differs from many others is that this ribbon could also have acted as the power-source for any vehicle travelling up it -- thus reducing the necessary payload of a vehicle by the entirety, or nigh-unto the entirety, of its fuel requirement. In comparison, for traditional rockets the fuel to escape earth's gravity represents 90% of its initial weight. The final requirement would be a resource from which we could extract the necessary materials to grow new foods, without simply shipping dirt up from the earth -- as this would, of course, be counter-productive. Thankfully, it turns out that the moon, for example, is literally covered in materials which could be adapted to that purpose -- as are the more easily-yet reached "Near Earth Asteroids".

And, again, none of these suggestions are even all that new or radical. Look up Accelerating Future's blogs' entries on exactly this proposition -- you'll get plenty of well-considered results, even if you only pull them from Michael's blog. With such things as the above in mind, though, there is literally room for trillions of people within this old ball of dirt's desmegne. And this doesn't even begin to take into account the really radical or alternative stuff such as continual virtual-reality immersion or "mind uploading." It is equally possible to imagine a future where those people disillusioned with the real world might opt to stick themselves in what amounts to cybernetic coffins, to live out their (incredibly long or not) natural lives in the 10th generation of "Second Life". And do keep in mind that already, there are those making a living on the current version of Second-Life. So space really just isn't an issue.

Food is the issue-at-hand here. And that, too, isn't an issue: the key to understanding the fundamental flaw in the basis of the Malthusian Argument is that the fundamental belief behind it is that the food-production capacity of the planet is non-fungible; that the soil of the earth is not replaceable -- "There's only so much dirt to go around." And, as Dubais has discovered -- with the rest of the world nigh-unto certain to catch on -- that just ain't so.

So -- to the Aubrey de Gray's of the world: Tinker away, tinker away. This author would love the irony born of reading Isaac Asimov's Bicentennial Man aloud on my 200th Birthday.

Read More:
-- Singularitarianism: The True Religion?
-- Can the Environment Survive the Environmentalists?
-- The Cloned Soul Dilemma & The Calico Solution
-- Egalitarianism At Gunpoint? A Guaranteed Abundance
-- Farming 2.0: Food By Factory?
-- Articles on Bio-Luddism

Maybe We Really Should Welcome Our New Robotic Overlords...

There is a meme going around the internet(s) which, it would seem, just hasn't quite given up the ghost yet -- "I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords." Quite obviously, this is primarily taken as a joke. So more's the joke -- it might just be true.

This blog has asked the question previously, could humanity actually be more free under 'robotic overlords' than under human government? From the article, "Future Government":

This so-called "smart mob" development could be viewed as the early onset or "birthing pangs" as it were of a 'cybernetic society': a society which is quite literally directed by machines. This is a prime example of how a "liberal representative democracy" could wind up being transformed into a culture which is directed -- openly, in this case -- by decision-making machines which are entrusted with the all-mighty knowledge of what is the "will of the people." Regardless of whether this machine actually follows that axiom, it will -- in this scenario -- be following the axiomatic goal previously described: Give everybody the most opportunity to do whatever they want, restrict only those who would prevent others from acting freely.

The trick here is, of course, that previous article only suggested that if it were possible to make an AGI, that it might in fact be a better governor of the course of humanity than we humans are. Even if, however, we never quite get that far -- and there are good reasons not to, this author must admit; even as I disagree with most of them -- there are at least a few elements which might vastly improve the human situation, as it were.

Now, just a few disclaimers for those who haven't studied the issue of robotics and artificial intelligence. First: the "robots taking over the world" a la Rossum's Universal Robots (R.U.R.) -- the story where the word "Robot" itself even comes from, just won't happen. It's a classic case of anthropomorphism; ascribing human values and logos to non-human entities. Second: Asimov's Three Laws are fine for fiction, but it is impossible to build an operating machine off of three strings of language text. Third: If you don't know what the difference is between AGI and AI -- AGI means "Artificial General Intelligence", where AI means "Artificial Intelligence" -- then whatever your idea of intelligent robots or computers may be, it isn't very likely to be accurate. It'd be like trying to predict the effects of gene engineering using only the ideas of Mendel as a guideline. (For further fun on this, take a look at the impact of Lysenkoism; it had a great deal to do with the collapse of the Soviet Republics -- Communist Russia, that is).

