Archive for the 'Philosophy' Category
Bunny and Egg time again folks.
As you dig into your chocolate rabbits and eggs at this time of year spare a thought for our missing history. All those tales and stories of European oral history that were destroyed over the centuries. The stories that accompany the eggs and rabbit your children are demolishing. The tales of your ancestors migrations across Europe, through the UK and now across the world. All gone.
Ignore the christian idols that have been pasted on top of the traditional spring festival. They have had their day. Like the winter past, after two thousand years of ignorance and darkness, the lies and deceits of the church are finally falling from the minds of our children.
We now live in a world where foolishness of the church is plain to see. Condom’s cause HIV eh? Let’s file that one alongside the “World is Flat”, papal infallibility and Rome being the gateway to the afterlife.
But for now dig in. For those still in the North. Winter and Winterfest is a memory, the snows are receding, the streams are running again, the fowl are laying and rabbits can be found in the fields. The darkness of winter has been pushed back and finally after three long months the kids are no longer underfoot and there is fresh food on the table.
Happily the festival of the spring equinox is much as it has always been, a time for family, friends, eggs and rabbit – albeit chocolate ones in this day and age.
Eat and enjoy. Another year begins and there is much work to be done before the darkness and the cold returns.
April 11 2009 | Personal and Philosophy | 2 Comments »
Or Keystone Cops.
In NSW over the last weeks there have been well reported crackdowns on “Outlaw” biker gangs. What is interesting about all this is that these crackdowns have not occurred under the anti association laws that were passed through the state parliament without any debate. The crackdown has occurred under existing criminal law.
The police correctly have been raiding biker premises where drugs, firearms and other criminal activity has taken place. They have been pulling over armed bikers etc etc. Things they could have done at any time over the last five years.
So now we find our civil liberties have been taken away by the “saviours” in state parliament. The state opposition provided no opposition as usual and we find that we didn’t need these laws in the first place.
All we needed was for the NSW police to do their bloody job instead of crying out for more and greater powers.
If they knew these guys were manufacturing drugs and had piles of illegal firearms, and they knew not only what these guys were doing, but the addresses that the drug factories and weapons stockpiles were located at, what the fuck were they doing.
So the police for whatever reason turn a blind eye to the activities of these guys until it became so popular that all the Middle Eastern crime gangs that were targeted by police, morphed into “Biker Gangs” that were left alone by police, the whole thing hits a crisis point with bombings, bashings and shootings becoming the norm and everyone else in the state looses their Liberty as a consequence.
Remember these laws will be on the books for a long long time after the last Middle Eastern Hells Angel and his bomb making associates enter a retirement home.
A knee jerk reaction by a struggling and unpopular government to protect us from hobgoblins that they created by having the police allow these guys to get out of control and the concept of personal liberty is pushed even further from the grasp of the average Australian.
New South Wales. The unemployment capital of Australia and now an even less pleasant place to live. Last one out turn off the light methinks.
(Middle Eastern Bikers? believe it or not. Middle Eastern and Pacific Islander actually, many apparently don’t even ride bikes. A consequence of changing demographics, there are simply not enough Anglo Saxons left to recruit from.)
April 11 2009 | Law and Politics | No Comments »
The Outlaw
Most of you probably have never met a biker and to be honest the last time I was in the vicinity of them was quarter of a century ago in South Australia when the Barbarians were still a recent memory and the October long weekend if I remember correctly meant three days of madness at the Ponde music festival and another year to get the taste of diesel chook out of your mouth. (Recipe: Pile up twenty or so of chickens in take away foil bags, cover with diesel, add a match – sell to party goers with the munchies).
While you justifying the anti biker actions when people being arrested are apparently committing an illegal act on the higher end of the scale what are you going to do about this guy:
He is a stereotype biker. Rides a somewhat street legal Harley, wears a patch, owns some guns, smokes some weed. He runs a custom bike shop or works in one. A blokes bloke rather than a metrosexual he is an outlaw because he isn’t main stream.
