Shutdown: forget politics, how about morality?

Everyone has different beliefs about what's moral and what's not. I know what I believe, and I know other people believe differently. But there's one rule that is essential for civilization: whatever you're doing, imagine how the world would be if everyone behaved that way. If the result is bad, don't do it. ("Do unto others...")

Some examples: stealing from the grocery store; leaving your dog's waste in the neighbor's yard; assaulting someone over an old family feud; not paying your taxes. In each case, if everyone behaved that way, the result would be a much worse world for everyone. So we can declare those wrong, even if (like in America) people believe many different things.

I'm going to ask you to not read further until you decide whether you agree with me or not. You have to be willing to be wrong. Pick a position, and be willing to follow where it leads. With me so far?

Now, apply this principle to the government shutdown. Keep in mind that for this discussion, I'm referring to the parties, but describing only the elected officials. Unless you're in Congress, I'm not talking about (or insulting) you. So please don't take this personally; it's not.

Democrats won't fund government if it defunds an existing law. Republicans won't fund government if it does fund that law. Are we agreed that's what's happening?

Now, apply our standard. What if everyone behaved like the Democrats? We'd keep laws we have, until the opposition wins enough elections to change them. In other words, the system would work as designed by our founders.

And if everyone behaved like the Republicans? Some group or other would constantly be shutting down the entire government to get one law repealed. We wouldn't have a government! And if anyone thinks having no government is good, I suggest that you move to Somalia and see how that works out in practice.

Finally, what if the Democrats "compromised", and everyone behaved like that? Then you'd see more and more groups behaving like the Republicans are. Again, total systemic failure.

The Republicans aren't wrong on the shutdown because of Obamacare (though they are responsible for spreading huge numbers of lies about it). The Republicans are wrong because their actions break the entire constitutional system they claim to protect.

In other words, they're hypocrites.

You can agree with their goals, that's a whole other topic on which reasonable people can disagree. But the Republican House's means of achieving those goals are simply unamerican.

Voter Fraud vs. Voter Suppression

There's a lot of talk lately about voter ID laws. Like many things, this issue has devolved into two sides. One side says that these laws are necessary to prevent voter fraud. The other side says these laws disenfranchise legitimate voters.

I'm not going to get into each side accusing the other of having negative motives. That's just not productive.

Let's instead start with basic premises of democracy, and identify our common ground. In a perfect system, no legitimate voter would be prevented from voting, and no illegitimate voter would be allowed to vote. This applies regardless of political persuasion, race, religion, location, age, anything. The goal is to have a good election, even if it results in your side losing.

(If you don't agree with that, I suggest you go live in Iran, which you might find more to your liking.)

Now that we've identified the ideal, we have to acknowledge that we don't live in a perfect world. Some number of fraudulent votes will be cast, and and some number of legitimate voters will be turned away. We wish to minimize both these numbers. But what if we have to decide between them?

That's what these voter ID laws ask us to do. So instead of arguing about hypothetical models, let's talk about what can be quantified.

These laws will prevent some number of fraudulent votes (and before someone accuses me of taking sides, zero is a number). These laws will also suppress some number of legitimate votes. We can measure both those things and see what effect the laws have.

But before we do that, let's define a standard. Having a standard, then comparing evidence against our standard, gives us a path to admit we were wrong, and thus become right. Again, let's try to find common ground.

Say we wanted to avoid even a single case of voter suppression, but as a consequence we had to accept ten billion fraudulent votes. This is a bad trade, because the ten billion fraudulent votes now dictate the course of the election. The one vote we "saved" didn't matter at all.

Now the other side. Say we wanted to prevent one fraudulent vote, and to do so we had to suppress every other vote in the country. I think we'd all agree that was a bad trade. Sure, there are no fraudulent votes, but there's also no election.

These absurd extremes demonstrate that we all live somewhere in the middle, and that we can (at least in principle) put a number on this problem. The only real difference any of us have is exactly where between these extremes we draw our line. So ask yourself: how many fraudulent votes have to be prevented to be worth suppressing one legitimate vote? The one suppressed voter loses his voice entirely; the one or five or fifty fraudulent voters reduces the value of everyone's vote. Where's the balance point?

I'm pretty confident that if you have to suppress more than one vote to prevent one fraudulent vote, we're definitely in the wrong territory. One fraudulent vote does less damage to the election than one suppressed vote does.

I'm also pretty confident that if you allow more fraudulent votes than the margin of error in the election, you're ruining the integrity of the election for all involved. So that puts a hard upper bound on the number of fraudulent votes that should be allowed in the entire election.

