Governments and Disappointment

An African chief stated that there are only two problems in Africa – rats and governments. The chief’s obvious disappointment with governments is shared by people all over the world. There are different kinds of governments based on different assumptions.

A reasonable argument is that humans prefer autocratic leadership in the form of kings and queens or charismatic leaders with a military background. Humans have an impressive tendency to form hierarchies with groups, large and small. This is a tendency derived from an instinctual social order that relies on groups organizing around leaders, alpha animals, who by ability or inherited status can control others. In small groups, leaders are more visible and more accountable to other members of the group. Small group leaders must court favor on a daily basis or rely on intimidation of critics and competitors. As groups enlarge, leaders are less visible and less accountable and hierarchies become better defined and more fiercely defended. Dictatorship is the oldest and most prevalent form of government. The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy index 2010 reported on 55 authoritarian regimes in the world. They suggested that democracies were in decline.

The hope, of course, is that the autocratic leader is benevolent and shares the wealth with his or her devoted subjects. Hopeful citizens are usually disappointed. History tells us that wealthy aristocrats who fail to share the wealth can be deposed and killed by rivals or revolutionaries. Governments in Africa are often corrupt and belligerent. They sometimes organize mass killings to remove groups that are no longer wanted or needed. Any opposition is rewarded by imprisonment or death. The aberrations of African countries are consistent with human history and mirror the worst conduct prevalent in Europe over many centuries. Recent events in Arab countries are further repetitions of age-old struggles with ruthless elites using force to suppress dissent.

The invention of more or less stable civil service organizations is the real basis of government and the key to social stability. In democracies, politicians are elected to pass laws and may act as temporary executive officers of government institutions. They are seldom qualified for the responsibilities they assume. In the best case, government institutions are staffed by well-educated, well-informed experts who advise and guide elected administrators, accept some of their ideological biases without compromising the conduct of the institution's business.  Seldom is the best case achieved and instead, in many countries, citizens discover that they are victims of the worst case mismanagement of institutions – often a product of political meddling and nepotism. You could argue that the real result of elections is guaranteed incompetence of elected lawmakers.

Democracy Flaws

Democracy and freedom are not necessarily linked. An alert, well-informed citizenry and a politically independent judiciary are essential to the preservation of some personal freedom. A civil society develops multiple overlapping levels of dispute resolution with the right to appeal bad decisions that are common and inevitable when local tribunals decide who is privileged and who is not. A champion of civil rights is often in the uncomfortable predicament of defending the rights of humans he or she disagrees with, dislikes and even fears.

All governments are inefficient and are prone to corruption. In every large institution, there is a tendency to fascism, the dictatorial rule of an elite group who believe only they know what is right and true. A fascist displays innate tendencies, modified by learning, but devoid of compassion. A fascist promotes arguments and dissension, developing the idea that only some citizens have rights and privileges and others become outsiders who must be constrained, imprisoned, deported or eliminated.  A fascist leader is a dictator. The idealistic notion that governments only exist to serve the needs of the people turns out to be a denial of human nature. Attempts within governments to regulate themselves appear in the most affluent nations where the people are well educated and well informed. Well qualified citizens often demand better performance from their elected officials and their media often broadcast news of wrong-doing. An elected official representing well qualified citizens has a vested interest in protecting his or her reputation by behaving correctly and following ethical rules.  This peer pressure dynamic is essential for small group regulation and may work to some degree in larger groups because of the increased ability of private citizens to broadcast disapproval.

Elections are often thought to be the essence of democracy, but as human groups grow larger and social organization more complex, the ideal of citizen controlled government becomes impossible.  The Economist Intelligence Unit assessed the kind and quality of governments in 167 countries during 2008. Only 30 countries had full democracies, representing 14.4% of the world population.

Type	Countries	% countries	% population
Full democracies	30	18.0	14.4
Flawed democracies	50	29.9	35.5
Hybrid regimes	36	21.6	15.2
Authoritarian	51	30.5	34.9

Five European countries Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Netherlands and Denmark had the highest ratings for fully functional democracies. Canada was eleventh and the US 18th on the list. North Korea had the lowest ratings as a dysfunctional authoritarian regime.[i]

By the end of 2010, full democracies decreased to 26 (12.3% of world population) and flawed democracies increased to 53 (37.2%). The democracy score was lower in 2010 than in 2008 in 91 countries out of the 167 they surveyed. They attribute the decline to economic distress in the afflicted countries.  [ii]

The Economist democracy report of 2008 stated: “Flawed democracies are concentrated in Latin America and Eastern Europe, and to a lesser extent in Asia. Despite progress in Latin American democratization in recent decades, many countries in the region remain fragile democracies. Levels of political participation are generally very low and democratic cultures are weak. There has also been significant backsliding in recent years in some areas such as media freedoms. Much of Eastern Europe illustrates the difference between formal and substantive democracy. The new EU members from the region have pretty much equal levels of political freedoms and civil liberties as the old developed EU, but lag significantly in political participation and political culture—a reflection of widespread anomie and weaknesses of democratic development. Only two countries from the region—the Czech Republic and Slovenia (just)—are in the full democracy category. Hybrid and authoritarian regimes dominate heavily in the countries of the former Soviet Union, as the momentum towards "color revolutions" has petered out.”

The Economist's 2010 report stated that:" The dominant pattern in all regions over the past two years has been backsliding on previously attained progress in democratization. The global financial crisis that started in 2008 accentuated existing negative trends in political development."

Kershaw recalled Hitler’s rise to power, exploiting democracy to create a demonic dictatorship. Other countries continue on a fascist course in the 21st century. Kershaw asked: “Could something like it happen again? That is the first question that comes to mind when recalling that Hitler was given power in democratic Germany 75 years ago. With the world now facing such great tensions and instability, the question seems more obvious than ever. Hitler came to power in a democracy with a liberal Constitution, and used democratic freedoms to undermine and then destroy democracy itself. That democracy, established in 1919, was a product of defeat in a world war and revolution and was never accepted by most of the German elites, notably the military, large landholders and big industry.  The Nazis’ spectacular surge in popular support reflected anger, frustration and resentment that Hitler was able to exploit among millions of Germans. Democracy had failed them, they felt. Their country was divided, impoverished and humiliated. Scapegoats were needed. It was easy to turn hatred against Jews, who could be made to represent the imagined external threat to Germany by both international capitalism and Bolshevism. Internally, Jews were associated with the political left which was held responsible by Hitler and his followers for Germany’s plight. These distant events still have echoes today. In Europe, in the wake of increased immigration, most countries have experienced some revival of neo-fascist, racist movements. Skillful politicians around the globe have proved adept at manipulating populist sentiment and using democratic structures to erect forms of personalized, authoritarian rule.” [iii]

From Human Nature and Group Dynamics by Stephen Gislason 2012 Edition.

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[i] Democracy report 2008 Economist Intelligence Unit http://www.eiu.com/index.asp

[ii] Economist Intelligence Unit’s  Webinar.  Democracy In Retreat: The EIU's Democracy Index 2010 . December 15, 2010  Online.

[iii] Ian Kershaw. How Democracy Produced a Monster. NYT February 3, 2008

Happiness

When all the arguments about human needs and tendencies subside, one simple idea always works. Humans want to be well fed and safe. Happiness begins with shelter, healthy air, adequate food, and clean water available in a secure environment. To remain happy, each person must be accepted by a social group that provides access to resources, employment and human rights. Do humans understand how to become happy? Yes and no. Humans have restless minds and generate dissatisfactions at a greater rate than they generate contentment. The restless, nomadic human is driven every day to emerge even from a stable, comfortable home to satisfy these relentless urges and drives.

Happiness may be equated with affluence but there are problems with affluence. I occasionally visit people who are rich and live in big houses. You can tour someone's elegant mansion and admire his or her couches, paintings, lavish bathrooms, wardrobes and swimming pool. While I live simply, I do have an appreciation for domestic comforts, interior décor, art and finely crafted art and artifacts, I know that being rich does not increase mind space nor does it decrease the constantly regenerating drives that sustain a state of dissatisfaction in all humans. A rich man with a big house may find that he is most comfortable sitting in his smallish study, in an old leather chair that is a little beaten up but fits his body after many years of daily contact. He might spend his leisure time watching videos, especially old movies that he has collected. The other 10,000 square feet of his mansion sits idle, except when he has parties but he does not enjoy those much anymore; he is tired of the ingratiating behavior of relative strangers, their idle chatter and malicious gossip. This is not to argue that having money and property will always make you miserable, as some poor people like to think.

