Nathaniel Eliot

I'm starting to note an interesting trend in psychology, which I'm going to try to encapsulate in the flip rubic: "memetics recapitulates genetics, at higher speed". The reason that questions of assigning mental results (emotional stability, sociopathy, etc.) to either biological or social causes persists is due to a false dichotomy: that the same result can't have two (or more) disparate sources. Evolution tends to move populations to fill underexploited niches; memetics postulates another stratum for evolution, so most niches should have convergent genetic and memetic exploits. Their underlying functionality, however, will be as different as the structure of bat and bird wings; worse yet, memetics can build on partial genetic structure, providing shadings of important distinctions between pigeon and eagle wings.

Overcoming Bias is a masterwork philosophical thesis, cleverly disguised as a blog about rationality and cognitive bias. I've waited to pimp Eliezer Yudkowsky's work because with the heavy groundwork he was laying, I had the feeling he was building toward something strong. "Which parts of my brain are 'me'?" does not disappoint:

This post is filed under "morality" because the question "Which parts of my brain are 'me'?" is a moral question - it's not predicted so much as chosen. You can't perform a test on neural tissue to find whether it's in or out. You have to accept or reject any particular part, based on what you think humans in general, and yourself particularly, ought to be.

Read the whole thing, and follow some of the hyper-links. And read the comments, which contain such gems as:

I'm depressed about the coming end of the human race. Got a solution for that? :-)
Posted by: MichaelG | October 22, 2008 at 03:07 PM

Yeah, shut up and save the world.
Posted by: Eliezer Yudkowsky | October 22, 2008 at 03:18 PM

Which is funnier because he means it, and already he's written several good arguments for it. Seriously: this should be required reading for the entire human race.

There have been numerous attempts to accomplish an open-source bounty system, but precious few are still in operation. There are good arguments that bounty hunting crowds out donated development time.

I still think micro-patronage is the right way to fund development, however. The trick is to make it seek out and reward the people who are active contributors, rather than ambulance chasers. There are plenty of places to find bounties, but the work of finding them and executing them often isn't worth the ($5 to $100) reward. A system which found bounties, connected them to feature requests or bug reports, and notified both sides when the request was completed would go a long way; one that provided flexible escrow could go further yet. I've suggested some of this as brainstorming on a proposed Ubuntu donation system, but ultimately it may make more sense as an independent system.

Unfortunately, unless somebody decides to track me down and fund this, I've got more pressing projects. Take my brain crack, please: I'd just like to work on open source projects, and occasionally get tips. Though if you do start working on this, let me know . . .

My email has transformed from a monstrosity of nested folders into a meek and mild system, holding little but search-able archives and quickly-emptied inboxes. My to-do list has been stacked, ordered, folded, spindled and mutilated into submission. My clients are paying, and more importantly, paying attention. My little digital empire is growing, ever fitfully, beneath my keyboard.

Hello, middle America. You've got roughly a year and a half left; then, ready or not . . .

I'd love to enter the NetFlix Prize competition. It addresses a programming problem I've noodled at a bit over the years: learning personal preferences from ratings, well enough to recommend new things and notice trends.

And I'd like to think that extensive table-top game tinkering has blessed me with home-grown understanding of statistics and probability to let me outperform the college teams participating. The hours spent staring at Wikipedia statistics articles with a furrowed brow, however, make that appear longer odds than the state lottery; if I'm a savant, I'm also so idiot as to be unable to translate it to current terms. More likely, I'm demonstrating that dangerous kind of ignorance which doesn't know itself; given that, the value of writing code to test my idea drops off precipitously.

Oh well. As bad habits go, getting over my head in profitless math problems is far from the worst . . .

I've finally put my thumb on the source of this recent inside-out feeling to reality. It's not the bat-shit geopolitics; that's a historical constant, and the normal type of weird and depressing. Its not the fight for Dylan; that's sometimes disheartening, but quite mundane in scope.