And from the available evidence, it would seem that the overwhelming supermajority of people -- globally -- fit into this category. Take, for example, the recent bit of news regarding the development of an ethical code to prevent humans abusing robots, being developed in Korea:

An ethical code to prevent humans abusing robots, and vice versa, is being drawn up by South Korea.

The Robot Ethics Charter will cover standards for users and manufacturers and will be released later in 2007.

It is being put together by a five member team of experts that includes futurists and a science fiction writer.

The South Korean government has identified robotics as a key economic driver and is pumping millions of dollars into research.

[...]

A recent government report forecast that robots would routinely carry out surgery by 2018.

The Ministry of Information and Communication has also predicted that every South Korean household will have a robot by between 2015 and 2020.

In part, this is a response to the country's aging society and also an acknowledgement that the pace of development in robotics is accelerating.

This article mentions that the code would be "based on Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics" -- a sorry state, frankly, for the public awareness to have reached on the issue.

However, this is all somewhat of a distraction from the purpose-at-hand. We all know the major problems involved with the liberal democracies of today; this author, however, will focus primarily on America, as that is the country I know best (being a natural citizen and all). Every day, it seems, is a struggle to obtain real and valid information about what is going on in our nation's capital -- not to mention the state capitals and the city/county/boro government buildings. There is a movement, still essentially in its infancy, to reintroduce the values of "openness" to the government-at-large. A good example of this is the "State Sunshine and Open Records" blog. Another would be the WikiFOIA project, maintained in part by the same people. The basic principle behind such obstinacy and trouble-making is really very simple: how can we know what choices to make, as voting members of the public, if we don't have all the information?

Now -- and this is key -- this same tendency it seems is being exploited by the increasing ubiquitousness of information technology. The patent review office, for example, has decided to create a pilot program for open-to-the-public peer review of patent applications, via a "democratic network" -- a la Digg and Reddit or perhaps more accurately,Slashdot. This was discussed in a few places, but the Patentlyo blog took a better stab at it, apparently, than many others. From the article:

Some of you may know that the PTO is implementing a new 'community patent review' pilot project later this spring. Applications will be published on a website and the general public will have a chance to identify prior art and vote on its relevance to the pending application. The public input will then be given to the Examiner to use. (The Examiner will do his own search and will not be required to use the community-identified art).

It is very much so worth noting that the major companies such as Microsoft do not want this to take off -- it would hurt their ability to exploit government agencies to their benefit. But imagine, for a second; apparently, social-democratic "Web 2.0" websites work well enough for assisting patent-decisions and also to create what has become quite possibly the most comprehensive encyclopedia ever built (Wikipedia, anyone?), so here's the million dollar question: What other government functions could be enhanced or facilitated by public peer-review? If not the writing of new laws, then certainly, codes and regulations could be benefitted by this process; imagine what would happen if an open-to-the-public peer review process were used to increase the clarity of the IRS's tax code regulations, or the EPA's pollution standards. It is a sade state of affairs that as it stands, this may be the closest thing to a vote these things will ever reach: as it stands, agencies like the IRS and the EPA fall solely under the jurisdiction of the Executive Branch, and thus are allowed to create enforceable policies without so much as a how-do-you-do by the public at large.

It is a well-known fact that automation and the information age have "accelerated" the productivity of just about every sector they have touched. So why is it, precisely, that the "governance industry" is sacrosanct from such upgrades? Compared to the irrational bickering and dithering going on in Congress & the Bush (and Clinton) Administrations -- wouldn't a "smart machine" likely do a better job? We created the representative democracy -- the republic -- as a means of overcoming the inability to govern ourselves due to the incredible distances and slowness of communication. The distances and slowness of communication are, every day, less and less a factor. So why is it that we cannot at least have something resembling a say in the everyday governance over, well, us? I say -- let the Patent Review Office's program be a shining beacon to the "streamlining" of government.

Now, all we have to do is overcome the bureaucrats whose fiefdoms will be so endangered by this. I may be an optimist, but I'm no blind idealist -- the odds of this succeeding are somewhat slim, without public outcry and sentiment. So, with that one in mind -- if you agree with the idea of having a say in the things that control your life, and agree with this (partial) solution -- spread this one 'round, 'k?

Read More:
-- Egalitarianism At Gunpoint? A Guaranteed Abundance
-- If Human Memories Could Be Altered: An Ethical Consideration
-- The Singularity Is Here -- But Will We Notice?
-- The Noose Around The Future's Neck: Energy, Environment, Economy, and Equality
-- Articles On Information Suffrage

Ashop Commerce's Shopping Cart Software

There's plenty of "shopping cart" e-commerce software out there -- and like all things, they range greatly. One of these is Ashop Commerce.

