Month: May 2013

Just a holding link for now on the civil marriage / partnership fiasco.

(We need to rehabilitate the word normal not being a value judgement – normal = most expected situation, abnormal = valid / legal / accepted variations to the norm. Previously. And before that.)

Consider the starting point Q – why would the state concern itself with a relationship between two people. A – when there are innocent third-parties involved, not party to the original “contract” – future children. Protection of children as individuals in their own right, and as part of the state’s future.

Otherwise parties are able to agree any kind of contract they like with each other, which can include for example pre-nup arrangements for when that contract is deemed to be broken. You can just get on with it, with or without the lawyers, with as much or as little contractual formality as you like .

The constitution of the state sets standards for values of that constituency. Any legal contract in that state, involving the state or not, must meet those values. A contract, again involving the state or not, can adopt additional values provided they do not conflict with the state standard values.

Not surprisingly traditional values arising from religious and ethical traditions are often embedded in state constitutions.

Excellent critical parody of Dan Brown. (Better than this attempt.) (Hat tip also to BifRiv)

Interesting analysis of Google’s enduring strength in finding what you’re looking for. The magic ingredient is the (intelligent) human selecting the words for the search string. No need, or diminished future need, for the likes of AI or NLP etc. (Hat tip to BifRiv)

WSJ interview with the current mayor of Houston. Hat tip to Matt.

In response to this Herald Scotland piece on EU and UK Constitutional  difficulties being posted on Facebook

Smiffy posted this:

I can’t even decide which way I would vote on our membership of the EU. I see that there are apparently valid arguments on both sides, both sides use economic and social arguments for their side and against the other but I have yet to see a solid case with real measurable pros and cons for either case. What chance is there of any referendum result being other than based on emotion and baseless argument?

What I do believe is that there should be a re-assessment and a new decision making process for our membership of the EU as EU majority voting will mean that the Eurozone can effectively drive the decisions for the whole of the EU.

To which I replied in all seriousness without a hint of irony:

Excellent Smiffy. In two posts you confirm
(a) referenda are the worst way to make a difficult decision on a complicated subject, and
(b) not only is democracy the worst from of governance, but popular voting is the worst from of democracy.
Excellent. Truly excellent.

And after discounting any irony Smiffy continued:

I have been struggling with this for a little while and was going to post something along these lines after I had read around the subject a little, but Jo’s post prompted me to do it now. I guess if I rolled my sleeves up and really researched the problem, I might be able to come up with a properly informed view but how many people will do that (which is what prompted my first post)? My concern is that our elected representatives may be little more capable/willing/able than the general populace to undertake such an analysis due to a mixture of skewed priorities, politics, a sprinkling of xenophobia etc. etc. The problem is that this is a Big Question. Spending a bit more or less on this government department or that, or tweaking the tax levels can (usually will) be adjusted by successive governments, but if we vote to leave and that turns out to be the wrong thing to do, we’re stuck with the result. I just hope I’m wrong in my lack of faith in our elected body.

I thought I’d put up a longer post to explain my views on (a) and (b):

Firstly since this is NOT the immediate point (or is it?) let’s just get my cards on table as far as UK / Scottish independence and UK / EU withdrawal, so we can push this to one side for a start. Both ideas are mad – “we”should be doing what’s best for “us” – our constituency.

Talking about the UK as us and the EU or Scotland as them, or about Scotland as us and the UK or EU as them, or about us as us and “our” government(s) as them is the root of our problem. Let’s deal with the last one first:

We are responsible for our government, we are them and they are us.

Secondly we are whatever “constituency” we consider ourselves to be. That ranges from the private me, the public me, me and my family, colleagues and social circles, local communities, regional communities, national communities, international communities, humanity, life as we know it, the planet, the cosmos.

I am part of all of these. They are all “we”. We are all in this together.

The example that always makes me chuckle with despair is UK politicians involved in EU or Nato or UN or whatever proudly claiming to be doing what’s best for Britain. Doh! talk about missing the point. The point is what is best for us – our constituency, for the EU, the world, whatever. They are in general making these claims in reaction to opponents and journalists suggesting they’re not – in order to “win” arguments, not because of any inherent value.