In fact he is probably no different in many ways to the ferals up at Byron and thereabouts who perhaps eshew the guns and bikes, but also wear scruffy cloths, bath occasionally, have long hair, tatoos, partake in various substances and also have no time for the rat race. He has analogs in the surfer crowd who have long hair, scruffy clothes, partake in various substances, may own a surf shop and is somewhat less than reliable when the surfs up.
He doesn’t sell drugs – too much hassle, but probably knows where to get them. He, like our feral from Byron and surfer from Bells beach isn’t exactly law abiding when it comes to the state dictating his moral behavior, but he – like the junk yard dog isn’t dangerous unless provoked.
With a wife and a couple of kids you are going to lock him up for years because he talks to someone.
Have a serious serious think about this.
Do the ‘Bra boys and surfer associates down at Maroubra and our ferals up at Byron have anything to worry about. What happens when the religious right of the NSW Liberals control the state parliament.
Is it possible to control the organized crime aspects that have crept into the biker scene using existing laws? Have you talked to our gun toting, pot smoking, patched up custom bike shop owner to find out his opinion of the new breed, addidas wearing, thinks a knuckle head is his silly mate and a shovel head is a road worker wannabe in a patch who really should be hanging out at Hip Hop bars with his “Crew from da Hood”.
April 04 2009 | Law and Politics | No Comments »
Let’s See What Happens To Justice.
The topic of the Anti Biker legislation has really got under my collar.
As reported last night the NSW Premier Nathan Rees has has seen an opportunity to feed upon the fear created by the media on the biker gang issue and is racing to save us from the two wheeled marauders. It seems they have worked out that if they ban bikers all organized crime in NSW will come to a stop. So far no mention of going after street gangs and or the Islander, Middle Eastern, Chinese, Vietnamese or Korean variations on the Mafia.
While Mr Rees and his saviors race to save us there a few things they need to keep in mind, some of which South Australia fails abysmally on.
Proof of Guilt.
South Australia bypassed the whole unpleasant issue of having to prove that a group of people were guilty of an offense by making the offense that needs to be proven before a court only that someone has associated with the banned organization. Whether the organization is guilty of any crimes is only a matter for the state Attorney-General (Think District Attorney if you are from the US) as per the following from the act.
(4) The Attorney-General may, for the purposes of making a declaration under this
section, be satisfied that members of an organisation associate for the purpose of
organising, planning, facilitating, supporting or engaging in serious criminal activity—
(a) whether or not all the members associate for that purpose or only some of the
members (provided that if the Attorney-General is satisfied that only some of
the members associate for that purpose, the Attorney-General must be satisfied that those members constitute a significant group within the organisation, either in terms of their numbers or in terms of their capacity to influence the organisation or its members); and
(b) whether or not members associate for the purpose of organising, planning,
facilitating, supporting or engaging in the same serious criminal activities or
different ones; and
(c) whether or not the members also associate for other purposes.
Evidence
And while we are discarding due process and normal standard of evidence check this out. Not only do we have people being punished by the state in a manner that bypasses the courts. The evidence used as a basis for this decision is not publicly available.
(1) If the Attorney-General makes a declaration or decision under this Part, the
Attorney-General is not required to provide any grounds or reasons for the declaration
or decision (other than to a person conducting a review under Part 6 if that person so requests).
(2) No information provided by the Commissioner to the Attorney-General for the
purposes of this Part may be disclosed to any person (except to a person conducting a
review under Part 6 or a person to whom the Commissioner authorises its disclosure)
if the information is classified by the Commissioner as criminal intelligence.
And the media was complaining about Guantanamo bay for what reasons exactly…
Guilt Through Association.
This one is nasty. Consider there was a war on and a soldier decided to undertake a reprisal against a non combatant that was known to associate with enemy forces. The cry for them to be bought up on war crimes coming from the same media that is currently screaming for anyone who associates with bikers to be imprisoned for five years would be deafening. The logic of “person A is a known criminal, person B associates with person A therefore person B is a criminal” defies belief in this day and age. I don’t know if the social engineers in their attempts to save us from ourselves have short memories of not, but freedom of association is fundamental to western law and society.
