From 05fa3051e12acddfe320912a93e1927bcf1b64f6df2a14589594144df3b9f3e2 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Nicholas Johnson Date: Mon, 23 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Subject: Fix spelling errors --- content/about.md | 2 +- ...tion-of-temporarily-embarrassed-millionaires.md | 6 ++-- content/entry/antinatalism.md | 20 +++++++------- .../article-you-should-be-using-an-old-computer.md | 2 +- content/entry/atom-and-rss.md | 4 +-- content/entry/automation-bullshit-jobs-and-work.md | 12 ++++---- content/entry/avoid-using-cryptocurrency.md | 6 ++-- content/entry/avoiding-automobile-surveillance.md | 4 +-- content/entry/avoiding-consumer-surveillance.md | 6 ++-- content/entry/back-up-your-data.md | 8 +++--- .../banning-facial-recognition-isnt-enough.md | 4 +-- content/entry/book-waking-up.md | 4 +-- content/entry/breaking-my-promise.md | 2 +- ...ublic-discourse-with-the-steel-man-technique.md | 2 +- .../come-watch-me-present-at-libreplanet-2022.md | 2 +- content/entry/coming-out-as-autistic.md | 4 +-- content/entry/consider-death.md | 2 +- content/entry/dead-mans-switch.md | 2 +- content/entry/dealing-with-close-minded-people.md | 6 ++-- ...cumentary-line-goes-up-the-problem-with-nfts.md | 2 +- content/entry/documentary-sicko.md | 2 +- ...eople-homophobic-transphobic-or-islamophobic.md | 4 +-- .../entry/dont-record-others-without-permission.md | 6 ++-- ...ely-on-a-vpn-for-online-privacy-and-security.md | 4 +-- content/entry/dont-use-github.md | 6 ++-- content/entry/doublethink.md | 10 +++---- content/entry/ego-traps.md | 2 +- content/entry/encryption-is-a-timer-not-a-lock.md | 2 +- content/entry/exposing-zoom.md | 10 +++---- content/entry/flygskam.md | 2 +- content/entry/free-will-is-incoherent-part-2.md | 4 +-- content/entry/future-proof-digital-timestamping.md | 6 ++-- content/entry/gemini-appreciation-entry.md | 4 +-- .../get-an-anonymous-phone-number-with-dtmfio.md | 10 +++---- content/entry/get-an-eco-friendly-burial.md | 4 +-- ...t-github-git-is-not-github-git-is-not-github.md | 2 +- content/entry/goodbye-pgp.md | 8 +++--- ...fer-large-files-from-one-computer-to-another.md | 2 +- .../i-wish-i-could-endorse-the-waking-up-app.md | 2 +- content/entry/implications-of-synthetic-media.md | 10 +++---- ...n-rejecting-discord-drawio-and-visual-studio.md | 10 +++---- content/entry/integrated-activism.md | 2 +- content/entry/ipv6-adoption.md | 4 +-- content/entry/is-beastiality-immoral.md | 2 +- ...to-believe-things-you-cant-justify-to-others.md | 2 +- content/entry/journal-update-019.md | 2 +- content/entry/journal-update-020.md | 2 +- content/entry/legalize-all-drugs.md | 10 +++---- content/entry/metaethics.md | 32 +++++++++++----------- content/entry/mourning-the-loss-of-privacy.md | 4 +-- content/entry/my-career-path.md | 10 +++---- content/entry/networked-ev-charging-stations.md | 2 +- content/entry/on-blockchain.md | 8 +++--- content/entry/on-compassion.md | 4 +-- content/entry/on-cultural-appropriation.md | 2 +- content/entry/on-spirituality.md | 4 +-- content/entry/on-the-intellectual-dark-web.md | 2 +- content/entry/on-transgender-athletes.md | 4 +-- content/entry/organization-let-grow.md | 4 +-- content/entry/oxen-security-fail.md | 2 +- .../entry/paying-close-attention-to-experience.md | 2 +- content/entry/podcast-the-key-to-trumps-appeal.md | 4 +-- .../entry/podcast-why-trump-is-unfit-for-office.md | 2 +- content/entry/private-online-shopping.md | 8 +++--- .../entry/rejecting-discord-and-google-colab.md | 4 +-- content/entry/rejecting-visual-studio.md | 2 +- content/entry/shouting-into-the-void.md | 4 +-- content/entry/site-update-001.md | 2 +- content/entry/site-update-002.md | 2 +- content/entry/site-update-003.md | 2 +- content/entry/site-update-008.md | 2 +- content/entry/site-update-009.md | 2 +- content/entry/site-update-010.md | 2 +- content/entry/site-update-011.md | 14 +++++----- content/entry/site-update-014.md | 2 +- content/entry/siue-cyberstalking-feature.md | 2 +- .../siue-eid-creation-and-maintenance-problems.md | 12 ++++---- content/entry/stop-amazons-police-state.md | 2 +- ...truggle-to-graduate-without-nonfree-software.md | 2 +- content/entry/the-addiction-to-thinking.md | 6 ++-- content/entry/the-cult-of-productivity.md | 2 +- content/entry/the-narrative-self.md | 2 +- .../entry/the-privacy-implications-of-weak-ai.md | 14 +++++----- content/entry/the-privacy-paradox.md | 6 ++-- content/entry/the-self.md | 4 +-- ...om-lockdown-browser-and-the-lockdown-monitor.md | 12 ++++---- ...m-mentality-versus-individual-responsibility.md | 10 +++---- .../entry/there-is-nothing-wrong-with-incest.md | 2 +- content/entry/thoughts-on-logic.md | 8 +++--- content/entry/thoughts-on-spirituality.md | 8 +++--- content/entry/using-email.md | 10 +++---- ...o-tiktok-a-trojan-horse-into-chinas-dystopia.md | 2 +- content/entry/why-i-dont-have-a-smartphone.md | 6 ++-- ...y-i-dont-trust-police-and-neither-should-you.md | 4 +-- content/entry/why-i-dont-use-a-pseudonym.md | 2 +- content/entry/why-i-left-its.md | 2 +- content/entry/you-dont-need-an-antivirus.md | 6 ++-- content/glossary.md | 4 +-- 98 files changed, 247 insertions(+), 247 deletions(-) diff --git a/content/about.md b/content/about.md index ed3f12d..f341286 100644 --- a/content/about.md +++ b/content/about.md @@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ The easiest way to contact me is through email. Feel free to encrypt emails to m [📬 Email](mailto:nick@nicksphere.ch) [🔑 Age Key](../resource/age.pub) -After exchanging a few emails, we can migrate to a secure messenging application if it seems appropriate. +After exchanging a few emails, we can migrate to a secure messaging application if it seems appropriate. ## Signing Key My Signify key serves as my trust anchor. I use it to sign Git commits. Git only supports GnuPG, so I use a hack to sign commits with Signify. You can also use this hack to verify my signed commits. diff --git a/content/entry/a-nation-of-temporarily-embarrassed-millionaires.md b/content/entry/a-nation-of-temporarily-embarrassed-millionaires.md index 5256948..b36e8a8 100644 --- a/content/entry/a-nation-of-temporarily-embarrassed-millionaires.md +++ b/content/entry/a-nation-of-temporarily-embarrassed-millionaires.md @@ -11,10 +11,10 @@ Out of all the Gravel Institute's videos that I've seen, I feel that they mostly Nonetheless The Gravel Institute is making a really important point here. One that I don't think is hyperbole. Americans think one day they're going to catch their "big break". They'll be able to stop working (before retirement) and finally just enjoy life. Obviously for most of them, that's a myth. # Expectations Versus Reality -For one, people's expectations of happiness given wealth don't match reality. Studies show having more wealth doesn't make you significantly happier after your basic needs are met. Maybe you'll be able to temporarily distract yourself from the warzone inside your head with unsustainable consumption of goods and services, increased social status, drugs, travel experiences, etcetra. But it won't hold you over for long. It's just not in your biology to be satisfied with what you've got. And if you're already content living in the present moment, you don't try to fill the void with wealth anyway because there isn't one. +For one, people's expectations of happiness given wealth don't match reality. Studies show having more wealth doesn't make you significantly happier after your basic needs are met. Maybe you'll be able to temporarily distract yourself from the war zone inside your head with unsustainable consumption of goods and services, increased social status, drugs, travel experiences, etc. But it won't hold you over for long. It's just not in your biology to be satisfied with what you've got. And if you're already content living in the present moment, you don't try to fill the void with wealth anyway because there isn't one. # You Will Never Be Rich -Not only are Americans wrong that what they need in life is extreme wealth. As The Gravel Institute points out, Americans are wrong to think they even have a chance at getting rich. It's not hyperbole either that Americans think they can get rich. Many Americans really do think that. I know this isn't rigorous, but just look at the search results for the search terms "You Will Never Be Rich".[2] The most popular videos are about how to get rich, not about how unlikely it is. Anecdotally, I've known Americans who have dreamt of getting rich, whatever that means. None of them are. I think their belief that they can become rich stems from the lie they were told as children that they're exceptional. +Not only are Americans wrong that what they need in life is extreme wealth. As The Gravel Institute points out, Americans are wrong to think they even have a chance at getting rich. It's not hyperbole either that Americans think they can get rich. Many Americans really do think that. I know this isn't rigorous, but just look at the search results for the search terms "You Will Never Be Rich".[2] The most popular videos are about how to get rich, not about how unlikely it is. Anecdotally, I've known Americans who have dreamed of getting rich, whatever that means. None of them are. I think their belief that they can become rich stems from the lie they were told as children that they're exceptional. When I point out how unlikely it is for Americans to get rich, they respond with examples of people who "made it". But that doesn't change the statistics. Those people were extremely lucky. Personally knowing somebody who became rich doesn't mean it will happen for you. If you know somebody who got rich, ask yourself, do they seem significantly happier than before they were rich? Probably not. So why do you want to be rich anyway? @@ -30,7 +30,7 @@ You know who benefits from Americans' false hope that they're going to get rich ## The Rich Are Selfish When you think about it, getting rich is an extremely selfish goal. Even if you do become rich, you have to be a callous and uncaring person to hold onto your wealth. Is that who you want to be? Maybe you could try to justify holding onto your wealth by investing it, with the goal of doing greater good in the future. But that's a very shaky argument. -For one, there are organizations that need the funding right now in order to mitigate existential risks such as climate mayhem, nuclear weapons, nanotechnology, general artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons, etcetra. Funding them in the future won't do any good if it's already too late to mitigate those risks. They need funds now. +For one, there are organizations that need the funding right now in order to mitigate existential risks such as climate mayhem, nuclear weapons, nanotechnology, general artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons, etc. Funding them in the future won't do any good if it's already too late to mitigate those risks. They need funds now. For two, even if you can justify keeping your wealth, the question of spending it remains unchanged. Money spent on yourself can't be spent on others. It will still makes sense to spend some money on yourself of course. But when you're filthy rich, you can afford to help others. Not donating to charity is willfully allowing other people in remote parts of the world to suffer and die all so you can live in luxury. diff --git a/content/entry/antinatalism.md b/content/entry/antinatalism.md index 24b4640..785de29 100644 --- a/content/entry/antinatalism.md +++ b/content/entry/antinatalism.md @@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ draft: false # Richard Stallman's Antinatalism If you check the promoted page[1] of this blog, you'll see I have promoted Richard Stallman's article "Why it is important not to have children"[2]. I have the promoted page so that I have somewhere to promote others' ideas and so that I don't have to write a new post for each idea. But I still want to highlight a few of the points in that article that I find most compelling. -The strongest reason Stallman gives for not having children is to avoid the global heating disaster (climate change) fueled by overconsumption and overpopulation. He notes that first-worlders who consume lots of resources especially should not have children. Even if there were no other reason not to have children, I consider averting climate change a strong enough reason on its own. Having one less child does more for the environment than all the other personal choices you can make combined. It's a no-brainer. +The strongest reason Stallman gives for not having children is to avoid the global heating disaster (climate change) fueled by overconsumption and overpopulation. He notes that first worlders who consume lots of resources especially should not have children. Even if there were no other reason not to have children, I consider averting climate change a strong enough reason on its own. Having one less child does more for the environment than all the other personal choices you can make combined. It's a no-brainer. Besides not contributing to climate change, there's also the legitimate concern about what kind of world children born today will live in. Given the current trajectory of climate change and the failure of nations to address the problem, children born today will be destined to live in a world where large regions are uninhabitable and there's constant conflict and war over resources unless drastic action is taken to prevent disaster. Is it moral to put another being into a world like that? @@ -68,7 +68,7 @@ Where Benatar deviates from this model is in premises 3 and 4. He places values Total: +0 ``` -Clearly this makes no sense. If you break your leg, in that moment, the pain of your broken leg isn't cancelled out by the fact that your other leg remains intact. That's absurd. But that's exactly what Benatar's argument seems to imply. +Clearly this makes no sense. If you break your leg, in that moment, the pain of your broken leg isn't canceled out by the fact that your other leg remains intact. That's absurd. But that's exactly what Benatar's argument seems to imply. ### Self-Contradictory To further illustrate the point that Benatar's value system makes absolutely no sense when his premises are interpreted in an absolute sense, I'm going to create 3 more diagrams representing his argument: @@ -151,12 +151,12 @@ Also, evolutionarily speaking, we value our close relatives over strangers. It m The rest of David's points are different ways of either restating his original asymmetry argument or smuggling in our normal intuitions, so I won't cover them. I believe his arguments merely confuse people into thinking they agree by equivocation and subtly smuggling in extra assumptions that are applied in the wrong context. -## Suffering Experienced by Descendents -But Benetar has more than just the asymmetry argument. And the rest of his arguments seem much more coherent at least. He claims that we are responsible for the suffering of our descendents for having brought them into the world. +## Suffering Experienced by Descendants +But Benatar has more than just the asymmetry argument. And the rest of his arguments seem much more coherent at least. He claims that we are responsible for the suffering of our descendants for having brought them into the world. If your quality of life is extremely low and you cannot support a child and you voluntarily bring a child into the world, I agree. If responsibility means anything, you're partially responsible for their suffering. By the same token, if you have strong reasons to believe your child will be extremely happy and you give birth to an extremely happy child, all else being equal, you can take partial credit for their happiness. -Certainly the potential suffering of descendents is cause for some people not to have children. But if you want to make the case that nobody should have children because of the suffering of descendents, we have to talk about depressive realism[7]. +Certainly the potential suffering of descendants is cause for some people not to have children. But if you want to make the case that nobody should have children because of the suffering of descendants, we have to talk about depressive realism[7]. ### Depressive Realism Depressive realism is the idea that depressed people are the ones who see the world most clearly. It's the optimists who are kidding themselves. This is in contrast to conventional wisdom which says depressed people have a negative cognitive bias. @@ -165,7 +165,7 @@ Antinatalists claim that most people do not evaluate reality correctly. They cla Some antinatalists further argue that the lives of all animals are very bad, not only the lives of humans. This philosophy is known as "universal antinatalism". According to universal antinatalism, since humans are the only species capable of understanding the predicament, we ought to sterilize other animal species to save them from their default state in the wild which is a life of struggle. -I don't know whether or not depressive realism is true. I'm also not sure whether animals suffer more than they flourish. I will give the antinatalists credit on these points. The suffering of descendents does seem to be the strongest argument in favor of no one having children and animal sterilization out of all the antinatalist arguments. +I don't know whether or not depressive realism is true. I'm also not sure whether animals suffer more than they flourish. I will give the antinatalists credit on these points. The suffering of descendants does seem to be the strongest argument in favor of no one having children and animal sterilization out of all the antinatalist arguments. However there is the possibility that future technology might deliver us eternal bliss so good it would retroactively justify all humanity's past suffering and the suffering of all other beings. This is a point Matt Dillahunty made when he addressed antinatalism. However it's not a valid point since it seems equally plausible that future technology could create suffering, perhaps even unfathomable torment beyond anything we've ever experienced. As a side note, Matt's criticism of antinatalism[8] seems to miss the point. @@ -174,7 +174,7 @@ Anyway, there are a lot of unknowns about the future. We don't know how good ete Benatar has cited historical evidence[9] trying to show that the rare moments of bliss we experience do not offset all our suffering and the additional suffering we cause other animals[10]. This seems to be a plausible hypothesis. But we also shouldn't forget that humans have made a lot of progress in quality of life over the years as well. ## Famine Relief -David Benetar also argues that: +David Benatar also argues that: > "...in a situation where a huge number of people live in poverty, we should cease procreation and divert these resources, that would have been used to raise our own children, to the poor." - Wikipedia, licensed CC-BY-SA 3.0 @@ -202,8 +202,8 @@ Finally, there's the argument that not having children opens up the possibility ## Environmental Antinatalism In conclusion, I agree with Stallman's arguments against having children. I don't think procreating is a good idea for most first-worlders right now. We need the global population to go down for the sake of sustainability. -## Suffering of Descendents -As for Benetar, his asymmetry argument is absurd. But he does have a point about the suffering of descendents. I'm agnostic towards depressive realism. I'm not trying to promote depression. I'm just not going to say it's true or false based merely on my own personal experience because there are 8 billion other people on the planet all with different experiences of the world. If your intuition is that depressive realism is totally implausible and life is mostly good and most people do evaluate the reality of their own well-being correctly, then that's fine. I'm just not that certain. +## Suffering of Descendants +As for Benatar, his asymmetry argument is absurd. But he does have a point about the suffering of descendants. I'm agnostic towards depressive realism. I'm not trying to promote depression. I'm just not going to say it's true or false based merely on my own personal experience because there are 8 billion other people on the planet all with different experiences of the world. If your intuition is that depressive realism is totally implausible and life is mostly good and most people do evaluate the reality of their own well-being correctly, then that's fine. I'm just not that certain. If depressive realism is true though, we shouldn't continue the species hoping future technology will make all the suffering worthwhile. It seems equally likely that future technology will create more suffering. The arguments in favor of not having children in order to have more time and money to help the poor and adopt or foster children seem compelling. @@ -217,7 +217,7 @@ The arguments for antinatalism coming from the Kantian imperative and impossibil ## Practicality From a pragmatic point of view, humans would never be willing to go extinct voluntarily. Given the uniqueness of our species and our technological advancement, we should not take such a matter lightly. As far as we know, there's no other life like us in the rest of the universe. To extinguish ourselves based on an estimation of well-being which we might be getting wrong could be a grave mistake. -While I consider antinatalism supported by suffering of descendents at least plausible, it seems like more people would be open to hearing Stallman's antinatalism than Benetar and his colleagues' versions. Therefore as a matter of strategy, if you want to promote antinatalism, it's probably best to promote environmental antinatalism and give reasons having children is personally undesirable rather than telling people not to procreate because "life is mostly suffering". +While I consider antinatalism supported by suffering of descendants at least plausible, it seems like more people would be open to hearing Stallman's antinatalism than Benatar and his colleagues' versions. Therefore as a matter of strategy, if you want to promote antinatalism, it's probably best to promote environmental antinatalism and give reasons having children is personally undesirable rather than telling people not to procreate because "life is mostly suffering". # Conclusion I believe I'm more open-minded to antinatalist reasoning than many other philosophers who seem to search for reasons to quickly dismiss people like Benatar. I understand that ideas don't live in a vacuum. They live in real human minds and the idea that life is mostly suffering could be a very hard pill to swallow, or even consider. diff --git a/content/entry/article-you-should-be-using-an-old-computer.md b/content/entry/article-you-should-be-using-an-old-computer.md index 88ca525..84f2355 100644 --- a/content/entry/article-you-should-be-using-an-old-computer.md +++ b/content/entry/article-you-should-be-using-an-old-computer.md @@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ Maybe you're above nothing to hide though. You understand privacy is a human rig The next most obvious question is "Where do I buy a computer without a backdoor?". I recommend RetroFreedom[4] (formerly Minifree). Leah Rowe[5] operates the site. She maintains the Libreboot[6] project, a free as in freedom alternative BIOS that ships with the old Thinkpads she sells. You can purchase products with cryptocurrency and several addons and upgrades are offered. I don't mind the markup in price since I know it goes toward an important free software project. I can personally attest to the quality of the laptops from RetroFreedom. I've bought several laptops from there running exclusively free software and I'm very satisfied. # Free Software -I would never again use a nonfree laptop to do my everyday personal computing. I've given up videogames since all the popular titles are nonfree requiring me to run the Winblows operating system. I quit my job[7] to avoid promoting proprietary software. I dropped out of college[8] so I didn't have to use invasive proprietary malware. Too many people have told me I'm too extreme. I care too much about free software. Life is just too short to be so picky. But to them I would say this: +I would never again use a nonfree laptop to do my everyday personal computing. I've given up video games since all the popular titles are nonfree requiring me to run the Winblows operating system. I quit my job[7] to avoid promoting proprietary software. I dropped out of college[8] so I didn't have to use invasive proprietary malware. Too many people have told me I'm too extreme. I care too much about free software. Life is just too short to be so picky. But to them I would say this: What does it say about society that the only way to get a non-backdoored laptop is to buy from a specific set of computers that are around 13 years old, replace the WiFi card, use special equipment to flash the BIOS with Libreboot/Coreboot and replace the operating system with GNU/Linux? Or pay someone else to do the procedure. diff --git a/content/entry/atom-and-rss.md b/content/entry/atom-and-rss.md index 28f7fac..1cbc193 100644 --- a/content/entry/atom-and-rss.md +++ b/content/entry/atom-and-rss.md @@ -14,9 +14,9 @@ It represents Atom[1] and RSS[2]. From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0[3]): ## Atom > "The Atom format was developed as an alternative to RSS. Ben Trott[4], an advocate of the new format that became Atom, believed that RSS had limitations and flaws—such as lack of on-going innovation and its necessity to remain backward compatible—and that there were advantages to a fresh design." -So that's Atom and RSS in short. In the real world Atom/RSS feeds really don't get the usage they deserve. For me an Atom/RSS feed reader is indispensable. Instead of checking 20 different webpages manually scanning each page for new content, I can just open my feed reader. It shows me all my web content in a streamlined fashion. Unlike social media, I have full control over my Atom/RSS feeds. In fact, Atom/RSS feeds are a big reason I don't have social media accounts and haven't for some time. Why go on social media when you can make it come to you? It's easy to get feeds for most popular social media sites including but not limited to Youtube, Reddit, Tumblr, Medium, Wordpress, Blogger and Twitter. +So that's Atom and RSS in short. In the real world Atom/RSS feeds really don't get the usage they deserve. For me an Atom/RSS feed reader is indispensable. Instead of checking 20 different web pages manually scanning each page for new content, I can just open my feed reader. It shows me all my web content in a streamlined fashion. Unlike social media, I have full control over my Atom/RSS feeds. In fact, Atom/RSS feeds are a big reason I don't have social media accounts and haven't for some time. Why go on social media when you can make it come to you? It's easy to get feeds for most popular social media sites including but not limited to Youtube, Reddit, Tumblr, Medium, Wordpress, Blogger and Twitter. -I'm not inherently against social media. I'm just against proprietary walled gardens which is most social media that people actually use. Atom/RSS feeds make it easy to keep your distance from social media without missing out. I'm aware I could use free[5], federated social networks like Mastadon[6]. I just don't have a need. For future reference, if I sign up for social media, I'll link my profile on my about page in the identity[7] section. Any social media accounts not linked under the identity section claiming to belong to me or even appearing to be mine are sockpuppets[8]. For now I just have this blog. +I'm not inherently against social media. I'm just against proprietary walled gardens which is most social media that people actually use. Atom/RSS feeds make it easy to keep your distance from social media without missing out. I'm aware I could use free[5], federated social networks like Mastadon[6]. I just don't have a need. For future reference, if I sign up for social media, I'll link my profile on my about page in the identity[7] section. Any social media accounts not linked under the identity section claiming to belong to me or even appearing to be mine are sock puppets[8]. For now I just have this blog. # How to Use Atom/RSS Now that you know what Atom/RSS is and you have an idea what it's used for, I'll move on to the meat of this post: how to use Atom/RSS. To begin using Atom/RSS yourself, you'll need to install a feed reader. There is mature feed reader software available for all major platforms including mobile. Decent feed readers support both Atom and RSS and you probably won't need to know which is which. Most sites including this one still use RSS. I do plan to eventually switch my site feed[9] over to Atom since it's more modern. diff --git a/content/entry/automation-bullshit-jobs-and-work.md b/content/entry/automation-bullshit-jobs-and-work.md index 08517b1..0651134 100644 --- a/content/entry/automation-bullshit-jobs-and-work.md +++ b/content/entry/automation-bullshit-jobs-and-work.md @@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ I understood why he prolonged his work. It was to give him more hours to make mo What surprised me more was when I brought this phenomenon up to others, they were apathetic. Some of them nonchalantly shared with me their own stories of bullshitting on the job for money. I learned wasting time on the job is not only very common, but it's seen as normal. -My only thought was "Surely there are better ways to organize society than this. Having a system that incentivizes timewasting is just stupid." And I still believe that. Just imagine all the different ways human societies can plausibly be organized and we're supposed to believe that the optimal economy is one where people are incentivized to spend thousands of collective hours bullshitting at work? I don't buy it. +My only thought was "Surely there are better ways to organize society than this. Having a system that incentivizes time-wasting is just stupid." And I still believe that. Just imagine all the different ways human societies can plausibly be organized and we're supposed to believe that the optimal economy is one where people are incentivized to spend thousands of collective hours bullshitting at work? I don't buy it. Why do people act like a better system is impossible? Do I just have a more active imagination than everybody else? I mean it doesn't take that much imagination to think of improvements. For example, what about UBI[3] where the government redistributes wealth from the hyper-rich to everybody else? @@ -52,11 +52,11 @@ According to Graeber, the reason we're not working less is basically because the He also notes in his 2013 essay[4] that people's attitudes about work are extremely convenient to the ruling class. Those who shame the unemployed for not working hard doing pointless jobs they hate are unknowingly spreading a meme that keeps the ruling class in power. It ensures that the working class is too busy doing pointless box-ticking to incite the political inertia needed to change their circumstances. -Another example of this is people who criticize protestors for not being at work. "Get a job!" they shout. If you go to enough protests, and I've been involved in a few, then you'll probably eventually hear that phrase. I'm reminded of a relevant paragraph about Fractal Wrongness[5] from RationalWiki (CC-BY-SA 3.0): +Another example of this is people who criticize protesters for not being at work. "Get a job!" they shout. If you go to enough protests, and I've been involved in a few, then you'll probably eventually hear that phrase. I'm reminded of a relevant paragraph about Fractal Wrongness[5] from RationalWiki (CC-BY-SA 3.0): > "Debating a person who is fractally wrong leads to infinite regress, as every refutation you make of that person's opinions will lead to a rejoinder, full of half-truths, leaps of poor logic, and outright lies, which requires just as much refutation to debunk as the first one—kind of like a recursive Gish Gallop, where each point both surrounds and is surrounded by an equally wrong argument." - RationalWiki -I imagine this is what it would be like to debate the kind of person who shouts "get a job" at protestors. +I imagine this is what it would be like to debate the kind of person who shouts "get a job" at protesters. Returning to the topic of automation, people seem pessimistic about not having to work. I can understand why people don't want jobs they like to be automated, but why are people so pessimistic about not having to work jobs that are, by their own estimation, shitty, demeaning, and miserable? How can this be accounted for? @@ -82,13 +82,13 @@ Ultimately the Puritan work ethic is an attempt to divorce the purpose of labor So one of the most important questions we should ask ourselves about work is how can we increase caring and decrease suffering? There are several right answers to that question, but I'll just offer two to get started. # Democracy in the Workplace -In general, the more agency and personal freedom people have, the more their wellbeing increases. This is reflected in the desire for a democratic form of government. The idea that government is there to benefit the people, that everyone gets exactly one vote, no matter the color of their skin, sexual orientation, wealth, caste, or popularity. Democracy has become sacrosanct. +In general, the more agency and personal freedom people have, the more their well-being increases. This is reflected in the desire for a democratic form of government. The idea that government is there to benefit the people, that everyone gets exactly one vote, no matter the color of their skin, sexual orientation, wealth, caste, or popularity. Democracy has become sacrosanct. Now let's think about work again. In every job I've had except for one, I've had a boss telling me what to do. The boss gave orders, and I followed them until I was off the clock. I had zero agency and zero freedom. And as we all know, that's the most common experience for workers. -It's strange that when it comes to work, the expectation of democracy vanishes. Workplaces are essentially dictatorships where you do what the boss says for as long as the boss says to do it. If you decline, you're fired. Since non-rich people need jobs to survive, declining to follow orders isn't an option. The choice is between doing whatever you're told and dieing. +It's strange that when it comes to work, the expectation of democracy vanishes. Workplaces are essentially dictatorships where you do what the boss says for as long as the boss says to do it. If you decline, you're fired. Since non-rich people need jobs to survive, declining to follow orders isn't an option. The choice is between doing whatever you're told and dying. -And the mere fact that one can (in theory) change jobs does nothing to alleviate the problem. Almost all workplaces are structured in undemocratic command hierarchies where workers have no autonomy or ownership. The lack of agency is unescapable. +And the mere fact that one can (in theory) change jobs does nothing to alleviate the problem. Almost all workplaces are structured in undemocratic command hierarchies where workers have no autonomy or ownership. The lack of agency is inescapable. When people think their government is behaving undemocratically, they risk their lives on an insurrection. When the workplace they go to for eight hours a day five days a week is utterly undemocratic, that's just the way things are. diff --git a/content/entry/avoid-using-cryptocurrency.md b/content/entry/avoid-using-cryptocurrency.md index 6507e34..f1c8bb4 100644 --- a/content/entry/avoid-using-cryptocurrency.md +++ b/content/entry/avoid-using-cryptocurrency.md @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ date: 2021-07-18T00:00:00 draft: false --- # Cryptocurrency's Unreasonably High Energy Consumption -The criticisms I'm about to levy do not apply to every cryptocurrency. I'm only criticising the cryptocurrencies that involve high energy usage per transaction. Proof of X based cryptocurrencies where X is work, storage or some other energy-intensive process fall into this category. But I'm mostly referring to proof of work. I'm excluding proof of stake cryptocurrencies because proof of stake does not cause considerable energy usage per transaction. I'm still including non-blockchain cryptocurrencies that employ proof of work and use a high amount of energy per transaction. From now on I'll use the word "cryptocurrency" to mean only those in that high energy consumption group without further explanation. +The criticisms I'm about to levy do not apply to every cryptocurrency. I'm only criticizing the cryptocurrencies that involve high energy usage per transaction. Proof of X based cryptocurrencies where X is work, storage or some other energy-intensive process fall into this category. But I'm mostly referring to proof of work. I'm excluding proof of stake cryptocurrencies because proof of stake does not cause considerable energy usage per transaction. I'm still including non-blockchain cryptocurrencies that employ proof of work and use a high amount of energy per transaction. From now on I'll use the word "cryptocurrency" to mean only those in that high energy consumption group without further explanation. What counts as "high energy consumption" is up for debate. But even in conservative estimates, the cryptocurrency with the highest market cap, Bitcoin, still uses enough energy per transaction to power the average American home for 1 to 2 months. At a few transactions per second, that adds up to more energy usage than some countries. We can argue all day long about what counts as "high energy usage", but Bitcoin is clearly far past that point. @@ -63,7 +63,7 @@ In this case, the social issues at conflict are privacy and freedom versus energ Well unless you've been living under a rock for the past 30 years, you know that climate change poses an existential threat to life on earth. In order to avoid climate mayhem, we need to cut down our energy consumption. Avoiding using cryptocurrency is a good way to do that. So I recommend you avoid using cryptocurrency wherever possible. But I'd like to break it down a bit more than that. ## Small Website Owners -Small website owners specifically should not accept cryptocurrency donations from high energy consumption currencies. This is why I've removed my crypto donation addresses from the about page[2] of this blog. I feel that I can no longer justify including them on my blog with the extreme energy consumption they use. Including them in the first place was a mistake. Small website owners like myself are also unlikely to receive sizeable donations. So, in practice, it doesn't make much of a difference choosing not to accept crypto donations. +Small website owners specifically should not accept cryptocurrency donations from high energy consumption currencies. This is why I've removed my crypto donation addresses from the about page[2] of this blog. I feel that I can no longer justify including them on my blog with the extreme energy consumption they use. Including them in the first place was a mistake. Small website owners like myself are also unlikely to receive sizable donations. So, in practice, it doesn't make much of a difference choosing not to accept crypto donations. I still accept donations via Liberapay. I will start accepting crypto donations again only for Ethereum after it switches fully to proof of stake. It'll be popular enough that someone looking at my website might have Ethereum they want to donate and it'll be fully independent of extreme energy consumption coins. Therefore I see no reason not to accept it in the future. @@ -72,7 +72,7 @@ I encourage all small website owners to follow in my footsteps and reject crypto ### Landchad.net I am disappointed to see Luke Smith's landchad website[3] promoting cryptocurrency to small website owners. I support the goals of the website in getting more people an online existence independent of social media, but Luke should at least mention the caveat of extreme energy consumption in the crypto article. Either that or outright take down the posts about accepting cryptocurrency. I plan on contacting him about this after publishing this post. -As I mentioned in my post on Integrated Activism, I have observed the cryptocurrency space largely ignoring the effects that crypto has on energy consumption, instead focusing only on privacy and freedom. In that post, I referred to this myopic focus to the detriment of other important social causes as "tunnel vision". Landchat.net is also guilty of this. It makes no mention of energy consumption at all. The crypto community needs to do better for environmentalists. +As I mentioned in my post on Integrated Activism, I have observed the cryptocurrency space largely ignoring the effects that crypto has on energy consumption, instead focusing only on privacy and freedom. In that post, I referred to this myopic focus to the detriment of other important social causes as "tunnel vision". Landchad.net is also guilty of this. It makes no mention of energy consumption at all. The crypto community needs to do better for environmentalists. ## Other Use Cases But what if you don't run a small website? What about a large website that regularly receives crypto donations? What about other internet services? What if you heavily rely on crypto donations? What if you pay for online services using crypto? diff --git a/content/entry/avoiding-automobile-surveillance.md b/content/entry/avoiding-automobile-surveillance.md index 794ef64..1273b68 100644 --- a/content/entry/avoiding-automobile-surveillance.md +++ b/content/entry/avoiding-automobile-surveillance.md @@ -11,9 +11,9 @@ Automobiles are no exception. They've also seen increased internetification. My For this post, I want to focus on avoiding mass surveillance of automobiles. None of the recommendations in this post apply to work vehicles[6] or car rentals since you don't own those. This guide is only for your own personal vehicle. # Don't Buy a Connected Car -My first piece of advice is don't buy a connected car. By connected car I mean a car with wireless capability other than radio. Buy an old car instead. Old cars predate the connected features of new cars. Ideally buy a car that doesn't support wifi, bluetooth or cellular connections. If it has a touchscreen it's probably too new. If you need navigation, you can buy a cheap car phone mount and use your phone. +My first piece of advice is don't buy a connected car. By connected car I mean a car with wireless capability other than radio. Buy an old car instead. Old cars predate the connected features of new cars. Ideally buy a car that doesn't support Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or cellular connections. If it has a touchscreen it's probably too new. If you need navigation, you can buy a cheap car phone mount and use your phone. -If you already own a connected car, the best advice I can give is to trade it in for an old car. Until then read the owner's manual and find out how to deactivate as many of the connected features as you can. Never pair your phone with your car. Disable bluetooth and cellular connections on the car if possible. +If you already own a connected car, the best advice I can give is to trade it in for an old car. Until then read the owner's manual and find out how to deactivate as many of the connected features as you can. Never pair your phone with your car. Disable Bluetooth and cellular connections on the car if possible. # Eliminate Remote Diagnostics Unfortunately even some old vehicles have remote diagnostics systems that collect and transmit vehicle sensor data wirelessly to the dealership, insurer, manufacturer or thugs[7]. I'll cover these by category starting with the dealership. diff --git a/content/entry/avoiding-consumer-surveillance.md b/content/entry/avoiding-consumer-surveillance.md index 5759166..ba79ba1 100644 --- a/content/entry/avoiding-consumer-surveillance.md +++ b/content/entry/avoiding-consumer-surveillance.md @@ -25,12 +25,12 @@ However, it makes more sense to use a credit or debit card for airline tickets a Despite always paying cash and never explicitly identifying yourself, big retailers can still identify you through more intrusive means of surveillance. I've already hinted at this in talking about disloyalty programs. ## Facial Recognition Technology -Surveillance cameras combined with facial recognition technology can uniquely identify you and the items you buy. The best way to combat this is to find smaller stores that don't have surveillance cameras. It's also not a bad idea to let the store owner or management know you choose their store over big retailers because they offer more privacy. If that's not practical for you, then be sure to wear a mask in the big retailers and a hat that covers your face from overhead cameras. One of the few good things that has come from Covid-19 is that it's now socially acceptable to wear masks inside stores. Wearing a mask simultaneously makes you harder to identify by facial recognition technology and prevents the spread of coronavirus. +Surveillance cameras combined with facial recognition technology can uniquely identify you and the items you buy. The best way to combat this is to find smaller stores that don't have surveillance cameras. It's also not a bad idea to let the store owner or management know you choose their store over big retailers because they offer more privacy. If that's not practical for you, then be sure to wear a mask in the big retailers and a hat that covers your face from overhead cameras. One of the few good things that has come from Covid-19 is that it's now socially acceptable to wear masks inside stores. Wearing a mask simultaneously makes you harder to identify by facial recognition technology and prevents the spread of Coronavirus. There are other ways you can be deanonymized through video surveillance besides facial recognition, but there's not much you can do about them. For that reason, I'm not going to cover them. Just know that they exist and that they have to be addressed through political action, not personal choices. -## Wifi Location Tracking -The other way that big retailers have become more invasive is through wifi location tracking of your smartphone. Your phone emits wifi signals to determine which wireless networks are available nearby. The person operating the retailer's wifi network can use those signals to track your movements within the store. It's profitable to collect your movement data, so you should assume that retailers are doing it. Your phone also has a MAC address[14] which can uniquely identify you, especially if your phone doesn't randomize it. Other wireless protocols that you leave activated on your phone might also be able to be misused by the retailer to track your movements. To avoid location tracking altogether, you can fully power down your phone before you enter the store. If that isn't good enough for you, another option is placing your phone inside a faraday bag[15]. Be sure to test it out before you use it though. +## Wi-Fi Location Tracking +The other way that big retailers have become more invasive is through Wi-Fi location tracking of your smartphone. Your phone emits Wi-Fi signals to determine which wireless networks are available nearby. The person operating the retailer's Wi-Fi network can use those signals to track your movements within the store. It's profitable to collect your movement data, so you should assume that retailers are doing it. Your phone also has a MAC address[14] which can uniquely identify you, especially if your phone doesn't randomize it. Other wireless protocols that you leave activated on your phone might also be able to be misused by the retailer to track your movements. To avoid location tracking altogether, you can fully power down your phone before you enter the store. If that isn't good enough for you, another option is placing your phone inside a Faraday bag[15]. Be sure to test it out before you use it though. # Anonymous Online Shopping We have grown accustomed to the luxury of having whatever we want show up at our doorstep with the click of a button. It's hard to say no when you've gotten so used to it. For those who really don't want to give up online shopping, I'm going to write a guide on how to anonymously buy and sell goods online. There's a few different methods for 100% anonymous online shopping. Some of them get very involved, so I'm going to save all the details for another post. See ya next time! diff --git a/content/entry/back-up-your-data.md b/content/entry/back-up-your-data.md index 468f63f..088a250 100644 --- a/content/entry/back-up-your-data.md +++ b/content/entry/back-up-your-data.md @@ -44,21 +44,21 @@ For one, you have to trust the cloud service's security practices. If they get c Another risk is that the data is modified either intentionally or by error. Encrypting the data will not prevent it from being modified maliciously. For that, you need authenticated encryption. Also, you may be limited on monthly bandwidth or file storage capacity. If you store a lot of data, that could quickly become expensive. -Using a cloud service provider, you can only access your data at their leasure. Hopefully their system has good uptime. This usually isn't a big problem. But they will also have full control over how you access your data. They might only allow you to access it over a web portal. You'll want to make sure they run a service you can access using only free software such as Nextcloud[3] or Etesync[4]. Preferably, they give you many ways to access it so you aren't locked in to a particular client program. +Using a cloud service provider, you can only access your data at their leisure. Hopefully their system has good uptime. This usually isn't a big problem. But they will also have full control over how you access your data. They might only allow you to access it over a web portal. You'll want to make sure they run a service you can access using only free software such as Nextcloud[3] or Etesync[4]. Preferably, they give you many ways to access it so you aren't locked in to a particular client program. # How to Backup? Now that I've covered the 5 W's (why, what, when, where, who), I'll cover the most important aspect of backups: How to do them. There is an endless list of software that can help with backups. One good rule is you should always use free software[5] for your backups. Never use proprietary software[6] for any part of the backup process. There's no reason for it and it will compromise your backup security. ## Offsite Backup -The first part of the backup process is to decide which data you want to store. Then, you should decide how you want to handle the remote backup. If you use a VPS, you control how you access your data, but all other caveats still apply. On a VPS, you can host your own service for the remote backup. As I said, there are a thousand ways to do this depending on your needs. If you like to keep it barebones, you can run a simple ssh server. If you are hosting a backup for more than just yourself, you may want to use an actual backup platform such as Nextcloud. There are several OS's that are built for the express purpose of backups from FreeNAS[7] to OpenMediaVault[8]. It doesn't really matter which you choose as long as it's meets your needs and runs free software. +The first part of the backup process is to decide which data you want to store. Then, you should decide how you want to handle the remote backup. If you use a VPS, you control how you access your data, but all other caveats still apply. On a VPS, you can host your own service for the remote backup. As I said, there are a thousand ways to do this depending on your needs. If you like to keep it bare bones, you can run a simple ssh server. If you are hosting a backup for more than just yourself, you may want to use an actual backup platform such as Nextcloud. There are several OS's that are built for the express purpose of backups from FreeNAS[7] to OpenMediaVault[8]. It doesn't really matter which you choose as long as it's meets your needs and runs free software. ## Encryption Once you have your offsite service set up, it's time to perform the backup. The first thing you'll want to do before anything else is encrypt your data. For most people, you'll want to use Veracrypt[9]. It's user friendly and cross-platform. For a guide on how to use Veracrypt, follow the beginner's tutorial[10]. Other encryption programs require using the command-line, decrypting the data to disk before reading it, or only work on GNU/Linux. For those reasons I won't use them in this tutorial. However, if you feel comfortable using LUKS or GPG, go ahead. Just know the trade-offs. -This next step is optional, but I recommend it. Veracrypt does not perform authenticated encryption. Your data is still encrypted, but it could be maliciously changed by an attacker and Veracrypt won't know about it. The best way to prevent this is with an HMAC. On GNU/Linux, you can do this with a single command as long as you have openssl installed. It doesn't seem as easy to perform on other platforms. For your HMAC password, you can reuse your Veracrypt volume password. Copy the resulting HMAC value, then save it to a text file next to your Veracrypt container file. It should also go into your backups. When you retrieve your backups later, you can perform the HMAC operation on the downloaded container file checking that the result matches the value you saved before. This provides you file integrity. At this point, I recommend deleting unencrypted copies of your data on disk since there's no good reason to have them around. +This next step is optional, but I recommend it. Veracrypt does not perform authenticated encryption. Your data is still encrypted, but it could be maliciously changed by an attacker and Veracrypt won't know about it. The best way to prevent this is with an HMAC. On GNU/Linux, you can do this with a single command as long as you have Openssl installed. It doesn't seem as easy to perform on other platforms. For your HMAC password, you can reuse your Veracrypt volume password. Copy the resulting HMAC value, then save it to a text file next to your Veracrypt container file. It should also go into your backups. When you retrieve your backups later, you can perform the HMAC operation on the downloaded container file checking that the result matches the value you saved before. This provides you file integrity. At this point, I recommend deleting unencrypted copies of your data on disk since there's no good reason to have them around. ## Finishing Up -Now your data is finally ready to go into storage. Upload the Veracrypt container file along with the HMAC text file to your remote backup system. Then copy your data onto external media such as a USB flash drive, external hard drive, or SD card. This will serve as your offline backup. You can store your third backup on the same computer you use to access and modify the data, or you can choose a different one so it's not taking up space. That's up to you. Just be sure to have at least 3 copies of your data, one of them at a remote location and one of them air-gapped. You could write a script to do the backups and check the HMAC for you. +Now your data is finally ready to go into storage. Upload the Veracrypt container file along with the HMAC text file to your remote backup system. Then copy your data onto external media such as a USB flash drive, external hard drive, or SD card. This will serve as your offline backup. You can store your third backup on the same computer you use to access and modify the data, or you can choose a different one so it's not taking up space. That's up to you. Just be sure to have at least 3 copies of your data, one of them at a remote location and one of them air gapped. You could write a script to do the backups and check the HMAC for you. Finally, you'll want to decide on your backup schedule. To add to your backup, you can simply mount your Veracrypt container and add more files. If you ever run out of space, you can always create a larger container and transfer all your data there. I hope you found this guide useful. I didn't go into as much detail as I could have about remote backup solutions, but I think I covered what needed to be covered. diff --git a/content/entry/banning-facial-recognition-isnt-enough.md b/content/entry/banning-facial-recognition-isnt-enough.md index 7a37732..e766b6c 100644 --- a/content/entry/banning-facial-recognition-isnt-enough.md +++ b/content/entry/banning-facial-recognition-isnt-enough.md @@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ The real motive for mass government surveillance such as law enforcement facial And the real motive for corporate mass surveillance is, boringly, profit. Corporations are psychopathic money-making machines and there's a very strong profit motive to conduct facial recognition surveillance of consumers. It provides them with data on consumers that has great monetary value. -Those are the real reasons behind facial recognition. Don't believe the propoganda from the government, the corporate media or the empire of the megacorporations that facial recognition surveillance is about "safety". It isn't now and never has been. +Those are the real reasons behind facial recognition. Don't believe the propaganda from the government, the corporate media or the empire of the megacorporations that facial recognition surveillance is about "safety". It isn't now and never has been. # Facial Recognition Will Become More Dangerous Stallman's Law says "Now that corporations dominate society and write the laws, each advance or change in technology is an opening for them to further restrict or mistreat its users.". Facial recognition tech is no exception. It will only improve and the government and retailers will use its advances to further suppress dissent and generate profits by invading people's privacy. @@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ Now I'm not proposing a total ban on private and public use of surveillance came It's all about giving people the freedom to decide whether they consent to surveillance or not. In today's society that freedom is disappearing fast and we need it back. There didn't used to be cameras everywhere polluting the urban and suburban landscape and we don't need them now either. They're too big of a risk. You may see this as an extreme solution, but it's not extreme. It's only far-sighted. -Looking at how facial recognition is already being used for targeted harassment of Uighurs in China, it's not hard to imagine ways in which improved facial recognition technology and other dangerous A.I. could worsen the situation. We need to preemptively stop things like this from happening by more strictly regulating what surveillance cameras are allowed to surveil. Private citizens may still record things in public. My objection isn't to that. It's to persistent, mass scale video surveillance of large public or private areas where people more or less have to be or would strongly desire to be (e.g. at a park or at work). +Looking at how facial recognition is already being used for targeted harassment of Uyghurs in China, it's not hard to imagine ways in which improved facial recognition technology and other dangerous A.I. could worsen the situation. We need to preemptively stop things like this from happening by more strictly regulating what surveillance cameras are allowed to surveil. Private citizens may still record things in public. My objection isn't to that. It's to persistent, mass scale video surveillance of large public or private areas where people more or less have to be or would strongly desire to be (e.g. at a park or at work). ## The Free Market Can't Fix It The reason I'm suggesting government involvement is the free market can't solve the surveillance problem especially when consumers can't afford to shop elsewhere or they live too far. Not to mention free market incentives are what created the problem in the first place. Even if there weren't monopolies preventing competition (e.g. a private versus surveilled shop), that would do nothing to stop employee surveillance. You may be able to choose where you shop, but you can't just decide not to work. That's why there ought to be a generalized law limiting corporate and government ability to use surveillance cameras. diff --git a/content/entry/book-waking-up.md b/content/entry/book-waking-up.md index 22877be..9012e8e 100644 --- a/content/entry/book-waking-up.md +++ b/content/entry/book-waking-up.md @@ -11,9 +11,9 @@ When someone holds a false belief, especially if it's a core belief, they are li The converse is also true. When someone holds true core beliefs, they're usually right about concomitant truths as well. I'm vastly oversimplifying and I could mention many caveats but that's generally the case. On several subject areas of my interest Sam Harris consistently gets it right. He's adept at navigating the pitfalls others find themselves trapped in when talking about spirituality. Sometimes I learn completely new information from him but I also find that he often expounds on my own thoughts better than I can. I hope I will eventually be as articulate on this blog as he is in his writing. Nonetheless I don't agree with him about everything and I also don't desire for my own voice to be identical to his. # Waking Up -When it comes to introducing spirituality to atheists and skeptics, Waking Up is the book to read. I've read it and reread it and I couldn't find any unsupported claims. It's expressive, relevant and intelligible to sincere truthseekers. Waking Up elaborates on the self in a clearer, more comprehensible way than my own[3] past attempts[4]. It mentions the idea of headlessness which I've also talked about before[5]. So before you read anything from other popular spiritual authors, I'd recommend reading Waking Up first. It gives the broader context that other books on spirituality leave out. +When it comes to introducing spirituality to atheists and skeptics, Waking Up is the book to read. I've read it and reread it and I couldn't find any unsupported claims. It's expressive, relevant and intelligible to sincere truth seekers. Waking Up elaborates on the self in a clearer, more comprehensible way than my own[3] past attempts[4]. It mentions the idea of headlessness which I've also talked about before[5]. So before you read anything from other popular spiritual authors, I'd recommend reading Waking Up first. It gives the broader context that other books on spirituality leave out. -Waking Up is a refreshing, rational middleground on spirituality avoiding both denial of spiritual experiences[6] by skeptics and mystical woo-woo[7] peddled by Deepak Chopra[8] and other pseudointellectuals. I recommend it to anyone remotely interested in spirituality. +Waking Up is a refreshing, rational middle ground on spirituality avoiding both denial of spiritual experiences[6] by skeptics and mystical woo-woo[7] peddled by Deepak Chopra[8] and other pseudointellectuals. I recommend it to anyone remotely interested in spirituality. [Link below] https://samharris.org/books/waking-up[9] diff --git a/content/entry/breaking-my-promise.md b/content/entry/breaking-my-promise.md index 712cb38..c96fbf6 100644 --- a/content/entry/breaking-my-promise.md +++ b/content/entry/breaking-my-promise.md @@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ title: "Breaking My Promise" date: 2021-12-02T00:00:00 draft: false --- -Towards the end of July, I promised to quit flying until the climate crisis was averted and until the TSA stopped groping passengers.