I gotta give it to 'em -- they certainly know how to gussy up a website. Their website itself, quite user-friendly. If you're looking for shopping cart software, and aren't too tech-savvy, this one would definitely be a good site to look at.

In reviewing their site, you'll find that the "test drive" examples are at least apparently -- to this non online-store owner/operator -- quite comprehensive. So you can get a good baseline from them. Now, the tests seem a bit buggy; when I attempted to register as a new customer, I received a fatal error message. To a perfectionist like me, that's a bad sign. The biggest clincher, however -- as I'm certain the nearly supermajority of my readers, whom use Firefox -- is the fact that their online store manager does not play nice with Firefox. In fact -- it's IE or Bust.

If it weren't for that, this author is one person who might consider starting up a side-store for the Functionalism In Action site (ambitious and greedy; those contestable "Free Market Capitalist" libertarians are rubbing off on me!) -- but as is, it's a no go.

Still, for the beginning internet user, say someone whom is looking to take that first step beyond E-Bay -- Ashop Commerce might just be the choice for you.

This post brought to you via Smorty.

What Limits, Enhancement? Creatine, Peg Legs, And YOU.

It would be very easy to say that we are now living in the cybernetic age. We have retinal, cochlear, cortical, and brain-stem neural implants that actually send and receive messages. We have prosthetic limbs that react to neural signals and send sensory information back. The question becomes -- what will we do when these things stop merely mitigating loss, and start creating benefit?

Creatine is still making headlines, to this day. Or, at least, definitely as recently as a month ago -- take this one for example: "Creatine Efficacy Headlines At Sports Nutrition Meeting". Cochlear implants -- internal hearing-aids, if you wish -- have been around for a while now. But just recently, a direct implant bypassing the cochleal region and directly stimulating the nerve for hearing was implanted in a young child, in New Zealand:

A three year old New Zealand girl has become the first child in the southern hemisphere to have a hearing device implanted in her brainstem.

Jorja Steel has been profoundly deaf since she contracted meningitis just before her first birthday.

Jorja had the implant inserted during major surgery, which was described as so delicate it could have been fatal. It's been successfully performed on about 30 Australian adults.

The implant is based on the concept of a cochlear implant, but stimulates the hearing nerve where it enters the brain by its small pad of electrode pulses.

Certainly, there's nothing that anyone -- aside from ethicists concerned over potential death for what is seen as "medically unnecessary" -- would complain about in a little girl getting her hearing back. But would the same be true if, say, she were to compete in some hearing-related sport?

The story of Oscar Pistorius, the Olympic-hopeful double-amputee, would indicate otherwise:

It's as if they fear Pistorius is bionic, or that advancements in technology will some day transform every amputee into an elite athlete. That's ludicrous. Pistorius' Cheetahs do not come with batteries. He propels them all by himself. If the IAAF is so intent on barring him from competition, then why not just make a rule saying double amputees are not allowed to compete? Maybe because that would be blatantly discriminatory? The IAAF hopes to be more subtle than that.

Instead of focusing on the so-called competitive advantage Cheetahs give Pistorius, why doesn't the IAAF examine all the inherent disadvantages he has when competing against non-disabled runners? Such as the fact that they have two legs? What about their state-of-the-art shoes? How about their advantage in the starting blocks, where they can push off, using their feet and ankles? If Cheetahs are so great, why aren't able-bodied runners rushing to have their legs cut off?

It is no stretch of the imagination to realize that even if Oscar Pistorius is allowed to compete in the Olympics, eventually we will reach a point where prosthetic legs will be so much more effective for running, compared to traditional flesh-and-bone, that not only will they be banned from the Olympics, but people might want to have them anyhow.

This bears repeating: we seem to be fastly reaching a point where artificial limbs, eyes, ears, and perhaps even organs will be optimal compared to the "real thing".

Again, this rears up the ugly head of that same question: "Where do we draw the line?" Superficially, it seems a relatively easy question to answer: many, many people -- we are told -- feel that while "correction" or "therapy" is okay, out-and-out "enhancement" is just not ethically sound. The best they can do to explain why this is, is to draw out the bio-luddite canard of the ideas and writings of Francis Fukuyama; that any artificial enhancements to the human condition would result in people incapable of having the human experience. While this author is certain the logic in this seems sufficient to most, one has to ask; "So what"? If somebody doesn't want to have human babies -- why should the be required to? We allow men -- and women -- to change gender identities, already; so why is augmentation so much less permissible than alteration?