Geneva Convention
To understand the cultural values and to see one of the fundamental documents where these principals are put down lets have a look at an important line in the fourth Geneva convention section( 1) paragraph (d)
(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.
To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
(d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.
Magna Carta
I know it is obsolete but lets have a look at section 39 the Magna Carta
No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.
Australian Constitution
Not a bloody lot I am afraid. As I have stated many times before “Liberty” is something Australians simply don’t get. They historically have not had the need to be protected from their own government and as they haven’t needed it they haven’t demanded it.
While Mr Rees and associates come riding to our rescue, we once again have no opposition. Perhaps people have forgotten, but the role of the opposition in a Westminster system is to oppose. To oppose means to call out all the problems with proposed laws.
The best our mob can do is resort to name calling and attempting to find fault with the sex lives of the government while not bothering to defending what most Aussies would consider the most basic of rights.
One day Australia someone will take away your personal freedoms and you won’t know what hit you. Although some would argue that day already occurred when you said a bloke could not go down to the local pub, have a beer, a cigarette and read the newspaper.
March 29 2009 | Law and Politics | 2 Comments »
My Take
With the Biker Laws that have hit my hot button it is worth going back and having a look at an earlier philosophical thread where I was trying to explore what Justice, the Law and Liberty was. It was essentially an exploration of how to avoid damage to Liberty while at the same time moving towards a state that offers protection from unnecessary bumps and bruises of life. In the course of that post I came up with the following principals against which it is interesting to view the current Anti Biker laws.
To revise the principals
(1) The Law is the will of the State.
(2) The Processes and Procedures of the Law themselves must be Legal
(3) The Principal of Justice is to Avoid Damage and Remediate Damage when it occurs
(4) It is the Law that the Law conform to the Principal of Justice.
(5) The Principal Of Liberty Is Freedom From Interference
(6) It is the Law that the Justness of damage to Liberty must be weighed equally by the Law with the Justness of damage to person, property and possessions.
Note: I have made item (6) more robust by inclusion of the words “It is the Law that”
The anti biker legislation is in fact a perfect example of what I was trying to get my mind around. In this situation the State is trying to avoid damage to it’s citizens. To be honest I wish that was true, but it seems to be more of a case of governments jumping on an opportunity created by fear and sensationalism coming from the media rather than an honest attempt at bettering things.
None the less if we assume that avoiding damage is what they are doing we can see their argument would be to create a situation in which the damage to the population under (3) is met which justifies their need for their Law.
Where we have problems is that if we assume that there are certain basic principals upon which the modern state is based such as Freedom of Association, Due Process, Standards of Evidence, The right of a fair trial amongst others. If we assume that it is indeed the Will of the State (1) that these principals be adhered to then a law that bypasses them puts us in a situation where the “Will of the State” contradicts the “Will of the State”. A situation that only a court can resolve I am afraid.
They are also severely damaging Liberty – the right to choose for yourself how you live your own life.
Without the principal of Liberty and the requirement that the damage to Liberty being weighed against the the damage to person property and possession you could easily find yourself in a situation where you could justify by-passing due process, standards of evidence, the right to a fair trial etc as being in the interest of justice. After all as a consequence of these laws the State can break up the Biker gangs and other groups we know but can not prove are committing crimes.
Surely that leads to a safer and hence more Just State….
March 29 2009 | Law | No Comments »
The Dangerous Free Ride
This one is a return to my philosophical posts and builds, or reiterates upon some concepts I discussed in Paradoxes Of Civilization. Like many of my posts it isn’t particularly politically correct, but then reality isn’t either. And like most of my philosophical posts, it is a long one.
Some Definitions
The concept of civilization leverage is the concept of civilization “A” obtaining a survival advantage or leverage from the existence of civilization “B”.