[1] As it turns out, that was a commitment I couldn't keep. I booked a flight. Since I made the commitment very publically, I don't think it's fair not to write an update after breaking it. I'm not perfect. I suppose the lesson here if there is one is that I shouldn't publically make commitments that I'm not certain I can keep. +Towards the end of July, I promised to quit flying until the climate crisis was averted and until the TSA stopped groping passengers.[1] As it turns out, that was a commitment I couldn't keep. I booked a flight. Since I made the commitment very publicly, I don't think it's fair not to write an update after breaking it. I'm not perfect. I suppose the lesson here if there is one is that I shouldn't publicly make commitments that I'm not certain I can keep. Although I still fly, the silver lining is I've made a different personal decision which drastically reduces my net emissions orders of magnitude more than not flying: I'm not having kids. Not having children may be my second best contribution to humanity besides this journal. I'm not 100% committing to this, but I estimate a very high probability that I won't have children. Especially because there's many reasons I don't want children besides just the climate, such as not becoming a slave to people with money. diff --git a/content/entry/bringing-civility-to-public-discourse-with-the-steel-man-technique.md b/content/entry/bringing-civility-to-public-discourse-with-the-steel-man-technique.md index a1e9748..576735e 100644 --- a/content/entry/bringing-civility-to-public-discourse-with-the-steel-man-technique.md +++ b/content/entry/bringing-civility-to-public-discourse-with-the-steel-man-technique.md @@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ The political situation in the United States right now is tense, to say the leas Therefore I feel it my duty as a citizen to do what I can to bring people together in these divided times. I don't think it's good to create consensus for the sake of it by suggesting everyone take the middle ground[5]. No, the goal is to collectively arrive at truth, which may or may not lie somewhere in the middle. So in this post I'm going to suggest a technique I think will drastically improve the public discourse which, I feel, is one of America's biggest problems right now. # The Steel Man Technique -Philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett[6] described a method for arguing with a person that holds opposing views. If you've ever heard of the straw man fallacy[7], it's just the opposite of that. With the straw man, you misrepresent your opponent's argument to make it easier to take down. With the steel man, you face the most charitable interpretation of your oppenent's argument. There are 4 steps to steelmanning as explained by Dennett: +Philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett[6] described a method for arguing with a person that holds opposing views. If you've ever heard of the straw man fallacy[7], it's just the opposite of that. With the straw man, you misrepresent your opponent's argument to make it easier to take down. With the steel man, you face the most charitable interpretation of your opponent's argument. There are 4 steps to steelmanning as explained by Dennett: 1. You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way." 2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement). diff --git a/content/entry/come-watch-me-present-at-libreplanet-2022.md b/content/entry/come-watch-me-present-at-libreplanet-2022.md index 4c38634..2f1d629 100644 --- a/content/entry/come-watch-me-present-at-libreplanet-2022.md +++ b/content/entry/come-watch-me-present-at-libreplanet-2022.md @@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ Okay, enough of the boilerplate. I haven't said a word about Haketilo on this jo Something like Haketilo has been badly needed ever since JavaScript became a full-fledged programming language several decades ago. I'm surprised something like it didn't arise sooner, but I'm happy it's here now and I'm happy to be a part of it. -I'm normally very reserved when it comes to sharing myself online in a public space. I've uploaded pre-recorded videos online before and I've presented live in-person to classroom audiences, but never on webcam in a recorded public livestream that will be made available forever. So it will be a new experience for me. We'll see how it goes. +I'm normally very reserved when it comes to sharing myself online in a public space. I've uploaded prerecorded videos online before and I've presented live in-person to classroom audiences, but never on webcam in a recorded public livestream that will be made available forever. So it will be a new experience for me. We'll see how it goes. I've been wanting to talk more about the Web on this journal for a while now. With this LibrePlanet talk, I'll kill two birds with one stone since I won't have to write an entry about it. There are other web-related talks happening at LibrePlanet this year as well. I may link to those on this journal if they cover lots of information I don't end up covering. diff --git a/content/entry/coming-out-as-autistic.md b/content/entry/coming-out-as-autistic.md index cd10c19..18ca42c 100644 --- a/content/entry/coming-out-as-autistic.md +++ b/content/entry/coming-out-as-autistic.md @@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ I coped with this by making simple things other children enjoyed more complex. I By the time I was an adolescent, I spoke on some topics like a professor. I had an age inappropriate level of knowledge about philosophy given my socioeconomic background. I liked to sit at home studying for fun. In my advanced classes, I purposely stumped teachers for amusement. I preferred to teach myself and I noticed when teachers explained things poorly. Sometimes my math homework wasn't challenging enough, so I wrote computer programs to do it for an added challenge. -I remember two instances in my high school career where the flow of conversation naturally landed on my special interests. Both times, I dominated the conversation. In precalculus, my extensive knowledge of philosophy left my peers dumbstruck. After a few moments, only one of them understood what I was saying even though I thought I was speaking plainly. +I remember two instances in my high school career where the flow of conversation naturally landed on my special interests. Both times, I dominated the conversation. In Precalculus, my extensive knowledge of philosophy left my peers dumbstruck. After a few moments, only one of them understood what I was saying even though I thought I was speaking plainly. At bowling, me and my then-girlfriend's friend were debating about religion. She was very religious. I was and still am an atheist. I'd memorized every argument and refutation. For every incorrect statement she made, I could've launched into a half an hour lecture detailing every level of her fractal wrongness. I could've made her points better than she did in my sleep. I didn't understand why my peers were so bad at basic reasoning skills and understanding certain concepts when I understood them so easily the first time. @@ -222,7 +222,7 @@ The way I was standing probably threw her off as well. Unless I make a special e I once had a neurotypical person try to explain to me how to stand normally. They explained I should cross my arms or put my weight on one foot, anything to make my stance less static. -One time I went to see a jazz band with this girl I was into. I had to wear noise cancelling headphones as I often do when I go places where there might be loud sounds. Her friends were there. One of them asked why I was wearing headphones. Instead of just telling her friends that I'm sensitive to loud noise or that I'm autistic, she lied and told them "it makes the music sound better". That relationship didn't work out. +One time I went to see a jazz band with this girl I was into. I had to wear noise canceling headphones as I often do when I go places where there might be loud sounds. Her friends were there. One of them asked why I was wearing headphones. Instead of just telling her friends that I'm sensitive to loud noise or that I'm autistic, she lied and told them "it makes the music sound better". That relationship didn't work out. ## Employment Struggles Now I'd like to talk about my employment struggles. diff --git a/content/entry/consider-death.md b/content/entry/consider-death.md index 17c958a..47b22a0 100644 --- a/content/entry/consider-death.md +++ b/content/entry/consider-death.md @@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ But one day, you will buy your last movie ticket. You'll hug a loved one for the Whenever you approach that day, if you're lucky enough to realize it's coming, you'll have a realization I've seen others on their deathbed also have. You'll realize that, day by day, you allowed your attention to be wasted on petty things when death wasn't knocking at the door. You'll regret expending so much of your attention on things that didn't matter. You'll give anything to turn back the clock, to relive your life with the clarity that you now have. But it will be too late. -There's actually a lesson to be learned here. It's possible to avoid the fate I just described. How can you get your priorities in order? How can you focus on what really matters in life __before__ you're on your deathbed? Simple. Do what most people are afraid to do. +There's actually a lesson to be learned here. It's possible to avoid the fate I just described. How can you get your priorities in order? How can you focus on what really matters in life before you're on your deathbed? Simple. Do what most people are afraid to do. Consider death. diff --git a/content/entry/dead-mans-switch.md b/content/entry/dead-mans-switch.md index 6920e79..29c18a6 100644 --- a/content/entry/dead-mans-switch.md +++ b/content/entry/dead-mans-switch.md @@ -100,7 +100,7 @@ else fi ``` -Those two scripts are the most important. Don't forget to set their permissions as executable. Next you need to decide how often you want the switch to be triggered. You can set it to be as frequent as you wish but remember if the switch isn't deactivated each time before trigger.sh runs it will publish the private key. The last thing you want is to accidentally trigger the switch. Phoenixnap.com has a great knowledgebase article[28] on using Cron. Here's an example that triggers the switch monthly at 00:00 hrs: +Those two scripts are the most important. Don't forget to set their permissions as executable. Next you need to decide how often you want the switch to be triggered. You can set it to be as frequent as you wish but remember if the switch isn't deactivated each time before trigger.sh runs it will publish the private key. The last thing you want is to accidentally trigger the switch. Phoenixnap.com has a great knowledge base article[28] on using Cron. Here's an example that triggers the switch monthly at 00:00 hrs: ```plaintext @monthly /home//trigger.sh diff --git a/content/entry/dealing-with-close-minded-people.md b/content/entry/dealing-with-close-minded-people.md index 181809d..c5d2e7a 100644 --- a/content/entry/dealing-with-close-minded-people.md +++ b/content/entry/dealing-with-close-minded-people.md @@ -76,14 +76,14 @@ If you do decide to engage such a person and you have an audience, you yourself You'll get much more respect from others being open-minded. Bystanders who don't have a strong opinion either way will be more likely to listen to you because you're open to hearing new evidence while the other person isn't. You also set a positive example for others on how to engage people, whether open-minded or close-minded. ## Have Reasonable Expectations -Also keep in mind that people seldom admit they're wrong in realtime. You can see this if you watch Anthony Magnabosco's SE videos. Usually people change their minds after retreating to the safety of solitude. Then if you're lucky, they'll openly admit they changed their mind later. It just comes down to people don't like admitting they're wrong because it feels like they're making a fool of themselves in front of others. +Also keep in mind that people seldom admit they're wrong in real time. You can see this if you watch Anthony Magnabosco's SE videos. Usually people change their minds after retreating to the safety of solitude. Then if you're lucky, they'll openly admit they changed their mind later. It just comes down to people don't like admitting they're wrong because it feels like they're making a fool of themselves in front of others. -So with that in mind, don't expect any person, open-minded or close-minded, to change their mind in realtime. Giving people time to themselves just to think about what has been said is how minds change. Long pauses give time for the other person to integrate what you've just said. There has to be some breathing room which brings me to my next point. +So with that in mind, don't expect any person, open-minded or close-minded, to change their mind in real time. Giving people time to themselves just to think about what has been said is how minds change. Long pauses give time for the other person to integrate what you've just said. There has to be some breathing room which brings me to my next point. ## Set a Stopping Point It's wise to set a stopping point. It's so easy to go on arguing with someone until you're blue in the face. What you end up doing is only triggering their psychological defense mechanisms, making them more close-minded, more unwilling to listen to you, and possibly even more entrenched in their existing belief structures[5]. -The moment you start repeating yourself or the other person repeating themself, then it's probably time to wrap up. If nothing new is being added to the conversation, what then could be the benefit of continuing? +The moment you start repeating yourself or the other person repeating themselves, then it's probably time to wrap up. If nothing new is being added to the conversation, what then could be the benefit of continuing? ## Set Boundaries Often people will want to continue arguing until they have smoke rushing out both ears and their face is as red as a tomato. They have the false notion that a consensus must be reached before they give themselves license to stop. They think that if they only repeat themselves for the 100th time, if they find the right words, they'll change your mind meanwhile they don't even consider the possibility of being wrong. diff --git a/content/entry/documentary-line-goes-up-the-problem-with-nfts.md b/content/entry/documentary-line-goes-up-the-problem-with-nfts.md index 3adc416..e1476ad 100644 --- a/content/entry/documentary-line-goes-up-the-problem-with-nfts.md +++ b/content/entry/documentary-line-goes-up-the-problem-with-nfts.md @@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ For those of you who have followed my journal for a while now, you know I've bec My cryptocurrency journey started years before I ever conceived of this journal. I was disappointed that I missed the opportunity to "invest" in Bitcoin[2] earlier, so I decided to invest in it. At the time, I was under the impression that altcoins were just Bitcoin clones. They weren't the original, so why bother with them? ## IOTA -Some time later, I realized that blockchains didn't scale. So I became enamored with IOTA's[3] cryptocurrency based on "the tangle", which is really just a decentralized acyclic graph. I naively believed all their false promises and dumped money into it. I even tried to get other people to invest. I ended up losing bigtime because I didn't pull out, even after the price dropped. I thoroughly read the whitepaper, having more understanding of the technology than most other "investors", and I started asking questions. +Some time later, I realized that blockchains didn't scale. So I became enamored with IOTA's[3] cryptocurrency based on "the tangle", which is really just a decentralized acyclic graph. I naively believed all their false promises and dumped money into it. I even tried to get other people to invest. I ended up losing big time because I didn't pull out, even after the price dropped. I thoroughly read the white paper, having more understanding of the technology than most other "investors", and I started asking questions. IOTA had a centralized coordinator, meaning that it wasn't even decentralized. I believe it still has the coordinator as of this time of writing. I joined forums asking what the plans were to remove it. I was met with vague non-answers. It was all smoke and mirrors. Eventually, after losing lots of money and realizing they had no real plan to fix the centralized coordinator, I ditched IOTA for good. diff --git a/content/entry/documentary-sicko.md b/content/entry/documentary-sicko.md index 6c4050c..a887e0d 100644 --- a/content/entry/documentary-sicko.md +++ b/content/entry/documentary-sicko.md @@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ The American healthcare system is the most needlessly complicated healthcare sys If our government-run healthcare programs aren't needlessly complicated enough with all the bureaucratic red tape then look no further than private health insurance. You can buy that directly or get it from an employer-sponsored group insurance plan. That's right. The healthcare system is unnecessarily entangled with employment in America. If you change jobs you could lose your healthcare plan. Isn't that just brilliant? Even if you directly buy healthcare not through an employer you still have to pay deductibles which can cost thousands. For example if your deductible is $3000 and you need an operation that costs $2500 your insurance won't pay for any of it. The insurance doesn't kick in until you pay over $3000. After the "policy period" it resets and you have to pay over $3000 again before your private insurance pays a nickel. All that only if you can get the private insurance to pay and of course they try to find any reason not to because it saves them money. And then after that you still might have coinsurance and copayments. ## No Healthcare -Also we can't forget the 27 million Americans that have no healthcare of any kind public or private in the middle of a pandemic. To make matters worse the US has no federally mandated paid sick leave and most states don't have it either. So if you're poor you get to make the choice between putting food on the table and potentially infecting others with a deadly virus and risking your own health. Being uninsured makes you always financially vulnerable. You're always 1 medical emergency away from bankcruptcy or drowning in medical expenses you'll have to slave away to pay off for the next 2 decades. And that's not even counting the underinsured. +Also we can't forget the 27 million Americans that have no healthcare of any kind public or private in the middle of a pandemic. To make matters worse the US has no federally mandated paid sick leave and most states don't have it either. So if you're poor you get to make the choice between putting food on the table and potentially infecting others with a deadly virus and risking your own health. Being uninsured makes you always financially vulnerable. You're always 1 medical emergency away from bankruptcy or drowning in medical expenses you'll have to slave away to pay off for the next 2 decades. And that's not even counting the underinsured. # Sicko Every other major country on earth guarantees healthcare access to every citizen. It's morally incomprehensible that in the year 2021 the US still hasn't universalized healthcare. diff --git a/content/entry/dont-call-people-homophobic-transphobic-or-islamophobic.md b/content/entry/dont-call-people-homophobic-transphobic-or-islamophobic.md index bbcd0df..7c27d76 100644 --- a/content/entry/dont-call-people-homophobic-transphobic-or-islamophobic.md +++ b/content/entry/dont-call-people-homophobic-transphobic-or-islamophobic.md @@ -5,13 +5,13 @@ draft: false --- The suffix "phobia" implies an irrational fear of something. If you have arachnophobia, that means you have an irrational fear of spiders. It doesn't mean you're ideologically opposed to spiders. That's why I don't like the words homophobia, transphobia, or islamophobia. Despite their suffix, those words aren't used to mean irrational fear. They indicate dislike and hatred, which isn't the same thing at all. -It's possible to fear something or be uncomfortable with it without being against it. Radical social justice warriors (SJWs) ignore this distinction and act as if being uncomfortable around or afraid of homosexuals, trans people, and muslims is equivalent to being anti-gay, anti-trans, and anti-muslim. Fear and hate often do go together, but they don't necessarily. +It's possible to fear something or be uncomfortable with it without being against it. Radical social justice warriors (SJWs) ignore this distinction and act as if being uncomfortable around or afraid of homosexuals, trans people, and muslims is equivalent to being anti-gay, anti-trans, and anti-Muslim. Fear and hate often do go together, but they don't necessarily. SJWs conflate fear/disgust and hate at their own peril. People are labeled anti-gay just because they don't like to see two men kissing. We lose people who would otherwise be in support of homosexuality because the only people they can turn towards for understanding are people who actually hate gays. To clear this confusion up, we should use the suffixes "ism" and "ist" instead of "phobia". Instead of saying "homophobic" to mean "gay-hating", we should use the terms "antihomosexualist", "antihomosexualism", or simply "antigay" instead. For opposition to trans rights, we can use "antitransgenderist", "antitransgenderism", or simply "antitrans". -The word "islamophobia" is doubly misleading. Despite the prefix "islam", it actually means anti-muslim. Islam is a despicable religion that decent people should ideologically oppose.[1] Being anti-Islam is totally different from being anti-muslim. So I propose the terms "antimuslimism" and "antimuslimist" instead. +The word "islamophobia" is doubly misleading. Despite the prefix "islam", it actually means anti-Muslim. Islam is a despicable religion that decent people should ideologically oppose.[1] Being anti-Islam is totally different from being anti-Muslim. So I propose the terms "antimuslimism" and "antimuslimist" instead. Language affects how we think[2], so we should be careful what words we include in our vocabulary. Are there any other words we should change? Let me know what you think. diff --git a/content/entry/dont-record-others-without-permission.md b/content/entry/dont-record-others-without-permission.md index 4934729..e4bc6f8 100644 --- a/content/entry/dont-record-others-without-permission.md +++ b/content/entry/dont-record-others-without-permission.md @@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ We've lost the right to personal privacy to a large extent thanks to the ever-ex # How it used to be This is very recent history so many of you reading this will have similar experiences. When I was in early primary school most people had dumb phones. They didn't have mobile phones with a built-in camera. From early primary school to middle and high school (in the United States) I watched smartphones with cameras become increasingly common and eventually got one myself. Not only were there more cameras, but their audio and video quality improved dramatically. It wasn't vague blurry media any more. Rewatching a recording was as if you were there yourself. -People don't consider how big of a deal this is. Before camera phones, if there was a fight or some other incident in a school cafeteria, only that lunch group saw it. Actually only the few students crowded closely around even got a good look at it until school staff broke it up. That lunch group would tell their friends about it who told their friends and so on. Details of the fight would get added on, ommitted and changed as the gossip spread. Only the few students that watched it were sure of what happened. The rest was hearsay. There was no video recording. It didn't end up on social media. The students were disciplined and that was the end of that. That degree of privacy has been lost. +People don't consider how big of a deal this is. Before camera phones, if there was a fight or some other incident in a school cafeteria, only that lunch group saw it. Actually only the few students crowded closely around even got a good look at it until school staff broke it up. That lunch group would tell their friends about it who told their friends and so on. Details of the fight would get added on, omitted and changed as the gossip spread. Only the few students that watched it were sure of what happened. The rest was hearsay. There was no video recording. It didn't end up on social media. The students were disciplined and that was the end of that. That degree of privacy has been lost. # How it is now If the same incident happened today, consider how it might be different. Now there's a fair chance a student might have pulled out their high-resolution smartphone camera, recorded the incident and shared it until it ended up on social media where the corporate surveillance state would pick it up. There would be a perfect digital copy of what transpired that day, shared with the whole world. It might hurt future employment prospects of either student. It could follow either student across schools should they attend a different school. School administrators could try to get students to take the video down, but they could never be certain all the copies were deleted. @@ -24,11 +24,11 @@ I don't have a perfect solution for what to do about this, but it's clearly less # Social Norm 1 It would be extremely dangerous for the government to strictly regulate what citizens are allowed to record. Perhaps a better way to mitigate the privacy problem caused by everyone having mobile smartphones with cameras on their person is to make it a strict social taboo to record others without their permission. To record another person having a bad day or distressed or shouting things they don't mean out of pure frustration and send it to others or upload it online for internet points is perverse, even if said person is in the wrong. People change. People improve. But that footage won't reflect that and it lasts forever. How would you like for the rest of your life to be about the worst thing you ever said or did? Would that be just? -Of course there would be many exceptional circumstances. Video recordings are sometimes important. Police officers and public officials should be subject to recording just as covert investigations may require recording others without their knowledge or consent. What should happen to the recording after an investigation concludes for example is equally deserving of its own discussion and has been discussed by groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation[1] in the context of police bodycams[2]. Then there are cases where recording others is important, but there are steps that should be taken before the footage is shared with anyone. Media coverage of protests is vital, but video footage can be used to identify the protestors. At a minimum, faces and identifiable markings should be blurred out to protect protestor identities. +Of course there would be many exceptional circumstances. Video recordings are sometimes important. Police officers and public officials should be subject to recording just as covert investigations may require recording others without their knowledge or consent. What should happen to the recording after an investigation concludes for example is equally deserving of its own discussion and has been discussed by groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation[1] in the context of police body cams[2]. Then there are cases where recording others is important, but there are steps that should be taken before the footage is shared with anyone. Media coverage of protests is vital, but video footage can be used to identify the protesters. At a minimum, faces and identifiable markings should be blurred out to protect protester identities. So that's one side of the equation. Society needs a taboo against recording people without permission except under extenuating circumstances. The norm should be not to record people without permission, where permission means informed consent. If you lie about the reasons you want to record someone or what you plan to do with the recording, you've obtained bastardized consent, not real informed consent. There can't be informed consent if the other party isn't informed. -One last note about consent to record someone is that it's very tricky if you're in a position of power over the other person. In some circumstances it may not even be possible for the other person to be fully informed. Alzheimer's patients can't give ongoing informed consent because they forget why they're being recorded. Recording a person with Schizoaffective disorder or Dissassociative Identity Disorder is also highly suspect. In what sense is it consent if a person doesn't have an accurate model of the world? Is it really consent if the person being recorded isn't the same person that gave consent? These are tough questions and there are no easy answers. +One last note about consent to record someone is that it's very tricky if you're in a position of power over the other person. In some circumstances it may not even be possible for the other person to be fully informed. Alzheimer's patients can't give ongoing informed consent because they forget why they're being recorded. Recording a person with Schizoaffective disorder or Dissociative Identity Disorder is also highly suspect. In what sense is it consent if a person doesn't have an accurate model of the world? Is it really consent if the person being recorded isn't the same person that gave consent? These are tough questions and there are no easy answers. Mental illnesses aren't the only reason informed consent can be impossible. It might be impossible if there's a large knowledge gap between the person recording and the person being recorded. Take Facecrook for instance. The average person has absolutely no idea how powerful Facecrook's A.I. systems (or their data brokers' A.I. systems) can get. It was used to manipulate an entire election it's so powerful, but the average Facecrook user has no clue how that could even be accomplished and can't even hope to understand those systems. Is that really informed consent? Some people have argued it was okay for Facecrook to manipulate the U.S. election in 2016, morally speaking, because the users clicked "I agree" years ago when they made their account. That's so absurd. 99% of Facecrook users couldn't have possibly known what Cambridge Analytica did was possible or the implications of it. It's especially not informed consent if you know the person whose data you're collecting can't understand the full implications of how it's used. diff --git a/content/entry/dont-rely-exclusively-on-a-vpn-for-online-privacy-and-security.md b/content/entry/dont-rely-exclusively-on-a-vpn-for-online-privacy-and-security.md index e5da491..7ab82f0 100644 --- a/content/entry/dont-rely-exclusively-on-a-vpn-for-online-privacy-and-security.md +++ b/content/entry/dont-rely-exclusively-on-a-vpn-for-online-privacy-and-security.md @@ -17,14 +17,14 @@ VPN stands for virtual private network. The type of VPN that you see ads for are ### Online Privacy Even with a VPN, websites can uniquely identify you through browser fingerprinting, cookies, tracking pixels, and other means. So even though your ISP is in the dark, every website you visit can still figure out who's visiting. VPNs only hide your IP address. They cannot protect you from application layer surveillance. -If you're the average person, the vast majority of data collected about you is only able to be collected because of decisions you made. You bought a Windows or Mac machine for your main personal computer. You installed proprietary programs. You bought a spyware-laden vendor spinoff of Android. VPNs can't stop you from making bad choices. +If you're the average person, the vast majority of data collected about you is only able to be collected because of decisions you made. You bought a Windows or Mac machine for your main personal computer. You installed proprietary programs. You bought a spyware-laden vendor spin-off of Android. VPNs can't stop you from making bad choices. VPNs are useful for certain things. They're just not the magic bullet for privacy they're made out to be. In fact, if I made a list of the top five things one can do to increase their online privacy, using a VPN wouldn't even make the list. ### Digital Security VPNs also aren't a magic bullet for digital security. Some common ways people get hacked are social engineering, data breaches, weak/reused passwords with no two-factor authentication, and downloading things they shouldn't. VPNs don't stop any of those attacks. -VPNs do prevent a relatively common attack vector which is the man in the middle attack (MITM) over wi-fi. However, most of the time, people are using the Web and nearly all websites support secure connections. Any halfway decent browser will tell you when you're connecting over an insecure connection and not to enter any login credentials. That thwarts wi-fi MITM attacks and even with a VPN, you ought to heed that warning. You don't need a VPN to prevent MITM attacks. +VPNs do prevent a relatively common attack vector which is the man in the middle attack (MITM) over Wi-Fi. However, most of the time, people are using the Web and nearly all websites support secure connections. Any halfway decent browser will tell you when you're connecting over an insecure connection and not to enter any login credentials. That thwarts Wi-Fi MITM attacks and even with a VPN, you ought to heed that warning. You don't need a VPN to prevent MITM attacks. ## What VPNs Are Good For VPNs are still good for a number of other things. I live in the United States, a country heavily engaged in the War on Sharing[3]. I use a VPN to torrent and prevent my ISP from throttling my connection. VPNs can also be used to get around region-locked content and bypass censorship. diff --git a/content/entry/dont-use-github.md b/content/entry/dont-use-github.md index 3979930..6cb8d06 100644 --- a/content/entry/dont-use-github.md +++ b/content/entry/dont-use-github.md @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ date: 2021-05-31T00:00:00 draft: false --- # Why is Free Software Being Hosted on Github??? -Free software being hosted on Github as its main repository is a downright embarrassment to the very principles free software is supposed to stand for. Github is a proprietary platform. Important site features can't work without proprietary Javascript running in the browser. The backend code for Github is completely proprietary. And it's owned by Micro$oft, one of the largest megacorps to ever exist whose CEO once called GNU/Linux a "cancer" and only changed his tune when he realized there was money to be made. +Free software being hosted on Github as its main repository is a downright embarrassment to the very principles free software is supposed to stand for. Github is a proprietary platform. Important site features can't work without proprietary JavaScript running in the browser. The backend code for Github is completely proprietary. And it's owned by Micro$oft, one of the largest megacorps to ever exist whose CEO once called GNU/Linux a "cancer" and only changed his tune when he realized there was money to be made. You can see more criticism of Github here: [Tom Ryder's Blog](https://sanctum.geek.nz/why-not-github.html) @@ -14,11 +14,11 @@ As a user of software and someone that occasionally writes software, I have a lo Having a single large megacorp whose primary business model is diametrically opposed to free software being the largest code host for free software is almost too dumb. Micro$oft is the worst possible entity to entrust to run the platform where you manage development of your free software projects. If you're using Github to host your code, migrate elsewhere immediately. # Other Code Repositories -If you choose to migrate to Gitlab.com, that's still pretty centralized since it's one of the largest code hosting platforms. But at least Gitlab doesn't require non-free Javascript, its backend is fully free and it's not owned by Micro$oft. Also, self-hosting is very easy if you have the resources. I recommend reading the GNU repo criteria evaluation page before you make your choice where to migrate: +If you choose to migrate to Gitlab.com, that's still pretty centralized since it's one of the largest code hosting platforms. But at least Gitlab doesn't require non-free JavaScript, its backend is fully free and it's not owned by Micro$oft. Also, self-hosting is very easy if you have the resources. I recommend reading the GNU repo criteria evaluation page before you make your choice where to migrate: [https://www.gnu.org/software/repo-criteria-evaluation.html](https://www.gnu.org/software/repo-criteria-evaluation.html) # Harm Reduction -I can't recommend Github since it requires non-free Javascript, but if you're going to use it anyway, don't use it for project management. At the most, use it as a backup to mirror your code hosted on a different, ethical repository. But don't rely on it otherwise. It's the last place you should trust with your code. +I can't recommend Github since it requires non-free JavaScript, but if you're going to use it anyway, don't use it for project management. At the most, use it as a backup to mirror your code hosted on a different, ethical repository. But don't rely on it otherwise. It's the last place you should trust with your code. # Take Action! I really hope you don't just agree with me and go on using Github anyway. Please don't do that. Take action! Even if you've been managing your repository on Github and you have dozens of issues and pull requests, making the transition will be worth the effort. It shows your commitment to software freedom and says to the other developers "Github is not an acceptable place for a free software project". For most of you reading this, the process of migrating all your code won't take more than an hour. Just pick a different, freedom-respecting platform to host your code and go get it done! diff --git a/content/entry/doublethink.md b/content/entry/doublethink.md index 53ca802..b97c556 100644 --- a/content/entry/doublethink.md +++ b/content/entry/doublethink.md @@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ draft: false # Quick Note As a quick note, what people post online is often taken as something they will forever agree with and are forever held to. This is unreasonable. There needs to be some equivalent of forgiveness if one posts something horrible online, but that's a topic for another post. I'm not saying people aren't responsible for what they post. But I am saying we should aspire to take the most charitable interpretation of what people post if we care about advancing the conversation. Obviously a person's character is a factor in how you interpret what they post. -On my blog, I want to retain the right to post not only ideas that I understand well. But I also want the freedom to talk about things I'm not sure about. That means I run the risk of being wrong. No one posting their ideas online openly should expect to be immune to criticism. Criticism comes with the territory. But I want to say I'm interested in sharing ideas. If it's clear to me you're only interested in taking my words out of context, twisting what I write or using cheap gotcha's because I didn't state something perfectly, then I probably won't respond. If you want clarification about anything I discuss, visit my about page[1] for contact details. With that cleared up, let's move on to the meat of this post. +On my blog, I want to retain the right to post not only ideas that I understand well. But I also want the freedom to talk about things I'm not sure about. That means I run the risk of being wrong. No one posting their ideas online openly should expect to be immune to criticism. Criticism comes with the territory. But I want to say I'm interested in sharing ideas. If it's clear to me you're only interested in taking my words out of context, twisting what I write or using cheap gotchas because I didn't state something perfectly, then I probably won't respond. If you want clarification about anything I discuss, visit my about page[1] for contact details. With that cleared up, let's move on to the meat of this post. # Caring What Others Think Most people are going around supremely concerned with what other people think of them. People convince themselves they don't care about what others think, almost as a badge of honor. If someone tells you this, express disbelief as a test. If they insist they don't care, then you might say they care enough about what you think to try to convince you that they don't. If I get any emails from people who insist they don't, I'll probably find it funny because it only serves to further my point. Humans are social animals. It's pretty well baked into all of us to be concerned with what other people think. Our brains have the capacity for theory of mind not by accident. It keeps us all in check so to speak. This is especially true if you're around a lot of people, in a densely populated city like NYC for example. You literally have less room to think without the input of others. @@ -43,9 +43,9 @@ Society has taught as that being a psychopath is a very bad thing to be. It has I'm not saying don't be a good person. If you really want the best for everyone, then feel free to promote goodness in the world. But if there are people you can't empathize with, that you can't relate to, then don't pretend to. Maybe try talking to them to get their perspective. It is yet another form of doublethink to feel that you must have compassion for all people. Entertain the idea that disliking people is okay. Maybe it is not a good guide to what you should do in regard to that person, but it's important that you accept your dislike of them, and not force yourself to like them. It's true that one can cultivate compassion for even someone who did horrible things like Ted Bundy or Hitler. But there is no "contest" of who can be the most compassionate person. ## Being Nonjudgemental -There is the idea that you shouldn't judge other people. "Don't judge" and "Love, not hate". Being judgemental is seen as a bad thing. What I think this means more precisely is not to look down on other people for the way they are or their actions. But this is doublethink at its finest. Because in the command "Don't judge", there is an assumption that judging is not a good thing to do. So if you believe in not judging others, then you cannot judge the judgemental either. +There is the idea that you shouldn't judge other people. "Don't judge" and "Love, not hate". Being judgmental is seen as a bad thing. What I think this means more precisely is not to look down on other people for the way they are or their actions. But this is doublethink at its finest. Because in the command "Don't judge", there is an assumption that judging is not a good thing to do. So if you believe in not judging others, then you cannot judge the judgmental either. -Another reason this idea of not judging doesn't make sense is that you can't not judge others. It's not voluntary in any sense. It is not always appropriate to vocalize your judgement, but you cannot stop yourself from judging. It's easy for me to point out someone like Kim Jong Un that everyone judges to be a bad human being. But you may meet someone with Tourette Syndrome and think to yourself, "Wow, their verbal tics are really annoying. Why can't they shut up"? And next you think "I'm not supposed to feel that way. I know they can't help it. What's wrong with me"? This encapsulates the essence of doublethink. You feel like you're not allowed to find it annoying because the disabled can't help it. +Another reason this idea of not judging doesn't make sense is that you can't not judge others. It's not voluntary in any sense. It is not always appropriate to vocalize your judgment, but you cannot stop yourself from judging. It's easy for me to point out someone like Kim Jong Un that everyone judges to be a bad human being. But you may meet someone with Tourette Syndrome and think to yourself, "Wow, their verbal tics are really annoying. Why can't they shut up"? And next you think "I'm not supposed to feel that way. I know they can't help it. What's wrong with me"? This encapsulates the essence of doublethink. You feel like you're not allowed to find it annoying because the disabled can't help it. ## First-Hand Story So far, this post has been very philosophical. So, I want to add in a personal story for concreteness. I once overheard a conversation between a student and a professor in his office. She was studying accounting. And she was absolutely struggling with it. She ended up audibly upset and crying about it. She didn't want to disappoint her parents by doing something else. I don't know how far along she was in her degree, but that gave me the impression that she already invested some effort into it. She hated accounting, but felt like that's what she had to do because of family pressure. This is a very common thing in my experience. Many students study just to avoid disappointing family, their main motivation not really being to learn. In her case though, it seemed like she just didn't like accounting. @@ -63,9 +63,9 @@ The fear of death, I believe, is largely taught. Children learn to be afraid of Where am I going with all this? I want to invite every reader to consider something. What would happen if you simply let go of all expectations society has of you? What would happen if you gave no thought to what others think of you? What if you forgot about being a good person, loving and not hating, being happy and not sad? What would happen if you allowed yourself to feel whatever you feel, without judging it? What would happen if you allowed your thoughts, emotions, and sensations to come and go like clouds in the sky without trying to label them? Healthy or unhealthy, good or bad, acceptable or taboo? ## The Sky -The sky is simply the space in which the clouds appear and dissapate. The sky does not follow the clouds. The sky does not push the clouds away. The sky simply allows the clouds to come and go. Consciousness is where thoughts, emotions, and sensations appear and dissapate. The sensation of being identified with your thoughts, is itself a sensation arising in consciousness. From an experiential perspective, there is nowhere outside of consciousness. +The sky is simply the space in which the clouds appear and dissipate. The sky does not follow the clouds. The sky does not push the clouds away. The sky simply allows the clouds to come and go. Consciousness is where thoughts, emotions, and sensations appear and dissapate. The sensation of being identified with your thoughts, is itself a sensation arising in consciousness. From an experiential perspective, there is nowhere outside of consciousness. -You might object: "You said earlier one cannot resist caring about what others think. So how can I be like the sky if I can't stop judging my thoughts"? This is why they call it meditation practice. Non-attachment takes practice. And mindfulness meditation is one of the most effective ways to achieve that state. It's not always easy to let go, because you have been conditioned your whole life to be passionate and cling. If you can't resist judging your thoughts, then judge them. Just don't judge your judgements of your thoughts. Let your judgements of your thoughts pass like clouds in the sky. So on and so forth. With meditation, your mind will tire of thinking and judging everything all the time. You will become thoughtless. That doesn't mean you can't think when you need to. It means you won't be held hostage by the next so called negative thought you have. You can see you true nature, prior to any idea about who society has told you you are supposed to be. It is a state of nonjudgemental, pure awareness. Some people report getting the feeling that their mind is in complete harmony with all that is. +You might object: "You said earlier one cannot resist caring about what others think. So how can I be like the sky if I can't stop judging my thoughts"? This is why they call it meditation practice. Non-attachment takes practice. And mindfulness meditation is one of the most effective ways to achieve that state. It's not always easy to let go, because you have been conditioned your whole life to be passionate and cling. If you can't resist judging your thoughts, then judge them. Just don't judge your judgments of your thoughts. Let your judgments of your thoughts pass like clouds in the sky. So on and so forth. With meditation, your mind will tire of thinking and judging everything all the time. You will become thoughtless. That doesn't mean you can't think when you need to. It means you won't be held hostage by the next so called negative thought you have. You can see you true nature, prior to any idea about who society has told you you are supposed to be. It is a state of nonjudgmental, pure awareness. Some people report getting the feeling that their mind is in complete harmony with all that is. This is not a state of mind you can force. It's a state of mind that comes about naturally as you practice meditation. It relates to the Chinese term "Wu Wei[6]". "Non-action" can be seen as not acting upon the contents of consciousness, nor judging them. It doesn't mean you are completely isolated from society. To me, it means not being so involved in society that you lose who you are. Being in a state of mindlessness might sound contrary to intellectualism, but that's a misunderstanding. The opposite is true. It's easier to think when your mind isn't getting in the way. diff --git a/content/entry/ego-traps.md b/content/entry/ego-traps.md index 52e218c..ad44199 100644 --- a/content/entry/ego-traps.md +++ b/content/entry/ego-traps.md @@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ Notice that I don't say it's inaccurate, just incomplete. You can never know exa ## Thought Experiment Let's say we want to build a computer system which perfectly simulates the universe. I mean the exact state and location of every atom, every gravitational wave, etc. We won't concern ourselves about practicalities like speed, power draw, the limits of physics, or how it gets the initial state of the universe. We are going to ignore quantum randomness and locality issues like quantum entanglement. I'm sure there are other quirks of physics I don't know about, but we are going to ignore all of those and assume the universe is far more Newtonian than it is. The point of this experiment doesn't depend on the actual universe being Newtonian. It's just to demonstrate a point. -Our computer system will be located on earth. Picture an imaginary sphere around our galaxy. Outside of this sphere is what our computer simulates. It ignores the inside. The simulation gets inaccurate over time because the part which it isn't simulating (our galaxy) propogates light out at the speed of light away from us, affecting the simulation. But, since we are good system designers, we account for this. We program it so that the imaginary sphere automatically expands at the speed of light (the fastest information can travel in our universe). This means that the system does not try to simulate the slowly, ever-expanding sphere (our galaxy) in which it resides. We now have a perfectly accurate simulation of the universe, minus a relatively small expanding sphere. +Our computer system will be located on earth. Picture an imaginary sphere around our galaxy. Outside of this sphere is what our computer simulates. It ignores the inside. The simulation gets inaccurate over time because the part which it isn't simulating (our galaxy) propagates light out at the speed of light away from us, affecting the simulation. But, since we are good system designers, we account for this. We program it so that the imaginary sphere automatically expands at the speed of light (the fastest information can travel in our universe). This means that the system does not try to simulate the slowly, ever-expanding sphere (our galaxy) in which it resides. We now have a perfectly accurate simulation of the universe, minus a relatively small expanding sphere. This is working fine, so let's upgrade the system. Now, it simulates the whole universe minus earth. We use the same solution as before, making an expanding sphere around the earth which it ignores. It will only take 8 minutes until that sphere touches the sun and we can no longer simulate the sun. Soon enough, we won't be able to simulate the solar system either, and it just gets worse from there. So, we upgrade the system again. Now, it simulates a sphere outside the building in which it sits. In no time flat, we already can't simulate the earth any more. diff --git a/content/entry/encryption-is-a-timer-not-a-lock.md b/content/entry/encryption-is-a-timer-not-a-lock.md index 01b4b4d..b4cae01 100644 --- a/content/entry/encryption-is-a-timer-not-a-lock.md +++ b/content/entry/encryption-is-a-timer-not-a-lock.md @@ -29,7 +29,7 @@ We all have a reason to resist mass surveillance[3], but how can we do that when Avoiding using the internet entirely isn't practical nor desirable, but it can be practical to avoid the internet for things that really need to stay private. For instance, maybe you partake in certain activities/meetings that your current or possible future government wouldn't approve of. You know the kind. If that's you, you'd be wise to avoid using the internet for that. -I don't care if you use Signal. How do you know for certain those messages won't be decrypted in the future? Have your meetings in person, not online. Intelligencies agencies aren't made of magic. They cannot break secure protocols. But they will bug your hardware. They will use zero-day[4] exploits. And if you're really interesting, they'll use a bruteforce attack straight to your knees. +I don't care if you use Signal. How do you know for certain those messages won't be decrypted in the future? Have your meetings in person, not online. Intelligence agencies aren't made of magic. They cannot break secure protocols. But they will bug your hardware. They will use zero-day[4] exploits. And if you're really interesting, they'll use a brute force attack straight to your knees. Have your private meetings in the middle of a field without any cell phones. Prefer in-person communication over PGP[5] or Signal. Prefer conducting private transactions with cash, not Monero[6]. Despite all of today's fancy encryption, real life is still the most secure option. diff --git a/content/entry/exposing-zoom.md b/content/entry/exposing-zoom.md index 574a048..643a6ea 100644 --- a/content/entry/exposing-zoom.md +++ b/content/entry/exposing-zoom.md @@ -29,7 +29,7 @@ The section on attention tracking in the Privacy Policy explains that if the hos It's peculiar how Zoom website obviously tries to give the overwhelming impression that you can trust the software, yet it's against their terms of service to reverse engineer it and their own privacy policy shows they collect enormous amounts of data that isn't strictly necessary or relevant to video conferencing. Do they really need your MAC address or know which OS you're using? But not only does Zoom obtain data when you are using Zoom. They obtain data from you even when you are not using their service. -Their own privacy policy says they collect data about you from Google Analytics and Google Ads. Google analytics can run in your browser as Javascript that watches what you do and collects data on you as you browse the web. If you don't know how to block Javascript, Google Analytics could be watching you in the background on any website without you even knowing it's there. Zoom also collects data from "Data Enrichment Services", and public sources. This could be just about anything from your social media accounts to arrest records. One way this is done is through tracking cookies. +Their own privacy policy says they collect data about you from Google Analytics and Google Ads. Google analytics can run in your browser as JavaScript that watches what you do and collects data on you as you browse the web. If you don't know how to block JavaScript, Google Analytics could be watching you in the background on any website without you even knowing it's there. Zoom also collects data from "Data Enrichment Services", and public sources. This could be just about anything from your social media accounts to arrest records. One way this is done is through tracking cookies. # Cookies Policy On the Cookie Policy page[12], it starts off explaining how cookies work. Essentially, cookies are any data a site can store in the browser. They can persist across browsing sessions and unfortunately they are used to track you across the web. I want to pay special attention on the Cookie Policy page to the analytics subtype under functional cookies. "Zoom uses cookies and other identifiers to gather usage and performance data...This includes cookies from Zoom and from third-party analytics providers". Cookie Policy. (2020, January 1). Retrieved May 23, 2020 from Zoom, Zoom cookie policy website, https://zoom.us/cookie-policy[13][14]. Notice the important line about how they use third-party analytics providers. How is it possible for Zoom to ensure your data is protected if they use third party analytics providers of which they don't control the data? It's not. We know Zoom uses Google Analytics, and we know that Google's business model is centered around collecting data on its users and selling it for profit. @@ -41,7 +41,7 @@ There is a lot there. They collect interest-based data on you automatically. Tha "Some of our websites and Products include code snippets provided by social media companies that can sense if you are already logged into a given social media account so you can easily share Zoom content with other social media users via that account". Retrieved May 23, 2020 from Zoom, Zoom cookie policy website, https://zoom.us/cookie-policy[17][18]. This means sites like Facebook and Google know you are using Zoom services and what page you are on. Social media sites use tracking cookies to track what websites you visit. Social media sites shouldn't be allowed to know that. Nevertheless, they are found on Zoom's website and services, the videoconferencing platform that "cares about your privacy". # Third Parties -Zoom gives your data to third parties. On their subprocessors page[19], they list the following third parties which they give your data to: People.ai, Zendesk, Wootric, Totango, Answerforce, Rocket Science Group LLC, Five9, EPS Ventures, WKJ Consultancy, Salesforce, CyberSource, Adyen, Zuora, Amazon Web Services, Oracle America Inc, and Bandwidth. We will ignore the 3 third parties related to billing (CyberSource, Adyen, and Zuora) since if you're not paying Zoom it probably doesn't apply to you. That still leaves 13 subprocessors each with their own privacy policies and their own third parties. You can see very quickly how the amount of third parties your data is being shared with grows exponentially. 