Chess players and computer security professionals learn a hard lesson early in their careers: you must assume that your adversary will behave intelligently, not that he will behave stupidly. You must judge your plans not against what your wildest dreams, but against what will happen if a smart opponent attempts to thwart your actions.

Similarly, when judging the proposal that the government undertake some action, one must consider what will happen if real-world bureaucrats, not saintly geniuses, execute the plan, and what will happen if an array of real world forces interfere with it.

For example, consider the dream a number of neo-conservatives had when they dreamed up the idea that a strong U.S. should re-shape the Middle East by invading selected countries and imposing democracy by force majeur. (This isn't a conspiracy theory — the idea was written about in public even before the 2000 elections.)

Now, it is all fine and well to daydream about our military might sweeping aside dictatorships without loss of life, and of crowds of cheering people, freed of decades of tyranny, greeting us with bouquets of flowers in the streets, and immediately setting up Western style democracies.

However, in the real world, we have a military that is not run or staffed exclusively by saintly geniuses. Opponents are also unlikely to cooperate with our plans — they will seek the most effective possible means to thwart us, and sometimes, they'll be able to find such strategies.

We must therefore not judge plans against our hopes and dreams, but against what is likely to happen in the real world. Indeed, the prudent planner judges a plan not only against the best case scenario but against a worst case scenario, because sometimes the worst case, not the best case, is what happens.

When examining a proposed government action, we must be especially skeptical, since there is no mechanism that will act as a check on poor performance. In the free market, companies that fail to meet their customer's needs go bankrupt, but governments are funded by taxation and have no such limitation. A CEO can claim in public all he likes that he was not responsible for "unforeseen circumstances" but pleading will not save his company from dissolution. If, however, a military commander's mistakes result in massive deaths, or if a bureaucrat's mistakes result in vast waste and the failure of a program, it is unlikely that they will be punished or that their work will be terminated. Instead, if they argue well, they might even get additional resources committed. In the commercial world, the best run organizations get more resources with time, and the worst run disappear. In government, the most politically astute organizations get more resources with time, and often especially if they have failed at their missions, while the best run organizations have no particular mechanism that rewards them or increases their scope.

This is the reason that you rarely wait for long on line at the supermarket, and it usually has what you want in stock. This is also the reason that you can wait interminably at the DMV or a similar government office, only to be told that you have to come back with additional forms the next day.

The next time someone says to you "wouldn't it be great if the government enacted my pet idea...", ask yourself what would happen in the real world if the government attempted to execute "the perfect plan", and not what would happen in the word of one's fondest dreams. In the end, the government will not do you want; it will instead do what the political process permits.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-09-09T23_56_12.html 2004-09-09T23:56:12-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics great post on the subject of war and liberty. It is a series of extended quotations from an essay on the subject by F.A. Harper, the founder of IHS. It is long, but I recommend giving it a read.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-09-09T17_55_53.html 2004-09-09T17:55:53-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics, Economics Michael Crichton was just the author of some sensationalist novels (including a recent one called "Prey" that does for nanotechnology a bit of what "Little Shop of Horrors" did for dentistry). It turns out, though, that he's got some interesting opinions:

There is no Eden. There never was. What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago. When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden?

I suggest reading the whole speech, which is about the environmental movement. I can't agree with all of it, and I spotted some factual errors, but overall, I found it refreshing.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-09-09T12_46_54.html 2004-09-09T12:46:54-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology "Statistics and Aliens" where I claimed that the Drake Equation, a famous way of estimating the number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy, may be wrong because it assumes statistical independence. I also noted that the possibility that we would be able to intercept the internal communications of other civilizations seems remote to me because information theory dictates that the better the technology, the more noise-like a communication will seem.

I've now found an article in New Scientist from a few weeks ago in which Frank Drake himself notes that our own technologies are making us harder and harder for aliens to hear (and thus presumably their technologies might make it hard for us to hear them), though the article doesn't mention the same information theoretic grounds that I do.

Also, so far as I know, I've seen no one else who questions the assumption of statistical independence in the Drake equation, which seems strange. Is anyone aware of another source that mentions that problem?]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-09-09T12_10_54.html 2004-09-09T12:10:54-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics, Economics A newspaper article pointed out to me by my old friend Harry Hawk notes that New Hampshire has the highest median income and lowest poverty rate in the nation.

New Hampshire also has no income tax or state sales tax. This web page shows that it has a lower state tax burden than any other state in the country other than Alaska (and Alaska largely funds its state government by taxing oil production).

Coincidence?]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-09-09T11_04_00.html 2004-09-09T11:04:00-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics most vicious mass murderers in human history, Mao Zedong, died of natural causes. He was responsible for the deaths of as many as 65 million of his countrymen — a number that makes Adolf Hitler look like an amateur.

For details on the crimes of Mao and other 20th century Communist leaders, see "The Black Book of Communism", available at Amazon.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-09-08T23_37_44.html 2004-09-08T23:37:44-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology Vernor Vinge came up with an interesting observation.

At some point in the next few decades, we're going to be able to build artificial intelligences that are comparable to human beings in intellectual power. Moore's Law being what it is, soon thereafter, we'll be able to build AIs that are smarter than people, and pretty soon after that, those AIs will be building yet further AIs that are far smarter than people, and so forth.

It is possible that before we learn how to build AIs, we'll first learn how to perform "intelligence amplification" or "IA", augmenting human brains with electronics or other mechanisms to produce intelligences that are better than human. Such amplified humans would be able to work on improving the amplification technologies, which may also lead to massively superhuman intelligences.

It is possible that the first superhuman intelligences will merely be faster versions of human intelligence implemented by simulating the human brain on a very fast hardware platform. Vinge calls this "weak" superhumanity, but it is still potentially quite impressive. K. Eric Drexler in his fantastic (but somewhat dated) book "Engines of Creation" (also available online), presents a mechanism for simulating a human brain, using a conservative nanotechnological design, that would run about a million times faster than a human brain. Such a being could perform a century's worth of engineering work in less than an hour. Presumably such minds might improve their own hardware designs with breathtaking speed. Drexler's design is a pure gedankenexperiment — no one is likely to ever build the precise construct he describes, but since it there is solid evidence that it could be built, it tells us that at least such a construct is possible, even if far better could be made.

Vinge notes that once there are intelligences that are substantially smarter than people, and which rapidly become smarter still, the world will rapidly change beyond all human comprehension. The limits of human intelligence will no longer be limit the speed of technological progress, and humans will no longer be the apex of our civilization.

Vinge wrote a famous essay some years ago on this topic, coining the term "The Singularity" for it. Once superhuman intelligence appears, our models of the future and our ability to predict what lies ahead get irreparably ruptured. No dog, however clever, will ever understand integral calculus, and it is equally unlikely that humans would understand the science and technologies of beings far smarter than we are. (Vinge's essay is very well written — I encourage people to give it a read.)

Vinge notes in his essay (as of 1993) that he would be surprised if such changes happened before 2005 or much later than 2030, but the dates are immaterial in my opinion. Whether such events happen in ten years or in a hundred years, the impact will be the same, and thirty years or a century are both a blink of an eye in the context of the whole of human history.

Do I believe Vinge? Very much so. Human intelligence is the result of physical processes taking place in the brain, and we will thus someday be able to simulate those processes with machines. We will likely also design machines that produce the same effect by different means, much as cars are not like horses but also provide transportation. To claim that we could never gain such abilities is to claim that human intelligence arises from a supernatural "soul" of some sort, and I see such overwhelming evidence against that claim that I cannot give it even passing credence. That which arises from a physical process we can eventually simulate and understand, and that which we can simulate and understand we can improve. Whether we enter the post-human era today, tomorrow or in two centuries is immaterial — it will happen eventually if we don't kill ourselves off first.

This brings us to the topic of Bruce Sterling.

Sterling has recently made vague attacks on Vinge's arguments in two public fora. One such attack was a speech he gave to the Long Now Foundation (available here). Today, I was pointed at an opinion piece in Wired with much the same content.

Here's an excerpt from the Wired essay:

A singularity looks great in special f/x, but is there any substance in the idea? When Vinge first posed the problem, he was concerned that the imminent eruption in artificial intelligence would lead to ubermenschen of unfathomable mental agility. More than a decade later, we still can't say with any precision what intelligence is, much less how to build it. If you fail to define your terms, it is easy to divide by zero and predict infinite exponential evolution. Sure, computers might someday awaken into something resembling human consciousness, but we have no metrics to describe that awakening and thus no objective way to recognize it if it happens. How would you test a claim like that?

Sterling misrepresents Vinge's essay on the singularity completely. Vinge made no claims to understand intelligence, but his argument does not require that we understand it precisely. Vinge never claimed that such breakthroughs would have happened by now, and his argument in no way requires a particular timetable. He made no claims about "infinite exponential evolution", either.

"Consciousness" is also a red herring. Asking "how would you test a claim like that" is clearly the wrong question to ask — Vinge's claim is not about "consciousness" and there is no need to test the "consciousness" of the superhuman intelligences. We will know if they are more intelligent than us by their actions, such as building constructs we cannot understand, and whether they are "conscious" or not is immaterial to the argument.

Sterling's tone throughout is laden with indirection. He doesn't ever come out and say "I think the Singularity is implausible for the following reasons" — much like astrologers or the Oracle of Delphi, he avoids making specific claims and thus can't be found to be obviously wrong.

The comments he does make, though, seem stunningly off the mark:

Even if machines remain inert and dumb, we still might provoke a singularity by giving humans a superboost. This notion is catnip for the techno-intelligentsia: "Wow, if we brainy geeks were even more like we already are, we'd be godlike!" Check out the biographies of real-life geniuses, though - Newton, Goethe, da Vinci, Einstein - and you find vulnerable mortals who have difficulty maintaining focus. If the world were full of da Vincis, we'd all be quarrelsome, gay, left-handed Italians who couldn't finish a painting.

Glib, but I hardly see what it has to do with Vinge's argument at all. Either minds are a physical phenomenon, and gedankenexperiments such as Drexler's point to ways that we might produce faster (and possibly "better") minds than our own, or they aren't physical phenomena and cannot be understood or simulated. Perhaps Sterling claims the mind does not arise from a physical phenomenon, though that would seem to be solidly contradicted by the science of our day. Perhaps he believes artificial intelligence research is forever doomed to fail even if the mind arises from physical phenomena, though I see little reason to assume that either. Perhaps he truly believes that all superhuman intelligences would be crippled by Attention Deficit Disorder, but that is a pretty implausible claim, and he certainly gives no evidence for it. Perhaps he finds the idea of people exploring this avenue of research distasteful or perhaps he hates smart people (the "brainy geeks" comment seemed a bit anti-intellectual), but any such distaste doesn't appear to have any relevance to whether Vinge is right or not.

Unfortunately, Sterling makes no arguments in any of these directions. He merely insinuates. Since he's fairly non-specific about what it is that he's claiming, one can't be completely sure of what it is that he believes.

What Sterling lacks in specificity, however, he makes up for in irrelevant and fairly bizarre side commentary, such as this:

More likely yet, we live in a dull, self-satisfied, squalid eddy in history, blundering around with no concept of progress and no sense of direction. We have no idea what we really want from our own lives or from society. And no Moore's law rising majestically on any 2-D graph is ever going make us magnificent or spiritual when we lack the will, vision, and appetite for spiritual magnificence.

None of this, of course, in any way intersects with Vinge's arguments in the slightest. It is a complete non-sequitur.

In spite of the fact that Sterling's final paragraphs are in no way relevant to his claims about the ides of the Singularity, I still must take issue with them. I don't see our society making "no progress" or being particularly "squalid". Frankly, it is amazing how much we've done even in the last couple of decades to reduce poverty, disease and other human ills. Virtually any objective measure one chooses to pick, from life expectancy among the poorest 20% of the population to the number of people living without indoor plumbing, will show that pretty clearly.

I also have to admit that I have no particular desire in my life for the "spiritual". If by "spiritual" he means religion, I have no belief in the supernatural, and no desire to see society waste more of its time on such flim-flam. If by "spiritual" he means not enough people share his particular tastes for art or architecture, well, a person who truly appreciates human freedom does not deny others the right to their own taste.

Of course, as I've noted, since Sterling is extremely vague, it is hard to know what he means with any precision. What I can say, though, is that he appears to have failed to make a coherent case against the idea of the Singularity.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-09-07T15_00_11.html 2004-09-07T15:00:11-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology an entry describing a very interesting article in IEEE spectrum about aging. The article analyzes the aging process in terms of the discipline of reliability engineering, which is an interesting new approach. See Allan's blog or the article itself for details. A more detailed paper is available here.

I'm pleased to see that the problem of preventing aging is finally beginning to get serious attention from a variety of researchers, and that it is even being discussed in mainstream technical and scientific publications.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-09-07T14_27_59.html 2004-09-07T14:27:59-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics in a very short but well written piece, if Iraq isn't Vietnam all over again.

In other news, CNN Reports:

There have been 1,126 coalition deaths, 999 Americans, 65 Britons, six Bulgarians, one Dane, two Dutch, one Estonian, one Hungarian, 19 Italians, one Latvian, 10 Poles, one Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and eight Ukrainians, in the war in Iraq as of September 7, 2004

That means that very soon, some lucky bastard will be the 1,000th U.S. soldier killed in combat in Iraq. This is likely to happen within the next 24 hours.