One problem of affluence is that humans repeat behaviors that were once gratifying and successful. It makes sense to repeat drinking a glass of water when thirst recurs, since water flows through us and must be replaced continuously. If you add alcohol to the water, having the second and third drink turns a pleasurable experience into to pathological experience: a nice person may become a monster; a healthy person becomes mentally and physically ill. The absurd consequences of typical human behavior have been broadcast by centuries of literature and self-help advice.

As soon as an object becomes “mine”, its value increases. An object possessed becomes an object that possesses the owner. If you enjoy buying objects and taking them home, the numbers of objects increase over time and you have to buy a bigger home. If buying one pair of shoes made you happy, you go back for a second and a third pair. If one car makes you feel good, buy two or three. This tendency to repeat acquisitive behaviors is built into marketing strategy- merchants offer "two for the price of one" or "buy one at the regular price and get one free."

Some individuals rationalize their compulsive acquisitive behaviors and refer to themselves as collectors. They promote interest in their collections and inflate the value of their objects. Others simply fill the space available to them with inexpensive junk and then rent storage to handle the overflow. Others fill small living spaces with newspapers and magazines until their dwellings resemble the underground burrows of acquisitive rodents. We know from common observation and formal study that acquisitive behavior is an old animal pattern that is built into our innate tendencies and is not going away. Some individuals thoughtfully regulate their consuming habits, having understood and learned to control their innate tendencies to hoard and consume more. The best advice for humans is "do more with less."

Philosophers have noticed the human tendency to desire anything and everything. As soon as you have satisfied one need, another arises. They have recommended less material preoccupations and a more contemplative life. In contrast to constant preoccupation with devouring the world out there, a contemplative human needs spaciousness and contentment rather than consumption. You need a few hours to relax at home and say (with a sigh of relief) I have, at least briefly, everything I need.

One of the Buddha's insights is stated simply: "The cause of all suffering is desire." He would suggest that the route to happiness is to decrease expectations and needs and not to consume more of everything. Appreciating one flower, one friend, or one precious artifact is more gratifying than trying to have a hundred of each. Money does not buy happiness, but, if spent wisely; more money can achieve comfort, and relative security in healthier more pleasant environments. In the best case, more money gives you more options and more freedom denied to less privileged people, including the philanthropic option, helping others by donating money to worthy causes.

From Human Nature & Group Dynamics by Stephen Gislason. The book a 21st century description of anthropology, sociology, psychology and neuroscience - disciplines that need to be integrated as they are in this book. The topics are essential to understanding human nature, its origins and its problems. Download the eBook version from Persona Digital Online

Error and Limitations

Human cognition is inherently fuzzy. Human performance is also fuzzy and mistakes are common if not inevitable, even with advanced skills and years of experience. It makes sense that there should be some slack in the evaluation of human performance and conduct. One of the common themes of storytelling is the incompetence of others and humans take pleasure in recounting the errors that others make.

An industry of litigation has emerged around human error and the pretense is that there are perfect humans who make no serious errors. The legal case for damages is built on the assumption of a standard of care and due diligence that exceeds the standards achieved in actual performance. If a surgeon amputates the wrong leg, a lawsuit against him is likely to succeed.

But surgeons, like all other humans, make mistakes everyday – they forget to do things; they jump to conclusions when there is too little evidence and fail to make decisions when there is enough evidence; they misinform patients; they write undecipherable notes; they get tired, irritable and impatient. The problems that physicians and surgeons face are universal human problems. They face a constant barrage of events that are complex and uncertain. Their tools and understanding are limited and their own needs are often neglected so that their performance is compromised. On the plus side, you can argue that, given their limitations, medical doctors do well most of the time, creating some order out of random and chaotic events. However, not all doctors do well all the time.

When humans make mistakes, they often claim: “I am only human.” Of course, that is a redundant statement since we already know that they are human, but the statement does suggest that someone, somehow expected them to perform at a superhuman level. The protest “I am only human” refers us to the principle that all humans have imperfect performance but judge others more harshly than they judge themselves. The indignant storyteller assumes the disguise of the perfect one who knows no error or sin.

A complex fantasy of superhuman performance emerges in every culture that supports the delusion that humans do better than they actually do. This is a collective self-deception on a grand scale. Leaders and aristocrats with various pedigrees are often given unearned prestige and superhuman abilities may be attributed to them. All humans, regardless of status, share basic tendencies and limitations. Inflated attribution will lead to disappointment sooner or later.

Self-deceiving and unrealistically high standards for others have a social value and appear in every human group. Claiming a high standard makes it easy to shame, blame and discredit others who make mistakes. High standards are used to motivate group members to work harder, compete and achieve more. In the best case, high standards operate as attractors that align individuals with learning experiences that can improve performance.

Another function of high standards is to support claims of elite groups that they possess special qualities that others cannot attain or can only attain by seeking membership in the elite group. Humans can be described as animals with material ambitions and moral aspirations whose performance inevitably fails to meet their own expectations, but they ignore their own limitations and deny their own errors. A more realistic view is that even the smartest, nicest humans have distinct limitations, will routinely make mistakes, and occasionally, one of their mistakes will have major and tragic consequences.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the US is a prototype of interacting groups of smart people who sometimes cannot get it right. In NASA, the smartest scientists and engineers collaborate on making space flights and other projects. NASA is also a showcase for US technology and has a major public relations responsibility. NASA failures are highly visible tragedies that are well-studied. When the regular orbital flights of NASA’s shuttle began, managers estimated the risk of failure to be 1 flight in 100,000. After the explosion of the shuttle, Challenger, in January 1986, Feynman declared that NASA exaggerated the reliability of its product to the point of fantasy. In 1988 when flights resumed, the revised estimated risk of catastrophic failure at 1 flight in 50.

After a decade of successful flights the estimate of risk was improved to 1 in 254 flights. The shuttle, Columbia, disintegrated on re-entry in 2003, and the risk estimate became 1 in 100. A piece of insulating foam fell off the fuel tank 82 seconds after liftoff and struck one wing edge with sufficient force to punch a hole in the wing. On re-entry, hot gases entered the wing causing progressive damage and the eventual disintegration of the shuttle. All astronauts perished. NASA teams worked for two years and spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to fix the foam problem. When the next shuttle took off in July 2005, again pieces of insulating foam broke off the fuel tank two minutes after launch but drifted away in the thin atmosphere. The shuttle completed its mission, but NASA, displaying appropriate caution and concern, announced that further flights would be suspended until the problem had really been fixed.

The actual risk of catastrophic failure of the shuttle as of 2005 was 2 flights in 113 or 1 in 56.5 flights. In his report on cognitive problems at NASA after the Challenger disaster, Feynman stated:” It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from the working engineers, and the very low figures from management. What are the causes and consequences of this lack of agreement? Since 1 part in 100,000 would imply that one could put a Shuttle up each day for 300 years expecting to lose only one, we could properly ask: “What is the cause of management's fantastic faith in the machinery?” We have also found that certification criteria used in Flight Readiness Reviews often develop a gradually decreasing strictness. The argument that the same risk was flown before without failure is often accepted as an argument for the safety of accepting it again. Because of this, obvious weaknesses are accepted again and again, sometimes without a sufficiently serious attempt to remedy them, or to delay a flight because of their continued presence. “ Feynman concluded that a successful technology requires that reality takes precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

From Group Dynamics and Human Nature by Stephen Gislason. Available in print edition and as a download from Persona Digital Online.

Protests and Mobs

We have recognized that humans are social animals who interact continuously. There is a constant tension between self-identity and group membership; between self-interest and group interest; between bonding, belonging and being a free independent person. There are important differences between acting alone and acting within a group. Group size also influences behavior. We have also recognized that humans do best living in working in small groups and become dysfunctional when they join larger groups. Social grooming is one of the most common everyday social interactions among chimpanzees and other primates. Chimpanzees allocate a large portion of their daytime hours grooming each other.

