Culture

Open Source Security

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about what the mainstream media could learn from Reflexive documentary filmmaking. Put simply, Reflexive Documentaries achieve a higher degree of objectivity by embracing and acknowledging their own biases and agenda. Ironically, by acknowledging their own subjectivity, these films are more objective and reliable. In a follow up post, I examined how this concept could be applied to a broader range of information dissemination processes. That post focused on computer security and how full disclosure of system vulnerabilities actually improves security in the long run. Ironically, public scrutiny is the only reliable way to improve security.

Full disclosure is certainly not perfect. By definition, it increases risk in the short term, which is why opponents are able to make persuasive arguments against it. Like all security, it is a matter of tradeoffs. Does the long term gain justify the short term risk? As I’m fond of saying, human beings don’t so much solve problems as they trade one set of disadvantages for another (with the hope that the new set isn’t quite as bad as the old). There is no solution here, only a less disadvantaged system.

Now I’d like to broaden the subject even further, and apply the concept of open security to national security. With respect to national security, the stakes are higher and thus the argument will be more difficult to sustain. If people are unwilling to deal with a few computer viruses in the short term in order to increase long term security, imagine how unwilling they’ll be to risk a terrorist attack, even if that risk ultimately closes a few security holes. This may be prudent, and it is quite possible that a secrecy approach is more necessary at the national security level. Secrecy is certainly a key component of intelligence and other similar aspects of national security, so open security techniques would definitely not be a good idea in those areas.

However, there are certain vulnerabilities in processes and systems we use that could perhaps benefit from open security. John Robb has been doing some excellent work describing how terrorists (or global guerillas, as he calls them) can organize a more effective campaign in Iraq. He postulates a Bazaar of violence, which takes its lessons from the open source programming community (using Eric Raymond’s essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar as a starting point):

The decentralized, and seemingly chaotic guerrilla war in Iraq demonstrates a pattern that will likely serve as a model for next generation terrorists. This pattern shows a level of learning, activity, and success similar to what we see in the open source software community. I call this pattern the bazaar. The bazaar solves the problem: how do small, potentially antagonistic networks combine to conduct war?

Not only does the bazaar solve the problem, it appears able to scale to disrupt larger, more stable targets. The bazaar essentially represents the evolution of terrorism as a technique into something more effective: a highly decentralized strategy that is nevertheless able to learn and innovate. Unlike traditional terrorism, it seeks to leverage gains from sabotaging infrastructure and disrupting markets. By focusing on such targets, the bazaar does not experience diminishing returns in the same way that traditional terrorism does. Once established, it creats a dynamic that is very difficult to disrupt.

I’m a little unclear as to what the purpose of the bazaar is – the goal appears to be a state of perpetual violence that is capable of keeping a nation in a position of failure/collapse. That our enemies seek to use this strategy in Iraq is obvious, but success essentially means perpetual failure. What I’m unclear on is how they seek to parlay this result into a successful state (which I assume is their long term goal – perhaps that is not a wise assumption).

In any case, reading about the bazaar can be pretty scary, especially when news from Iraq seems to correllate well with the strategy. Of course, not every attack in Iraq correllates, but this strategy is supposedly new and relatively dynamic. It is constantly improving on itself. They are improvising new tactics and learning from them in an effort to further define this new method of warfare.

As one of the commenters on his site notes, it is tempting to claim that John Robb’s analysis is essentially an instruction manual for a guerilla organization, but that misses the point. It’s better to know where we are vulnerable before we discover that some weakness is being exploited.

One thing that Robb is a little short on is actual, concrete ways with which to fight the bazaar (there are some, and he has pointed out situations where U.S. forces attempted to thwart bazaar tactics, but such examples are not frequent). However, he still provides a valuable service in exposing security vulnerabilities. It seems appropriate that we adopt open source security techniques in order to fight an enemy that employs an open source platform. Vulnerabilities need to be exposed so that we may devise effective counter-measures.

Open Security and Full Disclosure

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about what the mainstream media could learn from Reflexive documentary filmmaking. Put simply, Reflexive Documentaries achieve a higher degree of objectivity by embracing and acknowledging their own biases and agenda. Ironically, by acknowledging their own subjectivity, these films are more objective and reliable. I felt that the media could learn from such a model. Interestingly enough, such concepts can be applied to wider scenarios concerning information dissemination, particularly security.

Bruce Schneier has often written about such issues, and most of the information that follows is summarized from several of his articles, recent and old. The question with respect to computer security systems is this: Is publishing computer and network or software vulnerability information a good idea, or does it just help attackers?

