Transparency, talk of tradeoffs - and pseudonyms

Returning to the topic of transparency...

An article about “Our Transparent Future: No secret is safe in the digital era” - by Daniel C. Dennett and Deb Roy - suggests that transparency will throw us into a bitterly Darwinian era of “all against all.”  What a dismally simplistic, contemptuous and zero-sum view of humanity! That we cannot innovate ways to get positive sum outcomes.   

Oh, I confess things look dark, with some nations, such as China, using ‘social credit' to sic citizens against each other, tattling and informing and doing Big Brother’s work for him. That ancient, zero sum pattern was more crudely followed in almost every past oligarchy, theocracy or kingdom or Sovietsky, where local gossips and bullies were employed by the inheritance brats up-top, to catch neighbors who offended obedient conformity. 

Indeed, a return to that sort of pyramid of power, with non-reciprocal transparency that never shines up at elites – is what humans could very well implement, because our ancestors did that sort of oppression very well. In fact, we are all descended from the harems of those SOBs.

In contrast, this notion of transparency-driven chaos and feral reciprocal predation is just nonsense.  In a full oligarchy, people would thereupon flee to shelter under the New Lords… or else…

 

…or else, in a democracy we might actually innovate ways to achieve outcomes that are positive sum, based on the enlightenment notion of accountability for all. Not just average folk or even elites, but for  those who would abuse transparency to bully or predate.  If we catch the gossips and voyeurs in the act and that kind of behavior is deemed to be major badness, then the way out is encapsulated in the old SF expression "MYOB!" or "Mind Your Own Business!"

Yeah, yeah, Bill Maher, sure we have wandered away from that ideal at both ends of the political spectrum, amid a tsunami of sanctimony addiction. But the escape path is still there, waiting and ready for us.

It’s what I talked about in The Transparent Society… and a positive possibility that seems to occur to no one, especially not the well-meaning paladins of freedom who wring their hands and offer us articles like this. 

== Talk of Tradeoffs ==

Ever since I wrote The Transparent Society (1997) and even my novel, Earth (1990) I’ve found it frustrating how few of today’s paladins of freedom/privacy and accountability – like good folks at the ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) – (and I urge you all to join!) – truly get the essence of the vital fight they are in. Yes, it will be a desperate struggle to prevent tyrannies from taking over across the globe and using powers of pervasive surveillance against us, to re-impose 6000 years of dullard/stupid/suicidal rule-by-oligarchy.

I share that worry!  But in their myopic talk of “tradeoffs,” these allies in the struggle to save the Enlightenment Experiment (and thus our planet and species) neglect all too often to ponder the possibility of win-wins… or positive sum outcomes.

There are so many examples of that failure, like short-sightedly trying to ‘ban” facial recognition systems, an utterly futile and almost-blind pursuit that will only be counter-productive. 

But I want to dial in on one myopia, in particular. I cannot name more than four of these activists who has grasped a key element in the argument over anonymity - today's Internet curse which destroys accountability, letting the worst  trolls and despotic provocateurs run wild. 

Nearly all of the privacy paladins dismiss pseudonymity as just another term for the same thing. In fact, it is not; pseudonymity has some rather powerful win-win, positive sum possibilities. 

Picture this. Web sites who are sick of un-accountable behavior might ban anonymity! Ban it... but allow entry to vetted pseudonyms. 

You get one by renting it from a trusted fiduciary that is already in the business of vouching for credentials... e.g. your bank or credit union, or else services set up just for this purpose (let competition commence!)

The pseudonym you rent carries forward with it your credibility ratings in any number of varied categories, including those scored by the site you intend to enter. If you misbehave, the site and/or its members can ding you, holding you accountable, and those dings travel back to the fiduciary you rented the pseudonym from, who will lower your credibility scores accordingly. ...

... with no one actually knowing your true name!  Nevertheless, there is accountability.  If you are a persistent troll, good luck finding a fiduciary who will rent you a pseudonym that will gain you entry anywhere but places where trolls hang out. Yet, still, no one on the internet has to know you are a dog.

I have presented this concept to several banks and/or Credit Unions and it is percolating. A version was even in my novel Earth. 

Alas, the very concept of positive sum, win-win outcomes seems foreign to the dolorous worrywarts who fret all across the idea realm of transparency/accountability/privacy discussions. 

