The seed of reason

Vegetarian priorites

I am a vegetarian but I am often intensely frustrated by the arguments and tactics of other vegetarians.  They often seem to betray a twisted idea of vegetarian ethics.  I want to put down my opinion on what vegetarian's priorities should be and how best those priorities can be achieved (without recourse to intimidation or criminal damage).

In the past decade there was a significant animal welfare movement arguing for (and eventually succeeding in) a ban of hunting foxes for pleasure.  As the house of lords argued vociferously against this the legislation it took an age to pass and received a large proportion of parliamentary time.  I argue that, although fox hunting does indeed deserve to be banned, that it was not the right fight to pick and probably set back the animal welfare agenda by squandering valuable political capital.

Lets look at the figures.  Fox hunting in its hey day resulted in fewer than 30,000 fox deaths a year.  This is less than a thousandth of the number of animals killed for food every year in the UK.  Foxes have a frightening time in the chase but the animals raised for slaughter in the UK live in terrible conditions their whole lives.  Given all these facts fox hunting should never have been a priority.

Many other animals are hunted for food or pleasure.  I think that killing an animal for pleasure or food (a type of pleasure really) is wrong.  However, we should note that most such animals are free range and have a longer life than captive bred animals.  All else being equal then hunting animals is better than conventional factory farming (and many free range farms for the matter).  Overall then whilst I agree that hunting for pleasure and food should be banned they are not priorities for the welfare agenda.

There have been many violent campaigns in the UK against the use of animals in the laboratory.  Animal testing for cosmetics is now banned and there are tight rules in place regulating what experiments can and cannot be performed.  I argue that the use of animals in experiments may be justifiable and we should not be looking to ban it.  Lets look at the figures again (figures from the USA here).  Millions of animals are used in experiments every year.  This is a significantly higher figure than the number killed in hunts, however, billions are slaughtered for food every year.  Much more importantly animal experiments are responsible for saving many saved human lives and for the amelioration of much human suffering.  Seeing as the medical industry cannot yet function without animal testing one is not weighing a luxury item against an animals life but a human life against an animals life.  I do not think that a human life is worth infinitely more than an animal life but I do think human life is worth much more than most animal lives lost in experimentation.

That does not mean that we shouldn't try to reduce the number of animals used in experiments and reduce the deaths and suffering of those that are.  We can certainly fund the development of alternatives to animal testing.

I would argue that ridding this world of slaughterhouses should be the main priority of the vegetarian movement.  Eating meat is considered a luxury and marginally improves the quality of lives just as many other unnecessary items do.  Both the American medical association and the British medical council say that there is no significant overall risk to a vegetarian diet (although both vegetarian and meet including diets should be varied).  It had long been assumed that meat was necessary or beneficial to the health.  However, the risks of meat tend to cancel the benefits (which do exist).  Here one might argue that a vegetarian diet is easy enough to maintain in the UK but that the developing world needs to raise meat.  This is dangerously wrong as meat requires much more water per calorie produced (and also per gram of protein).  Almost all land in most developing nations would be best used for crop production and some would be best suited to bio-fuel production (the more marginal land).  In fact a very good ancillary argument for not raising animals for food is the dramatic ecological gains and increased food production that would result.  Factory farms are the worst form of animal farming around and working to close these should be the first step in our battle against the meat industry.

Despite the growth and power of the vegetarian movement our numbers are still relatively small and we have not succeeded in banning even the worst excesses of meat production.  We should concentrate our efforts on making more progress in this area.  However, past experience has shown that people are reluctant to give up luxuries even if they result from terrible abuses.  This is most true when there is no alternative source of those luxuries.  Part of this is no doubt a culture of denial and detachment where people deny the ethical status of animals or mentally detach the act of eating meat from the killing of an animal.  No doubt carefully designed advertising campaigns could help here.  However, I think a more radical solution is more likely to succeed and offers a greater hope of complete success.  This a topic I've mentioned before on this site... "In vitro meat".  In vitro meat is animal muscle tissue grown outside of any animal.  In vitro meats should eventually become very similar to today's meat products in their texture, flavour and nutrient value.  The main problem with this idea is that we lack the necessary technology.  However, with the coming biotechnology revolution there's never been a better time to take up the challenge.  I think when people have a cheap, tasty and ethical alternative to meat they will stop eating it in their millions and the stage will be set for banning the slaughterhouse and funding retraining for those that are currently involved in the meat industry.