When such a vulnerability exists, it creates what Schneier calls a Window of Exposure in which the vulnerability can still be exploited. This window exists until the vulnerability is patched and installed. There are five key phases which define the size of the window:

Phase 1 is before the vulnerability is discovered. The vulnerability exists, but no one can exploit it. Phase 2 is after the vulnerability is discovered, but before it is announced. At that point only a few people know about the vulnerability, but no one knows to defend against it. Depending on who knows what, this could either be an enormous risk or no risk at all. During this phase, news about the vulnerability spreads — either slowly, quickly, or not at all — depending on who discovered the vulnerability. Of course, multiple people can make the same discovery at different times, so this can get very complicated.

Phase 3 is after the vulnerability is announced. Maybe the announcement is made by the person who discovered the vulnerability in Phase 2, or maybe it is made by someone else who independently discovered the vulnerability later. At that point more people learn about the vulnerability, and the risk increases. In Phase 4, an automatic attack tool to exploit the vulnerability is published. Now the number of people who can exploit the vulnerability grows exponentially. Finally, the vendor issues a patch that closes the vulnerability, starting Phase 5. As people install the patch and re-secure their systems, the risk of exploit shrinks. Some people never install the patch, so there is always some risk. But it decays over time as systems are naturally upgraded.

The goal is to minimize the impact of the vulnerability by reducing the window of exposure (the area under the curve in figure 1). There are two basic approaches: secrecy and full disclosure.

The secrecy approach seeks to reduce the window of exposure by limiting public access to vulnerability information. In a different essay about network outages, Schneier gives a good summary of why secrecy doesn’t work well:

The argument that secrecy is good for security is naive, and always worth rebutting. Secrecy is only beneficial to security in limited circumstances, and certainly not with respect to vulnerability or reliability information. Secrets are fragile; once they’re lost they’re lost forever. Security that relies on secrecy is also fragile; once secrecy is lost there’s no way to recover security. Trying to base security on secrecy is just plain bad design.

… Secrecy prevents people from assessing their own risks.

Secrecy may work on paper, but in practice, keeping vulnerabilities secret removes motivation to fix the problem (it is possible that a company could utilize secrecy well, but it is unlikely that all companies would do so and it would be foolish to rely on such competency). The other method of reducing the window of exposure is to disclose all information about the vulnerablity publicly. Full Disclosure, as this method is called, seems counterintuitive, but Schneier explains:

Proponents of secrecy ignore the security value of openness: public scrutiny is the only reliable way to improve security. Before software bugs were routinely published, software companies routinely denied their existence and wouldn’t bother fixing them, believing in the security of secrecy.

Ironically, publishing details about vulnerabilities leads to a more secure system. Of course, this isn’t perfect. Obviously publishing vulnerabilities constitutes a short term danger, and can sometimes do more harm than good. But the alternative, secrecy, is worse. As Schneier is fond of saying, security is about tradeoffs. As I’m fond of saying, human beings don’t so much solve problems as they trade one set of disadvantages for another (with the hope that the new set isn’t quite as bad as the old). There is no solution here, only a less disadvantaged system.

This is what makes advocating open security systems like full disclosure difficult. Opponents will always be able to point to its flaws, and secrecy advocates are good at exploiting the intuitive (but not necessarily correct) nature of their systems. Open security systems are just counter-intuitive, and there is a tendency to not want to increase risk in the short term (as things like full disclosure does). Unfortunately, that means that the long term danger increases, as there is less incentive to fix security problems.

By the way, Schneier has started a blog. It appears to be made up of the same content that he normally releases monthly in the Crypto-Gram newsletter, but spread out over time. I think it will be interesting to see if Schneier starts responding to events in a more timely fashion, as that is one of the keys to the success of blogs (and it’s something that I’m bad at, unless news breaks on a Sunday).

Monkey Research Squad Strikes Again

Culture / /

My crack squad of monkey researchers comes through again with a few interesting links:

  • Blogs, Media, and Business Strategy: David Foster draws parallels between business strategy, media bias, and blogs:

    The authors argue that disruptive innovations–those destined to change the structure of an industry–tend to attack from below. They usually first appear in a form that is in some ways inferior to the existing dominant technologies, and hence are unlikely to get the attention or respect of industry incumbents. They provide examples in industries ranging from steel to semiconductors. In steel, for instance, the challenger technology was “mini-mills” using electric arc furnaces to melt scrap. At first, the steel produced in these mills wasn’t as good as the steel produced with the incumbent technology, the gigantic integrated steel plants, so they focused on an unglamorous and relatively low-margin market: reinforcing bar (rebar). Big-steel executives could afford to disregard the mini-mills and to focus on higher-end business.

    I would bet that the comments made by some big-steel execs about their mini-mill counterparts were quite similar in tone to the comment recently made by a CBS exec about bloggers in their pajamas.

