Can cheating be combatted?

As I mentioned, earlier, liberals should start practicing judo. Start by accepting Trump’s demand for a commission to investigate electoral fraud. A call that is now echoed in this article from Salon. Watch, as they scurry to back away from the demand.

Indeed. Former Attorney General Eric Holder has signed on to lead the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a newly formed political group aimed at untangling the creatively drawn districts that have helped cement the Republican Party in power, both in Washington and many state capitals. Mind you, Gerrymandering is a crime against the American people by the entire political caste and for years both parties practiced the foul art, as I dissected here. Along with ways that you personally and all by yourself can defeat it, here. And yes I mean you, all by yourself.

Recent years have seen citizen uprisings in many blue states, where ballot measures instituted nonpartisan commissions to draw the districts for Congress and state legislatures. This as happened only in blues like California, Washington, Oregon and so on, leading to much hand-rubbing glee, at first, among republicans, who saw this as “political suicide” by democratic voters. 

(Libertarians note: these are the same states that are decriminalizing marijuana and doing other things top get oppression off your back. They are also thriving vastly better than red states.)

Only lo and behold, a funny thing happened. With more neutral districting, Democrats did better at the polls. It seemed that voters trusted those legislators more, not less, when they had to work hard, each election, rather than taking their constituents for granted. 

Which led to my call for Democrats to abandon gerrymandering altogether, especially in DP dominated states that still use it, like Illinois and Maryland. All those exceptions have accomplished, overall, was to let Republicans cry “See? Everybody does it!”

I doubt that Holder or Obama actually listened to me. Still, it seems my advice is being carried out. Obama and Holder will jawbone Illinois, Maryland and others to abandon gerrymandering, so that it will become strictly a Republican crime. Instead of just mostly a Republican crime.

At which point we might see whether Justice Roberts and Justice Alito -- and Justice Gorsuch -- are still able to stomach the utterly intolerable. Or whether those three can rouse themselves to be citizens first, before and above being partisan hacks. (We will see a number of occasions, over the next few years, when those three might hold the fate of our Great Experiment in their hands.)

== The simplest solution to a cheat ==

As it happens, Roberts and Alito earlier held back from meddling in gerrymandering, because they saw no clear way to prescribe a redistricting process. Only here’s the thing: you don’t even have to demand impartial redistricting commissions! I have long reponded with a three sentence solution:

(1) Set some upper limit to all districts’ perimeter-to-area ratio. (You can be generous; just forbid the absurdly contorted.)

(2) The legislature – or some commission -- may establish the boundaries, but…

(3) There must be minimal overlap between the boundaries of districts for state assembly, state senate and Congress. They must be as different from each other as practically possible. Hence, if they gerry one house to benefit their own party, fine! They’ll mess themselves up in the other two. 

There you go.  No need for formulas or “commissions.” Problem solved. Do it. Just do it.

There is, of course, a way for we citizens, ourselves, to defeat gerrymandering cheats, at least a bit, even if the crooks manage to cling to their criminal practice. If politicians have contrived things so that only one party can ever win in your district, then register as a member of that party! That way, you can vote in the only election that matters in your district, the primary. 

Seriously, you betray nothing by registering as a Republican, if that’s the party that owns your district. You can then help moderates to win the local nominations and to withstand Tea Party/Breitbart bullying challenges. (And note, you conservatives who live in Santa Monica or some other liberal enclave, this can work both ways!) Think about it.

This proved unnecessary after California's brilliant reforms, with non-partisan primaries and top-two runoffs in the fall. It has led to amazing outcomes, with moderates winning in both parties and the minorities in each district gaining clout!

 == Our side: Reduced to essentials ==

Exaggerating a bit to make a powerful point, this essay by Yonatan Zunger asserts provocatively that Tolerance is a Peace Treaty, not a moral precept. A powerfully important treaty, yes, that allows us to create far more complex, effective, productive and happy societies. But ultimately one based on pragmatism, which is vastly stronger than any "value system." 

When tolerance, diversity and all those nice things are called moral-axiom absolutes, that weakens them! Because someone else can simply shrug and cancel your hifalutin Core Value by saying "I have different core values. Different axioms." (Like holy writ telling me that your kind are filth.)