So in conclusion I think that efforts to ban hunting for pleasure are currently a waste of time, that alternatives for animal testing should be researched but that our first priority should be ridding the world of the slaughterhouse.  Finally the best way to proceed towards that goal would be to fund and encourage the development of high quality in vitro meat.

The research problems we must solve are difficult but shouldn't be beyond the capacities of 21st century science.  It would probably be wise to keep an eye on how efficient any new technologies are in their use of raw materials particularly grain and water.  We don't want to be making our ecological problems worse.

See also my posts under the topic vegetarianism particularly "Rules of thumb for vegetarian ethics".

AI and AL

I have discussed artificial intelligence in many of my previous posts.  To see those articles click on the link under categories on the top left.  I had a discussion recently about the potential for warfare between clonable minds (AIs) and non-clonable minds (homo sapiens sapiens).  It was an interesting and thought provoking discussion centered around the question "Would AIs ever choose to use biological weapons against humans?".

Today I'm going to talk about the interesting points that came up in this discussion.

Firstly we discussed what other methods AIs might prefer (in their own self interest) or in the interests of a trans-mind Geneva convention.  We came up with several possibilities including the following:

1) AIs might infiltrate the media and seek to control human civilization through the manipulation of our information sources and our analysis.

This would be a very powerful way for AIs to wage cultural warfare against humans and prevent or contain physical warfare.  Because AIs can be cloned AIs would quickly learn about the human emotional balance and the weak points in our intellectual defenses to propaganda.  With pervasive computing and the Internet there's no reason AIs won't have access to the information sources that they need.

2) Economic blackmail

AIs will be essential to much of our economies.  A war against even a particular subset of AIs could well result in crippling economic sabotage.

3) Mass blackmail

With access to large stores of personal data AIs could blackmail millions of people at once in myriad different ways in order to achieve tactical or economic advantages.  This tool is also available to humans but AIs would have superior processing capabilities (due to mind cloning) and could use this tool more effectively.

We agreed that biological warfare would not be a weapon of first choice for AIs as the above 3 methods and conventional warfare (or what counts as conventional by mid century!) would probably be enough of an advantage.

However, if for some reason AIs were to find themselves outgunned in conventional warfare and facing extermination then biological warfare would enable AIs to win a war because:

A) AIs would not have to fear a similar counterattack.

B) AIs would not have to restrict biological weapons to diseases which are not very infectious.  Humans must do this to avoid pandemics.

C) AIs would be able to replace human labor in the production of AIs and supporting infrastructure.

It was over (C) that we disagreed (at least initially).  You have to ask yourself "Why is it that we don't build a fully autonomous industrial infrastructure?".  The answers are instructive and help us understand why (C) holds.

Firstly humans are dexterous.  There are no equivalents of the human hand yet in the manufacturing process.  Why? Because hands require highly sensitive and high density sensors capable of returning large quantities of useful information AND because we lack the sophisticate AI to control these hands.

The first problem is a difficult but eminently solvable problem which we are likely to solve (due to a huge economic reward) once we have necessary level of AI.

Secondly humans are intelligent and resourceful.  However, all the intellectual capacities that allow humans to fix systems that break down, to design factories for novel problems etc. would be present in an AI as advanced as humans by definition. 

Hence we see that if we had AIs then they would be able to replace humans in all our industries.  But the true import of this is that AIs would then be capable of surviving without humanity.  They would be able to reproduce and pass on a genetic  material of sorts (their underlying source code).  In short they would become alive.  Indeed AI could probably over time remove all dependence on biologically derived materials and become a totally new form of life which could survive independently of DNA if necessary.  The creation of AI would really be an origin of life event.  Although one might prefer not to refer to it as life as it is would not be limited to Darwinian processes.  Perhaps hyperlife would be a better term.