  • Andy Cline and Jay Manifold announce a new joint venture called 411blog.net, a resource whereby “a symbiotic relationship between blogging and traditional forms of journalism can be deliberately cultivated.”
  • Belmont Club has some excellent information regarding how the process of mapping social networks and understanding their properties can be used to take down terrorist networks.
  • Kevin Murphy notes the surprising similarities between musicals and action movies.

A Reflexive Media

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“To write or to speak is almost inevitably to lie a little. It is an attempt to clothe an intangible in a tangible form; to compress an immeasurable into a mold. And in the act of compression, how the Truth is mangled and torn!”

– Anne Murrow Lindbergh

There are many types of documentary films. The most common form of documentary is referred to as Direct Address (aka Voice of God). In such a documentary, the viewer is directly acknowledged, usually through narration and voice-overs. There is very little ambiguity and it is pretty obvious how you’re expected to interpret these types of films. Many television and news programs use this style, to varying degrees of success. Ken Burns’ infamous Civil War and Baseball series use this format eloquently, but most traditional propaganda films also fall into this category (a small caveat: most films are hybrids, rarely falling exclusively into one category). Such films give the illusion of being an invisible witness to certain events and are thus very persuasive and powerful.

The problem with Direct Address documentaries is that they grew out of a belief that Truth is knowable through objective facts. In a recent sermon he posted on the web, Donald Sensing spoke of the difference between facts and the Truth:

Truth and fact are not the same thing. We need only observe the presidential race to discern that. John Kerry and allies say that the results of America’s war against Iraq is mostly a failure while George Bush and allies say they are mostly success. Both sides have the same facts, but both arrive at a different “truth.”

People rarely fight over facts. What they argue about is what the facts mean, what is the Truth the facts indicate.

I’m not sure Sensing chose the best example here, but the concept itself is sound. Any documentary is biased in the Truth that it presents, even if the facts are undisputed. In a sense objectivity is impossible, which is why documentary scholar Bill Nichols admires films which seek to contextualize themselves, exposing their limitations and biases to the audience.

Reflexive Documentaries use many devices to acknowledge the filmmaker’s presence, perspective, and selectivity in constructing the film. It is thought that films like this are much more honest about their subjectivity, and thus provide a much greater service to the audience.

An excellent example of a Reflexive documentary is Errol Morris’ brilliant film, The Thin Blue Line. The film examines the “truth” around the murder of a Dallas policeman. The use of colored lighting throughout the film eventually correlates with who is innocent or guilty, and Morris is also quite manipulative through his use of editing – deconstructing and reconstructing the case to demonstrate just how problematic finding the truth can be. His use of framing calls attention to itself, daring the audience to question the intents of the filmmakers. The use of interviews in conjunction with editing is carefully structured to demonstrate the subjectivity of the film and its subjects. As you watch the movie, it becomes quite clear that Morris is toying with you, the viewer, and that he wants you to be critical of the “truth” he is presenting.

Ironically, a documentary becomes more objective when it acknowledges its own biases and agenda. In other words, a documentary becomes more objective when it admits its own subjectivity. There are many other forms of documentary not covered here (i.e. direct cinema/cinema verité, interview-based, performative, mock-documentaries, etc… most of which mesh together as they did in Morris’ Blue Line to form a hybrid).

In Bill Nichols’ seminal essay, Voice of Documentary (Can’t seem to find a version online), he says:

“Documentary filmmakers have a responsibility not to be objective. Objectivity is a concept borrowed from the natural sciences and from journalism, with little place in the social sciences or documentary film.”

I always found it funny that Nichols equates the natural sciences with journalism, as it seems to me that modern journalism is much more like a documentary than a natural science. As such, I think the lessons of Reflexive documentaries (and its counterparts) should apply to the realm of journalism.

The media emphatically does not acknowledge their biases. By bias, I don’t mean anything as short-sighted as liberal or conservative media bias, I mean structural bias of which political orientation is but a small part (that link contains an excellent essay on the nature of media bias, one that I find presents a more complete picture and is much more useful than the tired old ideological bias we always hear so much about*). Such subjectivity does exist in journalism, yet the media stubbornly persists in their firm belief that they are presenting the objective truth.