Our tolerant, diverse, positive-sum society needs no such axiomatic crutches! Amid our complexity, we've prospered and achieved more, in a few generations, than all others combined, across all continents and 6000+ years. There are zero positive metrics - from art to fun to prosperity to happiness, to soulful contemplation - in which this approach has not been rewarded multiplicatively, not arithmetically. When it comes to science and knowledge - gathering the tools and powers of creation - we've been rewarded exponentially. That is one heap of validation for free speech, tolerance, flat class structures and the rule of law.

There are powers who see where this is going. If the Enlightenment thrives for just one more generation, we'll reach a critical mass of bright youths and citizens committed to their own blatant self interest, in this positive sum miracle. Those aiming to reinstate traditional humangovernance styles of oligarchy and feudal-inherited privilege know that they have just a narrow window of time in which to bring the experiment crashing down.

Their chief tool - fomenting frantic, anti-future populism among a fact-averse lumpenproletariat - worked somewhat in 1930s Europe. It took grit and courage - yes, militancy - to face down that last major oligarchic putsch. Indeed, our Great Experiment will only be rescued by determined will and goodwill, as it was from evil empires in the 1860s, the 1940s and across the Cold War.

It requires that we view Tolerance and Freedom of Speech and class-flatness not only as our core tenets but also as the greatest tools ever discovered for achieving positive sum outcomes. Tolerance is our oxygen, our practical need, not a catechism that can be used against us.

Read this piece. Then recall how I have been poking at audiences for decades with a deliberately aggressive call to arms, rousing appreciative, if nervous laughter: 

"We must go forth and crush every worldview that does not accept diversity and tolerance!"

If that does not wring from you a tense, ironic smile -- maybe a chuckle that is both nervous and determined -- then you just don't get it. How dissonant, contradictory, yet necessarily militant we are obliged to be, to save the fecund, wondrous peace our predecessors won. See my essay: The Dogma of Otherness (from my collection Otherness).

Oh but alas. Here’s your openness and transparency.  “Paul Ryan Proposes Ban on Live-Streaming From House Floor.”

== Let the comparisons begin! ==

I’ve recommended that the fact-centered half of our civil war use wagers!  I'll offer a major missive about that, soon. Meanwhile though, note that the maneuver can only work if you parse the bets so clearly that there’s no wriggle room and the facts are overwhelmingly clear. Like defying  your favorite confederate cultist to name fact-based professions that are not warred upon by Fox.

Or to name a major metric of U.S. national health that does not do vastly better, across the span of democratic presidencies.  

Case in point: U.S. consumer confidence has boomed to its highest level since 2001 -- yes, higher than at the peak of the housing boom.  Reinforcing the almost perfect correlation that every single large and attributable metric of U.S. national health does better across the span of democratic administrations than across their republican predecessors.  Usually “oppositely” better. (In other words, most such metrics plummeted across both Bush Administrations.)

More comparisons here.

Let’s gather these.  If the pattern persists, it will help us to pry some intelligent “ostrich” conservatives’ head out of holes-of-denial.  And all it will take is a few… million… of them to make the difference that saves us.

And it begins.

======

Addendum.  One of you in comments pointed out: "It's not only blue states that have created redistricting commissions: Arizona has one, too. But it took a citizens' initiative to create it and years in court to defend it from the GOP legislature and state-wide officers who wanted it dead, dead, dead." Yes, well, okay. Blue in spirit, somewhat.  Look, Arizona has a huge, independent, libertarian streak. And they draw half their electricity from coils arrayed around the spinning in Barry Goldwater's grave.

Asides: on Pax Americana, Libertarians and where the #$#! are our Roosevelts?

Mid-week, let's pause to get a few points out of the way. Below I will have some things to say about current American politics -- about "Galt's Gulch in Chile" and about... "The Roosevelts."

But first... clearly my most provocative stance is to defend the period -- post WWII -- called  "PA"… or Pax Americana.  It's a topic wherein I think we can distill what is loony about both sides in the current, re-ignited US civil war... as well as simplistic and comfortable cliches that are clutched by many of our friends, overseas.