Humans often form social gatherings and interact with multiple partners at the same time in everyday interactions, such as conversation. Adult male chimpanzees compete for higher status by forming coalitions. Males have to renew or confirm their relationships with each other by frequent grooming sessions in relatively small clusters. Adult females do not compete for higher status by forming intimate allies and do better by having wider interactions with many individuals and tend to groom in larger groups.
Some primate species, including humans, come together in groups of several hundred individuals for conventions. These are temporary congregations that may have enduring benefits or adverse consequences for the participants. Humans also assemble in-groups to protest, to seek revenge and to attack real or imaginary enemies. Well-focused mobs with effective leaders can be agents of change. Authoritarian rulers are sometimes disposed when large numbers of people protest injustices on the street, risking their lives to demand rights, freedoms and justice. Democracies need activism and public displays of disapproval to survive corrupt and incompetent politicians who tend to disregard human rights.

Even in polite societies, mobs may become disorganized and destructive, transforming more or less well-behaved humans into combatants, who push, shove, raise their arms in the air, show fist gestures and shout meaningless slogans. Soccer fans, for example, will gather in large stadium to enjoy the game and then riot as they exit, crushing each other and destroying property down the street. Mass movements of humans occur regularly and often operate at the lowest level of intelligence with none of the moral restraints that are available when individuals act alone according to the rules and peer pressure of the local community.

Street Mobs with Opposing Views

Mobs of people have assaulted each in passionate encounters that lead to mass deaths. Kakar describes an ethnic riot as-the intense, sudden physical assault by civilians of one group on civilians of another group. He stated that: “In the 20th century, the number of dead claimed by the primitive weaponry used in ethnic riots was second only to the number killed by sophisticated armaments. Ethnic riots can be followed by secessionist warfare, terrorist violence, and a general undermining of democratic institutions.” Dictators often use protests as an opportunity to kill large numbers of disobedient citizens either by uniformed police shooting at the crowd or by more surreptitious attacks by mercenaries who form counter protest mobs.

Horowitz studied 150 ethnic riots in 50 countries and concluded that lethal riots combine passion and calculation. He identified four factors that lead to killing: a hostile relationship between two groups; a response to events that engages the anger of one group, a response dominated by outrage or wrath; a sense of justification for violence, such as viewing it as self-defense, part of a long drawn-out war, or punishment of the other group for wrongdoing. The participants in lethal riots believe that that their aggression will not be punished.

Societal assets that reduce outbreaks of violence include more liberal, humanitarian attitudes that negate ethnic animosity and increase the aversion to violence of all kinds. Increased personal risk assumed by would-be rioters is an important deterrent. Even in polite societies such as Canada, the deployment of riot police has become routine for crowd control. The politicians and police will argue that dangerous riots often escalate over days and even weeks so that early intervention and detention of aggressive rioters will prevent escalation toward property damage and of loss of life. Crowd control is not an easy task.

Suppression of Dissent

Despite token support of human rights, the right of free speech and the right to assemble and protest peacefully, governments everywhere prepare to suppress dissent by using force, arrest and detention. You could invent a scale to rate governments according to their tolerance for public protest and their willingness to abrogate human rights to stay in power. One of the problems with mob control by riot police is that legitimate and peaceful protest may be suppressed with the same vigor as potentially dangerous riots. Public protest is a citizen’s right in a free society and a necessary option when governments become corrupt and autocratic. A citizen concerned with civil rights will insist on strong civil control of police actions. Otherwise, corrupt governments will use police and military power to further their fascist goals.

Autocratic governments stay in power by limiting or banning public protest, suppressing free speech and using lethal force to punish individuals and groups for challenging their authority.

From Human Nature and Group Dynamics by Stephen Gislason.
Available as a printed book or as a PDF download from Persona Digital Online.

Failing Economies

There has been a remarkable proliferation of euphemistic, metaphoric and deceptive descriptions of economic events in the 21st century , peaking in 2011 as global economic crises proliferated. Even the Economist Intelligence Unit, usually a reliable source of data and analysis, used euphemisms such a "soft patch" in economic recovery to describe an impending global disaster.

In the US, when Ben Bernanke sat at his computer and typed 800 billion US dollars into current government accounts, his action was described as "Quantitative Easing." In this century of economies as numbers in computer databases, printing money is old fashion. With the proper endorsements from high-ranking government officials, you just type in numbers and all is well. Not that quantitative easing is such a bad idea -- should be available to all hard-working citizens with increasing debt burdens.

Not to be outdone by US extravaganzas, the countries of the European Union began to fail as individual countries such as Ireland, England, Italy and Greece accumulated increased debt burdens with threatened defaults on paying both the interest and principal owed. By mid 2011, global economic recovery appeared to be a wish, a fantasy, a delusion more that a realizable goal. Krugman wrote: "These are interesting times — and I mean that in the worst way. Right now we’re looking at not one but two looming crises, either of which could produce a global disaster. We can only hope that the politicians huddled in Washington and Brussels succeed in averting these threats. Even if we manage to avoid immediate catastrophe, the deals being struck on both sides of the Atlantic are almost guaranteed to make the broader economic slump worse. In fact, policy makers seem determined to perpetuate what I’ve taken to calling the Lesser Depression, the prolonged era of high unemployment that began with the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and continues to this day, more than two years after the recession supposedly ended. "

I admit that I admire Krugman's social and political analysis more than his economic theory. He favors governments spending their way out of recession to avoid stagnation or worse, depression. He confronts opposing economic strategies that demand fiscal restraint, debt reduction, increased taxation, and reduction in the size of government. To some extend my simplistic understanding of human nature restores reality but not optimism about the prospects for economic recovery.

Just to review the main dynamics at work:

Humans do best living and working in small groups. Their cognitive limitations become obvious when they attempt to manage large groups, corporations and countries.

Large systems will reliably reach an avalanche state and tend to fail suddenly and dramatically.

Economies are complex, somewhat chaotic systems that no-one understands well enough to manage from the top down.

No-one can know what will happen next.

Burning cheap fossils fuels was essential to wealth generation and environmental destruction in the 20th century. Cheap fossil fuels are becoming scarce. The environmental degradation they helped cause will become more threatening and more expensive.

Environmental degradation with extreme weather events, declining resources and increasing populations will not allow a return to the easy affluence enjoyed by a few in the 20th century. Reduced growth, reduced consumption, reduced expectations will be good for everyone.

Government leaders do not have the knowledge, skills, power or political will to rescue us from the impending crises they help to create.

The 2011 civilian revolts in Northern African and the Middle East are not signs of progress towards civil societies, new affluence and justice for all. They are recurrences of inevitable social chaos that arise from increasing populations and decreasing resources to sustain those populations.

There are many mechanisms that cause inequitable distribution of resources. Large numbers of educated, unemployed, frustrated young men in many countries are protesters, rioters, potential revolutionaries waiting to be inspired to take action against oppression. The combination of wealthy, armed dictators, expanding numbers of poor and defenseless citizens, with the overwhelming adverse forces of nature creates death and destruction that has no obvious solution. The role of climate change as an overwhelming force that threatens the survival of entire countries is generally ignored by economic theories. Events so far in the 21st century point away from all idealist visions toward the harsh realities of human conflicts and suffering that have prevailed as long as humans have walked the earth.

From Human Nature and Group Dynamics by Stephen Gislason
Availble as Printed Book or PDF download from Persona Digital Online.

The Common Good -- No Consensus

One ethical argument is that group interests should have priority over selfish interests. An investigation of ethics must consider this argument and develop metrics for the common good. No-one should assume that it is easy to define the common good. In political battles, clearly divergent, if not contradictory ideas of the common good prevail and efforts to achieve consensus are difficult to impossible. The ethical implications are profound.