The recent CBS scandal, consisting of a story bolstered by what appear to be obviously forged documents, provides us with an immediate example. Terry Teachout makes this observation regarding how few prominent people are willing to admit that they are wrong:

I was thinking today about how so few public figures are willing to admit (for attribution, anyway) that they’ve done something wrong, no matter how minor. But I wasn’t thinking of politicians, or even of Dan Rather. A half-remembered quote had flashed unexpectedly through my mind, and thirty seconds’ worth of Web surfing produced this paragraph from an editorial in a magazine called World War II:

Soon after he had completed his epic 140-mile march with his staff from Wuntho, Burma, to safety in India, an unhappy Lieutenant General Joseph W. Stilwell was asked by a reporter to explain the performance of Allied armies in Burma and give his impressions of the recently concluded campaign. Never one to mince words, the peppery general responded: “I claim we took a hell of a beating. We got run out of Burma and it is as humiliating as hell. I think we ought to find out what caused it, and go back and retake it.”

Stilwell spoke those words sixty-two years ago. When was the last time that such candor was heard in like circumstances? What would happen today if similar words were spoken by some equally well-known person who’d stepped in it up to his eyebrows?

As he points out later in his post, I don’t think we’re going to be seeing such admissions any time soon. Again, CBS provides a good example. Rather than admit the possibility that they may be wrong, their response to the criticisms of their sources has been vague, dismissive, and entirely reliant on their reputation as a trustworthy staple of journalism. They have not yet comprehensively responded to any of the numerous questions about the documents; questions which range from “conflicting military terminology to different word-processing techniques”. It appears their strategy is to escape the kill zone by focusing on the “truth” of their story, that Bush’s service in the Air National Guard was less than satisfactory. They won’t admit that the documents are forgeries, and by focusing on the arguably important story, they seek to distract the issue away from their any discussion of their own wrongdoing – in effect claiming that the documents aren’t important because the story is “true” anyway.

Should they admit they were wrong? Of course they should, but they probably won’t. If they won’t, it will not be because they think the story is right, and not because they think the documents are genuine. They won’t admit wrongdoing and they won’t correct their methodologies or policies because to do so would be to acknowledge to the public that they are less than just an objective purveyor of truth.

Yet I would argue that they should do so, that it is their duty to do so just as it is the documentarian’s responsibility to acknowledge their limitations and agenda to their audience.

It is also interesting to note that weblogs contrast the media by doing just that. Glenn Reynolds notes that the internet is a low-trust medium, which paradoxically indicates that it is more trustworthy than the media (because blogs and the like acknowledge their bias and agenda, admit when they’re wrong, and correct their mistakes):

The Internet, on the other hand, is a low-trust environment. Ironically, that probably makes it more trustworthy.

That’s because, while arguments from authority are hard on the Internet, substantiating arguments is easy, thanks to the miracle of hyperlinks. And, where things aren’t linkable, you can post actual images. You can spell out your thinking, and you can back it up with lots of facts, which people then (thanks to Google, et al.) find it easy to check. And the links mean that you can do that without cluttering up your narrative too much, usually, something that’s impossible on TV and nearly so in a newspaper.

(This is actually a lot like the world lawyers live in — nobody trusts us enough to take our word for, well, much of anything, so we back things up with lots of footnotes, citations, and exhibits. Legal citation systems are even like a primitive form of hypertext, really, one that’s been around for six or eight hundred years. But I digress — except that this perhaps explains why so many lawyers take naturally to blogging).

You can also refine your arguments, updating — and even abandoning them — in realtime as new facts or arguments appear. It’s part of the deal.

This also means admitting when you’re wrong. And that’s another difference. When you’re a blogger, you present ideas and arguments, and see how they do. You have a reputation, and it matters, but the reputation is for playing it straight with the facts you present, not necessarily the conclusions you reach.

The mainstream media as we know it is on the decline. They will no longer be able to get by on their brand or their reputations alone. The collective intelligence of the internet, combined with the natural reflexiveness of its environment, has already provided a challenge to the underpinnings of journalism. On the internet, the dominance of the media is constantly challenged by individuals who question the “truth” presented to them in the media. I do not think that blogs have the power to eclipse the media, but their influence is unmistakable. The only question that remains is if the media will rise to the challenge. If the way CBS has reacted is any indication, then, sadly, we still have a long way to go.

* Yes, I do realize the irony of posting this just after I posted about liberal and conservative tendencies in online debating, and I hinted at that with my “Update” in that post.


Thanks to Jay Manifold for the excellent Structural Bias of Journalism link.

Benjamin Franklin: American, Blogger & LIAR!

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I’ve been reading a biography of Benjamin Franklin (Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson), and several things have struck me about the way in which he conducted himself. As with a lot of historical figures, there is a certain aura that surrounds the man which is seen as impenetrable today, but it’s interesting to read about how he was perceived in his time and contrast that with how he would be perceived today. As usual, there is a certain limit to the usefulness of such speculation, as it necessarily must be based on certain assumptions that may or may not be true (as such this post might end up saying more about me and my assumptions than Franklin!). In any case, I find such exercises interesting, so I’d like to make a few observations.