11 of the 13 relevant third parties are under US jurisdiction. Since the 2013 Snowden leaks[20], We know that the U.S. government performs massive dragnet surveillance on US-based companies without any oversight, so it's probably safe to say that the U.S. government is collecting Zoom data from either Zoom itself or Zoom subprocessors. +Zoom gives your data to third parties. On their sub-processors page[19], they list the following third parties which they give your data to: People.ai, Zendesk, Wootric, Totango, Answerforce, Rocket Science Group LLC, Five9, EPS Ventures, WKJ Consultancy, Salesforce, CyberSource, Adyen, Zuora, Amazon Web Services, Oracle America Inc, and Bandwidth. We will ignore the 3 third parties related to billing (CyberSource, Adyen, and Zuora) since if you're not paying Zoom it probably doesn't apply to you. That still leaves 13 sub-processors each with their own privacy policies and their own third parties. You can see very quickly how the amount of third parties your data is being shared with grows exponentially. 11 of the 13 relevant third parties are under US jurisdiction. Since the 2013 Snowden leaks[20], We know that the U.S. government performs massive dragnet surveillance on US-based companies without any oversight, so it's probably safe to say that the U.S. government is collecting Zoom data from either Zoom itself or Zoom sub-processors. # Weasel Words Here, Zoom is trying to weasel out of the fact that they are selling your data: "As described in the Zoom marketing sites section, Zoom does use certain standard advertising tools on our marketing sites which, provided you have allowed it in your cookie preferences, sends personal data to the tool providers, such as Google. This is not a “sale” of your data in the sense that most of us use the word sale...It is only with the recent developments in data privacy laws that such activities may fall within the definition of a “sale”". Retrieved May 23, 2020 from Zoom, Zoom Privacy Policy website, https://zoom.us/privacy[21][22]. @@ -53,7 +53,7 @@ This is tantamount to saying "Zoom isn't really selling customer data because cu # Citizen Lab Findings I already mentioned how Zoom must provide data to the U.S. government, a member of the Five Eyes[23]. But Zoom provides data to China as well. Citizen Lab[24], an interdisciplinary laboratory at the University of Toronto, reported several troubling findings on 3 April 2020. I'll just go over the key findings and expand on them. -Zoom claimed to use AES-256 in their security whitepaper[25], however Citizenlab found that they actually use AES-128 in ECB mode. Anyone that knows about block cipher modes knows that ECB mode is not suitable for video conferencing. Citizen Lab included the classic example of the ECB penguin[26], which is why you don't use ECB mode for large files. Any audio or video conferencing over ECB would be as secure as the penguin image on the right, not very secure. Worse yet, the encryption keys were found to be generated by Zoom servers in China even when all meeting participants were outside of China. So the Chinese authorities could get the keys and decrypt Zoom communications of children in K-12 classrooms, U.S. courts using Zoom, meetings between government officials, college students, and everyday Americans as well as non-Americans and other countries that used Zoom. +Zoom claimed to use AES-256 in their security white paper[25], however Citizenlab found that they actually use AES-128 in ECB mode. Anyone that knows about block cipher modes knows that ECB mode is not suitable for video conferencing. Citizen Lab included the classic example of the ECB penguin[26], which is why you don't use ECB mode for large files. Any audio or video conferencing over ECB would be as secure as the penguin image on the right, not very secure. Worse yet, the encryption keys were found to be generated by Zoom servers in China even when all meeting participants were outside of China. So the Chinese authorities could get the keys and decrypt Zoom communications of children in K-12 classrooms, U.S. courts using Zoom, meetings between government officials, college students, and everyday Americans as well as non-Americans and other countries that used Zoom. Citizen Lab also shows Zoom advertising their use of end-to-end encryption[27]. End-to-end encryption means only the communicating parties are able to decrypt the communication. Clearly, with the encryption keys generated on the Zoom server itself, that's not possible. Zoom can decrypt your communications. Citizen Lab also claims that they found a "serious security issue" with Zoom's waiting room feature, advising users not to use waiting rooms if they care about meeting confidentiality. @@ -61,7 +61,7 @@ Citizen Lab also shows Zoom advertising their use of end-to-end encryption[27]. On 30 March 2020, Boston FBI[28] issued a warning about using Zoom. According to the warning by Setera (30 March 2020) "The FBI has received multiple reports of conferences being disrupted by pornographic and/or hate images and threatening language". This is followed by advice of what to do to prevent Zoom-bombing. But Zoom is not innocent in this because it was possible to scan for random meetings to join. It doesn't strike me as a very useful or necessary feature. Zoom is for teleconferencing. Most meetings will have a specific purpose and the participants don't want random people joining in to disrupt the meeting. So it doesn't make sense to me why this was a feature in the first place. To make matters worse, the FBI report explains Zoom didn't have passwords enabled by default for meetings until January 2020. # Zoom's Response -It wouldn't be fair for me to criticise Zoom without also pointing out steps they have taken to address the platform's many problems. First, I want to focus on their April 1st blog post[29]. Eric S. Yuan claims (April 1, 2020) "Thousands of enterprises around the world have done exhaustive security reviews of our user, network, and data center layers and confidently selected Zoom for complete deployment". I would like a full list of these enterprises so I know not to trust their "security reviews". Frankly, 128-bit AES in ECB mode is an embarrassing rookie mistake. It basically only happens when you don't know what you're doing. Just looking at Zoom's track record of horrible security and privacy that I've outlined above, I don't see how thousands of "exhaustive security reviews" could miss so much. +It wouldn't be fair for me to criticize Zoom without also pointing out steps they have taken to address the platform's many problems. First, I want to focus on their April 1st blog post[29]. Eric S. Yuan claims (April 1, 2020) "Thousands of enterprises around the world have done exhaustive security reviews of our user, network, and data center layers and confidently selected Zoom for complete deployment". I would like a full list of these enterprises so I know not to trust their "security reviews". Frankly, 128-bit AES in ECB mode is an embarrassing rookie mistake. It basically only happens when you don't know what you're doing. Just looking at Zoom's track record of horrible security and privacy that I've outlined above, I don't see how thousands of "exhaustive security reviews" could miss so much. In that blog post, Yuan mentions the increased outreach and video tutorials. But security mistakes caused by user error are not really in the scope of this post. One of the first things the post mentions is that on March 27th, the Facebook SDK[30] was removed from the Zoom app on iOS. It's astounding to me that Yuan can claim in the same blog post detailing the removal of the Facebook SDK that (March 27, 2020) "Our customers’ privacy is incredibly important to us". This is insane. If customer privacy was important then the Facebook SDK would never ever have been in the Zoom app. Facebook is an absolute surveillance monster. The SDK spies on people that don't even use Facebook. Apps that really care about privacy don't touch anything Facebook or Google with a ten foot pole. Some information sent by the Facebook SDK was: Application bundle identifier, application instance ID, application version, device carrier, iOS advertiser ID (gross), iOS device CPU cores, iOS disk space available (why???), iOS device disk space remaining, iOS device display dimensions, iOS device model, iOS language, iOS timezone, and iOS version. This doesn't happen by accident. At some point, a developer for Zoom wrote some code for the iOS app to make it send that device information to Facebook on purpose. For a teleconferencing app, the Facebook SDK is absolutely unnecessary. Zoom only remove the SDK after being called out[31]. for it. This is an example of being reactive to security and privacy issues, not proactive. @@ -79,7 +79,7 @@ Zoom is a proprietary[38] platform. This means it is essentially a black box. As When no one except you or your organization can see the source code, there are incentives to insert malicious pieces of code that benefit you at the user's expense. Jitsi does not have the same incentive structure because it's free software[41]. Anyone with the know-how can look over the code and see if something fishy is going on. This will never be true of Zoom. Zoom has no reason to ever give away their source code and make their program trusted free software. Part of the reason I dropped out of my classes at my university was because Zoom because being forced on us students and [I refused to use it]({{< relref "the-tipping-point-rejecting-windows-zoom-lockdown-browser-and-the-lockdown-monitor.md" >}}). ## Call to Action -I'm not saying you, the reader, should go as far as I did. I'm just saying if we, as a society, want to live in a world where we are given more privacy and security in our digital lives, then we have to say no to platforms like Zoom. If we don't, we will move ever closer to some kind of dystopian surveillance hell, assuming we aren't already there. Ask yourself this question: If you don't reject these untrusted proprietary platforms with a horrible track record, then who will? How many people do you know that would reject Zoom if their boss or professor told them to use it? The demand for our digital rights back has to start somewhere, before it's too late. +I'm not saying you, the reader, should go as far as I did. I'm just saying if we, as a society, want to live in a world where we are given more privacy and security in our digital lives, then we have to say no to platforms like Zoom. If we don't, we will move ever closer to some kind of dystopian surveillance hell, assuming we aren't already there. Ask yourself this question: If you don't reject these untrustworthy proprietary platforms with a horrible track record, then who will? How many people do you know that would reject Zoom if their boss or professor told them to use it? The demand for our digital rights back has to start somewhere, before it's too late. Link(s): diff --git a/content/entry/flygskam.md b/content/entry/flygskam.md index cac8eff..fed27b2 100644 --- a/content/entry/flygskam.md +++ b/content/entry/flygskam.md @@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ Some airlines offer carbon offsets. It's debatable how effective these are in ac # Covid-19 Now you might be wondering how practical it actually is to just not fly on planes. Can society function with far less air travel? Luckily the Covid-19 pandemic has given us a clue. -Because of Covid-19, airlines cut up to 95% of their trips in April of 2020[4]. Now I don't know how sustainable that 95% is. But it at least shows that, no matter what the airline industry says, it's feasible to cut back massively on air travel. Another way of putting that is a lot of air travel going on right now is non-essential. And Covid-19 may have helped many of us frequent flyers realize that we don't actually need to fly and there are alternatives to flying. So take that into consideration next time you think about flying. +Because of Covid-19, airlines cut up to 95% of their trips in April of 2020[4]. Now I don't know how sustainable that 95% is. But it at least shows that, no matter what the airline industry says, it's feasible to cut back massively on air travel. Another way of putting that is a lot of air travel going on right now is non-essential. And Covid-19 may have helped many of us frequent fliers realize that we don't actually need to fly and there are alternatives to flying. So take that into consideration next time you think about flying. # Freedom and Privacy But maybe the environmental reason isn't good enough. After all, flying makes up less than 3% of total carbon emissions. Well if you live in the United States, I have one more bonus reason for you to avoid flying. That is, all the changes made to airports since 9/11. I'm agnostic with respect to how much this applies to other countries. But for the TSA, I recommend Bruce Schneier's blog post on Reassessing Airport Security[5] where he spells out many good reasons that the airport security implemented since 9/11 is mostly a futile waste of everyone's time and money. diff --git a/content/entry/free-will-is-incoherent-part-2.md b/content/entry/free-will-is-incoherent-part-2.md index 9e21aa6..37a0e44 100644 --- a/content/entry/free-will-is-incoherent-part-2.md +++ b/content/entry/free-will-is-incoherent-part-2.md @@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ Sam Harris gives the example of a brain tumor which I will reiterate here. A per ## Compassion One consequence of this is that hating people no longer makes sense. Even people that committed unspeakable atrocities such as Hitler and Stalin can't rationally be hated for what they did. I'm not defending them either. Pick any villains you like. They are as much a victim of the chain of causality as morally good people are. No one is responsible for the way they are, not in any ultimate sense. This also means that feelings of pride and shame don't really have any merit either. It doesn't make any more sense for you to be really proud of your successes than ashamed of your failures. Your successes and failures are not of your own doing. How could they be? And besides, you are a constantly changing organism. So, it's a legitimate question to ask if the continual process that is you is similar enough to how it was when it succeeded or failed to actually stake claim to past successes and failures. -This opens us up to feel more compassion for everyone, not just people we like. It's precisely because we could have been in their shoes, that we could have been them in another life so to speak and done exactly as they did (if only we had their atoms) with no ability to choose otherwise, that we are able to cease judgement and feel compassion. This also explains why we feel more forgiving of our own mistakes than others' mistakes. We can see the full chain of prior causes through our memories. "I'm the way I am because of my parents who raised me. And they are the way they are because of their parents etc. But my neighbor or friend or coworker who is a mess is like they are just because that's how they are. With me, Adam committed the original sin and therefore nothing is my fault. With my neighbor/coworker/friend/person who cut me off in traffic though, it's a different story. The buck just stops at them". +This opens us up to feel more compassion for everyone, not just people we like. It's precisely because we could have been in their shoes, that we could have been them in another life so to speak and done exactly as they did (if only we had their atoms) with no ability to choose otherwise, that we are able to cease judgment and feel compassion. This also explains why we feel more forgiving of our own mistakes than others' mistakes. We can see the full chain of prior causes through our memories. "I'm the way I am because of my parents who raised me. And they are the way they are because of their parents etc. But my neighbor or friend or coworker who is a mess is like they are just because that's how they are. With me, Adam committed the original sin and therefore nothing is my fault. With my neighbor/coworker/friend/person who cut me off in traffic though, it's a different story. The buck just stops at them". # Justice How can we justify throwing people in jails and prisons if they aren't ultimately responsible for their actions? Simple. Society is better off that way. Being "tough on crime" is completely compatible with disbelief in free will. What doesn't make sense is punishment for the sake of it. Given what we now know about free will and how that corrects our idea of responsibility, it doesn't make any sense at all to punish someone just for the sake of it. How does it make sense to punish someone for the sake of it when they literally could not have done anything else? Punishment should always be toward some end. Hopefully toward a constructive end like rehabilitation, rather than a destructive end like vengeance. Sadly, the (in)justice system in the United States (and many other countries) does not reflect our modern understanding of the brain or free will. That is to say it isn't based on reality. @@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ The key to a new mindset about justice really is introducing the meme of no free I spent a lot of time talking about the implications for justice. Not only in our personal lives is it important to cultivate compassion for conscious beings, but it is important for our institutions as well. Even if you are a completely selfish person, don't you want to live in a society of healthy, compassionate and self-actualized people just for your own sake? Your environment affects you like you affect it and who is in your environment affects you. If a segment of our population is suffering, that is not only that segment's problem. That is everyone's problem because we are not all isolated little egos separate from one another. While there isn't always something you can do to help others, that does not mean you shouldn't practice compassion for them. -I want to propose a principle of radical universal compassion toward all conscious beings. One of the most important things we can do is find ways to practice compassion toward those that have wronged us and toward ourselves for our own past transgressions against others. I'm not saying you ought never to feel bad about having wronged someone. But continuing to beat yourself up is not useful. Some people are toxic and you should avoid associating with them. But holding on to negative emotions, continuing to feel angry or guilty isn't useful. And it doesn't feel good either. Holding a grudge harms you more than the person against whom you hold the grudge. Holding a grudge is akin to the thought process "It's important that I stay angry at this person for much longer than the normal half-life of my anger because they've done something so unforgiveable". While you may cut ties with someone for compassion toward yourself, the hanging on to negative emotions is more harmful to yourself than to them. It's like picking up a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else. You are the only one that gets burned. +I want to propose a principle of radical universal compassion toward all conscious beings. One of the most important things we can do is find ways to practice compassion toward those that have wronged us and toward ourselves for our own past transgressions against others. I'm not saying you ought never to feel bad about having wronged someone. But continuing to beat yourself up is not useful. Some people are toxic and you should avoid associating with them. But holding on to negative emotions, continuing to feel angry or guilty isn't useful. And it doesn't feel good either. Holding a grudge harms you more than the person against whom you hold the grudge. Holding a grudge is akin to the thought process "It's important that I stay angry at this person for much longer than the normal half-life of my anger because they've done something so unforgivable". While you may cut ties with someone for compassion toward yourself, the hanging on to negative emotions is more harmful to yourself than to them. It's like picking up a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else. You are the only one that gets burned. By realizing that no one is ultimately responsible for what they do, we open the doors to compassion. A person has exactly as much free will as a rock, and therefore holds as much ultimate responsibility for their actions as a rock does for falling on someone. You may object that humans are not like rocks. Humans have a nervous system and rocks don't. Humans know what they are doing, even if they aren't ultimately responsible. If a person commits a murder, we can conclude they are more likely perpetrate violence in the future. If a rock falls on someone, we can't conclude the same rock will fall on someone again just because it did so once before. What I'm saying is rocks and brains have the same degree of free will. In that respect, they are the same. So it makes no more sense to blame a brain for planning a murder than it does to blame a rock for falling on someone. Develop a justice system that deters future violence and promotes better patterns of thought and behavior in brains? Absolutely. But that isn't what is happening in America's justice system and many others and the minds of many citizens. Blame is what is happening. Vengeance is what is happening. Needless suffering is what is happening. And that can't be justified given a lack of free will. The guiding principle that does make sense in a justice system is compassion, and the results from Nordic prisons bears that out. diff --git a/content/entry/future-proof-digital-timestamping.md b/content/entry/future-proof-digital-timestamping.md index 1fa4236..df6199f 100644 --- a/content/entry/future-proof-digital-timestamping.md +++ b/content/entry/future-proof-digital-timestamping.md @@ -22,11 +22,11 @@ I didn't want to use some centralized service to perform the timestamping becaus Then I found OpenTimestamps.[1] It's based on Bitcoin, which I don't like. I've encouraged people to avoid using proof-of-waste cryptocurrencies before.[2] I don't feel great about using software that relies on a planet-roasting cryptocurrency, but there's just no other way I know of to create trustless, decentralized, verifiable timestamps. -Also, OpenTimestamps has an extremely efficient design compared to other Bitcoin timestamping schemes. Thanks to OpenTimestamps' clever use of merkle trees[3], it can timestamp unlimited data using only 1 transaction. Other Bitcoin timestamping software uses 1 transaction per timestamp, an extremely wasteful, inefficient design. At least OpenTimestamps isn't that bad. +Also, OpenTimestamps has an extremely efficient design compared to other Bitcoin timestamping schemes. Thanks to OpenTimestamps' clever use of Merkle trees[3], it can timestamp unlimited data using only 1 transaction. Other Bitcoin timestamping software uses 1 transaction per timestamp, an extremely wasteful, inefficient design. At least OpenTimestamps isn't that bad. So anyway, I created a timestamped Git commit and tagged it timestamp-1[4]. I wrote the concatenated commit data of the timestamped commit to a file[5] in case you're interested to see what it looks like. The software works in a very elegant fashion. It even maintains compatibility with non-OpenTimestamps Git clients, so GnuPG can still verify the commit signature. -The base64-encoded timestamp appended to the commit data includes all the necessary hashes to build the merkle path from the tagged commit to the merkle root included in the Bitcoin transaction. Using './ots --git-extract ' on any file in the nicksphere-gmi repo present at the timestamped commit, you can extract an ots proof file which you can then verify with './ots --verify '. +The base64-encoded timestamp appended to the commit data includes all the necessary hashes to build the Merkle path from the tagged commit to the merkle root included in the Bitcoin transaction. Using './ots --git-extract ' on any file in the nicksphere-gmi repo present at the timestamped commit, you can extract an ots proof file which you can then verify with './ots --verify '. Thus future readers of my journal and historians will be able to verify that each entry was written by a human with no major external dependency other than the widely witnessed Bitcoin ledger. There are caveats to that, but luckily I thought up ways around all of them. @@ -62,7 +62,7 @@ It doesn't even matter if all the underlying cryptographic primitives of the led # Conclusion This journal's timestamp is not yet future-proof because it still uses SHA-1. When Git supports SHA-2, I plan on creating a new timestamp. I don't think SHA-2 preimage resistance will be broken any time soon and I think distributed ledgers will still be popular for years to come. So if you want to create a trustless, future-proof, unforgeable digital timestamp, timestamp chaining seems like the way to go. -Future internet historians will have many methods of verifying when some digital media was created. They probably won't be limited to verifying timestamp chains. While timestamps offer the strongest assurance that media isn't synthetic, it's not like your digital work will necessarily be indistiguishable from synthetic media just because you didn't timestamp it. +Future internet historians will have many methods of verifying when some digital media was created. They probably won't be limited to verifying timestamp chains. While timestamps offer the strongest assurance that media isn't synthetic, it's not like your digital work will necessarily be indistinguishable from synthetic media just because you didn't timestamp it. I just decided to timestamp my journal to create that extra assurance that it's not synthetic. That was the primary reason. The synthetic internet might arrive in 10 years or 50 years. Since I have no way to know, it seemed best to create a verifiable timestamp now, before GPT-4 gets released. diff --git a/content/entry/gemini-appreciation-entry.md b/content/entry/gemini-appreciation-entry.md index 389507c..94a5154 100644 --- a/content/entry/gemini-appreciation-entry.md +++ b/content/entry/gemini-appreciation-entry.md @@ -67,8 +67,8 @@ Importantly, Gemtext (Gemini text media type) still allows for sufficient format and support for multiple languages. It's useful, while not lending itself to overly busy pages. -### No Hivemind -And then there's hiveminds. Online platforms like Facebook and Reddit especially seem to create self-selected communities where all members conform to certain opinions or else face being ostracized. Thanks to the lack of built-in interactivity on Gemini, there seems to be a lack of hivemind as well. +### No Hive Mind +And then there's hive minds. Online platforms like Facebook and Reddit especially seem to create self-selected communities where all members conform to certain opinions or else face being ostracized. Thanks to the lack of built-in interactivity on Gemini, there seems to be a lack of hive mind as well. ### No Rating System or Censorship There's no such thing as being "downvoted to oblivion". Since there's no ads, you're not at risk of gaining or losing ad revenue for sharing unpopular opinions. You don't get points or karma. You don't have to post under your real name. You're free to say anything you want and the worst you'll get is a nasty email. diff --git a/content/entry/get-an-anonymous-phone-number-with-dtmfio.md b/content/entry/get-an-anonymous-phone-number-with-dtmfio.md index a6f79fb..fa3819b 100644 --- a/content/entry/get-an-anonymous-phone-number-with-dtmfio.md +++ b/content/entry/get-an-anonymous-phone-number-with-dtmfio.md @@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ DTMF.io has shut down. Links to the website have been replaced with archival lin I am not in any way affiliated with DTMF.io[1]. I was not paid to write this (I wish). If I am paid to write about something, I will always disclose it. I will never write things I do not agree with for money. I just happen to think DTMF.io[2] is a good service and people ought to know about it. # Purpose -One reason I feel compelled to write about privacy and anonymity is there are so many poorly researched guides out there that don't offer real anonymity, but advertise that they do. Existing guides either have a freedom[3] issue, privacy issue, or other issue which makes them less than ideal. DTMF.io[4] really impressed me, so I decided to share it with all of you. Also, I plan on writing a guide on anonymous ecommerce in the future. When I do that, this post will make a good reference since a phone number is required in many cases when doing ecommerce. +One reason I feel compelled to write about privacy and anonymity is there are so many poorly researched guides out there that don't offer real anonymity, but advertise that they do. Existing guides either have a freedom[3] issue, privacy issue, or other issue which makes them less than ideal. DTMF.io[4] really impressed me, so I decided to share it with all of you. Also, I plan on writing a guide on anonymous e-commerce in the future. When I do that, this post will make a good reference since a phone number is required in many cases when doing e-commerce. Sometimes I get asked why I insist on such high standards of anonymity, privacy and freedom in everything. What on earth kind of threat model do I have to insist on such high standards? No, I don't possess state secrets or anything of that level. If I did, I wouldn't be blogging about Big Brother since Big Brother is probably on the list of keywords that gets flagged by 3 letter agencies[5]. My philosophy on this actually aligns pretty closely with Richard Stallman[6]. I'm just very ethically motivated. Specifically, it's a matter of preserving my freedom[7] and resisting Big Brother. It's not just that I want to resist Big Brother. I think everyone ought to hold high standards like I do in order to raise the bar on privacy[8] and protect democracy. @@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ There are 3 major problems that come to mind with burner phones: 1. They are materially wasteful[10]. All the effort that went into manufacturing the burner phone and it's just going to be used temporarily, perhaps just once, then become e-waste. They're bad for the environment. 2. They run proprietary[11] operating systems and software. This is bad for your freedom. Because of their freedom issues, there's no way to ensure they don't covertly surveil you. The whole point is that they're supposed to be anonymous, so this is kind of self-defeating. -3. You'll need to remove the batteries or put the phone in a faraday bag when you aren't using it. Turning it off isn't effective since you might accidentally hit the power button. Since we're trying to preserve the number's anonymity against Big Brother, it can't ping nearby cell towers at places you're associated with. You can't send or receive sms or calls unless you take it out of the bag, so you'll have to only use it at a remote location. Going to a remote location just to make a call or check your messages is very inconvenient. +3. You'll need to remove the batteries or put the phone in a Faraday bag when you aren't using it. Turning it off isn't effective since you might accidentally hit the power button. Since we're trying to preserve the number's anonymity against Big Brother, it can't ping nearby cell towers at places you're associated with. You can't send or receive sms or calls unless you take it out of the bag, so you'll have to only use it at a remote location. Going to a remote location just to make a call or check your messages is very inconvenient. ## Just Hide My Caller ID? The second method appsverse suggests is hiding your caller ID. This isn't anonymous against Big Brother so we can disregard it. @@ -31,14 +31,14 @@ The second method appsverse suggests is hiding your caller ID. This isn't anonym Method 3 is phone apps. Appsverse recommends phoner, which is a proprietary app that give you burner phone numbers. The problem is most of these apps are proprietary and you should never install them. Don't go through the Goo-lag Play Store or crApple App Store looking for burner phone number apps. Almost all of them are proprietary garbage. Another example is Burnerapp.com[12]. It's proprietary and requires your name, email and phone number tied to your real identity. Also, there's no way to pay anonymously. How can your phone number be truly anonymous if you have to identify yourself to get it? # SMS Privacy -SMSPrivacy.org[13] is worth a mention. You can send and receive sms messages over a web interface. The sign up process doesn't require providing any personal information. It has a v2 onion address[14] and doesn't require Javascript which is always a plus. The only gripe I have is the price. 0.0015 BTC per day per phone number is asking too much for most people. It's even more expensive for a physical phone number that you can use to sign up for websites. +SMSPrivacy.org[13] is worth a mention. You can send and receive sms messages over a web interface. The sign up process doesn't require providing any personal information. It has a v2 onion address[14] and doesn't require JavaScript which is always a plus. The only gripe I have is the price. 0.0015 BTC per day per phone number is asking too much for most people. It's even more expensive for a physical phone number that you can use to sign up for websites. # Introducing DTMF.io -DTMF.io[15] is the best service I've come across for an anonymous phone number. Like SMS Privacy, it can be accessed over a web portal. There is no third party Javascript. The web portal is available in several languages. It requires no personally identifiable information[16] (PII) to sign up and supports 2-factor authentication. Unlike SMS Privacy, it has a more reasonable price tag. It has a v3 onion address[17] for Tor. It supplies landline, mobile, SIM mobile and toll-free phone numbers from all over the world. You can pay with Bitcoin, Lightning, Ethereum, Litecoin, Monero and Perfect Money. Monero support is a huge plus since it's the only cryptocurrency with private payments by default. You can also make calls using SIP or your web browser. SIP is convenient because it allows you to bypass the Javascript trap[18] of using the web portal. Like SMS Privacy, it does not require you to enable Javascript in the browser for sign up or sms, although calling won't work without it. DTMF.io has an API available to pro and business customers allowing automated account control, sms and calling. Their terms of service[19] and privacy policy[20] seem reasonable enough. You can't expect much privacy using sms anyway, which is why I can't recommend using it for very much except maybe website sign up and only if it's required. I also recommend you avoid sharing PII using your anonymous number. Keep in mind a social graph could still be constructed of which numbers you're contacting and at what time. To reduce linkability, you should use a different number for each website you sign up for, if you can afford it. +DTMF.io[15] is the best service I've come across for an anonymous phone number. Like SMS Privacy, it can be accessed over a web portal. There is no third party JavaScript. The web portal is available in several languages. It requires no personally identifiable information[16] (PII) to sign up and supports 2-factor authentication. Unlike SMS Privacy, it has a more reasonable price tag. It has a v3 onion address[17] for Tor. It supplies landline, mobile, SIM mobile and toll-free phone numbers from all over the world. You can pay with Bitcoin, Lightning, Ethereum, Litecoin, Monero and Perfect Money. Monero support is a huge plus since it's the only cryptocurrency with private payments by default. You can also make calls using SIP or your web browser. SIP is convenient because it allows you to bypass the JavaScript trap[18] of using the web portal. Like SMS Privacy, it does not require you to enable JavaScript in the browser for sign up or sms, although calling won't work without it. DTMF.io has an API available to pro and business customers allowing automated account control, sms and calling. Their terms of service[19] and privacy policy[20] seem reasonable enough. You can't expect much privacy using sms anyway, which is why I can't recommend using it for very much except maybe website sign up and only if it's required. I also recommend you avoid sharing PII using your anonymous number. Keep in mind a social graph could still be constructed of which numbers you're contacting and at what time. To reduce linkability, you should use a different number for each website you sign up for, if you can afford it. I know I criticized using apps for an anonymous number before, but that's because they are proprietary. DTMF.io supports SIP. So, you can use free (as in freedom) SIP calling apps to make calls or you can use the official free (as in freedom) DTMF.io app[21] for sms and calling currently available on Android. You can build it from source for Android, iOS, Windows, Mac and GNU/Linux. Voice calls aren't currently supported in Windows or GNU/Linux though. It does not require Goolag Play Services and only asks for permissions it needs. It will even work without camera, microphone or contacts permissions enabled. -The only recommendation I'd make if you plan on using it is that you pay anonymously and don't provide an identifying email address on sign up. Also, if you use the Android app, you should proxy the connection over a VPN or Tor (with Orbot[22]) that way the service never gets your real IP address. Use Tor Browser with the onion address to access it over the web. Other than that I don't know what more you can ask for. The other anonymous phone number services (except for SMS Privacy) either don't allow you to pay anonymously, require identifying information, have proprietary Javascript, or some other problem that makes them unsuitable. As far as I can tell, DTMF.io is the only game in town for a cheap, ethical, anonymous phone number. If you're using anything else, you should definitely make the switch. +The only recommendation I'd make if you plan on using it is that you pay anonymously and don't provide an identifying email address on sign up. Also, if you use the Android app, you should proxy the connection over a VPN or Tor (with Orbot[22]) that way the service never gets your real IP address. Use Tor Browser with the onion address to access it over the web. Other than that I don't know what more you can ask for. The other anonymous phone number services (except for SMS Privacy) either don't allow you to pay anonymously, require identifying information, have proprietary JavaScript, or some other problem that makes them unsuitable. As far as I can tell, DTMF.io is the only game in town for a cheap, ethical, anonymous phone number. If you're using anything else, you should definitely make the switch. Link(s): diff --git a/content/entry/get-an-eco-friendly-burial.md b/content/entry/get-an-eco-friendly-burial.md index fa718a5..eab8093 100644 --- a/content/entry/get-an-eco-friendly-burial.md +++ b/content/entry/get-an-eco-friendly-burial.md @@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ draft: false # Burials The amount of waste generated by traditional burials is totally unnecessary. Corpses are packed with embalming fluid, which is often environmentally disastrous. It also uses up tons of wood, steel, and concrete. Even cremation emits noxious gases into the atmosphere. How did this ever become the norm? -The funeral industry has done a really good job of making sure people remain unaware of the less expensive, eco-friendly options, but the Green Burial Council[1] is raising awareness of this issue. They advocate for eco-friendly, non-greenwashed burials. They provide educational materials about green burials to the public and to cemetary operators. +The funeral industry has done a really good job of making sure people remain unaware of the less expensive, eco-friendly options, but the Green Burial Council[1] is raising awareness of this issue. They advocate for eco-friendly, non-greenwashed burials. They provide educational materials about green burials to the public and to cemetery operators. # Funerals Funeral services are clearly useful. They give loved ones a specific time and place to grieve. But there's this idea which is part of culture now, that the more money you spend on disposal of the corpse, the more you cared about the real, living person. That's stupid. @@ -29,7 +29,7 @@ When I get old and eventually die, I want younger generations to see me as someo In all likelihood, I have a long life ahead of me and won't have to worry about burial for at least fifty years. I don't plan on dying soon, but if I do come to an untimely death, let this serve as my end of life wish: -> "I don't want my death to harm nature. I wish to be placed directly into the earth, without a casket, at the nearest available spot. If that's not possible, then get me a cheap, biodegradable casket. No cremation and no preservatives. There's no reason to preserve a corpse that nobodys going to see anyways." +> "I don't want my death to harm nature. I wish to be placed directly into the earth, without a casket, at the nearest available spot. If that's not possible, then get me a cheap, biodegradable casket. No cremation and no preservatives. There's no reason to preserve a corpse that nobody's going to see anyways." If you want to preserve nature for future generations, please make it known that you wish for a green burial. Thanks for reading. diff --git a/content/entry/git-is-not-github-git-is-not-github-git-is-not-github.md b/content/entry/git-is-not-github-git-is-not-github-git-is-not-github.md index 49d8c35..38504d5 100644 --- a/content/entry/git-is-not-github-git-is-not-github-git-is-not-github.md +++ b/content/entry/git-is-not-github-git-is-not-github-git-is-not-github.md @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ A common confusion among new programmers is that Git and Github are the same thi Git is a powerful version control tool that makes software development and collaboration easier. Github is a cloud-based repository hosting service operated by corporate monster Micro$oft. Git helps millions of developers write better code. Github sold code to ICE[1], who used it to assist separating families at the border and putting immigrants in cages. -I have said before nobody should use Github[2], especially not people who write free software. If you need a software development platform, use Sourcehut[3]. It has no advertising, tracking, or Javascript. It's 100% free software and it's the fastest and lightest software forge, bar none[4]. And if you don't like Sourcehut, there's other free software forges out there for whatever your needs are. +I have said before nobody should use Github[2], especially not people who write free software. If you need a software development platform, use Sourcehut[3]. It has no advertising, tracking, or JavaScript. It's 100% free software and it's the fastest and lightest software forge, bar none[4]. And if you don't like Sourcehut, there's other free software forges out there for whatever your needs are. A morally neutral version control tool being frequently confused with a morally onerous big tech company is bad. More than just technical confusion, it invites moral confusion. Without knowing the difference, new developers may confuse criticism of Github the company with criticism of Git the tool. They will think "Github is bad? It can't be because I use that program and it's helpful to me." diff --git a/content/entry/goodbye-pgp.md b/content/entry/goodbye-pgp.md index f7d0aad..8dcb346 100644 --- a/content/entry/goodbye-pgp.md +++ b/content/entry/goodbye-pgp.md @@ -78,7 +78,7 @@ Like signing keys, you can manually rotate encryption subkeys to protect past em ## No Message Padding If that's not enough to convince you not to use PGP for messaging, let me give you another reason. PGP uses CFB, a padding-less encryption mode. That means the exact length of the encrypted message can be recovered by attackers without decrypting the message. -If you use PGP for email, you should at least use PGP/MIME to hide attachment filetypes. Leaking filetype and length is bad, but leaking length alone is still pretty bad since it can be used to infer file and message content. +If you use PGP for email, you should at least use PGP/MIME to hide attachment file types. Leaking file type and length is bad, but leaking length alone is still pretty bad since it can be used to infer file and message content. PGP is also unsuitable for automated decryption since it's vulnerable to padding oracle attacks.[11] @@ -112,9 +112,9 @@ I'm not saying long-term identity keys are useless. I have one myself. I'm also GPG protects long-term identity keys by allowing users to have online subkeys, which frees up the primary key to be kept offline. But it's not clear to me that subkeys are necessary. Why not use a single key kept on dedicated hardware like a Yubikey? GPG's implementation of subkeys can certainly be improved. It's so lacking that it forces some users to rely on multiple keys.[18] ### SSH -For the SSH use case, the GPG agent can be used for SSH authentication. However, OpenSSH already provides a remote login client capable of key generation that comes pre-installed on popular Linux distros. +For the SSH use case, the GPG agent can be used for SSH authentication. However, OpenSSH already provides a remote login client capable of key generation that comes preinstalled on popular Linux distros. -The OpenSSH server also doesn't have a concept of key revocation or expiry. It can't because that might leave clients locked out. Revoking compromised keys does nothing to stop attackers from SSH'ing into servers, which may cause confusion. +The OpenSSH server also doesn't have a concept of key revocation or expiry. It can't because that might leave clients locked out. Revoking compromised keys does nothing to stop attackers from SSH-ing into servers, which may cause confusion. ### Password Management For password management, there's no reason to use GPG either. The standard Unix password manager Pass[19] depends on GPG2, but there's a fork of it called Passage[20] which uses Age instead. @@ -124,7 +124,7 @@ There are also other password managers which don't depend on PGP or Age and they ### Organizational Security OpenPGP CA[21] is PGP software for organizations. It uses sequoia-pgp[22], which seems to be an improvement over GPG. -For intra-organizational communication, there are so many secure messaging platforms which are better than PGP over Email. No organization should rely on PGP over email for internal communications. Period. +For intraorganizational communication, there are so many secure messaging platforms which are better than PGP over Email. No organization should rely on PGP over email for internal communications. Period. There are already mature identity management systems for organizations such as OpenLDAP[23]. I'm no sysadmin but I'm sure there's plenty of non-PGP dependent software which can meet organizational needs. diff --git a/content/entry/how-to-transfer-large-files-from-one-computer-to-another.md b/content/entry/how-to-transfer-large-files-from-one-computer-to-another.md index 4d85db7..895346b 100644 --- a/content/entry/how-to-transfer-large-files-from-one-computer-to-another.md +++ b/content/entry/how-to-transfer-large-files-from-one-computer-to-another.md @@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ If the messaging app is proprietary, which it usually is, then it's probably not So how should one transfer files? There are several ways to securely transfer files without relying on centralized data-mining cloud services. ## USB -If the recipient is in close physical proximity to you and you trust them, you can use a USB drive or external hard drive to transfer large files. To prevent data from getting into the wrong hands later, the USB should have an encrypted, password-protected LUKS volume. For cross-platform support, use FAT32 or NTFS for the filesystem. +If the recipient is in close physical proximity to you and you trust them, you can use a USB drive or external hard drive to transfer large files. To prevent data from getting into the wrong hands later, the USB should have an encrypted, password-protected LUKS volume. For cross-platform support, use FAT32 or NTFS for the file system. FAT32 only supports a 4 GB max file size. If a file is too large for the encrypted volume, Linux offers the split command to split it into smaller, more manageable chunks and the receiving machine only needs the cat command to piece the file back together. diff --git a/content/entry/i-wish-i-could-endorse-the-waking-up-app.md b/content/entry/i-wish-i-could-endorse-the-waking-up-app.md index d7f92a8..fa8157d 100644 --- a/content/entry/i-wish-i-could-endorse-the-waking-up-app.md +++ b/content/entry/i-wish-i-could-endorse-the-waking-up-app.md @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ If you've been reading my journal for a while, you know I'm a strong proponent o As a beginner meditator, it can be very difficult to stay on task. It's common to sit there for a half hour trying to meditate only to later realize you were thinking the entire time. There's immense value in having someone there to interrupt you when you're going off-track. Sam explains all this in the first session of the course. Since a lot of people only know what the mainstream media has told them about meditation, I'd like to include a quote from Sam's website to offer a more accurate perspective: -> "The purpose of meditation isn’t merely to de-stress, or to sleep better, or to learn to be a little less neurotic. The purpose is to radically transform your sense of who and what you are." - Sam Harris +> "The purpose of meditation isn't merely to de-stress, or to sleep better, or to learn to be a little less neurotic. The purpose is to radically transform your sense of who and what you are." - Sam Harris I think the Waking Up app is one of the few apps where the marketing doesn't oversell the benefits. If you stick to the program and put in the effort, you can radically transform your experience of the world. It's not just marketing. diff --git a/content/entry/implications-of-synthetic-media.md b/content/entry/implications-of-synthetic-media.md index 07ae9ab..ce4c914 100644 --- a/content/entry/implications-of-synthetic-media.md +++ b/content/entry/implications-of-synthetic-media.md @@ -7,11 +7,11 @@ A few months ago, I wrote an entry titled "The Privacy Implications of Weak AI". A.I. and automation are subjects people avoid thinking about because they're scary. I can't fault anybody for that because they're right. The way weak AI is already being used is extremely worrying. It doesn't bode well for the future, but we can't find solutions without discussing the problem. So today, I thought I'd explore another way weak A.I. might disrupt society. -In case you're not familiar with the term "deepfake", it refers to AI-generated media[2] (synthetic media) where a person in a picture or video is digitally replaced with somebody else. The goal is for the replacement to be so seemless that it's impossible to tell the difference. Right now, deepfakes[3] are pretty good and they're getting better all the time. This has huge implications. +In case you're not familiar with the term "deepfake", it refers to AI-generated media[2] (synthetic media) where a person in a picture or video is digitally replaced with somebody else. The goal is for the replacement to be so seamless that it's impossible to tell the difference. Right now, deepfakes[3] are pretty good and they're getting better all the time. This has huge implications. # Plausible Deniability ## Blackmail -You might initially think, as I did, that blackmail will get a lot easier. You won't even need real incriminating photos or videos of someone any more. You can just generate it as needed. But the problem is, every semi-computer-literate person will be able to generate convincing deepfakes. As deepfakes become more common and the public becomes more aware of them, blackmail using photos, videos, audio, etcetera will become impossible because the victim can always plausibly deny it. +You might initially think, as I did, that blackmail will get a lot easier. You won't even need real incriminating photos or videos of someone any more. You can just generate it as needed. But the problem is, every semi-computer-literate person will be able to generate convincing deepfakes. As deepfakes become more common and the public becomes more aware of them, blackmail using photos, videos, audio, etc. will become impossible because the victim can always plausibly deny it. Even if you have real blackmail material on someone, all the victim needs to do is claim it's deepfaked and it will be impossible for a third-party to be sure one way or the other without more context. So blackmail will become harder, not easier. @@ -35,11 +35,11 @@ I imagine it like that scene in the first Terminator movie where terminators can On the other side of the law, black hat hackers will certainly use deepfakes to social engineer corporations and institutions. In fact, it already happened when a voice deepfake was used to scam a CEO out of $243,000.