Still, you can see the concept discussed here: The Brinternet: A Conversation with three top legal scholars. 

== Surveillance Networks ==

Scream the alarms! “Ring video doorbells, Amazon’s signature home security product, pose a serious threat to a free and democratic society. Not only is Ring’s surveillance network spreading rapidly, it is extending the reach of law enforcement into private property and expanding the surveillance of everyday life,” reports Lauren Bridges in this article from The Guardian.

In fact, Ring owners retain sovereign rights and cooperation with police is their own prerogative, until a search warrant (under probable cause) is served.  While the article itself is hysterical drivel, there is a good that these screams often achieve… simply making people aware. And without such awareness, no corrective precautions are possible. I just wish they provoked more actual thinking.

See this tiny camera disguised in a furniture screw! Seriously. You will not not-be-seen. Fortunately, hiding from being-seen is not the essence of either freedom or privacy. 

Again, that essence is accountability! Your ability to detect and apply it to anyone who might oppress or harm you. Including the rich and powerful. 

We will all be seen. Stop imagining that evasion is an option and turn to making it an advantage. Because if we can see potential abusers and busybodies...

...we just might be empowered to shout: ...MYOB!

Science - or "scientism"?

I’ll finish with one of my roundups of some amazing news from the frontiers of science! But first, a little philosophizing about just what kind of an era we are living in.

== Anti-“scientism”? ==

I’ve been accused of scientism -- belief that scientific knowledge somehow yields insight into the supposedly separate category of moral knowledge. A typical hate-reflex against science is to label it in terms that adversaries know will be deemed insulting by scientists: i.e. dismissing it as just another religion. This happens at both ends of the political spectrum.

1. Those who operate in more traditional mental modes tend to see things in zero-sum terms and assume that truth is found in incantations. Hence on the 'right' you are damned if you question received dogma. On the 'left' you have fewer anti-science cultists, but they are intense.

2. Science is terrifying to such folks, because it invokes objective reality as an arbitrator of disputes. A 'god' of sorts who actually answers 'prayers' for intercession and ruling on true incantations. This is offensive to those who fear their spells may be rendered useless or become objects of derision. Or forgotten. 

Postmodernists respond by doubling down that text is everything and efforts to apply experimental evidence are simply male-western-white bullying. Rightists are remarkably similar, but less creative. 

3. Since they operate in cabals of incantation, they assume it's what scientists do. In fact, "science" is not the essential thing that has changed. The new thing that's entered the world is competitive reciprocal accountability, of which science is just the most powerful application. Others include adversarial justice courts and free-fair elections. And all of these 'liberal' inventions are now under open attack.

(BTW I have a monograph on modern theology. And while many dogmatists are fanatical, I have found other religious folk to be far more willing to engage in fair disputation than hostile campus postmodernists.)

But the advantages of science go beyond competitive effects of reciprocal accountability. Both the underlying assumptions of science and the cornucopia outcomes are positive sum, a concept that a great many humans - even educated ones - cannot grasp, even in theory. 

4. I have found that two counter-memes can be effective. To those who criticize science, or the west, or America, or etc., but who appear to be folks of good will (especially youths) hold up a mirror. 

"Look at yourself! Your reflex to criticize and to be unsatisfied with a situation that has benefited you above all other generations: where did that critical reflex come from? Did you invent Suspicion of Authority? Or did you suckle it from almost every Hollywood film and from countless songs?  

"Is it possible that you learned it from a civilization whose very success has depended upon new systems of internal criticism that now pervade almost every university or TV show?  An error-correction system, based on relentless error-discovery through criticism, of which you are now a part?"

We're not asking you, on realizing this, to give up your passion for change, for expansion of horizons of inclusion, or to stop complaining about hoary old assumptions or injustice! Error-targeting by brash critics is our only chance to cross the minefield ahead! Still, you'll be a stronger warrior for justice if you calmly see the synergies and who might be unexpected allies.

Science has been instrumental in disproving so many prejudices earlier generations took for granted, such as the physical incapability of women - (Have you watched the womens' soccer World Cup?). Or the notion that other races cannot achieve intellectual excellence, or that tobacco is safe, or that it's harmless for rivers to catch fire. Those opposing injustice and wanting a healthy Earth have been empowered by science.