The first is that he would have probably made a spectacular blogger, if he chose to engage in such an activity (Ken thinks he would definitely be a blogger, but I’m not so sure). He not only has all the makings of a wonderful blogger, I think he’d be extremely creative with the format. He was something of a populist, his writing was humorous, self-deprecating, and often quite profound at the same time. His range of knowledge and interest was wide, and his tone was often quite congenial. All qualities valued in any blogger.

He was incredibly prolific (another necessity for a successful blog), and often wrote the letters to his paper himself under assumed names, and structured them in such a way as to gently deride his competitors while making some other interesting point. For instance, Franklin once published two letters, written under two different pseudonyms, in which he manufactured the first recorded abortion debate in America – not because of any strong feelings on the issue, but because he knew it would sell newspapers and because his competitor was serializing entries from an encyclopedia at the time and had started with “Abortion.” Thus the two letters were not only interesting in themselves, but also provided ample opportunity to impugn his competitor.

On thing I think we’d see in a Franklin blog is entire comment threads consisting of a full back-and-forth debate, with all entries written by Franklin himself under assumed names. I can imagine him working around other “real” commenters with his own pseudonyms, and otherwise having fun with the format (he’d almost certainly make a spectacular troll as well).

If there was ever a man who could make a living out of blogging, I think Franklin was it. This is, in part, why I’m not sure he’d truly end up as a pure blogger, as even in his day, Franklin was known to mix private interests with public ones, and to leverage both to further his business interests. He could certainly have organized something akin to The Junto on the internet, where a group of likeminded fellows got together (whether it be physically or virtually over the internet) and discussed issues of the day and also endeavored to form a vehicle for the furtherance of their own careers.

Then again, perhaps Franklin would simply have started his own newspaper and had nothing to do with blogging (or perhaps he would attempt to mix the two in some new way). The only problem would be that the types of satire and hoaxes he could get away with in his newspapers in the early 18th century would not really be possible in today’s atmosphere (such playfulness has long ago left the medium, but is alive and well in the blogosphere, which is one thing that would tend to favor his participation).

Which brings me to my next point: I have to wonder how Franklin would have done in today’s political climate. Would he have been able to achieve political prominence? Would he want to? Would his anonymous letters, hoaxes, and in his newspapers have gotten him into trouble? I can imagine the self-righteous indignation now: “His newspaper is a farce! He’s a LIAR!” And the Junto? I don’t even want to think of the conspiracy theories that could be conjured with that sort of thing in mind.

One thing Franklin was exceptionally good at was managing his personal image, but would he be able to do so in today’s atmosphere? I suspect he would have done well in our time, but I don’t know how politically active he would be (and I suppose there is something to be said about his participation being partly influenced by the fact that he was a part of a revolution, not a true politician of the kind we have today). I know the basic story of his life, but I haven’t gotten that far in the book, so perhaps I should revisit this subject later. And thus ends my probably inaccurate, but interesting nonetheless, discussion of Franklin in our times. Expect more references to Franklin in the future, as I have been struck by quite a few things about his life that are worth discussing today.

Functional Chauvinism

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Respecting Other Talents: David Foster writes about the dangers of “Functional Chauvinism”:

A person typically spends his early career in a particular function, and interacts mainly with others in that function. And there is often an unwholesome kind of functional “patriotism” which goes beyond pride in one’s own work and disparages the work done by others (“we could get this software written if those marketing idiots would just stop bothering us.”)

An excellent post (and typical of the work over at Photon Courier), Foster focuses on the impacts to the business world, but I remember this sort of thing being prevalent in college. I was an engineer, but I naturally had to take on a number of humanities courses in addition to my technical workload. Functional chauvinism came from both students and professors, but the people who stood out were those who avoided this pitfall and made an effort to understand and respect functional differences.

For instance, many of my fellow engineering students were pissed that they even had to take said humanities courses. After all, they were paying an exorbanent amount of money to be educated in advanced technical issues, not what some Greek guy thought 2 millennia ago (personally, I found those subjects interesting and appreciated the chance for an easy A – ok, there’s a bit of chauvinism there too, but I at least respected the general idea that humanities were important).

On the other hand, there were professors who were so absorbed in their area of study that they could not conceive of a student not being spellbound and utterly fascinated by whatever they taught. For someone majoring in philosophy, that’s fine, but for an engineer who considers their technical courses to be their priority, it becomes a little different. I got lucky, in that several of professors actually took into account what major their students were. Often a class would be filled with engineers or hard science majors, and these classes were made more relevant and rewarding because the professors took that into account when teaching. Other professors were not so considerate.

