Ubiqitous Electronics and Privacy

Interesting bit of foofrah about an 'art' project! It seems that one Kyle MacDonald has come to the attention of the Secret Service for capturing pictures of unsuspecting people browsing computers at an Apple store and then posting them on a site as a 'art' project called People Staring at Computers.

At the time of this writing no charges have been laid and it is not clear that any 'crime' has actually been committed but Mr. MacDonald's computer has been confiscated and is apparently being scrutinized by the authorities.

While it would appear from what I read that Mr. MacDonald actually physically added software to at least one store computer (which he claims he had permission from the store to do) to take and forward pictures for his use, it is not necessary to do that. It is possible, I believe, (No I do not know how, but have been told that it is possible) to remotely turn on any internet connected camera and capture the resulting images at another location.

In fact, Apple itself has applied for a patent for technology to allow it to turn off the camera function in any one of its phones should they happen to discover the images not to be to their liking. Obviously then, they can monitor the images being fed through their phones, and it seems quite likely that they can be turned on remotely as well and I am sure that there are a number of people with the knowledge and equipment to do so.

So what? Well if you are at all paranoid, I strongly suggest that you disconnect from the internet when you are doing anything in the same room as your computer (or phone) that you want to stay private! It would almost appear that any reasonably well informed person might be said to have no 'expectation of privacy' at any time or place with any kind of electronic equipment around!

Of course, the truth is that with the millions of phones and computers and cameras there are to tap, the odds that anyone would tap yours is (for most of us, at least) pretty darn small. Most of us just aren't that interesting.

The rumor is that all phone calls are computer monitored for key words and those with one of the key words are recorded and followed up but come on.... At any given moment there must be several hundred hours of phone calls happening. Even if only one in a million of those calls contained a key word there would still be thousands of man hours a day required to actually listen to even those calls.

The reality is that 'general' surveillance of any type is really only useful after a crime has been detected ( or at least 'suspected') by other means. If the authorities know a place and or time to look, having surveillance records of that time and place can be very useful but as a way of 'discovering' crime it is are pretty much useless. There are simply too many times and too many places.

Privacy is an obvious growing concern. In the case of Mr. MacDonald the question is one of what rights do we have to prevent or at least profit from the exploitation of our own image? I do know that in art photos it is generally considered necessary to get permission for use from any recognizable individuals in your photos. Mr. MacDonald did not do that! But is that a matter for the Secret Service? I suspect that their interest was as much that he was exposing the simplicity of a tactic they would rather not have the public widely aware of.

Apple? Well their suggested interest in being able to shut down phone cameras was to enable the control of piracy of copyrighted material. For example they could monitor images coming from a concert or movie opening and shut down the phone cameras if the copyright holders desired them to do so (and presumably paid for the privilege, also). But what about images of a protest, or police brutality? They would shut down the cameras at police request? What about individuals having phone sex (with video!)? Would they be responsible for NOT providing video of a crime? I am very surprised if their legal advisers did not warn them that having the ability to 'do a good thing' might leave them open to liability claims if they failed to do that 'good thing'. Having abilities carries responsibilities and I am not sure that on sober thought they would even want the abilities they applied to patent.

The SAFE Act

Below copied from an article 'House Tries to Make the Internet SAFE' by Frederick Lane, of newsfactor.com  


By an overwhelming margin -- 409 to 2 -- the U.S. House of Representatives passed new legislation on Thursday aimed at making the Internet safer for children. The Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online (SAFE) Act was sponsored by Texas Democrat Nick Lampson, one of the founding members of the House Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus.
......
According to a press release from Rep. Lampson's office, ISPs would be fined $150,000 per incident per day for first offenses, and $300,000 per incident per day for second and succeeding offenses.
.....
the bill's definition of ISP -- anyone offering an open Wi-Fi service -- could apply to municipalities, libraries, coffee shops, or even individuals who fail to password protect their Wi-Fi router. The language of the legislation, which was adopted without congressional hearings or significant debate, may also apply to social-networking sites, e-mail service providers, and Internet search engines
........
As it is currently drafted, the legislation applies not merely to photographs of minors engaged in sexual activity (which is clearly child pornography), but also more subjective material, including photographs of minors in provocative poses and sexually explicit cartoon drawings depicting minors.