[NOTES: Previous posts to collate, plus random notes.

https://www.psybertron.org/?p=5696
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=5610
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=5125
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=4979
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=4587
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=4577
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=4073
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=3701
https://www.psybertron.org/?p=3582

Constitutions consist of principles and values, not executable policies. Changes to principles and values are OK subject for popular referenda. Executable policies are for the executive (and all the structures of checks and balances in which the values and principles are enshrined.)

Us vs them – in/out, yes/no single binding referendum – only for matters of principle and values. Non-binding referenda OK, but opinion polls probably cheaper.

Values are more than objective (or subjective) binary choices, so more than logical analysis of specific example choices, unless the example is genuinely simple.. They (quite rightly) carry emotional baggage, qualitative, immediate radical empiricism, experience of felt value.

Tyranny of majority, popular majorities without “conservative” checks and balances – conservative of constitutional values. The way we judge a majority a government in power, different levels of government constituency; Elections and electoral processes, representative or delegate – appointments from other “traditions” – first and second chambers.

Our constituency is defined by what we value, not by whoever we voted for / whoever won the last election. Still need multiple constituencies – parallel and hierarchical – see single “market” error – the (valued) objective is NOT uniformity.]

Yet again politics is getting tied in knots over trivial waste-of-time issues – I last mentioned sexual orientation and same sex marriages here, but really it’s the same as Scottish / UK / EU independence debates, and the abolish the lords / bishops in the second chamber debates. Thank god for the lords, as one baroness said recently, a place where worthwhile policy can be debated.

The same sex marriage thing is taking up so much media and political time, from BHA humanist wedding campaigns to the conservative party self-destruct cycle. The sooner we have one legal definition (and thus set of rights) the better – in law, so a civil definition that is – traditions of celebrating the event and what you call it, whatever, your “narrative”, your choice. (And to be clear the only important reason to do this is to stop the debate and get onto something worthwhile.)

The real tragedy; the common theme is friendship or constituencies that make us “we”.

“Friendship is the only cement
that will ever hold the world together.
We are citizens of the world.
The tragedy is that we do not know this.”
Woodrow Wilson (1919)

Good job this story has “Quantum Computing” in scare quotes because it’s nothing to do with quantum computing – computing using quantum information in qubits. It’s a computer that uses quantum effects, like every computer – in fact like every device, and indeed everything in the cosmos, you and me included. What it is using specifically is the quantum tunnelling “Josephson Effect” apparently.

The debate about quantum computing is not so much about whether it’s a practical way to build a computer, which would be nice if it were possible, it’s about computation as the foundation of reality. (Nobel prize-winning Josephson is one of my sources on world models in physics.)

There’s been a spate of attacks against WordPress highlighted last month by WordPress (Matt Mullenweg) and continuing to affect hosts this month (DreamHost in my case, May 11, 12, 13, 14 etc.). Bringing down services and sites. Brute force attacks by robot agents attempting automated logins to hack into WordPress accounts and their hosts.

I did my duty last month and tightened-up all my WordPress account admin user ID’s and Passwords, and I’ve always kept my WordPress version up to date (and as Matt suggests, I’ve never been hacked so far as I can tell, touch wood), but in fact there are a whole host of “hardening” recommendations to tighten up WordPress security. I think I will at least set a plug-in to limit and reject multiple automated login attempts, but there are many more housekeeping measures. WordPress and DreamHost (and BlueHost, GoDaddy, etc) need to highlight these to ALL their users. (Of course once trolls do get even partial admin access inside such accounts, then the brute-force login traffic is the least of our concerns.)

The issue is not that WordPress (or DreamHost) are particularly insecure or incompetent, just that so much of the world’s web traffic goes through WordPress pages – something like 20% (or over 20% of the top million, depending whose stats are most current & reliable). Not surprisingly at least that proportion of troll hacking attempts are targetting WordPress.

There is a tendency to think “why would my little old web site be targetted” – why would anyone waste their time hacking me for anything other than mischievous nuisance reasons, but of course that is the wrong way to look at it. Every site is a potential back door to the hosts’ networks. Which means that the hosts need to take responsibility sure, but so do WordPress users. Even if you’re not using WordPress, your host is hosting many users who are, so the service you get (and give) is affected by this issue. We’re all in this together – it’s like “barn-raising” to quote Matt.

Make sure you (and any friends who are WordPress users) act to help secure your sites and your hosts.