Will the media notice?

[NB: The link to CNN above is updated periodically with the casualty count, so it may have higher numbers than the ones mentioned by the time you click on it.]]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-09-07T13_52_28.html 2004-09-07T13:52:28-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology reminded me of a study done a few years ago that debunks the placebo effect. I'm pretty surprised that it hasn't gotten more attention, especially since it has a lot of implications for the question of whether the mind can have significant impacts on the health of the body. I similarly note a study announced a couple of months ago that debunks the notion that elderly people can delay their own deaths until after major holidays.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-09-07T13_22_33.html 2004-09-07T13:22:33-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics, Economics "The Machinery of Freedom" by David Friedman to a friend who never returned it. Recently, I re-purchased it, and over this past weekend, while I was vacationing in the countryside, I re-read it for the first time in about 15 years.

I had forgotten how wonderful it is. It is one of the most important texts on libertarianism out there.

"The Machinery of Freedom" is structured as a series of short essays, all discussing a small part of the overall picture. Each is a small jewel. The essays are not academically rigorous — Friedman claims that such a style tends to interfere with coherent presentation of an argument, and I think he's correct. What the essays lack in academic depth, however, they make up for in clear argumentation and grand vision.

As I re-read each essay, I was stunned by how closely the ideas corresponded to my own world view. I kept wondering if I had held these opinions before reading the book, or if I had so thoroughly assimilated them years ago that I could no longer distinguish their origin. I suspect the latter. Although I was a libertarian before reading "The Machinery of Freedom", it is obvious that it profoundly effected my thinking. My belief that the state is likely superfluous certainly originated with Friedman's arguments.

Although David Friedman professes to feel that libertarianism is superior morally as well as pragmatically, he takes a pragmatic/utilitarian approach throughout on the basis that such arguments are more convincing than moral arguments. The result may have been a stronger one than he had intended — many of his disciples, such as myself, have long since ceased to make the argument for libertarianism on any sort of moral terms at all. Perhaps someday Friedman will write a book on moral philosophy and reverse the unintentional effect he has had on so many of us.

I've started reading Friedman's newer book "Law's Order", a text on the economic analysis of law. I may review it here in the next few weeks.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-09-01T22_28_52.html 2004-09-01T22:28:52-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Miscellanea Illuminatus Trilogy, co-written by Discordian Robert Anton Wilson. One of them even wore a Sacred Chao shirt to last Sunday's anti-Bush march in New York City.

This lead me to poke around on the net a bit after R.A.W.'s latest doings.

He has his own web site these days, which is a bit of a mixed bag. However, it links to the web site for his Guns and Dope Party, which among other things advocates replacement of 1/3rd of the U.S. Congress with ostriches. So far, I agree vigorously with the whole of their platform. I give them a thumbs up.

R.A.W. also has a Cafe Press shop where you can buy such wondrous swag as the "Hannibal Lecter for White House Physician" baseball hat.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-09-01T19_20_48.html 2004-09-01T19:20:48-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics My friends and I started out with breakfast in the East Village at 9am, after which we joined a feeder march going to the main protest at 10am. We joined the main march at about noon, at which point the streets on the West Side were already so clogged that no forward progress was possible. It is unclear how many people were part of the protest — it was certainly in the hundreds of thousands, but no one ever seems to use accurate methods of crowd counting to determine the real numbers. The claims range from 150,000 to 500,000.

The biggest problem of the day was the heat — everyone was baking in the sun, and bottled water was sweating out of people nearly as fast as they could drink it. The fact that the march was barely moving and that the only breezes were stirred by police helicopters did not help. We moved very, very slowly up Seventh Avenue to Madison Square Garden, and then turned right onto 34th street at about 3:30. My group of friends decided that we were not interested in being herded like cattle downtown, so we took the subway up to Central Park and joined the "unauthorized" protest there.

The park was great fun. It was filled with thousands of people peacefully enjoying a Sunday afternoon. The libertarians were out there (as I have noted, I met the LP Presidential candidate briefly and thanked him for running), as were lots of other groups.

The Billionaires for Bush were out in force at the park, looking incredibly well dressed as always. This has been a big week for them, including their Million Billionaires March, their Vigil for Corporate Welfare, and a Coronation Ball. I don't agree with all of their politics beyond disliking Bush — they're fairly standard Democrats — but I wholeheartedly admire their tactics. There are few groups I've seen in some time who get across a message with better humor and verve than they do. The evening wear, the shouts of "four more wars!", and the buttons (which all claim in small print to be produced with sweat shop labor) are terrific street theater. It is a great shame that libertarians rarely achieve the levels of zest and fun that folks like the Bs for B have.

My group finally left the park and got dinner on the Upper West Side around 7pm, and I got home, showered and collapsed well before 9. I was so wiped out that I slept for eleven hours.

Throughout the day's activities, we were shadowed by police helicopters and a police blimp. (Yes, a blimp, equipped with surveillance cameras with high powered lenses.) We were also surrounded by huge numbers of police at every turn. However, for the most part, everything Sunday was about as peaceful as you could imagine. There was one point where a paper Chinese Dragon was lit on fire near us, but other than that, no evidence of anything untoward.

On Friday, though, the police arrested bicycle borne protesters by the hundreds. On Sunday, they arrested a lot of the gays who held kiss-ins in front of theaters where the delegates were seeing shows — reportedly the pretext was "obstructing the sidewalks" but it seemed pretty lame as excuses go. They also arrested a lot of folks on Tuesday. The claim is that they've now well exceeded the numbers detained at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

The police have been pretty low on violence as these things go, but they haven't been overly friendly, either. They've apparently been using a considerable amount of trickery as part of their crowd control arsenal. It seems one common tactic has been to "agree" to let people march along certain routes and then to arrest them when, obeying "instructions", they violated the law. Another trick which was apparently used with cyclists on Sunday was to force them the wrong way up a one-way street and then to arrest them for riding against traffic. I suppose this is all yet more evidence for what every citizen should already know — the police can and will lie to you if it suits them.

The police have also apparently been detaining people not in the usual city jail facilities, but in a semi-converted pier on the West side. Reputedly the floor in the holding area is covered in dirt and motor oil and there aren't any places to sit or lie down. Some arrestees have been detained for periods of 24 to 36 hours before being booked and released, which is pretty unusual, especially considering that they're all being held for the most minor offenses. There is speculation that this is part of the police tactics, but of course there is no way to actually know.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-09-01T18_43_39.html 2004-09-01T18:43:39-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics, Economics entry over at Cafe Hayek that points out, quite poignantly, that the division of labor has improved the material conditions we live under beyond all recognition.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-29T21_01_13.html 2004-08-29T21:01:13-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics "unauthorized" protest in Central Park, where I got a picture of myself shaking hands with the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate Michael Badnarik.

I took a couple hundred pictures today, some of them moderately interesting, but I'm so worn out I can't stay awake any longer (and it is only 8:45pm), so I'll blog more extensively about these events tomorrow.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-28T22_01_31.html 2004-08-28T22:01:31-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics A thread has started over at Samizdata about my recent entries on foreign policy and national defense from a libertarian perspective. I welcome the opportunity to explore these issues further.

A few quick notes about some of the responses I received:

First, one gentleman over at Samizdata with the handle "veryretired" referred to my views as "pacifist". This is far from the case. I am not a pacifist. I believe it is fine to stop and punish malefactors with the use of force. He may note that I spoke favorably of the deterrent effects of heavily armed militias and nuclear arsenals — I suspect most pacifists would not be willing to call me one of their own.

However, although I am not a pacifist, I am indeed a libertarian, and as a libertarian, I believe that governments, if they should exist at all, should limit themselves to enforcing contracts and defending the citizenry from violence. Since I see no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime was a threat to the United States or United Kingdom, I do not see a case for involvement by the governments of the U.S. or U.K.

Arguably, the situation in Afghanistan was different since the Afghanis were harboring a hostile force that had used violence repeatedly against U.S. targets. (Note I say "arguably" — the Afghani situation is quite complicated.)

Now, "veryretired" might then ask what is to be done about third world dictators if large foreign countries will not overthrow them. I will not spend much time here on noting how often the U.S. and U.K. have created third world dictatorships to suit their agenda in "the great game" — I've already done that in an earlier post, and it could easily be argued that at least a few of the dictatorships in existence in the third world are not the product of Western meddling. One must then answer how the poor inhabitants of the small number of remaining dictatorships could be helped.

As I have said, I do not feel that individuals are in any way constrained the way governments are. In a libertarian society, individuals are free to contribute their own resources to charitable causes even if governments are not. If "veryretired" is strongly concerned about the problem of tin-pot dictators, he may undertake personal actions towards eliminating them. He is, naturally, free to recruit others to join him, and to solicit their funds. What he cannot do, however, is to use the force of the state to compel others to contribute their hard earned money to your good cause.

"veryretired" also refers to my position as "amoral", presumably because I do not wish to use the forcible taxation power of the state to pay for the good cause of his choice. However, if "veryretired" claims to be a libertarian, presumably he does not see anything amoral in the state refusing to fund homes for the poor, public art, space exploration and numerous other "good causes". Why is this cause fundamentally different? Certainly people die because of third world dictatorships, but they also die for lack of medical care, and no libertarian would argue the state should provide for that. (If "veryretired" meant that I was being amoral in some different fashion, I welcome his clarification.)

"veryretired" also asks:

When would Metzger have had the US adopt a Swiss foreign policy? Give us a date, and examine honestly the conditions in the world and the likely consequences. I would very much like to see some specifics instead of all the airy theorizing that usually goes on about this subject.

The likely consequences of this? I would suspect that we would not, today, be worried terribly much about attacks on the United States, and our rate of economic growth would be substantially higher. Both of these would be in the direct interests of the citizenry of the U.S., which is, after all, the group to which the U.S. government is accountable.

In another comment on Samizdata, Andrew Ian Dodge wrote:

The trouble with the pacifist libertarian response to Saddam is that is ultimately suicidal. Saddam (or at least his secret service) had links with Islamic extremists. After all he paid a bounty to Palestinian "martyrs". I think it would have been a costly mistake to wait until someone supported by Saddam attacked the US.

An old friend of mine, Tim Starr, wrote to mention to me that the Swiss have not been entirely free of terrorist incidents. For example, Palestinian terrorists attacked an El Al plane in Zurich in 1969, and some Swiss tourists were killed at Luxor in 1997. However, I don't think that the Swiss were, per se, the target of such attacks. In the former case, Switzerland was merely a convenient place to attack Israelis, and in the latter, it appears that the Swiss tourists were not targeted for their nationality but as part of a campaign to frighten away foreigners of all nationalities. There have been several other incidents involving Switzerland, but I can't find any evidence that in any of them Swiss nationals were targeted because of their nationality.

Christian Dreyer, in Switzerland, responded to me in this blog entry. I'm afraid that I don't per se understand his point. He notes that the Swiss adopted neutrality more from necessity than from desire, but that does not impact whether the policy has been a successful one. Similarly, he says it would be bad for the U.S. to "withdraw into its own shell", but he doesn't explain why this would be bad for the citizens of the U.S., and that is, after all, the meat of the question. Lastly he notes that Switzerland is becoming less neutral these days, but again, that does not in any way tell us whether armed neutrality is the superior stance.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-28T12_54_13.html 2004-08-28T12:54:13-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics Turn your mind, for the moment, to the "state of nature", a philosophical construct that folks like Hobbes, Locke, and others considered in attempting to understand the proper role and form for governments. The "state of nature" is the world before laws, institutions or agreements of any sort.

Much of human activity is directed at producing and transforming resources for our use. We grow food to feed ourselves, and that takes work. We produce tools so that we can grow the food, and that also takes work. In the state of nature, each of us has to spend a substantial amount of our personal time guarding the resources we have developed. It is not enough to grow corn — one must also hold on to it long enough to eat it. However, spending one's time guarding one's resources means that one is not out producing more resources with that effort. Hobbes refers to this problem as the "war of all against all" — a situation in which no one can has security or can be productive.

Some thinkers argue that, since this situation is highly undesirable to everyone, people seek a way to correct it. We develop, implicitly or explicitly, a minimal social contract with our neighbors. This social contract is a simple truce: I give up on trying to steal the things you make, in exchange for your doing the same. I will not do violence to you so long as you do not do it to me. I will respect my agreements with you so long as you respect them as well. This truce allows us to halt the Hobbesian "war of all against all". Thus assured of personal safety for ourselves and our chattels, we can engage in commerce and the division of labor, resulting in a better life for everyone participating in the armistice. Those that violate the truce by engaging in violence or theft have little reason to complain about our treatment of them, because it is no different from what they have done to others.

The minimal State, then, is an arrangement to enforce this very basic social contract. It enforces agreements among the participants in the State (who we sometimes call citizens), defends them and their property, and does nothing more. (I would argue that it is possible to perform these activities without a State, but that is another discussion entirely.)