[6] # The Infopocalypse -The central subject which we seem to be orbiting is the infopocalypse. That is, when sockpuppets and deepfakes become absolutely pervasive everywhere on the internet. And I have to mention sockpuppets because they go hand in hand with deepfakes in an important way. +The central subject which we seem to be orbiting is the infopocalypse. That is, when sock puppets and deepfakes become absolutely pervasive everywhere on the internet. And I have to mention sock puppets because they go hand in hand with deepfakes in an important way. Right now, what prevents bots from overtaking the internet is mainly CAPTCHA[7], phone registration, and bot detection systems. CAPTCHA is a technique to tell humans and computers apart. As A.I. improves, bots will eventually be able to do all the things that humans can do, including passing CAPTCHA. They'll also be able to bypass bot detection and, with some money, buy phone numbers. -We have to assume that as time passes, it will take less and less resources for anyone to create their own personal army of convincing bots. Combining this with deepfakes will make it nearly impossible to tell human from machine. Unless new techniques for bot prevention are developed, online platforms may run rampant with spam, disinformation, and sockpuppets. +We have to assume that as time passes, it will take less and less resources for anyone to create their own personal army of convincing bots. Combining this with deepfakes will make it nearly impossible to tell human from machine. Unless new techniques for bot prevention are developed, online platforms may run rampant with spam, disinformation, and sock puppets. So new techniques will have to be developed to tell humans and machines apart and, hopefully, those techniques still allow for online anonymity. Internet protocols and applications will have to be adapted to defend against this new threat model. @@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ Now, broadening the subject even more to synthetic media as a whole, not just de Maintaining relationships with real people takes effort. With synthetic media and convincing chat bots, a lot of people will probably opt for relationships with synthetic, digital A.I. systems instead of other human beings. This could be really destructive to the social fabric. The word "loner" will take on a whole new meaning. -What worries me the most is how addictive these A.I. chatbots could potentially be. We've already seen how bad social media and smartphone addiction is. Maybe it's too early to worry about this, but if A.I. chatbots pass the Turing test[8] and become capable of real-time audio and video calls, there will probably be less human connection in society. +What worries me the most is how addictive these A.I. chat bots could potentially be. We've already seen how bad social media and smartphone addiction is. Maybe it's too early to worry about this, but if A.I. chat bots pass the Turing test[8] and become capable of real-time audio and video calls, there will probably be less human connection in society. If you're looking for some inspiration, two good films depicting human-bot relationships are Her[9] and Ex Machina[10]. Those films both depict A.I. taking human form, which goes a bit outside the scope of synthetic media, but synthetic media by itself probably wouldn't make good film. diff --git a/content/entry/inception-rejecting-discord-drawio-and-visual-studio.md b/content/entry/inception-rejecting-discord-drawio-and-visual-studio.md index 2436a99..94f6d9f 100644 --- a/content/entry/inception-rejecting-discord-drawio-and-visual-studio.md +++ b/content/entry/inception-rejecting-discord-drawio-and-visual-studio.md @@ -25,18 +25,18 @@ Project II was a similar story to project I except that I was in a group of thre Again, it was awkward asking everyone to use Riot when they had never heard of it. I had a hard time finding a soft way to propose using it when I wasn't willing to accept a proprietary alternative. But my two group members were willing to use it. I again was able to convince them to exchange device keys in person for an encrypted room. So far, all was well. ### Documentation -And so we began our documentation. This time, I was not our project lead. Another team member had more time to work on the project, so he took the initiative. He was very diligent and before we had even started writing code, we ended up with an estimate of close to eighty classes total. We had polished UML diagrams for all those classes including package diagrams and UML class diagrams and a three tier architecture established before a single line of code was written. I was very satisfied with that. For my diagrams, I used Dia[6] and my teammates used draw.io[7]. Dia was difficult and annoying to use as far as alignment goes. It might have been due to my inexperience never having used it before, but I used it anyway for freedom. Draw.io is not free software. It uses proprietary Javascript and requires a software license to purchase the app. Nevertheless my teammates were able to at least export their diagrams in png format so I could see them using free software. Our project lead claimed to have used Dia before and said it was too inconvenient usage-wise. +And so we began our documentation. This time, I was not our project lead. Another team member had more time to work on the project, so he took the initiative. He was very diligent and before we had even started writing code, we ended up with an estimate of close to eighty classes total. We had polished UML diagrams for all those classes including package diagrams and UML class diagrams and a three tier architecture established before a single line of code was written. I was very satisfied with that. For my diagrams, I used Dia[6] and my teammates used draw.io[7]. Dia was difficult and annoying to use as far as alignment goes. It might have been due to my inexperience never having used it before, but I used it anyway for freedom. Draw.io is not free software. It uses proprietary JavaScript and requires a software license to purchase the app. Nevertheless my teammates were able to at least export their diagrams in png format so I could see them using free software. Our project lead claimed to have used Dia before and said it was too inconvenient usage-wise. -The deliverables for the project were scheduled in such a way that we had to do all the documentation before starting the project, and continually revise documentation as the project went along. Our documentation was so effective that I trust we could've handed it to any other group in the class, and they would have been able to implement our entire design. Some of the documents were done using Google Docs regrettably. I strongly suggested using Sandstorm[8] instead since it is free software and doesn't require proprietary Javascript in the browser. That did not end up happening since I had other classes to worry about and we were crunched for time. If I could retake the class, I would have created a separate shared repo for documentation and used a word processor for editing instead. Our team lead did not see this as viable since he felt we needed to be able to see everyone else's changes in real time. There was a lot of talk about using Sandstorm, but I was never able to make it happen. +The deliverables for the project were scheduled in such a way that we had to do all the documentation before starting the project, and continually revise documentation as the project went along. Our documentation was so effective that I trust we could've handed it to any other group in the class, and they would have been able to implement our entire design. Some of the documents were done using Google Docs regrettably. I strongly suggested using Sandstorm[8] instead since it is free software and doesn't require proprietary JavaScript in the browser. That did not end up happening since I had other classes to worry about and we were crunched for time. If I could retake the class, I would have created a separate shared repo for documentation and used a word processor for editing instead. Our team lead did not see this as viable since he felt we needed to be able to see everyone else's changes in real time. There was a lot of talk about using Sandstorm, but I was never able to make it happen. -Another possible free software self-hosting alternative to Google Docs would have been an Etherpad[9] instance, but public Etherpad instances did not have the plugins necessary for nicely formatting documents unless I self-hosted and installed them myself. And I guess I didn't have the time to set up an instance or something. But I did put a few hours of work in trying to get it working. It was very discouraging to be working so hard on something very tangientially related to our actual project. I wasn't able to move the group toward using Etherpad either. I ultimately ran out of time trying to make it work. I was the one pushing to use something besides Google Docs mainly due to its proprietary Javascript. +Another possible free software self-hosting alternative to Google Docs would have been an Etherpad[9] instance, but public Etherpad instances did not have the plugins necessary for nicely formatting documents unless I self-hosted and installed them myself. And I guess I didn't have the time to set up an instance or something. But I did put a few hours of work in trying to get it working. It was very discouraging to be working so hard on something very tangentially related to our actual project. I wasn't able to move the group toward using Etherpad either. I ultimately ran out of time trying to make it work. I was the one pushing to use something besides Google Docs mainly due to its proprietary JavaScript. -After I had been defeated unable to move the group to something besides Google Docs, I gave in to using Google Docs which I was able to use anonymously without an account. I just used the shared link. But I still had to run the proprietary Javascript in the browser which I now regret giving in to. This failure was very discouraging and harmed my motivation for doing the project. I discussed this extensively with the project lead but we weren't able to bypass the issue. After this failure, I didn't know the worse was still yet to come. +After I had been defeated unable to move the group to something besides Google Docs, I gave in to using Google Docs which I was able to use anonymously without an account. I just used the shared link. But I still had to run the proprietary JavaScript in the browser which I now regret giving in to. This failure was very discouraging and harmed my motivation for doing the project. I discussed this extensively with the project lead but we weren't able to bypass the issue. After this failure, I didn't know the worse was still yet to come. ### Testing Framework We had to use a testing framework for the current project iteration to test our code. Of course our professor's hand-me-down specification and slides insisted that we use MSTest. I did some background research because it sounded proprietary. I found it was available for MonoDevelop, but when I went to install it, it asked me to read and sign a license agreement first. I believe it was proprietary based on the terms it was asking me to agree to when I tried to install it through MonoDevelop. I clicked decline. Instead of installing it, I dug in my heels and went to the professor after class. Regrettably, I did not mention the idea of free software very explicitly. Instead I talked about how I wasn't willing to agree to the terms so MonoDevelop could run the tests. He chuckled when I mentioned I wasn't using Visual Studio as the project requirements laid out, preparing for a potentially awkward conversation. And then when I mentioned not wanting to use the testing framework, he seemed perplexed. He told me I could write the unit tests and have a team member who has Visual Studio run them, thus bypassing agreeing to the license. This didn't satisfy me though, because it just passes the buck off to someone else. I definitely wasn't going to rely on my team members to agree to something I myself wouldn't. I let him know that I felt his idea didn't really solve the issue for me. I asked Professor X if I could use the NUnit testing framework instead, a libre library. He told me to ask the grader. -So I emailed the grader explaining in detail my ethical concerns about MSTest. He got back to me promptly admitting that he did not know about the ethical issue and would be willing to accomodate me given that NUnit could work in Visual Studio. It could, so I wrote my tests for our code using NUnit. I even rewrote some of our tests that had been written in MSTest into NUnit to increase the freedom of our project which wasn't too difficult. I had successfully dodged what could have became a freedom issue. I also discussed this with our group. They continued writing the unit tests using MSTest. +So I emailed the grader explaining in detail my ethical concerns about MSTest. He got back to me promptly admitting that he did not know about the ethical issue and would be willing to accommodate me given that NUnit could work in Visual Studio. It could, so I wrote my tests for our code using NUnit. I even rewrote some of our tests that had been written in MSTest into NUnit to increase the freedom of our project which wasn't too difficult. I had successfully dodged what could have became a freedom issue. I also discussed this with our group. They continued writing the unit tests using MSTest. ### IDE I thought I would be able to use MonoDevelop as before without any issues. I had solved the issue of the testing framework. What more issues could arise? The database. The instructions for the database in the database tier of our three tier architecture were written to explain how to use the SQL database in Visual Studio. It used libraries that only worked in Visual Studio if I recall correctly. This caused an inner conflict for me. I had never failed a class before, but I knew the professor wasn't going to rewrite the specifications in the middle of the project and it would be too much for the grader to try to get something else working and too much for me to research another solution. I talked about this issue ad nauseum to our group lead, who was sympathetic but tried to still convince me to just write the database anyway. I wasn't able to get him to really make sense of the freedom issue despite sending supporting links from the FSF website to explain my position. After heated debate, we eventually came to the compromise that I would only work on the part of our program that did not include the database. I would work on the other two tiers; the controller and graphical interface. I now regard this compromise as a mistake. diff --git a/content/entry/integrated-activism.md b/content/entry/integrated-activism.md index 56306d1..d70e217 100644 --- a/content/entry/integrated-activism.md +++ b/content/entry/integrated-activism.md @@ -37,7 +37,7 @@ A final example I'll give is free software and getting organized. I've attended ## A Reasonable Compromise If you are an activist who doesn't have "tunnel vision", who is capable of considering several social issues at once, you are going to run into situations where two or more social issues are in a "hard conflict" and there's no easy way to respect them all. What you have to do in situations like those is to figure out your priorities. This isn't easy because there are often complex interactions between any two social issues. But that doesn't mean it's the wrong approach. -If there is a climate protest I want to attend, but I can only retrieve the location for the protest by running proprietary Javascript on the webpage, I'm probably going to run the proprietary Javascript sacrificing my computing freedom. Perhaps this is a bad example because I could probably just email the organizers, but my point still stands. Attending climate protests is more important than leading a life of perfect free software purity. Free software does me no good if the planet is uninhabitable. +If there is a climate protest I want to attend, but I can only retrieve the location for the protest by running proprietary JavaScript on the webpage, I'm probably going to run the proprietary JavaScript sacrificing my computing freedom. Perhaps this is a bad example because I could probably just email the organizers, but my point still stands. Attending climate protests is more important than leading a life of perfect free software purity. Free software does me no good if the planet is uninhabitable. As an activist, you must sort out your priorities. There aren't always ways to respect every social issue you fight for. Compromises have to be made. These kinds of compromises are made in politics all the time. It's a matter of strategy. Some social issues are more pressing than others. diff --git a/content/entry/ipv6-adoption.md b/content/entry/ipv6-adoption.md index 85125cb..268f30a 100644 --- a/content/entry/ipv6-adoption.md +++ b/content/entry/ipv6-adoption.md @@ -14,12 +14,12 @@ This was fine when the internet was small, but now the internet is massive and h Welcome to NAT[2]. NAT stands for Network Address Translation. The main reason NAT exists is to solve the IPv4 problem of not having enough logical addresses for every device. NAT translates private IP addresses on an internal network to public IP addresses that can talk to other computers on the real internet. This allows several connected devices to share the same IP address, conserving logical addresses so IPv4 can still work. I won't go into detail on how this happens because it's not relevant, but it does have overhead. NAT is basically an ugly hack for the problem of not enough IPv4 addresses for each internet connected device. # IPv6 -IPv6[3] supercedes IPv4 using 128-bit addresses (340 undecillion IP addresses). It's the obvious elegant solution to the problem of not having enough internet addresses: use a protocol that has more addresses. It doesn't require NAT because each connected device can have its own IP address on the real public internet. Since the IPv6 address space is so huge, it's highly unlikely that IPv6 will ever be superceded for lack of internet addresses. +IPv6[3] supersedes IPv4 using 128-bit addresses (340 undecillion IP addresses). It's the obvious elegant solution to the problem of not having enough internet addresses: use a protocol that has more addresses. It doesn't require NAT because each connected device can have its own IP address on the real public internet. Since the IPv6 address space is so huge, it's highly unlikely that IPv6 will ever be superseded for lack of internet addresses. It also has other practical advantages to IPv4. As the name implies, it's a newer protocol drafted in 1998 whereas IPv4 was first deployed in 1982. IPv6 packets are easier for routers to process since the IPv6 packet is simpler than the IPv4 packet. This is consistent with the original vision of the internet where most processing happens at endpoints, not routers. IPsec[4] is mandatory whereas in IPv4 it was retrofitted. Network operators don't have to do port forwarding on the router or make firewall changes. Multicast addressing is simpler. IPv6 limits the size of routing tables[5]. Mobile IPv6[6] is as efficient as regular IPv6. I could go on but the point is it's much better than IPv4 in every way. # IPv6 Adoption -ISPs and tech giants are slowly increasing IPv6 support. Ideally, everyone would use IPv6 and IPv4 would cease to exist. IPv4 has no practical advantages. It was superceded by IPv6 over 2 decades ago and the switch still hasn't completely happened yet. What's the problem? If IPv6 is better then why is adoption taking so long? The barrier to IPv6 adoption isn't so much at endpoints. By 2011 all major operating systems had support for IPv6. The problem is there often isn't a strong financial incentive for IPv6 adoption. +ISPs and tech giants are slowly increasing IPv6 support. Ideally, everyone would use IPv6 and IPv4 would cease to exist. IPv4 has no practical advantages. It was superseded by IPv6 over 2 decades ago and the switch still hasn't completely happened yet. What's the problem? If IPv6 is better then why is adoption taking so long? The barrier to IPv6 adoption isn't so much at endpoints. By 2011 all major operating systems had support for IPv6. The problem is there often isn't a strong financial incentive for IPv6 adoption. If you're an average internet user, you don't even know what IPv4 or IPv6 is. Unless your ISP enabled IPv6 for you then you probably don't have it. You can access all the internet resources you want without it anyway. Even if your ISP enabled it and your modem/router supports it, still many end-user devices and applications don't work well with it. If they do support IPv6, they also support IPv4 because IPv6 always runs alongside IPv4 with dual stack[7]. If you host any internet resource then all your users support IPv4. So why bother with IPv6? diff --git a/content/entry/is-beastiality-immoral.md b/content/entry/is-beastiality-immoral.md index d1c4e1c..956569b 100644 --- a/content/entry/is-beastiality-immoral.md +++ b/content/entry/is-beastiality-immoral.md @@ -34,7 +34,7 @@ Now there is one big issue I glossed over, on both the non-human animal side and Animals can transfer dangerous diseases to humans such as rabies[2]. Humans can also transfer diseases to animals. I want to make it clear that I don't have any specialized knowledge on this topic. I'm not a veterinarian or a doctor, so I could be completely wrong on this, but diseases are my main concern with beastiality. -Seeing the havoc Covid-19 continues to cause, I think we have good reasons to be worried about new infectious diseases hopping across species. My lack knowledge in the area of diseases and the fact that it's not well-researched procludes me from forming a definite opinion. I don't know how severe the risk of disease transmission is, so I won't make a final moral judgement about beastiality. +Seeing the havoc Covid-19 continues to cause, I think we have good reasons to be worried about new infectious diseases hopping across species. My lack knowledge in the area of diseases and the fact that it's not well-researched precludes me from forming a definite opinion. I don't know how severe the risk of disease transmission is, so I won't make a final moral judgment about beastiality. # The Least Convenient World Ending on that note isn't very satisfying, so let's explore the least convenient possible world[3]. diff --git a/content/entry/its-not-necessarily-irrational-to-believe-things-you-cant-justify-to-others.md b/content/entry/its-not-necessarily-irrational-to-believe-things-you-cant-justify-to-others.md index 9c2cfb6..e7ef705 100644 --- a/content/entry/its-not-necessarily-irrational-to-believe-things-you-cant-justify-to-others.md +++ b/content/entry/its-not-necessarily-irrational-to-believe-things-you-cant-justify-to-others.md @@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ Maybe you have a relationship that just "feels right". Again, I think you have t But sometimes the intuition of a good relationship is right. Intuitions tend to improve over time as you get to know yourself better. It's perfectly acceptable to love someone and not have a reason why. That might just be your specialized brain circuitry working as it should, giving you a result without all the reasons why. # Conclusion -There's a tendency among hyperintellectual people (Spock types) to minimize, denigrade, and avoid indirect reasoning. I know because I am a hyperintellectual person myself. But we can't afford to throw indirect reasoning out the window wholesale. Despite its flaws, it surely has its place and we can't function without it. +There's a tendency among hyperintellectual people (Spock types) to minimize, denigrate, and avoid indirect reasoning. I know because I am a hyperintellectual person myself. But we can't afford to throw indirect reasoning out the window wholesale. Despite its flaws, it surely has its place and we can't function without it. We shouldn't assume people who can't verbalize their justification for a belief lack justification for that belief. I think this is an important thing to keep in mind when you engage with someone who is less prepared than you. diff --git a/content/entry/journal-update-019.md b/content/entry/journal-update-019.md index ec83c0a..862f9e3 100644 --- a/content/entry/journal-update-019.md +++ b/content/entry/journal-update-019.md @@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ git cat-file -p | sed '/-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----/,/-----END P # Future Plans * Document nicksphere-gmi. Unlike previous versions, the current nicksphere-gmi repository is a proper static capsule/website generator. It therefore makes sense to document it for others. * Make a simpler demo capsule/website for potential nicksphere-gmi users. -* Remove the promoted page. I think it would be best to eliminate the promoted page over time, making an entry for each item on the promoted page. I would rather explain in proper context what it is about these people/organizations/etcetra that I support instead of just listing them with no explanation. +* Remove the promoted page. I think it would be best to eliminate the promoted page over time, making an entry for each item on the promoted page. I would rather explain in proper context what it is about these people/organizations/etc that I support instead of just listing them with no explanation. * Support multithreading for nicksphere-gmi. * Add a 404 page to this journal. diff --git a/content/entry/journal-update-020.md b/content/entry/journal-update-020.md index 2329d57..8676bc1 100644 --- a/content/entry/journal-update-020.md +++ b/content/entry/journal-update-020.md @@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ I'm still not quite satisfied with my new Hugo theme, hugo-theme-nicksphere. It # Future Plans * Polish up hugo-theme-nicksphere. -* Remove the promoted page. I think it would be best to eliminate the promoted page over time, making an entry for each item on the promoted page. I would rather explain in proper context what it is about these people/organizations/etcetra that I support instead of just listing them with no explanation. +* Remove the promoted page. I think it would be best to eliminate the promoted page over time, making an entry for each item on the promoted page. I would rather explain in proper context what it is about these people/organizations/etc. that I support instead of just listing them with no explanation. Link(s): diff --git a/content/entry/legalize-all-drugs.md b/content/entry/legalize-all-drugs.md index 5b8bf0f..a9edd31 100644 --- a/content/entry/legalize-all-drugs.md +++ b/content/entry/legalize-all-drugs.md @@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ draft: false # History Lesson A century ago, alcohol prohibition in the United States began with the 18th amendment[1] prohibiting the production, importation and sale of alcoholic beverages and ended in 1933 with the 21st amendment[2]. The goal of prohibition was to reduce alcohol consumption. While prohibition succeeded in reducing alcohol consumption somewhat, it resulted in many unintended consequences including public health problems, an increase in organized crime, and corruption of law enforcement. -The war on "drugs" only played a small part of law enforcement efforts on the whole until Ronald Reagan was inaugurated in 1981. Reagan expanded the drug war with a focus on criminal penalties instead of treatment. His policies resulted in a massive increase in incarcerations of nonviolent drug users. His wife Nancy Reagan started the Just Say No[3] campaign to teach schoolchildren not to use drugs. It was about as effective at reducing drug use as abstinence-based sex education is at reducing sex. The most popular Just Say No program, DARE[4], showed zero effect on drug use according to 20 controlled studies[5]. Perhaps that's because DARE spreads lies and gives children a contorted picture of the war on drugs? In 1986, congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act changing federal supervised release[6] programs increasing focus on punishment rather than rehabilitation, prohibiting analogs of controlled substances[7] and requiring mandatory minimum sentences[8] for nonviolent drug users. The sentencing discrepency between crack and powder cocaine resulted in an uneven increase in incarceration rates for black people. Doesn't that sound familiar? +The war on "drugs" only played a small part of law enforcement efforts on the whole until Ronald Reagan was inaugurated in 1981. Reagan expanded the drug war with a focus on criminal penalties instead of treatment. His policies resulted in a massive increase in incarcerations of nonviolent drug users. His wife Nancy Reagan started the Just Say No[3] campaign to teach schoolchildren not to use drugs. It was about as effective at reducing drug use as abstinence-based sex education is at reducing sex. The most popular Just Say No program, DARE[4], showed zero effect on drug use according to 20 controlled studies[5]. Perhaps that's because DARE spreads lies and gives children a contorted picture of the war on drugs? In 1986, congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act changing federal supervised release[6] programs increasing focus on punishment rather than rehabilitation, prohibiting analogs of controlled substances[7] and requiring mandatory minimum sentences[8] for nonviolent drug users. The sentencing discrepancy between crack and powder cocaine resulted in an uneven increase in incarceration rates for black people. Doesn't that sound familiar? In 2020, a whole century since the beginning of prohibition era, there are signs that we are finally learning what history has to teach us: The unintended consequences of drug prohibition are worse than the problem it's meant to solve. As of today, medical cannabis use is legalized in 35 states. The recreational use of cannabis is legalized in 15 states. 16 states have decriminalized cannabis use. Up to 40 states might allow some form of marijuana legalization[9] by the end of 2020. Just a few days ago Oregon became the first state to legalize magic mushrooms for medical use and decriminalize "street drugs". People found in possession of street drugs will face a ticket and a 100 dollar fine rather than a felony. They will optionally be offered treatment. Despite recent progress, the war on "drugs" is still being waged almost 50 years later and drugs are cheaper and easier to acquire than ever. And that's where we're at today. @@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ I could argue why drugs should be legalized without giving you the history lesso ## Personal Autonomy Drugs should be legal because your own body belongs to you, not the government. If I want to chop my finger off so I only have 4 fingers, I should be able to do it. You can say it's the dumbest thing you've ever heard of, that something's wrong with me, that no one in their right mind would do such a thing, but it's my finger. I'm not by any means comparing doing drugs to cutting your own finger off. Depending on which drug you do, it can be far less dangerous or far more dangerous than cutting your own finger off. Cutting your own finger off also doesn't have any perceivable benefits whereas drugs do. That's why people do them. Making this argument makes me sound like I lean libertarian, but I don't think personal autonomy is without limits. -With abortion, there is another life (or potential human life) at stake. Whether you are pro-choice or pro-life, there is at least a potential human life there that you have to take into account in your calculation of banning abortion versus legalizing it. With suicide, it is your own life you are taking. It belongs to you. But it might make sense for agents of the state to have the authority to prevent you from committing suicide if you are in a crisis situation. Although it is your own life and belongs to you as far as the government should be concerned, your future self might be glad someone stopped you. Much like abortion, you can make the case that there is a potential happy human life that is being ended. With explicit informed patient consent as in euthenasia, that argument is much harder to make especially when someone is in great pain, terminally ill, and there is no prospect of future happiness. Anyway, the point is that personal autonomy isn't an absolute. However, in general, you should be able to do whatever you want so long as it doesn't infringe upon the rights of others. +With abortion, there is another life (or potential human life) at stake. Whether you are pro-choice or pro-life, there is at least a potential human life there that you have to take into account in your calculation of banning abortion versus legalizing it. With suicide, it is your own life you are taking. It belongs to you. But it might make sense for agents of the state to have the authority to prevent you from committing suicide if you are in a crisis situation. Although it is your own life and belongs to you as far as the government should be concerned, your future self might be glad someone stopped you. Much like abortion, you can make the case that there is a potential happy human life that is being ended. With explicit informed patient consent as in euthanasia, that argument is much harder to make especially when someone is in great pain, terminally ill, and there is no prospect of future happiness. Anyway, the point is that personal autonomy isn't an absolute. However, in general, you should be able to do whatever you want so long as it doesn't infringe upon the rights of others. You might object that while drug use may not infringe upon others' rights, it may affect them negatively even if you use drugs responsibly. So can watching too much TV, social media, and a million other things we don't criminalize. While watching too much TV is bad for you, to criminalize watching too much TV would be tyrannical because it means the government gains the right to restrict your viewing. My right to extend my fist ends at your face. Likewise, the right to do drugs, or as I'll call it, the right to access alternative states of body and mind, means the government isn't allowed to close you off from having certain types of experiences. If those states of mind produced by drugs are inconvenient for some government agenda like war, then that's too bad. There is no "right for the government to restrict states of consciousness aversive to conflict". @@ -39,7 +39,7 @@ Wherever there is an organized illicit drug industry, there is also going to be The bottom line is dealing with the cartels is mutually beneficial for those in power, so long as they don't get caught. Those in government and the police have all the wrong economic incentives when it comes to the drug war. In some government positions in countries with rampant corruption, it's probably an unwritten job requirement to work with the cartels. We'll probably never know which positions those are for sure though. Corruption happens in the shadows and it's always difficult to produce any concrete evidence. Legalizing drugs would eliminate the cartel's source of profit, which means politicians would no longer have any financial incentive to work with them. It follows that drug-related government and police corruption would decrease. ## Improved Police-Community Relations -The war on "drugs" is responsible for police militarization more than anything else. Peaceful protestors and rioters face chemical irritants, armored vehicles and riot gear because the war on "drugs" has ensured police have military-style gear. Police militarization causes officers to view themselves as a confrontational force instead of community-oriented. In the eyes of the citizenry, this makes police look like an occupying force rather than public servants. +The war on "drugs" is responsible for police militarization more than anything else. Peaceful protesters and rioters face chemical irritants, armored vehicles and riot gear because the war on "drugs" has ensured police have military-style gear. Police militarization causes officers to view themselves as a confrontational force instead of community-oriented. In the eyes of the citizenry, this makes police look like an occupying force rather than public servants. I'm not dumping all the blame on cops either. The job of police officers is to enforce the law. When the law is unjust, the police still have to enforce it. It's not fair on them because it makes them look bad. Ending the war on "drugs" would do so much for police-community relations. Children wouldn't have to watch their parents hauled off to jail for choosing to engage in a victimless activity. Families wouldn't be torn apart. Drug-related police corruption would end, as I talked about in the above section. Police departments could shift their resources toward stopping murderers and rapists, people causing real harm to society. Without ending the war on "drugs", public confidence in policing will continue to erode. In the year 2020 where we have nationwide demonstrations against police brutality[14], the Justice Department declaring NYC, Portland and Seattle "Anarchist Jurisdictions"[15], and police abandoning precincts[16], police definitely shouldn't be perpetuating a failed drug war that has lasted half a century and will only further diminish public trust in the police. @@ -51,12 +51,12 @@ First off, I need to explain the difference between the two. In general, decrimi If you want to deter drug use, then there are better approaches than not fully legalizing drugs. This is where you could get creative. As a single example, turn the idea of a fine on its head. Offer a cash reward to addicts for staying clean. Consider cultural influences and other societal factors that may be causing people to turn toward drugs, such as poverty or mental illness. Perhaps the reason drug use is so high is because society has other problems that aren't being attended to, and drugs are just a symptom of it. This is where policy could be informed by sociological research. If you think criminalizing or not fully legalizing drugs is the only way to deter their use, then I'd encourage you to think more creatively. # Drug Regulation -Let's move on to regulation. Regulation of drugs is important for ensuring drug quality, fair pricing, safety and education. But it's also probably a good idea not to regulate drugs so heavily that a sizeable black market continues to exist. I'm not going to focus on regulation other than to say deciding on the regulations should be an evidence-based process. Lawmakers have almost 50 years of evidence on how not to treat drugs in society, so maybe they can learn from past mistakes and other countries that have decriminalized drugs and come up with regulations as drugs are legalized. +Let's move on to regulation. Regulation of drugs is important for ensuring drug quality, fair pricing, safety and education. But it's also probably a good idea not to regulate drugs so heavily that a sizable black market continues to exist. I'm not going to focus on regulation other than to say deciding on the regulations should be an evidence-based process. Lawmakers have almost 50 years of evidence on how not to treat drugs in society, so maybe they can learn from past mistakes and other countries that have decriminalized drugs and come up with regulations as drugs are legalized. # Drug Education As for education, let's talk about some of the things schools shouldn't do. First and foremost, school drug education programs should stop lying to children about drugs. Schools should stop teaching children that every hard drug user is an addict. Schools should stop teaching abstinence as the only practical way of protecting oneself from harmful drugs. And they should stop using green-tinted goggles to mimic the effects of marijuana. Yes, they actually did that[19]. -So what should schools do? They should tell the truth. They should teach that the war on "drugs" has been one of the greatest moral failures of our time, a colossal waste of money, time, resources and human life that could have been better spent on literally anything else. Education programs should provide a fairminded, evidence-based view of the advantages and disadvantages of drug use per each drug. Drug education programs need to instruct young adults which drugs are worth doing, which are not, how often and in what setting, once they are of age. Drug education should come before most young adults are offered drugs. Program instructors could be social workers instead of police officers because drug addiction is not a criminal issue. It's a health issue. As we end the war on drugs, social workers should take responsibility for dealing with drug-related issues. Social workers can be trained based on prior drug research and hear testimony from non-addicted healthy drug users and addicts alike so they can get an accurate sense of the positive and negative effects of different drugs. This would put them in a good position to educate youth about drugs. +So what should schools do? They should tell the truth. They should teach that the war on "drugs" has been one of the greatest moral failures of our time, a colossal waste of money, time, resources and human life that could have been better spent on literally anything else. Education programs should provide a fair-minded, evidence-based view of the advantages and disadvantages of drug use per each drug. Drug education programs need to instruct young adults which drugs are worth doing, which are not, how often and in what setting, once they are of age. Drug education should come before most young adults are offered drugs. Program instructors could be social workers instead of police officers because drug addiction is not a criminal issue. It's a health issue. As we end the war on drugs, social workers should take responsibility for dealing with drug-related issues. Social workers can be trained based on prior drug research and hear testimony from non-addicted healthy drug users and addicts alike so they can get an accurate sense of the positive and negative effects of different drugs. This would put them in a good position to educate youth about drugs. # Post Drug War Society Now that I've covered a few points on education, how will we convert our current society into a post drug war society? One answer is we need better resources for treating drug addiction. Education can only do so much if there aren't effective resources out there. Drug treatment centers don't even have to abide by federal guidelines and it's debatable if they even work at all. That has to change. They need to be evidence-based and evaluated for effectiveness. diff --git a/content/entry/metaethics.md b/content/entry/metaethics.md index e09c102..3caf751 100644 --- a/content/entry/metaethics.md +++ b/content/entry/metaethics.md @@ -3,64 +3,64 @@ title: "Metaethics" date: 2020-10-11T00:00:00 draft: false --- -I'm going to talk about metaethics using the 3 questions posed by Bernard Rosen and Richard Garner. The first part is moral semantics. Moral semantics asks how we should interpret moral language, words like good, evil, right, wrong and ought. The next is moral ontology. Moral ontology asks about the nature of moral judgements. Are there many kinds of moral judgements? Are those judgements true for everyone or only specific groups? Lastly, there is moral epistemology. It talks about what we can know about morality and how we know it, irrespective of its nature. For instance, how can we justify our moral judgements to others? I'll start with moral semantics. Without defining the semantics, nothing else in this post would have any meaning. +I'm going to talk about metaethics using the 3 questions posed by Bernard Rosen and Richard Garner. The first part is moral semantics. Moral semantics asks how we should interpret moral language, words like good, evil, right, wrong and ought. The next is moral ontology. Moral ontology asks about the nature of moral judgments. Are there many kinds of moral judgments? Are those judgments true for everyone or only specific groups? Lastly, there is moral epistemology. It talks about what we can know about morality and how we know it, irrespective of its nature. For instance, how can we justify our moral judgments to others? I'll start with moral semantics. Without defining the semantics, nothing else in this post would have any meaning. # Moral Semantics There are at least 2 desirable properties for our moral semantics: -1. It should allow us to convince rational agents of our moral judgements. +1. It should allow us to convince rational agents of our moral judgments. 2. It should minimize the number of assumptions we have to make. -Theories such as emotivism[1] assert moral sentences just express emotions. When I say "Murder is wrong", I don't mean "I dislike murder". Neither does anyone I have ever met. We want more out of a moral theory than expressing emotions. We want to be able to convince others of our judgements. Emotivism isn't what we're after. What about universal prescriptivism[2]? It holds that moral judgements such as "Murder is wrong" should be interpreted as "Don't murder". But just commanding someone to do something isn't necessarily convincing because it doesn't employ logical reasoning. It's unlikely to convince anyone that doesn't already believe they shouldn't be murdering. So again, it fails our first requirement of being able to convince others. Let's move on to some other theories. +Theories such as emotivism[1] assert moral sentences just express emotions. When I say "Murder is wrong", I don't mean "I dislike murder". Neither does anyone I have ever met. We want more out of a moral theory than expressing emotions. We want to be able to convince others of our judgments. Emotivism isn't what we're after. What about universal prescriptivism[2]? It holds that moral judgments such as "Murder is wrong" should be interpreted as "Don't murder". But just commanding someone to do something isn't necessarily convincing because it doesn't employ logical reasoning. It's unlikely to convince anyone that doesn't already believe they shouldn't be murdering. So again, it fails our first requirement of being able to convince others. Let's move on to some other theories. ## Hume's Guillotine -Ethical naturalism[3] says that moral propositions are objective properties of the cosmos. This means that we can look at features of reality and "see" what is right and wrong in the same way that we can look into a microscope and deduce the germ theory of disease. This idea of moral semantics is self-evidently absurd. Making no extra assumptions, nothing about the way the world is tells us the way it should be. I cannot deduce "Murder is wrong" from empirical facts like "The sky is blue" or any other facts about the physical or metaphysical cosmos. This strict divide between facts and moral judgements is known as Hume's Guillotine[4]. +Ethical naturalism[3] says that moral propositions are objective properties of the cosmos. This means that we can look at features of reality and "see" what is right and wrong in the same way that we can look into a microscope and deduce the germ theory of disease. This idea of moral semantics is self-evidently absurd. Making no extra assumptions, nothing about the way the world is tells us the way it should be. I cannot deduce "Murder is wrong" from empirical facts like "The sky is blue" or any other facts about the physical or metaphysical cosmos. This strict divide between facts and moral judgments is known as Hume's Guillotine[4]. -Ethical non-naturalism[5] tries to bypass Hume's Guillotine by saying that these moral judgements are irreducible. Nothing about the way the cosmos is tells us how it should be, but how things should be is an objective irreducible (possibly intuitive) property of the cosmos itself. If someone asks me "Why shouldn't I murder?", the only correct response according to ethical non-naturalism is philosophical jargon like "It is an irreducible, intrinsic property of the universe that murder is wrong". If another ethical non-naturalist comes along saying murder is ethical, all I can do is repeat how my belief is an intrinsic property of the universe, so the other person must be mistaken. It would be like watching two presuppositionalists[6] argue in circles. I'd be comfortable going on record saying presuppositional apologetics has never convinced anyone that didn't already believe what it is they were presupposing. More like they already believed something and went looking for philosophical jargon to defend it. That's exactly what ethical non-naturalism does and also why it's not convincing. Ethical non-naturalism fails both of our criteria because it is unconvincing to third-parties and requires making assumptions. +Ethical non-naturalism[5] tries to bypass Hume's Guillotine by saying that these moral judgments are irreducible. Nothing about the way the cosmos is tells us how it should be, but how things should be is an objective irreducible (possibly intuitive) property of the cosmos itself. If someone asks me "Why shouldn't I murder?", the only correct response according to ethical non-naturalism is philosophical jargon like "It is an irreducible, intrinsic property of the universe that murder is wrong". If another ethical non-naturalist comes along saying murder is ethical, all I can do is repeat how my belief is an intrinsic property of the universe, so the other person must be mistaken. It would be like watching two presuppositionalists[6] argue in circles. I'd be comfortable going on record saying presuppositional apologetics has never convinced anyone that didn't already believe what it is they were presupposing. More like they already believed something and went looking for philosophical jargon to defend it. That's exactly what ethical non-naturalism does and also why it's not convincing. Ethical non-naturalism fails both of our criteria because it is unconvincing to third-parties and requires making assumptions. -So far, we haven't had any luck finding a moral semantics that satisfies both our requirements. What about divine command theory[7]? According to it, god's moral judgements are correct. There is no evidence that a god or gods exist, but let's pretend for a moment that a god does exist and that god makes moral judgements. According to divine command theory, god's judgements are true. This raises the Euthyphro dilemma[8]: Are god's moral judgements true just because god declares them, or are god's moral judgements true because god only declares true moral judgements? If the former is true, then god can declare "Murder is perfectly morally okay" and it would be true because god said so and morality would be arbitrary. If the latter is true, then god is just the messenger for moral judgements that are true independent of god's opinion. Therefore god would be arbitrary. Ideal observer theory[9] suffers from the same dilemma. Even if we ignore all of that, both theories still fail our second criteria. The assumption is that god or the ideal observer's judgements are true. We want to avoid making strong assumptions, so these theories aren't good either for our criteria. +So far, we haven't had any luck finding a moral semantics that satisfies both our requirements. What about divine command theory[7]? According to it, god's moral judgments are correct. There is no evidence that a god or gods exist, but let's pretend for a moment that a god does exist and that god makes moral judgments. According to divine command theory, god's judgments are true. This raises the Euthyphro dilemma[8]: Are god's moral judgments true just because god declares them, or are god's moral judgments true because god only declares true moral judgments? If the former is true, then god can declare "Murder is perfectly morally okay" and it would be true because god said so and morality would be arbitrary. If the latter is true, then god is just the messenger for moral judgments that are true independent of god's opinion. Therefore god would be arbitrary. Ideal observer theory[9] suffers from the same dilemma. Even if we ignore all of that, both theories still fail our second criteria. The assumption is that god or the ideal observer's judgments are true. We want to avoid making strong assumptions, so these theories aren't good either for our criteria. ## Moral Progress -I want to define "moral progress" before I continue. Moral progress means just what is sounds like; that it is possible to go from a less ethical society or individual to a more ethical one. Certain moral theories don't allow us to do this. Error theory[10] says that all moral claims are false. This is an assumption and it doesn't allow us to convince rational agents of our moral judgements because all moral judgements are false. "Murder is wrong" and "Murder is good" are both false under this theory. So it's a non-starter. We can't do anything useful with this theory. We can't convince others, can't reason, can't make deductions, and never have any reason to change our minds. +I want to define "moral progress" before I continue. Moral progress means just what is sounds like; that it is possible to go from a less ethical society or individual to a more ethical one. Certain moral theories don't allow us to do this. Error theory[10] says that all moral claims are false. This is an assumption and it doesn't allow us to convince rational agents of our moral judgments because all moral judgments are false. "Murder is wrong" and "Murder is good" are both false under this theory. So it's a non-starter. We can't do anything useful with this theory. We can't convince others, can't reason, can't make deductions, and never have any reason to change our minds. Moral progress is also impossible under moral relativism[11]. It's difficult to draw a hard line between what constitutes a "culture" or a "group", but let's ignore that for now. Let's say we have a very clear idea of who belongs to which culture at what time. According to relativistic morality, what is good is defined as what the "group" accepts as good. This group could be a single individual or a society. Let's take the case of a single individual. If I am my own group, then whatever I believe is automatically correct because I believe it. It's "true for me" that murder is wrong. It may not be true for another person or group, but it is true for me. Morality is relative. -With this reasoning, I am never wrong. There is never a reason for me to change my mind about any moral judgement because I'm right by definition. I can't convince other individuals because whatever they believe is "true for them", so this theory fails our first criteria. With cultural relativism, the culture is the group, not the individual. So, it might be possible for an individual to be wrong if they disagree with their culture. This would mean that an abolitionist in a slave-owning culture would be morally wrong about slavery because the predominant culture is in favor of owning slaves. Also, if the culture decides slavery is wrong, then there are two interpretations that can be made of their previous support of owning slaves. The first interpretation is that the culture was wrong to think that slave-owning was just, and now they have the right belief. But according to cultural relativism, this would also be true in the reverse direction. Going from an abolitionist culture to a slave-owning one would also have to be considered moral progress, since the only metric by which moral judgements can be made is what the existing culture believes. The second interpretation is that the culture was never wrong. When the culture was in favor of slave owning, it was in fact good to own slaves for that culture. And when the culture was in favor of the abolition of slavery, then owning slaves was immoral for that culture. This would imply that moral judgements can change over time, but moral progress never really happens. Moral progress aside, convincing other cultures of your culture's moral judgements has no rational basis in cultural relativism. Furthermore, it assumes that the culture is always right, a very strong assumption that fails our second criteria. +With this reasoning, I am never wrong. There is never a reason for me to change my mind about any moral judgment because I'm right by definition. I can't convince other individuals because whatever they believe is "true for them", so this theory fails our first criteria. With cultural relativism, the culture is the group, not the individual. So, it might be possible for an individual to be wrong if they disagree with their culture. This would mean that an abolitionist in a slave-owning culture would be morally wrong about slavery because the predominant culture is in favor of owning slaves. Also, if the culture decides slavery is wrong, then there are two interpretations that can be made of their previous support of owning slaves. The first interpretation is that the culture was wrong to think that slave-owning was just, and now they have the right belief. But according to cultural relativism, this would also be true in the reverse direction. Going from an abolitionist culture to a slave-owning one would also have to be considered moral progress, since the only metric by which moral judgments can be made is what the existing culture believes. The second interpretation is that the culture was never wrong. When the culture was in favor of slave owning, it was in fact good to own slaves for that culture. And when the culture was in favor of the abolition of slavery, then owning slaves was immoral for that culture. This would imply that moral judgments can change over time, but moral progress never really happens. Moral progress aside, convincing other cultures of your culture's moral judgments has no rational basis in cultural relativism. Furthermore, it assumes that the culture is always right, a very strong assumption that fails our second criteria. ## Objective Morality -Other moral semantics define morality in different ways. For example, some define good to be that which maximizes the well-being of all conscious creatures and bad to be that which maximizes suffering. These objective moral semantics are not relative to any individual or culture. They do allow for moral progress and they have the benefit that they allow us to convince others of our moral judgements. For a contrived example, let's say I believe that "Murder is wrong", but my interlocutor thinks that "Murder is good". If we are both using the same definition of good (the maximization of well-being), then I can show that murder reduces well-being, empirically. I can show how it negatively affects the well-being of the family and friends of the victim and talk about the pain of being murdered and the loss of the possibility of future well-being for that person. To use my earlier example, I can point out how slave-owning societies have less well-being in total than those without slaves. Therefore an abolitionist culture would be morally superior according to my definition of good and going from a slave-owning culture to an abolitionist one would be moral progress. +Other moral semantics define morality in different ways. For example, some define good to be that which maximizes the well-being of all conscious creatures and bad to be that which maximizes suffering. These objective moral semantics are not relative to any individual or culture. They do allow for moral progress and they have the benefit that they allow us to convince others of our moral judgments. For a contrived example, let's say I believe that "Murder is wrong", but my interlocutor thinks that "Murder is good". If we are both using the same definition of good (the maximization of well-being), then I can show that murder reduces well-being, empirically. I can show how it negatively affects the well-being of the family and friends of the victim and talk about the pain of being murdered and the loss of the possibility of future well-being for that person. To use my earlier example, I can point out how slave-owning societies have less well-being in total than those without slaves. Therefore an abolitionist culture would be morally superior according to my definition of good and going from a slave-owning culture to an abolitionist one would be moral progress. -The big problem with objective morality is it must make at least one assumption about what ought to be in order to bypass Hume's Guillotine. With utilitarianism, I am assuming that maximizing well-being and minimizing suffering is what we're after. I have to assume that to deduce that murder is wrong. Otherwise I can point out that murder reduces well-being all day long, but it won't get me anywhere because good has nothing to do with well-being. So we are stuck with either not being able to reason about moral judgements with rational agents, or assuming that good has something to do with well-being. +The big problem with objective morality is it must make at least one assumption about what ought to be in order to bypass Hume's Guillotine. With utilitarianism, I am assuming that maximizing well-being and minimizing suffering is what we're after. I have to assume that to deduce that murder is wrong. Otherwise I can point out that murder reduces well-being all day long, but it won't get me anywhere because good has nothing to do with well-being. So we are stuck with either not being able to reason about moral judgments with rational agents, or assuming that good has something to do with well-being. I am levying the same criticism about popular moral philosophy that Immanuel Kant[12] did back in his day through my examples. Kant rightly realized that objective moral philosophy has the insurmountable problem that it must rely on a "heavily subjective" moral imperative to get started. The earlier example I gave of well-being does not apply to people who only care about their own well-being. Utilitarianism[13] will never persuade moral action on behalf of those that only care about themselves. Therefore, objective morality can never surpass hypothetical imperatives[14]. A hypothetical imperative only applies to someone who wishes to achieve certain ends. If I want to pass a test, I'd better study. Another way to say this is I only need to study if I want to pass the test. If I don't care about passing, then I can study or not. It makes no difference. Kant saw this as inadequate and came up with categorical imperatives[15] instead. Categorical imperatives boil down to maxims[16] which also have to be assumed. So while Kant rightly criticized the objective morality of his day for making assumptions, he went on to create his own theory also based on assumptions. ## Hypothetical Imperatives -In a way, with this post, I am doing what Kant originally set out to do. He pointed out the same problems I see with objective morality and attempted to fix them. That is, existing moral systems all either require making some strong assumption or they don't make any assumptions but are useless when it comes to convincing rational agents of our moral judgements. But in doing so, he just made his own assumptions in the form of categorical imperatives. I am not going to do that. Kant's categorical imperatives are unnecessary. Hypothetical imperatives are all that's needed. Kant would have been right if he had just stopped after his criticism of objective morality and not tried to create his own Kantian morality. I do not need to assume my way around Hume's Guillotine because I'm not going to make any assumptions. There's no need for morality to go beyond hypothetical imperatives. I shall explain further. +In a way, with this post, I am doing what Kant originally set out to do. He pointed out the same problems I see with objective morality and attempted to fix them. That is, existing moral systems all either require making some strong assumption or they don't make any assumptions but are useless when it comes to convincing rational agents of our moral judgments. But in doing so, he just made his own assumptions in the form of categorical imperatives. I am not going to do that. Kant's categorical imperatives are unnecessary. Hypothetical imperatives are all that's needed. Kant would have been right if he had just stopped after his criticism of objective morality and not tried to create his own Kantian morality. I do not need to assume my way around Hume's Guillotine because I'm not going to make any assumptions. There's no need for morality to go beyond hypothetical imperatives. I shall explain further. We all have values. Values are things we care about. Some values are fundamental, meaning that we care about them in and of themselves. Others are instrumental. We care about them because they "derive" from other values. If I value passing a test, then I ought to study. Studying would be good. In this case, studying is an instrumental value. I care about