__________________________________________________________________________

Well our great elected officials are at it again. Under the guise of  'protecting the children' they are moving again to censor and terrorize the freest form of information dissemination currently available to the populace. Is any one 'in favor ' of child pornography? Well I suppose some are, but I am certainly not among them and if this legislation had any chance of significantly stemming the business or, for that matter was even intended to, I might support it.

However it simply has no chance of working as supposedly intended. It is literally as blatantly stupid as saying that the US Postal Service, United Parcel Service, FedEX, DHL, and any other courier/mail service be fined  500,000 dollars (average shipping is 3 days so with the per day rate.....) anytime they transport a package that turns out to have something that someone might possibly consider to be pornography in it.. Or maybe the telephone company should be fined $150,000 to $300,000 anytime they transport a FAX that someone somewhere might possibly consider to be pornographic. (In fact, why aren't they suggesting that the telephone and cable companies be fined $150,000 to $300,000 for every objectionable image they allow to be transmitted over their service? Couldn't be because that would madden the people spending bribe money so lavishly to get the right to completely control the Internet I suppose.)

I am willing to accept that most of the 409 'yes' voters are just too ignorant to see the uselessness of this bill to cure the actual problem and voted 'yes' because “How could you be against the kids?”. But you certainly don't get that kind of vote without some pushing and shoving by somebody. I mean, when was the last time a bill even got 409 votes in any direction at all (except for pay raises, of course)? So what were the proponents really after?

What they are after is a club! A 'big frippin club' with which to terrorize Internet Service Providers, Network providers and Search Services. Because those 'damn things' keep telling everybody everything!    This law is totally impractical for its stated purpose. There is not, at this point in time and in all likelihood  ever, any software that can tell the difference between 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable' images. Therefore, the only chance the services have to comply with the law is to hire thousands upon thousands of humans to view each and every image that anyone anywhere in the world attempts to store, however temporarily, on their equipment, and immediately pass accurate judgment as to its 'acceptability'. Not only is the cost totally prohibitive, the privacy intrusion is ridiculous and the likely acceptability of the results negligible because of the vagueness of the definitions. So, of course, no service will even make any serious attempt to comply. But the backers of the legislation are completely aware of this! And it is exactly what they want! If the bill were to become law ALL Internet services could be blackmailed into the censorship that supporters of the bill actually desire at any time. “If we see anything more about  Iran not having nukes, we might go looking for kiddie porn.” and since it is possible to key word search and destroy text, well.... how hard do you think even the best financially set services could resist?

Nothing threatens tyranny as much as an informed populace so nothing is as important to the tyrant as controlling the 'information' available to the populace. This bill, The 'Patriot Act', and most if not all bills pushed through on an agenda of 'saving the people' are simply 'clubs' designed in reality to strip away our freedoms, probably most importantly our 'freedom to know' what the 'powers that be' want hidden.

Josh Wolf and Blogger Journalism

Is the implied relationship actually relevant?

I was watching “Cranky Geeks” (www.crankygeeks.com/) today and the program for the week centered around the case of Josh Wolf, the blogger/journalist who set the record for the longest stretch in jail for refusing to honor a subpoena for his video work and information to a Federal grand jury.

Why it was even a Federal case is somewhat questionable but since it involved a protest over some sort of World Summit the Feds decided to pretend it was a terrorism issue (anything involving protests by or about or near foreigners must be terrorism, right?) and took over a case of 'assault on a police officer' in an attempt to 'get the goods' on some unspecified 'domestic terrorists' (which of course anyone who disagrees with the administration must be).