Michael Sandel asks What’s the Right Thing to Do? He teaches political philosophy at Harvard and offers a popular course -- Justice. One of his intellectual anchors is Jeremy Bentham who wrote Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation in 1780. Bentham proposed a utilitarian test to evaluate the morality of any action: ask the question will my action produce the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people? John Stuart Mill later argued that respect for individuals rights as "the most sacred and binding part of morality" is compatible with the idea that justice rests ultimately on utilitarian considerations. In simple terms, the two arguments compare individual interests with group interests.

Sandel also reviewed the philosophy of Immanuel Kant who argued that reason tells us what we ought to do, and when we obey our own reason, only then are we truly free. Kant’s ideas seem oddly unrealistic in the 21st century. Reason is in short supply. Every person assumes that he or she is more reasonable than others who disagree. There is no consensus about the “common good.” We know that some humans are bad and will harm others as a matter of course; their behavior will not be altered by rational argument or laws and must be constrained by force. Some of these bad people arrive in positions of authority and power. Some bad people are elected, even to the highest positions in government where they can do much harm without insight or remorse.

We know that the audience, the "public", is made up of different groups with vested interests that conflict. We know that everyone invents stories that support their own point of view. Everyone deceives others and there is no absolute truth. We know that the voting public contains individuals with different mental abilities and that most humans have distinct limitations on what they can and will understand.

Human destiny as a species still lies with the programs in the old brain that offer only limited empathy and understanding and insist on the priority of local group survival at any cost. Individuals can transcend the old programs by diligent learning and practice but individual effort and learning does not change the genome, so that there can be no enduring civility without the persistent and relentless initiation of new humans into a rational and compassionate world order. Whatever we value about civilized human existence - culture, knowledge, social justice, respect for human rights and dignity must be practiced anew and stored as modifications of each person's neocortex.

From the Good Person - Ethics and Morality by Stephen Gislason. Avilable as a print edition or as a download from Persona Digital Online.

Does Capitalism Really Work ?

The term capital means money. In a root sense, money is an analogue of work and goods. In the best case, monetary policy develops a value-based connection between work, industrial productivity and monetary rewards; between industry and goods for sale. However, money is weak analogue of value and monetary policy has become increasingly abstract as countries grow larger and richer. Now, you would be challenged to demonstrate a valid connection between money and real value.

Money has become numbers stored in computer databases. The numbers are not connected to real things in the real world. If everyone with numbers demanded real goods for their numbers, the cost of real goods would skyrocket and the stores would be empty. The "economy" is an abstract number machine with inputs and outputs and prolific, complicated transactions that require fast, global computational networks to proceed at a frantic pace that defies understanding.

Idealist versions of capitalism still persist among people who are both wealthy and content and among people who have aspirations but little understanding of the realities of capitalist economies. A capitalist might argue that every newborn has the opportunity to become rich, even if his or her parents are poor. The trick is to master the techniques of using money to make money, leaving behind any quaint notions of trading time, effort and skill for money. One basic strategy is to buy for less and sell for more. Another is to purchase property and services that others will rent or consume on a continuing basis, so that you make money while you sleep. Another strategy is to use some money or capital assets as leverage to borrow and invest more money, increasing your net worth.

Borrowing money or credit is perhaps the greatest strength and the greatness weakness of capitalism. Credit promotes spending, construction and expansion. Individuals enjoy assets such as a cars and homes that they do not own. Corporations buy supplies and build new factories on credit. The credit aspect of capitalism only works if the borrower can earn money and payback the lender.

In the US, Adam Smith declared the virtues of capitalism in the “The Wealth of Nations,” which established a new economic theory in 1776. Sloan suggested: “Smith’s treatise was as transformational as the American Revolution and established the intellectual foundation of capitalism, free markets and individual choice. Smith’s thesis is that setting people free to pursue their own self-interest produces a collective result far superior to what you get if you try to impose political or religious dictates: “Free people allowed to make free choices in free markets will satisfy their needs (and society’s) far better than any government can. Smith believed passionately in free trade, both within countries and between them. He felt that allowing people and countries to specialize and to trade freely would produce enormous wealth, because freeing people and nations to do what they do best will produce vastly more wealth than if everyone strives for self-sufficiency.”

Smith’s vision is idealistic and, if you consider the US as an experiment in his theory of free markets, then you have all a lot of data to disprove his thesis. To advocate capitalism, you have to believe in the regulatory magic of a “free market.” Supply and demand determine the price of goods and services. Consumers become the regulators of corporate behavior by rewarding companies that provide good service and good products at a reasonable price. It does sound reasonable, but in practice there are complications.

You could argue that capitalism is a good system if you are rich and a bad system if you are poor. Capitalism is really about, making and hoarding money. It is about investing money to make more money without working. Capitalism is about controlling resources including the human resources needed to make and sell goods so that capitalists have more money to make more money and grow wealthy. Problems in a “free market” economy include risky credit, gambling, reckless pollution of the environment, exploitation of natural resources and exploitation of workers. Regulation by government is necessary to constrain reckless and sometime criminal behavior of individuals, corporations and government agencies.

In capitalist countries, free markets hardly exist. If there is an ongoing argument, it is not about what kind of economy you favor, but how much government regulation you support. Economy Watch stated: “The US government makes full use of economic tools such as money supply, tax rates, and credit control, among other things, to adjust the rate of economic growth. The US Federal Government also regulates the operations of private business to prevent monopolies. The government renders a number of direct services in the form of providing support for national defense, monetary aid for research and development programs, and funds for highway construction, and infrastructure in general. In 2008, the US federal debt stood at $9.2 trillion, 67% of GDP. Each taxpayer owed $79,000 of government debt that must be added to personal debt to get a reasonable idea of the problem. American consumers typically also have a crushing burden of personal debt.”

The US government debt continues to grow and will likely increase for many years, even with disciplined fiscal restraint. If you are an optimist, you will argue that with low interest rates the burden of debt is manageable; with economic recovery and growth in GDP, government incomes will rise and deficits will eventually be eliminated.

The economics of capitalism became ideologically attached to democracy, although the connection is neither inevitable, nor even workable. I write from a perspective of a comfortable, safe citizen of a country (Canada) that combines capitalism and socialism with relatively good results. While Canada is not perfect, it is a country that looks viable in the long term, given stability of its neighbor, the USA. The US, in contrast, fell into deep recession in 2008 with a failing infrastructure and out of control government spending on futile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - all based on paranoia, lies and promises that could not be realized.

The benefits and vices of a “capitalist” economy are most clearly manifest in the USA. Prior to the great collapse, the Economist reported that eight out of ten Americans thought their country was heading in the wrong direction (they were right): “The hapless George Bush is partly to blame for this, but many are concerned not so much about a failed president as about a flailing nation. One source of angst is the sorry state of American capitalism. American house prices are falling faster than during the Depression, petrol is more expensive than in the 1970s, banks are collapsing, credit is scarce, recession and inflation both threaten the economy and consumer confidence is an oxymoron. Many Americans feel as if they missed the boom. Between 2002 and 2006 the incomes of 99% rose by an average of 1% a year in real terms, while those of the top 1% rose by 11% a year; three-quarters of the economic gains during Bush’s presidency went to that top 1%. The rich appear in Barack Obama’s speeches not as entrepreneurial role models but as modern versions of the “malefactors of great wealth” denounced by Teddy Roosevelt a century ago: this lot, rather than building trusts, avoid taxes and ship jobs to Mexico. Free trade is less popular in the United States than in any other developed country, and a nation built by immigrants is building a fence to keep them out. “

By the end of 2010, economic recovery appeared to be a wish, a fantasy, a delusion more that a realizable goal. Economist Krugman summarized the plight of the US: "We are no longer the nation that used to amaze the world with its visionary projects. We have become, instead, a nation whose politicians seem to compete over who can show the least vision, the least concern about the future and the greatest willingness to pander to short-term, narrow-minded selfishness."

From Human Nature and Group Dynamics by Stephen Gislason 2011 Edition, available as a printed book from Alpha Online or as a PDF download from Persona Digital Online.