5. To those who are committed anti-modernists of either today's far-left or entire (mad) right, I find one weapon that's partly effective. Wagers. Blunt dares to put money on their assertions. No, you won't get rich: 99% of the time they refuse, they weasel and flee (a reward in its own right). But on occasion (especially when you use the words "ocean acidification") the threat of a bet causes someone with a sliver of residual honesty to back down and admit they had been too grand in their declarations. It's a step.

== Amazing items from the discovery horizon ==

The beginning of uplift? Frankly, I expected this particular insertion experiment back in the 1990s. The effect of one alteration on monkey brains is apparently substantial, though still only a baby step.

Have you been following news that 'Impossible' meatless meat will make a Whopper and 'Beyond' meatless meat is skyrocketing in stock value? Now add the fact that cultured chicken is getting closer. All of this makes it feel more like a sci fi world than most space stuff! And these developments might (we can hope) be as big a game changer as the white light LED bulb or plummeting solar cell prices. Now — Seafood Without The Sea: Will Lab-Grown Fish Hook Consumers?

For it to be a world changer, meat substitution must come in 3-5 years, not 25. What's also needed? Algae industry at huge scale. Could provide zero-net carbon fuels plus basic feed stock for all those meat substitutes. And in a pinch, we could eat algae. Or feed it to crickets. Ideally the algae farms would take up the entire south face of urban towers, letting cities feed themselves.

The best thing on Netflix: Our Planet is more than just another “nature show.” The first episode, narrated by David Attenborough, shows things I never, ever saw before in 60 years of watching such shows! The HD is simply stunning. And yes, there is no better way to lure your delusional-denialist cousin back toward some kind of awareness and light.

An army of micro-robots to swarm your mouth - attack bacterial biofilms and clean your teeth? Where do they go to work next - when swallowed?

See an image of one of the1000 or so cubes of purified… but not isotope separated… uranium that the Nazi regime created in their chaotic and (fortunately) extremely dumb efforts to develop nuclear power during WWII. Their concept involved no isotopic refinement, was clueless about the possibility of carbon as a moderator, (leaving them with heavy water which the allies and brave partisans destroyed), and their initial reactor design was insane, having none (at all) of the brilliant control methods invented by the team of Enrico Fermi, in Chicago. Yet there are romantics out there who proclaim there was superior “Nazi Science.” 

There was almost zilch Nazi science! They retained a number of fairly solid engineers, like Von Braun, after chasing nearly all the seriously-alpha scientists away. That’s what romantic-dogmatic jerks do. Almost an identical reflex underlies today’s romantic-confederate-foxite war on science… along with every other fact centered profession.

And no, that's not "scientism." It is self-interest, to defend the human trend that refuted past travesties, gave us nearly all our knowledge and wealth, and is rapidly teaching us what we need in order to become decent planetary managers.

Two Very Different Excuses for Government Intervention

Although I have a new book published today, let's put that aside, for what I feel is a vital topic. A way to put all of our "left-right" political wranglings into a much, much deeper and more calmly mature perspective. Get ready for some basics underlying it all.

Largely unspoken, amid hand-wringing over Donald Trump’s potential Republican nomination, is a scenario that could deeply discomfit GOP elders. Oh, Trump would battle Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders hard. But at some point in the summer and autumn debates, he is almost certain to say: “Of course the rich pay too little tax!” 

Moreover, with both nominees agreeing, on live TV, that needle would shift, hard. With almost a consensus sigh, Supply Side will be finished, precipitating the first of several convergences of left- and right- populisms.

At one level, this is only to be expected. Today’s American uber-rich are now paying their lowest averaged rate since income taxes began. The latest budget bill, passed by this GOP Congress, sweetened the deal even more, helping accelerate, as economist Robert Samuelson wrote the "hollowing out of the middle class."

And yet, the public rightfully frets over “interventions” to level the playing field. Government is inherently worrisome and “leveling” strikes a dissonant chord to American ears. We can argue over ways and means to improve both fairness and competitiveness. But is there a fundamental metric to differentiate among our options?

Two kinds of “meddling”

Americans have a tendency to differentiate between government interventions that increase opportunity versus interventions that aim at fairness in outcomes.

Step back a bit. Most of us fret about fairness to some degree. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and others have shown that human moral reasoning has an innate modularity divided into: Care, Fairness, Liberty, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity.

Progressives tend to stress the first two: Care and Fairness. 