In between those numbers, things get a little fuzzy. I could see easy arguments for any ratio between 1:1 and 1:10, and I'd like to hear arguments for numbers outside that. So we have our standard. Now we ask, how do the numbers work out? Because if more votes are being suppressed than frauds are being prevented, we've created more problems than we've solved.

Let the data gathering commence!

Standards of Evidence

My nephew came home from school a while back, saying that Wikipedia was full of false information. His teacher had told him this, apparently. Now, I like Wikipedia. It's a fascinating project, and I trust it as much as I trust most things I read online. (And I agree, high school teachers should definitely require better sources for homework assignments.) But it was interesting to me that my nephew trusted the teacher more than he trusted Wikipedia. On what basis would he make that determination?

You see similar behavior in most people, including myself. How often do you repeat things you hear as if they were fact? How often do you vote based on things you haven't directly confirmed? "Eating local honey prevents allergies!" "Vaccines cause autism!" "Obama may not have been born in the US!" I suspect some people reading this believe at least one of those things; and I suspect those same people don't have a clear idea defining why they believe them.

The unstated issue is a lack of standards of evidence. What will a person accept as true for a particular purpose? Well that depends entirely on what we're doing. Different activities require different levels of surety, depending largely on the consequences of being wrong.

Sometimes the standards of evidence are defined for us. If you're making a bet, it's between those making the bet. If you're writing a school paper, the standard of evidence is defined by the teacher. If you're writing a scientific journal paper, the standard of evidence is often whether your results are reproducible in the real world or not. If you're on a jury, the standard of evidence is whatever the judge tells you the law says.

On the other extreme is if you're satisfying your own curiosity and don't plan to act. In that case, something like Wikipedia is probably fine, but it's entirely up to you if it's not. There are no consequences if you're wrong, because it's all in your head. Whether you need to find a more reliable source depends on the relative values you personally place on your time and the accuracy of what's in your brain.

But what about cases in between? If you're making a decision that will significantly alter multiple lives, Wikipedia is nowhere near good enough. If you're casting a vote, infotainment (i.e. cable news) isn't good enough. If you're making a public statement that millions will hear and potentially act on, one random person's word isn't good enough. So what is?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say most people don't have clearly defined standards of evidence for most purposes. I don't, and I'm one of the more obsessively rational people you're likely to come across. So I'm not going to suggest that you should have a defined standard of evidence for every activity you undertake.
 
I care about truth. I care a great deal, because it's not good enough to mean well. You have to have real information, or you can't make good decisions. The world works a particular way, and we have to try to figure out what that way is, because that's the only way we can make the world better.

Our goal should not be to show that reality matches our beliefs. Our goal should be to make our beliefs match reality. You make a guess, you test your theory, and if your theory is no good, you throw it out and get a new one. The reason a standard of evidence is important is because it allows you to be wrong. When it comes to things you can test, have an opinion (or don't!), but always be in doubt.

So ask yourself: what propositions about the world do you believe? Politics, science, humanities, nutrition, exercise, trivia, pick a topic. Why do you believe what you do? Because you heard it on the news or read it on Wikipedia or your mother told you? Under what circumstances would you admit your belief to be wrong?

If the answer is "under no circumstances", you're no longer talking about politics or science or what have you. You're now talking about religion. If you're comfortable with mixing your religion with your politics or science or whatever, fine. And if you're comfortable having that little humility, that much pride in your intelligence, okay. But at least be aware that's what you're doing. And if you're not comfortable with those things (I know I'm not), then change.

Admit the possibility of being wrong. Embrace it. Find a way to prove yourself wrong! Nobody will judge you for having been wrong in the past. (Well, some may. But those people are jerks anyway.) At worst, you'll confuse a lot of people who have never seen anyone change their minds before! And at best, you'll be more right, and more humble, than you were before.

Job's Redeemer

There's a verse that's often quoted at funerals from Job 19.

For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God.

Think about that verse. Job says that his Redeemer will stand upon the earth. Christians understand him to be referencing Christ. But Job wasn't a Christian. Job wasn't even a Jew. So did Job know that he was talking about Christ? Was he expecting a literal physical incarnation of God? If so, what was the basis of his expectation? And if not, what redeemer was he talking about?

The Hebrew in the answer to this question goes way beyond what I can handle. But the implications are fascinating. Job's mentions wanting an arbitrator in chapter 9, when he says no one can stand between man and God. But he doesn't say this arbitrator doesn't exist; he says that the arbitrator isn't present! The implication is that the one who can stand between Job and God exists, and is also Job's redeemer, who he believes is coming.