You might want to take note of the interconnection between purpose and action in the minimal State. The minimal State does not, for instance, build art museums, because it does not exist to promote art but to enforce agreements and provide mutual defense. In order to build an art museum, the State would need to acquire the resources with which to build it. If people are willing to donate those resources freely, there is no need for the State to build the museum — it could be built privately. If people are not willing to donate the resources freely, then the act of forcibly taking the needed resources turns the purpose of the minimal State on its head &mdash instead of enforcing the decision by the participants to respect each other's lives and property so that their own lives and property will be respected, the State then becomes an agent for some to abscond with the property of others. I may think it is a good idea to build a home for orphans, but if I take your resources against your will to do it, whether I'm an official of the State or a private citizen, I have violated the truce. To obey the truce, I must convince you to voluntarily provide resources for my goals, whether by trading with you or appealing to your charitable instincts.

In short, if the justification of the minimal State is that it exists, at the behest of a collection of sovereign individuals, to enforce a mutually beneficial truce among those who choose to participate in it, and to organize mutual defense against those who choose not to participate by violating the truce, then that justification does not reasonably permit the expropriation of resources for the purpose of projects that are merely laudable.

Note that this view of the minimal State cannot provide a justification for initiating warfare in distant lands which are not a threat its citizens' safety, regardless of how laudable it might be to re-arrange the social structures of those foreign places to suit enlightened tastes. However, by the same token, neither position prevents individuals from engaging in such activities on their own, at their own risk and with their own resources.

The view that I've just described is the so-called "minarchist" libertarian position. Note that it is not, in principle, very different than the anarcho-capitalist position that some libertarians take. The distinction is merely that the minarchists feel that a night watchman State is required to enforce the truce, and the anarcho-capitalists believe that the same function can be provided without a monopoly enforcement mechanism. However, both otherwise have nearly identical positions.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-27T11_42_15.html 2004-08-27T11:42:15-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology The BBC reports on a man who had lost his jaw bone due to cancer. Doctors have grown him a new one:

After taking a 3D computer tomography (CT) scan of the patient's head, they used computer aided design to recreate the missing portion of the jaw-bone (mandible).

The design was used to construct a teflon model, which was then covered with a titanium cage.

The teflon was then removed, and the cage filled with bone mineral blocks, coated with bone marrow and a protein which accelerates bone growth.

"What ideas, if embraced, would pose the greatest threat to the welfare of humanity?" That question was posed to eight prominent policy intellectuals by the editors of Foreign Policy in its September/October issue (not yet available online). One of the eight savants consulted was Francis Fukuyama, professor of international political economy at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, author of Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution, and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics. His choice for the world's most dangerous idea? Transhumanism.

I'm amused to see that Transhumanism is being taken seriously enough to be denounced by the intellectual famous for telling us that we have reached the end of history. (Fukuyama's idea of the end of history is the liberal Western democracy. At least this is a more pleasant thought than that of Fukuyama's inspiration Hegel, who believed history ended with the 19th century Prussian state, or another philosopher inspired by Hegel, Karl Marx, who thought the end of history would be the dictatorship of the proletariat.)

For those not in the know, "Transhumanism" is the idea that it may be desirable for humans to transcend their current biological limitations by technological augmentation or transformation. We are all currently limited in our lifespans, and in our physical and intellectual abilities. The transhumanists ask, why be limited? We nearly have the ability to modify ourselves in wonderful new ways, ranging from biochemical modifications all the way up to uploading our consciousnesses into computers. Why not, they ask, be more than human?

I must confess that I, too, espouse this "dangerous idea". I think it would be very pleasant to have a better memory, more intellectual capacity, the ability to think more clearly, a longer (or unbounded) lifespan, etc., and I see very little wrong with taking steps in that direction.

If it offends some people who don't like the idea of changing themselves, well, they can remain as they are. Live and let live. The libertarian principle says everyone should get to live their lives in peace provided they let others do the same, and if they prefer to die after a mere 80 or 100 years, or to leave their minds at their current capacity, I have no objections — so long as they don't interfere with me peacefully pursuing life, liberty and happiness in my own way.

However, there are those out there who aren't happy about people thinking these kinds of thoughts. Fukuyama is hardly the only person worried about the strange doings in the technosphere. Bill Joy has made a bit of a name for himself spreading his own brand of technological alarmism, and there are numerous others.

Am I worried that these anti-technology maunderings will slow the rate of technological progress? Not really. Even if the majority adopts a radically luddite policy (and, in fact, especially if they do), those that disobey will gain a strong competitive advantage. There is therefore fairly strong economic (and by the same token, evolutionary) pressure towards disobedience of such a stricture. In a world with hundreds of countries, some people somewhere will do the sorts of research that the "civilized" deem inappropriate. If the civilized really forswear the same technologies, they won't have the tools with which to stop the "uncivilized" anyway — they'll be out-gunned. There is therefore a very strong reason to believe that, at best, luddism could only slow down technological progress for a while — it could not stop it.

More to the point, although people often fear change, I think that it would be very difficult for governments to organize to stop it very effectively. They would have to do things like banning scientific research, improvements in computer technology, and such. I don't think that is going to happen. Even with substantial negative attention brought to bear, it only took a few years between Dolly the Sheep and the first successful production of cloned human embryos in South Korea. I doubt other attempts to slow progress will be particularly more successful.

The transhumanist idea that Fukuyama worries about is already out there, and ideas cannot be unthought. The transformation of much of the human race will happen. The question now is only whether to join in, or to stay behind, frightened of the opportunities the future will bring.

[Thanks to Monica White for the pointer that inspired this.]]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-26T14_20_00.html 2004-08-26T14:20:00-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Miscellanea Apple as dead. Their sales were falling, their technology was stagnant, and I honestly didn't see where they could go. I was wrong.

As usual, Steve Jobs demonstrated he's still got amazing business and aesthetic sense. Apple's new technology, which is an improved version of the software created by Jobs' startup NeXT, is a seamless fusion of the Unix operating system with the prettiest GUI in existence.

Macs are easier to use than Windows for novices, and they are now very pleasant for experienced users and programmers, too. Apple by all rights should be selling product hand over fist. However, their market share has not taken off — it is still only a few percent of the market.

I think that is because Macs are perceived as too expensive. A lot of the market for personal computers is now in the deep sub-$1000 range, and Apple doesn't really offer much there. They have one product under $1000, the eMac, and the lowest price you can buy one for is $800. Add a few needed accessories and you're way more expensive than the $500 low end machines being flogged these days by Dell. Apple doesn't promote the eMac at all, either — it is largely a stealth product.

Apple might well be saying "we don't need that low margin business" but I think that's a big mistake. Selling much lower priced machines will not cut into Apple's sales or margins at the high end, but it will drive a market for Apple software and accessories that Apple needs. Just as importantly, it will get many people who never thought about Apple seriously addicted to the ease of use and quality of the Mac, which (over the years) will drive a lot more sales at the high end of the market. People who buy Macs never look back, but people who buy Windows boxes often don't know what they're missing. In the long run, gaining a solid presence at the low end would be very good for Apple's market share.

I think Apple should design a very low cost offering, aimed at the $500 to $800 market segment. Minimally configured, such a machine should provide a user with acceptable performance but very few frills, much like the low end Dells. Unlike Dell, Apple fully controls the price of their own operating system, so they can likely shave an extra $50 off of Dell's cost basis. Dell has to pay Microsoft, and Apple does not. Apple can also likely count on lower support costs, since their machines are much easier to use. They might not even have to sacrifice much in terms of aesthetics — an ugly case and a pretty one can often be the same price.

Such a machine would not make Apple very much money, but it would not need to. It would serve to re-establish Apple as the brand of choice for new computer users, students and schools, and then, ultimately, addict lots of those people to Macs for the long term. The product line would not cannibalize Apple's existing market at all. Power users who can pay $2000 would not be interested in a no-frills computer. It would, however, greatly interest software vendors to see Apple's market share rising, as it would encourage them to develop more for the platform. All in all, I think it would be a great win.

Now if only Apple would listen to me.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-26T13_03_59.html 2004-08-26T13:03:59-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Miscellanea Weebl and Bob is an ongoing series of flash animations depicting the lives of two ellipsoids who rock rhythmically back and forth and lust after pie. They are occasionally joined by a mushroom-shaped ninja pirate named Chris, a wooden donkey named Donkey, a wee bull named Wee Bull, political activist jars of jam, a monkey with mean D.J. skills but no toilet training, and many others.

I suggest starting at the oldest episode in the full list and working forwards.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-26T11_39_52.html 2004-08-26T11:39:52-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology The BBC reports about a group that has found ways to use "vaccines" to substantially down-regulate allergic responses.

The Gene Expression blog reports on an instance of one species of fish splitting into two species within twenty years. (I'm always amazed that people can still claim that evolution is "unproven".)

Science Magazine published a paper reporting the use of femtosecond laser pulses in combination with STMs to observe the motion of individual carbon monoxide molecules on a copper surface.

The BBC reports that Statins have been shown to slow HIV infections.

The BBC reports that a single protein in the brain, called NPS, appears to act as a major signal in both sleep and anxiety signaling pathways.

The FuturePundit blog reports that silencing either the TLR4 gene or the related CD14 signaling gene resulted in the substantial reduction of age related weight gain and bone loss in mice.

New Scientist reports that increasing the production of a protein called PPARdelta in the muscles of mice resulted in a two-thirds reduction in weight gain when the animals were fed a high fat diet. More interestingly, the mice also were able to run 92% longer than the controls. Both effects appear to have resulted from a doubling in the production of so-called "slow twitch" muscle in the mice.

There were a lot of other articles I've seen recently, but those were a few highlights. I know lots of people out there are skeptical of the notion that we're approaching some sort of "Technological Singularity", but as a passive observer of the science literature, let me note that discoveries that would have made front page headlines of mainstream newspapers a few years ago are now happening so often that they barely get mentioned in the news sections of the science press. The rate of discovery in molecular biology has become especially stunning — gaining access to complete genomes has opened up the floodgates as never before.

I'm becoming hopeful that major uncured illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, many cancers, etc., are going to be completely understood, and possibly even fully treatable, in the next decade.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-25T20_52_24.html 2004-08-25T20:52:24-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics, Security last post. They'll say "So what is your suggested alternative to our current foreign policy? It is easy to attack other people's ideas, but it is much more difficult to present an alternative."

Fair enough. I'll tell you what I'd prefer our government's foreign policy to be, assuming we need to have a State at all. My proposal is pretty simple: Swiss-style armed neutrality. That means no invasions, no military threats, no foreign aid, no "covert operations", no military bases outside the country, no attempts to influence the internal affairs of foreign countries whatsoever.

No one blows up bombs in the streets of Geneva. No one from Switzerland gets kidnaped in third world countries to protest the evils of Swiss foreign policy. Wherever they go, at worst, people think of the Swiss as boring — it is rare that anyone feels the need to buttonhole someone from Zurich or Lugano and tell them off for what their government does.

The Swiss are not pacifists, though. They have a very strong militia for defense, and in times past when Europe was less peaceful, it would have been extremely costly for an attacker to invade them. Even if (in the case of particularly strong enemies) an invasion might have ultimately succeeded, it would have yielded very little of value at an astonishing expense.

Such a foreign policy perfectly suits the minarchist excuse for government &mdash that it exists to protect its citizens and their property from violence within the borders of the country. It is pretty inarguably perfect for that purpose. (I'm not a believer in the necessity of even a minimal state, but that's not today's discussion.)

I think the U.S. would do just fine with such a policy. It is unlikely that many countries could attempt an invasion of the U.S. given our geography. With a strong militia, armed to the teeth, no such invasion would likely succeed even if someone was foolish enough to try. In addition, we have a large nuclear arsenal, which should make any potential attacker worry about the fate of their home territory. The nuclear weapons pretty effectively deter any attempts at missile based attacks, too. Realistically, were we neutral, we would not be attacked at home if we were even moderately careful.

For a while, we might still get terrorist threats from people who hadn't realized that we had withdrawn our forces from overseas and weren't going to bring them back, but those would fade after a while. In the long run we'd be fine.

Such a policy is also far, far cheaper than the one we pursue now — the economic benefits alone would be more than worth it.

Some might argue that we would not have a force capable of deterring attacks on U.S. shipping — especially oil shipments — without a strong military capable of foreign intervention, but I don't believe that such a use for the military is good idea in the first place. For one thing, it distorts the market for commodities like oil because the market price does not reflect the true cost (including armed security) of importing the commodity. My solution would be for the oil companies to simply hire private security to guard their own tankers and leave it at that — if the cost is high, then let the market price for oil reflect that.

Some might also argue that a strong military is needed to defend U.S. citizens overseas, but I doubt that. As I noted, how often are the Swiss targeted for political reasons?

Lastly, some might argue that we have an obligation, as a nation, to defend the interests of those under the thumbs of totalitarian regimes abroad. As I've noted elsewhere, however, U.S. foreign policy has propped up and indeed created totalitarian regimes far more often than it has attacked them. This is a simple instance of the universal rule that governments don't do what you want them to do — they do what public choice economics causes them to do. We can dream all we like, but governments are made up of people with their own agendas.

Furthermore, as I've also noted elsewhere, I have no objection to people spending their own resources and risking their own lives liberating the downtrodden in the third world, or persuading others to do so voluntarily, but the Non-Coercion Principle that we libertarians follow says that we don't use force to get others to spend their money and risk their lives for our causes, no matter how noble our cause may be. Whether the purpose is curing cancer or building a football stadium, coercion is still coercion, and libertarians don't coerce others into paying or doing.