PA has lasted all our lifetimes, since WWII saw the passing of Pax Brittanica… the “British Peace.”  "Pax" referred originally to Pax Romana or the Roman Peace that kept the Mediterranean placid and open to commerce for 600 years. Pax Sinica refers to similar epochs across China and east Asia. Pax Hispania was the greatest empire the world has ever known, in which Columbus's discoveries -- then Magellan's -- led to a "peace" that preached its own absolute goodness while it spread deliberate genocide for 400 bloody years. But at least there was no hypocrisy.  

Here is the crux. With the likely exception of Pax Hispania, almost every pax era has been better for average people on planet Earth than almost every era without a pax empire, when competing kingdoms would send armies slashing and burning and looting across each others’ territories. The Chinese, for example, admit that the First Emperor Chi'in, who unified the five warring states, was something of a murderous madman. But he also made it safe to travel and trade and paved the way for the Han Dynasty renaissance. He was hell on scholars and dissenters, but made things better for average folk who just wanted to live out their lives, pay taxes, practice a trade and be left alone.

Are there costs, whenever there is a ruling imperium? You bet! When the First Emperor crushed the Five Kingdoms, peace then reigned… along with brutal tyranny and a collapse of the vibrant, cultural competitiveness that had prevailed, before. Minorities had plenty to complain about, under Pax Parthia, Pax Alexandrine, Pax Romana, Pax Mughal etc, and homogenization under a single oligarchy is often harsh on progress. (So harsh that it might help to explain why few or no alien species made it to the stars.)  Indeed, it was when the nations of a divided Europe -- circa 1400 to 1900 -- vigorously competed that humanity made some of its greatest, if morally mixed, strides -- including strides toward both liberal enlightenment and industrial grade genocide.  

This is not a matter for taking sides, but for being open-minded about many pros and cons, so that understanding might help us to navigate a future course, between the Scylla of violent chaos and the Charybdis of stifling empire. Those of you out there who leap to just one, simplistic stance on all of this, making grand and righteous declarations, may thereby feel good, but you understand little about the complex morass that is human history.  And thus you are no help at all, in steering us toward better days.

== The current pax ==

Where Pax Americana is different is in having operated under a mythic system that -- even when it was only hypocritically paid lip service -- at least spoke repeatedly that there should be no empires. Indeed, while American commercial interests may have been predatory, during the weak end-days of the Chi-ing Dynasty, U.S. policy was always on China's side, at least officially, demanding that European and Japanese powers give back the colonial "concessions" they had wrested from the weakened central kingdom. Not one other nation in all of China's long history ever stood up for her that way.

Does imperfection disqualify everything? de Rochefoucauld said "Hypocricy is the homage that vice pays to virtue." Indeed, though betrayed often, the moral stance against empire has been relentlessly conveyed in American propaganda -- e.g. Hollywood films, which portray "empires" as bad things and tolerance of diversity as the greatest positive virtue.  Indeed, those of you who are now seething in anger at me, for daring to say good things about PA... um, have you thought of where you got the value system by which you judge these things?  Can you name another major culture that preached "by all means criticize the center of power!"

Ironies abound. The best that PA can preen about is that it reduced most of the bad outcomes of a pax era. Rigid domination, imperial mercantiism and repression of diversity. A priesthood with a lock on "truth." Outright and barefaced conquest.

We are talking human nature here... what groups of people do when they find themselves in a position to dominate. Go on now and name for me one people, across all of time, who behaved well when tempted by such power. One. We can wait here if you like, all day.  The real enemy is that temptation, which seems rooted in our natures.

But it can be controlled.

My assertion has been that: 

(1) The ratio of good deeds to bad - by Pax Americana - is stunningly better than any other pax power across time…

(2) Should we expose and dissect and atone for wretched events like Vietnam and Allende -- all the way down to negligent crimes of poor supervision, like those exposed in Iraq by WikiLeaks? Absolutely! I am Mr. Transparency.  And criticism is the only known antidote to error (CITOKATE.)

But these crimes, while calling for fierce retrospection and learning, do not alter the fundamental fact, that outcomes have been vastly better, under the PA system designed by the greatest human of the 20th Century, George Marshall.  

Average humans today live in more peace than at any time in the history of our species, as shown in Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature, with only a few percent ever experiencing personal and direct contact with war in their lifetimes. One top benefit: Pax-protected world trade has uplifted 2/3 of the world’s children out of poverty.