Job is taking issue with God's treatment of him. He is saying that the one that will settle this dispute will come and stand upon the earth. Job believes that he will see God when justice is given, but that that justice will be given by someone else! Job doesn't want God to save him. Job wants someone to save him from God!

This makes so much sense in the context of the rest of the book. It's full of Job claiming his innocence. Job believes that God has done this to him, that Job himself doesn't deserve it, but also that another force of justice besides God will make things right! Like Abraham and so many others in the Bible, Job serves Yahweh, but he doesn't really get that his god is different than all the others.

So when God arrives at the end of the book, He explains to Job just who he's dealing with; no mere tribal god, but the Creator of all things. Job's knowledge of God was limited. So was Israel's knowledge. So is ours. Job served God the best he understood how. His getting a few details wrong do not diminish this in the slightest. Obedience with imperfect understanding is far from a flaw. If it was, we'd all be in the same position.

So at the end, Job becomes silent, because his whole argument is null. The god he believed in and worshiped and served was vastly bigger than he understood. He now understands that there is no higher power. Job has no appeal, no case to make; all his speeches and arguments have been based on a false premise. He shuts up because he grasps that his god, who he believed to be subservient to some ultimate justice, is Himself that ultimate justice. There is nowhere else to turn.

Light in the Box

A few months ago I came across Light in the Box. Now normally, I'm an Amazon sort of guy. But this little site has some great stuff! Specifically, I got an unlocked Android phone with a huge screen for just over $200. Works great so far. Highly recommended!

And before anyone asks, yes, it's probably a Chinese knockoff. It works fine. It probably came off the same assembly line in some unauthorized-by-Samsung third shift, and just got labeled differently. Its existence is probably a violation of Chinese law, but let that be a lesson to Samsung for manufacturing there in the first place. If you want to protect your IP, build somewhere else!

VPNs, Tor, and Bitmessage

For obvious reasons, I'm becoming more and more concerned with privacy. The goal isn't to make yourself impossible to hack; there's no way of accomplishing that. But you can make penetrating your security cost more than it's worth. Unfortunately, the world of available tools is confusing, and frankly, a little frightening.

I've taken up using a VPN (Private Internet Access, if you're interested) which theoretically helps anonymize all my internet traffic. A VPN encrypts all my traffic and sends it through one pipe, where it gets mixed with everyone else's traffic before it leaves. So everyone can see who my VPN is, but as long as the VPN provider can be trusted, I'm anonymous. Good luck with the trust part.

Tor can be used to similar ends, but there's no single person to trust. The network is peer-based, not client-server. Your traffic is encrypted in several layers, then bounced from node to node in the network, each node decrypting a single layer of encryption. When the final layer is reached at the exit node, the data leaves the Tor network and goes to its destination. But no single node knows where everything is going. It's not perfect, of course, but it's got fewer trust issues than a VPN.

Tor is great if your goal is to circumvent law enforcement. Whether that's a good thing or not, naturally, depends entirely on who's law we're talking about. If you're circumventing censorship laws to publicize human rights abuses, more power to you. But Tor doesn't know the difference between that and hiring an assassin. I'm not making that up; on the front page of Tor's internal wiki are links to services where you can have drugs delivered to your door, buy a stolen Paypal account, have someone murdered, and order counterfeit currency.

These are evil things, and I'd rejoice to see all that shut down. But the Tor network has also done a lot of good in places where governments are abusive and censorious. (You know, Iran, Egypt, the United States of America...) Perhaps this is a corollary to government being the price we pay for civilization; crime is the price we pay for privacy. Perhaps one day we'll have a world where privacy isn't necessary to survive our government.

Moving on.

Bitmessage looks fascinating. Email sends messages to your destination through a series of forwarding servers. Bitmessage instead has everyone's inbox encrypted and mixed together, and that database is shared peer-to-peer. Everyone has a copy of everything, but only the recipient can decrypt their own messages. Like Tor, there's no one to trust.

Unfortunately, I can't make it work. I've yet to successfully send a message to anyone besides the echo address (BM-orkCbppXWSqPpAxnz6jnfTZ2djb5pJKDb). And the only messages I've received were from a newsgroup that was full of racists. If anyone has better luck, please let me know. And feel free to message me at BM-2DCANQGGBZeRkZRhFBmErnApJ7d38s2A2L

Teach how to think

I teach algebra at the University of Phoenix. None of my students are in any sort of science/technical field. Nursing is as close as it comes. So I'm frequently asked the eternal question, asked of any math teacher whose students aren't there voluntarily, "What is this good for? When am I going to use it?"