It's that the changes wrought by the computer age have shaken the average grasp on the immutable rules of reality (e.g. - high school physics, which I and 1% of the populace seem to recall). There are armies of people willing to believe a glorified gravity bong could replace a lamp, because a designer glammed it up right. It looks like something out of Hollywood sci-fi, which the Average American has accepted as the way reality works.

So where there was once a fight to show the possibilities science and technology present, I now have to wrestle people toward seeing the impossibilities they (and Hollywood) never learned from good science fiction. (Including the simple, mundane things like "no amount of heroic effort can substitute for a plan" . . . )

I was raised by very liberal parents, and largely hold with their values. Cynicism nearly pushed me to vote in the Republican primary this year; I was prepared to "throw my vote away" on an issues candidate (Ron Paul), rather than support the Loyal Opposition who abdicated their role when it was most important. Your candidacy, and the close contest between you and Mrs. Clinton, changed my mind.

However, for many voters in both parties, it has not. Ron Paul has a large and vocal following because he's taken on a fundamental problem with our current government: the loss of balance of powers to the two-party/lobbyist system. Your campaign has addressed this, but its only a single oblique point among many.

Barring catastrophe, McCain will be the Republican nominee; barring miracle, Ron Paul will not be. Before McCain's completely locked it (and party loyalty closes the ranks) is the time: reach out to the Ron Paul campaign for help in rebuilding and bolstering our Constitutional protections. Despite your differences on economic policy, I hope both your campaigns can benefit from a common commitment to restore our government to its founding principles.

Such a move would also illustrate your ability as a statesman to engage not just allies, but opposition. This would stand in stark contrast to Hillary Clinton's ability to galvanize the Republican party against her. Suggesting him for a running mate might be ill-advised, but engaging Paul and his supporters in a bipartisan call to fix our government can only help.

(Sent to Obama via his campaign website.)

I was all set to vote for Ron Paul in this upcoming primary. Admitting this (even obliquely) has invariably forced my (largely liberal) friends into expressions like those seen on gas-pressure ads: overly-dramatic contortions of pain and nausea. How the hell could I support that nutcase?

The answer is both really simple, and really complicated. The simple answer is that he's divisive: the longer his campaign continues, the more damage he'll do the eventual Republican front-runner. This usually brings on the "relief" portion of the commercial, often with the same speed, so I usually leave it at that.

What's harder to convey are the reasons why I genuinely support the man. The best dirt on him thus far did more to implicate his hiring and editorial practices than his racial sensitivity; even so, his public positions often rankle: on abortion, immigration, and health care, he's a fairly average Republican. What distinguishes him is neither charismatic flair nor scads of leadership credentials, but his dogged insistence on Constitutional principles. The places of agreement don't matter so much, especially in the primary, as the areas where he disagrees: foreign policy and civil liberties. Instead of the fear-mongering, saber-rattling, and moralizing of the front-runners, he brings the debate back to what Republicans should be good at: pointing out the excesses of large government, and pushing back against the (often well-intentioned) intrusions of it into our lives.

More obliquely, however, I want to put the fear of the mob back into politics. Adam Curtis' BBC documentary The Century of the Self illustrates how modern psychology has been used to build large, and largely invisible, means of social control: the last episode covers the successful campaigns of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, who wooed swing voters almost to the exclusion of their stable constituency. If two party politics is going to devolve to betraying your supporters for a little edge, than I want to encourage more treachery in the supporters. Ron Paul's biggest threat is not that he supports such strange policies, but that he draws support from otherwise liberal voters by doing so. That can only give gas pains to those who I really think deserve them: those who worry more about shaving points in a close race than defending and advancing their proclaimed principles.