A common problem in discourse

Whilst observing discussion, arguments and idle chatter over the last few years I have noticed a common pattern.  This pattern occurs in certain conversations where presumptions are made about a proposition of the form "I dislike X" or "I think that people should not do Y".  Such a statement is often followed by a description of X and an analysis of why the person thinks it is a bad thing.

Following such a statement the listener often makes further assumptions about how X might be avoided.  This is often where problems occur.  I have heard many an argument that has grown out of a misunderstanding of what (if anything) is being proposed as a response to X.

Roughly speaking I think there are various differing levels at which such a statement could be interpreted.  I give examples (from my own perspective):

1) I think that X should be illegal and should carry a prison sentence.

Murder, rape and genocide...

2) I think that X should incur a fine.

Parking violations...

3) I think that people ought to have a right to civil remediation if someone does X.

Fraud, negligence...

4) I think that X is wrong and people who do X should be socially ostracized/stigmatized.

People who repeatedly lie and deceive those close to them?

5) I think that X is wrong and that people who do X should be rebuked.

Cheating on someone, not helping friends out in times of need...

6) I don't like X and I think that people should be discouraged from doing X.

Reading tabloid magazines...

7) I don't like doing X myself.

Watching embarrassing movies.

8) I just don't like it.  I don't know (or suggest) what to do about it [The most common by far].

Employment discrimination on the grounds of attractiveness.

A common tacit in arguments is to misrepresent what someone is proposing in response to a dislike of theirs.  Examples include:

A) Someone says "I dislike pornography" and people assume that 3,2 or 1 are intended responses where 8 or 6 are more likely.

B) "I hate the way tabloids twist everything" and 3 is assumed where 6 is more likely.

C) "I don't like the idea of having an abortion" where 1 is sometimes assumed when the person may well mean 7.

So it seems to me that an awful amount of time could be saved if people did not jump to such conclusions rashly.  Perhaps it would be good before you say "I don't like..." to think 'How are people going to interpret this?'.

Educational priorities for children?

Today I shall talk about primary education.  I have long been of the opinion that many important aspects of education are left too late (if taught at all) in our education and that society would benefit from including them in primary education.  I will give a list of these items, explanations as to why I think them important and why I think they should be taught this early.

1) Common problems with critical thinking such as:

Here-say evidence, the use of emotive words, bad analogies, ad hominem attacks, over reliance on authorities or circular reasoning.

See a good list of these at this page [http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/sherm3.htm].

Many if not all these problems could be taught about in primary school.  Of course children would not necessarily obtain a full understanding of them first time around.  It would probably be fruitful to teach them in more detail later on in a child's education too.

Never the less knowing and being able to avoid these pitfalls would help immensely with the rest of a child's education.  Furthermore being able to recognize and apply critical thinking skills requires many years of practice.  Like language skills I think critical skills are best learned early on and practiced regularly.

2) The scientific method.

The basic hypothetical-deductive method is a three step process (very similar to natural selection).  This process can be explained to a small child in outline.

Furthermore Occam's razor is very simple to explain in outline.  A full understanding requires a more careful explanation but for the purposes children are likely to need it for a basic form of Occam's razor should suffice.

3) The laws of thermodynamics and the theory of natural selection.

Both of these aspects of physics are not addressed until very late on in the sciences, are very simply stated and help one understand everything else in Physics, Chemistry and Biology.  Children would be much less confused by the sciences if they were taught these ideas first.

Certain key ideas help children develop a structure within which to place new knowledge.  These ideas should be taught first.

4) The differences between primary and secondary sources and the importance of looking for bias in those sources.

In learning about the world children are bombarded by the media, the Internet, their parents, their peers and other organizations with truth claims.  Children must be helped to develop the skills to evaluate these claims for themselves.

5) The concept of a reasoned argument, the idea of a formal proof and the meaning of rigor in such a proof.

I'm not advocating a course in formal languages for 5 year olds here.  However, children should know that their are intellectual tools available to reduce bias, to deduce predictions rigorously from theories and judge the strength of an argument.

Most adults believe they understand the meaning of the words proof, reason and logic but are mistaken.  In particular 'logical' is often confused with 'rational'.  Knowing that these ideals exists and what they mean can help in trying to attain them.