By the way, this is all pretty standard stuff. Libertarians have been advocating this position for decades, and I don't understand how it can be the least bit controversial among people of our political clan at this point.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-25T14_59_32.html 2004-08-25T14:59:32-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics Did the U.S. say "hey, we understand that they're upset with us, we've got a long history of screwing them, lets leave them alone?"

Of course not, because we didn't even remember that they had a reason to be pissed off at us. The U.S. has about zero national memory of all the times we've screwed various third world populations to the wall in the name of "Realpolitik". We then act puzzled about why they might dislike us — the know-nothings in the White House go so far as claiming that the problem is that various people around the world "hate freedom", as though the murderous thugs in third world countries who torture their citizens with our funding were a form "freedom". (None of the 9/11 hijackers came from "free" countries as we understand the term, but they all came from countries that could claim to be strong allies of the U.S., and in many cases these countries are the recipients of lots of U.S. aid which funds the local dictatorship. I suppose that is how we show our support for "freedom".)

Anyway, back to our narrative. After the Iranian Revolution, we decided that one of Iran's neighbors, Iraq, was a great proxy for our war on them, so we handed that country's brand new dictator, a fellow named Saddam Hussein, lots of help. Hell, we sent Donald Rumsfeld to go and shake his hand, and tell him that it was okay if he went off and killed a bunch of his own people for good measure, so long as he attacked Iran. We knew he was a murderous thug, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Later he turned around and invaded one of our even more special friends, Kuwait, and we were forced to break off our good working relationship with him. Eventually, of course, we ended up deciding to get rid of him — why we picked the particular time we did is unclear, but the public excuse was that he had biological or chemical weapons, and that he'd been involved with terrorism against the U.S., although it turned out that neither was the case. Who have we paid off and propped up this time to help us meet our goal? Everyone in sight.

Meanwhile, recall that the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in the late 1970s. We could think of no better solution at the time than to hand lots of money, weapons and training to various "freedom fighters", such as a fellow named Osama bin Laden, who we hoped would take care of the Soviets for us. Eventually, of course, this lead to little problems like the Taliban taking over Afghanistan, and giving shelter to bin Laden and company, who turned out not to really be our friends. We decided to invade, but we didn't have any nearby bases. Did that stop us? No! Following our usual pattern, we found dictators in nearby countries like Turkmenistan who were willing to give us use of their military bases in exchange for our looking the other way and handing them a bunch of money.

Why has all this stupidity happened? Because the U.S. is run by a government, and governments pretty much always end up behaving stupidly. When a business acts stupid (and they all do eventually), the market punishes it by taking away its money and power. When a government acts stupid, there is no market mechanism to punish it, and no competing government to womp it in the marketplace, so it almost always perpetuates the stupidity instead of getting rid of it.

What I want to know, though, is not why governments act stupid — thanks to lots of good research over the years I think that's now fully understood. I'm not even asking why most people trust their governments — that just strikes me as a subset of the general question of why so many people believe utterly unbelievable things, such as the idea that the Bible is the perfectly accurate message of a supernatural being.

What I want to know is why so many seemingly rational people who claim to be libertarians are out supporting this madness. Take, for example, the folks over at Samizdata. Most of the time they seem to be perfectly reasonable folks, but for the last couple of years they've been seized by the notion that the war in Iraq is not merely justifiable but indeed laudable. I've seen this same disease afflicting many libertarians around the world. They ignore the hundreds of billions in forcible taxation needed to pay for the war, they ignore that the excuses for the war proved ultimately false, and they ignore all the innocents killed, all on the basis of various vague justifications like "fighting terrorism" (though there is no evidence that the war in Iraq has done anything at all to reduce the threat of terrorism) or the fact that Saddam Hussein was a ruthless dictator (fully ignoring all the other ruthless dictators we're actively supporting worldwide with money taken by force from U.S. taxpayers.)

Worse, these "libertarians" even forget straightforward libertarian principles about the use of force in acquiring resources. Sure, a person can decide he wants to support some "good cause" like cancer research or knocking off a third world murderer — but to a libertarian, no amount of "good" to be done by supporting a cause justifies taking money by force to pay for it. If a large number of Samizdata contributors (or anyone else) wanted to personally support efforts to depose third world dictators, that would be one thing, but what they advocate instead is that my money be used to achieve their goal, and that it be taken from me by force if I won't agree. Individuals can do whatever they want with their own resources, but they can't decide to commit other people's resources. That violates the Non-Coercion Principle.

So, at last getting to my question of the day, does anyone have a good explanation for what has gotten into these "libertarians" who are out cheering for the war? I'd be very curious to hear people's explanations. No, I don't want to hear more of their rationale for the war — I'm familiar with their arguments and I don't need them repeated. I'm interested into some sort of insight into their mental state. What takes a person who distrusts all uses of government to the point where they'll support something as indefensible to a libertarian as the Iraq war, and parrot obviously false claims like "this will stop terrorism"? (Some might say this happened because 9/11 deranged a lot of people, enraging them so much that they can't think clearly, but that seems like a poor explanation to me — I watched the Trade Center towers fall live and in person, with people I knew inside, and I'm not out arguing that we should invade randomly selected third world countries.)]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-25T12_03_04.html 2004-08-25T12:03:04-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics Cryptome has released the latest update to its Iraq War Casualty Calendar. The count stands at 992. This implies that the count may go over the 1000 mark during the Republican National Convention.

Perhaps if this becomes widely enough known the mainstream media might pick it up -- spread the word.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-20T13_23_42.html 2004-08-20T13:23:42-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology, Politics The ETC Group, which I've blogged about before, puts out a constant stream of bizarre, ill informed attacks on biotechnology and nanotechnology.

Who runs the group? According to this article from Forbes:

His name is Pat R. Mooney, and he is a high school dropout from Canada with no scientific training.

Unfortunately, he's very effective even though most of his attacks are based on extremely bad science:

[H]is Ottawa organization, the ETC Group, is widely credited with being one of the first to raise health and environmental concerns about genetically modified food. Its efforts, along with those of other outfits like Greenpeace, led to a public relations fiasco for the biotech industry. In Europe the name Monsanto, which sells genetically modified seed, still exemplifies the ugly American multinational. Because of the fear Mooney helped generate, Nestle and others don't sell food with GM ingredients in Europe. Restaurants post signs assuring customers meals are virtually GM-free.

Now Mooney, 57, has set his target on nanotechnology, the business of manufacturing on a molecular scale.

My translation: nanotechnology could help rid the world of disease and poverty, but an ill-educated Luddite in Canada with a talent for getting press attention will be fighting hard to make sure that doesn't happen.

By the way, genetically modified plants had (and still have) the potential to radically reduce malnutrition in the third world, but people have managed to scare themselves so thoroughly about the technology that these crops may never be widely grown. Some countries even refuse food aid if it contains genetically modified grain. Thanks to the luddites, millions may die needlessly of starvation. Every time you see a picture of a child starving in the third world, remember Pat R. Mooney. (You should also remember anti-globalization protesters, government bureaucrats and lots of other folks, but that's another story.)]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-20T12_57_51.html 2004-08-20T12:57:51-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology, Security a good summary of the recent results from Crypto '04 on the cryptanalysis of hash functions. The general gist is that, as of right now, SHA-1 and its "SHA-2" descendents have not yet been successfully attacked, but most of the others have.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-20T12_44_21.html 2004-08-20T12:44:21-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics, Economics Tyler Cowen is apparently writing a new book explaining why economic growth is so crucial to improving people's lives. Quoting from his blog entry about the book:

The importance of the growth rate increases, the further into the future we look. If a country grows at two percent, as opposed to growing at one percent, the difference in welfare in a single year is relatively small. But over time the difference becomes very large. For instance, had America grown one percentage point less per year, between 1870 and 1990, the America of 1990 would be no richer than the Mexico of 1990. At a growth rate of five percent per annum, it takes just over eighty years for a country to move from a per capita income of $500 to a per capita income of $25,000, defining both in terms of constant real dollars. At a growth rate of one percent, such an improvement takes 393 years.

I'm looking forward to reading it.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-16T17_50_32.html 2004-08-16T17:50:32-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology, Security this rumor from earlier today.

There is still no confirmation out there of the break in SHA-1, but this preprint, which went up today, reports collisions in MD4, MD5, HAVAL-128 and RIPEMD, all achieved with very little CPU time. That pretty much covers all the cryptographic hash functions in use.

It feels as though once someone found the right thread to pull on, the whole sweater started to unravel.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-16T16_48_38.html 2004-08-16T16:48:38-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics, Economics The New York Times Reports (though sadly only with registration and for a limited period) that a new book, entitled "Bonjour Paresse" (the Times translates this as "Hello Laziness") by Corinne Maier is becoming something of a best seller in France.

Quoting the Times:

"Imitate me, midlevel executives, white-collar workers, neo-slaves, the damned of the tertiary sector," Ms. Maier calls in her slim volume, which is quickly becoming a national best seller. She argues that France's ossified corporate culture no longer offers rank-and-file employees the prospect of success, so, "Why not spread gangrene through the system from inside?"

[...]

Her solution? Rather than keep up what she sees as an exhausting charade, people who dislike what they do should, as she puts it, discreetly disengage. If done correctly - and her book gives a few tips, such as looking busy by always carrying a stack of files - few co-workers will notice, and those who do will be too worried about rocking the boat to complain. Given the difficulty of firing employees, she says, frustrated superiors are more likely to move such subversive workers up than out.

One might argue that Ms. Maier is supporting evil behavior, but perhaps that's not entirely the case. Her argument is largely that French companies are not meritocracies and that they do not reward work, so why bother working?

Why indeed? In a country where work is legally limited to 35 hours a week, taxes are high, and failing companies are coddled by the government, perhaps there is indeed little rational incentive to do much. Take a bit of an objectivist viewpoint for a moment. If all else fails, isn't "striking" the "right" thing to do? Is such a book not, in a way, a call to "shrug" in an environment in which no other mechanism seems effective?

I'm being slightly facetious here. It is probably a violation of one's agreement with one's employer to do nothing for one's salary, and I doubt that Ms. Maier is an objectivist of any stripe. Indeed I would expect that she is hostile to that sort of philosophy.

However, one reaps what one sows. I'm hardly surprised that a country that has long made it difficult to get ahead now finds people wondering why they should even try.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-16T16_01_48.html 2004-08-16T16:01:48-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology, Security this Wikipedia article if you would like an introduction to the topic of cryptographic hash functions.

Chen and Biham were due to report some attacks on SHA-0 this week at Crypto. Last week, it was reported that Antoine Joux had extended this work into a full scale method for finding collisions in SHA-0 with time complexity of 2^51, and would also be reporting his results at the conference.

Ed Felten is now reporting that a rumor has started at Crypto that someone has further extended the Joux attack to an attack on SHA-1 and may announce the details at conference later in the week. Since SHA-0 is only of academic interest but SHA-1 is deployed in lots of cryptosystems, this is naturally getting lots and lots of buzz.

As a side note, if this proves to be true, even if it is only a certificational weakness, it will be very embarrassing to the NSA. It is almost certainly the case that they would not release an algorithm that they knew had even a certificational weakness, thus implying that if there is such an attack, they did not know about it when they corrected SHA-0 into SHA-1.

It is unclear how such a break would impact HMAC when used with SHA-1 without knowing more details, if there are any details. Stay tuned.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-10T15_03_26.html 2004-08-10T15:03:26-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Security, Software Worried about computer viruses striking your network?

My method of stoping viruses from striking my users is phenomenally effective, yet incredibly cheap. I simply block all email attachments bearing Microsoft file types that my users are unlikely to have any real desire to get in email.

At the moment, that means I have a Postfix configuration that contains the following header_checks:

/^Content-(Type|Disposition):.*(file)?name=.*\.(asd|bat|chm|cmd|com|cpl|dll|exe|hlp|hta|js|jse|lnk|ocx|pif|rar|scr|shb|shm|shs|vb|vbe|vbs|vbx|vxd|wsf|wsh|zip)/ REJECT Sorry, we do not accept .${3} files.

For those that don't understand what that means, it instructs Postfix to look for message headers indicating any of a long list of attachment types, and if it finds one, to refuse to accept the message, indicating "Sorry, we do not accept filetype files." to the sender. If you don't use Postfix as your MTA, I'm sure that you can do similar things in most other sane MTAs. (If you use Microsoft Exchange as your MTA, you are out of luck, but then again you are probably out of luck anyway.)

This approach is a bit heavy handed, but I find that most of those file types are never included in any sort of legitimate email. Who would want to legitimately mail someone a .pif or .lnk file?

The big plus of the approach is that at the cost of one line of configuration, you pretty much ditch any possibility of ever seeing the next Microsoft Outlook virus. No one will ever send you an infected .exe or .scr file because you reject all of them — you will never have to worry that your virus scanner's rules are not up to date or something similar.

What are the minuses of doing this? Well, first, some users will occasionally want to get zip files in the mail. If you have no choice, you can let them through, but in practice I've never gotten complaints about this and I forward mail for lots of people. Second, this will not stop macro viruses that infest .doc and .xls files and the like. It isn't a complete substitute for having a virus scanner, though it does remarkably well.