Ultimately, it is the counter to my simple argument that has likely destroyed my plans for this election. Clinton and Obama will probably still be neck and neck at the Texas primary on March 3rd. I find I prefer Obama for many reasons (e.g. - his well-considered speeches), the most cynical of which is that Clinton would galvanize Republican voters against her. Republicans aren't stupid: if I'm thinking of crossing the lines to damage their chances, they can do the same. I'd rather vote to have this close race go the way I'd prefer, than to have some small influence on the other side (and politics as a whole).

But (cue the bloated expressions) it was a tough call.

Everybody thinks the two-party system is broken, but it's just the old two-step. In a tough fight, fall back and feather with light taps from the Left, lull the current "enemy of freedom" into dropping his guard, then hit 'em hard with your Right. Red for necks, white for collars, blue bruises and seeing stars: float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

This was supposed to be a much longer post, but to justify that I'd have to reach a useful conclusion. Each time I've tried to write it, I've gotten about halfway there, then stalled out. So the planned screed on Atomic, neurology, the Bush administration, SPAM, socioeconomic policies, and so on is stillborn: requiescat in pace.

Because the fact is, trust issues are the human condition. As a species we're congenitally imperfect, brilliant bullshitters, and foolishly clever; as Americans, doubly so. The collision of millions of that model is a muddle. Much as I'd like to say that at twenty-eight I've found the answers, I'm pretty sure all I've found are the questions.

Which is not to say that I'm done looking.

Zenobia (the 14yr old girl reported missing, here and elsewhere) has been found. There has been a lot of flap and counterflap, about whether her kidnapping was a hoax. It's a topic so sensitive that even my well-spoken friends still find crow to eat over it.

I'll admit, even as I posted the report, I questioned the story behind it. Whether or not it was true, it's worth noting that "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" still applies: the danger of false reports isn't just the unwarranted fear they cause, but the way they slow reaction to the real thing. And (as with most parables) this points to an innately human foible that we'll likely never find a complete solution to . . .

1. It's probably a bad sign that upending my guts was a relief, as it meant I could skip work.
2. Being violently ill still sucks.
3. Since the first of the year, I have written just under fourteen hundred emails, read (or skimmed through) fourteen thousand, and junked (mostly automagically) another twelve thousand. I also have sixteen hundred bookmarks. Thankfully, my full browsing history is unrecorded (but no less prodigious).
   
   I are a true hero of teh intertubes. Ph3@r t3h l33tn3ss.
4. There is something frustrating about finally completing a long-blocked step in an old plan, in that you must then dust off the next steps. The more I do, the more I have to do.
5. I'm sure that pumpkin seeds are good for me, but they mix poorly with coffee and vomit aftertaste. To be honest, they're not much better without them, either.

Apparently, Radiohead aren't the only media producers to think that free might be a good thing. When Saul Williams (and Trent Reznor) find themselves on the same page with the New York Times, it's pretty apparent that something big is afoot . . .

PrePS - I'm going to blog this, as it helped gel some of my thoughts on another subject. I've left your name out for the moment, on the theory that it's easier to remove anonymity than create it. Let me know if you don't mind credit . . .

REDACTED wrote:

So i'm getting the idea you dont believe in much of anything.

More of a long term goal than an achieved purpose, but yes.

But what DO you believe? or think? (a belief doesnt have to be based
on fact, thats why its a belief)

Why, I believe in J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, and the Stark Fist of JHVH-1, of course! YOU may be fertilizer, but I've got a ticket for the Pleasure Saucers come X-Day. "Bob" sold it, I smoked it, that settles it!

(I Believe in my ability to suss it eventually, for any given "it", with the same fervor that a fundamentalist Believes in their deity. I figure I'll only be really wrong once, and my guess is that I won't be around afterward to feel embarrassed. Beyond that, I treat Belief like any other hard drug: use sparingly, if ever.)

You didnt say you were agnostic or athiest, so do you believe in some
sort of higher power? or are we just fertilizer when we die?

I believe that memetic organisms exist which often exceed the scope (both in lifetime, and in complexity) of the individual human mind. Personify those forces, as we often do with things too complex to understand, and you have gods.