studying because I care about passing the test. I care about passing the test because I care about passing the class. I care about passing the class because I care about graduating. I care about graduating because graduating increases my chances of getting a high-paying job. I care about getting a high-paying job because I care about having money. I care about having money because it increases my opportunities. I care about increasing my opportunities because increasing my opportunities increases my well-being. And I care about my well-being in and of itself. In that example, everything except well-being is an instrumental value. Well-being is the intrinsic value. Why does any of that matter? It matters because we can make certain assumptions about others' values. We can assume others generally value staying alive because evolution has baked that into all of us. Whether that is an intrinsic value or instrumental isn't important. As long as others value their continued existence, we can convince them that they ought to care about certain other instrumental values as well like having enough food to eat, having shelter, acting in a non-violent manner, etc. If we know someone's values, we can reason with them about what other values they should have, if they are rational. People often aren't rational, meaning they often have instrumental values incompatible with their intrinsic values. This is a fancy way of saying they don't know what's good for them. People can also be irrational by not doing what they know is good for them. It is common knowledge that a healthy diet and exercise is important, but we don't always do that even though we all want to be healthy. While people aren't always rational, I still consider it an important requirement of a moral system to be able to use rational arguments to convince others. -Hypothetical imperatives don't make any assumptions because they are stated as conditionals. They also allow us to reason with other rational agents about moral judgements. The vast majority of the population values something like well-being for themselves and other conscious creatures. Therefore, I can deduce their other instrumental values if they are being rational. This allows us to collaborate on our values. It means we can tell someone "Murder is wrong" and they understand that to mean "Murder is in contradiction with one or more of my instrumental or intrinsic values". It doesn't do any good to tell a psychopath that murder is wrong because they don't value the well-being of others. This is a big problem in artificial intelligence. If a general artificial intelligence is created that is incompatible with our intrinsic human values, it could be extraordinarily dangerous. The orthogonality thesis[17] explains that any level of intelligence is compatible with any goal. This means a superintelligent AI smarter than we can imagine could value maximizing the number of peanuts in the universe above all else, including human life. It need not have human values which is what makes it so dangerous. It's not that it's bent on harming people. It's just so bent on maximizing peanuts that it grinds humans up for resources to create peanuts. It is neutral toward our well-being because it only cares about peanuts. +Hypothetical imperatives don't make any assumptions because they are stated as conditionals. They also allow us to reason with other rational agents about moral judgments. The vast majority of the population values something like well-being for themselves and other conscious creatures. Therefore, I can deduce their other instrumental values if they are being rational. This allows us to collaborate on our values. It means we can tell someone "Murder is wrong" and they understand that to mean "Murder is in contradiction with one or more of my instrumental or intrinsic values". It doesn't do any good to tell a psychopath that murder is wrong because they don't value the well-being of others. This is a big problem in artificial intelligence. If a general artificial intelligence is created that is incompatible with our intrinsic human values, it could be extraordinarily dangerous. The orthogonality thesis[17] explains that any level of intelligence is compatible with any goal. This means a superintelligent AI smarter than we can imagine could value maximizing the number of peanuts in the universe above all else, including human life. It need not have human values which is what makes it so dangerous. It's not that it's bent on harming people. It's just so bent on maximizing peanuts that it grinds humans up for resources to create peanuts. It is neutral toward our well-being because it only cares about peanuts. We aren't going to convince psychopaths or AI systems to change their behavior by presenting them with moral theories. Hypothetical imperatives can explain why this is. Both the psychopath and the AI system do not share the same moral imperatives as most of humanity, so convincing them rationally is a lost cause. We don't lose anything by using only hypothetical imperatives. With rational agents that share our values, we can make convincing rational arguments. With rational agents that don't share our values such as psychopaths or AI, we never had any hope of convincing them anyway. With irrational agents, we may be able to convince them, but not using rational argument. Therefore whatever we are doing to convince them can't be considered moral reasoning, so we need not worry about it. ## Wrapping Up Moral Semantics Returning back to our original question, how can we define words like good, evil, right, and wrong? Consider the fact that most of humanity shares the same values. In general, those values boil down to well-being for ourselves and others. So, the best way to understand a sentence like "Murder is wrong" might be "Murder is in contradiction with the instrumental or intrinsic values shared by nearly all of humanity". There is an obvious objection to this. The objection is that some people just have different intrinsic values entirely. Psychopaths just don't value the well-being of others intrinsically. A statement like "Murder is wrong" has no meaning to them. Let's take a less extreme example. Person A values well-being so fervently that their ideal future looks like creating as many simulated beings as possible and flooding their minds with the utmost pleasure for the longest amount of time possible. Person A wants heaven on earth, literally. Person B on the other hand gets uncomfortable at the thought of utopia. Person B values variety, spicing things up a bit once in a while. They want to increase well-being also, but think that some suffering in the cosmos is appropriate. It's what keeps us all human and shouldn't be completely gotten rid of. Person A and B both want increased well-being for themselves and others, but given a thousand years of arguing they could never come to a consensus on where exactly the peak of the moral landscape lies. -The second less extreme scenario I gave with Person A and Person B is far more common I imagine than psychopaths or AI. True psychopaths are rare and we don't have strong AGI yet. But every person you talk to probably pictures their version of heaven slightly differently. We want our moral language to be inclusive so we can convince others of our moral judgements, but everyone has slightly different intrinsic values. How can we reconcile this? My answer to this is simply that we don't need to. In the same way that the rays of light from the sun hit earth in parallel because the sun is so far away, most people's idea of utopia is far enough away from where we are now that the steps toward it are similar no matter what your idea of heaven is. Even if every person had radically different incompatible intrinsic values, the best thing we can do is try to find common instrumental values and work together on those. That is still the best option we have. So the only appropriate way to define moral language that I see is translating it into the language of hypothetical imperatives. +The second less extreme scenario I gave with Person A and Person B is far more common I imagine than psychopaths or AI. True psychopaths are rare and we don't have strong AGI yet. But every person you talk to probably pictures their version of heaven slightly differently. We want our moral language to be inclusive so we can convince others of our moral judgments, but everyone has slightly different intrinsic values. How can we reconcile this? My answer to this is simply that we don't need to. In the same way that the rays of light from the sun hit earth in parallel because the sun is so far away, most people's idea of utopia is far enough away from where we are now that the steps toward it are similar no matter what your idea of heaven is. Even if every person had radically different incompatible intrinsic values, the best thing we can do is try to find common instrumental values and work together on those. That is still the best option we have. So the only appropriate way to define moral language that I see is translating it into the language of hypothetical imperatives. -Some may disagree, but I tend to be pragmatic. Language should be useful for communication. That's where I get my first criteria for moral semantics. What good is moral language if we can't use it to make rational arguments to convince others about our moral judgements? This is why I view theories like error theory, emotivism, and ethical non-naturalism as non-starters. They are not useful for convincing anybody of moral judgements and only serve to nullify moral language. Hypothetical imperatives are the most convincing way to interpret moral language such that extra assumptions are not necessary. +Some may disagree, but I tend to be pragmatic. Language should be useful for communication. That's where I get my first criteria for moral semantics. What good is moral language if we can't use it to make rational arguments to convince others about our moral judgments? This is why I view theories like error theory, emotivism, and ethical non-naturalism as non-starters. They are not useful for convincing anybody of moral judgments and only serve to nullify moral language. Hypothetical imperatives are the most convincing way to interpret moral language such that extra assumptions are not necessary. # Moral Ontology -Given that I am using hypothetical imperatives to interpret moral language, should moral statements be interpreted as universal or relative? When I say "Murder is wrong", how can that apply to others who do not value human well-being? They can't exactly translate that to "Murder contradicts my instrumental or intrinsic values" if it in fact doesn't. Does this mean everyone has their own morality and it's all relative[18]? Or should we treat common intrinsic values as universal[19] and even those that don't value the well-being of others are subject to that moral judgement? +Given that I am using hypothetical imperatives to interpret moral language, should moral statements be interpreted as universal or relative? When I say "Murder is wrong", how can that apply to others who do not value human well-being? They can't exactly translate that to "Murder contradicts my instrumental or intrinsic values" if it in fact doesn't. Does this mean everyone has their own morality and it's all relative[18]? Or should we treat common intrinsic values as universal[19] and even those that don't value the well-being of others are subject to that moral judgment? As I said before, we are far enough away from utopia that even if most of us don't share the exact same intrinsic values, they converge on instrumental values. Therefore, as a matter of language, it is best for us to talk as if everyone shares the value of well-being for themselves and others. This doesn't mean we universalize well-being into a global intrinsic value for everyone. Being a pragmatist, I care about convincing others of my values. I don't think it's really an important question if values are universal or relative. My answer to this would be interpret it however you want. Pragmatically, it isn't going to affect your ability to convince anyone. I personally am going to talk in a universal way because it sounds more natural and gets the point across. I am going to say "Murder is wrong", not "Murder is wrong, for me". "Murder is wrong" applies to everyone that shares the intrinsic value of increasing well-being and decreasing suffering, which is almost all humanity. So, even though I know that not everyone has an intrinsic set of values that can deduce "Murder is wrong", I am going to speak as if it's a universal anyway because it's close enough that I'm not going to speak with exception. "Murder is wrong" is a good analogy. Murder is wrong, generally. But what about in wartime? What about in self-defense? It's less clear. But despite that, we don't say things like "Murder is wrong except during wartime and except in self-defense and except...". We don't speak this way because the list of exceptions goes on forever. For the same reason, I am going to say "Murder is wrong" without considering all the edge cases like an AI that only values maximizing peanuts. The short answer to the moral ontology of my metaethics is "I don't care". You can treat it as relative or universal. It makes no difference to the hypothetical imperatives. Either someone shares your values and you can go about using rational argument to convince them or they don't and you can't. Whether you want to say "Murder is wrong" is true for only people that value well-being or it's true for everyone is a question I don't think deserves an answer. It's a question that doesn't have any meaning. Semantically, I think it makes the most sense to speak in universals ("Murder is wrong", not "Murder is wrong, for me") and I've given my reasons why. With that, I'll move on to the last section which is moral epistemology. # Moral Epistemology -Now that we know how to interpret moral judgements, how can we actually support or defend moral judgements? Part of my motivation for writing this post is how much I enjoyed Sam Harris' book The Moral Landscape[20]. I highly recommend it. In it, he explains how scientific facts can inform moral values. What many people take issue with is that he doesn't really solve the is-ought problem. He just asserts that morality has something to do with the well-being of conscious creatures. I don't take too much issue with this since it is almost universally true. I just avoid taking that step and instead use hypothetical imperatives to avoid running into the is-ought problem that is a popular critique of his book[21]. +Now that we know how to interpret moral judgments, how can we actually support or defend moral judgments? Part of my motivation for writing this post is how much I enjoyed Sam Harris' book The Moral Landscape[20]. I highly recommend it. In it, he explains how scientific facts can inform moral values. What many people take issue with is that he doesn't really solve the is-ought problem. He just asserts that morality has something to do with the well-being of conscious creatures. I don't take too much issue with this since it is almost universally true. I just avoid taking that step and instead use hypothetical imperatives to avoid running into the is-ought problem that is a popular critique of his book[21]. The bigger problem I see with Sam's morality is one I brought up already. Even for those who do value well-being, there may be minute differences in the end goal those values imply. Some that value well-being may want a perfect utopia. Others that also value well-being may think that goes too far, that there should always be at least some discomfort to spice things up. Sam himself has admitted before that he finds the idea of a "well-being utopia" uncomfortable. His common response to criticisms of this sort is that the idea of well-being is fluid and continually evolving. However, this still doesn't solve the problem that some people, likely many people, just have irreconcilable intrinsic values, even if they all value well-being. For that reason, I choose not to assume that well-being is what everyone is after. This allows my theory to account for wide variances in value structures, but I understand why Sam starts with well-being. diff --git a/content/entry/mourning-the-loss-of-privacy.md b/content/entry/mourning-the-loss-of-privacy.md index 7f8c72a..f88923f 100644 --- a/content/entry/mourning-the-loss-of-privacy.md +++ b/content/entry/mourning-the-loss-of-privacy.md @@ -51,9 +51,9 @@ In general, I don't give friends, family or strangers consent to take pictures o # I'm Paranoid? People often say to me "Nick, you're paranoid". They ask why I care so much about privacy, implying I'm doing something I shouldn't be. These people are the "nothing to hide" people. They are clueless to what is going on around them in terms of mass surveillance and its effects. They don't understand that society is taking a very dark path and I'm doing my best to resist it while I still can. They just see someone who is extremely paranoid over nothing because they don't understand how mass surveillance is used to control and influence the world. -On the contrary, pro-surveillance people are some of the most paranoid folks I've ever met. Those who think there needs to be surveillance cameras in every isle of the supermarket lest someone steals. Those who think we need a mass surveillance apparatus monitoring everyone at all times because of an extremely miniscule threat brought to attention by a few incidents that happened 20 years ago. An extreme overreaction to a perceived threat. That's the very definition of paranoia. +On the contrary, pro-surveillance people are some of the most paranoid folks I've ever met. Those who think there needs to be surveillance cameras in every isle of the supermarket lest someone steals. Those who think we need a mass surveillance apparatus monitoring everyone at all times because of an extremely minuscule threat brought to attention by a few incidents that happened 20 years ago. An extreme overreaction to a perceived threat. That's the very definition of paranoia. -I'm not downplaying 9/11 or saying terrorism isn't an issue, but taking away everyone's right to privacy just gave the terrorists exactly what they wanted. A better response would have been to mobilize for freedom and privacy since governments always try to justify expanding their power in times of crisis. It usually works by the way because people are scared and in need of reassurance. Terrorism was never that big of a threat and more surveillance wouldn't prevent it anyway. It's security theater. Mass surveillance doesn't prevent terrorism. It just makes it easier for the government to get dirt on protestors, journalists, dissidents and whistleblowers. For that reason, mass surveillance poses more of a threat to democracy than terrorism ever has. +I'm not downplaying 9/11 or saying terrorism isn't an issue, but taking away everyone's right to privacy just gave the terrorists exactly what they wanted. A better response would have been to mobilize for freedom and privacy since governments always try to justify expanding their power in times of crisis. It usually works by the way because people are scared and in need of reassurance. Terrorism was never that big of a threat and more surveillance wouldn't prevent it anyway. It's security theater. Mass surveillance doesn't prevent terrorism. It just makes it easier for the government to get dirt on protesters, journalists, dissidents and whistleblowers. For that reason, mass surveillance poses more of a threat to democracy than terrorism ever has. # Mourning Privacy What all this brings me to is a sense of loss and mourning what once was. Older people lived in an age without mass surveillance. I sometimes wish I were born in that era, where people had real privacy. I could've walked down the street without being recorded by a doorbell camera. Private conversations with others would not only have been practical, they would've been the norm. I could've gone to a person's home and it wouldn't have been bugged with half a dozen Internet of Stings devices. I could've gone to the store without having dozens of cameras tracking my facial expression and the way I walk and who I'm with. I could've finished college and gotten my degree and a decent privacy-respecting job since, back then, all jobs were privacy-respecting. I could've used the internet before it was monopolized by big tech, before every packet sent over the wire was scooped up and analyzed. I miss it, even though I never lived during that time. I don't wish for everything to go back to how it was. I just want the privacy back. diff --git a/content/entry/my-career-path.md b/content/entry/my-career-path.md index 25e5323..4249e95 100644 --- a/content/entry/my-career-path.md +++ b/content/entry/my-career-path.md @@ -35,7 +35,7 @@ So that's the overview. It has been over a year and some months since all that t ## Blogging Since I dropped out, I've obviously been writing this blog for one thing. Putting things in writing helps me tremendously in organizing my thoughts. Also the occasional feedback I get from others helps. I'm very happy I started this blog and I have no plans to ever stop writing on it. So long as I have thoughts to think I'll have posts to publish. -In terms of career advancement, this blog is a step forward. I can put it on my resumé. It demonstrates my critical thinking and my writing abilities, both desirable qualities for employers. It highlights my focus on computer privacy, security and ethics. And finally, it represents my technical skills through the code I've written and published on git.nicksphere.ch. More than anything else, I'd say it shows my writing ability though. +In terms of career advancement, this blog is a step forward. I can put it on my résumé. It demonstrates my critical thinking and my writing abilities, both desirable qualities for employers. It highlights my focus on computer privacy, security and ethics. And finally, it represents my technical skills through the code I've written and published on git.nicksphere.ch. More than anything else, I'd say it shows my writing ability though. ## Working To pay my bills, I've been working low wage entry-level positions that don't serve to advance my career in any way. It's all I've been able to get so far. I'm not going to sugar coat it. It sucks, but I've gained immense respect for the people who work those jobs. Someone has to do them and there's no silver lining to it. They work their asses off to earn starvation wages and barely stay afloat financially speaking. They ought to be paid more. @@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ Nevertheless I feel very out of place working low wage entry-level positions, bu ## Looking For Internships I've tried applying for free software internships, but no luck so far. The only place I'm certain I wouldn't have any freedom issues is the granddaddy organization of the free software movement, the FSF. I haven't had any luck there yet either. According to the statistics I've read, less than 5% of applicants get approved for many of the free software internships. There's just not as much money and positions available in free software as there is in proprietary software. A lot of internships are targeted towards minorities and being a straight, white male doesn't help. A lot of them are exclusive to students, which I am no longer. -Something that has been discouraging is seeing so-called "open source" internships use proprietary software for project development and communication. It makes no sense to use Goolag docs, Slack and Github for project development when you're developing free software. User freedom matters, but what about developer freedom? Don't developers deserve freedom too? Many of the sites for free software internships require proprietary Javascript to apply and they include Goolag Analytics, which goes to show how seriously they're taking the whole freedom thing. +Something that has been discouraging is seeing so-called "open source" internships use proprietary software for project development and communication. It makes no sense to use Goolag docs, Slack and Github for project development when you're developing free software. User freedom matters, but what about developer freedom? Don't developers deserve freedom too? Many of the sites for free software internships require proprietary JavaScript to apply and they include Goolag Analytics, which goes to show how seriously they're taking the whole freedom thing. ## Interacting with Free Software Communities Since dropping out, I've communicated in various free software communities. @@ -107,7 +107,7 @@ I've spent over a year trying and failing to find a way to make money with free Writing this blog isn't definitively moving me more toward a career either, but it's motivating in ways that contributing to free software isn't. For instance I have a very strong motivation to share my opinions with the world, it's a good outlet for self-expression and and it helps me clarify my thoughts. ### I Need Certain Things Out of My Career -So the conclusion I've come to out of thinking about what motivates me is this: Whatever career path I pursue from here, it needs to be backed by several strong motivating factors. I strongly prefer it to enable me to do good in the world. At a minimum, it needs to be ethically neutral. No promoting or tacitly condoning proprietary softare. I'd rather be janitor than have any high-paying career at evilcorp. It must help me gain more knowledge and skills, preferably marketable skills. Ideally I can put it on my resumé to further improve career prospects. +So the conclusion I've come to out of thinking about what motivates me is this: Whatever career path I pursue from here, it needs to be backed by several strong motivating factors. I strongly prefer it to enable me to do good in the world. At a minimum, it needs to be ethically neutral. No promoting or tacitly condoning proprietary software. I'd rather be janitor than have any high-paying career at evilcorp. It must help me gain more knowledge and skills, preferably marketable skills. Ideally I can put it on my résumé to further improve career prospects. I realize that the avoiding proprietary software requirement and doing good in the world preference are going to be the most limiting factors in my career search. Most jobs have at least some aspects that are ethically questionable. I'll have to carefully consider those and research before pursuing the career path so I don't waste my time/money and get discouraged again. @@ -153,7 +153,7 @@ Being self-employed would give me more freedom in my work. It would allow me to It wouldn't be easy, but it might be a better path to advancing my career than anything else. I could try different things and if I fail I've only wasted my time. I'm not a very business-oriented person, but I could learn business skills which may help me succeed on my own. ## Volunteer -While volunteering isn't going to get me a career job instantly, it could help me get my foot in the door. I can put it on my resumé. It would help with networking and meeting likeminded people. I would get work experience. And I would be doing good for the world meanwhile. So it's another solid choice for advancing my career. +While volunteering isn't going to get me a career job instantly, it could help me get my foot in the door. I can put it on my résumé. It would help with networking and meeting like-minded people. I would get work experience. And I would be doing good for the world meanwhile. So it's another solid choice for advancing my career. # Managing My Expectations With that, I have some solid ideas to try. The plan is to try many things simultaneously to maximize my chance of success. I need to apply for internships while networking while looking for local job opportunities while volunteering and looking into self-employment. It's a lot of work but it beats the hell out of making casual, inconsistent efforts and hoping something floats my way without a plan. @@ -203,7 +203,7 @@ Another criticism I've received that's worth consideration is: > "Wouldn't you be able to do more good in the world by giving in to proprietary software temporarily just to get your degree and some experience, thereby earning more professional respect, connections and experience? Wouldn't the good from that cancel out the temporary evil?" ### Response -I respect this argument because there are theoretical cases where arguments of similar form are correct. For instance, if I enable proprietary Javascript in my browser so I can access a job search site that subsequently gets me a job doing a lot of good with free software. But that's a theoretical example. In practical reality, there's a lot of problems with thinking that way. +I respect this argument because there are theoretical cases where arguments of similar form are correct. For instance, if I enable proprietary JavaScript in my browser so I can access a job search site that subsequently gets me a job doing a lot of good with free software. But that's a theoretical example. In practical reality, there's a lot of problems with thinking that way. For one, it's a slippery slope. How much are you willing to give in before you finally put your foot down? If you don't draw the line somewhere, then you don't care too much about your principles. If you're not willing to make sacrifices for them, then you're as good practically speaking as someone who has no ethical principles at all. The only difference is you'll try to do good as long as it doesn't cause you any major inconveniences. But in the real world, doing the right thing is often personally inconvenient. History has countless proofs of that. diff --git a/content/entry/networked-ev-charging-stations.md b/content/entry/networked-ev-charging-stations.md index 1786bfe..e9470be 100644 --- a/content/entry/networked-ev-charging-stations.md +++ b/content/entry/networked-ev-charging-stations.md @@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ EV charging stations are worse for your privacy than gas stations. With gas stat The bad news is the worst is still yet to come. There's not a huge opposition to networked charging stations and the issue is even lesser known than that of mass surveillance. And in the United States, if EVs are the way of the future and demand increases for them, there will need to be many more charging stations than there are now. This is bad because it's almost certain that these new charging stations are going to be proprietary and networked, selling customer data. It will become increasingly difficult to resist the privacy invasion of our location data once the infrastructure is already in place. What are you going to do, not charge your car? Once infrastructure is already paid for, there needs to be a very strong incentive to change it. The best course of action now is to oppose the networked charging stations before they are deployed and avoid using them, even if it's inconvenient. That's because most of the charging stations that are going to be deployed have not yet been deployed. So, there's still time to stop the surveillance infrastructure before it expands. ## How to Fight Back -If your school or workplace wants to install a networked charging station, tell them you oppose this decision and would instead be in favor of a more privacy-respecting option such as a non-networked station. If you own an EV yourself, tell them that you will refuse to use the networked charging station because you don't want to encourage proprietary surveillance infrastructure. You could also stick flyers on the networked charging stations calling for EV drivers not to use the networked stations, or at least to become informed about the problem and organize. Chargepoint puts out their own propoganda[1] trying to spin the surveillance off as a good thing, a myth we must dispel. The fact is all of the items on their list are doable with non-networked charging stations running free software. If you want analytics or access controls, you could imagine a cryptographic system that uses secure private tokens to protect EV driver privacy while also making analytics possible without any sign up or extra hassle to the driver. Proprietary charging station phone apps could also be avoided and replaced with free software alternatives. +If your school or workplace wants to install a networked charging station, tell them you oppose this decision and would instead be in favor of a more privacy-respecting option such as a non-networked station. If you own an EV yourself, tell them that you will refuse to use the networked charging station because you don't want to encourage proprietary surveillance infrastructure. You could also stick fliers on the networked charging stations calling for EV drivers not to use the networked stations, or at least to become informed about the problem and organize. Chargepoint puts out their own propaganda[1] trying to spin the surveillance off as a good thing, a myth we must dispel. The fact is all of the items on their list are doable with non-networked charging stations running free software. If you want analytics or access controls, you could imagine a cryptographic system that uses secure private tokens to protect EV driver privacy while also making analytics possible without any sign up or extra hassle to the driver. Proprietary charging station phone apps could also be avoided and replaced with free software alternatives. Vulnerabilities[2] in networked charging stations have been found in the past. As everyone should know, any time there is a database containing personal data, it becomes the target of hackers. The only way to completely prevent data from being stolen or leaked in the long run is by not collecting the data in the first place. Luckily with EV charging stations, storing location data is completely unnecessary. With enough public pressure we can just do away with it entirely. We just have to show that privacy is the priority. diff --git a/content/entry/on-blockchain.md b/content/entry/on-blockchain.md index 40bb1b0..b571056 100644 --- a/content/entry/on-blockchain.md +++ b/content/entry/on-blockchain.md @@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ I'm going to talk about blockchain in the context of cryptocurrencies. Hencefort # Blockchain's Successes ## Cryptocurrency Markets -For starters the multi-billion dollar cryptocurrency market may not exist without blockchain. Even non-blockchain based cryptocurrencies reference the blockchain based Bitcoin in their whitepapers. While there are functioning non-blockchain cryptocurrencies, they might never have been conceived without the initial inspiration from Bitcoin. Bitcoin is still the most valuable coin and it still uses blockchain. As I write this, it's nearing an all-time high of $30k USD per 1 BTC. +For starters the multi-billion dollar cryptocurrency market may not exist without blockchain. Even non-blockchain based cryptocurrencies reference the blockchain based Bitcoin in their white papers. While there are functioning non-blockchain cryptocurrencies, they might never have been conceived without the initial inspiration from Bitcoin. Bitcoin is still the most valuable coin and it still uses blockchain. As I write this, it's nearing an all-time high of $30k USD per 1 BTC. ## Smart Contracts Shortly after Bitcoin Vitalik Buterin[2]'s blockchain based Ethereum[3] cryptocurrency hit the scene featuring smart contracts[4]. Smart contracts are programs that automatically run on top of a blockchain. They enable decentralized exchanges, ERC20[5] tokens, CryptoKitties[6], decentralized cloud storage payment, governance, and digital contracts. These use cases are only possible because of the security assurance blockchain provides. @@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ Shortly after Bitcoin Vitalik Buterin[2]'s blockchain based Ethereum[3] cryptocu ## Darknet Markets Since cryptocurrencies enable anonymous irreversible transactions with no middlemen, they are used on darknet markets[7] which otherwise wouldn't exist. Some say darknet markets have done more to prevent drug-related violence than the DEA ever has. Those same markets also sell guns, stolen credit card details, and hackers for hire. It's hard to say one way or the other if they are an overall force for good. But darknet markets are only possible because of the anonymity of blockchain. -Blockchain is a powerful, transformational technology still relevant twelve years after the Bitcoin whitepaper[8] was originally published. Love it or hate it, there's no denying its influence on cryptography, pop culture and finance. +Blockchain is a powerful, transformational technology still relevant twelve years after the Bitcoin white paper[8] was originally published. Love it or hate it, there's no denying its influence on cryptography, pop culture and finance. # Blockchain's Failures You'll notice I still use blockchain to accept donations[9] for this website. That's because I know of no better way to accept anonymous online donations. The moment I know of a better way I'll update my donation methods. If GNU Taler[10] ever gains popularity, I will use it instead. In any case, I've given the devil his due, so now I'll move on to the problems with blockchain. And blockchain is fraught with problems. @@ -38,7 +38,7 @@ In any distributed system, partitioning is a given. Blockchain must tolerate arb Consistency can't be sacrificed either. Nodes must agree on which blocks are included in the blockchain otherwise you don't have a blockchain. But that means the blockchain is sometimes unavailable. That's a big problem because if you're trying to perform a transaction, you can't have the client program telling you to come back later. No one would use that cryptocurrency. -To resolve this, blockchain makes a tradeoff between consistency and availability. Blockchain is eventually consistent. As the blockchain grows, nodes are guaranteed to eventually agree on new blocks. In the Bitcoin blockchain large transactions are considered final after they reach 6 blocks deep in the chain. Transactions deeper than 6 blocks are consistent across nodes. +To resolve this, blockchain makes a trade off between consistency and availability. Blockchain is eventually consistent. As the blockchain grows, nodes are guaranteed to eventually agree on new blocks. In the Bitcoin blockchain large transactions are considered final after they reach 6 blocks deep in the chain. Transactions deeper than 6 blocks are consistent across nodes. As for availability, nodes in the Bitcoin network have a mempool. A mempool or transaction pool is where transactions wait to be included in a block. Any given transaction will find its way into a block which will eventually become a finalized block so long as the Bitcoin network isn't congested. The catch is Bitcoin can only perform about 3-7 transactions per second. Faster coins can handle tens or hundreds of transactions per second, but they all have some transaction limit due to the CAP theorem. @@ -124,7 +124,7 @@ Then there are projects in use today that work well and are likely to continue t And then you have projects that have been important in the past, but should probably be abandoned now. They have no unique properties that make them especially useful. They aren't making any major innovations. It's probably a waste of time to develop for them other than critical bug fixes. I'm looking at Bitcoin[33], Bitcoin Cash[34], and Litecoin[35]. ## Vaporware -Finally there are the projects that are going absolutely nowhere. They are held up by marketing and the illusion of progress through smoke and mirrors. They trick gullible investors and sometimes themselves into thinking they are the next big thing. When you look closely at their whitepaper and fundamentals it becomes clear their solutions don't work in the real world. Iota[36] is in this category. It's centralized, yet it has been promising decentralization for years with no way to get there. When evaluating these kinds of projects, remember Hanlon's razor: +Finally there are the projects that are going absolutely nowhere. They are held up by marketing and the illusion of progress through smoke and mirrors. They trick gullible investors and sometimes themselves into thinking they are the next big thing. When you look closely at their white paper and fundamentals it becomes clear their solutions don't work in the real world. Iota[36] is in this category. It's centralized, yet it has been promising decentralization for years with no way to get there. When evaluating these kinds of projects, remember Hanlon's razor: > "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." diff --git a/content/entry/on-compassion.md b/content/entry/on-compassion.md index 92ea646..6fa6f87 100644 --- a/content/entry/on-compassion.md +++ b/content/entry/on-compassion.md @@ -40,10 +40,10 @@ Let's do a thought experiment and I've seen this happen before: An older lady sh Is stoking an internet hate mob really the best way to go about promoting self-reflection? Is that really what compassion looks like? Is that what justice looks like? I don't think so. There are better ways to get people to self-reflect. People that do this clearly have bad motives. If it's someone in a position of power being exposed like a politician or leader of some community, then obviously to some degree they're signing up to public scrutiny. But when it's done to Joe Blow, what good is coming out of that? ## Lack of a Mechanism For Forgiveness -And don't forget there's practically no way to atone for your wrongdoing after you've been cancelled. If your public racism gets recorded on video and uploaded and you get cancelled, and then after some self-reflection you see the error of your ways, it's too late. You've already been condemned. Everyone who saw the video already thinks you're a racist jerk. Even if you make a formal apology, is everybody going to see that? And even if they do, will they believe that it's genuine or will they think you're just apologizing to get uncancelled? There is no mechanism for forgiveness because the internet never forgets and your mistake stands independent from any atonement or personal growth you've made since. +And don't forget there's practically no way to atone for your wrongdoing after you've been canceled. If your public racism gets recorded on video and uploaded and you get canceled, and then after some self-reflection you see the error of your ways, it's too late. You've already been condemned. Everyone who saw the video already thinks you're a racist jerk. Even if you make a formal apology, is everybody going to see that? And even if they do, will they believe that it's genuine or will they think you're just apologizing to get uncanceled? There is no mechanism for forgiveness because the internet never forgets and your mistake stands independent from any atonement or personal growth you've made since. ## The True Motives of Cancel Culture -The people who cancel others already understand all of this though. They understand it's very hard to get uncancelled. And they don't care. Their motives aren't really to expose injustice or solve anything. They have no interest in apologies or giving you a chance to atone. Their only motive is vengeance on the person they perceive to have wronged them. That's it. They just want random internet strangers to take their side and hurl insults. If that's not hate, then I don't know what is. +The people who cancel others already understand all of this though. They understand it's very hard to get uncanceled. And they don't care. Their motives aren't really to expose injustice or solve anything. They have no interest in apologies or giving you a chance to atone. Their only motive is vengeance on the person they perceive to have wronged them. That's it. They just want random internet strangers to take their side and hurl insults. If that's not hate, then I don't know what is. In conclusion, social justice warrior style cancel culture is the antithesis of compassion. And the worst thing about it is it pretends to have compassionate motives, namely "fighting for justice". Of course I'm not saying conservatives don't also participate in cancel culture. They definitely do.[4] I've just chosen not to focus on that for this entry. diff --git a/content/entry/on-cultural-appropriation.md b/content/entry/on-cultural-appropriation.md index 2c74e3a..365b910 100644 --- a/content/entry/on-cultural-appropriation.md +++ b/content/entry/on-cultural-appropriation.md @@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ First, let's stop calling it cultural appropriation. The word "appropriation" ca Second, let's identify the real problem with cultural appropriation. American high school girls wearing Chinese dresses for prom are not a problem. Neither are non-indigenous people having powwows, calling people chief, or talking about their spirit animal. The root moral problem and, as far as I can tell, the only problem with "cultural appropriation" is it can spread false negative stereotypes by inaccurately depicting groups of people instead of harmlessly imitating "their" culture. -Third, let's lower the temperature on the discussion. We all have different ideas about how groups of people should be portrayed. Even those within a group may disagree. Instead of reacting to an indigenous American costume for halloween with "OMG!!! CULTURAL APPROPRIATION!! THIS IS INAPPROPRIATE OFFENSIVE STEREOTYPING! HOW DISRESPECTFUL! WHO RAISED YOU?! MAKE A PUBLIC APOLOGY NOW!", we should be more thoughtful and consider the precise mechanism by which indigenous American halloween costumes actually cause harm, if any. +Third, let's lower the temperature on the discussion. We all have different ideas about how groups of people should be portrayed. Even those within a group may disagree. Instead of reacting to an indigenous American costume for Halloween with "OMG!!! CULTURAL APPROPRIATION!! THIS IS INAPPROPRIATE OFFENSIVE STEREOTYPING! HOW DISRESPECTFUL! WHO RAISED YOU?! MAKE A PUBLIC APOLOGY NOW!", we should be more thoughtful and consider the precise mechanism by which indigenous American Halloween costumes actually cause harm, if any. We have to recognize that intelligent people can disagree about which contexts imply pure cultural imitation which is morally neutral and which contexts imply portrayal of a group of people. Sometimes it's a gray area. There's room for intelligent people to disagree about which representations of groups are harmful and which aren't. We don't need to resort to shouting matches or demand public apologies from those who have different intuitions than us. diff --git a/content/entry/on-spirituality.md b/content/entry/on-spirituality.md index 46f1f41..e9d8834 100644 --- a/content/entry/on-spirituality.md +++ b/content/entry/on-spirituality.md @@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ At the time I probably wasn't even sure how I wanted those posts to be interpret > As a quick note, what people post online is often taken as something they will forever agree with and are forever held to. This is unreasonable. There needs to be some equivalent of forgiveness if one posts something horrible online, but that's a topic for another post. I'm not saying people aren't responsible for what they post. But I am saying we should aspire to take the most charitable interpretation of what people post if we care about advancing the conversation. Obviously a person's character is a factor in how you interpret what they post. > -> On my blog, I want to retain the right to post not only ideas that I understand well. But I also want the freedom to talk about things I'm not sure about. That means I run the risk of being wrong. No one posting their ideas online openly should expect to be immune to criticism. Criticism comes with the territory. But I want to say I'm interested in sharing ideas. If it's clear to me you're only interested in taking my words out of context, twisting what I write or using cheap gotcha's because I didn't state something perfectly, then I probably won't respond. If you want clarification about anything I discuss, visit my about page[5] for contact details. With that cleared up, let's move on to the meat of this post. +> On my blog, I want to retain the right to post not only ideas that I understand well. But I also want the freedom to talk about things I'm not sure about. That means I run the risk of being wrong. No one posting their ideas online openly should expect to be immune to criticism. Criticism comes with the territory. But I want to say I'm interested in sharing ideas. If it's clear to me you're only interested in taking my words out of context, twisting what I write or using cheap gotchas because I didn't state something perfectly, then I probably won't respond. If you want clarification about anything I discuss, visit my about page[5] for contact details. With that cleared up, let's move on to the meat of this post. > > -- Me in Doublethink[6] @@ -41,7 +41,7 @@ The reason I share that myth or poem or experiment is because I found it compell As for my past posts on spirituality, you should interpret them in the same way. Think of my spiritual posts as doors to experiences. Some doors are locked. You're forever barred from what lies behind them. Those experiences are simply not in the cards for you. Other doors require a key. It's possible to find out what's behind those doors, but it takes some effort. Other doors are missing doorknobs. They might already be cracked open or you might open them by accident. It's perfectly fine to be drawn toward certain doors and not others. This doesn't mean you can't make missteps on your spiritual journey. It just means my journey isn't identical to yours. -In summary, read the spiritual texts you find most compelling by all means but give your own conscious experience precendence over any text. I'm not trying to make objective truth claims about reality or present a theory in the typical sense of the word. My spiritual writing is expressly written with the hope that you relate to it in your inner world or are entertained by it. In the best case it even helps to further your spiritual life journey. That's all I'm trying to do with these posts. Nothing more. +In summary, read the spiritual texts you find most compelling by all means but give your own conscious experience precedence over any text. I'm not trying to make objective truth claims about reality or present a theory in the typical sense of the word. My spiritual writing is expressly written with the hope that you relate to it in your inner world or are entertained by it. In the best case it even helps to further your spiritual life journey. That's all I'm trying to do with these posts. Nothing more. I'll link to this section in future spirituality posts where it's applicable so there's no confusion on how to interpret my writing. diff --git a/content/entry/on-the-intellectual-dark-web.md b/content/entry/on-the-intellectual-dark-web.md index 042f5e9..42ee98f 100644 --- a/content/entry/on-the-intellectual-dark-web.md +++ b/content/entry/on-the-intellectual-dark-web.md @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ To the frustration of ideologues, I reject most politically-oriented labels and If I say "I'm an X", whether that X stands for democrat, libertarian, anarchist, or some other label, it always always always comes with baggage. When I accept a label, instead of people becoming interested to learn my thoughts, they think they already know. So why must I have a label? If you want to know what I think about any given topic, let's talk about it. I don't want to take this half-assed shortcut of giving you a word that's associated with all these opinions that I don't necessarily hold. -I'm confident about my beliefs on a few topics because I've taken the time to learn a lot about them. Religion needs to be replaced with secular spirituality. Proprietary software is harmful. Cryptocurrency is a disaster. The War on Drugs is a mistake. Free will is incoherent. Extreme wealth inequality is causing a lot of problems. Honesty is almost always the right choice. Etcetera, etcetera. +I'm confident about my beliefs on a few topics because I've taken the time to learn a lot about them. Religion needs to be replaced with secular spirituality. Proprietary software is harmful. Cryptocurrency is a disaster. The War on Drugs is a mistake. Free will is incoherent. Extreme wealth inequality is causing a lot of problems. Honesty is almost always the right choice. Etc, etc. But then there's this enormous space of topics where I admit I know nothing and if I were to say something about it then I'd be making things up. What's the best economic system? I have no clue. How big of a problem is racism in America? I don't know. How does reality relate to consciousness? I don't know. How do we best fix the ecological and environmental crisis? I don't know and I'm not afraid to admit that. diff --git a/content/entry/on-transgender-athletes.md b/content/entry/on-transgender-athletes.md index 05b8415..7eb8064 100644 --- a/content/entry/on-transgender-athletes.md +++ b/content/entry/on-transgender-athletes.md @@ -15,9 +15,9 @@ We already separate people in professional sports based on biological difference And you might say "Aren't all these distinctions arbitrary? Neurotypical people's brains differ. Should less intelligent neurotypicals get their own league too?". And I think that hits on an important point. We choose how to divide people up and there's plenty of room for reasonable people to disagree about the divisions. -But biological sex is definitely a meaningful way of differentiating people in sports, and it's unambiguous. You either have XX chromosomes or XY chromosomes, and that can be used to determine sex.[4] Biological women who don't want to compete against trans women aren't being anti-transgenderist. They just don't want to get crushed by trans women who, in many cases, have clear biological advantages over them. +But biological sex is definitely a meaningful way of differentiating people in sports, and it's unambiguous. You either have XX chromosomes or XY chromosomes, and that can be used to determine sex.[4] Biological women who don't want to compete against trans women aren't being antitransgenderist. They just don't want to get crushed by trans women who, in many cases, have clear biological advantages over them. -Calling such people anti-transgenderists muddles anti-transgenderism. There are people who actually hate transgender people. They give them dirty looks as they walk down the street. They namecall. They talk poorly of them behind their back. Most of these professional athletes, I assume, are not antitransgenderists. +Calling such people antitransgenderists muddles anti-transgenderism. There are people who actually hate transgender people. They give them dirty looks as they walk down the street. They name-call. They talk poorly of them behind their back. Most of these professional athletes, I assume, are not antitransgenderists. When pro athletes like Ronda Rousey[5] are asked about transgender issues, they don't know what the hell to say. They're athletes. They've spent their lives training, not learning about every little social issue. Just because they're not updated on the most politically sensitive language doesn't make them anti-transgenderist. diff --git a/content/entry/organization-let-grow.md b/content/entry/organization-let-grow.md index e2017a2..66dbdd8 100644 --- a/content/entry/organization-let-grow.md +++ b/content/entry/organization-let-grow.md @@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ The playground monitor who watched over us, a woman probably between the ages of I now suspect that, if pressed, the playground monitor would have said something to the effect of "that game isn't appropriate", because people were getting sick from the swine flu. But what does "inappropriate" even mean? We were kids with no bad intentions and it was a fun game. I suspect if we called it something different, the monitor wouldn't have had a problem with the game. Looking back, it still makes no sense to me why that game was canceled for us. # Dragon Ball -I have yet another similar story. Some kids get into comics, Harry Potter, Pokemon, or Yu-Gi-Oh!. For me it was Dragon Ball Z. I liked watching Dragon Ball Z. I had the well-taken-care-of action figures. I had the videogames. I watched the new episodes on television when they came on. I loved it. +I have yet another similar story. Some kids get into comics, Harry Potter, Pokemon, or Yu-Gi-Oh!. For me it was Dragon Ball Z. I liked watching Dragon Ball Z. I had the well-taken-care-of action figures. I had the video games. I watched the new episodes on television when they came on. I loved it. One day on the playground at recess, I learned a few other kids were into it as well. So naturally, we picked our characters and started fighting. We weren't even hitting each other. We were sticking our hands out with open palms going "Kamehameha!", Goku's signature technique. I pretended to be the feared, ruthless galactic emperor Frieza, and the others holding me in place were pretending to be the good guys. We were all having fun until, again, the playground monitor shut us down and told us we were being too rough, even though no one was hurt. @@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ Not spanking your children is another false example of coddling. Choosing not to Let Grow should be about children gaining more independence and parents and educators being free to give them that independence. It shouldn't be about parents having the right to spank their kids. As I said before, parenting from the old days wasn't ideal either. More parents and teachers spanked children and that was wrong. Just because we went too far overprotecting children doesn't mean we should go back to hitting as a form of discipline. # Conclusion -Based on what I've seen of Let Grow, they're doing a good job promoting childhood independence and I think they should stick to that. More childhood independence seems to be a very widely supported goal which shouldn't be diluted by taking public positions on the work ethic of millenials or the ethics of spanking. +Based on what I've seen of Let Grow, they're doing a good job promoting childhood independence and I think they should stick to that. More childhood independence seems to be a very widely supported goal which shouldn't be diluted by taking public positions on the work ethic of millennials or the ethics of spanking. If you have extra money, please send a donation to Let Grow[7] to help end helicopter parenting, restore childhood independence, and make parenting more bearable again. Thanks. diff --git a/content/entry/oxen-security-fail.md b/content/entry/oxen-security-fail.md index 0ab06d0..c2f7f27 100644 --- a/content/entry/oxen-security-fail.md +++ b/content/entry/oxen-security-fail.md @@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ The download links for each project are all vulnerable to network-level man-in-t When I noticed the lack of security headers on getsession.org, I emailed support@getsession.org informing them of the issue the same day. Over a week later, it's still not fixed and I have no response. How long has their website been insecure like this? I'm left wondering whether I should take OPTF and their work seriously. How can crypto projects focused primarily on privacy and security overlook basic web security? OPTF has some explaining to do. -Their sites may have other security vulnerabilities I'm unaware of. I'm no web pentester and I have no interest in pursuing it further. I may ask a pentester friend of mine to look into it for me. I'm going to contact OPTF directly through their contact form[6] about what all I've already found. I'll update this entry later once they respond. +Their sites may have other security vulnerabilities I'm unaware of. I'm no web pentester and I have no interest in pursuing it further. I may ask a pen tester friend of mine to look into it for me. I'm going to contact OPTF directly through their contact form[6] about what all I've already found. I'll update this entry later once they respond. # Update (2021-10-02): I received a response the same day I contacted the OPTF. They let me know my original email to Session went to spam which is why they didn't see it. It probably got filtered because I put "URGENT" in the subject line. The issue was resolved by the next day and the CTO (Kee Jefferys) thanked me for the feedback. diff --git a/content/entry/paying-close-attention-to-experience.md b/content/entry/paying-close-attention-to-experience.md index 38af1b0..35265d3 100644 --- a/content/entry/paying-close-attention-to-experience.md +++ b/content/entry/paying-close-attention-to-experience.md @@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ During this process, no information about color is communicated to the child. Th How would one communicate color itself rather than just the agreed upon name of the color? It seems impossible. Vsauce has an excellent video about this titled "Is Your Red The Same as My Red?"