In terms of definitions, when I use the word “Civilized” I am referring to a society within which the principal of “Justice” once again according to my definition holds.
To review; the principal of Justice is essentially a “Do No Harm” philosophy. As stated it means a legal system within which the guiding principal is to “Avoid damage and remediate damage when it occurs.”
An important note here is that this is not some touchy feely new age Buddhist principal. It is a real hard cold economic reality that relates to the costs associated with a society incurring damage as related to another society within which less harm occurs.
That by the way does not mean that such “touchy feely” principles are wrong by the way. It is interesting that post enlightenment Western humanism combined with “Natural” or “Common” law has converged on the “Do No Harm” of the Hippocratic oath and “Do No Harm” philosophies that would normally be considered “Eastern”.
And like Eastern philosophies it is also an easy principal to get wrong as we in the nanny state have discovered. The relentless drive to “do no harm” trampling over the equally important concept of “Liberty” without which such philosophies would never exist.
With the definition of “Justice” we are able to see that the concept of being civilized is a relative term in which the damage incurred and caused by one group of people can be compared to another, allowing us to state that group “A” is more or less civilized than group “B”. It does not take much thought to notice that according to common usage more civilized places and peoples tend to have better justice systems.
One of the key benefits of civilization is that from the definition it means that less damage occurs within a group of relatively more civilized people than without. This means that there is a greater build up of economic resources and infrastructure with the more civilized than the less. In simple terms the more civilized spend less of their resources repairing damage and have a greater ability to invest in their own development.
Once you have your mind around this I think it is relatively easy to see that the build up of knowledge and infrastructure depends upon the level of civilization of a people which in turn creates problems driven by the build up of technology that the people need to respond to, further refining their civilization.
An Aside Into Arms
A further definition we need here is the concept of a “Force Multiplier”. For this I need to digress a little into that of Arms a little.
The term is not mine, but the definition I use is. It originally came up via consideration of how to compare two soldiers or two militaries mathematically. In simple terms you compare a naked unarmed mans capability when pitted against an equal equipped with some item under measurement. For example a single man equipped with a pair of boots has a force multiplier of 
compared to the same man without boots. being measured by the number of people without boots the guy with boots could defeat. A knife would be a greater multiplier, a gun more so. Training, comms and infrastructure grant even more multipliers eventually allowing a militaries capability to be expressed as
To the unenlightened this simply means to sum over all the men 
the capabilities of each man with respect to the mans ability with the multiplier 
in terms of a single troopers ability 
. Setting this to unity yields.
Force multipliers can be less than unity to become force divisors. For example carrying a gun with no ammo, bad morale, the habit of shooting your own men, bad leadership.
While I am on this digression this whole thing will end up looking like one of those sums of products things you played with at school
(
(
))
where you can group together various terms and pull out common factors enabling you to determine which of an enemies multipliers are shared across everything, which are local and hence what you should target to result in the greatest damage to their capability.
In the above you can see that knocking out 
and 
would have broader impact than 
unless of course is greater than .
In other words would you get bigger bang for your buck damaging transport, air power, or destroying ball bearing plants. It explains why training, logistics and infrastructure are important because they amplify the ability of just a bunch of men with guns.
If you want to play with that even further you will find that the whole thing breaks down into a graph where an army is broken down into divisions, brigades, platoons etc at each level of which the same force multipliers hold. You eventually end up with the capability of an army being the sum of the capabilities of all divisions which in turn is the sum of the brigades capabilities etc. Some multipliers come out at army level, some such as specialized training and morale down at squad level. This though is a whole different topic, but does enable army “A” to be pitted mathematically against Army “B” on paper.
You can see why engineering is pretty well mandatory in this day and age.
Back to the Topic
The reason for the importance of this digression is consideration not of the military, but of civilians. Lets go back to our definition of Justice and Civilization, but this time we will look at the damage a population group will cause. The rhetorical question is what happens when you provide force multipliers to a less civilized people?