As I understand it, Josh has an established blog on which he covers this sort of event whenever possible and he was on hand for the protest and taking video which he then posted, edited down of course, on that blog. Several local TV stations scarfed his video from the blog and used it in their newscasts regarding the summit and the protest, etc. When Josh became aware of this he notified the stations of his copyright and billed them for the usage and they all paid up. The problem arose when the Feds saw the TV reports and asked the stations where they got the footage and thus found Josh. They insisted Josh turn over all the outtakes and answer questions about everything and anything they wanted to ask in front of a grand jury. Josh refused to honor this blanket request and, to make a long story short, ended up getting cited for contempt even though he offered to let the Judge view the tape outtakes so they could see there was nothing relevant in them and even though he had been taping at a place nowhere near where the officer was assaulted and there was no reason to believe that anything on his tape outtakes could have any relevance to that matter.

In fact it is clear that his refusal to 'give' them the tapes was never really the issue. They were never physically hidden and had the authorities had any grounds to do so they could have seized them under a search warrant at any time and presented them to the grand jury.

He was finally released when the authorities agreed that if he published the outtakes on his blog they would be satisfied. He agreed and was released and did so.

He had offered basically the same in the beginning but that was apparently not good enough. It would appear that, as he thought, the Feds were actually more interested in getting him under oath in front of a grand jury to be questioned about the people he may or may not have known within the protest movement (he has a history of covering and having a relationship with anti-government protesters of various types) then they actually were in what was shown in the outtakes, and not having any grounds to subpoena him directly, went after his video and his explanation of it instead.

Combine that conclusion with the fact that there is no Federal 'Shield' law anyway, and the “blogger is/blogger isn't” a journalist question is not relevant to the case. The real question is can a person be forced to testify before a grand jury even in the absence of any realistic reason to believe that person knows anything about the situation the grand jury is investigating. The answer would appear to be “YES!”

How about the rest of us?

Does this concern only those who video tape things of potential interest to zealous policemen (or over zealous witch hunters, depending on your point of view)? Perhaps so at this point in time. It is abundantly clear that coerced eyewitness accounts are not likely to yield much without other backup. Recent experience tells us it is possible to be Attorney General of the United States and a nearly complete amnesiac at the same time.

However; the principle apparently upheld by the Josh Wolf case is this; It is not up to the authorities to show that you know something relevant to their investigation, it is up to you to prove that you do not. And that, my friend, is one terribly dangerous principle.

Why? Because it can be used to justify all sorts of actions by the authorities! Hypnosis, truth serums, or sensory deprivation are just a few of the more mild things that might be justified under that principle. Josh carried a video camera, but we all carry a full sensory recorder in our heads.

Anyone anywhere in the vicinity of any situation of interest to the authorities might well have pertinent, even important, information in their heads and so, under the principle of “prove you don't know”, could be 'justifiably' subject to any procedure that might be expected to pull stored (consciously or unconsciously) information from their heads.

In essence, accepting what was done to Josh Wolf as legal (all questions of whether he is a journalist or not, aside) is to accept the principles of any police state, namely; “When the authorities do it, it is legal.”

The 'H' Word

Three decades ago, I served in a conscript military, in an
unpopular war, in a country of no consequence to me or my comrades.
There was no law there that could force me to do my job, there was no
law that could force anyone there to do anything. As we used to say,
"What are they going to do? Send me to Nam?"

It became obvious to me that the military was functioning more 'in
spite of' than 'because of' the formal military rules. It continued
to function without good leadership, clear purpose, or popular
support because the average soldier, some of whom would have
willingly shot their commanding officer had the officer ever gotten
in front of them, would not willing endanger their comrades even to
save their own hides.

The 'code of conduct' many of us operated under was not exactly
the idealized version, but it was allegiance to it and, not any law,
that kept the situation from deteriorating into complete anarchy. The
word for that allegiance to a code is "honor".

Honor is the adherence to a specific standard of conduct,
without legal or other obligation.

I believe we are losing respect for honor in our society. We use
the title 'The Honorable' and snigger when we say it. We assume a
lack of honor in our politicians. It has become 'politically correct'
to belittle military honor.

Is honor important? After all we have laws, don't we? We believe
in the Rule of Law!

Of course there are some areas where we recognize that 'honor' has
some value. Like, maybe, for the military?