It is certainly understandable to have such feelings, and to a point there’s no real harm done, but it can’t hurt to take a closer look at what other people do either. As Foster concludes, “Respect for talents other than one’s own. A key element of individual and organizational success.” Indeed.

Miscellany

Culture / /

Checking in with my chain smoking monkey research staff, here are a few interesting links they’ve dug up:

  • Baghdad Journal, Part 13: You knew this was coming – yet another in the long series of articles by artist Steve Mumford about Iraq on the ground. This one focuses a little on the law enforcement situation, including the training of Iraqi police and National Guard, and prisons. Interesting stuff, as always. If you are not familiar with Mumford’s work, I suggest you take a look at all of his previous columns. Highly recommended.
  • Alien vs. Predator: Something about this list where Aliens and Predators compete in unlikely events like breakdancing (which logically goes to Alien) and Macram� (wich is totally a Predator dominated event) just feels right. Perhaps it’s because of the Olympics.
  • Cinematic Supervillain Showdown: Along the same lines, inspired by AvP, Matthew Baldwin made up a list pitting other cinematic villains against one another, March Madness style. Funniest matchups: Sauron vs. Ferris Bueller’s Principal and Hannibal Lecter vs. Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. Kottke has a few interesting matchup ideas as well. As with any such list, there are notable absences, and I won’t stoop to the level of feigning shocked disappointment that one of my favorites isn’t included… Allright, I lied, where the hell is Boba Fett?!
  • Grand List of Overused Science Fiction Clich�s: This list of overused plot-points has a two pronged effect: Makes it that much more difficult to write a story, and it makes you genuinely appreciate when a story such as, perhaps, this one, whose concept is certainly overused, but studiously avoids any clich�s. [via The Ministry of Minor Perfidy]
  • 2004 Olympics: Speaking of those perfidious folks, Johno has a great post about the Olympics:

    Olympic badminton is scary. That wussy little shuttlecock and flimsy little racquet in the hands of experts become weapons of fearsome power. Last night in a doubles match I watched a short little American guy with a 35-inch (!) vertical leap whip off a kill that must have been going 85 MPH when the shuttlecock hit the court. Unbelievable. More unbelievable is that they got taken apart by a Norwegian team who played like implacable machines.

    Very true. And yes, those lady gymnasts do “need to eat some cake.” I’d also like to mention how astounding their routines are. I never really paid much attention to it before, but I now realize that I’m not sure I can even walk across the balance beam and that these people are truly amazing individuals.

That’s all for now. More later.

With great freedom, comes great responsibility…

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David Foster recently wrote about a letter to the New York Times which echoed sentiments regarding Iraq that appear to be commonplace in certain circles:

While we have removed a murderous dictator, we have left the Iraqi people with a whole new set of problems they never had to face before…

I’ve often written about the tradeoffs inherent in solving problems, and the invasion of Iraq is no exception. Let us pretend for a moment that everything that happened in Iraq over the last year went exactly as planned. Even in that best case scenario, the Iraqis would be facing “a whole new set of problems they never had to face before.” There was no action that could have been taken regarding Iraq (and this includes inaction) that would have resulted in an ideal situation. We weren’t really seeking to solve the problems of Iraq, so much as we were exchanging one set of problems for another.

Yes, the Iraqis are facing new problems they have never had to face before, but the point is that the new problems are more favorable than the old problems. The biggest problem they are facing is, in short, freedom. Freedom is an odd thing, and right now, halfway across the world, the Iraqis are finding that out for themselves. Freedom brings great benefits, but also great responsibility. Freedom allows you to express yourself without fear of retribution, but it also allows those you hate to express things that make your blood boil. Freedom means you have to acknowledge their views, no matter how repulsive or disgusting you may find them (there are limits, of course, but that is another subject). That isn’t easy.

A little while ago, Steven Den Beste wrote about Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union:

About 1980 (I don’t remember exactly) there was a period in which the USSR permitted huge numbers of Jews to leave and move to Israel. A lot of them got off the jet in Tel Aviv and instantly boarded another one bound for New York, and ended up here.

For most of them, our society was quite a shock. They were free; they were out of the cage. But with freedom came responsibility. The State didn’t tell them what to do, but the State also didn’t look out for them.

The State didn’t prevent them from doing what they wanted, but the State also didn’t prevent them from screwing up royally. One of the freedoms they discovered they had was the freedom to starve.

There are a lot of people who ended up in the U.S. because they were fleeing oppression, and when they got here, they were confronted with “a whole new set of problems they never had to face before.” Most of them were able to adapt to the challenges of freedom and prosper, but don’t confuse prosperity with utopia. These people did not solve their problems, they traded them for a set of new problems. For most of them, the problems associated with freedom were more favorable than the problems they were trying to escape from. For some, the adjustment just wasn’t possible, and they returned to their homes.