Libertarians stress Liberty and Fairness, while conservatives stress all six more equally. Brain function scans show, for example, that conservatives tend to have a stronger sense of visceral revulsion to things they find distasteful (impurity), hence judging them morally, and we all know their stronger fealty towards authority. However, regardless of partisanship, all three groups overlap with a clear moral concern about fairness.

So, now let’s go back to why people differ between fairness of opportunity or of outcomes.

Types of fairness

The latter of these two – aiming to flatten or level economic results or wealth - would strike some as a "European thing." Which is, of course, ironic since oligarchy has always been (and in many ways remains) far more embedded in European life than in North America.


Even when well-motivated, outcomes-leveling can become a calcified, meddlesome process, providing sinecures for paternalistic bureaucrats. It can also - as bruited by conservatives and libertarians - foster dependency. 

Outcomes-equalization puts negative pressure on what Americans feel are positive sum games that, in order to function well, must remain competitive and thus have winners. Viscerally, they feel it undermines ambition, encouraging laziness and whining. We have all heard this story told, often in its nastier-prejudiced forms. And yet, there is some sound, underlying basis. 

Our spectacular successes - which created the wealth enabling us to do many good deeds - arose from positive sum competitive arenas: markets, democracy, science, courts, sports, and now, crudely, the Internet. These all require some degree of inequality of outcomes in order to spur creative vigor.

At one scale or another (subject to fierce argument) outcomes-intervention by the state could stifle these arenas. Americans tend to set the boundary farther to the "right" in that demands for government outcomes-intervention should face a burden of proof. 

Now mind-you, very few of my fellow citizens would express it in the way I just did, using five dollar words, game theory and such. Still, it is important to recognize this underlying motif of American sensibility. Some might attribute it to the long Frontier Experience, or to the “American founder” who never actually visited the continent, Adam Smith. There is a sense that equalizing outcomes is a self-defeating process that could kill the golden egg-laying goose – a reflex that has been manipulated skillfully by right-wing media.

To be honest, I share all of these reservations! Surprised? Given my denunciations of the madness that has taken over U.S. conservatism? And indeed, my harsh critiques of today's version of libertarianism? Well, there is a simple explanation. It arises when you look at the other modern approach to bringing economic fairness.

Opportunity

Things are very different when it comes to opportunity-equalization. 

Even most Americans see real value there, voting repeatedly over two centuries to build highways and schools that can be used by all, subsidizing research shared by all, expanding rights protection (albeit far too gradually) to all races and genders, and building the finest universities on the planet. To the extent that we have been failing in this mission -- e.g. the horrendous student loan scandal, and allowing even a single American child to lack nutrition and health care -- I tend leftward, just as I tend rightward regarding outcomes equalization.

In this disparity, I think most of my countrymen would agree, if only the choice were put to them plainly, as I just did here. Moreover, the distinction was made very clear as long ago as 1776, with publication of Adam Smith's founding document of western society, The Wealth of Nations, wherein he asserts that the state should take actions to increase the number of skilled and confident competitors, in order to stimulate a vibrantly competitive and creative capitalism. Investing in infrastructure and schools and sanitation would - Smith avowed - allow more children to rise up and participate in vibrant markets for goods, services and labor. 


The economist-idol who has been quasi-deified by the American Right - Friedrich Hayek - in fact said pretty much the same thing! Hayek deemed valid those taxpayer supported interventions that will clearly increase the number and fraction of citizens who are skilled and confident market participants. A fact that is now repressed by today's self-described "Hayekians."

(Indeed, to be even more ironic, this is an area of agreement between Hayek and Karl Marx.)

When a state action aims to address a clear and blatant disparity of opportunity - an inequality that limits the supply of new, capable competitors - then the burden of proof must fall upon those who object to the intervention.  The default should be to intervene in favor of opportunity, until challengers show that the problem can be eliminated by non-governmental means. Feed these children now! Save those bridges now! Improve schools now! Then show us how state programs can wither away.


The burden of proof shifts when it comes to outcome equalization, or leveling of wealth and income. Because we know that some substantial disparity in outcomes is necessary, as an incentive, in order for our competitive arenas (markets, democracy, science, etc.) to work at all. We also know that outcomes equalization - if taken too far - could lead to tyrannical horrors as awful as any conceived by Orwell. 