It has always seemed a little silly, to me, to have rules about
how your are to go about killing your enemies. However; the soldier's
primary job, even in war, is not to kill the enemy but rather
to protect his own society.

Soldiers need, and we civilians need to believe that they have, a
strong allegiance to specific 'code of conduct', because so much of
their required conduct is way outside what is normally allowed in
society. When we train a wolf to guard the sheep pens we need
something that restrains the guard wolf. The same reasoning applies
to other occupations where 'codes of conduct' are often mentioned
such as medicine and law enforcement.

These are certainly not the only areas where 'honor' is a
consideration. What about the wild wolves of society.? Can a thief be
honorable? Of course, a thief is usually outside the pale of
acceptable conduct and deserving of punishment. However, we commonly
lighten the punishment based on our judgment of the thief's sense of
honor. For example if they did not go armed, worked carefully to
enter only empty homes, or held a reputation for dealing honestly
with their peers in their daily life, they might well be judged
worthy of receiving a sentence much lighter than the maximum allowed
under the law.

The fact is that all human society functions on the honor system
or it soon ceases to function at all!

Does this statement seem extreme to you? Think about it a bit.
What percentage of crimes are ever solved by the police? I can't give
a figure but I think that we can agree that there is a sense that
most crime is not solved. And given that feeling, fear of punishment
cannot be a powerful deterrent to crime. So why isn't criminal
activity the norm instead of the exception?

Because most of us have a 'sense of honor' that tells that it is
not OK for me to steal your stereo just because I happen to know that
you and all your family will be in another city for the weekend.
Because most of us have a 'sense of honor' that says it is not Ok to
push into the front of a line, a 'sense of honor' that says it is not
OK to grab a kids Halloween candy. Each of us has the power to be the
wolf sometimes but we usually don't do it because of our 'sense of
honor'.

The decline of respect for honor is an excellent indicator of the
impending dissolution of a society, because there is no rule of law
that can force 'proper' conduct from a population. My military
experience would certainly back that idea.]

Is it critical what standard of conduct one holds allegiance to?
Not nearly as much as you might think?

Is someone who would steal your stereo while you were out of town,
or some one that would drive after having a beer or two, or some one
that would hire out as a soldier to the highest bidder, or some one
that would sell sexual favors 'dishonorable'? Not by the definition.

Of course, as with the thief, a code of honor outside the range
considered acceptable within your society will lead to personal
troubles sooner or later; However; the definition of honor does not
concern the terms of a particular standard of conduct to which a
person holds, but rather the degree of allegiance to a standard.

We have become so dependent on the idea of the rule of law that we
are in danger of forgetting that law cannot rule anything. Any law
that is not supported by the 'honor' of the majority of the
population, cannot be effective.

Honor is an allegiance to a personal standard of conduct, a
personal standard of integrity, without legal or other obligation.

The standard of conduct may well vary from time to time, place to
place, or person to person, but, the decline of a society is not
signaled by changes to the 'standard of conduct' but rather by
decline in respect for allegiance to a standard.

It is important that we instill a sense of honor in our children
and reinforce it in ourselves.

For without honor there is no 'society', without honor there is no
law, without honor there is no future!

Dale Coparanis posted a long comment on my article 'Evolving' and I have responded as follows:

(Dale's lines are in italics, mine are not. ( I hope) )

As you know, Dan, I'm not a believer in the Faith of Evolution. Those that do believe it, however, want everyone else to accept that from nothing came the present day. Now I would call that a fairly big change.

I can't see any reason to believe it a big change. The present day did not come from nothing, it came from yesterday. I was here yesterday and it wasn't all that different in anyway that I can see. And as for the “Faith of Evolutuion” Well, I can tell you that I have directed evolution and seen the results of that evolution and I have seen the results of many other peoples work in evolution also. So while I do not insist that evolution is the only possible explanation of the present day ecology I can tell you that there is evidence I have observed for the existence of evolution and absolutely none that I have observed for any other explanation. 'Faith' is when you choose to believe something for which there is no evidence. Personally I find 'faith' to be a weakness that I hope we may someday overcome.