Defecting North Koreans face a host of challenges upon their arrival in South Korea (if they can make it that far), including the standard freedom related problems: “In North Korea, the state allocates everything from food to jobs. Here, having to do their own shopping, banking or even eating at a food court can be a trying experience.” The differences between North Korea and South Korea are so vast that many defectors cannot adapt, despite generous financial aid, job training and other assistance from civic and religious groups. Only about half of the defectors are able to wrangle jobs, but even then, it’s hard to say that they’ve prospered. But at the same time, are their difficulties now worse than their previous difficulties? Moon Hee, a defector who is having difficulties adjusting, comments: “The present, while difficult, is still better than the past when I did not even know if there would be food for my next meal.”

There is something almost paradoxical about freedom. You see, it isn’t free. Yes, freedom brings benefits, but you must pay the price. If you want to live in a free country, you have to put up with everyone else being free too, and that’s harder than it sounds. In a sense, we aren’t really free, because the freedom we live with and aspire to is a limiting force.

On the subject of Heaven, Saint Augustine once wrote:

The souls in bliss will still possess the freedom of will, though sin will have no power to tempt them. They will be more free than ever–so free, in fact, from all delight in sinning as to find, in not sinning, an unfailing source of joy. …in eternity, freedom is that more potent freedom which makes all sin impossible. – Saint Augustine, City of God (Book XXII, Chapter 30)

Augustine’s concept of a totally free will is seemingly contradictory. For him, freedom, True Freedom, is doing the right thing all the time (I’m vastly simplifying here, but you get the point). Outside of Heaven, however, doing the right thing, as we all know, isn’t easy. Just ask Spider-Man.

I never really read the comics, but in the movies (which appear to be true to their source material) Spider-Man is all about the conflict between responsibilities and desires. Matthew Yglesias is actually upset with the second film because is has a happy ending:

Being the good guy — doing the right thing — really sucks, because doing the right thing doesn’t just mean avoiding wrongdoing, it means taking affirmative action to prevent it. There’s no time left for Peter’s life, and his life is miserable. Virtue is not its own reward, it’s virtue, the rewards go to the less consciencious. There’s no implication that it’s all worthwhile because God will make it right in the End Times, the life of the good guy is a bleak one. It’s an interesting (and, I think, a correct) view and it’s certainly one that deserves a skilled dramatization, which is what the film gives you right up until the very end. But then — ta da! — it turns out that everyone does get to be happy after all. A huge letdown.

Of course, plenty of people have noted that the Spider-Man story doesn’t end with the second movie, and that the third is bound to be filled with the complications of superhero dating (which are not limited to Spider-Man).

Spider-Man grapples with who he is. He has gained all sorts of powers, and with those powers, he has also gained a certain freedom. It could be very liberating, but as the saying goes: With great power comes great responsibility. He is not obligated to use his powers for good or at all, but he does. However, for a good portion of the second film he shirks his duties because a life of pure duty has totally ruined his personal life. This is that conflict between responsibilities and desires I mentioned earlier. It turns out that there are limits to Spider-Man’s altruism.

For Spider-Man, it is all about tradeoffs, though he may have learned it the hard way. First he took on too much responsibility, and then too little. Will he ever strike a delicate balance? Will we? For we are all, in a manner of speaking, Spider-Man. We all grapple with similar conflicts, though they manifest in our lives with somewhat less drama. Balancing your personal life with your professional life isn’t as exciting, but it can be quite challenging for some.

And so the people of Iraq are facing new challenges; problems they have never had to face before. Like Spider-Man, they’re going to have to deal with their newfound responsibilites and find a way to balance them with their desires. Freedom isn’t easy, and if they really want it, they’ll need to do more than just avoid problems, they’ll have to actively solve them. Or, rather, trade one set of problems for another. Because with great freedom, comes great responsibility.

A Specific Culture

2 Comments / Culture / /

In thinking of the issues discussed in my last post, I remembered this Neal Stephenson quote from In the Beginning Was the Command Line:

The only real problem is that anyone who has no culture, other than this global monoculture, is completely screwed. Anyone who grows up watching TV, never sees any religion or philosophy, is raised in an atmosphere of moral relativism, learns about civics from watching bimbo eruptions on network TV news, and attends a university where postmodernists vie to outdo each other in demolishing traditional notions of truth and quality, is going to come out into the world as one pretty feckless human being. And–again–perhaps the goal of all this is to make us feckless so we won’t nuke each other.

On the other hand, if you are raised within some specific culture, you end up with a basic set of tools that you can use to think about and understand the world. You might use those tools to reject the culture you were raised in, but at least you’ve got some tools.

