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205 lines
10 KiB
Markdown
205 lines
10 KiB
Markdown
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% Information wants to pwn you
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Hacker Culture
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==============
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> Information wants to be free.
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>
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> -- a hacker motto
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At first, I believed this statement solely on political grounds. When I grew up,
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everyone who wanted to control information was evil - the record industry, old
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politicians, you know, those kind of people. Sharing information was an act of
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rebellion, no matter what the information actually *was*. People didn't want you
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to have free access, so you simply created it, regardless of content, be it the
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Anarchist's Cookbook, warez or pr0n.
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I grew up during the early Windoze years. One day, I accidentally opened an .exe
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file in a text editor and saw a lot of gibberish. I was amazed how someone could
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even *produce* this noise, let alone make it *work*. Later, I learned to program
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(and what machine code and compilers are) and adopted the culture of
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programmers, specifically open source ones.
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It was obvious to me that information should be shared. Open your source code
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and others can learn from it, find bugs for you and even implement new features.
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Everybody wins. The only people wanting to hide their code were those more
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interested in making money. (Which was considered suspect in the communitarian
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culture I grew up in.) Worse, they were essentially only making money from
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*ignorance*. If everyone knew their code, or how to produce it themselves, then
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they wouldn't actually provide any worthwhile service at all.
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This all convinced me that the motto was right, information really ought to be
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free. Up until now[^wikileaks] that is.
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Bad News
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========
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The idea of psychological hijacking, in the form of indoctrination, for example,
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was always vaguely known to me, but I always thought that this is both a) hard
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to do and b) affects only *other* people, certainly not me. Weak-minded idiots
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become cult members and suicide bombers[^suicide]; I'm far too intelligent for
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that.
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[^suicide]: I see now how wrong I was about fanatics after having read the
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latest research into suicide bombers. In fact, I can see that I am *exactly* the
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kind of person who, under the right environmental factors, becomes just that. As
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a defense mechanism, I get very nervous whenever a belief I hold creates any
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strong emotions or radical disagreement with the culture it originated in.
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I became more aware of the problem when I fell into the trap of a particularly
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nasty conspiracy theory[^conspiracy]. When I crawled my way out of it, I only
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concluded that I must become *smarter* and more *rational*. I thought of the
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problem in terms of psychology (being attracted by certain crowds and adopting
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their beliefs) and faulty reasoning (learn about fallacies and biases and you
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are safe). This changed when I learned about memetics and was provided with a
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(basic) mechanism of how this actually happened.
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A meme is a "unit of cultural transmission", the idea-equivalent of a gene, like
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an earworm. As memes are themselves replicators, they follow all the laws of
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evolution. I applied those idea the first time by thinking about the
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implications of considering [music] as a replicator. I wasn't quite sure what to
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make of my conclusions, but I didn't seriously deal with it (beyond downsizing
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my music library from 200GB to about 30GB) until now. (I also should revisit the
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article and fix several blatant flaws.)
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[music]: /reflections/letting_go_of_music.html
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It really clicked upon encountering the concept of the [Langford Basilisk]. Let
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this neat picture explain it:
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![The Parrot](parrot.jpg)
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A Langford Basilisk is a genuinely dangerous idea. In its original form, it
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works through making the brain think an impossible thought - essentially setting
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off a logic bomb. I don't believe that the human brain is actually susceptible
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to this kind of attack, but a poorly designed AI might be. Rergardless, there
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are other forms of Basilisks, some of which I actually know to work (under
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certain conditions).
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Consequences
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============
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Ok, maybe ideas *are* dangerous, not just in the "this exposes my own flaws or
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crimes and helps my opponents" kinda sense, but in the "computer virus" sense.
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Still, what should we do about that? To be honest, I'm not quite sure. But I
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can at least provide some examples and how I plan to handle them in the future.
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The most common example of a memetic hazard that is treated as such that I have
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seen is the TV Tropes wiki (intentionally not linked). It's a black hole for any
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culture whore (like myself) that sucks up your free time without any end in
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sight. I easily lost *weeks* of my life in there. Many tropers always follow up
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links to it with a warning. I am slightly immune to it now, but only because I
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know most of it by heart. That's like becoming an atheist by going to
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seminary[^seminary]. Not really practical. I had tried to limit my exposure
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through time limits, but it didn't really help. So I needed a systematic
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approach.
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So let's draft a little catalogue of memetic hazards.
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![Memetically Active](memetically_active.jpg)
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Structural Hijacking
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--------------------
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Things that are dangerous because of their structure. The most common example is
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anything that resembles a Skinner box. Most notorious are Twitter, MMOs and email.