Back on that topic of non-human, or "designer" as is en vogue, babies -- this has been going around for some time now, and it seems the Fukuyama's of the world have this one somewhat down pat; or at least have set the terms of engagement for the debate itself:

But there is nothing inherent in the technology that limits it to such uses. For example, Dean Hamer presents evidence that the gene for a vesicular monoamine transporter, VMAT2, influences a trait labelled self-transcendence, that is, the “capacity to reach out beyond themselves, to see everything as part of one great totality.”7 He proposes that different versions of VMAT2 lead to different degrees of self-transcendence and, therefore, to different propensities for religious or spiritual belief.

[...]

Some of the most challenging moral and ethical questions about a licence to design babies concern the societies it might lead to. The movie Gattaca depicts a future in which genetically enhanced people take the lead, viewing unenhanced people as fit only to clean up after them. Liberal democracy is a cooperative venture in which all are seen as having something to offer.17 Will genetic enhancement bring this social arrangement to an end, creating societies in which unenhanced people are viewed by their genetic superiors in much the same way that we currently view chimpanzees, suitable for drug testing and zoo exhibits but little else?

As an atheist and non-believer (yes, the two are distinct from one another), the idea of entire populations of people genetically bred to believe -- that is disturbing on some deep levels. But to the latter quoted section, thankfully, we have at least some answer, again taken from the headlines: South Korea Starts Campaign for Robot Rights. Certainly, it remains a dilemma -- but the point is this; we seem to draw the line at facile communication in language, and certainly it is historically inconceivable to redact enfranchisement once granted. (Enfranchisement means having a say in your own life; or voting.) Either way -- for that question to even be the one most asked... bodes ill for those of us with their eye in the sky, when it comes to brighter and better futures, as it were.

So -- where will the line between therapy and enhancement be drawn? This is a question that we will simply have to wait and see what the answer is. But to those of a skeptical mind -- a warning: Do you really want the bullet & bomb-proof supergenious ubermensch ten-ton weightlifters to only be criminals? Is it a good idea for those with greater-than-human capacities to be relegated to the status of "outlaw"? There is an old saying: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Read More:
-- Decoding the Brain
-- The Ethics of Cyberization
-- on Bio-Luddism
-- on Brain/Machine Interfaces
-- on Secularism

What You Know -- It Just Ain't So: Why Facts Can't Win Arguments

It is truly tempting to believe that if you just found the right argument, the right fact, you could convince the masses. That people are reasonable as a group. If history is any guide, however, that just isn't so. There are some people you just can't reach. Depending on the topic, the number is large.

There are a great number of reasons why this is the case -- you could call it whatever you wish, but what it boils down to is something this blog has discussed previously, in a more limited nature. From "Libertarianism vs. Libertarians:

One element worth noting is, as discussed below, is political bias:

The study was carried out during the pre-electoral period of the 2004 presidential election on 30 men, half who described themselves as strong Republicans and half as strong Democrats. During a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan, the subjects were asked to assess contradictory statements by both George W. Bush and John Kerry. The scans showed that the part of the brain associated with reasoning, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, was not involved when assessing the statements. Conversely, the most active regions of the brain were those involved in processing emotions (orbitofrontal cortex), conflict resolution (anterior cingulate cortex) and making judgment about moral accountability (posterior cingulate cortex)

Notice, especially, “The scans showed that the part of the brain associated with reasoning, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, was not involved when assessing the statements.

This piece specifically addressed political bias when confronting specific statements from the two entrenched parties. At least these people, however, were aware of their biases -- even if they thought of their biases as "the gospel truth." This phenomenon, however, is much more deeply present in society at large, and we all play victims to this unending game. Take, for example, this excerpt from today's article from Classically Liberal:

The study concluded that the state of Arizona took in tax revenue of $1.64 billion from immigrant workers while the amount the state spent on immigrants was approximately $1.41 billion leaving a net benefit of $222.6 million to the state coffers. But that is only what they contribute to Arizona’s revenue. They also pay national income taxes and social security taxes. As Shikha Dalmia, a senior analyst at the Reason Foundation noted: “A stunning two-thirds of illegal immigrants pay Medicare, Social Security and personal income taxes.” And while they pay in, under US law they are forbidden to receive the benefits for which they pay. “The only services that illegals can still get are emergency medical care and K-12 education.”

