Ill Advised Posting

(I thought I wasn't going to talk about this. I guess I was wrong.)

So, the police officer who shot Michael Brown six times, was just doing his job, and almost half of white Americans think race is getting too much attention in the case. People are "playing the race card"? "Lawlessness knows no color"? What?

Even if Brown was shoplifting (which is not all that clear) or jaywalking, the penalty for these crimes is not death in the US, last I checked. The penalty for acting suspicious is also not death, but apparently a woman in the first article believes it is:

“An officer doesn’t have xray vision,” wrote Jennifer Hall, of Robertsville, Missouri. “He can’t tell if you have weapon or not until searched. So you act in a suspicious manner, we know what the consequences are.”

Seriously? If your white son was caught jaywalking and mouthing off, and was shot dead for it, that would be OK? Because we know what the consequences are for acting suspicious, right? Or is it that those people are lawless. Those people are criminals. Those people deserve to be treated with suspicion and executed if they step out of line? And those people just happen to be black?

We all set this fire. We need to own up to that.

Minimum Wage

The title is a reference to the They Might Be Giants song. Really. That's what I was thinking about when I wrote it.

The other day I reblogged this thing on Tumblr about Walmart earnings and the salaries they pay their workers. For the most part my pinko bleeding-heart liberal friends seemed to agree: Walmart makes $27 billion in profit in one year, they could pay their bottom million employees $10,000 a year more and still make a $17 billion profit. This situation and others like it illustrates the crazy imbalance of our economic system, in which a few specialists in e.g. financial markets are paid hundreds or even a thousand times as much as regular workers who do essential jobs.

There was at least one person, however, who took issue with the statistics involved, saying that it didn't seem likely that a million workers, almost half of Walmart's total employees (and they are the biggest single employer in the world, apparently), were scraping by on minimum wage.

Now, the original post isn't actually criticism of Walmart specifically, so much. The second half of the post makes clear that this is about larger issues with the system itself, and Walmart is just a symptom. Whether Walmart only has to pay $10,000 more to a hundred thousand employees or a million doesn't really change the point, at least in my mind. (Wikipedia figures for Walmart also suggest that it might make more sense to use the profits after tax, which is only $16 or $17 billion, depending on what year you're talking about.)

On the other hand, checking Walmart salary information that's publicly available does paint a picture that seems consistent with the original post. I'm just looking at the first page full of results, and there are some reasonable and even well-paid positions. (Want to do well at Walmart? Become a pharmacist!) But the bottom-tier jobs pay $8 or $9 an hour on average. Being generous, that's $18 to $20 thousand a year. The "Careers to explore" links on that page include "Overnight Stocker" at $19k a year, and "Sales Associate" at $18k yearly. That's well below the poverty line for a family of four.

From the results from that page, a little less than half of the jobs on offer from Walmart (2073 of the 4205 positions summarized) are hourly jobs that pay on average about $19 thousand a year. If this is in any way representative of the mix of positions in Walmart's 2 million employee workforce, then yes, roughly a million workers are making poverty-level wages working for a company that made at least $16 billion in profit in the last year, after tax. Even if the results are strongly skewed, we're still talking about hundreds of thousands of workers.

Then there's this article, in which statements from Walmart spokespeople themselves lead one to the conclusion that a bit more than half of Walmart associates make less than $25,000 a year. Statistics are easy to misuse, but whatever way I look at this, it still seems like a lot of people are struggling to get by while a very few reap rewards out of proportion with their contribution to the company, society, or, well, anything. So, to repeat:

You know, this ridiculous idea that a worker on Wall Street who earns tens of millions of dollars a year securitizing imaginary assets or doing high-frequency trading is worth 1,000 times as much as workers who earn tens of thousands of dollars a year educating our children, growing or serving us our food, throwing themselves into harm’s away to protect our life or property, that this difference reflects the true value or intrinsic worth of these jobs is nonsense.

Worse than Television

"What have you created and released?" Charlie Stross asks.

Well, as anyone who looks at this probably knows:

• two short novels, with a third on the way
• A few short stories (temporarily unavailable because the Dead Channel is down)
• More than a decade ago, Mingw32 (which has been much improved by the efforts of others since I moved on)

I've sent out a few pictures here and there as well.