To bring it down to a more manageable level, it is believed that we evolved from apes (which evolved from smaller mammels, which evolved from reptiles, which evolved from fish, which evolved from single celled creatures, which evolved from the primordial soup, which evolved from rain falling on rocks, which came about from the earth forming out of space dust, which formed from material left over from the big bang, which came from??? I really like to think that one of my ancestors was a rock.). Therefore, it is quite reasonable to ask what the next step is. Certainly the differences that there are between the apes, "Lucy", pre-cro magnon man, and us are significant. Since evolution, in theory, doesn't stop, what's next? What do we look like? Are we bigger, smaller, fatter, thinner, have more arms, more eyes, fewer fingers?

One thing you should note is that the differences between us and a chimpanzee are in fact very small, when expressed as a percentage of our genome. Another thing to note is that whether you are supporter of the Biblical creationist approach, or tend away from the 'faith' side things, it would appear that you and I are descended from something in a mud pie.

To say that we have reached our evolutionary peak is kind of presumptuous, don't you think? I know that you haven't said that, per se, but you imply that with: "but the 'next step' will become the norm when it needs to or not at all."

Why would you think I suggest that we have reached our evolutionary peak (whatever that is)? And how could you find it presumptuous when you don't even believe we have an evolution to have a peak of? No 'change' in one or more members of a species is likely to become the new 'norm' for the species unless it imparts a significant advantage over those that do not have the 'change'. For example the ability to withstand the HIV virus, which is a possible 'next step' that we already knows exists, is not currently a significant advantage, evolutionarily, for those that have it, because currently only a very small percentage of the species dies from the result of the HIV virus. It will not become the 'norm' for the species. unless some virus shows up that is a lot more contagious and deadly than HIV and these people are also immune to that and everybody else dies off. Then an evolutionary step will have taken place. The 'next step' will becomes the 'norm' when it needs to or not at all

Since we are messing with evolutionary theory by doing work with DNA, one of the logical questions to ask is: "should we?" And, yes, I am serious. Can we be trusted to do what's right? Given the amount of evil in this world I would say no. In addition, given the willingness of many people to do whatever simply for immediate gratification (money, etc.), how can something as important as evolution be tinkered with in the right way?

I share your concern over the potential problems we could get ourselves into tinkering with evolution. True we have done it for centuries and are still here but we have made some fairly serious errors before an now we have the potential to really spoil the soup. But as they say “you can't put the genie back in the bottle.' If you honestly think that any amount of outlawing DNA manipulation can stop it from being done then I believe you are deluded. I would be very surprised if there were not a clone baby or six running around a nursery or six somewhere. And if you think it hasn't even been attempted then I have a nice Caribbean island which I am sure you would enjoy and I think I could make it yours for a very nominal sum if you could just be the first to send me $10,000 in small unmarked bills......

All I can see coming from outlawing research into the field is that good honest people will have no say in what is developed from it.

Your statement: "Every species evolves as needed or it dies out. is interesting. This explains why there are so many "living fossils" that have been discovered and why there is so much diversity in nature. It's really amazing how, accidentally, we have such an abundance of flora and fauna and why there are so many overlaps with them. I mean, just how many different types and colors of flowers does a meadow need?

Certainly there are a number of 'living fossils' . Alligators, crocodiles and many species of sharks to name a few. They haven't needed to change much at all. Or maybe you are talking about those rare finds of things that we know from fossils were once relatively common but had never been seen in recorded history until we started fishing miles down or some such. Well so what! If they still exist un-evolved from millions of years ago then all it shows is that, for at least some part of their habitat, evolutionary change was not required for survival. And, of course there is diversity in nature. Why would you think that evolution would require uniformity? Change happens! But not all change is 'evolutionary.' There are dozens of colors of pansies. Why? Because change happens. But all pansies are not one color because there is no particular advantage of one color over another.

Evolving

Dale Coparanis posted the following as a comment on my article Creationist Truth

Dan - what are we going to evolve into? Since evolution is always happening, what's the next step for humans?

When does that happen?

Do we risk upsetting the process of evolution by messing with DNA, cloning and other related scientific work?