The Real Meaning of the Arab Revolts

A responsibility to protect resolution was passed by the Security Council in 2011, authorizing military intervention to protect civilians in Libya. This resolution led to NATO nations joining together to bomb Libya over many weeks, shifting their resolve from protecting peaceful demonstrators (who became armed rebels) to removing the dictator and his supporters from power. Even when a final outcome is uncertain, it is obvious that responsibility to protect is an idealist's notion with no possibility of practical application

Libya was just one Arab country among many to erupt in civilian protests with peaceful demonstrations leading to property destruction and wanton killing. Beginning in Tunisia, citizens' street protests became a revolutionary passion that spread to adjacent Arab countries. The Arab uprisings had implications for the rest of the world.

Idealists who promoted democracy and freedom were quick to support popular uprisings that demanded reforms or removal of dictators. This distant idealism paints a pretty picture of the benefits of democracy and recommends elections as the ultimate goal of reform. The reality, of course, is very different.

Democratic states are in decline everywhere and their citizens, protesting in the streets, are subject to paramilitary police suppression. The transition from autocratic states with corrupt institutions to fully functional states whose institutions serve the best interests of the people would take, even the best case, centuries to achieve. The basic dynamic of street protest is that citizens with diverse needs and interests will unite in opposition to a common enemy. While the brief interlude of apparent consensus is impressive, cohesion vanishes as soon as the common enemy is defeated.

The Economist Intelligence Unit report in February summarized the emerging revolutions in Arab states: 'The recent momentous events have been extraordinary in several respects. The popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt were sudden and unexpected, occurring in seemingly infertile territory. The revolts were home-grown affairs led by secular forces. They have overturned a host of stereotypes about the Middle East and North Africa region and have caught the outside world unawares. In Egypt, the head of a regime with one of the biggest repressive apparatuses in the world was toppled within a few weeks. Authoritarian regimes elsewhere share similar characteristics: human rights abuses and absence of basic freedoms; rampant corruption and nepotism; the presence of small elites that control the bulk of a nation's assets; and poor governance and social provision. Economic hardships in the form of stagnant or falling incomes, high unemployment and rising inflation have affected many countries. Some authoritarian regimes have young and restless populations. Long-serving geriatric leaders are another common feature. In Egypt Hosni Mubarak had been in office for 29 years; the former Tunisian president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, was in power for 23 years. Ali Abdullah Saleh has ruled Yemen since 1978 while Libya's Muammar Qadhafi has been in power for more than four decades. The longer ageing autocrats hang on to power, the more out-of-touch and corrupt their regimes tend to become, and the more of an anachronism and an affront they become to their peoples."

In his description of protests turned armed rebellion in Libya, Solomon Stated: "A post-Qaddafi Libya could easily be roiled in internal battles, ultimately dividing into several smaller countries, each dominated by local tribes. That could make life better for some Libyans, and it could make life worse for others; it would almost surely be problematic for Western companies with oil interests in the country. Modern Libya is an artificial construct, a remnant of colonialism. The glue holding it together is failing, and the warnings of chaos are real. The choice between chaos and oppression is always a tricky one, but this population is tired of oppression and corruption, and chaos may look more attractive to them."

In Egypt, Mubarack was deposed, but street protests continued, hoping to persuade military leaders to proceed with democratic reforms. The apparent cohesion of the crowds lasted only a few weeks and then violent clashes resumed between Christians and Muslims.

Shadid and Kirkpatrick wrote:"But in the past weeks, the specter of divisions — religion in Egypt, fundamentalism in Tunisia, sect in Syria and Bahrain, clan in Libya — has threatened uprisings that once seemed to promise to resolve questions that have vexed the Arab world since the colonialism era. In an arc of revolts and revolution, that idea of a broader citizenship is being tested as the enforced silence of repression gives way to the cacophony of diversity. Security and stability were the justification that strongmen in the Arab world offered for repression, often with the sanction of the United States. But even activists admit that the region so far has no model that enshrines diversity and tolerance without breaking down along more divisive identities. In Tunisia, a relatively homogenous country with a well-educated population, fault lines have emerged between the secular-minded coasts and the more religious and traditional inland."

If civilians in any country needed protection, it was in Syria, but no help was forthcoming. A New York Times editorial summarized the deplorable conduct of a failing dictatorial government: "As many as 1,600 courageous Syrians have been slaughtered since pro-democracy demonstrations began in March (2011). On Wednesday, after three days of shelling, President Bashar al-Assad ordered his military to storm Hama, the city where his father killed up to 20,000 people three decades ago. Where has the international community been? Shamefully paralyzed. The United Nations Security Council finally issued a statement condemning “widespread violations of human rights and the use of force against civilians by the Syrian authorities” — but with no threat of sanctions. For two months, Russia, China, India, Brazil and South Africa had blocked any action at all. It is going to take a lot more pressure to persuade Mr. Assad that his time is up — or to persuade those enabling him to switch sides."

Early in this chapter (On Law), I discussed the irregular if not random distribution of ethical conduct. If ideal justice involves the fair and impartial measurement of human behavior and more or less equal treatment for all citizens, then ideal justice is impossible. The eruptions in Northern African and the Middle East are not signs of progress towards civil societies and justice for all. They are recurrences of inevitable social chaos that arises from increasing populations and decreasing resources to sustain those populations.

There are many mechanisms that cause inequitable distribution of resources. The combination of wealthy, armed dictators, expanding numbers of poor and defenseless citizens, with the overwhelming adverse forces of nature creates death and destruction on a grand scale that has no obvious solution. With diminishing resources worldwide, the prospect of wealthier countries, rescuing failed states seems less and less likely. In Somalia, Ethopia, and Kenya today a prolonged drought is producing a famine crisis with 11 million humans at risk. Somalia has been a failed state for decades. No input of emergency food aid will solve such a profoundly systemic crisis.

Events so far in the 21st century point away from all idealist visions toward the harsh realities of human conflicts and suffering that have prevailed as long as humans have walked the earth.


From Human Nature and Group Dynamics by Stephen Gislason. Available in a Print Eidtion and as a PDF file download from Persona Digital Online.

Group Size and Cognitive Limits

Humans are primates. Primates tend to live in complex, multi-tiered social systems in which different layers are functional responses to different environmental opportunities and problems. Chimpanzees, like humans, have a fission/fusion form of social system. The community is divided into a number of temporary foraging parties whose composition changes with changes in the environment. A larger group may divide into smaller foraging groups when food is scarce. Smaller groups may fuse when food is abundant or when an external threat makes alliances more attractive.

Dunbar and others established an important relationship between intelligence and cohesive group size. The basic idea is that the cohesion of primate groups is limited by the information-processing capacity of the neocortex. One human can only maintain social and working relationships a limited number of individuals by meaningful personal contact. In simple terms, you can only know a small number of people well enough to understand their individual characteristics, to evaluate what they are likely to do and to develop cooperative work habits. You can only form intimate contacts with a few select individuals.

Each human has a people sphere around them with a central region of intimates and a peripheral region of acquaintances. Just as there is a range of human cognitive ability, there is a range of human social ability. The most gifted humans have larger people spheres that might include up to 150 people. Beyond the boundaries of the known-people sphere, other humans blur into an undifferentiated “public.”

Humans can recognize more than 150 faces, but the faces are often nameless and meaningful associations are minimal, obscure or absent. Less socially gifted humans have difficulty maintaining connections with a smaller number of people and may not be able to sustain even one intimate relationship. Dunbar points to several examples in aboriginal groups, university facilities and military organizations that limit group size. The Hutterites limit their communities to 150 people and explain that if the number of individuals is larger, it becomes difficult to control their behavior by means of peer pressure. They prefer to split the community rather than create a police force.

The cohesion of primate groups is maintained by grooming each other. Body contact and grooming establishes and services friendships and coalitions. Coalitions protect their members against harassment by the other members of the group. The more harassment an individual faces, the more important coalitions are. A coalition’s effectiveness is measured by its members' willingness to come to each other's aid and is directly related to the amount of time its members spend grooming each other.