Again, for these ideals to become instinctual and to be used in developing a child's understanding of reality they need to be presented early on.

Counter terrorism and music piracy

Two apparently unrelated trends have been in the public eye over much of the last decade.  These are counter terrorism and music piracy.  I suspect counter terrorism will encounter problems caused by attempts to crack down on Internet piracy (that is if this crack down continues).  In this post I shall explain why I think that, what these problems will be and how they might be averted.

Terrorists must formulate plans, learn techniques and communicate these plans to collaborators.  In addition new recruits must be located and the relevant ideologies passed on.  Most of these activities can now be performed best with the help of the Internet and modern communications technologies.  This is why modern counter terrorism requires access to communications.

Terrorists and their warehouses have physical locations which are potentially vulnerable to counter terrorism operations.  When you have a physical location and you are engaged in a confrontation it is vital to you that this location remains secret.  Without private information and communications technology (ICT) a terrorist must:

1) physically visit a training camp.

2) fix a physical location to plan.

3) buy all equipment by physically visiting a site.

4) recruit others in a physical local where bugs may be placed and those involved may be identified.

These all create opportunities for detection and monitoring.

For the terrorist though, cryptographic protocols can help with these problems.  Terrorist training information may be encrypted and sent anonymously (but note that participants may still be able to identify each other) and later communications may be exchanged using strong cryptography (believed to be unbreakable).

A powerful counter terrorism tactic is to force terrorists to use unusual methods to orchestrate their attacks and so make it much easier to identify them and to prevent those attacks from succeeding.

If only a terrorist would want to buy a particular combination of goods then those that do are likely to be terrorists.  In addition if terrorists are forced to employ old fashioned and laborious techniques this will slow them down and make it that much easier to catch them before they cause any damage.

As mentioned above terrorists need to use modern cryptography in order to pursue efficient and secret operations.  A good strategy therefore for the counter terrorist would be to make sure that encryption (without back doors of some form for the counter terrorist) are something that few people wish to use.  Some legislation is already in force and more is probably on its way to force people to hand over their encryption keys.  However, it is likely that counter terrorist, faced with increasingly sophisticated terrorists, will want encryption systems to come with protocols allowing some limited access by counter terrorists.  Any found to use systems without such back doors then become a relatively small suspect group who can be investigated more efficiently.

Music piracy flourishes mainly because the public as a whole does not see it as being clearly wrong (or at least not significant enough to act as snitches).  Social norms in support of criminal legislation depend on the reasonableness of the law in question (for more of my posts on this topic look at my tags: computers and the Internet and politics).  Unfortunately copyright law is no longer providing a fair balance between copyright holders, creators and users.  As I have argued in my previous post entitled "a digital libraries act" copyright law for the digital realm should be abandoned and userights should replace it.  In short the economic value from a piece of music (or indeed any media) comes from playing the music not from possessing a copy.

Whilst the law remains unjust, however, it causes the following issues:

Restricting who may copy a file creates a communications system in which as few nodes store the relevant file as possible (each node is a potential failure point).  Unfortunately networks which use few storage nodes can be more than an order of magnitude less efficient (in use of bandwidth) than more modern networks which have many, more local, nodes.

There are large incentives to break copyright law.  This creates an arms struggle between rights holders and the public in which the public stimulate the development of communication systems that:

1) Are decentralized and hard to take offline - Stops music companies from using the courts or ISPs to shut down the network.

Terrorists could use such networks to swap training material.

2) Use encryption to hide the data passed around - Stops music companies from gathering evidence of files passed around for use in court.

Terrorists could use the encryption to keep their communications (and training materials) secret.

3) Anonymize users of the network - Stops music companies from identifying who downloaded a particular file.

Terrorists could use anonymity to keep their physical locations secret and prevent honey traps from being as effective.

So in conclusion, the crack down on music pirates by the music industry is catalyzing the creation of a black network of communications technologies that are a terrorist's dream.  They may already be using such networks for all I know.  The music industry cannot work with current copyright law without using disproportionate tactics and this is making it harder for those who have (or may soon have) more of a claim to their use.