[2]. He wonders if we can ever communicate what a color is. -Philosophers like Daniel Denette suggest that color might not be ineffable. Perhaps we just don't have the language to communicate color yet. If only we had precise enough words, using sufficiently many of them, we could communicate the experience of seeing color. I'm skeptical, but for now color is ineffable in every human language. All we can do is agree on common words. +Philosophers like Daniel Dennett suggest that color might not be ineffable. Perhaps we just don't have the language to communicate color yet. If only we had precise enough words, using sufficiently many of them, we could communicate the experience of seeing color. I'm skeptical, but for now color is ineffable in every human language. All we can do is agree on common words. # We Are All Alone In Our Minds And this ineffability of experience also generalizes to things besides color. I'll give a few examples. diff --git a/content/entry/podcast-the-key-to-trumps-appeal.md b/content/entry/podcast-the-key-to-trumps-appeal.md index 1fd4526..042de0d 100644 --- a/content/entry/podcast-the-key-to-trumps-appeal.md +++ b/content/entry/podcast-the-key-to-trumps-appeal.md @@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ title: "[Podcast] The Key to Trump's Appeal" date: 2021-01-07T00:00:00 draft: false --- -There are many things I don't agree with but I understand the motivation behind them. Religion is an example. I am not a religious person, but I can easily see the appeal of religion. Religion offers consolation for death anxiety. People need to feel like their lives have meaning. Religion offers purpose. People want to believe there's something more to life than everyday conscious experience because frankly, for lots of people, everyday experience just isn't good enough. Everyday experience is dissatisfaction, disappointment and dukkha[1]. People need hope that "this" isn't all there is. Religion gives people that hope. Even if you're nonreligious, it's not hard to see why religion appeals to people. +There are many things I don't agree with but I understand the motivation behind them. Religion is an example. I am not a religious person, but I can easily see the appeal of religion. Religion offers consolation for death anxiety. People need to feel like their lives have meaning. Religion offers purpose. People want to believe there's something more to life than everyday conscious experience because frankly, for lots of people, everyday experience just isn't good enough. Everyday experience is dissatisfaction, disappointment and Dukkha[1]. People need hope that "this" isn't all there is. Religion gives people that hope. Even if you're nonreligious, it's not hard to see why religion appeals to people. Donald Trump's appeal to half of Americans on the other hand is something that has puzzled me for years. It's not that he doesn't appeal to me. It's that I haven't been able to comprehend how he appeals to anyone, especially such a large fraction of American voters. I'm not alone in the confusion. Sam Harris[2] has also admitted to struggling to understand Trump's appeal. @@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ Myself: "So the wall isn't the reason he appeals to you. At least it's not the o Trump Supporter: "He tells the truth." Myself: "Here's concrete examples of him contradicting himself." (I show examples) Trump Supporter: "So? All politicians lie." -Myself: "So truthtelling isn't the real reason he appeals to you either. What's his strongest appeal?" +Myself: "So truth telling isn't the real reason he appeals to you either. What's his strongest appeal?" Trump Supporter: "He runs the country like a business. He's a businessman, not a politician." Myself: "But he routinely blames everyone else for his failures. In a business setting, doing that gets you fired. So he's not running the country like a business." Trump Supporter: "I don't care." diff --git a/content/entry/podcast-why-trump-is-unfit-for-office.md b/content/entry/podcast-why-trump-is-unfit-for-office.md index b7423b2..7760bc8 100644 --- a/content/entry/podcast-why-trump-is-unfit-for-office.md +++ b/content/entry/podcast-why-trump-is-unfit-for-office.md @@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ title: "[Podcast] Why Trump is Unfit For Office" date: 2021-01-07T00:00:00 draft: false --- -In his Making Sense[1] podcast Sam Harris[2] talks about why Donald Trump is unfit for public office. For reference, these clips come from Making Sense episodes #38[3] and #45. They were recorded before the 2016 presidential election but the past 4 years have only shown how right Harris was in his judgement of Trump. I haven't seen anyone else speak with the same clarity and completeness about Trump as Harris, so that's why I picked these clips. +In his Making Sense[1] podcast Sam Harris[2] talks about why Donald Trump is unfit for public office. For reference, these clips come from Making Sense episodes #38[3] and #45. They were recorded before the 2016 presidential election but the past 4 years have only shown how right Harris was in his judgment of Trump. I haven't seen anyone else speak with the same clarity and completeness about Trump as Harris, so that's why I picked these clips. I had a very similar if not the same opinion of Trump 4 years ago. I immediately recognized him as a narcissistic unintelligent con man unfit for public office. If I had expressed my opinion at the time in writing it probably would have sounded much like these clips from the Making Sense podcast. Although much has happened since 2016, I still find these clips worth sharing. diff --git a/content/entry/private-online-shopping.md b/content/entry/private-online-shopping.md index 91668be..c9f2e50 100644 --- a/content/entry/private-online-shopping.md +++ b/content/entry/private-online-shopping.md @@ -52,10 +52,10 @@ The bad news is the marketplace might still require a phone number. The good new Since marketplaces don't verify the number, you can make one up. The marketplace will probably only text it details of your order. I don't know of an online marketplace that forces buyers to verify their phone number. If you run across one, my advice is find a different marketplace. There's plenty out there. ## Browser Fingerprinting and IP Address -If you made it this far, then you've managed to not explicitly give out any personal information. Unfortunately, because the web is a privacy disaster, this isn't enough. There are dozens of other ways to leak your identity without it being obvious. For example, many online shopping sites have proprietary Javascript and cookies which facilitate tracking buyers across the web. Your IP address is also identifying information which can be used to deanonymize your purchases. But do not fear, for Tor Browser is here! +If you made it this far, then you've managed to not explicitly give out any personal information. Unfortunately, because the web is a privacy disaster, this isn't enough. There are dozens of other ways to leak your identity without it being obvious. For example, many online shopping sites have proprietary JavaScript and cookies which facilitate tracking buyers across the web. Your IP address is also identifying information which can be used to deanonymize your purchases. But do not fear, for Tor Browser is here! ### Mitigation - Use Tor Browser -The best way to avoid browser fingerprinting and leaking your IP address is installing Tor Browser[2]. Tor Browser protects you from browser fingerprinting while making it very hard for the site to figure out your real IP address. Use Tor Browser on the highest security setting that doesn't break site functionality. If "safest" mode breaks the website, try "safer". If "safer" mode breaks the site, use "standard". I also recommend using the LibreJS[3] addon to prevent proprietary Javascript analytics scripts from running in your browser. +The best way to avoid browser fingerprinting and leaking your IP address is installing Tor Browser[2]. Tor Browser protects you from browser fingerprinting while making it very hard for the site to figure out your real IP address. Use Tor Browser on the highest security setting that doesn't break site functionality. If "safest" mode breaks the website, try "safer". If "safer" mode breaks the site, use "standard". I also recommend using the LibreJS[3] addon to prevent proprietary JavaScript analytics scripts from running in your browser. ## Tor is Blocked If you can't access the site on the "standard" security setting in Tor Browser, then it probably blocks Tor exit nodes. Some sites do allow you to browse while using Tor, but won't let you purchase anything. You just have to find out which ones are Tor friendly and which aren't by trial and error. If a site isn't Tor-friendly, all is not lost. There is still hope with Proxychains. @@ -83,9 +83,9 @@ I wish I could say that's all because it feels like the overhead for making a pr Any payment system that identifies you can't be used for privacy. Until something like GNU Taler[5] becomes popular, we're left with 1 option that offers real payment anonymity: cryptocurrency. ### Mitigation - Monero -Since most places require some form of ID verification to buy cryptocurrency and cryptocurrency ledgers allow transactions to be easily traced, no cryptocurrency is suited for an anonymous purchase, except for 1: Monero[6] or XMR. It's so private that the IRS is offering $625,000 to anyone who can crack it[7]. You can acquire Monero through centralized or peer-to-peer exchanges. The great thing about Monero is you don't need to acquire it anonymously to make an anonymous purchase with it. Coins are untraceable and transactions are unlinkable. Feel free to acquire the Monero however is most convenient for you. Localmonero.co is a solid option that doesn't require any identification or proprietary Javascript and it has a Tor onion service. Just remember to store the coins on the Monero wallet on your own machine, not on an exchange. Also I recommend proxying the Monero client through Tor to prevent transactions being linked to your IP address. +Since most places require some form of ID verification to buy cryptocurrency and cryptocurrency ledgers allow transactions to be easily traced, no cryptocurrency is suited for an anonymous purchase, except for 1: Monero[6] or XMR. It's so private that the IRS is offering $625,000 to anyone who can crack it[7]. You can acquire Monero through centralized or peer-to-peer exchanges. The great thing about Monero is you don't need to acquire it anonymously to make an anonymous purchase with it. Coins are untraceable and transactions are unlinkable. Feel free to acquire the Monero however is most convenient for you. Localmonero.co is a solid option that doesn't require any identification or proprietary JavaScript and it has a Tor onion service. Just remember to store the coins on the Monero wallet on your own machine, not on an exchange. Also I recommend proxying the Monero client through Tor to prevent transactions being linked to your IP address. -Unfortunately few online stores actually accept Monero. Bitcoin still reigns supreme. Luckily there are coin swap services online that accept Monero and pay out Bitcoin. Kilos' KSwap[8] (WARNING: NSFW) is one example. It requires no sign up, no Javascript and it's a Tor onion service. +Unfortunately few online stores actually accept Monero. Bitcoin still reigns supreme. Luckily there are coin swap services online that accept Monero and pay out Bitcoin. Kilos' KSwap[8] (WARNING: NSFW) is one example. It requires no sign up, no JavaScript and it's a Tor onion service. The hidden fees are of course embedded in the exchange rate. When you go to buy Monero, you're going to take a hit and when you pay to convert it to Bitcoin, you're going to take a hit. In the end, you may end up paying 20% more than you otherwise would have had you just bought the item with a debit card. That's not even including the costs involved in a mailbox service. But that's just the price of your privacy if you insist on buying online. There's no easy way around it. diff --git a/content/entry/rejecting-discord-and-google-colab.md b/content/entry/rejecting-discord-and-google-colab.md index 1b527be..ec5918c 100644 --- a/content/entry/rejecting-discord-and-google-colab.md +++ b/content/entry/rejecting-discord-and-google-colab.md @@ -9,9 +9,9 @@ This semester I took Deep Learning at SIUe[1]. Deep learning is a senior level C # Story In Deep Learning class, after the lectures, we had to get into groups for our class project. The class project consisted of designing and implementing our own neural network which would do some novel task. It didn't take me long to get into a group. The issue as always was finding a communication platform that we could all use that was free software. Since most students opt for proprietary walled gardens instead such as Discord[2], I had a lot of difficulty because I wasn't willing to use Discord. Our whole group of four agreed on using Discord except for me. Email wouldn't be viable. It's not great for real time communication and file sharing. Even after I explained that I don't use proprietary software, the group still did not want to budge as I expected. So the admin of the Discord "channel" and I got together and set up a Matrix bridge[3]. I was surprised at how easy this was. Because Matrix has a Matrix-Discord bridge[4] available and there is a public bot[5] called t2bot, I was able to use Riot.im client instead of Discord. Riot.im is free software and Matrix is an open protocol which is more acceptable than the proprietary walled garden of Discord. The bot allowed me to create a Matrix room which bridged Discord and the Matrix network. It took less than ten minutes to set up. Now that I got the hang of using it, I'm able to get it working in less than five minutes. There are a few quirks but overall it works fantastically and it's completely free. I recommend donating[6] if you use the bot since there is no charge for using it. It's a great tool for avoiding proprietary Discord and Slack. -Google Colab[7] is a service Google offers that gives researchers and students a free GPU. It can be used for things like training neural networks in Python. It wasn't required for this course per se, but if you didn't have one you had better have a GPU or be in a group with a member that had a GPU. I have a computer with a GPU, but it is AMD, not Nvidia so it wouldn't work with the Python libraries like Keras and Tensorflow we were using to train the neural networks. I discovered this after I had already set up the machine for class unfortunately. I really took issue with Google Colab being basically required. If students didn't agree to the Google terms of service, how would it be possible to do the project? You could have relied on a group member to have an account and train the networks, but that just pushes the problem back a step to your team member agreeing to the terms of service. Worse, Colab requires proprietary Javascript in the browser so you would have to run proprietary code to use it. And you know Google is collecting your experiment data in case you find something of interest because that's their whole evil business model. +Google Colab[7] is a service Google offers that gives researchers and students a free GPU. It can be used for things like training neural networks in Python. It wasn't required for this course per se, but if you didn't have one you had better have a GPU or be in a group with a member that had a GPU. I have a computer with a GPU, but it is AMD, not Nvidia so it wouldn't work with the Python libraries like Keras and Tensorflow we were using to train the neural networks. I discovered this after I had already set up the machine for class unfortunately. I really took issue with Google Colab being basically required. If students didn't agree to the Google terms of service, how would it be possible to do the project? You could have relied on a group member to have an account and train the networks, but that just pushes the problem back a step to your team member agreeing to the terms of service. Worse, Colab requires proprietary JavaScript in the browser so you would have to run proprietary code to use it. And you know Google is collecting your experiment data in case you find something of interest because that's their whole evil business model. -I ended up emailing Professor X about the issue explaining that students shouldn't have to agree to Google's terms of service and run proprietary Javascript just to take Deep Learning class. He responded saying unfortunately that while he understands my concerns that's the only way the class could exist and also it was in the syllabus. I don't believe that at all. If it was within budget, the school could offer students GPUs in a lab to train the neural networks the same way the networking lab has special networking equipment for each student. Of course SIUe isn't going to do that because it costs lots of money and using a service from an evil data collecting company costs only your soul. Besides, no one except me in the whole computer science department would care about the ethical advantage of students having their own dedicated GPUs, so it wasn't in SIUe's interest to purchase GPUs for each student. +I ended up emailing Professor X about the issue explaining that students shouldn't have to agree to Google's terms of service and run proprietary JavaScript just to take Deep Learning class. He responded saying unfortunately that while he understands my concerns that's the only way the class could exist and also it was in the syllabus. I don't believe that at all. If it was within budget, the school could offer students GPUs in a lab to train the neural networks the same way the networking lab has special networking equipment for each student. Of course SIUe isn't going to do that because it costs lots of money and using a service from an evil data collecting company costs only your soul. Besides, no one except me in the whole computer science department would care about the ethical advantage of students having their own dedicated GPUs, so it wasn't in SIUe's interest to purchase GPUs for each student. There were other problems with the class as well not related to proprietary software. I believe the average grade on the midterm was below 50%. There was a lot of background needed to understand the concepts in class that many students didn't have. I felt like my time was being wasted every day in the class because too much material was being covered way too quickly to really learn anything. I don't say that about many classes because there's always the student responsibility to study, but if you ask me that class was a mess. So after I found out my GPU wouldn't work and I couldn't train our group's network myself, I completely lost motivation for the project. There was no way for me to run the code since I refused to sign up to Google Colab. I couldn't even check if my code ran and due to COVID-19, I couldn't get with any group members who had a GPU. The only option was to rent a VPS with a GPU and neural network training capabilities. I decided ultimately that I shouldn't have to and wasn't going to rent a VPS just to pass a class. Despite having our midpoint report finished and a working neural network, I wasn't really learning anything to the depth I wanted to in that class, and the proprietary Google Colab had me discouraged, so I dropped the class. diff --git a/content/entry/rejecting-visual-studio.md b/content/entry/rejecting-visual-studio.md index bc53cfd..1377072 100644 --- a/content/entry/rejecting-visual-studio.md +++ b/content/entry/rejecting-visual-studio.md @@ -34,7 +34,7 @@ He then suggested I use the university computers instead of my own. I explained There was also the extremely common confusion about how software companies will make money producing only free software. Beforehand, I had emailed Professor X supporting links from the FSF[7] website explaining about free software. I tried explaining that it's not about price, but freedom. I could have been misreading the situation so don't take this as fact, but it seemed to me that he didn't have any interest in learning about free software or the ethical implications. He seemed more interested in getting me to conform to using Visual Studio so that it would make his and the grader's job easier. The reason I think that is because throughout our entire prolonged exchange, emails and in person, he didn't mention ethics once and expressed his sentiment that the conversation was "pointless". I don't think conversations about ethics are "pointless". I think a conversation about ethics is important before starting any project, not just writing software. # Conclusion -I have seen this theme again and again having conversations with professors. Perhaps I just don't explain free software well enough, which is why I provided links and video resources to Professor X. One thing I often see, which is true of anyone changing their mind in general, is that people won't do it on the spot in realtime. Reading a post like this you may think that I wasted my time. But people do change their minds and it almost always happens in private, not under the pressure of a realtime conversation. And even if people don't change their minds completely, they can often be nudged in the right direction. So don't lose hope just because someone doesn't immediately see things your way. Many professors at SIUe that I've talked to just aren't accustomed to thinking about software freedom as an important issue. I expressed my frustration to Professor X about how the issues he was bringing up were peripheral to me, and that if he really wanted to convince me to use Visual Studio and Windows he would have to show me why my ethical beliefs are wrong. +I have seen this theme again and again having conversations with professors. Perhaps I just don't explain free software well enough, which is why I provided links and video resources to Professor X. One thing I often see, which is true of anyone changing their mind in general, is that people won't do it on the spot in real time. Reading a post like this you may think that I wasted my time. But people do change their minds and it almost always happens in private, not under the pressure of a real-time conversation. And even if people don't change their minds completely, they can often be nudged in the right direction. So don't lose hope just because someone doesn't immediately see things your way. Many professors at SIUe that I've talked to just aren't accustomed to thinking about software freedom as an important issue. I expressed my frustration to Professor X about how the issues he was bringing up were peripheral to me, and that if he really wanted to convince me to use Visual Studio and Windows he would have to show me why my ethical beliefs are wrong. The truth is unless someone is very brave and intellectually honest, they're not going to change their mind (admit they were wrong) on the spot. Especially professors because they would have to rewrite entire assignments to use different software and restructure their coursework which is potentially a lot of work. I think they are also strongly encouraged from above to use particular proprietary software because of the university's deal with Microsoft. They would have to go against that. But I have seen professors use their own computers in class, so it's still very feasible. It's a lot of work that professors aren't required to do and for reasons most of them aren't accustomed to considering. I'm not defending their decisions to continue using proprietary software, just explaining why they don't change things. I'd like to engage with a professor and see them realize my point on the spot and decide then and there to restructure their course to be more ethical, but that never happens. diff --git a/content/entry/shouting-into-the-void.md b/content/entry/shouting-into-the-void.md index 9a91930..4c4406f 100644 --- a/content/entry/shouting-into-the-void.md +++ b/content/entry/shouting-into-the-void.md @@ -13,11 +13,11 @@ I want to reach a wide audience. I want my ideas to make a difference in the wor I plan to start keeping track of how many site requests are made. Right now, my only metric for estimating read count is the occasional email I receive. If you would, please email me[1] letting me know how often you read this journal, which platform you're using to access it, and any other demographic information you're comfortable providing so I get an idea of my audience. -I have no way to collect analytics for Flounder, Gitlab, Gemini, Freenet, or Zeronet. I'm against adding tracking scripts on the web version of this journal. Pageviews don't necessarily translate into interested readers and that's about all I can see. So if you're reading this, I'm counting on your input. But I digress. +I have no way to collect analytics for Flounder, Gitlab, Gemini, Freenet, or Zeronet. I'm against adding tracking scripts on the web version of this journal. Page views don't necessarily translate into interested readers and that's about all I can see. So if you're reading this, I'm counting on your input. But I digress. I've been thinking it would be nice if I had a way to monetize my writing. Donations aren't working but I'm uncomfortable with my ideas being restricted from people just because they don't have enough funds. So I'll always make my thoughts available through my writing on a "pay what you want" basis, even if that payment is zero. If I decide to try my hand at writing ebooks rather than online journal entries, I'll give the ebooks away for free with the option of payment. -Format-wise, I write rather than making videos or podcasts because I just don't want to put myself out there that much. I care about my privacy. Perhaps I'll make this journal accessible to passive listeners by running entries through a text-to-speech engine. If I were to raise enough money through donations, I could pay for human voiceovers instead. +Format-wise, I write rather than making videos or podcasts because I just don't want to put myself out there that much. I care about my privacy. Perhaps I'll make this journal accessible to passive listeners by running entries through a text-to-speech engine. If I were to raise enough money through donations, I could pay for human voice-overs instead. Unlike popular online educators, I don't hold back controversial viewpoints in the name of appealing to a mainstream, normie audience. I just write whatever the hell I want. On this journal, I give readers brutal honestly instead of trying to win them over. I'm trying to spread good ideas that will age well. Sometimes that means losing the popularity contest. diff --git a/content/entry/site-update-001.md b/content/entry/site-update-001.md index c6d6d53..9d600e9 100644 --- a/content/entry/site-update-001.md +++ b/content/entry/site-update-001.md @@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ draft: false # What's New I just finished migrating this site to a new server in Poland and I made a few changes along the way. I added IPv6 support to the site. I cleaned up the about[1] page and added some context to give the site a clear purpose. The primary crypto donation method is now Monero instead of Bitcoin. It's better for privacy. I also switched from Ko-fi to Liberapay[2]. Liberapay supports multiple currencies and languages. It's a non-profit that handles transactions transparently with free software[3]. -As for the site mirrors, I removed the SIUe[4] mirror since it's insecure and I seem to have lost access since I don't attend any more. I changed the onion address to a new vanity onion[5]. I also registered my I2P site with zzz's I2P domain name service so it's more memorable. It will take up to a week to propogate through all the nodes, so you'll have to use the direct base32 address[6] or a jump service to access this blog over I2P for now. I don't plan on changing the links again so it's safe to bookmark the new onion address and I2P link. I've made a backup of the private keys for the eepsite, onion, and zeronet addresses. In the event of a future server migration, I'll be able to keep the addresses the same. +As for the site mirrors, I removed the SIUe[4] mirror since it's insecure and I seem to have lost access since I don't attend any more. I changed the onion address to a new vanity onion[5]. I also registered my I2P site with zzz's I2P domain name service so it's more memorable. It will take up to a week to propagate through all the nodes, so you'll have to use the direct base32 address[6] or a jump service to access this blog over I2P for now. I don't plan on changing the links again so it's safe to bookmark the new onion address and I2P link. I've made a backup of the private keys for the eepsite, onion, and Zeronet addresses. In the event of a future server migration, I'll be able to keep the addresses the same. Link(s): diff --git a/content/entry/site-update-002.md b/content/entry/site-update-002.md index 41e77c2..7389fe5 100644 --- a/content/entry/site-update-002.md +++ b/content/entry/site-update-002.md @@ -3,6 +3,6 @@ title: "Site Update 002" date: 2020-11-13T00:00:00 draft: false --- -The RSS feed on my site works again. I'm not sure how long it was broken. I generate this site using relative URLs in order to accomodate I2P, Tor and Zeronet users. That inadvertantly caused the XML for RSS to also use relative links. RSS doesn't support relative links because it has no way of knowing the URL from only the XML data. I patched it so the XML now uses absolute links. +The RSS feed on my site works again. I'm not sure how long it was broken. I generate this site using relative URLs in order to accommodate I2P, Tor and Zeronet users. That inadvertently caused the XML for RSS to also use relative links. RSS doesn't support relative links because it has no way of knowing the URL from only the XML data. I patched it so the XML now uses absolute links. Sorry to anybody using RSS! ¯\(ツ)/¯ diff --git a/content/entry/site-update-003.md b/content/entry/site-update-003.md index f8cc929..eb10080 100644 --- a/content/entry/site-update-003.md +++ b/content/entry/site-update-003.md @@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ draft: false # What's New I removed the bootstrap JS that wasn't really doing anything. The site should load faster and use less data now. I created a new tag called "info" for all site updates. The about page has been compacted so it's cleaner and easier to read and not so long-winded. I also updated my PGP key to use Curve25519 instead of RSA. PGP is awful[1]. I still use it for email only because it's better than nothing. -This site allows you to get filtered RSS feeds for just the content you're interested in. For example, if you only want to read about privacy, then you can use https://0gitnick.xyz/tags/privacy/index.xml for a privacy feed or https://0gitnick.xyz/tags/privacy/index.html for webpages. The category-centered feeds were broken with the same issue the aggregate site feed had last time with the relative URLs. They're fixed now. +This site allows you to get filtered RSS feeds for just the content you're interested in. For example, if you only want to read about privacy, then you can use https://0gitnick.xyz/tags/privacy/index.xml for a privacy feed or https://0gitnick.xyz/tags/privacy/index.html for web pages. The category-centered feeds were broken with the same issue the aggregate site feed had last time with the relative URLs. They're fixed now. The biggest change I made is reorganizing the tags. I renamed some tags and added new ones. The reason I did that is I have in mind the readers who just want a particular type of content and the tags were disorganized before. If I'm not sure if a post should be assigned a certain tag, I err on the side of too many tags since not tagging it could mean some readers will miss a relevant post. It's better for readers to see a post they don't care about now and then and just delete it rather than miss posts entirely because I was too strict with tagging. diff --git a/content/entry/site-update-008.md b/content/entry/site-update-008.md index de5c22c..a8b2457 100644 --- a/content/entry/site-update-008.md +++ b/content/entry/site-update-008.md @@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ It seems I'm making update posts more often than I imagined, but it's fine. I'm * Change "recommendation" tag to more specific tags. (e.g., "books", "videos") * Sign commits on Github/Gitlab[1] so users can TOFU[2] this blog -* Minify html and css +* Minify HTML and CSS # Future Plans * Mirror site repo and scripts on Savannah diff --git a/content/entry/site-update-009.md b/content/entry/site-update-009.md index 0e6a4f0..5a7aeca 100644 --- a/content/entry/site-update-009.md +++ b/content/entry/site-update-009.md @@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ I haven't posted anything for a while and I've been working behind the scenes to * Add Ethereum address and tokens for more donation options. # Future Plans -* Add Gemini[4] support. The modern web has so many problems: tracking cookies, proprietary client-side Javascript[5], non-Unix philosophy, browser fingerprinting[6], DRM[7] as a standard, etc. Gopher[8] is 30 years old and has suffered decline. Gemini[9] is more modern avoiding the limitations of Gopher and the pitfalls of the modern web. +* Add Gemini[4] support. The modern web has so many problems: tracking cookies, proprietary client-side JavaScript[5], non-Unix philosophy, browser fingerprinting[6], DRM[7] as a standard, etc. Gopher[8] is 30 years old and has suffered decline. Gemini[9] is more modern avoiding the limitations of Gopher and the pitfalls of the modern web. Link(s): diff --git a/content/entry/site-update-010.md b/content/entry/site-update-010.md index 158e6cd..b560391 100644 --- a/content/entry/site-update-010.md +++ b/content/entry/site-update-010.md @@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ I did some more behind the scenes work on my site: I have 2 options when it comes to Gemini: 1. Maintain 2 separate copies of my content. This adds significant overhead to updating the site and writing posts since I have to do everything twice. -2. Maintain 1 copy of my content. It would have to be Gemini-first since html -> gmi is lossy, but gmi -> html is not. I'd have to write a custom CMS since I have too many posts to manually organize into tags and pages. I would also need the custom CMS to generate the Atom/RSS feeds for every tag. In the long run this would be simpler because I'd only have to maintain 1 copy of my content. Hugo would be scrapped. +2. Maintain 1 copy of my content. It would have to be Gemini-first since HTML -> GMI is lossy, but GMI -> HTML is not. I'd have to write a custom CMS since I have too many posts to manually organize into tags and pages. I would also need the custom CMS to generate the Atom/RSS feeds for every tag. In the long run this would be simpler because I'd only have to maintain 1 copy of my content. Hugo would be scrapped. Given my dislike of the modern web, I'm opting for option 2. My content will still be available on the web, only the site layout will change. The canonical repo will be 0gitnick.xyz-gmi and 0gitnick.xyz-www-v2 will be generated from 0gitnick.xyz-gmi using a custom CMS. The existing 0gitnick.xyz-www which is hugo based will be renamed to 0gitnick.xyz-www-v1. I will maintain it until 0gitnick.xyz-gmi and 0gitnick.xyz-www-v2 are ready, which I estimate to take at least a few months. diff --git a/content/entry/site-update-011.md b/content/entry/site-update-011.md index ed6f620..76295a2 100644 --- a/content/entry/site-update-011.md +++ b/content/entry/site-update-011.md @@ -4,22 +4,22 @@ date: 2021-05-02T00:00:00 draft: false --- # What's New -I paused posts because I've been busy migrating my blog to gemini[1]: -* Migrate blog to gemini because the web is cancer. -* New website! Even though the web is cancer, a web presence is still a necessity. I wrote a script that generates a gemini capsule and website from my content files. I also wrote the CSS myself to mirror the look of the Amfora gemini client for convergence. +I paused posts because I've been busy migrating my blog to Gemini[1]: +* Migrate blog to Gemini because the web is cancer. +* New website! Even though the web is cancer, a web presence is still a necessity. I wrote a script that generates a Gemini capsule and website from my content files. I also wrote the CSS myself to mirror the look of the Amfora Gemini client for convergence. * Register a new domain name! nicksphere.com. It's a .com domain, more memorable and more meaningful than 0gitnick.xyz. 0gitnick.xyz will also work until it expires just to give readers time to bookmark the new domain. -* New Tor/I2P/Freenet links as well! The Tor v3 onion now contains "nick" instead of "0gitnick". The i2p address is now "nicksphere.i2p". The freenet link is now "/nicksphere" instead of "/0gitnick". +* New Tor/I2P/Freenet links as well! The Tor v3 onion now contains "nick" instead of "0gitnick". The I2P address is now "nicksphere.i2p". The freenet link is now "/nicksphere" instead of "/0gitnick". * Gemfeed and web feed (Atom) are available with content summaries. Full content Atom feeds may be available again in the future, but don't bank on it. * Promoted content has returned! I added a disclaimer this time to make it clear what the promoted content is all about so that my previous reservations are lessened. * I will no longer promote content with a post unless I have significant commentary to add. I don't like posting others' content in my own posts because then if you already view their content then you see it twice. It just wasn't a good way of organizing promoted content, so I'm done doing that. Here's how it will work going forward: For content I want to promote, I will use the promoted page. For content I want to commentate on, I will make a post about it. -* All tags and separate feeds are gone. I don't feel like the tagging system was very valuable. I often didn't know what to tag my posts or whether to create a new tag for them or remove a tag. Now I don't have to think about it. I can get on with just doing what I like which is writing posts. As for you readers of my blog, I have doubts that anyone much uses the tags anyway. Reading the title and summary probably does more to help readers make a judgement if they want to read that post than tags. I would've had to reimplement them in my content management system and it didn't seem worth the work. +* All tags and separate feeds are gone. I don't feel like the tagging system was very valuable. I often didn't know what to tag my posts or whether to create a new tag for them or remove a tag. Now I don't have to think about it. I can get on with just doing what I like which is writing posts. As for you readers of my blog, I have doubts that anyone much uses the tags anyway. Reading the title and summary probably does more to help readers make a judgment if they want to read that post than tags. I would've had to reimplement them in my content management system and it didn't seem worth the work. # Future Plans * Write configuration files for CI pipelines so the Github and Gitlab site mirrors work again. Since I'm using a content management system I wrote myself, I also have to write the CI pipeline configuration for generating the site myself and I haven't gotten to it yet. -Ignore what site update 10 says about the repos. It only makes sense to have 1 repo to maintain content on gemini and the web. The repo nicksphere-www is deprecated. It will no longer be used at all. The canonical repo for my content is now nicksphere-gmi. It contains generator scripts for gemini and the web as well. It still needs work such as the CI pipelines, but it's close enough to use for my capsule and my site now. +Ignore what site update 10 says about the repos. It only makes sense to have 1 repo to maintain content on Gemini and the Web. The repo nicksphere-www is deprecated. It will no longer be used at all. The canonical repo for my content is now nicksphere-gmi. It contains generator scripts for Gemini and the web as well. It still needs work such as the CI pipelines, but it's close enough to use for my capsule and my site now. -In post 10 I estimated it to take months to launch this gemini capsule, but I'm clearly ahead of schedule. Also, I've learned there are existing content management systems for gemlogs that I could have used. They generate Atom feeds automatically, but I've already written my own that works well for my content, so I'll just make changes to it if necessary instead of using someone else's. +In post 10 I estimated it to take months to launch this Gemini capsule, but I'm clearly ahead of schedule. Also, I've learned there are existing content management systems for gemlogs that I could have used. They generate Atom feeds automatically, but I've already written my own that works well for my content, so I'll just make changes to it if necessary instead of using someone else's. Link(s): diff --git a/content/entry/site-update-014.md b/content/entry/site-update-014.md index 322f61f..c21836d 100644 --- a/content/entry/site-update-014.md +++ b/content/entry/site-update-014.md @@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ draft: false Nightfall.city is a virtual city. I'm on main street. Being added was a pleasant surprise. I like these little Gemini communities. I like reading other people's Gemlogs and finding out what they're up to. The browsing experience of the Geminispace is so much more user-friendly than browsing the web. I could browse for hours. I encourage you to download a Gemini client and explore the space yourself. -Personally, I like the uniformity of presentation. It lends itself to a nondistracting, enjoyable experience. I like knowing I'm not going to encounter ads, tracking cookies or other garbage and I don't have to worry about client-side Javascript because Gemini doesn't support Javascript or cookies! I can focus on what's important: the content. +Personally, I like the uniformity of presentation. It lends itself to a non-distracting, enjoyable experience. I like knowing I'm not going to encounter ads, tracking cookies or other garbage and I don't have to worry about client-side JavaScript because Gemini doesn't support JavaScript or cookies! I can focus on what's important: the content. I also like the simplicity. I don't have to learn how to navigate every new Gemini capsule I visit because they're all the same. My brain doesn't have to get used to different stylesheets. It's just better. I'll probably do a post about Gemini in the future. Anyway, the web is a bloated mess. Long live Gemini! diff --git a/content/entry/siue-cyberstalking-feature.md b/content/entry/siue-cyberstalking-feature.md index bad5cfb..98c37d7 100644 --- a/content/entry/siue-cyberstalking-feature.md +++ b/content/entry/siue-cyberstalking-feature.md @@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ draft: false --- https://www.siue.edu/search/people.shtml[1] -This lesser-known feature has existed for at least 2 years and probably much longer than that. I emailed their helpdesk[2] several times pointing out the search feature could be abused by cyberstalkers and data mined. I pointed out that it should require authentication and not be open to the public internet. It's a huge risk for student privacy and safety. Anyone can find any student's full name, area of study, rank, home address, phone number and university email. A week later, I still have no response. +This lesser-known feature has existed for at least 2 years and probably much longer than that. I emailed their help desk[2] several times pointing out the search feature could be abused by cyberstalkers and data mined. I pointed out that it should require authentication and not be open to the public internet. It's a huge risk for student privacy and safety. Anyone can find any student's full name, area of study, rank, home address, phone number and university email. A week later, I still have no response. A quick search reveals that other university's student directories generally don't include the student's rank, home address, or phone number. SIUe should at least remove the home address and phone number fields from public view. diff --git a/content/entry/siue-eid-creation-and-maintenance-problems.md b/content/entry/siue-eid-creation-and-maintenance-problems.md index 4ed019d..9727274 100644 --- a/content/entry/siue-eid-creation-and-maintenance-problems.md +++ b/content/entry/siue-eid-creation-and-maintenance-problems.md @@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ Do I even need to say it a third time? * A password cannot contain any of the characters $&@=+"/[]:;|*,?<>~' or a space. -Throw out the NIST guideline on using all printable ASCII characters and unicode. In fact, it doesn't support unicode. I tried inserting a unicode character only to get errors. From a security perspective, this rule is extremely concerning. I'm not sure what it's trying to do, but some of the characters are used in SQL commands. Could this indicate a SQL injection[3] vulnerability? Since SIUe has to update the password across multiple systems (Blackboard, Outlook, etc.), it could be due to a compatibility issue. This could also be a security concern. +Throw out the NIST guideline on using all printable ASCII characters and Unicode. In fact, it doesn't support Unicode. I tried inserting a Unicode character only to get errors. From a security perspective, this rule is extremely concerning. I'm not sure what it's trying to do, but some of the characters are used in SQL commands. Could this indicate a SQL injection[3] vulnerability? Since SIUe has to update the password across multiple systems (Blackboard, Outlook, etc.), it could be due to a compatibility issue. This could also be a security concern. I'm going to lump the last 4 together because the only thing I have to add is that they reduce the password space again and are composition rules. @@ -43,11 +43,11 @@ Every 60 days, you are required to reset your password[4]. The NIST password pol Furthermore, all these password rules make it much more difficult to analyze the number of possible passwords. To do that, you would need every e-ID and every word in "the dictionary". Who knows what words are included even. I'm certain that even the administrators have no idea how big the password space is, but it's definitely insufficient. This brings me to my next point. -# Autogenerated Password Patterns +# Auto-generated Password Patterns -If your password is reset using your security question, or you get your password generated for you at the helpdesk, there seems to be patterns to the passwords. I've noticed after testing this out by resetting my password that the generator always seems to prefer 2 digits and 6 letters. The generator seems to prefer 3 letter sequences with a consonant followed by a vowel followed by another consonant. This makes it easy to pronounce. It always uses lowercase. I don't think I have ever seen it use uppercase. This is why I do not recommend using passwords autogenerated by SIUe. They have patterns. If you obtain an autogenerated password, change it as soon as possible. Since the generator algorithm is closed off, there's no way to know how secure it is. Your best bet is to generate a password yourself using a password manager and memorize that. +If your password is reset using your security question, or you get your password generated for you at the help desk, there seems to be patterns to the passwords. I've noticed after testing this out by resetting my password that the generator always seems to prefer 2 digits and 6 letters. The generator seems to prefer 3 letter sequences with a consonant followed by a vowel followed by another consonant. This makes it easy to pronounce. It always uses lowercase. I don't think I have ever seen it use uppercase. This is why I do not recommend using passwords auto-generated by SIUe. They have patterns. If you obtain an auto-generated password, change it as soon as possible. Since the generator algorithm is closed off, there's no way to know how secure it is. Your best bet is to generate a password yourself using a password manager and memorize that. -# Annoying UI +# Annoying User Interface ## Looks Take a look at the creation and maintenance page[5]. I myself am not great at designing graphical user interfaces, but this one is bad. There was a class I had where the professor went over how awful the creation and maintenance page was during the class, but I won't mention who. Some things they noticed on the face of it: For some strange reason, the table has four columns, but the third and fourth column only have one item. The radio buttons get their own separate cells which look awful with the borders. Everything is at the top of the page, not centered. The gray background is very bland and it looks like not much thought was put into the color scheme. And it definitely isn't going to look nice on mobile. @@ -57,7 +57,7 @@ The date of birth on the "I want to get an e-ID" option and the "I have an e-ID The new password and confirm new password fields on the change password page[6] allow you to input in your browser 9 characters, but the server just rejects anything more than 8. It also has text above the input field saying it only allows 8 characters. ## Invalid HTML -After seeing the poor quality of the subdomain's webpages, I got curious and clicked view source. They were using XHTML 1.0 and the legacy windows-1252 character encoding. After checking all the pages reachable from the radio buttons with the HTML validator at https://validator.w3.org/[7], the results were as expected. Every URL I checked had invalid HTML at the time of this writing: +After seeing the poor quality of the subdomain's web pages, I got curious and clicked view source. They were using XHTML 1.0 and the legacy windows-1252 character encoding. After checking all the pages reachable from the radio buttons with the HTML validator at https://validator.w3.org/[7], the results were as expected. Every URL I checked had invalid HTML at the time of this writing: * https://eid.siue.edu/am/e-ID[8] (85 errors) * https://eid.siue.edu/am/get_e-ID[9] (16 errors) @@ -78,7 +78,7 @@ When it lets you change the secret phrase and answer, it literally shows you the # Denial of Service Vulnerability There is a denial of service vulnerability related to the change password form[14]. If you unsuccessfully reset your password more than 5 times, your ability to reset your password will be locked for 24 hours. This password reset attempt limit persists across browsing sessions and IP addresses. It must be stored on SIUe servers. That means anyone can use the people search feature[15], which I covered previously, to scrape for e-ID's. Then, they can spam the password reset form with every e-ID scraped from the search feature. Since it's only necessary to do this once every 24 hours per account, anyone can effectively break the password reset feature for all active students, faculty and staff with a simple Python script. -Of course, students can make a call to the helpdesk to get the password reset limit fixed so they have 5 more attempts within the 24 hours. But it's possible to run this attack continuously with such high volume that even students who call the helpdesk and get a reset on the attempts cannot change their password. I'm not encouraging or condoning denial of servicing the change password feature. I'm only pointing the attack vector exists in the hope that it gets fixed. +Of course, students can make a call to the help desk to get the password reset limit fixed so they have 5 more attempts within the 24 hours. But it's possible to run this attack continuously with such high volume that even students who call the help desk and get a reset on the attempts cannot change their password. I'm not encouraging or condoning denial of servicing the change password feature. I'm only pointing the attack vector exists in the hope that it gets fixed. Link(s): diff --git a/content/entry/stop-amazons-police-state.md b/content/entry/stop-amazons-police-state.md index 97140f4..3ac24f9 100644 --- a/content/entry/stop-amazons-police-state.md +++ b/content/entry/stop-amazons-police-state.md @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ date: 2020-11-20T00:00:00 draft: false --- # Amazon's Orwellian Surveillance Hellscape -Amazon is providing police departments with warrantless access to thousands of Ring doorbell cameras giving cops unpredecented, persistent surveillance capabilities of private homes and neighborhoods. This is yet another dangerous partnership between the empire of the megacorporations[1] and the state. +Amazon is providing police departments with warrantless access to thousands of Ring doorbell cameras giving cops unprecedented, persistent surveillance capabilities of private homes and neighborhoods. This is yet another dangerous partnership between the empire of the megacorporations[1] and the state. Police don't even need probable cause to request the Ring camera footage. If the "owner" of the camera refuses to share footage with the police, the real owner (Amazon) can provide the footage anyway. There are no safeguards and there's no accountability in place to protect the footage. This persistent dragnet neighborhood video surveillance is incompatible with democracy and must be stopped. Sign the petition at www.cancelring.com[2] and tell your local officials to cancel these partnerships that violate our basic civil liberties. diff --git a/content/entry/struggle-to-graduate-without-nonfree-software.md b/content/entry/struggle-to-graduate-without-nonfree-software.md index 9942aec..13db254 100644 --- a/content/entry/struggle-to-graduate-without-nonfree-software.md +++ b/content/entry/struggle-to-graduate-without-nonfree-software.md @@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ draft: false # Introduction From the title of this journal entry alone, you might think it's about my story struggling to graduate without nonfree software. But I've already beaten that topic to death on this journal. It's time for someone else's story: Wojciech Kosior. He faced the same sort of difficulties graduating that I did, except he graduated. His story is one of incredible determination and persistence. He fought hard to graduate in freedom and won. I don't know of many people with the resolve displayed in his narrative. -The revised narrative of his struggle can be found on gnu.org[1]. It went through at least 20 revisions before being published. Many of the details were stripped. He kindly sent me the unedited original copy of his narrative which I personally find more inspiring than the one on gnu.org. I modified the narrative's formatting to make it more presentable here. It was originally sent as a .org. If you want the original .org file (for emacs), I've uploaded it to this web server for download[2]. +The revised narrative of his struggle can be found on gnu.org[1]. It went through at least 20 revisions before being published. Many of the details were stripped. He kindly sent me the unedited original copy of his narrative which I personally find more inspiring than the one on gnu.org. I modified the narrative's formatting to make it more presentable here. It was originally sent as a .org. If you want the original .org file (for Emacs), I've uploaded it to this web server for download[2]. If you enjoyed reading my story struggling to graduate without nonfree software, then you're in for a treat. Without further introduction, I present to you Wojciech Kosior's narrative. diff --git a/content/entry/the-addiction-to-thinking.md b/content/entry/the-addiction-to-thinking.md index dfe790c..d5743c5 100644 --- a/content/entry/the-addiction-to-thinking.md +++ b/content/entry/the-addiction-to-thinking.md @@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ This activity doesn't require you to believe superstitions or unsubstantiated cl Here are the instructions: -> Pick up the pen and hold it to the paper. Whenever you notice a thought that can be written down in words, you write it down. Don't worry about grammar or spelling, that's not the point. Don't worry if it's even coherent or continuous. Don't scratch anything out. Redundancy is perfectly fine. Just write down whatever's on your mind. If it's kind, peaceful, helpful, write it down. If it's hateful, vulgar, taboo, write it down anyway. It's important that you don't censor anything. Just let there be a continuous flow of thoughts from your mind to the paper. +> Pick up the pen and hold it to the paper. Whenever you notice a thought that can be written down in words, you write it down. Don't worry about grammar or spelling, that's not the point. Don't worry if it's even coherent or continuous. Don't scratch anything out. Redundancy is perfectly fine. Just write down whatever is on your mind. If it's kind, peaceful, helpful, write it down. If it's hateful, vulgar, taboo, write it down anyway. It's important that you don't censor anything. Just let there be a continuous flow of thoughts from your mind to the paper. > > Write until you notice enough thoughts that your mind outpaces your hand. Try to at least fill up 1 full page with thoughts. The more, the better. The goal is to write down as much of your own self-talk[3] as you can. @@ -39,12 +39,12 @@ None of this is new information. Contemplatives have said for centuries that bei I have to clarify that thinking is an absolutely necessary faculty. It's necessary for survival and human progress. For instance all technology first began with a thought. So thought is not the enemy here. The problem is thinking without being aware of it. As contemplatives through the ages have discovered, having that background stream of thoughts is a primary source of human suffering. Reason being that internal conversation, even for the most average people, is often negative and, as I discussed, sounds like how someone in a mental asylum might communicate. # Life is Pain -There may be no more important fact to realize if you want to lead a fulfilling life than this one: Throughout the course of a normal human life, the quality of one's mind determines quality of one's life. If you go through life entranced by your thoughts as most of us do, you will lead a life of dissatisfaction. You'll never be fully content with the present moment. In my own experience and others', even the best days of our lives don't quite cut it. In ancient Indian literature, this is known as dukkha[5]. +There may be no more important fact to realize if you want to lead a fulfilling life than this one: Throughout the course of a normal human life, the quality of one's mind determines quality of one's life. If you go through life entranced by your thoughts as most of us do, you will lead a life of dissatisfaction. You'll never be fully content with the present moment. In my own experience and others', even the best days of our lives don't quite cut it. In ancient Indian literature, this is known as Dukkha[5]. # An Alternative, Perhaps? Mystics, yogis and monks that have spent decades doing nothing but meditating in caves have suggested that there are alternatives to living entranced by your thoughts. They've suggested that contentment is actually a learnable skill. To most people it sounds strange that one could learn to be content. It's thought that contentment arises out of favorable life circumstances. This is contradicted by scientific studies showing people don't report being much happier given increases in income once the threshold for basic needs is met. -Unless you believe all the contemplative literature over the millenia is merely a product of mental illness and self-deception, you have to admit some people seem to have found an alternative to being entranced by thought, to being perpetually dissatisfied with life. Once you admit that, you also have to admit that if it was possible for them, then it just might be possible for you too. +Unless you believe all the contemplative literature over the millennia is merely a product of mental illness and self-deception, you have to admit some people seem to have found an alternative to being entranced by thought, to being perpetually dissatisfied with life. Once you admit that, you also have to admit that if it was possible for them, then it just might be possible for you too. And the alternatives to dissatisfaction don't require you to ignore bad things happening in the world or accept religious dogma. They just require a shift in consciousness. For some the shift is gradual taking many years of practice. And for others like Eckhart Tolle[6] it's instantaneous. diff --git a/content/entry/the-cult-of-productivity.md b/content/entry/the-cult-of-productivity.md index b50f146..787c299 100644 --- a/content/entry/the-cult-of-productivity.md +++ b/content/entry/the-cult-of-productivity.md @@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ Now I"m not saying getting things done is bad if that's what you want to do. But # Deprogramming Yourself ## Challenging Assumptions -To uncondition ourselves from this cult of productivity, we have to question the basic assumptions. Why is it a good thing for instance to "Keep Busy"? There are people that Keep Busy not because that's what they want to do, but to avoid their own thoughts. If that's why someone is Keeping Busy, then it can be a very bad thing. Work isn't the only way to busy the mind. Overeating, drug addiction, social media addiction and smartphone addiction also keep people busy, but they're not good. +To decondition ourselves from this cult of productivity, we have to question the basic assumptions. Why is it a good thing for instance to "Keep Busy"? There are people that Keep Busy not because that's what they want to do, but to avoid their own thoughts. If that's why someone is Keeping Busy, then it can be a very bad thing. Work isn't the only way to busy the mind. Overeating, drug addiction, social media addiction and smartphone addiction also keep people busy, but they're not good. And what about "Getting Things Done"? That's not always good either. If you're Getting Things Done just for the sake of it and not because it's what you want, that can come through in your work. For instance, I write blog posts when motivation strikes. That's why my blog doesn't have a defined schedule. Otherwise I would just be writing for the sake of Getting Something Done, not enjoying myself doing it. diff --git a/content/entry/the-narrative-self.md b/content/entry/the-narrative-self.md index 85e3128..15848c2 100644 --- a/content/entry/the-narrative-self.md +++ b/content/entry/the-narrative-self.md @@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ There's 2 broad strategies you can employ to deal with this neurotic, problem-se The first strategy is changing the narrative. You can recondition yourself to "think positive" by telling yourself a better story. 