Dunbar stated: ”Group size is a function of relative neocortical volume in nonhuman primates... Among primates, the cohesion of groups is maintained by social grooming; the time devoted to social grooming is linearly related to group size among the Old World monkeys and apes. To maintain the stability of large groups, characteristic of humans, by grooming alone would place intolerable demands on time budgets. It is suggested that (1) the evolution of large groups in the human lineage depended on the development of a more efficient method for time-sharing the processes of social bonding and that (2) language uniquely fulfills this requirement... Analysis of a sample of human conversations shows that about 60% of talking time is spent gossiping about relationships and personal experiences.”

The emergent idea is that smaller groups based on kinship and affinity work better and larger groups require formal external structures that define and enforce specific roles and behavior. In modern businesses, smaller work groups increase job satisfaction and allow the coordination of tasks and information-flow through person-to-person links. In some high tech software companies, smart and nice employees are happiest working in a village atmosphere that includes children, pets and combines work with play.

In contrast, highly regimented and anonymous work environments disconnect employees from every other expression of their lives and produce “alienation” a common feature of urban life. Large companies do better by re-organizing around small and cohesive work groups that resemble bands of less than 20 people. A family-like unit of 3 to 10 people is often the first size of group to achieve effective collaboration and cooperation. While conflict is inevitable in human groups of any size, natural conflict resolution only works in small groups.

From Intelligence and Learning by Stephen Gislason. Available as a printed edition or an eBook for download from Persona Digital Online.

Frames and Propaganda

The human world is a big place, populated by more than 7 billion humans, busy everday doing good things and bad things. News media attempt to report on events often with boastful slogans such as "keeping you informed as it happens" or "the first and best with breaking news..." Of course, no-one and no news agency can keep up with all world events. Everyone can only sample a few events everyday, with limited understanding of what is really going on out there.

Frames can be appreciated as devices that help us sample and present aspects of bigger pictures. A frame is real device that encloses a picture or selects a part of a larger picture. The view finder of a camera frames a photo to be taken. A good photographer frames a photograph with a sense of composition. The photo will be cropped and sized according to its final use. Paintings are placed on the wall and their display is considered to be an expression of taste and wealth.

Framed samples are appealing to humans and represent a fundamental strategy of coping with the profusion of events that occur in the real world. A photograph in a magazine or on a gallery wall is one selection from hundreds or thousands of images. Movie directors understand how to use successions of frames to present a story. Cameras are mounted on moveable platforms that allow shots from below, above, moving toward, moving away. The audience is guided by the director’s point of view to consider only some possibilities among many.

Language is also framed for presentation. Indeed, all media rely on framing devices to present selected samples of what is going on out there. A proud newspaper such as the New York Times has a tradition of responsible journalism and its writers attempt to report factual events truthfully. The front page of the Times is an important frame that is viewed internationally. Readers trust that the writers and editors have worked hard to use that frame responsibly. In contrast, the front page of a tabloid paper may reach a large audience, but readers need to know that the contents of that frame are fictional and cannot be trusted.

The advantage of understanding the frame metaphor is that it awakens interest in the semantic and pragmatic analysis of language. It is important to understand that all words and phrases are limited samples. Humans are story tellers. Thinking is speaking. The main purpose of story telling is to persuade others that you are a good person who knows what is true and that everyone should agree with you. All speakers and writers present a limited sample of all possible descriptions. Names artificially abstract objects and events from the contexts that give them meaning. Clever speakers and writers chose words and phrases to direct attention to their point of view and to advance their vested interests.

Professional propagandists have detailed understanding of the techniques of persuasion and control using language tools. They know how to direct and limit discourse and can imbed commands in polite language that influence the behavior of their audience. The goal of a propagandist is to develop a slogan that is propagated as a meme, infecting millions of minds. In each mind, an associative network of meaning is activated whenever the slogan is heard or seen.

For example, political strategists for the Republican party got George Bush elected by concentrating on slogans propagated through radio, television and printed media. Republican candidates would not engage in meaningful discourse. An observer could not decide if they were actually dumb, or just acting dumb on the advice of strategists. The Bush group was prolific in the production of slogans and succeeded in propagating a series of memes. For example, Bush cut taxes for the wealthy and claimed "tax relief" for all citizens. All citizens want relief from some burden or other and taxes are high on the list. But the Bush Boys were also big spenders and borrowed extravagant sums of money to finance their misadventures. The real world consequence of “tax relief” was that the US government borrowed increasing amounts of money so that as of 2007 every man woman and child in the country owed at least $30,000, almost half to foreign investors. Also, large sums were borrowed from the pension savings of citizens that should have been invested and protected from political squandering. As of 2007 at least 600 million US dollars was spend destroying buildings and killing people in Iraq. This cost was cleansed of all moral wrongdoing by calling the misadventure a "war to defend freedom." The war was against "terrorists" but waged in Iraq that had not contributed to the terrorist attack on the World Trade center in 2001. Fifteen of the 19 attackers came from Saudi Arabia. The economic disaster of 2008 followed and may not resolve for many years.

Many years ago, Chomsky described the merging of commercial interest with political agendas that conspired to control the public mind in the US and most other affluent countries. The media in the US achieves a biased mass consensus, despite a declared intention to present just the facts and to fairly represent all points of view. Chomsky wrote: "The guardians of history in every society are acutely sensitive to the faults of officially-designated enemies. The crude way to murder history is to lie. A more effective device is to set the bounds of permissible discourse. In coverage of contemporary affairs, the practice is a virtual reflex, as has been extensively documented. It is also standard in media critique, ensuring that unacceptable truths are banished from the mind. Thus, it is child's play to demonstrate the docility of the media with regard to US depredations (in other countries)… One factor is the power of business propaganda in the U.S. This is the country where the public relations industry was developed, where it is most sophisticated. It’s the home of the international entertainment industry, which is mainly propaganda. Huge funds are put into controlling the "public mind," …this is toward the capitalist end … there’s a huge expenditure on marketing, which is a form of manipulation and deceit... something like one-sixth of the gross domestic product goes to marketing. A large part of that is advertising. Advertising is tax-deductible, so you pay for the privilege of being manipulated and controlled."

From Language and Thinking by Stephen Gislason. Available in a printed edition or as a PDF download form Persona Digital Online.

Artificial Intelligence = False Claims

When you do not know exactly how digital computers work and how programmers utilize the hardware, it is easy to be fooled into believing that computers are intelligent or will be soon. When you know exactly how digital computing works, you are less likely to believe in computers that will develop their own intelligence. In fact, a programmer knows that he or she has to tell the computer exactly what to do in precise and annoying detail. Without expert programming, digital computers are dumb machines.

The ability of a digital computer to calculate quickly exceeds human ability. A common impression is that a calculating computer is smart. Humans have difficulty doing calculations and only a small percentage of any student population will excel in mathematical ability. The ability to calculate quickly and accurately is overly impressive.

The abstract reasoning that underlies advanced mathematics is more interesting and is independent of the ability to calculate. Most mathematicians are happy to do calculations on a digital machine and do not feel the least bit threatened that some computer will take over their job of abstract reasoning. Digital computers have no sense of meaning, cannot perceive and are only able to make simple robotic decisions about the data they receive. They can store images accurately and will faithfully recall stored data unless a malfunction intervenes. Output procedures are echoes of input procedures. The biggest advance in programming involves searching thru large databases to find the right answers to specific questions. Goggle`s search engines represent state of the art algorithms, designed to deliver relevant results to search inquiries. Failure to achieve relevance remains a persistent search problem. Google requires teams of programmers working everyday to monitor and refine their software.

Popular science fiction postulates that digital computers will become intelligent sentient beings and take over the world. Arthur Clark’s Science fiction novel and Stanley Kubrick’s movie version of 2001 were thrilling in 1968. I was thrilled the sense of motion during the docking of shuttle with the space station, transformed by Strauss’ Blue Danube Waltz. The spacecraft in the movie was operated by HAL, the computer. HAL represented the possibility of computers developing human-like artificial intelligence.

In 1968, anything was possible, but with subsequent developments in brain and computer science, we now know that living intelligence is so developed, complex and profound that any success with machine programming is disappointing and rudimentary. We now know that real intelligence lies well beyond the ability of present and future digital machines. In AI there is more artificial and less intelligence.