If so, then should we stop all that work?

Dale, Evolution doses not happen in particularly large steps. For example we may evolve into being able to defeat all viruses naturally. Some people have been shown to be essentially unaffected by HIV for example, so if a virus were to evolve that killed anything that did not have this inborn defense mechanism then the species would eventually come to consist only of those that do. The next step is whatever is necessary to survive a changing environment. We either make it or die. The universe does not care which.
When will it happen? In one sense it almost certainly already has, but the 'next step' will become the norm when it needs to or not at all.
Do we risk upsetting the process of evolution by messing with DNA.cloning and other scientific work? Well in one sense the answer is "of course!" But in another sense "how could we?". We may kill ourselves off completely with an atomic holocaust, for example, but then again that may just be the assist the species needs to bring the trait of 'extreme radiation tolerance' into the 'norm'. We may also become the first(?) species to direct its own evolution consciously and go branching off deliberately and purposefully to occupy every environment possible and thus to exist for as long as there is a universe to house us.
Should we stop all that work? Get serious Dale! Are you going into the middle east without your cholera vaccine? Would you be pleased if some luddite decided that steel was 'unnatural' so when you took a bullet they had to cut it out with a flint blade?
Evolution is not some sort of weird and unusual thing. It has happened and continues to happen all the time and the rule is simple. Every species evolves as needed or it dies out. And as Baretta used to say, "That's all there is to that tune."

Creationist Truth

A comment by Ruth MacGill on Bert B's article entitled “About Faith and Doubt“ put me in mind of another common place 'creationist' argument. The one that says “Clearly, God made this world for us. Look how beautiful it is and how well it provides for us !” The first thing that comes to mind when I hear that argument is “What colossal hubris!” The world is a fine place for fish and fowl and bear and elk, etc. But of course it was made for us, not them? On what ridiculous basis do we assume that it was made for us?

The real problem is that the argument is ridiculous. We evolved here. How could we not find the world beautiful and supportive. Would anything evolve into a situation it found ugly and non-supportive? Of course not! Whatever, if anything, evolved in the interior of the sun would surely find it a beautiful and hospitable place. And, quite possibly, thank its God for being so kind as to create it such a fine place to live.

Good Old 'Trickle Down'

"Trickle down economics stems from the early 1950's when we were the only Western country whose industrial infrastructure had not been smashed and it was accurate to say that whatever was good for General Motors was good for the United States. That was no longer true by the time Reagan came to power, money was being left in the hands of America's economic elite which was investing it overseas -- not in America."

The above is from a comment by George McNaughton on an article by Dan (open minded conservative) K called Dear Mr. President .

It illustrates a problem with the Republican approach to the 'cut taxes to stimulate the economy' idea. It never was accurate to say that 'whatever was good for General Motors was good for the United States." In the 1950's and now the accurate phrasing of the statement is "whatever is good for the United States is good for General Motors." ( though General Motors may have already been demollished by the decades of abuse of the real 'United States')

To put it in terms more in line with what most people think of as the 'trickle down' concept; "what's good for the rich is good for the rest" is, was, and always has been false! the proper statement is, was, and always has been "what's good for the rest is good for the rich!" You do not stimulate an economy by stimulating rich people. any more than you water a tree by spritzing its top leaves. Rich people get rich when a whole lot of 'not so rich' people have money to pay them for what they supply.

'Rich people' don't consume much more that poor people and whatever they can consume they already are consuming so giving them more money does nothing for the economy.

And an economy is not made more vigorous by upping the available funds to create things, it is made more vigorous by upping the available funds to consume things.

The ability to create a product will never make you rich, it is the ability (and willingness) of customers to buy your product that makes you rich. Stimulating an economy is all about stimulating the consumers not the producers. A ready and able consumer is all the stimulus any producer needs!

What Do You Know?

What Do You Know?

What a loaded question. It leads, however to some pretty profound insights. (Maybe!)

David Hume in his Treatise On Human Nature put forward a proposal that I find compelling because of its usefulness in illuminating human behavior. He postulated a three tier hierarchy of information in the human mind. Stage 1 is perception, Stage 2 is belief, Stage 3 is knowledge.