(3) That propaganda campaign about tolerance and suspicion of authority and individualism may have been hypocritical! Nevertheless, it engendered people like you who are generous in your citokate-criticism and who push for exactly those values! Memes that you express, even as you fume at me for praising the pax that taught you all those values. While never once pausing to realize "Hey I am part of an organic process!  And any other empire would have killed me for this, by now."

(4) Combine all this and there may be a unique opportunity -- that we might actually tip into an era when pax law is no longer needed. An era portrayed in Star Trek, when the very idea of one dominant power is viewed by all as repugnantly retro and archaic.  No other culture ever preached that eutopian notion, though you illustrate it right now, as you seethe at these words. 

Here is more about Pax Americana: Pondering Pax Americana and the Government Shutdown.

== Basics ==

It merits reiterating. Was PA awful at times? Sure... except compared to every single other nation that was ever tempted by such power. If you make that comparison, PA is day to their night. Moreover, you know it.

Was PA drooling-insane-stupid under both Bushes? Sure. So much so that you have to wonder if that Saudi-owned family did it on purpose. (The wretched irony? That the phrase "Pax Americana" is only uttered nowadays by right wingers, who eviscerate its promise at every turn, with almost every immoral and incompetent act of foreign and domestic policy. Meanwhile the liberals who are PA's true spokesmen, glower at the one thing that made their dreams possible. Oh, we are weird, all right.)

Should Pax Americana be replaced with something grownup, at last, bringing an end to all empires? Sure! That's the idea!

Would Star Trek be better? Yep! 

Do you have a better idea? We'd all love to see your plan. But please, one that is only half impractical preaching but also looks at what progress has been made, so far, and how that progress happened.)

Will the end of all empires come, if PA simply goes away? Or prematurely stops enforcing peace? Baloney. Before you prescribe nothing as a replacement to the current pax power, please find for us, across 6000 years, a lasting era when that prescription worked well.

PA is the only empire that ever had as its (hypocritically uneven) policy "there should be no empires." And that hypocrisy has one saving grace...

...it will make itself come true.  

== Too-big means get-smaller ==

And now a couple of politically redolent items: The Federal Reserve is pushing the biggest U.S. banks to shrink so that they're less of a risk to the financial system. Fed proposals include imposing additional capital requirements for the eight largest banks — including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America — that exceed the levels mandated by international regulators. “Capital surcharges" would increase in proportion to how risky the regulators deem a bank to be.

Which leads one to ponder...

Ken Burns documentaries are always a great buy, for your viewing time. His most recent — “The Roosevelts” -- focuses on Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor. Terrific. Fascinating stories. 

Only… I find my own thoughts drifting  -- and as I watch this series I can only contemplate our parents in the Greatest Generation... who overcame the Depression, crushed Hitler, prevented a mad Soviet Empire from world conquest, built a vibrant/free/open/flat/fair capitalism that created so much wealth that we could then afford to take on ancient, bad habits like racism, sexism and environmental neglect.

That generation... so admired by folks on the American Right... try asking your Fox-Watcher... "which human being did the Greatest Generation of Americans -- and indeed, nearly everyone on Earth -- adore, above all others?"

Watch them go goggle-eyed and choke. But make them say the name. Aloud.

== And finally? ==

Galt’s Gulch Chile? One common theme that spans from leftist-hippies to followers of Ayn Rand is the notion of anarchic utopianism — that those who have free spirits and the right ideology can create an ideal community, free of the ills they perceive in our complex, compromise-ridden civilization. On rare occasions, these communities have thrived… ironically those that have been run patriarchally by brilliant administrators, replicating feudalism-of-old, with a patina of egalitarian catechism. But most such experiments swiftly collapse. As in the case of the AnyRandian ideal community described here.

This is not the only libertarian dream community in the works. Perhaps more sturdy, but still problematic, are seasteading efforts propelled by Patri Friedman and Peter Thiel.

In the end, however, this is tragic for us all. Libertarianism might have served as a rational and pragmatic counter-balance to the other utopian tendency, to try solving all problems with statist approaches. It might also have held true to the sane vision of Adam Smith - to do what is needed in order to maximize the number of skilled and capable young competitors in a flat-fair-open society. 