David Stork,a machine intelligence researcher wrote: “Perhaps a dark side of HAL’s legacy is to have fixed an anthropomorphic view of artificial intelligence so firmly in the minds of a generation of researchers… But those idiot savants (AI programs) did not show even the slightest signs of achieving general competence. In the subsequent AI winter -- brought on by the end of a military research spree as well as the inevitable collision between venture capitalists and reality – only the mechanical cockroaches survived.“

I do not believe that digital computers even of great speed and complexity will attain consciousness, nor do I believe that robots controlled by digital computers will ever come close to achieving the self-organizing, free-living intelligence of a human.

Mark Tildon of Los Almos Laboratories makes small robots from spare parts derived from discarded portable cassette players. A few transistors in his robots handle the task of moving limbs and solving problems such as getting past obstacles or dealing with broken parts. His robots resemble insects and move like insects. Tildon observes that living brains solve the complex tasks of surviving as free beings in an ever-changing world by using simple and compact circuits. He observes that efforts to make free-living robots using digital computing fail because even simple tasks quickly grow in complexity and require state of the art computing power.

Digital robot abilities are in a much simpler domain than living creatures and may never compete well, even at a rudimentary level. While the work done on robotics and artificial intelligence is interesting and useful, progress to date informs us that it will be exceeding difficult to achieve the digital equivalent of the free-living intelligence of an ant. AI and robotics helps us to appreciate that the ant brain is a marvel of computation and miniaturization. We may eventually progress to computational devices based on different materials and strategies that are more brain-like and achieve better and unexpected results. At this writing, no one knows how to do this. The search continues with the study of animal brains.

Despite the science fiction roots and unrealistic arguments (often delusional), machine intelligence enthusiasts are more visible and vocal than ever before. Their meetings have the giddy feel of a born-again religious revival. One god-substitute is singularity:” Techno-Rapture. A black hole in the Extropian worldview whose gravity is so intense that no light can be shed on what lies beyond it. … the human mind is not the final word. Someday, human technology will advance to the point of being able to improve on the underlying hardware (the brain) - an event known as the Singularity. Depending on how much futurism people have been exposed to, they tend to imagine different candidate technologies, “different timescales, and different outcomes for humanity. The Singularity Institute's favored technology is computer-based synthetic minds - "Artificial Intelligence" or "AI" - which we think can be developed quickly and with an outcome favorable to humanity … The Singularity Institute seriously intends to build a true general intelligence, possessed of all the key subsystems of human intelligence, plus design features unique to AI. We do not hold that all the complex features of the human mind are "emergent", or that intelligence is the result of some simple architectural principle, or that general intelligence will appear if we simply add enough data or computing power. “

There is room for fantasy and speculative thinking; however, no-one needs to take the Singularity view or timetable seriously. Some of the worst future predictions claim that digital circuitry is becoming faster, denser and less expensive and therefore “supercomputers’ will soon emerge that have greater processing power than the human brain. Some even suggest that massive parallel processing is superior to brain computational abilities.

There is no knowledge that allows anyone to assess brain processing ability and no basis to compare brains with digital computers. One of the aspects of “futuristic speculations” that amazes me is the lack of knowledge about the present. Another aspect that concerns me the most is the ignorance of life processes. I doubt that any machine will soon display free-living competence. Ant brains are amazing but digital robots are disappointing. The challenge for future computer designers is to make robots that do as well as an insect in a free-living competition. This task will require a new computing technology, lots of money and the rest of this century to achieve. Unless, of course, some genius discovers and copies brain circuitry that underlies insect competence.

I am concerned about human treachery, but have no concern about machines independently developing destructive intentions that could rival or match their human makers. Evil is a human invention. Humans already make world-destroying machines. This is not a future scenario. Once launched, a world-destroying machine such as an intercontinental ballistic missile carrying hydrogen bombs is self-sufficient. The ICBM is a dumb robot that after launch can find its way to its target without further assistance from human programmers. A bevy of dumb ICBM robots with hydrogen bomb warheads can destroy human civilization. The combination of bad and dumb humans and dumb robots is to be feared. This is history and no one has to wait for future malevolent robots to be constructed.

From Intelligence and Learning by Stephen Gislason. Available as a PDF download from Persona Digital Online

Can Corporations be Good Citizens?

One way to epitomize the 20th century is to describe the emergence of corporations as a dominant form of social organization. The corporation turned out to be an efficient way to organize, administer and build industrial capability. As corporations enlarged and became wealthy, countries became wealthy and were transformed. The emergent legal definitions of incorporation submerged the rights and duties of individuals and advanced the protection and privileges of small groups who were legally incorporated.

In the best case, a corporation values its workers and its customers and develops win-win strategies so that everyone benefits – the corporation posts profits, the workers enjoy stable employment and the customers are satisfied with the goods and services they receive. If best cases exist, they tend to be temporary.

Corporations depend on rules to regulate their employees and more rules to govern their interaction with customers. While there is an ethos of customer service in retail organizations, enlarging corporations become less friendly, less personal and less civil, leaving customers with problems they cannot solve, complaints that will not be addressed, and helpful suggestions that will not be heard.

The internal dynamics of corporations reveal all the tendencies of human nature, somewhat tamed by the discipline required to remain more or less efficient and legal. The alpha members of corporate society would tend to be ruthless dictators if they were not constrained from many directions. The growth of rules and regulations has paralleled corporate growth. You could argue that some balance had been achieved but events at the beginning of the 21st century are relentlessly adverse and quite different from the conditions in the 20th century when corporations grew larger and wealthier as a matter of course.

You could also argue that governments are not always competent nor constructively motivated. Civil service organizations grow to resemble corporations. You cannot rely on morality or government regulation alone to achieve benevolent corporations. Changes in legislation that make corporate executives more accountable are desirable along with more honest and competent internal self-regulation. An ideal solution is to transform people who manage and work for corporations into good citizens who have a strong sense of fair play and will do no harm to others.

Knowing that humans routinely lose their sense of responsibility and morality when they sign up as members of a large group, you are not surprised when you learn of the depredations of corporations. The current question is can large corporations evolve into more responsible and ethically motivated organizations?

Balkan and others have argued that corporations are sociopathic since their prime interest is making money and the end justifies the means: “A corporation is inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism.”

A new legal definition of corporations would seek to balance the profit motive with social responsibility. Corporate executives need to be accountable to their shareholders, customers, workers and neighbors and less preoccupied with their own greed. Government and corporations provide similar opportunities for executives to divert wealth into their own bank accounts and to favor family, friends and allies with monetary and other rewards.

Competition is the force of natural selection. Many have argued that competition in the market place keeps bad corporations from surviving. Competition has been a driving force for technological innovation and corporate efficiency. In the best case, bad products tend to disappear since consumers search for better and cheaper products. Confusion arises when cheaper is not better. The drive to win over competitors by marketing cheaper products has produced profound dislocations of people, money and corporate activities.

Corporations do not remain loyal to their workers or the communities that supported them. They move manufacturing to developing countries. Corporations use every means to keep labor costs low. They exploit poor and uneducated workers in countries that do not protect their workers.

Mass migrations of unskilled workers are another feature of the 21st century that will grow beyond any definition of national boundaries. Some of the poor worker migration is legally organized. Most the migration is illegal, spontaneous and disorganized. Humans have always migrated. They deplete the resources in one area and then move to the next.

From Human Nature and Group Dynamics by Stephen Gislason. Available as a Printed Book From Alpha Online or as an eBook (PDF) From Persona Digital Online.

The Problem with Self Evaluation

One of the key issues of human existence is the discrepancy between evaluating others and evaluating oneself. Humans evaluate and compete with each other in a continuous negotiation that involves strategy, criticism, conflict, and overt battles. The brain systems that evaluate others are not used in self-evaluation.

Humans tune into other humans and copy desirable statements and behaviors. The term “appropriate” suggests that language and behavior can be matched to suit the needs and standards of a specific group. Skilful humans learn to be appropriate in different social settings. Humans self regulate in social settings by observing others and adjusting their own behavior to be more congruent with the behavior of others.

A constructive response to rejection is to change appearance with more care in grooming and costume selection; to learn behaviors and stories that are more acceptable to the group.