He then defined 'knowledge' as that information which is so deeply ingrained that we act upon it without any conscious awareness of it. An example of 'knowledge': How do you walk? How do you talk? You can not tell me because you are not conscious of what it takes. You 'know' how to do it.

By now you see the problem with the title question. Under Hume's theory, any answer to that question is bound to be false. If you are conscious of it you do not 'know' it and if you are unconscious of it you would not be putting it in your list.

So how do we get to be what we are? Hume postulates that we perceive things and that when perceptions are consistent, persistent, and vivid enough they become beliefs and should they reach even higher levels of consistency, persistence, and vividness the information content of those perceptions becomes 'knowledge'.

Now according to the theory, we are born with a bunch of methods of perception and one basic piece of knowledge. For the most part, we can hear, see, feel, taste, smell and perceive our own thoughts. And what we 'know' is “I AM”. Everything else we learn over time.

How do we learn? We perceive! And if the perceptions reach a certain level of “persistence, consistency, and vividness” the perceived information is established as belief and if they are even more “persistent, consistent, and vivid” it becomes established as “knowledge” and is acted upon without any conscious awareness.

Two very important things should now be obvious.

One: If this theory is more or less accurate, we cannot possibly believe in our own non-existence. One might theorize that at some point one's self did not exist and at some point in the future one's self will not exist. One might even hold that idea as 'likely', however; since 'non-existence' cannot possibly be perceived, the concept cannot even reach the stage of 'belief', much less 'knowledge'. Therefore , by our very nature, we are bound to try to 'rationalize' this conflict between what we eventually come to perceive about everybody else, ie. They end, and what we 'know' about ourselves, ie. We have always been and will always be. Hence Heaven, Hell, Karma, Reincarnation, Valhalla, you name it. A million and one attempts to rationalize a dichotomy forced upon us by our very nature. To be human is to be tempted to religion. And to live without that crutch will ever be the hard road.

Two: Much of what we 'know' must be false! Why? Because our tools for perceptions are extremely limited and not very reliable. We can only see a very limited range of the electro-magnetic spectrum. We are so blind we 'knew' it was dark at night! We can only hear a small spectrum of sound waves so we 'knew' that giraffes make no sounds and bats fly silently trough the night. We knew that most things don't have a smell. We knew that the sun and moon were just a little further away than the top of a high tree or hill or tree on a hill. We 'knew' it for thousands of years and we were wrong for thousands of years. And there is a source of perceptions even less reliable than our eyes, or ears or nose. And if we don't learn to watch it closely at all times and question it constantly, our load of 'false knowledge' can actually threaten to overwhelm us entirely. That is our mind. Remember that a major source of our 'perceptions' is our mind. Our memories, of perceptions real or imagined, produce information we perceive almost constantly. Our conscious minds and our unconscious minds constantly serve us up thoughts. Our perceptions of these thoughts are as 'good' as any other perceptions, in that, if they are 'consistent, persistent and vivid' enough, their information will become knowledge! The problem arises from the fact that memories of perceptions are often inaccurate, either as the result of inaccurate perceptions from the physical world or from the fact that they are completely imaginary to begin with. But our mind does not care about truth! It only cares about 'consistent, persistent, vivid'. Meet that criteria and 'knowledge' is born. Serve a mind the 'consistent, persistent, and vivid' perception that Brits are cold and aloof sort of people and that mind will 'know' this even though its owner never met an Englishman. In fact, isolation from Englishmen will enhance the 'knowledge' as the consistency of the perceptions will be secure. Only constant questioning of perceptions and beliefs can possibly keep our 'beliefs' and 'knowledge' near the truth.

What do you know? Not all that much I hope!

China Leads the Way Again

Finally someone has recognized the hazard! China, that bastion of progressive correct think, is leading the way again. There can be no doubt that internet addiction is a major human problem. Communication and curiosity are diseases. We are so blessed to have the land of the Little Red Book and the estimable Red Guard to show us the way.