Math isn't the only subject that gets this kind of questioning, of course. History, science, really almost any school subject can be. And answers like, "Math is everywhere!" and "Knowing where you came from can help you determine where to go" just aren't satisfying.

Here's the truth. I'm 99% sure my students will never again have to find the slope of a line. Just like I'm 99% sure that most history students will never need to know the dates of the Spanish-American war. But that's not why you study these things.

To do math well, you have to be able to apply a set of rules in an organized fashion. You have to be able to recognize the kind of problem you're dealing with, apply the relevant algorithm, keep all the details straight, and recognize when you're done. So if you learn to do math, you must also learn these skills. And those skills are used everywhere.

You don't take math to learn math. You take math to learn to solve problems in a structured fashion.

You don't take history to know what happened when. You take history to know why things happen. You see how people have behaved throughout history, you learn the patterns, and you see how those patterns repeat themselves.

You don't take science to know what kinds of rocks there are in the world. You take science to learn that the world operates according to predictable, deterministic (or at least probabilistic) fashion.

We focus on the details at the expense of the true overall lesson. If all we're testing our students on is how well they memorize trivia, we're wasting everyone's time. We're not teaching how to think.

Stack Exchange

I love the Stack Exchange. You know all those websites that come up in Google searches that have a question-answer format? And you know how bad they all are? This is web Q&A done right. It's amazingly well designed. So many subjects, the potential for many more, and a great system to make sure the whole thing stays high-quality. Ones of particular interest include:

Electrical Engineering (where I am now a top 100 user!)
Software Development
Sysadmin
Advanced user
Life as a programmer
Christianity
Biblical Hermeneutics
Sci-fi/Fantasy
TV/Movies

Seriously, this is a great way to learn, share, and organize information. It's set up like a game, with points and accomplishments. Once you get going, it's hard to stop! Find ones you're interested in, and go!

Bagworm genocide

The trees outside my house are covered with these things:

They're all over the neighborhood, they've already killed one tree of mine, and they're working on the others. I'm pulling off as many as I can, but there are literally thousands of small ones. I've sprayed all the trees, and haven't seen any movement since then, so I'm reasonably confident most of them are dead. I've also fed the trees with some Bayer plant protecting stuff. So far, I think we're at a stalemate.

I want to go on the offensive. I want to wipe out this species. How do I do it? And is there any reason I shouldn't?

TV streaming boxes

I enjoy my television setup. I ripped all my DVDs to a pair of USB hard disks, one WD Elements for TV shows, another Seagate Backup Plus for movies. Both are connected to a low-power server, which has a gigabit wired connection to jacks throughout the house. Each TV in the house has a streaming box attached, including two older WD TV Live, one newer WD TV Live, and one Apple TV.

The Apple TV requires an iTunes server, which only supports limited file types. The WD TV boxes are far more flexible and easy to set up; they read files of almost any type, directly off a Windows file share. I especially recommend the newer model, which has a vastly improved user interface.

Neither seems to support any sort of randomized playlist or video shuffle, so it's impossible to set up a sort of "channel-surfing" background noise channel. If anyone knows of a player which supports such a thing, let me know!

So here's the weird part. Whatever show I'm watching will intermittently freeze. The show will stop for between thirty seconds and three minutes. After that time, the video will skip ahead by that length of time, forcing me to rewind.

Imagine, watching the latest episode of Suits. You get to the juicy part (which, let's face it, is the entire episode), and then the show freezes. And worse, when it recovers, you get a lovely fast-forward spoiler of the next three minutes.

Unacceptable!

What's weird is that it's not the network. While the video is frozen, I can VNC into the server, no problem. But the server can't read the USB hard disk! If I try to open it, explorer freezes until the video resumes.This implies that the problem is between the server and the drive.

I've had multiple WD Elements drives behave this way. The Seagate drive, however,doesn't seem to have any such problems; watching movies, I'm fine. I'm seriously considering abandoning the WD Elemenets drives except as backups.

I also had an interesting issue with the server. All three Live boxes, at the same time, stopped seeing the server shares. Any PC could access the shares, and the network cabling all remained functional. The problem turned out to be my newly-reformatted Windows 7 desktop PC. It had assumed the duty of telling everyone where all the network shares were. The server was running XP. Windows 7 doesn't speak the same language as Windows XP in this regard, so suddenly all the streaming boxes couldn't see anything. Turned my desktop off long enough for the XP server to re-establish control, and all was well. One frustrating hour, I tell you!