Since most humans cannot observe themselves in action, they cannot evaluate their own appearance, facial expression and behavior. It is easy to argue that humans, like other primates, are mostly interactive creatures, pre-occupied with what others are doing. Humans have little or no native cognitive ability for self-evaluation and limited ability for self-regulation.

The result is constant negation and conflict among humans who judge the others harshly and have little or no insight into the effect of their own behavior on others. In the simplest analysis, humans tend to judge others with more skill, more detail and more critically than they judge themselves.

Each human peers out from a central illusion of a perfect self that must survive at all costs. This feature of the human mind is “innate narcissism” and is neither optional nor negotiable. The admission of error is difficult for most humans. The basis of this reluctance is practical; humans who make errors are criticized aggressively and may be demoted or dismissed from the group. The denial of errors is an innate defensive reflex. Denial of errors also manifests a real and important inability to accurately evaluate oneself.

A social group provides external regulation in the form of values, beliefs, approval, disapproval, criticism, and by insisting on standards of conduct. Self-evaluation largely consists of monitoring the effects of your own actions on others. Some humans are socially gifted and spontaneously adjust their behavior to receive desirable responses from others. Females tend to be more socially aware and skillful than males. Some humans are socially disabled and do not adjust their behavior even when they are repeatedly censured and punished.

The potential ability to self-evaluate with any accuracy and skill must be learned and practiced in a sustained and intelligent manner. There are terms that refer to narcissism such as “self esteem” or “self-image.”

The proud person manifests narcissism in a more or less acceptable manner. The arrogant person is aggressively narcissistic. The empathic person recognizes the narcissism in others. The selfish person fails to recognize the narcissism in others. The shy person hides his or her narcissism.

The idea of “low self-esteem” is flawed since it assumes that narcissism is optional and some people lack this feature, but this is rare.
Humans who fail to achieve the approval of the local group feel sad or angry, often both. Their narcissism is intact and their distress arises from the inability or reluctance of the local group to acknowledge their wonderful characteristics.

The rejected ones will complain and may appear to value themselves less, but their distress emerges from a deep and narcissistic conviction that they should receive better treatment from the group. Humans who are rejected repeatedly develop aversions to hostile individuals or groups and places where rejection occurs. Their withdrawal and aversive behavior is often described as “low self-esteem.”

There are many strategies available to achieve more approval, ranging from supplication, to self-improvement, to destructive aggression. If the group rejection is sustained, the oppressed member becomes “depressed” and expresses self-doubt; his or her withdrawal maintains the social peace. If, on the other hand, the oppressed member becomes angry, he or she will leave the group, seek allies and may return, seeking revenge, sometimes after many years.

From the book The Good Person, Ethics and Morality by Stephen Gislason. Available as an eBook for download at Persona Digital Online.

Wired, Wireless and Alienated?

All human affairs proceed in a dialectical fashion with progression and regression in constant play. Good and bad results emerge from every innovation. As the media world becomes more complex and more demanding, a high tech citizen runs the risk of becoming unhappy and confused. We know that better access to procedures and information is a decisive advantage for people who can use the information. In the early days of the www, there was discussion of the "emergence of a global brain paradigm for modeling the world."

However, humans have a limited ability to embrace other humans and are quickly over-loaded by information that is not immediately relevant. Some smart people are happy to leave the cell phones in a drawer and leave the hectic lives for a nature retreat. They value the natural world and celebrate opportunities to reconnect with their “inner self” and nature. Carl Jung suggested: “Too much man makes a sick animal. Too much animal makes a sick man.”

Humans have long lived in small groups and travelled to join assemblies of other groups. These gatherings have become highly organized affairs with formal presentations and social interactions. Real meetings have important features that virtual interactions such as email, text messages, chat rooms and social networks lack. Humans rely on seeing facial expressions, body language and observing the coordination of speech with gestures. Without access to a real person, the information is always incomplete.

The frequency of rude and angry emails and comments posted are problems with virtual communications. Internet etiquette has emerged to reduce angry responses. A smart communicator will delay a response to an irritating message and will consider how to reply in a diplomatic manner. Internet users worry about loss of privacy, but the real danger is that a sicker animal may emerge who is comfortable in virtual reality but disoriented and destructive in the real world.

The business leaders of the information age are highly competitive and believe that they are in a race. The race has only to do with business competition and profits. The world would be a better place if everyone slowed down and made more gradual transitions from one state to another. There is no race. There is nowhere to go. We are already here.

Who is fooling whom?

There are potential benefits. There are some hazards. Most internet users will have limited ability to understand how to find the best information and will default to slogans and seek free entertainment. Social networking sites are popular because they are free and entertaining. The FaceBook idea is that you can advertise yourself, acquire friends and become a friend of many others. The real effect is that the meaning of friend is deflated.

Real friends are rare and need to be cherished. Virtual friend are not friends at all. There is a possibility that meaningful relationships can develop after online contact, but this is not probable. There is a risk that your personal information may be used against you.

People worry about loss of privacy but another danger is that a sicker human animal may emerge who is comfortable in virtual reality but disoriented and destructive in the real world. Nice people watching TV in their living room are already more comfortable in the virtual world of television programming and are often confused about what is really going on.

Dependence on Machines

In the unrealistic fantasies about computers becoming intelligent, willful and taking over the world, there is an imbedded and legitimate concern about human dependence on machines. There is an associated concern about human limitations. As computer networks expand, humans become dependent on them and have more difficulty understanding how the whole system works. Another concern is that humans are selfish and chaotic in their pursuit of wealth.

The proliferation of perverse machines makes some people wealthy but with little benefit to the individual user and to society a whole. You could argue that cars and airplanes are perverse machines because they encourage humans to be restless wanders in pursuit of ephemeral pleasures.

Electronic games are perverse machines since they occupy time and attention in a virtual reality that might be better spent enjoying and cultivating the real world.

Television has been declared a perverse machine for the same reason – a virtual reality replaces the real world and sedentary viewers become fat, sick and confused.

The real question is what humans really want? A better real world is a good answer. A better real world would be more natural, cleaner, safer, and more stable. A better world might be achieved, but not by the people watching TV text messaging and playing videogames.

The realworld infrastructure that depends on computer networks to operate is based on human intelligence and demands the dedicated work of people who are tuned into the real world. The maintenance of enlarging complex systems is difficult and requires advanced education attached to dedication and constant learning. An enlarging population now depends on a small elite group to maintain banking, communication, energy, transportation, government and military networks. An increasing dependence on expanding, whole-planet electronic systems is a new development and the possibility(aka probability) of catastrophic failure concerns many observers.

Human experience is typically paradoxical. Human information and intelligence is being distributed more widely than ever before and this distribution depends on a technologically elite group. If you tend to be paranoid, you are afraid of the technology and fear that a sinister elite group will take over and control the world. Science fiction paranoia tends to emphasis machine autonomy and fears machine dominance. If you are paranoid, all sinister plots are plausible and you cannot differentiate a realistic fear from an imaginary and unrealistic fear.

If you are pronoid, you are grateful for the benefits of the technological society and even if you are not part of the technology elite, you assume (quite correctly) that the scientific and technical elites consist mostly of reasonable and nice people who have interests and goals similar to your own. If you are realistic and pronoid, you know that computers are dumb and that robots are machines that weld and paint cars.

You are mostly interested in training enough smart people to keep our complex infrastructures operating. The need is for better solutions to basic problems such distributing medical information, controlling traffic in cities, distributing food and other goods and protecting airplanes from crashing.

The curious aspect of future technology fears and fantasies is that all the problems in the real world are discussed and then ignored. Even the most advanced countries have aging infrastructures, ready to collapse at any moment. Electricity, telephone, cable communications and the internet are carried by wires on poles that fall down easily, pushed by a little wind or shaken by earth tremors. Even if TV networks keep broadcasting, viewers may not have clean water to drink or food to eat. We can hope that communication of good ideas might reduce the extravagant devastation that humans inflict on their planet. What do humans really want? Do they want more distraction and entertainment in virtual reality or do they want a real life in a real, healthy world?

From Intelligence and Learning by Stephen Gislason. Download at Persona Digital Online.