On the other hand, I don't believe (at all) that creative people are obligated to give away their work for free. Some of my best friends are authors, or aspiring authors. I've given my work away for free because, while I love to write, I don't have the need or the time and energy to get paid for it, at least for the time being. It would take a lot of work to go pro. There's probably another blog post in that whole topic.

What prompted this, though, aside from a desire to brag (sorry), is piracy.

Specifically, I have this gut feeling that piracy is not the root cause of the crisis in publishing (or the crisis in music). Which is not to say there isn't a crisis, or that copying somebody's work against their will isn't wrong. However, I have the feeling that the industry's problems are coming from elsewhere. One of these places is a general economic downturn. We're all less willing to spend money on stuff.

The other part is a proliferation of distractions, many of them legitimately free. I could easily spend all my time on the internet, on twitter and in web forums, and without infringing on anyone's copyright. I hardly watch TV any more at all. I have DVDs for a series that I bought last year still sitting unwatched. I have deliberately started scheduling reading time for myself so I don't spend all of my time on the net and forget the pleasure of books.

Some of these distractions are even "creative." I might not be writing and drawing at all without the internet. I can spend time editing Wikipedia articles or participating in online discussions. I can spend time looking for references and information related to my next project. This blog itself is a distraction from reading I could be doing to help some professional author make ends meet. It's part of the attraction of the internet, that you can be doing creative, or at least interactive, things with it. It feels so much more fulfilling than vegetating in front of a TV set. And yet, this is, I think, helping to destroy the publishing industry.

What should we do about it? Hell, I don't know. I'm certainly not going to suggest people should step back from the keyboards and leave it to the professionals. There has to be some recognition that doing great work requires dedication and a lot of hard work that should translate into a tangible reward. I worry quite a bit about works of art and literature might not be created because talented people can't make a living producing them. I think eventually a balance will emerge, but I also think it's going to be messy for a while.

Straussian

This is a boring, non-art, non-funny post. You may want to skip it.

There is an interesting guest blog over on Boing Boing about Straussian thinking. Which quotes another piece by Robert Locke:

The key Straussian concept is the Straussian text, which is a piece of philosophical writing that is deliberately written so that the average reader will understand it as saying one ("exoteric") thing but the special few for whom it is intended will grasp its real ("esoteric") meaning. The reason for this is that philosophy is dangerous.

And it was this that prompted me to the blog, where I will say my piece into the void so that it may be lost forever and no longer bother me.

This touches one of my most raw nerves. It's an arrogant thing to believe, and if there is one thing that really pisses me off, it's arrogance.

As summarized in that quote, the concept of the Straussian text is based on a few key ideas:

1) People cannot be trusted to think for themselves.

2) You, the initiate, and I, the teacher, are some of the special few people who can grasp the esoteric meanings (and, of course, be trusted to think for ourselves and others).

3) The vast majority of philosophers agree with point 1 (and, of course, me).

More succinctly, "You and I know better than everyone else what is best for them."

Which is poppycock. The only rational basis for a moral system is that people should decide for themselves. They're going to decide things for themselves whether we want them to or not, and if we do not allow them to make those choices, at some point we must discuss how to coerce them, which leads, inevitably, to force. I don't believe that force is never called for, but I do believe it is the last resort, and starting from the basic position that people should not be allowed to think for themselves and act on those thoughts seems entirely backward. You start from a position of complete freedom for all, and only restrict those freedoms where the case can be made that restrictions on freedoms of some are necessary to prevent harm or other damage to the freedoms of others. Otherwise you always end with special pleading for the ruling class, because rulers by definition have more freedom than the ruled. Perhaps my real problem is with kings, and those who would justify them.

I digress. Item 2 on my list is base flattery. The philosophy calls on you to join an exclusive club, which automatically makes it more inviting. One should always be wary of suggestions that you are better or smarter than other people. The people making these suggestions are all too often trying to sell you something you don't need.