Instead, it has been hijacked by solipsists who never, ever mention the word “competition” anymore, in their obsessive defense of towering accumulations of PROPERTY, never noticing how this serves the proto-feudal wishes of the oligarchs who were denounced by Adam Smith, and have always been the greatest enemies of markets and freedom.

See my dissection of Any Rand here: http://www.davidbrin.com/aynrand.html

==Return to Part One of this Series: An Unstable World

Viral Video - for those who like ideas

In this golden era of public speaking, all those viral presentations range from enlightening (e.g. the best TED talks) to absurd flim-flam (e.g. the worst TED talks)… all the way to the hilariously on-target Onion Talks. I’ve certainly been kept busy in this new century, giving “chatauqua” blather that — I suppose — spans that entire range. Now, some of my best recent talks are available, online!

1. Otherness: Will we supply our own new diversity? Suppose we don't meet aliens. Might we satisfy our thirst for "otherness" anyway, by widening the range of who "we" are? The greatest discovery of recent, scientific civilization has been tolerance. Inclusion of all types, races, genders of people as full citizens, contributing fresh perspectives and wisdom. That task of human-expansion is not complete! But already we're discussing the next phases. Incorporating intelligences that are artificial, or human variants, or uplifted animals. What are the dangers and opportunities?

Explore these Big Ideas along with David Brin's assumption-shattering talk at the Smithsonian, in May 2014.

Alas, the editors of this slide-heavy talk chose to focus mostly on my boring face, which may prevent you from making out the clever illustrations. But you can follow along on Slideshare! Just open the window alongside and click along with me. (Some overlays and animations don't play.)

2. “Indignation, Addiction and Hope: Does it help to be “Mad as Hell?” My talk at TEDxUCSD finally offers a public version of this disturbing notion I’ve been discussing for years — that an unseen addiction is destroying our civilization.

Recent science exposes this as a scam that has produced the most disastrously addictive force in civilization…. a veritable plague of sanctimony that is pushed by cynical media, selling fear while poisoning our native ability to negotiate with one-another.

For a generation, we’ve been taught that the best way to deal with any problem - personal or national or worldwide - is to get mad as hell! 

Oh, certainly problems sometimes merit indignation! But are we abandoning our greatest gift – the ability to actually solve problems?

Again, the TED-itors chose to emphasize my boring face. So here are the slides.  (Most multi-layer and animated slides don’t flow; you’ll just have to imagine!) And see links to some other cool videos, below.

== The ideas get even deeper! ==

 Robert Kuhn’s television series Closer To Truth “gives you access to the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover the fundamental issues of existence. Enjoy new ways of thinking. Appreciate diverse views. Witness intense debates. Express your own opinions. Seek your own answers. Get smarter.”  Wow… that’s a pretty hefty promise!  So why not check out this fabulous series, now fully available online!  

I contributed a few bits to the program, on topics ranging from cosmology and SETI to religion to ESP.  My segments - sorted by show episode and category - can be found here. 

But scan the impressive lists of other folks Kuhn interviewed, some of them WAY smarter than me!  Such as David Deutsch, Freeman Dyson and Francisco Ayala. Mind-blowing stuff.  

== What does it take to be “ethical?” ==

Elsewhere, the topic came up… to what extent is it fair to judge men and women of the past by OUR modern moral standards? And to what extent does that set us up for rebuke by much better descendants?

Certainly some who engage in the modern drug high of sanctimony chide their neighbors partly to lower their own "karma" … but also as a kind of aggression. (See my video on this: cited above!)

And yet the world does need to be saved! And we owe much to heroes who stood up -- in days past -- to question the "common wisdom" of their own times, when it came to racism, sexism, classism or environmental neglect.

There is a litmus that I apply to historical figures and I am willing to see it applied to myself.  Yes, they were products of their times — as am I.  Hence, what I ask is "did you try to be at least two standard deviations BETTER than your times?"

Did you try -- and succeed -- to shift the momentum or arc of your times in better directions?  By that metric, Thomas Jefferson gets some added slack and Abraham Lincoln is let completely out of purgatory.  Sure it's self-serving. This standard lets me continue to eat meat, for example, so long it is judicious and sparing and I keep a nagging conscience affecting how I behave as a much-reduced carnivore. And so long as I am part of the movement to keep applying pressure for better empathy and treatment of animals… plus the technological push for tissue culture meaticulture that may take away the ethical conflict with our evolved natures… I don’t feel too guilt-wracked.