In general, this is a really cheap and efficient barrier to put at your outermost MTA, and the people and organizations I know who have done it have never regretted it.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-09T21_42_50.html 2004-08-09T21:42:50-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Miscellanea Warren Ellis' blog this evening, where I came across "A Softer World". I've never seen anyone so thoroughly understand the feline mind before.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-08T13_26_30.html 2004-08-08T13:26:30-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology, Politics is reporting (sorry, the link will stop working soon) that "animal rights activists" have managed to temporarily derail the construction of a biology laboratory at Cambridge.

The story leads with a photograph of several protesters, one of whom is carrying a sign which says "animal testing delays medical progress".

Of course, that's beyond merely untrue — it stands reality on its head. There is no good alternative to the use of animal models for most medical research. A few days ago, I reported on a breakthrough recently made on Alzheimer's Disease thanks to animal experiments. Animal experimentation is the reason we have the information we needed from that test — no rational person would agree to be injected with an experimental substance and then killed and autopsied a few days later, so we need to use animals for such tests.

Almost all of modern medicine, from vaccines to surgery, has been developed using animal models. Had we avoided all animal testing over the last several centuries, human lifespan today would be dramatically shorter.

On a similar note, I was recently reading an article in Wired about Craig Venter's project to sequence the genomes of vast numbers of previously unknown microorganisms. Venter's team is, essentially, sailing around the world, collecting a few gallons of water out of the ocean every couple hundred miles, and shotgun sequencing all the DNA in the living matter within the sample. Less than a percent of the microorganisms on the planet have ever been observed, let alone sequenced, so this is really neat work. The team is not only getting the first real glimpse at how large the population of microbial species really is, they're also getting an amazing sampling of previously unknown genes.

Unfortunately, it appears that lots of people, including the luddite ETC Group, are organizing oppose his work. They've even gotten his expedition halted in a few places where he crosses in to various territorial waters. Why? I really can't explain their rationale. I can't make out a coherent reason for opposing such research in anything they say. They make weird claims about "biopiracy" (whatever that might be) and such, but really it appears their major dislike for Venter is that they hate technology.

The article in Wired describes the bizarre events that happened when Venter arrived at Tahiti, which is ruled by the French. Remember in reading this that his activities consist of grabbing a few gallons of worthless ocean water here and there and studying the single celled microorganisms within — he isn't stealing ancient artworks or running a slave ship or any such.

Venter was immediately notified by Rockville of a fax from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs politely informing him that his application to conduct research in French Polynesia was denied. The ministry understood that the Sorcerer II's mission was to collect and study microorganisms that might prove helpful for health and industry, but France wished to protect its "patrimony" by restricting "extraction of these resources by foreign vessels." "It's French water, so I guess they're French microbes," Venter told me when he got the news.

[...] [W]hen the Sorcerer II reached the French Polynesian island of Hiva Oa in the Marquesas archipelago, the port captain there informed Venter and Howard that their vessel was not allowed to leave the harbor. Impounding a private foreign vessel merely on suspicion is against international law, and Venter protested to the US State Department, which informed the ministry that it considered the act a violation of the honor of the United States. The Sorcerer II was allowed to proceed as a normal tourist vessel, but with a warning not to attempt to take any samples.

Venter later got permission to continue sampling, but with unusual restrictions considering that he was taking nothing more than a few gallons of seawater:

[...] When I wake up the next day, Venter is in the main cabin reading an email from his office; Howard leans over his shoulder. Dill is setting the table for breakfast. "So the big news this morning is [...] the French are going to send a gunboat out to escort us," he tells me.[...]"They want to make sure we sample where we said we would. We're not supposed to tell the State Department about this. It might put a chill on French-American relations. Being as how they're so cozy right now and all," Dill says. "They'd like to know if we'd like to invite an officer on board, too," Venter says. "How do you say 'fuck you' in French?"

This trend towards luddism seems to be spreading.

I wish I had the ability to explain the position of such groups coherently enough to be able to attack them point by point, but I'm afraid that my contempt is a bit too strong for me to be able to do that. I really don't believe they have a rational position so I find it difficult to try to explain their position. ETC, for example, frequently puts out bizarre press releases about scientific work that they obviously don't understand even slightly. Most of their documents are so filled with technical mistakes that it is hard to even count all of them.

However, even though they don't seem to have much of a coherent or accurate argument on their side, such groups frequently are pretty good at getting a lot of attention. I think this is because fairly few people in the news media or in politics have any real personal understanding of science and technology, so they are not able to make informed judgments about the wild claims that are made.

I have to admit that I don't understand luddites well. Human welfare has been radically improved by technology. The progress we've made towards reducing poverty and human misery has been nothing short of breathtaking. Even Marx seemed to understand this pretty well. I get the feeling that the people who used to embrace communism now have switched to technophobia.

As a postscript, let me note that even the most radical anti-technology activists out there like the Unibomber, Ted Kaczynski, seem to make use of at least some technology in their lives. I doubt Kaczynski could have survived through the winter in his cabin without steel implements and an iron stove for heat. No one would know of Kaczynski's ideas but for his willingness to use of technology to write them down (even paper and pencils require pretty significant ingenuity and effort to produce). Even written down, high technology, including computers, has been the primary means by which his ideas have been disseminated. Some such people argue that they are merely using technology temporarily to try to fight technology, or that they do not oppose "appropriate" technologies like wood stoves. (Kaczynski doesn't seem to make any such arguments, though, or at least, none that I can see.) Even so, there is tremendous irony in anti-technologists making use of even primitive technologies, and further irony in their communicating by any method other than speech. I suspect, however, that the irony is lost on them.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-06T20_49_20.html 2004-08-06T20:49:20-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Music The Be Good Tanyas first album "Blue Horse" a while ago on the recommendation of friends. I liked it a lot, so I recently purchased their second album, "Chinatown". It just arrived. So far, so good, though I haven't heard the whole thing yet.

For those not familiar with their sound, they seem heavily influenced by what is now termed "American roots music". They are a little folky, a little bluesy. I'm not much of a folk music listener, but I go by Duke Ellington's maxim that "if it sounds good, it is good"...]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-06T17_27_15.html 2004-08-06T17:27:15-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology also reporting that variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a.k.a., vCJD, a.k.a. the human analog of Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, a.k.a. BSE, a.k.a. "mad cow" disease, may be carried by more of the population than was previously believed. The incubation period of the disease may also be longer in some cases than was expected. Bad news for people who like eating cows that have eaten other cows.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-06T17_15_57.html 2004-08-06T17:15:57-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics, Economics this absolutely predictable story:

US drugs tsar John Walters has admitted that Washington's anti-narcotics policy in Latin America has so far failed.

Naturally, of course, merely because it hasn't worked to date is no reason for doubt.

[Walters] predicted positive results would be seen within a year.

I wonder if an Idea Futures market on the success of U.S. drug interdiction would find many takers on the "drug war succeeds" side of the bet.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-06T12_51_54.html 2004-08-06T12:51:54-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology available in full here.

Thanks to Steve Bellovin for the link. Steve also pointed out that the Wall Street Journal carried coverage today about a conference where that work was presented — apparently the conclusions are rather controversial. Having just read the paper, though, I'd say it looks like pretty good work assuming the results are reproduceable.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-05T12_35_06.html 2004-08-05T12:35:06-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology Nature is publishing a paper that describes an elegant experiment designed to directly measure the mutation rates in the well known "model organism" Caenorhabditis elegans.

The researchers raised hundreds of generations of C. elegans, carefully making sure they knew which generation was which by selecting a single organism to parent each new generation. (C. elegans is hermaphroditic and capable of self fertilization.) They then sequenced portions of the genome in each generation.

This direct measurement revealed a mutation rate an order of magnitude higher than had been previously estimated.

If this turns out to be correct, it has implications for everything from evolution to cancer mechanisms to aging.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-05T11_01_11.html 2004-08-05T11:01:11-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology This article reports a study in which the injection of antibodies targeting the beta amyloid plaques into the brains of mice with a close analog of Alzheimer's disease managed to trigger a response in which the immune system cleared the plaques. Neurofibrillary tangles associated with the disease cleared spontaneously shortly after the amyloid plaques vanished. [Update: I've found another somewhat better report from Science Magazine here]

The treatment only worked in mice with early stages of the disease.

This is a very preliminary sort of result, but it is really quite exciting. Even if it does not lead to an immediate Alzheimer's treatment for humans, it does lend extremely strong evidence to the hypothesis that the beta amyloid accumulation in and of itself is the major mechanism triggering the symptoms of Alzheimer's, and that blocking the production of beta amyloid or clearing the plaques would halt the progress of the illness.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-04T08_49_54.html 2004-08-04T08:49:54-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Miscellanea Today's Dilbert is nothing short of brilliant.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-03T22_06_31.html 2004-08-03T22:06:31-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics, Economics, Intellectual Property interview with David Israelite of the DoJ about piracy and its effects.

In it, he makes a rather remarkable claim:

Q: You've said that the theft of intellectual property is a national security problem. Why?

A: First of all, we talk about it being an issue of economic national security. Our economy is so based on intellectual property ideas that, unless we can protect them, we're really looking at a situation where it's going to hurt our ability to survive as a country.

Secondly, so much of what we do now involves computers, whether it be with software or other types of communication lines. Often, intellectual property is a key component to the things we do to protect ourselves as a country.

Lets have a look at these two claims.

First, there is the question of economic losses from piracy. The entire US movie industry's revenue stream is somewhere like $40B. The US recording industry's revenue is something like $15B. (These numbers might be off a bit but they're the right ballpark, which is enough for this calculation.) That's $55B total. The U.S. economy as a whole is somewhere in the vicinity of $12,000B. That means if the entire music and movie industries vanished without a trace, the economy would (worst case) shrink by something like 0.4%. Note that this does not take in to account new economic activity that might be engendered by piracy, which might be substantial.

Even assuming that we had much more than 0.4% drop in economic activity with the demise of the movie and record industries — which I seriously doubt — it would still hardly count as something that could, and I quote David Israelite, "hurt our ability to survive as a country". I suspect that, given the figures from recent recessions, we could manage far worse without our "survival" being at stake.

Second, Mr. Israelite notes that people use computers and communications lines, and then somehow implies that computers or communications systems would be threatened were intellectual property threatened. I will note that I am writing this blog on a computer using no proprietary software whatsoever, and my server has no proprietary software on it either. Obviously our use of computers and the internet could continue unabated were proprietary software to vanish. If Mr. Israelite has a specific point on this, he has made it rather poorly.

Overall, I judge the claims he makes to be poorly founded. However, the promulgation of such claims is rather predictable in the light of Public Choice theory.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-03T21_16_29.html 2004-08-03T21:16:29-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics, Economics reports that Georgia (the country, not the state) has a new economy minister named Kakha Bendukidze who's hell bent on cutting taxes, reducing the size of government and privatizing everything in sight, as well as eliminating things like restrictions on foreign banks and legal tender laws.

Best quote:

As to where investors should put their money, "I don't know and I don't care," he says, and continues: "I have shut down the department of industrial policy. I am shutting down the national investment agency. I don't want the national innovation agency." Oh yes, and he plans to shut down the country's anti-monopoly agency too. "If somebody thinks his rights are being infringed he can go to the courts, not to the ministry." He plans, as his crowning achievement, to abolish his own ministry in 2007. "In a normal country, you don't need a ministry of the economy," he says. "And in three years we can make the backbone of a normal country."

Could Georgia be on its way to real reform? I have no idea. I've seen these sort of promising stories before, and politics usually gets rid the reformers before they get rid of the bureaucrats. However, if there was real reform on this scale, Georgia might turn into a quite nice place to invest someday. It probably bears watching over coming years.

(Much thanks to Samizdata for the link.)]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-03T13_18_40.html 2004-08-03T13:18:40-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology, Economics DIMACS at Rutgers University runs some interesting workshops. One that was just announced focuses on "Markets as Predictive Devices". Given that my old acquaintance Robin Hanson is one of the instigators, I assume that it will focus pretty heavily on Idea Futures.

For those unaware of the concept, it is a means to quantify predictions by using markets. The notion is to set up tradable contracts, much like futures contracts, which pay off not if guesses about the price of wheat or oil are correct, but if guesses about the future direction of technologies or world events are correct. It is hypothesized that the implied predictions given by the market price of the contracts will be more accurate than the educated guesses of pundits, because traders will have a monetary incentive to follow their heads rather than their hearts. There is some (as yet limited) evidence that this hypothesis is true.

I first saw the concept of Idea Futures under another name in "The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner (which incidently also coined or popularized a bunch of modern computer security jargon, such as the terms "worm" and "virus"). However, it was Robin who really formalized and spread the concept of Idea Futures, first in the magazine "Extropy", and later in more academic contexts.

Some of you may remember a DARPA proposal to set up betting markets on the odds of terrorist incidents, which was later withdrawn under heavy pressure. Robin's work was the basis for that idea.

(Some of you may also remember my recent blog entry about a company that is enabling trading in idea-futures like contracts.)

I'm not sure whether or not Idea Futures will have a dramatic impact on society, but the concept certainly has intellectual appeal. Perhaps someone should start trading a contract on whether Idea Futures will have a widespread effect (if only they could formulate the claim well!)]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-08-01T21_03_02.html 2004-08-01T21:03:02-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology reports that they are working on an extremely high resolution electron microscopy rig to permit direct imaging of the shapes of molecules. The article on the web is a bit low on detail — if anyone knows more and can tell me about it, please do.