3, of course, is arrogance (again). The Straussian text assumes that the authors wanted to hide something in their books, for you, the specially chosen, to extract. There are philosophers who would think so, certainly, but I believe they are at best second-rate. Ideas can be dangerous, to the established social order, to peace of mind, but hiding them does us no great service. Better that ideas see the light of day, to be challenged, and that we may challenge ourselves with them.

Fine if you are ready for the challenge, you say, but what about all those other idiots? Back to point 1 again. The problem with philosophies based on taking away people's choice for their own good (or not), is that you have to decide who gets to do the deciding, and there is no way to do this. All systems of choosing rulers will, at some point, lead to corruption and abuse of power. It is true that people will sometimes make choices that lead to harm for themselves or others, but this is the price we pay and the risk we take for being able to make the same choices ourselves. I would rather have an imperfect but free society than a more efficient dictatorship. (Of course, in current societies I don't get that choice, but I lean towards the one which more closely resembles my ideal.)

Deep Thoughts

All a corporation has to do to stand out, to be amazingly, startlingly, outlandishly progressive, is to say that it won't be evil. Just don't be evil. You don't have to, you know, go out of your way to be good. You can even be an irritant, or an impediment. You could be dangerously incompetent. But at least you're not evil.

Come to think of it, it's getting like that for politicians, too, isn't it? Just say you won't be evil. Instant boost in the polls.

Well, it might work if we thought we could believe any of them.

Men!

Twice in the past few days I have come across a link to this piece, Rebecca Solnit, writing in the L.A. Times, about how (some) men love to explain things they know nothing about to women, and how this oppresses the women. Indeed, she goes on to compare her experience with having to give an overconfident ass in a Raulph Lauren Aspen lodge the smackdown with the plight of women in Islamic nations who are not allowed to testify at their rape trials, or Maria Lauterbach being butchered by her rapist.

What? ... What!?

These people, the explainers, the talk-down-upon-ers, are blowhards. They like explaining things they know nothing about to everyone, not just to women. OK, sorry. I shouldn't be declarative like that. I risk being accused of explaining something, and of arrogance, asshattery, blowhardedness, and general male-dominated hegemonic discourse.

Still, please, hasn't everyone, female or not, met someone like this? Hasn't everyone had to sit through their bluster and arrogance and contempt? It's not like only men can act that way, either. Have you never experienced a woman's whithering contempt? Her certainty in the face of all reason?

Not all women, to be sure, and not all the time. Just some women, or rather some people, some of the time. It doesn't look like a male thing from where I'm standing. She doesn't even seem to realize that linking maleness to arrogance the way she does is exactly the kind of contemptuous stereotyping that she protests later, when applied to herself:

Several years ago, I objected to the behavior of a couple of men, only to be told on both occasions that the incidents hadn't happened at all as I said they had, that I was subjective, delusional, overwrought, dishonest -- in a nutshell, female.

Or, rather, when she perceives it applied to her. I doubt either of her accusers actually came out and said she was "subjective" or "dishonest" because she was female. (Though I'll admit the stereotype may have crossed their minds, because people are bad like that.) Indeed, I've seen this kind of behavior, too, and again from both sexes. People always, always remember the "facts" to their own advantage. Men do, and so do women, and so, I have no doubt, does Ms. Solnit. But heaven forbid the incidents in question not be perfectly preserved in the objective crystal clarity of her memory. There is no possibility that she might be subjective in the least, even if every other human being on earth is.

Of course, it never works to talk to anyone about that, because nobody will admit they do it themselves. "Everyone else is subjective, but not me! I know what I saw." Except when they show you the video later and point out the man in the gorilla suit.

No doubt the men in question were in the wrong, and Ms. Solnit was in the right, but to become incensed at the oppressiveness of these men questioning her version of events? Incensed to the point of making these people who had the temerity to disagree with her the poster-men of all male oppression? That seems strangely... arrogant. Isn't Ms. Solnit, now, doing the explaining? Perhaps it is people who explain things, to people, and let's just call them blowhards, whatever their sex.

Modern Cartoonist

Modern Cartoonist by Daniel Clowes.

Don't be afraid to look at your work, get disgusted, throw it in the toilet, and start anew.