Causality, minds and society

Genetic determinism is the idea that genes determine behavior.  Sometimes genetic determinists are accused of positing that all behavioral trends can be understood by genetics alone.

The blank slate is the idea that for all people (regardless of sex, race, etc.) the mind begins its development at birth (or maybe some earlier stage) from the same (or almost the same) beginning state.  The metaphor is that the mind at birth is a blank slate waiting to be written on.  Sometimes this group is accused of ignoring real differences between groups.

As an example genetic determinists might argue that gender roles are largely coded within our genes and that differences between adult men and women can be accounted for mainly genetically.  On the other hand advocates of the blank slate might argue that men and women start out with the same minds but that the influence of peer pressure, advertising and social norms change their developmental paths so that men often end up with one set of psychological features and women another.

As another example one could argue that intelligence has a significant genetic component and that twin studies demonstrate this.  On the other it might be that intelligence is determined by how people with certain physical attributes are treated.

As one measure of intelligence (IQ) has shifted significantly with time the rival camps give differing explanations:  Evolution is increasing intelligence within humans in the 20th century; Schooling is of a higher quality (or more universal) than before.

As a final example consider personality disorders.  One might argue that criminal behavior is genetically determined.  If so tests for the relevant genes would open up significant social issues.  On the other hand it might be argued that personality disorders mainly arise from mistreatment in childhood and that if only we could prevent childhood abuse or improve support for children we could all but eliminate criminality.

The main problem with the above arguments is that they all make use of the either/or fallacy.  They assume that either there is a clear and simple causal link from genetics or there is a simple causal link from nurture.

Now of course there are also environmental causes (such as nutrition) for behaviors but the either/or fallacy is still a problem even if we incorporate all three types of causation.

There is an implicit assumption that the different causes do not interact or that even if they do that they can be teased apart easily.

This debate has significance in discussing free will and the 'soul' because causality is often called upon to argue that a causal physical universe cannot be all there is as then everything you do would be determined by environment, genetics and societal influences on your development.

If on the other hand there is no easy way to calculate your future behaviors from knowledge of these three categories of influence then this makes the argument dubious.  It essentially depends on ignoring the horrendous computational complexity involved in actually performing such a calculation.

Lets look at other possibilities!

The factors might interact in a fairly straight forward way.  E.g if you have a genetic predisposition to Alzheimers and contract the herpes simplex virus (cold sore) then you are very likely to develop Alzheimers.

The factors might interact as coupled differential equations.  E.g children may genetic dispositions and may simply copy the most successful adults.  Teenagers may copy each other.  Through such behavior complex results may emerge (the emergence of chaotic patterns from simple rules).

Finally there may be developmental accidents.  In a baby's developing brain there may be multiple ways to perform certain mental tasks.  Which one the brain picks may be a matter of chance but have significant repercussions later on in terms of their behavior.

The burden of proof and artificial intelligence

On many occasions I have heard people discussing the question "Is artificial intelligence possible at all?".

Now I do not think that this question really deserves much attention.  The answer is a clear yes.  Unfortunately there is a common perception that the question is relevant and even a significant group of people who take the viewpoint that Artificial intelligence is not possible (It is only for this reason that I address it at all).  Generally the reasons given are theological in nature or based on theologically motivated metaphysics.  Here is an example of this (in the form of a blog post).  I read this and responded but I thought that I should copy my comment (with suitable modifications) here.  So that I have done.

On the possibility of artificial intelligence:

All the available evidence indicates that the universe is Turing computable.  If anyone can prove, or even find any evidence at all that there was a part of the universe (such as the human mind) that was not Turing computable that would be a huge revolution in physics more significant than any advance since Newton.

And that’s the problem with any contention that AI is not possible. A scientific demonstration that AI is not possible would amount to such new physics as I just mentioned above. Without a scientific demonstration you would be left arguing that you could have something which passes every test you can devise for intelligence and yet you do not regard as being intelligent (likewise conscious etc.).  This has the standard solipsistic problems.  So the idea that AI is impossible (rather than just very very difficult) is mere wishful speculation and will remain so until some actual evidence to the contrary is presented.