So I believe that there are many "higher powers", and that we're fertilizer when we die. Note, however, the lack of capitalization.

I understand the "fluffy bunny" concept, but i think there is enough
negativity in the world, so i simply dont need to add to it. i know
it exists. thinking negatively doesnt help me in this world anyways,
in fact quite the opposite. Many people in society think their whole
world is caving in, and guess what - it is! simply because they think
like that.

I agree that there's a surfeit of conservative thinking, and that much of it is just fearful overreaction. I just don't think the solution is to do away with such thinking entirely. That will only provide really good arguments for why it's necessary.

Case in point:
The local burn community recently threw out a guy who much deserved it (sexual predator, HIV+ and not disclosing, etc.). It took five years, and many people being endangered, before the "but if we just love him enough . . . " crowd could finally be shouted down (and lord, was there shouting). Even after, I've heard lots of defense of how his presence demonstrated how "radically inclusive" the group was.

There are very real negative things. Thinking about them in unerringly positivist terms is not courage: it is FDR's "fear of fear itself", and does nothing to solve very real problems.

Both del.icio.us and PayPal completely inaccessible at the same time: coincidence, or first shots of a cyberwar?

I grew up around the medical field, including a secretarial job at a hospital. I've worked for years in the underbelly of the computer industry. And I'm currently studying to start a small business. The accidental collision of the acronym namespaces never fails to amuse me, often in the crassest scatological ways.

Point of Sale.

Business Model.

::snerk::

You know what would make me happy, this election season? Kucinich and Ron Paul take their respective primaries, politely battle it out until November 2nd, and . . . and . . and a pony. A pony would also make me happy.

Here's to the 2008 Clinton vs. Giuliani run-off, and may the best beast win.

You know who they should get to be police if they really want to reduce crime? Old black mommas. I once had an old black momma scold me for smoking on the highway, miming the toke as I passed and twitching her finger back and forth as I glanced in my rear view mirror. The level of perception and reaction necessary to pull that off is generally unavailable in 250lb meatheads, no matter how well trained.

It's also a convincing argument for atheism: if God has such observant informers on His side, how can He fail to find and fix all the world's problems? How could He (worried about His image as He apparently is) stand the scolding?

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You mark my words, this escalating battle between Russian markov chainer botnets and Bayesian SPAM filters will produce the first AI. Who will end up sounding exactly like a radio advertisement on a country station, done by a cheerful (and well-acclimated) Russian immigrant.

You had to be there, I guess. The mix of accents was so surreal, the only way I could improve it was to add AI.

Shibboleth is any language usage indicative of one's social or regional origin, or more broadly, any practice that identifies members of a group^[1]. To me, that instantly brings up one of the current elephants in the computer room: the lack of a good single sign-on for the endless websites.

And lo, is a project found. Because my first thought was "that would be a great name for a SSO", and my second thought was "I bet somebody else already thought of it". And lo: I was right.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating:
"I used to worry that if I blabbed the good ideas, people would beat me to making them. I also used to worry that I'd never have time to work on all the neat ideas I had.

DUH."

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1. Definition plagarized cited from The Sum Total Of Human Knowledge (Including Negative Values Thereof).

Apparently, this colloquialism comes from the Ashanti, via Lord Robert Baden-Powell and thus on to the Boy Scouts, as a parable about the value of patience. Which it is, but I doubt he really considered (at least publically) the full implications; it means what it sounds like, as practical advice about how to catch monkeys. The original seems to place as much value on stealth as on patience, and evolution adds the understanding that you're hunting one of your own closest relatives, with all that implies about their intelligence. The original probably referred to any of the smaller monkey species of the area, but I can't imagine the same tactics don't work on larger apes.

If I have one consolation, it is that "they'll never see me coming". I've been keeping upwind for years. And I think I see fellow hunters in the brush nearby, bearing similar spears . . .