Mechanisms that speed up the analysis of macromolecules will be of substantial importance to biotechnology and (ultimately) nanotechnology, so mechanisms that can achieve it, like (possibly) this one, and like Magnetic Resonance Force Microscopy, could be very important enabling technologies.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-31T13_57_02.html 2004-07-31T13:57:02-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics, Economics For example, once you are familiar with supply and demand curves, you can already begin making predictions about the impact of price regulation. If you artificially lower the price of a good by government edict, the demand will exceed the supply, and you will get a shortage. (Try drawing a supply and demand curve on paper with price on the horizontal axis and draw a vertical line to the left of the supply/demand intersection if you don't see this.) If, on the other hand, you artificially raise the price, you'll get an unpurchased surplus.

This pattern is consistently seen in the real world, but it is rarely understood by people watching it.

For example, in 1973, the OPEC countries decided not to sell oil to the United States because of our support of Israel. There were, however, other producers of oil, including companies extracting it inside the United States itself. If the price of oil in the United States had been entirely based on market mechanisms, we would have expected the price to shoot up until demand fell enough to cross supply. There would have been no shortages, only a dramatic price rise. Additionally, Non-OPEC producers would have had a large economic incentive to find new ways to supply oil since the they could make large profits selling it, so supply would have eventually eased.

However, the price was not unregulated. The United States had price controls on all domestically produced oil. No one remembers this — you'll be hard pressed to find more than a passing reference to it in the Wikipedia article on the crisis, for example. What happens when you have government price caps? A shortage of course. At the artificially lowered price, demand exceeds supply. The gasoline rationing that immediately resulted was completely predictable, and yet almost no one understood it. The bulk of the population had no idea that they were victims of government price control policy. People instead usually blamed the oil companies for "profiteering", as though one could make more money by refusing to sell one's product than one could by selling it.

Today we are experiencing a significant rise in the demand for energy with a simultaneous tightening of supply, but there are no gas lines this time. Why is this? Because oil prices were decontrolled long ago, so the price merely rose until supply and demand met. Eventually, as oil supplies (which are finite) start to run low, the rise in prices will eventually drive people to use other sources of energy, without any need for outside interference.

Artificial price caps are not the only type of price regulation. Set a guaranteed price floor above the market clearing price, and demand drops while supply rises. Agricultural price supports have left us with things like vast government warehouses filled with cheese no one wants, made with milk from herds of cattle that we don't need. (The irony of the government deliberately raising the price of food while issuing food stamps to the poor who can no longer pay for it is rarely mentioned, but that's not our topic today.)

The minimum wage is an example of a price floor. The ideas behind it are as simple as they are incorrect. The advocates assume that wealth is some sort of finite resource that neither grows nor falls (the "zero sum" fallacy), that employers are a privileged exploiting class that unfairly pay people less than they are "worth", and that employers could choose to pay their employees any arbitrary wage we pick, but will deliberately pay low wages because they're mean people.

Thus, we assume that by forcing employers to pay some of their employees more, we will have "costlessly" increased the well being of low wage workers. Of course, in reality there are some pretty serious costs.

First, the supply and demand rule we've just studied means that the demand for low wage labor will necessarily fall. Some of the workers will get the wage increase, but others will no longer have jobs. Employers will look at the increase in their cost of labor and try to find ways to ameliorate it. Some may find that it is cheaper to buy more automated machines than to keep as many workers. Others might forgo an expansion, and perhaps others will cut employee benefits to make up for the increased cost of wages. One way or another, though, they'll be compelled to find a way to respond to their increased costs.

You might think this is a "mean" thing for employers to do, but in fact they have no choice. You as a consumer do not voluntarily buy the more expensive choice among equivalent products when you're out shopping, so producers are under tremendous pressure to minimize costs so that they can offer lower prices in the marketplace. If a producer lowers costs more than his competitors, he gains an advantage over them, and so the competitors have to follow suit or go out of business. No employer has an infinite pool of resources to draw on. Wages are set not by "exploiting employers", but by market pressures, just like every other kind of price.

Employers cannot unilaterally set wages. If they offer wages that are too low, they will not attract qualified employees. When you've looked for work, if there were two equally interesting jobs you could pick, and one offered twice as much money, would you pick the lower paying job? Could your boss offer you *any* salary without fear that you would seek another employer that paid more?

We are all employers at times, of course. Do you pick an arbitrary fee to pay your lawyer or plumber, or are you forced into a particular fee by the marketplace? If you wanted to, could you simply pay your plumber minimum wage? Of course not. No other employer has true control over wages, either. Employees are paid well because the market clearing price for their labor is high, or are paid little if the market clearing price for their labor is low. The market for labor is driven by supply and demand like all markets.

It is possible that in some industries, demand is sufficiently inelastic that employment won't drop much after a government imposed wage increase, because customers will absorb the increase in prices. However, those customers also have only finite resources available to them. If they pay more to one supplier, they then have less money to pay to other suppliers or workers. They will either employ fewer people, or purchase fewer goods (thus causing other suppliers to employ fewer people), but either way, the change will have negative effects.

Raising the cost of labor in the economy is thus not harmless — it reduces the amount that can be done with a given amount of resources. Increasing the minimum wage, no matter how well intentioned, creates unemployment for the poor and reduces economic output.

That brings up another point, which is that the economy is not a zero sum game. There isn't a finite pool of wealth out there which some mean people have seized and which others are being unfairly kept away from. The work we do every day increases the total wealth of the world. If I go into my workshop and build a chair, the wealth of the world is larger by the value of one chair. Every day, we make more and more things, raising the total wealth of the world. The reason that 7% of the U.S. population didn't have indoor plumbing in 1970 and that only 0.6% lack it now isn't because wealth has been redistributed — it is because there is a lot more wealth to go around with every passing day.

The government doesn't produce any wealth. Factories, software companies, farmers, and others are the ones producing wealth. All the government can do is make it harder for people to produce wealth or take wealth from one person and hand it to another. It can't actually make the pie larger on its own, but it can manage to drastically reduce the size of the pie by interfering. Only the people actually doing productive work can increase the size of the pie.

We see extreme cases of this in the third world. The reason people in Africa live in shacks and have to wear our cast-off clothing is not because we're mean and keep them from having all the wealth we've stolen from them. They have little wealth to steal in the first place. They are poor because their governments are run in a way that makes the creation and retention of wealth impossible. Unlike the booming Asian economies, where foreign factories are welcomed, few foreign companies "exploit" the poor of Africa, because the African governments have made running factories and businesses nearly impossible. Even indigenous entrepreneurs are regulated, shaken down and taxed into oblivion. If you want to make the poor wealthier, you have to stay out of the way of people who want to produce wealth. The more you get in the way, the poorer people will be.

So, we now turn our attention to New York State, where the legislature recently tried to raise the minimum wage to $7.15, an increase of nearly 40%. That's not a small adjustment by any means. Governor Pataki vetoed the legislation, saying that the minimum wage hike would put New York at a "distinct competitive disadvantage". This is a remarkably economically enlightened viewpoint. However, not all politicians in the state are this enlightened. Quoting the Newsday article I've just linked to:

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver called Pataki's veto "an outrageous slap in the face to tens of thousands of hardworking men and women in our state."

The assembly speaker appears to be basing this statement on the counter-factual belief system that I mentioned before. Repeating, this belief system claims that the economy is a "zero sum" game, that employers voluntarily choose to "exploit" people by paying them less than they are "worth", and that employers can choose to pay their employees any wage at all without impact upon them if they wish to. Therefore, these people reason, it must be the case that refusing to raise the minimum wage 40% is an attempt to continue the exploitation of the hard working men and women of New York State by evil employers, and that but for this veto thousands of people would have better lives without any negative repercussions.

As with most politicians, Silver shows a deep ignorance of how the economy actually works. This is rather ordinary. What I find unusual, and indeed praiseworthy, is that Pataki actually seems to have shown some considerable sense here, and was willing to stand up for his principles even though everyone "knows" that the minimum wage is "good".]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-31T01_05_11.html 2004-07-31T01:05:11-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics, Economics reported to have hit a record $445 Billion.

To put that in perspective, were Bill Gates' entire net worth confiscated by the feds, it would only pay for 1/10th of this year's deficit. Indeed, everything the richest man in the world has ever earned wouldn't even pay for a small fraction of our war in Iraq. The federal government now spends more than his entire asset base every week.

The federal budget continues to grow at a pace far exceeding that of the GDP. It is amazing to me that George W. Bush can still claim with a straight face to be a fiscal conservative. Then again, shame is a rare commodity among politicians.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-30T23_41_39.html 2004-07-30T23:41:39-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Miscellanea The BBC reports on the bizarre case of a Swedish priest who convinced his ex-nanny to kill his wife by sending her SMS messages which purported to be from "God".

Excerpt:

"Suddenly Helge said to me: 'If God were to tell you to kill a human being, would you do it?'" Miss Svensson said.

"I thought it was a very strange question, but thought that if I really knew it was God saying it, I would have to obey. There would be no alternative," she said.

What I find interesting about this, and about the sorts of stories one hears about in books like "Under the Banner of Heaven" (disclaimer: I haven't read that book, I've just heard the author speak), is that they confirm my ancient hypothesis that once you allow yourself to be guided by "faith", to accept "truths" conveyed to you without evidence and indeed to deny evidence and rationality as a basis for understanding reality, you can be convinced to do nearly anything.

This is not to say that I believe all religious people are readily capable of murder. Rather, I claim that once you structure your life around ideas that you are not permitted to test, but which you accept as beyond testing (that is, on "faith"), you've abandoned your most important survival tool, namely reason.

Introduce a bad axiom into a mathematical formal system, you can prove anything. Similarly, if you abandon reason for "faith", you lose your only tool with which to distinguish the truth. This could leave you helpless to escape the idea that "God" demands that you kill, and from there it is a short step to shooting abortion doctors or flying planes into skyscrapers.

Some religious people will argue that "God" doesn't want you to shoot doctors or fly planes into skyscrapers, but how are we to assess whether that is true or not? We are told that we can't apply the scientific method to the question of the existence "God", let alone to the determination of the "divine" will. We are supposed to go by "faith". If you have to go by "faith", why is the "faith" of the person who kills because "God" has commanded it any less correct than the "faith" of the person who claims "God" did not command it? The answer "it just is" will get you sent to the back of the class. So will references to the "self evident" truth of any holy book you care to name.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-30T15_00_52.html 2004-07-30T15:00:52-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Miscellanea Paul Graham isn't to some people's tastes, but I rather like his essays. He's got one up that I hadn't read before called What You Can't Say.

Excerpt:

No one gets in trouble for saying that 2 + 2 is 5, or that people in Pittsburgh are ten feet tall. Such obviously false statements might be treated as jokes, or at worst as evidence of insanity, but they are not likely to make anyone mad. The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry might be believed. I suspect the statements that make people maddest are those they worry might be true.

If Galileo had said that people in Padua were ten feet tall, he would have been regarded as a harmless eccentric. Saying the earth orbited the sun was another matter. The church knew this would set people thinking.

A city traffic agent who was suspended for a month without pay after she issued a ticket to a New York Police Department official was ordered back to work yesterday after three weeks, and will be paid for all but a week of the suspended period, city officials said yesterday.

Res Ipsa Loquitur.

(Thanks to Thor Simon for pointing out the article to me.)]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-29T14_10_25.html 2004-07-29T14:10:25-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology Here is the New York Times' obituary.

The Times piece has a great passage near the beginning:

The discovery of the structure of DNA resolved longstanding questions about the nature of the hereditary material and the manner in which it is copied as one generation succeeds another. The structure, almost immediately accepted, was electrifying to scientists not only because of its inherent elegance but also because it showed how biology, evolution and the nature of life itself could ultimately be explained in terms of physics and chemistry. Indeed, the desire to replace religious with rational explanations of life was a principal motivation of Dr. Crick's career.

Crick didn't just co-discover the structure of DNA — he went on to demonstrate how DNA is transcribed into proteins, and to instigate and supervise much of the foundational work of molecular biology. I think he'll be remembered for a long time.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-29T11_51_35.html 2004-07-29T11:51:35-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology, Politics an article on New York City leasing out lampposts to 802.11 service providers. Normally I wouldn't bother to mention this, but it has a really stunning quote from Peter Vallone, who will be running for Mayor next year.

But all that radiation has some activists and officials concerned about the potential health implications of the antennas. "Apparently the city is willing to gamble with the health of its residents for $25 million," said Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. He is introducing legislation to require the companies to pay for radiation inspectors as part of their franchise agreements. "There is no study that has looked at the cumulative effect of these transmitters," he said.

That's got to be one of the dumbest things I've seen a politician say in... oh, sadly, hours. I wish it was unusual to see a politician spouting junk science and requesting rules to impede the construction of new infrastructure, but unfortunately it happens practically every time I look at the news.

For those not in the know, an 802.11 device puts out no more than a couple hundred milliwatts, and once you take the inverse square law into account, the capacity of such a device to transfer energy to anything nearby is pretty limited.