For example the thug who likes to bully his neighbors with a stick has with the gift of an AK47 the ability to terrorize a whole district. The force multipliers increase the amount of damage the less civilized can cause. Once again going back to the definition this reduces the civilization level of those people as a consequence of the increase in damage.
And here is the problem. How did our uncivilized thug get the force multiplier of the AK47 without having to go through the social and moral development that allowed the development of the technology that produced the weapon in the first place.
The answer of course is he obtained leverage from some other more civilized population group.
The Gun Debate
It is also probably the crux behind the US gun debate that assumes falsely that because some people can safely own and bear weapons that all people can own and bear weapons without an increase in damage. It makes the assumption that all people are as civilized as each other and despite the cries of the bleeding heart “We are all created equal crowd” this simply is not true.
With this concept as background we have a far more concerning issue. What happens when a population’s ability to survive is enhanced because of the development of a neighboring peoples social, moral and technological capability.
As a basic example lets say the social moral and technological development of population “A” results in medicines, guns, transport etc being given to people “B” who increase in numbers. But the problems of people “B” that inhibited their ability to develop those same items in the first place are still with them. So now instead of 100,000 warlike uncivilized tribal people you have 1,000,000 warlike uncivilized tribal people armed with AK47′s.
As an interesting thought 1,000,000 illegal AK47′s are made each year and there are about 75,000,000 AK47′s available worldwide. Self correcting problem perhaps?
Charity An Issue
Western charity I am afraid is not good. Less civilized people can not just be handed the end result of social, moral and technological development without harming them. They need to find their own way, their own solutions to their own problems and tread their own path. They have to develop socially and morally in line with their technological development.
A concept people have a really hard time understanding is that if we in the West had left Africa alone disease would mean that today their population would be smaller, but that the available resources for schooling education and medicine per head of population would have been higher and today they would have been better educated, healthier and all in all better off. One wonders if we had kept our noses out of other peoples business whether the relationship between the West and Africa would be far more equitable today.
No I don’t like images of starving African babies. But I also shudder at the concept of millions of starving Africans in a century. For this one the concept I use is what I term the “Hours of Misery” simply put integrate the total number of hours of misery in a population over time using strategy “A” and compare it to strategy “B”. I don’t know about you, but to me a million starving people is a far greater problem than half a million.
So dear bleeding heart liberal I suggest you demonstrate that your politically correct feel good policy will not result in a much larger population of miserable people. From my view if you increase the total misery within a population then it is you who are being cruel, not I.
I don’t want to just hear the rhetoric either. Show me the math.
Was eradicating smallpox the right thing to do. Before you condemn me on this, you need to understand from your own history that the increase in resources per head of population following the Black Death was one of the key factors that jump started Western Enlightenment. All of a sudden the value of people increased, they could break from serfdom and sell their labor for more elsewhere. There were sufficient spare resources to fuel the scientific and cultural developments of the time and the churches power was significantly diminished.
Nuclear Concerns
The concept of civilization leverage is the crux behind Western concerns of nuclear weapons in the hands of nations who themselves did not go through the social, moral and technological advances of the enlightenment. The risk of nuclear weapons and advanced military capabilities in the hands of essentially tribal peoples correctly scares the West.
And all of this brings us back to the Paradox of Civilization where the civilized find it distressing to see the damage incurred by the uncivilized, but any attempts to short cut the process results in even more damage to the uncivilized, which itself is not a civilized thing to do.
The argument that it is not fair that one people have access to something and another people don’t resonates. You have to ask yourself why don’t they. Why can’t they farm. Why can’t they learn to rotate crops, why do they tolerate barbarism, why do they deny their daughters schooling, why do they resort to superstition.
Demographic changes, a longer term worry.
Another thing that worries me is migration patterns. Human populations are not constant entities. A common thought in the West is to look at the ruins of ancient civilizations and wonder how the people living there now ever built those monuments.