Great, I'm going to be unclogging my toilet for decades.

Found on Bookslut.

The Atomic Flying Car

Jumping off from Tim's comment on my We are The Sims? post, let's talk about singularity. I mean Singularity. This is the idea (according to my understanding) that, in the next fifty or a hundred years (or maybe longer, I guess), computers will become smarter than humans, humans will be integrated/uploaded to computers, and immortality and other weirdness will result.

I'm a bit skeptical about Singularity, at least on the relatively short scale of a hundred years. The argument has to do with the point made in my previous post about increasing computing power not leading to increasingly sophisticated software.

Mind you, our software today is more sophisticated than it used to be. There has been some progress made, and there are also market forces pushing us to try and make software more sophisticated. Still, I think if you look at what software could do ten or even twenty years ago, and compare to what it does now, the changes have mostly been the kind of thing that is enabled by hardware. 3D graphics is more sophisticated now, in terms of techniques, but the basic idea could have been (and was) implemented many years ago, and most of the improvement has come from simply being able to do more number crunching, faster. That's what most of it comes down to in software: more number crunching, faster. The principles behind the number crunching haven't really changed.

Even the internet, which supposedly changed everything, didn't really change the software that much. What the internet changed was how people used the software, and what sort of software they wanted.

So, to me, the idea that computers are really getting smarter is a bit suspect. They're doing more number crunching, faster. Being able to think is a different thing entirely.

"So?" you say, "We'll build thinking machines once we understand how thinking works and we have the computational power to do it." Maybe. But maybe not. Maybe understanding how thinking works is more difficult than we think. AI researchers have been banging their head against this problem for decades, and, frankly, progress is slow.

Maybe it's too difficult for humans to design a machine that thinks like a human. "But," you say, "We'll augment our intelligence with computers, until we're smart enough to design a thinking machine." Ah, but that assumes that the kind of augmentation computers can provide will help. I think it will help a little, but I'm not sure that it will solve the problem of designing complex systems. Until we have a machine that can actually think, all the thinking that goes into design has to pass through the bottleneck of a few square centimeters of wet, gray meat in the front of some human's head. Expanded external memories, instant recall and perfect arithmetic skills might not be enough when it comes to actually thinking and designing.

Maybe we will manage to design thinking machines, but they won't be all that better than us at thinking. Faster, possibly, and with the same perfect, instant memories and math skills, but perhaps not so much better at thinking. It's a possibility.

So, for Singularity, I'm skeptical. Maybe it will happen, but I think it might turn out to be the atomic flying car of the 21st century. In 2100, people might make jokes like the "Where's my jetpack?" jokes of today: "Where's my uploaded immortality?"

We are The Sims?

There was an article in the New York Times recently about the idea that we are living in a simulation, with the catchy assertion that it is actually likely we are living in a simulation. This is based on the idea that, soon-ish, we will have sufficient computing power available to simulate the brains of all the humans on Earth. From there, it follows that some of these simulations will be run, perhaps for entertainment, and, since there are more of them than there are "real" Earths, we are more likely to be a simulation than the real thing.

I can see a couple of arguments against this. First, if my life is a simulation being run for someone's entertainment, why isn't it more interesting? Either the "real" world is an astoundingly boring place, or somebody has a very unhealthy obsession with the minutae of everyday lives. Is he really watching when I pee?

Second objection: A useful simulation doesn't need to simulate every person on Earth to some arbitrary degree of realism. Especially for the purposes of entertainment, there doesn't seem to me to be any reason to throw huge amounts of computing power at simulating the day-to-day thoughts of billions of people who don't do anything all that interesting. Much simpler models will do.

Third objection: Having the raw computing power does not translate to being able to code the simulation. The task of capturing the behavior of a brain, and also simulating the reality around that brain to a level of fidelity necessary to properly stimulate the brain, is what I would call "non-trivial." As a computer programmer, my experience suggests that exponential increases in computer power do not, actually, lead to exponential increases in software sophistication. Whole brain/reality simulations on the scale that the article talks about are so difficult, I don't see it happening except for some very good reason, and I can't think of any such reason.

Those are my arguments. I don't think we're being simulated.