The city is also filled with millions of such low power emitters. If such devices were a problem, really we'd have much more serious problems than a few new pole top devices. Even banning the hundreds of thousands of existing 802.11 devices people have set up in their homes wouldn't be enough. Cell phones, cell phone towers, walkie-talkies, microwave ovens, microwave communications dishes, television and radio transmitters, etc. are everywhere, in the millions. We'd need to shut all of them down, too. That is ignoring all the televisions, radios, CD players, computers, etc., all of which emit a tiny amount of electromagnetic energy. If we got rid of all of these things, maybe then the marginal change caused by adding some pole-top 802.11 transmitters would be observable, even if it was still completely unimportant to health.

Luckily federal law keeps municipalities from preventing the construction of new cellphone base stations, but nothing protects companies from the likes of Mr. Vallone. Lets hope people laugh at him loud enough that he drops the whole thing, and soon.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-28T21_59_56.html 2004-07-28T21:59:56-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Security news.com.com.com.com is reporting that someone has realized that you can reprogram RFID tags so the scanner at the checkout thinks that you're buying something cheaper than you really are.

Of course, doing this exact same thing with printed bar codes by making up fake ones and sticking them on merchandise has been floating around for a long time. I don't see how the RFID threat is significantly different.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-28T21_39_00.html 2004-07-28T21:39:00-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Miscellanea I wonder if I'm a victim of this devastating syndrome.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-28T21_03_40.html 2004-07-28T21:03:40-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology, Politics, Economics This BBC story just in from the "strangling the infant in the crib" department.

The Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering in the UK are about to propose new regulations governing nanotechnology, long before any real nanotechnology has even be developed.

Best quote from the online article:

"Our main concern is that this is a new, powerful technological platform that could be disruptive," said Jim Thomas, from the campaigning ETC (Erosion, Technology and Concentration) Group.

"What does it mean for the poor, disabled, the disadvantaged - people who are usually left out of the debate?"

He stressed that nanotechnology should be developed to benefit all, and that public engagement was essential.

How the poor and disadvantaged might be helped by delaying things like lifesaving technologies and radically less expensive goods, Mr. Thomas doesn't say. Presumably the disabled might be angry about medical nanobots going in, fixing their severed spinal cords and permanently ending their blissful paraplegia.

I'm reminded yet again that the speeches the bad guys in "Atlas Shrugged" make are not parodies — they're the sorts of things real people say. It is almost enough to make me reach for a pack of ciggies with dollar signs on the filters, only I think smoking is stupid.

Perhaps we can introduce Mr. Thomas to the bureaucrats in Ghana, who are also working to help the poor. They may have ideas to trade about the public betterment.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-28T20_16_30.html 2004-07-28T20:16:30-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Software Paul Graham has posted a new essay on his web site called "Great Hackers".

It's damn good. Even better in some ways than the old parable about programmers and bees.

If you're involved in the software industry at all, I'd recommend a read.

Paul's other essays are damn good, too. They convinced me to try programming in Lisp again, for which I'm eternally grateful.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-28T14_27_22.html 2004-07-28T14:27:22-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology, Politics, Economics, Intellectual Property, Open Source Wikipedia articles a lot in my recent postings.

I'd like to give the Wikipedia people a bit of a plug. They've instigated a free encyclopedia, written by... well, anyone who cares to help write it. ("Free" in this case means both the free software and free beer senses of the word.) The web site that hosts the encyclopedia is a "Wiki", a system that allows anyone who sees a problem with a page or wants to contribute to do so, immediately. There's literally a button on every part of every page named "edit".

Wikis, like all "open source" style projects, work on the stone soup model. You start with a small implementation of an idea and convince lots of people that they should help you improve it. What starts as a kettle and a rock turns into something far, far better. The public good "problem" is stood on its head. The non-rivalrous, non-excludable nature of pure information doesn't bring the "market failure" traditional economic analysis would predict, but instead becomes an advantage begging to be harnessed.

If any project shows the power of an open source community, it is Wikipedia. In a few short years, they've produced, for free, one of the best information resources I'm familiar with, and they've barely even started. If you haven't looked at Wikipedia, you should.

By coincidence Slashdot is running an interview today with Wikipedia's founder Jimmy Wales.

There's a great quote in the interview that I'd like to share:

I frequently counsel people who are getting frustrated [...] to think about someone who lives without clean drinking water, without any proper means of education, and how our work might someday help that person. It puts flamewars into some perspective, I think.

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.

I think he's on to something. Couple

• An internet filled with the complete sum of human knowledge
• $10 laptop computers with cheap satelite internet access

For a fictional vision of what such technologies could bring, see The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-28T00_30_28.html 2004-07-28T00:30:28-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics, Economics Public Goods problem to me as an example of why we need governments. They mention all sorts of things as potential public goods, like, for example national defense. This entry is my overarching argument for why the "Market Failure" argument is a poor excuse for government provision of services.

If you already know what a public good is, and a bit about the theory of market failure, skip down to And now for my point.

For the rest of you who want an explanation of public goods and "market failure", and don't want to look at the Wikipedia article I list above, a Public Good is an economic good (that is, a product, service, resource, etc.) that has unusual properties that lead us to believe that a free market might underproduce it.

Specifically, it has to be:

• non-rivalrously consumed, meaning that any number of people (within reason) can use it simultaneously without impeding each other's access. For example, whether or not someone else is in a movie theater, I can still enjoy the show. Ten people watching does not mean I only get one tenth of the viewing pleasure.
• non-excludable, meaning that no one can keep you from enjoying the good, and thus you might not pay for it and yet you might still consume it. For example, one might consider fishing in the deep ocean non-excludable, since no one can stop someone from fishing in international waters.

Goods that possess both these features are said to have a problem, which is called "market failure". It is said that the free market will not supply as much of the good as would be truly "efficient" (in the economic sense of the word), because suppliers will not be compensated as much as the "real" demand curve for the good would imply. (See this Wikipedia article if you aren't familiar with supply and demand curves.)

Put another way, if you could exclude people from the benefits of a good, people would be forced to pay for it if they wanted it, but since they can enjoy the benefit without paying, and since one person's consumption does not impact another's, the exhibited demand curve is much lower than the "true" curve, and thus supply will be much lower than might be abstractly thought of as "efficient".

Note that you need both properties for something to be a Public Good. A movie theater has a door that locks, and is thus excludable -- I can keep you from entering if you will not pay. There is not an infinite supply of fish, and thus deep sea fishing is (at the limit) not non-rivalrous. (Fishing might exhibit a different kind of market failure popularly called "The Tragedy of the Commons", but that's a story for another day.)

An example that is often given in economics texts for a Public Good is a lighthouse. Everyone benefits from it, but since it is non-excludable why should I pay for it if someone else will? Thus we would naively expect there to be an undersupply of lighthouses. Another example given is raising honeybees — the bees help nearby farmers, but because they can't be stopped from going to any field in the vicinity, you would naively expect that beekeepers would be under-compensated for their work and thus there would be an undersupply of bee hives.

As it turns out, both of these examples are historically false. Lighthouses were historically supplied by private means, and a lively market exists in renting the use of bee hives to pollinate crops. (See the collection "The Theory of Market Failure" if you are interested in details on both these "textbook fallacies".)

As it happens, I don't believe there really are any public goods (or at least, no "market failures" important enough that we should care much about them). However, let us assume that there might be a few. It is argued that one of the functions of government is to "fix" the market failures that a pure free market might have by intervention. For example, lets say that we believed that national defense was a "public good". The government could then provide the good directly (such as by collecting taxes and running an army with them), or could use subsidies or similar mechanisms to "correct" the market failure.

And now for my point.

For the government to actually fix the so-called "market failure", it has to do two things.

First, it needs to somehow assess what the "true" demand curve is. How might it go about doing that? Is there be some amazing scientific method for figuring out the "true" demand? Unfortunately, as Von Mises and Hayek pointed out in their work on the so-called "calculation problem", there is no particularly good way to figure out appropriate supply and demand curves without resorting to market mechanisms.

In practice, then, we end up with the "calculation" being made fairly arbitrarily, as the result of policial mechanisms. Sadly, as James Buchanan demonstrated in his pioneering work on public choice economic theory, the political method is likely to base its "computation" on the interests of powerful actors in the process rather than on any sort of rational basis. Bureaucrats will have a personal interest in the expansion of their fiefdoms, and thus will always argue for increased production of a good. Firms seeking government contracts will have an enormous incentive to lobby for increased production. (Indeed, if contract worth a billion dollars in profit is in danger, why not spend $900M lobbying if it will retain your business?) Individual members of the public, however, each have only a tiny fraction of the cost of any given government program to bear, so one's personal incentive to lobby against any given program is low. On a billion dollar federal budget item, the average American can save only $3.30 by getting the program canceled — the sum hardly makes the effort worthwhile.

We therefore expect that the government will not make rational decisions about the allocation of a public good, but will instead tend to overspend on it — perhaps even vastly overspend on it.

Second, to fix the "market failure", the government must somehow actually act to supply the missing good, either directly or via government contracts. Because there is no market discipline enforcing the efficient delivery of government services, these services are often supplied in a stunningly bad manner. You can't go to the competing DMV — there is none — so you wait on line for hours to get your drivers license. Why should we expect that the efficiency with which, say, national defense or other purported "public goods" will be supplied would be any greater?

So, here is the crux of the problem with the "let the government supply the public goods" argument: there is no evidence the government can supply putative "public goods" with any greater efficiency than the market that has "failed". Indeed, one might even get less efficiency than one started with. Why, then, is government intervention any better than the "market failure" we started with?]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-27T14_09_13.html 2004-07-27T14:09:13-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics, Economics invisible hand has usually been left free to clothe the naked.

Until now, that is.

This morning, I heard a story on the BBC World Service that seemed outlandish — they claimed that Uganda was now taxing imports of second hand clothing to "protect" the local clothing industry.

Naturally, I didn't believe anyone could be that stupid, but a quick search on Google reveals that it is true. See this article, for example, and this one. Indeed, it seems that Tanzania and other African countries are doing similar things.

I'm reminded of Frederic Bastiat's brilliant satire, The Candlemaker's Petition, except this isn't a joke — this is nightmarish reality. To protect a tiny economically inefficient local industry, these governments are driving up the cost of clothing bought by the desperately poor.

If you want to know why Africa is an economic basket case, look no further than this sort of insanity.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-27T12_03_58.html 2004-07-27T12:03:58-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Security, Open Source Green Hills Software (which sells proprietary operating systems, often for defense contracts) has written an article in which he argues that Linux (and by implication, all open source software) should not be used in defense contracts. He claims that open source is a major security threat to defense systems, because evil foreign agents could infiltrate the open source developer community and insert trojan horses into software later used for military purposes.

I'm a big believer in avoiding the Ad Hominem fallacy, so even though Dan O'Dowd has every reason in the world to make this up from whole cloth to protect his business, lets treat the claim seriously and address it.

It is true that evil foreign agents could try to get trojan horses into the Linux sources (as could evil domestic agents). However, they could also get jobs with companies like, say Green Hills, or other defense contractors. The latter would seem like a far more direct route to sabotage, since you get a close look at how your software will be used and thus can plan your sabotage much more effectively.

Although it is true that people working on defense contracts usually have security clearances, it is far from clear that such clearances actually prevent espionage or sabotage. I know of no studies that validate the methodology used in security clearances, and certainly the "security clearance" barrier hasn't prevented lots of folks from causing damage to U.S. interests even when they've had the clearances.

It is also the case that much of the software that goes into defense systems is produced by people with no clearances whatsoever -- I doubt that Green Hills, for example, always goes through the trouble of clearing the guys who work on their base software products if they are not going to be doing classified work.

We also have the question of the "many eyes" theory of open source security, which O'Dowd makes fun of. Many open source advocates note that since anyone who wants to can read the source code to an open source product, it is harder to conceal back doors. O'Dowd attacks this by saying that there are none the less security holes found quite regularly in Linux. What he does not mention is that there are also security holes found quite regularly in Windows and other proprietary operating systems, and that there might even be security holes in his own products. The question we are looking at here is not whether or not there are bugs -- the question is whether it is easier or harder to conceal an intentional flaw in an open source system.

Although it is true that the ability of large numbers of people to read the code is no panacea, it certainly is a help. There are comparatively few people who get to read the code in proprietary systems, such as the ones Green Hills sells, so there are fewer people in a position catch a trojan inserted by a rogue programmer.

Mr. O'Dowd also misses one of the most important aspects of security -- he fails to discuss the economic tradeoffs (if any) being made in a given security decision. He mentions only the possible problems of using an open source operating system, but he ignores the price associated with not using one. Against the weak claim of decreased security, we have to balance the loss of functionality and increased cost that using a proprietary operating system might cause. Developers do not select open source software at random. They adopt it because it gives them better functionality and has a lower cost.

Indeed, the cost savings and productivity benefits of open source systems might easily make it possible to devote more effort to security in a design, and the improved tools available can make security far easier to implement. Open source operating system users take features like packet filters, MMU based memory protection for multiple processes, logging facilities, etc., for granted, but these features not available in many conventional embedded operating systems. Even the ones that do have any particular feature rarely provide the breadth of functionality of the open source systems.

Lastly, let me note that Mr. O'Dowd appears to be inventing the threat he describes. I doubt he has any actual evidence of evil foreign agents trying to subvert defense products by sneaking trojan horses into the Linux source base. If he does have such evidence, he did not mention it.

Overall, I think his argument against open source is pretty weak. I don't think defense agencies should give it much heed.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-26T23_47_44.html 2004-07-26T23:47:44-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics, Security Cryptome: according to this set of web pages, security at the Democratic National Convention turns out to be quite unprofessional in places.

