From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Date: Sat, 13 Apr 1996 13:30:46 +0800
To: Adam Shostack <mccoy@communities.com (Jim McCoy)
Subject: Re: No matter where you go, there they are.
Message-ID: <m0u7oHD-0008zIC@pacifier.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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At 10:14 PM 4/11/96 -0500, Adam Shostack wrote:
>Jim McCoy wrote:
>  What is
>| Dennings fascination with building Big Brother?
>
>	She read Snow Crash, and it scared her.
>	Snow Crash is a book about a future in which governments are
>ineffective.  Companies run things, and have complete local control.
>The world has gone to hell, and as a result, life is nasty, poor,
>brutish and short.  Many people do not look forward to this world.
>Thats an understandable reaction; when I first heard about anonymous
>assasination markets, I thought it was pretty bizzare as a world to
>look forward to.

However, looked at from the standpoint of somebody who is not already 
steeped in it, OUR society is a "pretty bizarre world."  Ostensibly we live 
in a society that loves freedom, yet it's controlled by a rather tiny number 
of people who wield an extraordinarily large amount of power.  We can be 
beaten or killed by agents of the government, and the only time a ruckus 
seems to be raised is when there happens to be a camcorder nearby, one that 
the  police do not notice in time.  I haven't heard much speculation about 
why we never (actually, almost never) see such cases without recordings.


>	Then I heard Neal Stephenson speak.  And he brought up a very
>good point, which was Hitler killed more people than Charles Manson
>because Hitler had a big country, and its large army.  I look
>forward to smaller, weaker government that can't put the Japs in
>holding camps, surround and harras the Branch Davidians, etc.
>
>	The debate, really, boils down to Hobbes v. Locke, or Plato v.
>Aristotle.  Its not going to be resolved anytime soon by a
>philosopher.

I think it will be resolved by a computer programmer.

I am reminded of the scene in the TV show "Hitchhiker's Guide to the 
Galaxy," when the two philosophers complained to the computer, "Deep 
Thought" (Assigned the task of answering the question of "Life, the 
Universe, and Everything"), something like "What's the point of debating the 
existence of God, when you're going to tell us his address?"

There is precedent for this kind of frustration.  I seem to recall that more 
than 10 years ago, or more, that the solution/proof for the 4-color mapping 
problem (The theory that all maps could be colored with at most 4 colors) 
was done by computer.  It was accomplished, as I recall, by exhaustively 
testing "all" the various possibilities (having been narrowed down 
appropriately), and determing that they needed no more than 4 colors.

Mathematicians, who were used to multi-page proofs that a human could 
actually comprehend and follow on a step-by-step basis, were unhappy that it 
all came down to a computer.

  Many of us have read Mill, Hayek, Freidman, Nozick, and
>decided that we prefer that world view.  That Dr. Denning has decided
>that she likes Philosopher-Kings is not particularly unusual, except
>in the computer business.  Go read Leviathan.  Think about what we're
>talking about here.
>
>	Its a scary new world that I expect will be created, by the
>UNSTOPPABLE advance of technology.  There is no weapon created that is
>not used by someone who judges the cause to be worthwhile.  Nukes,
>chemicals, and biologicals have all been used against civilian
>populations.  I judge that stopping the advance of cryptoanarchist
>technology will fail (in the long run), and not be worth the price.  I
>suspect Dorothy disagrees, and there lies her fascination with
>building in Big Brother.

I think the thing to remember is that the "worth the price" issue  appears 
to depend substantially on who you are.  If you're a powerful government 
official, who fears losing his cushy job and maybe even his life, it may 
appear to be worth an effort.  From the standpoint of the ordinary citizen, 
however, if he understands what's at stake he'll recognize that it isn't.  

Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com