In summary although there is a common viewpoint that AI is impossible or that the question of its possibility is in doubt this is not the case.  Indeed if AI were impossible this would be immensely surprising and would certainly result in a noble prize and a place in history besides Einstein, Darwin and Newton for the person who proved it.

I address how difficult I think such a task is in other postings which can be found under the tag AI.  Of course one may think that AI is in priciple possible but not practically possible.  I also disagree with this viewpoint but not as strongly.

Shadow arguments

Over the course of my life I have come across many arguments based on sound intuitions but where those intuitions are in my opinion misapplied.  I call such arguments shadow arguments as they shadow more interesting arguments and observations.  Shadow arguments occur often on the frontier between religious/'spiritual' and reason/scientific thought (they are often 'God of the gaps' arguments).  In this post I want to explain more about this phenomenon, give (in brief) some examples and discuss why I think it may be valuable to investigate further.

The intuitions involved in shadow arguments tend to be of the form "X is over simplified.  When X is simplified in this way important detail is missed or incorrect consequences are drawn.".

However, generally the argument takes the form of observing that a simplified explanation in some domain does not account for certain observations.  The conclusion is then drawn that a 'spiritual' understanding is needed.

Now from a Spinozoan perspective we ought to be interested in why people are making these erroneous arguments.  As mentioned above I suspect that there are underlying and valid intuitions involved (through misapplication).  Isolating these intuitions and finding valid application for them seems to be a worthwhile exercise to me.

I shall now give two examples along with the underlying intuition and how I think its misapplied.  I may return to some of the examples in future blog posts.

1) Emotions cannot be understood with reason.

Intuition: Emotional behaviors are not always rational.

Misapplication: The only way reason can seek to understand behavior is through rationality.

Rationality has a peculiar property:  It is not always rational to remain rational.  If one could choose to lose control over certain decisions or to cede control to an emotion this can be the best choice.  Emotions can be thought of as perfectly sensible ways to achieve certain goals which would not be accessible to rationality (at least if simply defined).

Note that democracy has much the same trouble.  Democracies can democratically decide to lose their democratic status (temporarily or permanently).

2) Ineffable qualities of sensory experience exist.

Intuition: A thing and a description of the thing are not the same.

Misapplication: The description of a sensory experience is not the sensory experience itself and so sensory experiences cannot to described.

A sentence in English may be represented in a brain in a very different way to how an experience is represented.  In a computer, opening an executable file in notepad does not run the file.  But that does not mean that everything describing the action of that program is not expressed in the notepad file (technically a hex editor would be needed here).

Further examples would include the Chinese room argument, arguments that is impossible to be good and various discourses seeking to establish that reason is not a sufficient mode of thought for understanding reality.

Break

The gap in posts will end next week.  I am mulling many ideas concerning vegetarianism.  In addition there will be several posts on the topic of arguments for the supernatural.

Creatures

A couple of years ago I wrote a program.  I didn't have a clear purpose in mind in writing it.  I guess it was meant to be (a) A computer art project (b) An example of a complex system (c) A metaphor for insect life (d) A demonstration that a computer can be behave in a biological/creative manner.

But really I wrote it because I wondered what the program I had in mind would look like when run.  Screen shots from this program will go up in a subsequent post.  Today I give the wider world access to this program of mine released under the GPL (which means you can do almost whatever you like with it!).

The program is a simulation of Turing machines operating in 2 dimensions of tape.  The Turing machines can turn left, right, go forward, backwards and change the colour of the square they are hovering over.  They do this according to a simple program (randomly generated).

The program can be found at [this page] on my blog.  At the beginning of this program there are various variables that you can set to get different images.

ScreenOpt=12 or 13 (12 is high resolution, 13 low)

numTermites=1-30 (Number of the Turing machines operating simultaneously)

NumColours=1-32 (Number of colours that are available for the Turing machines)

bias = 0 to 4 (The higher the number the more the machines tend to use a smaller palette of colours)

wrap = 0 or 1 (Set to 1 the machines wrap around the screen like the ship does in the game asteroids.  Set to 0 and the edge of the screen becomes a boundary)

blawhi =0 or 1 (If the screen is set to low resolution you can choose to have the colours all shades of grey)