I was a bit skeptical, but a friend of mine who is a ham radio operator in Boston confirms the radio frequencies posted are unencrypted and are indeed being used as stated, and the photographs of unprotected facilities speak for themselves. The descriptions in the report are a bit breathless, but they appear to be essentially plausible.

It seems that Potemkin Security is everywhere -- even at a national political convention. We're willing to shut down all the highways in Boston, but no one will even think to properly install fencing or to encrypt security communications.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-26T22_14_44.html 2004-07-26T22:14:44-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics Cryptome has published an extraordinary calendar of every U.S soldier killed to date in Iraq.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-26T22_06_01.html 2004-07-26T22:06:01-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Intellectual Property However, there is a difference between ingratitude and filing charges for criminal copyright violation, which is what the MPAA has done to a guy running a Stargate SG1 fan site.

I wonder if anyone told the folks at the MPAA that trying to jail your customers is bad for business?

Of course, the MPAA has a history of taking stupid positions.

[Originally seen on bOINGbOING and via Adam Fields]

ADDENDUM: It appears that the story is in fact months old. You can find a government press release on it here. I have no information on what may have transpired since then.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-26T21_09_34.html 2004-07-26T21:09:34-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics Rob Mitchell has noted to me that those of us who object to the phrase "In God We Trust" on US paper money have an easy form of protest available to us.

Simply black out the offensive words with a felt tip pen. You'll be taking direct action to make the currency better, and every bill you alter and spend will circulate your opinion of 31 USC 5114(b) far and wide.

This idea seems to have been re-invented several times. Google finds a number of web sites advocating it, such as this one, for example.

I'm sure I'll get mail claiming that marking your bills in this manner is a crime of some sort, but it appears that, arguably, given the intent and result of the action, it is does not meet the definition of defacing the currency in the U.S. code. Apparently adding an advertisement to the currency is illegal, so I would stick to merely inking out the offending phrase rather than adding any words of one's own, even though the statute seems to be discussing commercial advertising. Also, merely inking out the phrase makes it less likely the bill could be argued to be "unfit to be reissued" given that banks put ink marks on bills all the time.

(Rob argues that just inking out the offending phrase is a more powerful statement anyway, and I tend to agree with him.)

Regardless, the activity is probably protected by the first amendment, and as a practical matter, the odds of anything happening to you are likely nil.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-26T11_36_22.html 2004-07-26T11:36:22-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology claim from Seth Shostak at the SETI Institute that, given the Drake Equation and Moore's Law, we should expect to discover radio signals from another civilization within 20 years or so.

This seems like a good opportunity for me to mention that I think Drake Equation is flawed. It calculates the number of technological civilizations we should expect to find in our galaxy by multiplying a few estimated quantities and probabilities. Unfortunately, it makes the assumption that these figures are statistically independent. I see no reason to make that assumption, so I think the Drake Equation is incorrect.

If the Drake Equation's input values are statistically independent, the development of one technological civilization would have no impact on the development of other technological civilizations. That seems unreasonable to me.

I think it's likely that any technological civilization will build Von Neumann Machines, i.e. self replicating devices, that explore and colonize the universe around them in every possible direction. Very likely these constructs will travel at a large fraction of the speed of light. Our own civilization is extremely young, and yet it should be able to create such things within the next century.

I thus think it is likely that any species capable of technological civilization starts expanding out at near the speed of light within tens of thousands of years of evolving. We've been around for something less than 1/100,000th of the life of the universe, which is a blink of of an eye on cosmic time scales. You would therefore expect that if another civilization is in your light cone, it should already have traveled to where you are. (This is a variation of the Fermi Paradox.)

So, if there are other folks out there that we could hear, they should be where we are already. However, if they were here already, we probably wouldn't be. Intelligent life has a way of drastically interfering with its environment. We've seen this phenomenon on Earth, where we've spread over the entire planet in a miniscule time. It isn't likely that other intelligent technologically capable species are going to arise on Earth so long as we're here.

Thus, we hear no one because if we weren't the first out the starting gate in our light cone, we wouldn't be here in the first place.

Does this mean I think SETI is a waste of time? Far from it. Among other things, I have a mediocre record as a pundit, so I could be wrong, and it would be a great mistake not to find out if there is other intelligent life out there. However, I will not be shocked if we hear nothing.

By the way, we may hear nothing even if there are other technological civilizations out there. There is an assumption that with sufficiently sensitive equipment, we should be able to pick up the internal communications of other civilizations. Our own television and radio broadcasts are, after all, likely to be detectable many light years away. However, this will not continue.

Information theory tells us that more densely packed a signal is, the more it resembles random noise. We're getting better and better at using bandwidth, so pretty soon I'd expect everything we send to be pretty indistinguishable from random. This has already started to happen. We're also starting to adopt spread spectrum radio technology very widely, and that, too, has the effect of making your broadcasts look like random noise. Lastly, in order to maximize the available bandwidth, we'll start more and more narrowly focusing our communications using phased arrays and other active antenna technologies, so most of our communications may be inaudible outside of teeny chunks of space.

Although the specifics of how we communicate by radio in the future will change, the fact that new technologies will produce signals more and more like random noise and harder and harder to hear at a distance is likely permanent. It is a response to fundamental laws about information theory and radio communications. I assume that if there is anyone out there, they will be subject to the same fundamental laws, so their communications will follow the same trend.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-26T09_50_06.html 2004-07-26T09:50:06-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics New York Times story (sorry, registration required and the link will doubtless expire soon) notes that the number of Americans currently in prison or on parole has reached a new high of 6.9 million. That's 3.2% of the population.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-26T09_45_21.html 2004-07-26T09:45:21-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Intellectual Property front page story (sorry, registration required to read it, and it probably won't be accessible in a few days anyway) about how the Russians are upset about the "pirating" of the AK-47 worldwide. They assert that the numerous clones of the famous rifle made in factories around the world are illegal because Russian intellectual property is being used without any licenses.

On the face of it, this claim is completely ridiculous. The rifle was designed over 50 years ago, so any patents that might be claimed have long since expired. There might be a claim on the name "AK-47" itself, as a trademark, but the usual rules on trademark say "police it or lose it", and the mark has been in use as a generic term for the design of this particular rifle for so long without anyone being sued that I doubt any court would now enforce a claim for such a mark.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-26T08_56_19.html 2004-07-26T08:56:19-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics DoD web site doesn't give out enough information on the ordering of the deaths.) In addition, the current count for deaths among allied "coalition" troops is 117. There are therefore now over 1000 direct deaths among allied military personnel.

There have also been numerous deaths among civilian contractors, for which it is impossible to get a direct count. However, this site lists the names of 116, though there are surely far more.

At least 5,000-6,000 Iraqi military were killed during the course of the war itself, and something like another 12,000 civilians have been killed (though that is a number based on news reports and may be low.)

We are therefore now at something like seven times the number of people killed on 9/11, and this is just in Iraq.

We've also spent something like $125 billion dollars, and we're planning on spending something like $100 billion more. (Sources for a more accurate figure would be appreciated).]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-25T19_12_53.html 2004-07-25T19:12:53-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Music Kronos Quartet decides to cover "Flugufrelsarinn" by Sigur Ros?

You can find out here.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-25T15_27_27.html 2004-07-25T15:27:27-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics, Security Bruce Schneier calls "Security Theater"). It provides the feeling that something is being done even if it doesn't actually accomplish much, and thus gives people the ability to say "see, we're doing something about security!"

I mention this today because a friend of mine just told me that they had accidently flown out of LaGuardia Airport a few days ago with a Leatherman in their bag, and hadn't realized it until someone caught it when they tried to board their flight back to New York today. I hear stories like this all the time, and there are even some known incidents of people accidently bringing firearms onto aircraft without anyone stopping them. (I suspect those might happen routinely but for the fact that there are very few people who forget that they are carrying a gun and then try to board an airplane.)

I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that the TSA doesn't even do the wrong job very well. It seems like a fine example of what happens when people demand that the government "do something" about a problem, without contemplating too seriously what the right "something" might be.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-25T14_43_51.html 2004-07-25T14:43:51-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics, Economics Marginal Revolution) that there is an Irish based company called TradeSports that runs an unusual betting operation.

Instead of keeping their own book, TradeSports sets up futures style contracts with cash settlement that pay off based on the outcome of a future event. (I'm reminded of Idea Futures, except for the most part they're doing pretty ordinary sports bets.)

In addition to sports, they're running a number of contracts on future economic statistics, elections and other such things.

(One hopes that perhaps someday they'll do Idea Futures. There are places like the Foresight Exchange that do idea futures, but so far as I know none use real money.)

One reason I mention them is because they're running a set of contracts on the current U.S. presidential election, much like the Iowa Electronic Markets, except they're not a small scale academic experiment.

Currently, it appears that the people on TradeSports collectively believe George Bush's reelection is a 50/50 shot, which is pretty much the same prediction that the IEM and the Foresight Exchange.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-25T13_12_09.html 2004-07-25T13:12:09-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Politics, Security article in information week reveals the shocking fact that the Department of Homeland Security's efforts to fight "cybercrime" are "plagued by problems". One good quote:

"Despite the progress made, DHS faces significant challenges in developing and implementing a program to protect our national cyber-infrastructure," Ervin's report said.

Of course, one asks what they legitimately could do to "protect our national cyber-infrastructure". Those of us who are actually involved in computer security are working pretty hard to come up with solutions to things like denial of service attacks, viruses, and other issues. There isn't terribly much they could be doing other than law enforcement, and they don't seem to ever do any of that. People are, for practical purposes, never prosecuted for computer break-ins. (There are prosecutions, but they constitute a microscopic fraction of the number of incidents.)

One of the things I find bizarre about the whole thing is that the government is under the delusion that it is, in fact, involved. They spend money and have departments with appropriate names and such, but so far as I can tell none of it has any connection to reality. (I'm not including the folks at places like NSA who actually do computer security for their organizations every day. I mean the various "information security task force" types.)

So, there are folks in Washington who must go in to the office every day and think they are involved with keeping our networks secure, when in fact nothing they do has any impact on the problem at all. This kind of thing appears to be a common feature of large bureaucracies. I've been struggling to come up with a pithy word or metaphor for it without much success. The only thing that pops into mind for me today is the Aztec priesthood. Those where the folks who thought that if they didn't cut out someone's heart every day, the sun would stop rising.

It is sort of the inverse of a "Cargo Cult". Instead of your actions bringing about no results even though you think you're doing everything right, the results you want keep happening even though your actions have nothing to do with it at all, and you are convinced you are the cause.

This brings up a couple of questions.

• Is there a good word or phrase for this sort of thing? That is, is there a good word for "people who think they're doing something but who are in fact completely uninvolved?" There are excellent phrases for similar concepts -- "Potemkin Village", "Cargo Cult", etc., -- but none of them quite capture the idea precisely.
• Is it actually for the best that these folks are kept busy thinking they're involved when they aren't, so that they don't cause damage by actually becoming involved? It doesn't seem as though we can prevent the government from wanting to "do something" about computer security, so maybe keeping them occupied with reports, studies and "coordinating activities" is, in fact, a good thing.

Addendum: A friend writes to me and says: The best comment I've heard about DHS is "They can't even piss through an open window."]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-24T18_03_42.html 2004-07-24T18:03:42-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Science & Technology X-ray crystallography. However, things may be changing.

When I was a kid, they told us things in science classes like "no one will ever seen an atom because they are too small". Then, of course, in 1981, some smart folks invented Scanning Tunneling Microscopy ("STM") and suddenly people could take pictures of atoms. Soon we had Atomic Force Microscopy ("AFM") too.

Neither STM nor AFM are capable of doing things like showing us the detailed structure of a macromolecule like a protein, but now another variation on the theme has been invented, Magnetic Resonance Force Microscopy. It is a cross between Magnetic Resonance Imaging and scanning microscopes like the STM.

The first devices seem to be capable of detecting spin flips in individual electrons, and upping the sensitivity by a few orders of magnitude seems straightforward. This could be a major breakthrough. We may soon be able to directly image macromolecules. The impact of that capability on chemistry, biology and molecular nanotechnology would be huge.]]> http://www.piermont.com/blog/archives/permalinks/2004-07-24T17_14_01.html 2004-07-24T17:14:01-04:00 Perry E. Metzger Miscellanea I've kept saying I was going to set up a blog for a long time, but I never actually got in a large enough supply of "round tuits" before now.

More to the point, I've finally found a blogging program that does things roughly the way I like. (Actually, it doesn't quite do what I want, so I'll probably rewrite it when it becomes irritating enough to me. That's a different story, though.)

My intent is to republish all the rants I currently post to various other places here, and to use this as a home base for new ones. Usenet is dead, and mailing lists are pretty limited in scope. Blogs seem to be taking over the role of providing places for people to express themselves. I'm hoping this is a better medium for archiving my thoughts.

Will I write regularly for this thing? Maybe, maybe not. I suppose it depends on how it feels. We'll see how it goes.

You will note that the blog doesn't contain a "comments" mechanism. Part of that is because I wanted to start with a blogging system that produced purely static content. Part is that I also prefer to decide on what goes up on this site. If you want to say something about things I've posted, send me email.]]>