By way of summary: Illegal immigrants, we are told, drain the economy, steal jobs, and overburden the Social Security/Welfare/Safety Net. Yet they are also responsible, en masse, for massive identity theft problem in this nation. Now, it doesn't take a genius to understand that social security and medicare taxes are automatically withheld when someone is working in a position that requires a registered SSN or TIN (Tax Identification Number). And supposedly a supermajority of illegals, say the identity theft "people", are stealing identities so they can work. Keep in mind, they also work jobs that are typically below the threshold for the income tax, which is typically also automatically withheld. What this results in is simple; in terms of levels of taxation based on income, the 'illegals' are in fact the most highly taxed bracket of the population -- specifically because they can never get those funds back. But you'll never hear an anti-immigration person (note that it's never discussed in the media as "anti-illegal-immigration"?) discuss this. In fact, as discussed at CLS (EDIT: so the anti-immigration position could be refuted), they will tell you things quite different. Read the article to see some of the absurdities tossed about -- such as the idea that 60% of all illegal immigrants are working "highly skilled" jobs, yet don't pay taxes at all on that income. And here's the clincher -- most of the people putting out such information -- originally, that is, rather than just repeating it -- know this; yet were even those people themselves to come forward and admit such, those whom were doing the repeating would disregard them, and continue to believe the canard about illegals ("Damn dirty Mexicans" -- or Cubans if you're in Florida) regardless of any new information.

There is a heart-achingly great lack of reason within this country I love -- America, that is -- and that's the easiest way to put it. If there weren't, you wouldn't have things like this come up:

From Time.com: "Superstitious Americans...have gone to great lengths to secure the triple sevens as their wedding date, hoping the lucky numbers will make them lucky in love...It may well be the most popular wedding day in history."

Since the demand for weddings on this date was high, the price for 7/7/07 weddings should also have been high compared to other dates. Thus, only couples willing to pay a superstitious premium got married on 7/7/07. This could provide a great research opportunity. Are superstitious couples, for example, more likely to get divorced? Do they make as intelligent financial decisions as other couples do?

If you think this is harmless, well -- it is, really. But that doesn't change the underlying point. Here's a simple experiment you the reader can perform to test this hypothesis of this author's out: Walk up to any ten people you know believes that the numbers 777 are lucky, and ask them why.You can include yourself if you really want. Tally up the number of those who give you an answer related to this:

So there you have it. The number 777, and its true significance, is immersed in the Kabbalistic occult sciences, such as gematria. Any other meanings attributed to the number 777, apart from the use of gematria, are based in other superstitions and numerology. They are not founded in scripture, nor in biblical mysticism. In fact, the vast majority of explanations for the number that I hear are ones that people make up off of the top of thier heads. So, good luck with that.

Then tally up the people with different answers. If the number of people who recognize the Kabbalistic origin of the number 777 is greater than the number of people who don't, then congratulations -- you win a cookie. Now, a follow-on question for those same ten people: ask how many of them think that the occult is the work of the devil, without having explained the origin of the number 777 to them. If you get even 1 person who believes 777 is lucky but thinks the occult is of the devil or something like that, then you owe me a cookie. Somehow this author expects he'll have some surplus cookies.

The point is simple; people take to beliefs and ideas without really examining them. Socrates would turn in his grave to see today's culture. While it's nothing new or unique, it is enduring, and it is problematic.

And here's the sad conclusion from this: So long as beliefs come before reason, it will never matter how many facts are on your side. If you disagree with the beliefs, you might as well be the villain of the story. If you disbelieve this, consider the following: there have been -- and you can "google" this for yourself, or use the -- calls to label global warming deniers as criminals, simply for uttering the words. (To be precise, this has occurred in other nations.) Regardless of whether global warming is anthropogenic or not, such behavior is inexcusable; it undermines the entire scientific process.

So, those of you who believe that you have a truth or a fact that the public-at-large disagrees with -- and this author is one such -- here's the million-dollar question; one that both libertarians and transhumanists both face: How do we convince the "unwashed, teeming masses"?

Read More:
-- Can the Environment Survive the Environmentalists?
-- A Martyr Complex Too Many?
-- Secular Morality: Contradiction in Terms, or Best Hope For Humanity?