Or is that rationalization? Sure, my pisco vegetarian wife has better karma than I do. She’ll live longer, too! I expect I'll reevaluate next year... and the next.

Likewise, I fight for a better world hard enough to know that I am trying and I cannot be judged as not having cared... yet I still fly in airplanes, drive a car.  I’m not in this to lord my virtuous nature over others, nor to win your approval.  I am in it to be (as Jonas Salk demanded) a "good ancestor."

== Other Cool Media ==

The brainiac philosophers at "A Partially Examined Life" have posted both the two hour podcast of our interview and their followup notes. "What’s the point of thinking? David Brin sees the future as a pressing threat, and Existence speculates that the reason we don’t see evidence of life on other planets is that no species survives its technological adolescence. The solution? We need to be smarter than our parents and work to give our kids the tools to be smarter than we are. In the book, the ultimate hope comes from a concerted effort to develop and diversify the coalition of Earth’s intelligent life, to make “humanity” encompass more than just the biological humans that we currently are."

I tried hard to offer my best stuff since these are the alphas who actually did something with their philosophy majors! Maybe I tried too hard to impress em. Did talk a mile a minute, trying to cover a lot?

And now… here are the cliffs of Torrey Pines north of San Diego .  These men release their  hawks, and then soar with them. way cool.

Of Buddies, Offpspring and Artificial Mythology: A stunningly beautiful video/art riff by renowned artist Bob Vanderbob contains this background remark -- "These (are) times of accelerating change, ill-defined angst, collective paralysis , anger and all sorts of regressive behavior. Times that are scary but also full of potential. It is important that we stay calm. One way to do that is to put our lives into perspective. Look at the big picture. That is what mythology does." -- while he presents images that are gorgeously evocative and thought-provoking.

Your Digital AfterLives: Here’s an interesting rumination, by Eric Steinhart, on the notion that we may be living in a simulation. Some subtleties.

== Miscellany ==

 Overstepping Artifacts, by Musicians with Guns, is a way-cool video that illustrates another great riff on fractal space. I'd love to use this as a basis for the ever-changing metal corals under the seas of Kithrup, in a Startide Rising flick.

See MyDream: a cool build-your-own universe/world game system recently funded on kickstarter.  It seems compatible with what Sheldon Brown and I have been working on... the Exorarium Project.

Are indoor shopping malls vanishing? No new one has been built in the US since 2006 and maybe half of them might disappear soon. For a generation, they were our town square. By all appearances (especially in the age of video arcades) in may be that GenX was the best of all times to be young and hang out.

Suspicion of Authority -- a prevalent meme

I am on an elite advisory board having to do with nanotechnology. In that discussion I engaged in a review of some topics many of you have heard before, summarizing a lot of ideas more compactly. Anyway, it should be archived and available - so I'll post it here before returning to the essay on gerrymandering. 
                                                       ---    ----   ---

One question rose: "Are nation-states really the right object of focus? Or is it is more likely to be a multi-national mega-company or a small group of hyper-rich individuals?"

Sometimes it makes sense to generalize a little, before getting back to specifics.

What are we talking about here? Will you bear with me through a riff that may seem a bit lectury. It really will become relevant to the topic at hand.

Each of us in this group was raised in a culture that’s featured a weird propaganda program Nearly every novel and Hollywood film has promoted Suspicion of Authority (SOA). Often two subsidiary messages accompany SOA. These are:

   -- Tolerance of Diversity (TOD) and

   -- Personal Harmless Eccentricity (PHE).

Often, in a movie, the protagonist will bond with the audience in the 1st five minutes by:

   (1) exhibiting some quirky eccentricity to establish individualism, and

   (2) having a run-in with some dislikable authority figure (often over the eccentricity.)

And if you want to establish viewer dislike of an authority figure, by all means let him perform some act of intolerance commensurate with the comeuppance you plan him to receive later on. If the intolerance was verbal, he may “learn a lesson.” If he kicks a dog, sucka gonna die. (See my essay: Our Favorite Cliche: The Idiot Plot.)