The answer is they didn’t. People move from one place to another. One people will build infrastructure and another people will migrate in. A fairly obvious trend is that people tend to migrate towards more civilized places and away from less civilized ones. The unsavory question is whether the decline and fall of civilization is related to changing demographics.
What was the population mix at the time of Romes fall. What happened to Aquitaine? Why is Alexandria no longer the worlds center of knowledge? What happened to Constantinople? What happened to the “spark” of civilization.
Of greater concern in the modern era what happens when over time you find that people move into an area containing the military infrastructure of a more civilized people.
Constantinople conquered Rome and used Roman roads to impose themselves on Europe for a millenia. Today our courts and presidents are sworn in holding a book of the oral history of the Judean’s while our own lore and history has been long forgotten.
What about US and Russian nuclear capability? As different people move into these countries bringing different values and culture with them does that increase or decrease the risk of nuclear war?
The fastest growing population group in the US are Hispanics. It would be quite reasonable to expect that in the years to come US politics will be dominated by the Hispanic population and South American issues will have a far higher place in US policy. Does that increase the risk that the US military will find itself involved in Latin American conflict driven by the realities of politics. Will it become attractive for a US president to side with one party or nation in South America in order to win over the US based Latin vote.
Or to be more brutally honest would you trust the nuclear arsenal of the US in the hands of a Latin American presidente. Even if you are South American, would you honestly trust your own politicians with the arsenal of the United States?
While I am on my soap box, the internet has been an interesting example. When I first met it, the primary users were academics. Hacking was a challenge, but not malicious. Then it spread. As it came into contact with a broader population base the range of crime and malicious activity exploded. The less civilized think this is great, whereas once they could have made life miserable for their town or local area, the internet provided them with leverage and the ability to damage anyone anywhere on the planet.
Just a thought.
Sic Em Rex.
February 01 2009 | Culture and Philosophy | 1 Comment »
The Path To “What Is Red”
For now I will close down this chain of thought but do need to put down some closing comments. Key amongst these is that I think the reason we are unable to solve the “Red” problem is very similar to the problem of finding the solution to
Which if you remember your math only has an imaginary solution.
continue reading »
December 28 2008 | Philosophy | No Comments »
Which One Is You
This post will probably be the last in the awareness thread for a while as I have hit a conceptual brick wall trying to work out a non circular qualitative description of such a simple thing such as red. None the less for now lets assume that somewhere between your ears is something that associates what you and I call “Red” to some form of nervous activity.
continue reading »
December 28 2008 | Philosophy | No Comments »
Why Not?
Should be the answer, but I will go a bit further. Humans like to believe that they are different to everything else and that their awareness somehow transcends the physical universe. This does give us a form of status. It makes us special in our own minds. Some would say legends in our own lunch times, but it also introduces severe problems with the laws of physics. In simple terms it violates conservation of energy and momentum to have this “external transcendence” interact with physical particles without an energy transfer. To have an external agency affect your thoughts or actions implies an energy transfer. So unless the laws of physics adapt themselves specially around you we have a situation where “Awareness” and thought are things that have a physical explanation. The question is where?
Another reason is from an artificial intelligence viewpoint. If we assume that we are physical creatures rather than metaphysical, the that thing we call awareness exists somewhere between our ears and as such can be modeled physically. If we can model it we can program it. To do that we need to know what “it” is.
Perhaps the best reason of all is that we don’t know what awareness is. It is virgin territory, the great unknown.
So why not.
December 24 2008 | Philosophy | No Comments »
How would you know if you lived in virtual reality?
This post follows on the thread on awareness that I have been playing with over recent weeks. Once again it is fairly philosophical. This time drawing in some concepts from the cyber punk world. Ideas you are probably familiar with from science fiction books and movies such as The Matrix, Neuromancer and the like.
What we are going to do is abstractly separate your brain with a very clean surgical knife from your body, and then see if you notice it.
continue reading »
December 24 2008 | Philosophy | No Comments »
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