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Emotional Hijacking
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-------------------
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Things that hide themselves by taking over your emotional system. Many drugs,
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particularly heroin, come to mind as non-meme examples. But what would their
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equivalent look like as an idea? Something that controls your emotions directly
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to serve its own purpose (or the one of its creator)?
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What about music? When I revisited some old music I hadn't listened to for a few
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years, it became obvious to me. It puts me in a specific emotional state and
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tries to keep me their for as long as it can, not unlike an addiction. The
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emotional control itself wasn't the immediate problem (If I have a song that
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would make me wide awake, motivated and happy, why not listen to it?), but
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rather that it would force emotions on me I *didn't* actually want. Some songs
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would make me angry or sad and there was little I could actually do against it!
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Very, very evil.
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Our brains have no natural distinction between "I believe this" and "I observe
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this". *Everything* that happens is at first taken at face value, taken to be
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true. If there is sadness, then *I* must be sad and must have a reason to be
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sad. That I just react to a superstimulus is not detected. The same effect, of
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course, is dramatic when it comes to our believes. Plenty of experiments have
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demonstrated that merely *stating* an opinion, even explicitly solely to repeat
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something someone else said, will cause our own opinion to shift in that
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direction unless proper measures are taken. If I merely get you to think about a
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proposition and you don't think it through yourselves, you are very likely to
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become a little bit more convinced of it and identify with it.
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The important conclusion to be drawn is that there is no such thing as neutral
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observation. You can't do emotionally powerful act without them controlling your
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mind. The Buddhists have warned us about this for centuries; if you lie, you
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will harm *yourself* in the process. You will start to believe your own lies, if
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you want to or not.
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The way to handle this is by a) being as honest as you possible can (so you
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never state or do something you wouldn't want to be a part of you) and b) put
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off [proposing any solution] to a problem until you have understood it. The
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moment you start defending or attacking a solution, you likely become stuck and
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changing your mind later is quite difficult.
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But you can also use this to your advantage! Particularly the Tibetans have been
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teaching how loving-kindness and a general good mood are not magical things that
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just happen, but skills to be learned. At first you just pretend to feel like
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the kind of person you'd like to be and through some regular practice you
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actually start feeling like that automatically. Very cool and powerful. Just
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sitting down and forcing myself to be calm and smile for 15 minutes has helped
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me greatly through phases of depression.
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I also apply this when it comes to recreational media I watch. I now only watch
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TV shows or movies that have characters in them I want to identify with -
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protagonists that are actual role models. I don't do this for moralistic reasons
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(You should be a nice person!), but purely pragmatic ones (I enjoy being nice,
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so I won't watch shows with asshole protagonists as I will become more like them,
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if I want to or not, regardless how much I enjoy the show.)
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Remember that there is no such thing as a "real" and a "fake" emotion. Emotions
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are (biochemical) brain states, like a tag, and can be changed at will. They are
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not "layered" or even aware of any content at all. You don't like your current
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state? Hack it! It's like changing your wallpaper - there's no "true" wallpaper
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underneath and you can't just "try on" another one. There is only one, right
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now, and whatever you choose, that's it. So make it a pretty one.
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[proposing any solution]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ka/hold_off_on_proposing_solutions/
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Intellectual Hijacking
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----------------------
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Knowing just enough to be dangerous.
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As a general rule, treat information exchange like sex. It might be fun, but
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that's a side-effect that has only been built into you so you would actually do
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it a lot. The purpose really is reproduction, so make sure to be safe. Watch
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your partners and don't use just about any practice.
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[^wikileaks]: At the time of writing (December 2010), Wikileaks is all over the
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news. It's great to finally see someone pull a Hagbard Celine, but even greater
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to be made aware by the fallout of how afraid of chaos I had become. I was
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seriously worried that this could cause some of the major political players to
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become even more paranoid, putting many (semi-)stable arrangements at risk of
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collapse. I was particularly worried what it would do to fuel the increasing
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[neo-fascism] of the US. Luckily, my Discordian training eventually kicked in and
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I remembered that what I was seeing was not a threat to order, but rather an
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exposition of the inherent chaos.
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[^conspiracy]: I'm unwilling to publicly state the conspiracy theory I believed,
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but if you send me an [email](/about.html) and ask me in private, I would
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discuss it.
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[^seminary]: Amusingly, this seminary effect actually happens. I used to study
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religions (in a historical context) and met someone who studied theology. He
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told me that about half the students each year would start out as Christians and
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be atheists at the end when they learned how the bible actually came to be and
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stuff like that. Information kills religions dead.
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[neo-fascism]: http://zompist.com/fascism.html
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[Langford Basilisk]: http://www.ansible.co.uk/writing/c-b-faq.html
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