I raise this here because it is important for us to recognize the cultural roots of our worry. Not only do these three themes -- Suspicion of Authority, Tolerance of Diversity, and Personal Harmless Eccentricity -- express Western/Enlightenment/American/Frontier/Californian value sets. They are also rooted in the Scientific Pragmatism that has been a successful guiding principle for a century -- also called “modernism.”

Suspicion of Authority is not, in itself, completely wise. Many people in our society take the SOA message and use it as an excuse to dive into cycles of addictive self-righteous indignation, often focusing extreme “suspicion of authority” toward on one side of an insipid, ill-defined and fundamentally unhelpful metaphor... the 300 year old French “left-right political axis.”

For more on Indignation addiction, see my article: Open Letter to Researchers of Addiction, Brain Chemistry and Social Psychology.

This simple-minded version of Suspicion of Authority tends to be blinkered and myopic. Such people tend to minimize or ignore the dangers posed by the authority figures on THEIR side.

That’s the immature version of SOA -- which is fueling the so-called “Culture War.”

At its more mature end, Suspicion of Authority is simply an expression of the fundamental lesson of the Liberal Enlightenment -- that we are master self-deceivers. We fool ourselves - as Nobel laureate Richard Feynman said - all-too easily. Therefore, truth and decency cannot be delivered by hierarchically-empowered kings or priests, who have proved they can rationalize doing anything they want and calling it the Greater Good.

Instead, the Liberal Enlightenment says that both truth and good behavior can only come from markets of interaction, in which free players are empowered to hold each other accountable through criticism --  CITOKATE .

Forgive me. CITOKATE is my acronym for  Criticism Is The Only Known Antidote To Error.

Elsewhere I talk about the four biggest “accountability arenas” -- Markets, Democracy, Science and Courts -- each of which handle the process of reciprocal accountability very differently.... but with similar underlying processes. (See: Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict and Competitiveness for Society's Benefit.)

In fact, the SOA is a very important part of how these four arenas work. It empowers players to resent established centers of orthodoxy, giving many of them the balls to jump in the arena as challengers.

Can you see that this supplies a contextual framework for what we’ve been discussing?

What the previous discussion shows is that, in general, each of us fears seeing technological breakthroughs monopolized by some set of elites. The difference between a liberal and a conservative is often over WHICH elites you fear trying to become Big Brother. The irony is that both sides are often right!

Naturally, we feel less threatened by “the United States” developing such powers first, in part because it is home to most of us and partly because of Pax Americana’s (until recently) above average record as a fairly benign imperium, by historical standards.

Also (until recently), the principal modus for error-prevention (or palliation) in the US was open criticism. How many of those other elites instead base their methodology on secretive central control?

The prospect of others taking a leap in this massively empowering technological area naturally seems worrisome. Not only other nation states, but other elites, such as unaccountable multinationals, criminal gangs, terror groups, mad billionaires, mad scientists.... etc.

Having laid that out, let me ask this; is our fear best expressed in specific terms, e,g, about China, India or Rupert Murdoch getting disruptive technologies and taking over? Or might it be better to look at it the other way.

* What fundamental cultural tools should be in place, in order to assure that is DOES NOT MATTER who gets a disruptive technology first?

Implicit throughout our discussion has been some degree of fealty toward the basic assumptions of the liberal enlightenment. That competition, reciprocal accountability, openness, skepticism, criticism (error detection) and flattened access hierarchies, are all good things.

We can see from history that the rate of grievous ERROR in a society is inversely proportional to the presence of these traits... even though every one of them runs counter to human nature and the self-interests of leaders.

The question is this. Can openness and reciprocal accountability prevent terrible mistakes and abuse of nanotechnology? Ray Kurzweil thinks so. I agree, provisionally. In contrast, many thinkers, ranging from Francis Fukuyama and Bill Joy to the Unabomber and Michael Crichton and Margaret Atwood believe our only hope is to reject and repress whole areas of endeavor.

The Fermi Paradox seems to be saying that SOME kind of worrisome mistake may wipe away  intelligent life forms. Is this it? Nano stuff? Is Crichton right?

Hell, I am loyal to the Enlightenment.