In illustration, let me cite Kurt Vonnegut's wonderfully chilling short story "Harrison Bergeron" which portrays a future in which the Handicapper General of the United States rigorously enforces actual equality of outcomes.  Ayn Rand's "Anthem" also portrays this extremum, though turgidly preachy and unrealistic.

Sure, make some outcomes more equal

 
Am I excluding all outcomes equalization, by demanding that they bear burden of proof? Not at all. Such burdens can be met! Those competitive arenas I mentioned do not maintain themselves. If we can glean one truth from six thousand years of varied human societies, it is that they will always tumble into oligarchic cheating and feudalism, unless kept in tune by careful regulation. Over time, wealth disparities always widen till they become outrageous, warping both politics and markets.

Clearly that has already happened in America and the world, when 62 near-trillionaires own as much wealth as humanity's entire bottom half. Conservative economist George Cooper reaches the same conclusion from a different direction in his recent Evonomics article “Piketty Debate Exposed The Failure of Economics. 5 Steps to Fix It.” Cooper shows that our civilization must continue a “circulation” pattern of government actions to stimulate the bottom while capitalist processes feed the top.


Up to this point my aim has been to make clear a dichotomy of twin generalities. And while in general, opportunity-levelers get benefit of the doubt, outcomes-levelers bear the onus to show clearly why it is necessary to reduce this or that caste's economic gains.

 That onus may be easy to satisfy, right now! Indeed, I deem it to be blatantly so. Still, it should still be kept clearly in mind, lest we tumble into the nightmare worlds -- the leveling extrema -- of "Harrison Bergeron," or even "Anthem."

It gets complicated

Now, these two notions - equalization of opportunity vs. outcome - do overlap!  When a competitor fails in the marketplace of labor or business, there should be a limit to how low they are allowed to fall. This wonderful civilization is not, as Tennyson put it, “Nature, red in tooth and claw.” We have a better version of creative competition than Nature, more cognizant and less wasteful. In a market, or in elections, or in science, this year's loser might come roaring back next year, with improved products, policies or data. Second and third chances come under opportunity enhancement, though the major effort must be yours.

The most controversial overlap comes in wealth redistribution, which certainly sounds like outcome equalization! But, as Gershwin reminds us, it ain't necessarily so. 




Let's go back to that earlier point and restate what is blatantly obvious, yet utterly ignored by mavens of the right. The worst destructive force that ruined flat-fair-open-creative markets and suppressed equality of opportunity across 60 centuries was inherited oligarchy and feudal overlordship. That was the normal system in most large-scale human societies. Feudal inherited oligarchy was the system of cheating despised by Adam Smith.

Indeed, partly influenced by Smith, the American Founders, in the 1780s, seized up to a third of the land in the former colonies, owned by aristocratic families, and sold or redistributed it to make the playing field more level. States also banned primogeniture and fiercely enforced equal inheritance so that rich family fortunes would break up among many heirs. The Founders' economic meddling and redistribution was thus vastly greater than ever attempted later, by either Roosevelt!

Today's inheritance tax has similar (if much smaller) effects, incentivizing wealthy families to create charitable foundations, rather than let the feds get their clutches on it. In practice, this limits the likely creation of neo-feudal castes, made up of kids who never produced any goods or services or earned the wealth and power they would then exert over the rest. And yes, a progressive income tax helped to foster the sense of general, middle class justice that today’s conservatives ironically yearn for, in the 1950s.

Wealth redistribution is thus a tricky middle ground. Equalization of opportunity (and maximization of competitive creativity) is impossible without some. On the other hand, some inequality of outcomes is absolutely required in order to maintain the kinds of incentives that spur creative people to take risks and develop great new things.  

This is one more area in which we need to again be a people capable of thoughtful negotiation and pragmatic compromise. But always bearing in mind what is fundamental: the incentive of some wealth-disparity is a necessary fuel to propel our competitive arenas to maximum effort. But those creative arenas will seize-up and grind to a halt, unless lubricated by maximized opportunity for all children -- all of them -- to confidently participate.

If we fail to enhance opportunity, we’re guaranteed to regret the outcome.

=========

Addendum: Here’s a cantankerously different take on the plusses and minuses of contemporary libertarianism and other oversimplifying dogmas: Models, Maps and Visions of Tomorrow. 

This article is reprinted from Evonomics.