21st century Stoics such as William B. Irvine employ a number of mental exercises to put life in perspective and reduce suffering. I won't get into Stoicism here as there are many different exercises, but you can see William's website[1] for more information. ## Zen -The other way to deal with your narrative self involves the self. It is Zen rather than Stoic. Instead of changing the voice in your head, you can deidentify from it. Instead of your experience seemingly being centered around your inner monologue, you can recognize the inner monologue for what it is, simply another object of experience. +The other way to deal with your narrative self involves the self. It is Zen rather than Stoic. Instead of changing the voice in your head, you can de-identify from it. Instead of your experience seemingly being centered around your inner monologue, you can recognize the inner monologue for what it is, simply another object of experience. # Pros and Cons of Each Strategy Both Stoicism and Zen each have their respective pros and cons. diff --git a/content/entry/the-privacy-implications-of-weak-ai.md b/content/entry/the-privacy-implications-of-weak-ai.md index ef7b1f7..815e6c7 100644 --- a/content/entry/the-privacy-implications-of-weak-ai.md +++ b/content/entry/the-privacy-implications-of-weak-ai.md @@ -9,15 +9,15 @@ So a few days ago I started writing this entry titled "Societal Implications of I've chosen to limit the scope of this entry to weak AI only. I'm purposely omitting AGI because it warrants its own discussion. AGI, or general artificial intelligence, is AI with intelligence equal to or far exceeding human intelligence in every way that matters. Weak AI by contrast only handles narrowly-defined, limited tasks. But make no mistake. Just because it's limited doesn't mean it's not dangerous. This entry is all about how weak AI threatens our privacy and what we can do about it. # Privacy Must Be Protected -The 'nothing to hide' people don't understand this, but privacy is important for the healthy development of humans and other animals. Being watched all the time is psychologically hazardous. It's backed up by science. Without privacy, there's nowhere to make mistakes without judgement. Letting AI just destroy our privacy in the name of 'progress' is not an option. +The 'nothing to hide' people don't understand this, but privacy is important for the healthy development of humans and other animals. Being watched all the time is psychologically hazardous. It's backed up by science. Without privacy, there's nowhere to make mistakes without judgment. Letting AI just destroy our privacy in the name of 'progress' is not an option. # AI is Already a Privacy Disaster -AI is already destroying our privacy in numerous ways. Just have a look at awful-ai[1], a git repo tracking scary usages of AI. AI can be used to infer criminality from a picture of a person's face. It can recreate a person's face from their voice alone. Everybody already knows about facial recognition which is a privacy disaster. Big retailers use it for tracking. China uses it to surveil muslims. Any time you see 'AI' and 'privacy' in the same sentence, it's always bad news. +AI is already destroying our privacy in numerous ways. Just have a look at awful-ai[1], a git repo tracking scary usages of AI. AI can be used to infer criminality from a picture of a person's face. It can recreate a person's face from their voice alone. Everybody already knows about facial recognition which is a privacy disaster. Big retailers use it for tracking. China uses it to surveil Muslims. Any time you see 'AI' and 'privacy' in the same sentence, it's always bad news. # AI Will Become a Worse Privacy Disaster -AI is already very bad for privacy and getting worse all the time. The most worrisome thing is we have no idea how good weak AI can get at privacy-invading use cases. The only limit in sight is how much personal information can theoretically be derived from input data. Can AI accurately predict the timeframe when someone last had sex based on a 1 minute video of that person? What about how they've been feeling for the past week? It's hard to say what future AI will be able to predict given some data. +AI is already very bad for privacy and getting worse all the time. The most worrisome thing is we have no idea how good weak AI can get at privacy-invading use cases. The only limit in sight is how much personal information can theoretically be derived from input data. Can AI accurately predict the time frame when someone last had sex based on a 1 minute video of that person? What about how they've been feeling for the past week? It's hard to say what future AI will be able to predict given some data. -You may be publicly sharing information about yourself online now, knowingly or unknowingly, which a future AI Sherlock Holmes (just a metaphor) can use to derive information about you that you don't want anyone to know. Not only that, but it will be able to derive information about you that you don't even know. How much information will future AI be able to derive about me from these journal entries? What will it learn about me from my style of writing, what I write about, when I write about it, etcetera? I don't know. Just imagine what inferences future AI will be able to derive about someone given all the data from intelligence agencies and big tech. Imagine how that could be weaponized. +You may be publicly sharing information about yourself online now, knowingly or unknowingly, which a future AI Sherlock Holmes (just a metaphor) can use to derive information about you that you don't want anyone to know. Not only that, but it will be able to derive information about you that you don't even know. How much information will future AI be able to derive about me from these journal entries? What will it learn about me from my style of writing, what I write about, when I write about it, etc? I don't know. Just imagine what inferences future AI will be able to derive about someone given all the data from intelligence agencies and big tech. Imagine how that could be weaponized. Future AI may not be able to explain how it reaches its conclusions to us humans. But that won't necessarily matter. As long as its conclusions are accurate, it will be dangerous. If it turns out that future AI Sherlock can derive troves of personal information from very little data, we'll need very strict privacy protections. If it turns out that AI Sherlock can't derive much information, then maybe we can relax protections a little. @@ -52,7 +52,7 @@ There is cause for concern about such strong privacy laws though. For instance t ### Self-Driving Cars How can you have self-driving cars if it's illegal to conduct persistent surveillance of the public? You can't. The cars must have external sensors and cameras in order to work. We could just not have them, but self-driving cars will save millions of lives. We don't want to block technological development that benefits humanity. -For those cases, we need strict, legally enforceable data collection and data protection standards that businesses must adhere to and perhaps audits to ensure the standards are being followed. If your company builds technology which has the hardware cability to conduct persistent surveillance of the public, then there should be guidelines it has to follow: +For those cases, we need strict, legally enforceable data collection and data protection standards that businesses must adhere to and perhaps audits to ensure the standards are being followed. If your company builds technology which has the hardware capability to conduct persistent surveillance of the public, then there should be guidelines it has to follow: * The technology must be built with free hardware and run free software exclusively. * The technology must not collect more data than necessary to achieve its ends. @@ -65,7 +65,7 @@ Of course the guidelines will be technology-specific and they won't be perfect. ### Online AI Matchmaking For another example, imagine an online AI matchmaking service which finds your perfect match. Suppose it's more successful than other existing matchmaking services, by any metric. Sounds great right? But there's a catch. The reason it achieves such great results is because it creates huge dossiers on its users to feed into the AI matchmaking algorithm. -You might be thinking "Well if you don't want your privacy invaded, just don't sign up." Ah but it's not so simple. None of us live in a privacy vaccuum. Every time you give up data about yourself, you risk giving up data about others even if you never explicitly offer data about them. As I already discussed, AI can deduce information about other people you're close to based on things it knows about you. Using privacy-invading services inevitably leaks some data about nonconsenting non-users. +You might be thinking "Well if you don't want your privacy invaded, just don't sign up." Ah but it's not so simple. None of us live in a privacy vacuum. Every time you give up data about yourself, you risk giving up data about others even if you never explicitly offer data about them. As I already discussed, AI can deduce information about other people you're close to based on things it knows about you. Using privacy-invading services inevitably leaks some data about nonconsenting non-users. It still makes sense to mitigate the privacy damage caused by AI matchmaking using the same sort of regulations I proposed for self-driving cars. Deciding not to use the service is an individual decision. But on a societal level, we have to decide whether it's okay for such a service to exist in the first place in an environment where AI Sherlock could use the data to derive personal information about nonconsenting non-users. @@ -79,7 +79,7 @@ But maybe we can avoid making trade-offs. One reason to stay hopeful I haven't m We could also regulate businesses running AI-driven services so they're legally required to operate it collecting as minimal user data as possible. For instance, if we figured out how to use homomorphic encryption for the hypothetical AI matchmaking business without collecting plaintext data about users, it would then be legally required of all AI matchmaking businesses providing worse or equivalent service to provide that same level of privacy to users. -With that law in place, we could constantly step up privacy protections against AI and also online services that don't use AI as well. We could also avoid a 2-tier society of those benefitting from AI and those that aren't. Maybe cryptography can save us from being forced to pick and choose. +With that law in place, we could constantly step up privacy protections against AI and also online services that don't use AI as well. We could also avoid a 2-tier society of those benefiting from AI and those that aren't. Maybe cryptography can save us from being forced to pick and choose. # Summary In summary, AI is a danger to privacy. It's getting more dangerous. To protect our privacy, we need to stop governments and businesses from collecting data about us and get them to purge data they already have. Stronger laws and regulations than currently exist anywhere in the world will need to be passed to protect user privacy in a meaningful way. If we're fortunate, advances in cryptography, particularly homomorphic encryption, could allow us to reap the benefits of AI without the privacy invasion. diff --git a/content/entry/the-privacy-paradox.md b/content/entry/the-privacy-paradox.md index 87525a1..9a2b980 100644 --- a/content/entry/the-privacy-paradox.md +++ b/content/entry/the-privacy-paradox.md @@ -12,9 +12,9 @@ There seems to be a common theme here. Big Brother programs automatically target # The Paradox Thus we end up with a paradox: The more you avoid mass surveillance, the more interesting you become to Big Brother. This increases the likelihood that you'll end up on one of their "extra surveillance" lists and that more targeted methods will be used on you. The less you avoid mass surveillance, the less interesting you become to Big Brother. All else being equal, this decreases the likelihood that you'll get special attention. Blending in with the surveilled masses might give you more anonymity and privacy, in practice. In other words, allowing yourself to be mass surveilled might act as a kind of protection against targeted surveillance. -If you pay for everything in cash[8] where cash payments are uncommon, if you use internet services[9] registered outside of the Five Eyes[10], if you use Tor and VPNs for accessing the internet, if you use free as in freedom[11] software and encrypted communication apps, if you avoid social media[12], if you drive a privacy-friendly vehicle[13] when you can afford a newer car, you're going to attract attention to yourself. One of these things on its own isn't a red flag, but combined together, there's really only one thing you can be doing: avoiding mass surveillance. One doesn't avoid mass surveillance in today's world by accident unless you're amish or living in a poor country. +If you pay for everything in cash[8] where cash payments are uncommon, if you use internet services[9] registered outside of the Five Eyes[10], if you use Tor and VPNs for accessing the internet, if you use free as in freedom[11] software and encrypted communication apps, if you avoid social media[12], if you drive a privacy-friendly vehicle[13] when you can afford a newer car, you're going to attract attention to yourself. One of these things on its own isn't a red flag, but combined together, there's really only one thing you can be doing: avoiding mass surveillance. One doesn't avoid mass surveillance in today's world by accident unless you're Amish or living in a poor country. -Knowing this, what ought you to do about it? Should you try to blend in or should you avoid mass surveillance and just not care how many watchlists you end up on? +Knowing this, what ought you to do about it? Should you try to blend in or should you avoid mass surveillance and just not care how many watch lists you end up on? # What to Do About It ## Short Answer @@ -31,7 +31,7 @@ You contribute to the stereotype that a desire for privacy indicates nefarious a The only long-term winning strategy for all society is to avoid mass surveillance as much as possible with the hope that others will follow suit. This is true whether you're a law-abiding citizen or a criminal mastermind. To drive this point home, I'll end with a quote by Edward Snowden[17] from his interview with John Oliver on Last Week Tonight: -> "You shouldn’t change your behavior because a government agency somewhere is doing the wrong thing. If we sacrifice our values because we’re afraid, we don’t care about those values very much." +> "You shouldn't change your behavior because a government agency somewhere is doing the wrong thing. If we sacrifice our values because we’re afraid, we don’t care about those values very much." This quote was taken from the context of taking dick pics, but it can be equally applied here: Don't accept mass surveillance as reality just because the government might target you for it. diff --git a/content/entry/the-self.md b/content/entry/the-self.md index de0e0f4..78d7597 100644 --- a/content/entry/the-self.md +++ b/content/entry/the-self.md @@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ This is something that I have always found intuitive but is an easy mistake to m The right question is "If an object's parts are replaced, should we still call it the same object?". We could make a pros and cons list of calling it the same object versus giving it a different name and decide what makes more sense. One might think I'm being being pedantic about this and philosophers understand the real question is about what we call the object. My own personal experience has shown that this is not true. People often do not understand that they're arguing about what to call something, and it's not any deeper than that. This is called Mistaking the Map for the Territory[3]. -But we have also created another problem. What is an object? Let's take a car for example. Let's say we haven't replaced any parts. Where does the car stop and the car's environment begin? Is the air inside the car also the car? What if the car is in orbit around the earth and it has no air, is the space inside the car still the car, or is it just empty space? This questioning is ridiculous in one sense because when I say the word "car", every English speaker intuitively knows what the word "car" means. For all practical usages of the word "car" we will never have to worry about bizarre philosophical quandries about the identity of the car (especially since there's no "Car of Theseus"). We all just sort of know what other people talk about when they talk about a "car". +But we have also created another problem. What is an object? Let's take a car for example. Let's say we haven't replaced any parts. Where does the car stop and the car's environment begin? Is the air inside the car also the car? What if the car is in orbit around the earth and it has no air, is the space inside the car still the car, or is it just empty space? This questioning is ridiculous in one sense because when I say the word "car", every English speaker intuitively knows what the word "car" means. For all practical usages of the word "car" we will never have to worry about bizarre philosophical quandaries about the identity of the car (especially since there's no "Car of Theseus"). We all just sort of know what other people talk about when they talk about a "car". # Opposites Everything implies its opposite or negation. I don't mean this in a logical sense. I mean it as a matter of language. The word "black" implies that there are words for other colors. It implies "not black" colors because otherwise we wouldn't need the word black. Left implies right. Up implies down. Forward implies backward. Here implies there. Car implies "not car" or environment for a better term. Just by using the word "car" we imply that there exists (in language, not literally exists in space) an environment which at least is defined as not being the car. The car is not its environment. This can be applied to any object. It also applies to adjectives and other features of language. Colorful implies colorless. Dumb implies smart. Yin-yang. It words for verbs as well. Running implies walking or crawling or not running. A pair of opposites that depend on one another. They cannot exist (conceptually) separately. So if they can't exist separately, why call them opposites? @@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ An understanding of the self is precisely the same. You might understand everyth There is a growing interest in the west around meditation and self which has been understood in the east for over two and a half thousand years. This shows that it's not a matter of knowing more facts. We have gained immense knowledge as a species over the past two and a half thousand years, but for most of us westerners we still have no clue about the self despite our technological advancement. It's just a matter of looking within and regular practice meditating. Turns out there are some places more thinking can't get you and the experience of oneness or "inner peace" is one of them. This I think is the hardest thing for a western person to digest because in almost every other area of human endeavor we can make progress by thinking. In meditation, the goal is to be thought-less, or at least aware of your thoughts. Awareness is a completely different mode than most of us westerners are used to using our brains. That's another reason some struggle to wrap their mind around it. I can talk to some western people about the self and awareness and it's as if they have no inner life whatsoever and don't understand what I'm talking about. # Conclusion -If you take away anything from this post, understand that knowing facts about self versus experiencing it are orthogonal. If you want to really experience oneness with reality and get with your self, one way to do it is repeated meditation practice. There is no substitute. If you have any interest, just try it. Try different forms of meditation even for five or ten minutes, but start with mindfulness if you're a beginner. And keep practicing even if you don't notice anything the first few times. You really can't fail because it's like dancing. There is no end goal. You just do it for the sake of it. The most important thing is that you are doing it. Meditation doesn't guarantee a profound experience, but I'd be surpised if I met someone who meditated properly for one week, an hour per day and found nothing of value. +If you take away anything from this post, understand that knowing facts about self versus experiencing it are orthogonal. If you want to really experience oneness with reality and get with your self, one way to do it is repeated meditation practice. There is no substitute. If you have any interest, just try it. Try different forms of meditation even for five or ten minutes, but start with mindfulness if you're a beginner. And keep practicing even if you don't notice anything the first few times. You really can't fail because it's like dancing. There is no end goal. You just do it for the sake of it. The most important thing is that you are doing it. Meditation doesn't guarantee a profound experience, but I'd be surprised if I met someone who meditated properly for one week, an hour per day and found nothing of value. Link(s): diff --git a/content/entry/the-tipping-point-rejecting-windows-zoom-lockdown-browser-and-the-lockdown-monitor.md b/content/entry/the-tipping-point-rejecting-windows-zoom-lockdown-browser-and-the-lockdown-monitor.md index b8f8e5d..229097b 100644 --- a/content/entry/the-tipping-point-rejecting-windows-zoom-lockdown-browser-and-the-lockdown-monitor.md +++ b/content/entry/the-tipping-point-rejecting-windows-zoom-lockdown-browser-and-the-lockdown-monitor.md @@ -8,23 +8,23 @@ This semester I took networking at SIUe[1]. Networking is a senior level CS cour # Story ## Windows -The first software freedom issue I had in this class had to do with the Wiresharks labs. Wireshark[2] is free software that can be used to capture and analyse network traffic. So there was no issue with Wireshark. Actually, the issue was with the assignment instructions. The instructions were written so that some tasks had to be performed outside of Wireshark and screenshotted. If I remember correctly Professor X said he did not make any changes to the assignment before giving us the assignment. The assignments were actually obtained from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst[3]. The DHCP Wireshark lab contained instructions that only work on Windows. +The first software freedom issue I had in this class had to do with the Wiresharks labs. Wireshark[2] is free software that can be used to capture and analyze network traffic. So there was no issue with Wireshark. Actually, the issue was with the assignment instructions. The instructions were written so that some tasks had to be performed outside of Wireshark and screenshotted. If I remember correctly Professor X said he did not make any changes to the assignment before giving us the assignment. The assignments were actually obtained from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst[3]. The DHCP Wireshark lab contained instructions that only work on Windows. -It wouldn't have been hard for me to find the equivalent commands on GNU/Linux, but by this point I realized that me doing all the legwork to get things working on GNU/Linux ultimately doesn't do much good. It gets me by but it doesn't help other students or have any effect moving coursework toward using free software. So instead, I decided I wasn't going to do the extra work myself, and instead included a note in my completed assigment submission stating that I don't own a Windows machine and wouldn't use it. So I downloaded the Wireshark trace from the University of Massachusetts (the assignment said we could do this if we couldn't get Wireshark to capture). I imported it into Wireshark and used it for the duration of the assignment. +It wouldn't have been hard for me to find the equivalent commands on GNU/Linux, but by this point I realized that me doing all the legwork to get things working on GNU/Linux ultimately doesn't do much good. It gets me by but it doesn't help other students or have any effect moving coursework toward using free software. So instead, I decided I wasn't going to do the extra work myself, and instead included a note in my completed assignment submission stating that I don't own a Windows machine and wouldn't use it. So I downloaded the Wireshark trace from the University of Massachusetts (the assignment said we could do this if we couldn't get Wireshark to capture). I imported it into Wireshark and used it for the duration of the assignment. Back in class after the assignment was graded, Professor X announced that students would no longer be permitted to download the trace from the University of Massachusetts. It would have to be captured manually by following the Windows-only instructions. This swiftly closed the loophole I used to bypass using Windows. Therefore, it is no longer possible to take networking with Professor X without using Windows unless you want to do extra work. And by the way, this is one of, if not the most ardent GNU/Linux professors at SIUe based on my experience. He said in class that he uses Arch[4] and is comfortable doing things in the terminal. The point I'm trying to get across is that if you want to only use free software, do not study at SIUe. It is not a free software friendly university and you will struggle trying to work around that. ## Zoom -After the corona virus lockdown was declared in Illinois and the university shut down all classes on campus, the lectures needed a way to continue. Professor X went for Zoom[5]. Zoom is proprietary crapware. You can download Zoom on your computer or use it through the browser which probably requires proprietary Javascript and camera and microphone access. I emailed Professor X if there was another way I could watch the lectures. To accomodate me, he began recording the meetings and emailing them to everyone. However, he said he was still taking attendance with Zoom unfortunately. So I found out it's possible to use SIP[6]. I attempted to set up an SIP account so I could use Zoom, but then I quickly gave up on that and decided on just using the recordings. I felt that I shouldn't have to do extra legwork to avoid using proprietary software. If professors are going to suggest proprietary software to students, which they shouldn't, then they should at least offer a free software alternative that works equally well. Of course, Zoom in the long run is turning out to be a disaster as proprietary software often does. +After the corona virus lockdown was declared in Illinois and the university shut down all classes on campus, the lectures needed a way to continue. Professor X went for Zoom[5]. Zoom is proprietary crapware. You can download Zoom on your computer or use it through the browser which probably requires proprietary JavaScript and camera and microphone access. I emailed Professor X if there was another way I could watch the lectures. To accommodate me, he began recording the meetings and emailing them to everyone. However, he said he was still taking attendance with Zoom unfortunately. So I found out it's possible to use SIP[6]. I attempted to set up an SIP account so I could use Zoom, but then I quickly gave up on that and decided on just using the recordings. I felt that I shouldn't have to do extra legwork to avoid using proprietary software. If professors are going to suggest proprietary software to students, which they shouldn't, then they should at least offer a free software alternative that works equally well. Of course, Zoom in the long run is turning out to be a disaster as proprietary software often does. I want to elaborate a bit on how Zoom is turning out to be a disaster. Zoom is a privacy nightmare. It actually has an attention tracking feature documented in the knowledge base[7] which creepily allowed hosts of a Zoom meeting to track if the participants were paying attention or not. The CEO addressed multiple issues[8]. One issue was uninvited participants joining and crashing conferences. Another was that the iOS client contained the Facebook SDK. Facebook is a surveillance monster, so of course that was an absolute privacy disaster and it had to be removed. Zoom video and audio doesn't even have end-to-end encryption according to this article[9]. Hackers quickly found a way to exploit Zoom to expose Windows passwords and showed a screenshot of it on Twitter[10]. Some Zoom calls may have been routed through China, where geofencing should have prevented this. The CEO didn't say how many users could have been effected[11]. China does not enforce laws about personal data privacy so who knows if the calls got collected, stored, or analyzed. -So now some universities are rushing over to Microsoft Teams, which will also be a privacy and security disaster forced upon students yet again. They are just going from one proprietary privacy disaster to the next when the best solution is to just use free software. Teams is proprietary and the Teams website requires proprietary Javascript and perhaps worse a Microsoft account where you must agree to their insane terms of service. So at this point you may be wondering, what free software is out there that would be reasonable for schools to use that would be better? Jitsi[12] seems like a very viable alternative. It allows video calling, voice calling, meetings between an unlimited number of participants, and no sign up or account required. I'm not sure about the encryption and data privacy it has, but at least you know it doesn't come with the Facebook SDK. Besides, there is also Matrix[13] which is cross-platform and has multiple clients. There are free software options available that universities should be looking into rather than all jumping onboard the Zoom train, then jumping onto the Teams train after Zoom derailed. +So now some universities are rushing over to Microsoft Teams, which will also be a privacy and security disaster forced upon students yet again. They are just going from one proprietary privacy disaster to the next when the best solution is to just use free software. Teams is proprietary and the Teams website requires proprietary JavaScript and perhaps worse a Microsoft account where you must agree to their insane terms of service. So at this point you may be wondering, what free software is out there that would be reasonable for schools to use that would be better? Jitsi[12] seems like a very viable alternative. It allows video calling, voice calling, meetings between an unlimited number of participants, and no sign up or account required. I'm not sure about the encryption and data privacy it has, but at least you know it doesn't come with the Facebook SDK. Besides, there is also Matrix[13] which is cross-platform and has multiple clients. There are free software options available that universities should be looking into rather than all jumping onboard the Zoom train, then jumping onto the Teams train after Zoom derailed. ## Lockdown Browser & Monitor -Due to corona virus, the final exam was going to have to change also. Obviously, us students couldn't take the exam in person and this opened up doors to potential cheating. I found out we were going to have to use the intrusive proprietary Windows or Mac only garbage that is the Respondus Lockdown Browser[14]. So I contacted Professor X over email to find out if there was an alternate way to take the exam. For example, being given access to the final exam and then given a certain time window to finish and upload it. He told me this wouldn't be possible. The browser apparently detects and does not allow usage through a VM based on the Respondus knowledgebase. Since I don't own any Windows machines and I'm required lawfully and ethically to social distance myself, the only way I know I can complete the exam without issues is by partitioning my hard drive and installing the latest Windows, just for this one exam that lasts less than two hours. +Due to corona virus, the final exam was going to have to change also. Obviously, us students couldn't take the exam in person and this opened up doors to potential cheating. I found out we were going to have to use the intrusive proprietary Windows or Mac only garbage that is the Respondus Lockdown Browser[14]. So I contacted Professor X over email to find out if there was an alternate way to take the exam. For example, being given access to the final exam and then given a certain time window to finish and upload it. He told me this wouldn't be possible. The browser apparently detects and does not allow usage through a VM based on the Respondus knowledge base. Since I don't own any Windows machines and I'm required lawfully and ethically to social distance myself, the only way I know I can complete the exam without issues is by partitioning my hard drive and installing the latest Windows, just for this one exam that lasts less than two hours. -Furthermore, even though I could do all that, I'm not willing to. That would be using Windows and the Lockdown browser and implicitly affirming that forcing proprietary software on students is okay. Professor X emailed me a second time and informed me that it wasn't really his choice to use Respondus Lockdown browser, that "the university" had decided on it. Whether that means there was some vote within the faculty of the computer science department or the dictate was simply handed down university-wide I don't know. I'm not very interested in the beaurocracy. He told me that "We are under extraordinary circumstances that no one foresaw 3 weeks ago. We've all had to make changes and exceptions to ways we work... I highly encourage you to also be sympathetic to the situation and consider making exceptions". After that he offered to help me repartition my machine to install Windows and mentioned that the university offers free legal Windows 10 licenses available to students. So I took the next step and contacted the chair of the CS department at SIUe. He reaffirmed what Professor X had already said and was not willing to have Professor X make an exception. +Furthermore, even though I could do all that, I'm not willing to. That would be using Windows and the Lockdown browser and implicitly affirming that forcing proprietary software on students is okay. Professor X emailed me a second time and informed me that it wasn't really his choice to use Respondus Lockdown browser, that "the university" had decided on it. Whether that means there was some vote within the faculty of the computer science department or the dictate was simply handed down university-wide I don't know. I'm not very interested in the bureaucracy. He told me that "We are under extraordinary circumstances that no one foresaw 3 weeks ago. We've all had to make changes and exceptions to ways we work... I highly encourage you to also be sympathetic to the situation and consider making exceptions". After that he offered to help me repartition my machine to install Windows and mentioned that the university offers free legal Windows 10 licenses available to students. So I took the next step and contacted the chair of the CS department at SIUe. He reaffirmed what Professor X had already said and was not willing to have Professor X make an exception. So I took Professor X's advice and was sympathetic and considered making an exception. And then after two seconds of thought I decided that dropping the class and refusing to use it was as sympathetic as I can get to proprietary software. I wasn't going to repartition my computer to install the proprietary backdoored malware operating system Windows that could rootkit my machine so that I could install a proprietary malware browser and "monitor" that purposely spies on and cripples the operating system. And then I realized it's probable that some of my other classes would require Respondus lockdown software as well this semester for the final exam and I couldn't in good conscience use it. Also, it's likely that due to COVID-19 my summer classes would also require using it. Even if those classes didn't require that proprietary software, it became clear to me that there were certainly going to be obstacles I simply couldn't get over in the future without switching professors, retaking classes, and constantly doing extra work without much benefit or change to the software the university was using. All of that could also prolong my graduation by a year, two years, or who knows how long racking up student debt. I had already came so far as I was two semesters away from graduating after this one. However, if I dropped out of SIUe, I would free up enough time to build my portfolio, improve my programming skills, network with free software organizations and potentially get some real-world experience. So, I dropped out. It was at great personal cost to myself, but it was the only ethical option left. diff --git a/content/entry/the-victim-mentality-versus-individual-responsibility.md b/content/entry/the-victim-mentality-versus-individual-responsibility.md index d1ce568..e95ff40 100644 --- a/content/entry/the-victim-mentality-versus-individual-responsibility.md +++ b/content/entry/the-victim-mentality-versus-individual-responsibility.md @@ -3,27 +3,27 @@ title: "The Victim Mentality Versus Individual Responsibility" date: 2020-04-10T00:00:00 draft: false --- -This is a compare and contrast of two seemingly opposing ideas. What I hope to show is that actually they are just two ways of talking about the same thing. I hope to find some common ground between left and right ideology. One is often referred to as "the victim mentality" and the other is what I call "individual responsiblity fetishism". +This is a compare and contrast of two seemingly opposing ideas. What I hope to show is that actually they are just two ways of talking about the same thing. I hope to find some common ground between left and right ideology. One is often referred to as "the victim mentality" and the other is what I call "individual responsibility fetishism". # The Victim Mentality -In the United States, the extreme political left is seen as propping up this mindset. The victim mentality is when a person has the mentality that they are not "responsible" for anything that is happening or has happened to them. Said person feels completely and utterly a victim of circumstance. This can either take the form of collective victimhood or individual victimhood. In the individual case, a person may feel that they cannot succeed because some circumstance in their life prevents success. For example, a person may feel that they were not adequately educated in their poor high school and therefore that is preventing them from succeeding in college due to the catching up they have to do. So it is the "fault" of their high school or the teachers that taught at their high school. Their high school teachers may give the explanation that they don't get paid enough and so their motivation is low, or they have so much else going on in life that they couldn't properly focus on teaching, or that they were also educated poorly and their culture perpetuated bad memes which ultimately made them become a failure at their job. There are several problems with the idea of blame. As Jordan Peterson has pointed out, one problem with this mentality is that it invites an infinite regress. Everyone can blame their parents for how they are. And parents can blame grandparents and so on all the way back to Adam and Eve. I use "Adam and Eve" metaphorically. Of course Adam and Eve never actually existed and we know this because we know darwinian evolution occurred. But the point is that a regression of causes can be traced back to the very beginning, where we find whatever or whoever is ultimately responsible for all the evil mess in the world. +In the United States, the extreme political left is seen as propping up this mindset. The victim mentality is when a person has the mentality that they are not "responsible" for anything that is happening or has happened to them. Said person feels completely and utterly a victim of circumstance. This can either take the form of collective victimhood or individual victimhood. In the individual case, a person may feel that they cannot succeed because some circumstance in their life prevents success. For example, a person may feel that they were not adequately educated in their poor high school and therefore that is preventing them from succeeding in college due to the catching up they have to do. So it is the "fault" of their high school or the teachers that taught at their high school. Their high school teachers may give the explanation that they don't get paid enough and so their motivation is low, or they have so much else going on in life that they couldn't properly focus on teaching, or that they were also educated poorly and their culture perpetuated bad memes which ultimately made them become a failure at their job. There are several problems with the idea of blame. As Jordan Peterson has pointed out, one problem with this mentality is that it invites an infinite regress. Everyone can blame their parents for how they are. And parents can blame grandparents and so on all the way back to Adam and Eve. I use "Adam and Eve" metaphorically. Of course Adam and Eve never actually existed and we know this because we know Darwinian evolution occurred. But the point is that a regression of causes can be traced back to the very beginning, where we find whatever or whoever is ultimately responsible for all the evil mess in the world. Besides the infinite temporal regression of blaming that can happen leaving no one and nothing ultimately responsible, there is also the possibility of the circularity of blame which also leaves no one ultimately responsible. Imagine a group of ten employees sitting at a round table meeting. The boss asks who is responsible for some financial mishap and everyone points to the person on their left, similar to how computer processes can enter a circular deadlock. Each process can blame the process it's waiting on for being stuck, but the processes are waiting in a circular fashion preventing progress from being made. I like to see these two different scenarios of regression and circularity as part of "the blame game", related to "playing the victim" or "the victim card". It's not my fault, it's someone else's. I'm the victim here. I don't "do" anything. Things simply "happen" to me. -With collective victimhood, entire groups of people feel marginalized, mistreated, underrepresented, or discriminated against. Economic and social inequality and treatment of minorities are a focus of the left. Leftists are concerned about groups of people that are disadvantaged relative to others groups of people. Leftists might be apt to say that marginalized groups are not responsible for what happens to them. For example, black people were historically barred from voting. Black schools weren't given the same resources as white schools. Segregation in public places instilled the idea that black and white people were meant to be separate and that black people were, rightly, second class citizens. It was pointed out that one problem with collective victimhood taken to the extreme is that it takes away all "agency" from the marginalized group. If a group is victimized, they have no responsiblity for where they are at and no agency to direct where they want to go. They are powerless. So one criticism of collective victimhood is that seeing yourself as a victim or in a group of victims is disempowering. It basically is saying that you can't "direct your own destiny". Your life is simply completely subject to "fate" as is everyone in your marginalized group. It is up to people not in the marginalized group, those with the agency, to fix things. Talking about agency starts to get into the idea of free will. Free will is an incoherent concept. I recommend Sam Harris' book The Illusion of Free Will[1] on the subject, although I plan on dedicating an entirely separate post to it. +With collective victimhood, entire groups of people feel marginalized, mistreated, underrepresented, or discriminated against. Economic and social inequality and treatment of minorities are a focus of the left. Leftists are concerned about groups of people that are disadvantaged relative to others groups of people. Leftists might be apt to say that marginalized groups are not responsible for what happens to them. For example, black people were historically barred from voting. Black schools weren't given the same resources as white schools. Segregation in public places instilled the idea that black and white people were meant to be separate and that black people were, rightly, second class citizens. It was pointed out that one problem with collective victimhood taken to the extreme is that it takes away all "agency" from the marginalized group. If a group is victimized, they have no responsibility for where they are at and no agency to direct where they want to go. They are powerless. So one criticism of collective victimhood is that seeing yourself as a victim or in a group of victims is disempowering. It basically is saying that you can't "direct your own destiny". Your life is simply completely subject to "fate" as is everyone in your marginalized group. It is up to people not in the marginalized group, those with the agency, to fix things. Talking about agency starts to get into the idea of free will. Free will is an incoherent concept. I recommend Sam Harris' book The Illusion of Free Will[1] on the subject, although I plan on dedicating an entirely separate post to it. Ultimately, what we have to realize is that the victim mentality is a way of talking about events. To paint a clearer picture of what's going on, I want to iterate through a few things. First, having a victim mentality can be disempowering to the person or group that has it. No doubt about that. It can create a feeling of helplessness, a sense of not having agency and control over your own life. I think that agency and control are complex subjects and loaded words, but I'm just talking about how the victim mentality can make people feel. It can create a feeling that the world or other people owe you something. It can be very devastating I think to the sense of control over your own life. If taken to the extreme, it can get you stuck in a place in life you don't like, and you can keep yourself there for a long time by telling yourself there's nothing you can do to improve your circumstances. And I do think this is a real thought pattern that drives self-pity and keeps people stuck in a bad situation. This is my primary concern with the victim mentality way of talking to yourself about things. And it is just a way of talking to yourself. That's the most important thing to keep in mind, because blame is really an abstraction made up by people to figure out who we need to help or punish. You might say the abstraction of blame comes in useful sometimes to figure out who is responsible for some mistake so that person can be singled out and given whatever treatment they need so that the mistake doesn't reoccur. But oftentimes, time is wasted figuring out who to blame. The desire to place blame can become so strong that you make up a sort of blame calculus and when all the tabulations are over, you realize the whole exercise was pointless. Because after the "blame units" have been tabulated and you know who to assign them to, the tabulation is functionally useless because despite the fact you know who to blame and how much, you did nothing with the tabulation. In that case, the abstraction of blame can become not so useful. A lot of time can be wasted playing the blame game to no useful end. That's also something I see happen in the real world all the time. # Individual Responsibility Fetishism This is the opposite side of the same coin propped up by extreme right. It involves talking to yourself as if you are a demigod. That is to say, you are directly personally responsible for everything in your life. It is just yet another way of talking to yourself, nothing more. The idea is, take "responsibility" for as much as you find it coherent to take responsibility for. Obviously, the weather affects your life. But, I don't think even the most extreme right wing "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" personality would argue that you are responsible for the weather. Although they might argue that you are responsible for how the weather makes you feel or how you are affected by the rain because you could bring an umbrella. When people talk to themselves in this way, they don't tend to make themselves responsible for every single event that happens, just as much as it makes sense to. Interestingly, this individual responsibility fetishism occasionally shadows other people's responsibility. I've seen this mindset among members of the military. It is my fault, not the person under my supervision. It's the opposite of the victim mentality. I'm at "fault" for the failure of anyone I'm in charge of. It's my failure, not theirs. I obviously failed to adequately train them, so blame me, not them for their failure to perform. In other words, bear the greatest burden you can bear and no more than that. -I find that many people who have this mindset and believe it firmly are competent and successful people and it's not hard to see why this kind of mindset would correlate with success. Talking to yourself this way can be very useful. I'm responsible for my own happiness. I'm not the victim. I am oppressed by my genes, childhood, past bullying, bad habits, or whatever, but it is my responsibility now to overcome those things. I "do" almost everything. Things don't "happen to me". I take ownership over what happens in my life because the results of my life are my own doing. Motivational videos often talk to people this way. It doesn't matter if there is any truth to it or if the abstraction of individual responsiblity makes sense given the lack of free will. For people with this mentality, they just recognize it's a useful way to talk to themselves inside their head because it has helped them succeed personally. +I find that many people who have this mindset and believe it firmly are competent and successful people and it's not hard to see why this kind of mindset would correlate with success. Talking to yourself this way can be very useful. I'm responsible for my own happiness. I'm not the victim. I am oppressed by my genes, childhood, past bullying, bad habits, or whatever, but it is my responsibility now to overcome those things. I "do" almost everything. Things don't "happen to me". I take ownership over what happens in my life because the results of my life are my own doing. Motivational videos often talk to people this way. It doesn't matter if there is any truth to it or if the abstraction of individual responsibility makes sense given the lack of free will. For people with this mentality, they just recognize it's a useful way to talk to themselves inside their head because it has helped them succeed personally. One issue with this abstraction of individual responsibility and this mindset is that it can be hard to draw a line between what you do and what happens to you. As a concrete example, you feel that you are reading this sentence right now. But are you beating your heart? The fact that the phrase "I beat my heart" doesn't exist in English indicates that people feel the beating of their heart isn't something they do. It is something that happens on its own. We say, "my heart beats". With breathing, you can say to someone "you are now manually breathing" and they will become aware of their breath. They will go from feeling as if breathing is just happening, to feeling that they are now consciously doing the breathing. This is why the breath is often used as an object of meditation. You can feel as if you are doing it or as if it is happening all on its own. Back to individual responsibility. Where should one draw this distinction between what you do and what happens to you? You have billions of cells in your body that operate, but you don't feel like you are doing that. That is something that is happening. Well, if you're going to take the attitude that you're responsible in your life, you better be able to say what the difference is between what happens to you and what you are doing. And there seems to be no hard and fast rule to do that. Individual responsibility in the popular conception depends on other abstractions. It depends on free will which is incoherent. This is easy to see because there is an infinite regress of prior causes that lead up to this moment for which you couldn't have had any control by definition. As Sam Harris puts it, "the buck has to stop somewhere". There is also the abstraction of self and other. This is a big topic worthy of its own post. But in short, where do you draw the boundaries between what is you and what is not you? Are you your brain? Surely not. You aren't aware of plenty of things your brain is doing such processing your visual field (unless you're looking at an optical illusion) or interpreting words you're reading right now or muscle memory. That happens without you thinking about it, automatically. You don't feel you are doing it. So if you are aware of your brain, does that mean you are just a passenger, a silent observer? If so, how can you be personally responsible for anything? There is also the whole issue of separate events. What is an event? When does an event start and end? If we are going to be responsible for an event that we caused, then we need to be able to define when that event started and when it ended and what it was that was contained in that event. Or we could define everything as just one happening. We can play the game of not talking about causes and effects, but just one singular happening that is the whole cosmos. That's another way of talking about the world that makes one wonder where individual responsibility could fit in. How can you be responsible if the universe is described as a singular going on and not separate events which you could individually claim responsibility for? If we're going to play this game of talking about responsibility, it might be trickier than we thought. -I see several dangers of the total individual responsibility way of viewing the world. By far the most common danger I see is the downplaying or complete disregard for societal, systemic issues. I met a member of the military that was willing to take responsibility for the mistakes of others he was in charge of. He felt his responsibility extended to others in that case. But when it came to the poor, he completely changed his tune. The poor were completely responsible for where they were at. He believed there was absolutely nothing society could do to help them and we all might as well not try. They'll just have to pick themselves up by their bootstraps on their own. One could have said the same thing about black people during the civil rights era. If they want rights, they will just have to fight for them on their own. I have no responsibility to help them do that. That's their individual responsibility, not mine. This is absurd. Surely, as a society we can agree that even if you want to view things with the "total individual responsibility" lense there are still actions others can take and policies that can be written into law that make the probability of success greater for everyone looking at society as a whole system. You can still play the game of seeing things through the "total individual responsibility" lense while admitting that society has systemic issues that no one individual can solve. These are not actually opposing sides. Doing things like making college tuition free, providing healthcare to all citizens, and ending the war on drugs would make it easier for individuals to take responsibility in their lives. As it turns out, if you take those undue burdens off people, they will find it easier to improve their lives and take responsibility, not get lazy and complacent. +I see several dangers of the total individual responsibility way of viewing the world. By far the most common danger I see is the downplaying or complete disregard for societal, systemic issues. I met a member of the military that was willing to take responsibility for the mistakes of others he was in charge of. He felt his responsibility extended to others in that case. But when it came to the poor, he completely changed his tune. The poor were completely responsible for where they were at. He believed there was absolutely nothing society could do to help them and we all might as well not try. They'll just have to pick themselves up by their bootstraps on their own. One could have said the same thing about black people during the civil rights era. If they want rights, they will just have to fight for them on their own. I have no responsibility to help them do that. That's their individual responsibility, not mine. This is absurd. Surely, as a society we can agree that even if you want to view things with the "total individual responsibility" lens there are still actions others can take and policies that can be written into law that make the probability of success greater for everyone looking at society as a whole system. You can still play the game of seeing things through the "total individual responsibility" lens while admitting that society has systemic issues that no one individual can solve. These are not actually opposing sides. Doing things like making college tuition free, providing healthcare to all citizens, and ending the war on drugs would make it easier for individuals to take responsibility in their lives. As it turns out, if you take those undue burdens off people, they will find it easier to improve their lives and take responsibility, not get lazy and complacent. # Conclusion So what am I really getting at with all this? These two ways of talking to yourself have their respective benefits and pitfalls. If you feel like you're in control, you can make a fetish out of individual responsibility and go around telling people they control their own destiny and it's all up to them and all they have to do is try. If you don't, you can go around saying everyone is powerless and there is nothing they can do to change the way their life is. But I want to make the point that the confusion really does come along from the way we talk to ourselves about things and the abstractions we build. This is obvious because as a matter of physics, there is no confusion about what is going on in the universe, physically. It is our language that gets us all mixed up, not the goings-on of the universe. But with our limited human brains we need abstractions to simplify the goings-on. We need approximations. I am not advocating we get rid of the idea of individual responsibility or victimization. It may be useful to refine the ideas or replace them with better abstractions or reinterpret them. In software development, there is a saying about abstractions. All abstractions are leaky. We make abstractions and then rely on their infallibility. But abstractions aren't perfect representations of what they're abstracting, or else they wouldn't be called abstractions. What that means is we need to recognize when our abstractions begin to break down and where they don't apply. diff --git a/content/entry/there-is-nothing-wrong-with-incest.md b/content/entry/there-is-nothing-wrong-with-incest.md index c435ef2..be742b0 100644 --- a/content/entry/there-is-nothing-wrong-with-incest.md +++ b/content/entry/there-is-nothing-wrong-with-incest.md @@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ title: "There Is Nothing Wrong With Incest" date: 2021-12-16T00:00:00 draft: false --- -Some online articles use the term "incest survivor" when referring to survivors of rape and other nonconsensual sexual activities. This is a bad term because there's nothing inherently wrong with incest. Let's unpack the related issues. +Some online articles use the term "incest survivor" when referring to survivors of rape and other non-consensual sexual activities. This is a bad term because there's nothing inherently wrong with incest. Let's unpack the related issues. # Pedophilia First, there's pedophilia. Pedophilia is often perpetrated by a family member, making it easy to mix up pedophilia and incest. But incest without pedophilia isn't morally wrong. Two adults engaging in incest doesn't necessarily pose any concerns related to their ability to consent. diff --git a/content/entry/thoughts-on-logic.md b/content/entry/thoughts-on-logic.md index d3aa32e..62a24a2 100644 --- a/content/entry/thoughts-on-logic.md +++ b/content/entry/thoughts-on-logic.md @@ -4,11 +4,11 @@ date: 2020-11-25T00:00:00 draft: false --- # Logic in Education -The term "critical thinking" gets thrown around a lot in schools, but children aren't ever sat down and explicitly told how to think. Logic needs to be introduced in primary school and reaffirmed throughout middle and high school (secondary school in the UK). Knowing how to think logically is far more important than knowing how to calculate the area of a circle, how volcanoes work, or how to use a bunsen burner. And teaching it shouldn't be politically controversial because there's an important distinction between telling kids what to think versus teaching them how to think. Logic is all about how to think. That's something we all should want others to know how to do well. +The term "critical thinking" gets thrown around a lot in schools, but children aren't ever sat down and explicitly told how to think. Logic needs to be introduced in primary school and reaffirmed throughout middle and high school (secondary school in the UK). Knowing how to think logically is far more important than knowing how to calculate the area of a circle, how volcanoes work, or how to use a Bunsen burner. And teaching it shouldn't be politically controversial because there's an important distinction between telling kids what to think versus teaching them how to think. Logic is all about how to think. That's something we all should want others to know how to do well. The point of teaching the formal, symbolic logic starting at a young age is not so kids, teens and young adults become good at truth tables. The point is they'll internalize logic like any other concept. The pattern recognition part of their brain will automatically recognize valid arguments when they see them. It will also recognize invalid forms of argument and logical fallacies without consciously doing any heavy lifting. That's where the most value is in teaching logic. -When I studied philosophy in community college, I remember there was an art student. He had a great personality and was a very likeable person. Whenever he got called on to answer a question though, he was never able to produce the right answer. It was clear to me that he never learned how to think logically. I wondered what it must be like to be a young adult never having learned that. There are also plenty of functioning older adults out there that never learned how to think logically. To be clear, studying formal logic isn't a prerequisite for logical thought. What I find to be the case with nearly everyone without training in formal logic is that they have an intuitive sense of how to reason, but there's important pieces of the puzzle they're missing. That's what I'm going to focus on in this post, the things that those without experience in formal logic get confused about. In my posts, I try not to assume prior knowledge, so I'm going to explain a bit about logic before I explain some of those missing pieces. If you're already familiar with logic, click here. +When I studied philosophy in community college, I remember there was an art student. He had a great personality and was a very likable person. Whenever he got called on to answer a question though, he was never able to produce the right answer. It was clear to me that he never learned how to think logically. I wondered what it must be like to be a young adult never having learned that. There are also plenty of functioning older adults out there that never learned how to think logically. To be clear, studying formal logic isn't a prerequisite for logical thought. What I find to be the case with nearly everyone without training in formal logic is that they have an intuitive sense of how to reason, but there's important pieces of the puzzle they're missing. That's what I'm going to focus on in this post, the things that those without experience in formal logic get confused about. In my posts, I try not to assume prior knowledge, so I'm going to explain a bit about logic before I explain some of those missing pieces. If you're already familiar with logic, click here. # Logic Logic is the study of rules of inference[1]. Rules of inference allow you to draw conclusions based on premises. In other words, starting with a statement A, you can conclude statement B. For example, the earth is round is a true statement. Therefore the earth is round or up is down is also a true statement. In fact, I could replace the statement up is down with any proposition Z and the earth is round or Z would still be true. I used the rule of inference "addition" to draw my conclusion, so I'm guaranteed that it's true no matter what Z is. I can apply another rule of inference to get humans have 3 legs therefore either the earth is round or up is down. That is also a true statement. It sounds strange because the normal way of understanding "therefore" is as a causal relationship. In this context, it's a strictly logical implication, not causal. Despite how strange it sounds, humans have 3 legs therefore either the earth is round or up is down logically follows from the earth is round. @@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ Now that I've talked about what logic is, I want to talk about some of the impor The first way to disprove an argument is by showing that one of the premises is false. The other way is showing that the structure of the argument is invalid[4]. People are used to thinking of arguments in terms of "arguments for" and "arguments against". That's why it's easy to get confused here. It's the attitude "There's some good arguments for a proposition and some good arguments against it and it's my job to weigh the pros and cons". But, in logic, an argument is either sound or unsound. The property of soundness[5] means that the premises are true and it has valid form. If the conclusion of an argument derives from valid rules of inference based on the premises, then the only way to disprove the argument is to show one of the premises is false. If all the premises are true and the form is valid, then the argument is sound and the conclusion is true. There's no "arguments for" and "arguments against", or "maybe it's wrong some other way". There's no two ways about it. No if, ands or buts. If an argument is sound, the conclusion necessarily follows. ## How Logical Fallacies Work -A logical fallacy is an error in reasoning. It can be formal[6] or informal[7]. Formal fallacies have to do with the structure of an argument. If an argument has bad structure, it is invalid. Informal fallacies have to do with the content of an argument. In my experience, it's more rare for people to commit formal fallacies. This is because there are so many more ways to commit informal fallacies than there are ways to commit formal fallacies. There are only a few ways to structure an argument improperly, but there are virtually endless ways to get the content wrong since the content can be anything at all. Take a look at yourlogicalfallacyis.com[8]. It's good to become familiar with informal fallacies by name and be able to call them out in realtime. To challenge yourself, try doing that during a live presidential debate. There's so many logical fallacies in those it's impossible to keep up, at least for me. +A logical fallacy is an error in reasoning. It can be formal[6] or informal[7]. Formal fallacies have to do with the structure of an argument. If an argument has bad structure, it is invalid. Informal fallacies have to do with the content of an argument. In my experience, it's more rare for people to commit formal fallacies. This is because there are so many more ways to commit informal fallacies than there are ways to commit formal fallacies. There are only a few ways to structure an argument improperly, but there are virtually endless ways to get the content wrong since the content can be anything at all. Take a look at yourlogicalfallacyis.com[8]. It's good to become familiar with informal fallacies by name and be able to call them out in real time. To challenge yourself, try doing that during a live presidential debate. There's so many logical fallacies in those it's impossible to keep up, at least for me. The thing people get confused about when they're unfamiliar with logical fallacies is they think fallacies are a minor problem for an argument, similar to the "arguments for" and "arguments against" I talked about earlier. They see the fallacy as the "argument against" part. That's completely the wrong way to think about logical fallacies. The presence of a single logical fallacy in an argument means that argument is toast. A logical fallacy is not a "counterpoint" to an argument. It fully invalidates the argument. An entirely new argument is needed to prove the conclusion. @@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ This one is the most widely-known. It simply means that many people believe some The genetic fallacy is whenever someone says something is good or true because it comes from a certain source. We can look at the media for example. While it is certainly true that some news sources are more reliable than others, the truth of an argument doesn't change depending on which news source makes it. This doesn't diminish the importance of having reliable sources of news. As a personal example, when Nick Bostrom[22] releases a new paper, I make an educated guess that I'll find it interesting based on his previous work being interesting. But the new paper that I read won't be interesting because all his previous work is. It will be interesting because of the contents of the paper. If you pick good sources of information, then that's actually not a bad heuristic for truth. You will only end up with a bad heuristic for truth if you pick bad sources of information, such as Facecrook. Just remember that the source of information has no bearing on the truth of the information. I'm really beating this point to death, but it bears repeating. The only determining factors for the soundness of an argument are the truth of the premises and the validity of the argument. ### Nature -The appeal to nature fallacy happens when someone says something is good, just or ideal because it's "natural". Two problems with that. For one, everything that happens is natural because we live in the natural world. But let's entertain the fallacy for a moment and define "natural" as things that aren't products of human intelligence. By that definition, coronavirus is natural. Natural disasters are natural. It's even in the name. Lots of horrible things are natural. "Unnaturalness" is often used to argue against homosexuality. Other species of primate also show homosexual behavior, so homosexuality is natural even in non-human animals. To sum up, appealing to nature is a bad heuristic since it's hard to define what counts as natural and many natural things everyone agrees are natural are not good, while things people call "artificial", such as vaccines, are good. +The appeal to nature fallacy happens when someone says something is good, just or ideal because it's "natural". Two problems with that. For one, everything that happens is natural because we live in the natural world. But let's entertain the fallacy for a moment and define "natural" as things that aren't products of human intelligence. By that definition, Coronavirus is natural. Natural disasters are natural. It's even in the name. Lots of horrible things are natural. "Unnaturalness" is often used to argue against homosexuality. Other species of primate also show homosexual behavior, so homosexuality is natural even in non-human animals. To sum up, appealing to nature is a bad heuristic since it's hard to define what counts as natural and many natural things everyone agrees are natural are not good, while things people call "artificial", such as vaccines, are good. ### Middle Ground Taking the "middle ground" position between two extremes is probably an even poorer heuristic for truth than the bandwagon. People think taking the middle ground means they're unbiased. They think having an "extreme" position means you are heavily biased. They perceive the middle ground as "balanced" and fair. But how do you go about deciding where the extremes are? Popular opinion? If that's the case, then we're back at the bandwagon fallacy. If you have some other way of determining the extremes, then what is it exactly? What if the middle ground is ambiguous? diff --git a/content/entry/thoughts-on-spirituality.md b/content/entry/thoughts-on-spirituality.md index f846efd..8d1bc8b 100644 --- a/content/entry/thoughts-on-spirituality.md +++ b/content/entry/thoughts-on-spirituality.md @@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ There's an essential fact of life which everyone should know but is often overlo As a matter of physics and neuroanatomy, we know that now is ill-defined. As a consequence of general relativity theory, you can't just talk about two events happening simultaneously. It depends on the observer. Neuroanatomically, the brain has different processing speeds for different senses and different parts of the brain process the same sensory input before other parts. -But subjectively, there is a present moment consisting of the whole collage of sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, thought, emotion, proprioception, your sense of self, etcetera. It's anything and everything that can be noticed. So to be clear, assuming you're reading this indoors, everything in the building that's not in your peripheral vision is not in consciousness. Unless you start thinking about it because I just mentioned it. Then it is. +But subjectively, there is a present moment consisting of the whole collage of sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, thought, emotion, proprioception, your sense of self, etc. It's anything and everything that can be noticed. So to be clear, assuming you're reading this indoors, everything in the building that's not in your peripheral vision is not in consciousness. Unless you start thinking about it because I just mentioned it. Then it is. # The Problem-Solving Mindset Narrative The contents of consciousness are what they are in this moment. If you don't like them, you can change them by changing your environment. For example, noticing muscular discomfort might prompt you to change posture. But changes only take place after you've already experienced the unpleasant thing that made you want to make a change. You first have to notice that there's a problem with experience before trying to solve it. @@ -79,7 +79,7 @@ So just meditate. Don't worry about having an ulterior motive and don't worry ab # Spiritual Bypassing Do watch out for other ways that the ego can creep back in though. Many novice meditators, after having insights about the nature of the mind, become convinced they're permanently enlightened and try to act as if they are all the time. This can be very psychologically destructive. It's called spiritual bypassing, a term coined in 1984 by American psychologist John Welwood[3]. I'll let Wikipedia explain it: -> "On the other hand, when spiritual bypass is used as a long-term strategy for ignoring or suppressing unaddressed mental health issues, negative consequences can include "the need to excessively control others and oneself, shame, anxiety, dichotomous thinking, emotional confusion, exaggerated tolerance of inappropriate behavior, codependence, compulsive kindness, obsession or addiction, spiritual narcissism, blind allegiance to charismatic teachers, and disregard for personal responsibility" - Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0[4] +> "On the other hand, when spiritual bypass is used as a long-term strategy for ignoring or suppressing unaddressed mental health issues, negative consequences can include "the need to excessively control others and oneself, shame, anxiety, dichotomous thinking, emotional confusion, exaggerated tolerance of inappropriate behavior, codependency, compulsive kindness, obsession or addiction, spiritual narcissism, blind allegiance to charismatic teachers, and disregard for personal responsibility" - Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0[4] It's not a hard trap to fall into. I think staying humble is a good way to avoid it. Admit that you don't have it all figured out, that you're probably not "permanently" enlightened, and you still get lost in thought and let your emotions get the better of you from time to time. @@ -95,7 +95,7 @@ Regardless of how the problem is described, the basic solution is the same: non- # Spirituality And Skepticism ## Deepak Chopra -In the past, myself and others have lamented the fact that the atheist/skeptic/rationalist community doesn't get more involved with spirituality. When sane, rational people don't write books about spiritual inquiry or speak about it, the floor is given people who promote incoherent pseudoscientic pseudospiritual technobabble. Their technobabble sounds just scientific enough so lay people have a hard time distinguishing between the quacks and real scientists. People like Deepak Chopra[5] who promote alternative medicine and make proven false claims such as "you can tell your body not to age" cannot continue to represent the spiritual movement. +In the past, myself and others have lamented the fact that the atheist/skeptic/rationalist community doesn't get more involved with spirituality. When sane, rational people don't write books about spiritual inquiry or speak about it, the floor is given people who promote incoherent pseudoscientific pseudospiritual technobabble. Their technobabble sounds just scientific enough so lay people have a hard time distinguishing between the quacks and real scientists. People like Deepak Chopra[5] who promote alternative medicine and make proven false claims such as "you can tell your body not to age" cannot continue to represent the spiritual movement. ## Myself And an Unnamed Youtuber That's part of why I'm writing this entry. If people like me don't want quacks like Chopra to continue being the authority on all things spiritual, we have to step up and start our own dialog rooted in the principles of science and skepticism. @@ -124,7 +124,7 @@ The reality of today is that almost everyone is identified with their thoughts a Mindfulness and non-identification with thought may help to reduce the suffering of a few individual houseless people, but to suggest mindfulness as an alternative to a real solution for houselessness would be moronic. Houselessness is a social problem. It's easier to eliminate the suffering that comes along with houselessness by dealing with its social causes than by telling mentally unwell houseless drug addicts they just need to meditate. As I said earlier, there is always another problem and identification with problems causes suffering, but at least the problem wouldn't be not having a safe place to sleep. Failing to find an entertaining television station is a better problem to have. -The naïve understanding of spirituality is that you can't simultaneously be free from desire and also be an activist marching in the street trying to make change. An "enlightened" person perceives no problems and therefore doesn't try to change anything. Right? Not exactly. This is another misunderstanding. +The naive understanding of spirituality is that you can't simultaneously be free from desire and also be an activist marching in the street trying to make change. An "enlightened" person perceives no problems and therefore doesn't try to change anything. Right? Not exactly. This is another misunderstanding. An "enlightened" person is someone who accepts the present moment as it is. Whether their activism succeeds or not, they remain unphased either way. Either outcome is accepted. That doesn't mean they don't care about the outcome. It just means they recognize the futility of becoming attached to it. diff --git a/content/entry/using-email.md b/content/entry/using-email.md index 85ea2b1..c19fd7a 100644 --- a/content/entry/using-email.md +++ b/content/entry/using-email.md @@ -27,12 +27,12 @@ The best alternative to self-hosting is to pick an email service provider wisely * Migration support ## Free Software -The first and most important requirement is that the email provider uses exclusively free software. This means their website and webmail portal do not require proprietary Javascript[3]. Javascript licenses should be included somewhere on the site or it should work without Javascript enabled. Also, all backend software should be free. In other words, if an email provider uses Mac or Windows to host the email server, it's as good as garbage and you shouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. It should probably run on GNU/Linux or FreeBSD. Good email providers support IMAP and POP3 for accessing email. Those protocols allow you to access emails from your own email client[4] on any device. More on that later. Now onto security and privacy. +The first and most important requirement is that the email provider uses exclusively free software. This means their website and webmail portal do not require proprietary JavaScript[3]. JavaScript licenses should be included somewhere on the site or it should work without JavaScript enabled. Also, all backend software should be free. In other words, if an email provider uses Mac or Windows to host the email server, it's as good as garbage and you shouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. It should probably run on GNU/Linux or FreeBSD. Good email providers support IMAP and POP3 for accessing email. Those protocols allow you to access emails from your own email client[4] on any device. More on that later. Now onto security and privacy. ## Privacy and Security The email provider should have a policy of not keeping logs. This brings me to my next and important point that the email provider needs to reside within a privacy-respecting country. The legal requirements for collecting logs and sharing user data are going to differ depending on which country it's in. Using an email provider based in the US or the UK is a very bad idea. Those countries don't have strong privacy considerations and your email data (and metadata) won't be safe. Email providers in those countries can't guarantee safety of your emails. You can get a lot of information about what data is collected just by actually reading the Terms of Service when you sign up. Don't use an email provider like Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo that logs all your emails and sells them to advertisers. If it's in the Terms of Service that the service shares non-trivial data with third parties, then that email service is garbage and you shouldn't use it. In fact, good email providers will never share any data without a court order first. In order to take an email provider's claims of protecting your data seriously, the email provider should have a transparency report providing as much detail as is legal about what information they can be forced to turn over, when, and how often it actually happens. -Also, email providers can't share information about you they don't have. If the email service provider offers anonymous sign up (they don't request your name, address, phone number or other PII), this is a good sign. They should also offer anonymous payment mechanisms (cash or cryptocurrency). You should not provide personal information just to sign up for an email account. Any email service that requires you to probably doesn't care very much about your privacy. For security, your email provider should use two-factor authentication to prevent your account from being stolen. In your browser, check the email service's website for TLS 1.3. If the email service website doesn't support TLS 1.3, that's a bad sign. Check that they support DANE/TLSA. They should claim to encrypt the hard disks of the email server or the email accounts themselves to prohibit data theft. They shouldn't ever send any email data unencrypted. It should always use TLS. The email service should provide you with "inbound encryption". Inbound encryption means you can generate a keypair and provide the email service your public key to encrypt your emails with. This means the email service encrypts your emails, as they are received, on their servers with a key only you have access to. If your emails are later stolen or requested via court order, the service will only be able to provide encrypted versions of your emails unreadable to anyone except you. +Also, email providers can't share information about you they don't have. If the email service provider offers anonymous sign up (they don't request your name, address, phone number or other PII), this is a good sign. They should also offer anonymous payment mechanisms (cash or cryptocurrency). You should not provide personal information just to sign up for an email account. Any email service that requires you to probably doesn't care very much about your privacy. For security, your email provider should use two-factor authentication to prevent your account from being stolen. In your browser, check the email service's website for TLS 1.3. If the email service website doesn't support TLS 1.3, that's a bad sign. Check that they support DANE/TLSA. They should claim to encrypt the hard disks of the email server or the email accounts themselves to prohibit data theft. They shouldn't ever send any email data unencrypted. It should always use TLS. The email service should provide you with "inbound encryption". Inbound encryption means you can generate a key pair and provide the email service your public key to encrypt your emails with. This means the email service encrypts your emails, as they are received, on their servers with a key only you have access to. If your emails are later stolen or requested via court order, the service will only be able to provide encrypted versions of your emails unreadable to anyone except you. Another good sign is if the email service supports access over Tor. The webmail client should support access over Tor Browser. It shouldn't block tor connections. If it has an onion address, then the email service went through extra trouble for Tor support. As I said, email providers can't share information about you they don't have. If you connect over Tor, you are protecting your IP address. That means you don't have to trust the email service not to log your IP when you access email. @@ -42,7 +42,7 @@ I've gone over some of the technical details, but I haven't mentioned the busine Nothing I've mentioned gives you a 100% guarantee that the email provider is secure, will stay in operation, doesn't sell your data to advertisers, or is competent. But the more criteria that the email provider meets, the better the chances that it's a good one. At some point you have to say "Okay, this email service meets so many criteria of being ethical that it either actually operates ethically or is so good at faking it I could never hope to tell the difference anyway". Once you do enough research where you can confidently say that, then you should consider using it. There are other features email services provide that I haven't mentioned such as email aliasing and email storage space. Those depend heavily on how you use email and if I listed all possible features of an email service, I'd never finish this post. But I think I have covered some of the key features to look for when choosing an email service. # Using an Email Client -The most common way by far to access email nowadays is using webmail which is a shame. Webmail is when you access your email account in the browser. Remember that email predates the web, so it doesn't rely on the web at all. It's just that people have been spoiled by web apps and never need to leave the browser environment any more. Using an email client, also known as a user agent, is a more satisfying way to use email. It provides functionality such as easy account navigation, email filtering, email flagging, calendaring, contacts, and more. Webmail also provides the same features, but often requires running proprietary Javascript to accomplish the same tasks. Using an email client gives you a single, unified user experience that you can customize to your liking for all email accounts, even if the accounts are on different email services. Using an email client empowers you to use inbound encryption, managing your encryption keys yourself. I just want to quickly mention that Protonmail[5] requires installing a proprietary bridge application[6] for IMAP and SMTP support. If you want to use Protonmail with your own email client, you'll have to install their software. I'm not trying to pick on them in particular. I just want to point out it's more secure to use email clients that work for any email provider, not client programs that the specific email service has homebrewed even if they are free software programs. Individualized email clients and client-related programs likely have less code review and less scrutiny which means you're less secure using them. Some good email clients are Thunderbird[7], Evolution[8] or Mutt[9] if you prefer a terminal. Microsoft Outlook[10] is common, but it is proprietary. Don't use it. +The most common way by far to access email nowadays is using webmail which is a shame. Webmail is when you access your email account in the browser. Remember that email predates the web, so it doesn't rely on the web at all. It's just that people have been spoiled by web apps and never need to leave the browser environment any more. Using an email client, also known as a user agent, is a more satisfying way to use email. It provides functionality such as easy account navigation, email filtering, email flagging, calendaring, contacts, and more. Webmail also provides the same features, but often requires running proprietary JavaScript to accomplish the same tasks. Using an email client gives you a single, unified user experience that you can customize to your liking for all email accounts, even if the accounts are on different email services. Using an email client empowers you to use inbound encryption, managing your encryption keys yourself. I just want to quickly mention that Protonmail[5] requires installing a proprietary bridge application[6] for IMAP and SMTP support. If you want to use Protonmail with your own email client, you'll have to install their software. I'm not trying to pick on them in particular. I just want to point out it's more secure to use email clients that work for any email provider, not client programs that the specific email service has home-brewed even if they are free software programs. Individualized email clients and client-related programs likely have less code review and less scrutiny which means you're less secure using them. Some good email clients are Thunderbird[7], Evolution[8] or Mutt[9] if you prefer a terminal. Microsoft Outlook[10] is common, but it is proprietary. Don't use it. ## POP3 Since most email users have been totally spoiled by the web, they have never heard the terms POP3 and IMAP. When you use an email client, you will have a choice of which protocol you prefer. POP stands for Post Office Protocol. The first version of POP was created in 1984. POP3 fetches emails from the remote email server, then deletes them from the server. It can be configured not to do that, but that's its main benefit. If you only check email from a single device and you don't want your emails hanging around on someone else's computer, then POP is the way to go. Sent emails are stored in the client you sent them. Deleted emails are only deleted in the client you deleted them in. So POP is not a good protocol if you are using multiple devices to check email. It doesn't try to sync across devices. POP is also good to use if you have very little space allocated to you on the remote server, but you regularly send and receive large email attachments. @@ -51,7 +51,7 @@ Since most email users have been totally spoiled by the web, they have never hea IMAP stands for Internet Messaging Access Protocol. It was created in 1986. IMAP makes use of the remote email server. All messages are stored on the remote server. When you delete an email, it is deleted on the server. When you send an email, it is stored on the server. When you read an email, the server marks it as read. If you switch devices, your email inbox will look the same. It has a consistent experience across multiple devices. This is probably what you want to use most of the time. # Email Use Cases -Even if you follow this guide on picking an email service and you use an email client and use 2-factor authentication and inbound encrypt all your emails and use POP3, it's likely that your correspondents are using Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo. Even though you could have the most secure email setup short of self-hosting, everyone you email is still using proprietary Javascript with no 2FA unencrypted webmail with every email being parsed and sold to advertisers and mass surveilled. My point is don't use email for personal correspondence. The fact is email is just an old insecure protocol. It doesn't even use end to end encryption because it comes from a different era. You can use PGP to encrypt your emails, but it has so many problems[11] that I can't recommend it for regular use. Almost no one uses it, it's difficult to use, and has many downsides. If you have to use email for personal or business correspondence, use PGP to encrypt. But the best advice I can give is just to avoid using email. +Even if you follow this guide on picking an email service and you use an email client and use 2-factor authentication and inbound encrypt all your emails and use POP3, it's likely that your correspondents are using Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo. Even though you could have the most secure email setup short of self-hosting, everyone you email is still using proprietary JavaScript with no 2FA unencrypted webmail with every email being parsed and sold to advertisers and mass surveilled. My point is don't use email for personal correspondence. The fact is email is just an old insecure protocol. It doesn't even use end to end encryption because it comes from a different era. You can use PGP to encrypt your emails, but it has so many problems[11] that I can't recommend it for regular use. Almost no one uses it, it's difficult to use, and has many downsides. If you have to use email for personal or business correspondence, use PGP to encrypt. But the best advice I can give is just to avoid using email. ## Email Privacy The best time to use email is when it's required. When you're signing up for a website that requires email for instance. You don't have to only have 1 email account either. I use several email aliases depending on the purpose. You can use different email accounts for every service you sign up for if you want. There's throwaway email accounts available if you need to send or receive email quickly and then ditch the account. I wouldn't recommend using email for receiving newsletters or information that you have another way of accessing. I might make another post talking about RSS, but it's basically a web feed. RSS readers can pull content from all the websites that support RSS that you're interested in without you actually visiting those sites. It's a similar experience to using an email client, but with less of a digital footprint. With email, your email server has a record of which feeds you are subscribed to. With RSS, there is no "account". No digital footprint showing you subscribed to that feed is necessarily created. If you anonymize RSS over Tor, then even a passive adversary like your ISP will have a hard time figuring out which news feeds you read. Even if you just visit the news site directly, that's still arguably better for your privacy in terms of minimizing your digital footprint. @@ -62,7 +62,7 @@ In summary, the most privacy-preserving way to use email is to avoid using email If and how you segregate out your email accounts is up to you. This is just an optional extra step you can take. Using multiple email accounts doesn't always make your emails more private or your accounts more secure. It just improves "unlinkability". A common example of this is having a personal email and a work email. Keeping your personal life and your work life separate is important for many people. You wouldn't want your workplace to know all the services you're signed up for and you wouldn't want to be receiving work emails on your personal email account. # Motivation -Those are my tips for getting the most out of email. It's a lot of information to take in, but I wanted to be thorough. My motivation for writing this post as I said in the beginning was seeing the way most people use email. Until we have a widespread protocol that supercedes email, we should at least get the most out of it. And the way most people are using email right now is the absolute worst way to use it. There's a lot of things in computing that aren't harder to do a different way, it's just that people haven't been shown the better way of doing things. Most people don't know anything beyond webmail despite the fact that email predates the web. I wrote this post to promote my preferred way of using email. I hope you have found it useful. +Those are my tips for getting the most out of email. It's a lot of information to take in, but I wanted to be thorough. My motivation for writing this post as I said in the beginning was seeing the way most people use email. Until we have a widespread protocol that supersedes email, we should at least get the most out of it. And the way most people are using email right now is the absolute worst way to use it. There's a lot of things in computing that aren't harder to do a different way, it's just that people haven't been shown the better way of doing things. Most people don't know anything beyond webmail despite the fact that email predates the web. I wrote this post to promote my preferred way of using email. I hope you have found it useful. Link(s): diff --git a/content/entry/video-tiktok-a-trojan-horse-into-chinas-dystopia.md b/content/entry/video-tiktok-a-trojan-horse-into-chinas-dystopia.md index b0e2a09..88e403b 100644 --- a/content/entry/video-tiktok-a-trojan-horse-into-chinas-dystopia.md +++ b/content/entry/video-tiktok-a-trojan-horse-into-chinas-dystopia.md @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ TikTok is a national security risk and yet people are still using it by the mill The main concern in the executive order seems to be TikTok allows the CCP to collect Americans' personal information including federal employees and it can be used for disinformation and blackmail. But as TheHatedOne[3] points out, US-based social media platforms already do the same thing. Facecrook has collected personal user data way before TikTok was around and it has more than twice as many users today as TikTok did in August. A consequence of Facecrook's data collection is it enabled Cambridge analytica[4] to manipulate the US presidential election in 2016 and yet the Federal Trade Commission only fined Bookface $5 billion dollars. Bookface made $15 billion in just the first quarter of 2019. The fine was barely a slap on the wrist. -The moral is if you're a US-based company that endangers national security through personal data collection and manipulation of public opinion through propoganda you get a slap on the wrist from the FTC while the NSA pats you on the back. If you're a Chinese-based company doing more or less the same you get an executive order banning you from doing business in the United States. And the 2 core issues of centralization of power and proprietary software of which the other issues are a symptom never even get so much as a mention in the mainstream media or the government. +The moral is if you're a US-based company that endangers national security through personal data collection and manipulation of public opinion through propaganda you get a slap on the wrist from the FTC while the NSA pats you on the back. If you're a Chinese-based company doing more or less the same you get an executive order banning you from doing business in the United States. And the 2 core issues of centralization of power and proprietary software of which the other issues are a symptom never even get so much as a mention in the mainstream media or the government. I recommend TheHatedOne's commentary on TikTok because he actually addresses the proprietariness and centralization of power in the case of TikTok. Have a listen. diff --git a/content/entry/why-i-dont-have-a-smartphone.md b/content/entry/why-i-dont-have-a-smartphone.md index 17bc343..dd0dec8 100644 --- a/content/entry/why-i-dont-have-a-smartphone.md +++ b/content/entry/why-i-dont-have-a-smartphone.md @@ -54,21 +54,21 @@ Even if I didn't have a phone to borrow, I could use the PinePhone as a home pho Regular readers of this journal are probably wondering when I'm going to mention privacy. It's widely understood that smartphones are tracking and surveillance devices, so surely that's another objection, right? ## Smartphones Are Surveillance Devices -Well actually no. It's possible to have a smartphone that isn't a mass surveillance device. When I had the Google Pixel, I enabled airplane mode and MAC randomization. I used free software from Fdroid exclusively. Traffic was onion-routed via Tor. Bluetooth was disabled and wifi as well when I wasn't using it. I taped both front and rear cameras.[2] So privacy wasn't an issue for me. +Well actually no. It's possible to have a smartphone that isn't a mass surveillance device. When I had the Google Pixel, I enabled airplane mode and MAC randomization. I used free software from F-droid exclusively. Traffic was onion-routed via Tor. Bluetooth was disabled and wifi as well when I wasn't using it. I taped both front and rear cameras.[2] So privacy wasn't an issue for me. The average person's smartphone is a surveillance device with dozens of proprietary apps tracking them every which way and a crippled, vendor-locked excuse for the latest version of Android. As for iPhones, there's no excuse for having that trash. They're even worse for your freedom than vendor-locked Androids. Non-techies don't know how to protect themselves from mass surveillance, so surveillance still counts as a reason for others not to have a phone. # On The Benefits of Having a Smartphone -While I'm talking about all the bad things about smartphones, don't think I'm oblivious to all the good things. I've had a smartphone for most of my life. I know the good. They make irreplaceable multitools. You can quickly contact others. If you ignore all the bad, smartphones augment human beings. +While I'm talking about all the bad things about smartphones, don't think I'm oblivious to all the good things. I've had a smartphone for most of my life. I know the good. They make irreplaceable multi-tools. You can quickly contact others. If you ignore all the bad, smartphones augment human beings. Is there some way we can have the good without the bad? # Can We Have The Good Without The Bad? The vast majority have nonfree surveillance phones dependent on big tech. This can be remedied by using free software. -Solving smartphone addiction isn't as straightforward. While plenty of people can use their smartphones without becoming addicted, staggering numbers of people still self-report as being addicted. Young people are highly addicted to their smartphones, unable to have simple get togethers with friends and family without staring at their screens. +Solving smartphone addiction isn't as straightforward. While plenty of people can use their smartphones without becoming addicted, staggering numbers of people still self-report as being addicted. Young people are highly addicted to their smartphones, unable to have simple get-togethers with friends and family without staring at their screens. Given all the kids addicted to smartphones and tablets, I'm not hopeful young people can use them without developing an addiction. So I'm not sure whether we can have the good without the bad. Maybe a new, non-addictive mobile operating system would help. Or maybe new technology isn't the solution. diff --git a/content/entry/why-i-dont-trust-police-and-neither-should-you.md b/content/entry/why-i-dont-trust-police-and-neither-should-you.md index 2da1aa7..fd1d79f 100644 --- a/content/entry/why-i-dont-trust-police-and-neither-should-you.md +++ b/content/entry/why-i-dont-trust-police-and-neither-should-you.md @@ -22,8 +22,8 @@ Here's a non-comprehensive list of 20 reasons you shouldn't trust police either * More than half of police say their job has made them more callous.[4] * Police steal more from the innocent than do thieves.[5] * Police mistake everyday objects for guns.[6] -* Police can search your home without your knowledge or consent if they suspect terrorism. You can be put on a terror watchlist for almost anything and it's nearly impossible to clear your name.[7] -* Instead of listening to protestors calling for police reform, police instead promote the myth that there's a "war on police".[8] +* Police can search your home without your knowledge or consent if they suspect terrorism. You can be put on a terror watch list for almost anything and it's nearly impossible to clear your name.[7] +* Instead of listening to protesters calling for police reform, police instead promote the myth that there's a "war on police".[8] * Local police departments use powerful surveillance technology to invade your privacy without a warrant.[9][10] * Police lying on the witness stand is so rampant it has a name: "testilying"[11] * Police training is severely inadequate. They receive less hours of training than barbers.[12] diff --git a/content/entry/why-i-dont-use-a-pseudonym.md b/content/entry/why-i-dont-use-a-pseudonym.md index 7e7276d..c5cdd06 100644 --- a/content/entry/why-i-dont-use-a-pseudonym.md +++ b/content/entry/why-i-dont-use-a-pseudonym.md @@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ Online anonymity is a house of cards. You have to completely dissociate everythi Maintaining an anonymous identity for a long period of time takes a lot of mental bookkeeping. You will eventually make a mistake. For me, I would have to run two blogs: one tied to my real name and one pseudonymous. It would be very challenging because the way I express certain ideas here is itself attributable to me by anyone who knows me. -I also benefit from racial and gender bias. I'm a white guy and within the ranks of U.S. law enforcement, there are underlying sympathies to white supremicists, as well as far-right ideologies and hate groups. It's hard to be a leftist cop because leftists are opposed to the War on Drugs. It's like being a vegan butcher. So naturally, law enforcement has a right-wing bias. +I also benefit from racial and gender bias. I'm a white guy and within the ranks of U.S. law enforcement, there are underlying sympathies to white supremacists, as well as far-right ideologies and hate groups. It's hard to be a leftist cop because leftists are opposed to the War on Drugs. It's like being a vegan butcher. So naturally, law enforcement has a right-wing bias. If I were a middle eastern male dissident writing what I do, I'd be a lot more concerned about my safety than I am as a privileged white dude. But no matter what your race is, you should exercise your rights. Because if you don't, you will lose them. It's vital that people use their rights to speak their mind under their real name and not just an anonymous pseudonym that has no skin in the game. diff --git a/content/entry/why-i-left-its.md b/content/entry/why-i-left-its.md index 79be930..f7731e9 100644 --- a/content/entry/why-i-left-its.md +++ b/content/entry/why-i-left-its.md @@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ I found that even with reduced hours, I could not get all my work done. I was al Some readers are going to think resigning (partially) over ethical reasons was a mistake because some other student would just take my place and the job would be done anyway. But I don't find that convincing. For one, even if someone else took my place, at least it wouldn't be me. Leave someone else to cross that line. It's too psychologically burdensome for me to work with proprietary software knowing I'm doing the world a harm. It's likely that whoever would take my place would not know about free software and would not feel so bothered by the work they are doing because of that. Also, this kind of thinking is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If everyone thinks this way, then everyone will reason that they should just accept the injustice because someone else will if they don't. That's a good way of keeping giant evil corporations like Microsoft in power. Microsoft prefers you to think that way. I'm not saying it's necessarily untrue. Maybe someone has already taken my place. But I'm saying to keep in mind that it's self-fulfilling. That kind of thinking is exactly the kind that discourages challenging existing power structures. -Another objection readers might have to me leaving my job over free software is that even if I find another job where I don't have to use any proprietary software, I might be contributing to other social harms. In other words, it's hard to find a place to work that is without ethical problems. I can't deny this is true. Some people work at jobs where they have to use Windows, but they have kids to take care of. If they don't go in to work, they might not be able to support their family. I'm not trying to suggest everyone should do what I did. I'm definitely not trying to take the moral high ground compared to those people. I'm just explaining why I did what I did. But there are less "nuclear" options for people who can't quit their job. Spread the word about free software to friends, family, and coworkers. Set an example for others by being a mindful consumer. For example, don't buy home assistants with proprietary software such as the Amazon Alexa or Google Home. Don't buy "smart" devices like smart tv's, smart fridges, smart lightbulbs, etc. These are small sacrifices consumers can make right now. With collective effort, we can create a large market for ethical tech and eliminate the market for unethical tech if only enough of us refuse to buy it. If the relatively small sacrifices aren't made now, the sacrifices required in the future to turn the tide will be much, much greater. Living without proprietary software is already far more inconvenient than most people will accept. And it's only going to get worse unless we reject proprietary products today. +Another objection readers might have to me leaving my job over free software is that even if I find another job where I don't have to use any proprietary software, I might be contributing to other social harms. In other words, it's hard to find a place to work that is without ethical problems. I can't deny this is true. Some people work at jobs where they have to use Windows, but they have kids to take care of. If they don't go in to work, they might not be able to support their family. I'm not trying to suggest everyone should do what I did. I'm definitely not trying to take the moral high ground compared to those people. I'm just explaining why I did what I did. But there are less "nuclear" options for people who can't quit their job. Spread the word about free software to friends, family, and coworkers. Set an example for others by being a mindful consumer. For example, don't buy home assistants with proprietary software such as the Amazon Alexa or Google Home. Don't buy "smart" devices like smart TVs, smart fridges, smart light bulbs, etc. These are small sacrifices consumers can make right now. With collective effort, we can create a large market for ethical tech and eliminate the market for unethical tech if only enough of us refuse to buy it. If the relatively small sacrifices aren't made now, the sacrifices required in the future to turn the tide will be much, much greater. Living without proprietary software is already far more inconvenient than most people will accept. And it's only going to get worse unless we reject proprietary products today. That was my short call to action. If you've made it this far, thank you for reading. If you find my ideas valuable, then please consider making a donation. Details are on my about page[3]. diff --git a/content/entry/you-dont-need-an-antivirus.md b/content/entry/you-dont-need-an-antivirus.md index 0f821e3..b1642de 100644 --- a/content/entry/you-dont-need-an-antivirus.md +++ b/content/entry/you-dont-need-an-antivirus.md @@ -3,13 +3,13 @@ title: "You Don't Need An Antivirus" date: 2022-01-09T00:00:00 draft: false --- -This entry is in response to recent news of Norton Antivirus putting a cryptominer[1] in their program. This is such a dumb move in so many ways it requires its own entry. Others have already commented on it, so I'd rather just tell you why you don't need an antivirus in the first place. +This entry is in response to recent news of Norton Antivirus putting a crypto miner[1] in their program. This is such a dumb move in so many ways it requires its own entry. Others have already commented on it, so I'd rather just tell you why you don't need an antivirus in the first place. Most commercial antiviruses are targeted towards Windows users. News flash. If you're using Windows, you already have known malware installed on your computer. It's called Windows and no antivirus program can remove it. Same for Macs as well. You should remove Windows or Mac and install a free Linux or BSD distro. If you still decide to use Windows or Mac, realize you don't actually need an antivirus anyways. Windows and Mac already come with built-in protections against 3rd-party malware. Of course both systems still let their own malware execute. -Most proprietary antivirus programs are themselves adware and spyware. And now Norton has a cryptominer. Installing proprietary antivirus software these days is just paying to install malware on your own system. Don't fall for it. +Most proprietary antivirus programs are themselves adware and spyware. And now Norton has a crypto miner. Installing proprietary antivirus software these days is just paying to install malware on your own system. Don't fall for it. So how should you avoid malware? Here's a list: @@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ So how should you avoid malware? Here's a list: * Do ignore Indian guys calling about your computer * Don't use proprietary software * Don't let untrustworthy people use your computer -* Don't click untrusted links +* Don't click untrustworthy links * Don't open sketchy email attachments * Don't visit shady websites diff --git a/content/glossary.md b/content/glossary.md index 7751bd3..6d3c5c4 100644 --- a/content/glossary.md +++ b/content/glossary.md @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ _build: --- # GLOSSARY * Antihomosexualist: Someone who oppresses or supports the oppression of homosexuals. -* Antimuslimist: Someone who oppresses or supports the oppression of muslims. Antimuslimists are almost always racists too. +* Antimuslimist: Someone who oppresses or supports the oppression of Muslims. Antimuslimists are almost always racists too. * Antitransgenderist: Someone who oppresses or supports the oppression of transgender people. * Child: Someone twelve years of age or less. Calling adolescents and teenagers children is condescending. * Disloyalty program: A rewards-based marketing strategy which offers discounts in exchange for sacrificing one's purchasing privacy. Disloyalty programs unfairly reduce the anonymity of every other shopper who isn't signed up. @@ -19,4 +19,4 @@ _build: * Police officer: A respectable, hardworking person who doesn't act like a thug. * The injustice system: A vengeful legal system which uses the incoherent concept of free will to justify keeping people in cruel and inhumane conditions. Punishment is emphasized over rehabilitation, but only the non-rich are punished. * The wannabe dictator: Donald Trump. -* Thug: A badge-and-gun-wielding predator who attacks nonviolent protestors, jails peaceful drug users, harasses the poor, and lies in court to defend other thugs. +* Thug: A badge-and-gun-wielding predator who attacks nonviolent protesters, jails peaceful drug users, harasses the poor, and lies in court to defend other thugs. -- cgit v1.2.3