[emphasis added] It is true that one of the things that religion gives us is a specific way of looking at and understanding the world. Further, it gives people a certain sense of belonging that is so important to us as social beings. Even if someone ends up rejecting the tenets of their faith, they have benefitted from the sense of community and gained a certain way of looking at the world that won’t entirely go away.

Religion isn’t as comforting as it seems

16 Comments / Best Entries, Culture / /

Steven Den Beste is an athiest, yet he is unlike any athiest I have ever met in that he seems to understand theists (in the general sense of the term) and doesn’t hold their beliefs against them. As such, I have gained an immense amount of respect for him and his beliefs. He speaks with conviction about his beliefs, but he is not evangelistic.

In his latest post, he aks one of the great unanswerable questions: What am I? I won’t pretend to have any of the answers, but I do object to one thing he said. It is a belief that is common among athiests (though theists are little better):

Is a virus alive? I don’t know. Is a hive mind intelligent? I don’t know. Is there actually an identifiable self with continuity of existence which is typing these words? I really don’t know. How much would that self have to change before we decide that the continuity has been disrupted? I think I don’t want to find out.

Most of those kinds of questions either become moot or are easily answered within the context of standard religions. Those questions are uniquely troubling only for those of us who believe that life and intelligence are emergent properties of certain blobs of mass which are built in certain ways and which operate in certain kinds of environments. We might be forced to accept that identity is just as mythical as the soul. We might be deluding ourselves into thinking that identity is real because we want it to be true.

[Emphasis added] The idea that these types of unanswerable questions is not troubling or easy to answer to a believer is a common one, but I also believe it to be false. Religion is no more comforting than any other system of beliefs, including athiesm. Religion does provide a vocabulary for the unanswerable, but all that does is help us grapple with the questions – it doesn’t solve anything and I don’t think it is any more comforting. I believe in God, but if you asked me what God really is, I wouldn’t be able to give you a definitive answer. Actually, I might be able to do that, but “God is a mystery” is hardly comforting or all that useful.

Elsewhere in the essay, he refers to the Christian belief in the soul:

To a Christian, life and self are ultimately embodied in a person’s soul. Death is when the soul separates from the body, and that which makes up the essence of a person is embodied in the soul (as it were).

He goes on to list some conundrums that would be troubling to the believer but they all touch on the most troubling thing – what the heck is the soul in the first place? Trying to answer that is no more comforting to a theist than trying to answer the questions he’s asking himself. The only real difference is a matter of vocabulary. All religion has done is shifted the focus of the question.

Den Beste goes on to say that there are many ways in which atheism is cold and unreassuring, but fails to recognize the ways in which religion is cold and unreassuring. For instance, there is no satisfactory theodicy that I have ever seen, and I’ve spent a lot of time studying such things (16 years of Catholic schooling baby!) A theodicy is essentially an attempt to reconcile God’s existance with the existance of evil. Why does God allow evil to exist? Again, there is no satisfactory answer to that question, not the least of which because there is no satisfactory definition of both God and evil!

Now, theists often view athiests in a similar manner. While Den Beste laments the cold and unreassuring aspects of athiesm, a believer almost sees the reverse. To some believers, if you remove God from the picture, you also remove all concept of morality and responsibility. Yet, that is not the case, and Den Beste provides an excellent example of a morally responsible athiest. The grass is greener on the other side, as they say.

All of this is generally speaking, of course. Not all religions are the same, and some are more restrictive and closed-minded than others. I suppose it can be a matter of degrees, with one religion or individual being more open minded than the other, but I don’t really know of any objective way to measure that sort of thing. I know that there are some believers who aren’t troubled by such questions and proclaim their beliefs in blind faith, but I don’t count myself among them, nor do I think it is something that is inherent in religion (perhaps it is inherent in some religions, but even then, religion does not exist in a vacuum and must be reconciled with the rest of the world).

Part of my trouble with this may be that I seem to have the ability to switch mental models rather easily, viewing a problem from a number of different perspectives and attempting to figure out the best way to approach a problem. I seem to be able to reconcile my various perspectives with each other as well (for example, I seem to have no problem reconciling science and religion with each other), though the boundries are blurry and I can sometimes come up with contradictory conclusions. This is in itself somewhat troubling, but at the same time, it is also somwhat of an advantage that I can approach a problem in a number of different ways. The trick is knowing which approach to use for which problem; hardly an easy proposition. Furthermore, I gather that I am somewhat odd in this ability, at least among believers. I used to debate religion a lot on the internet, and after a time, many refused to think of me as a Catholic because I didn’t seem to align with others’ perception of what Catholics are. I always found that rather amusing, though I guess I can understand the sentiment.

Unlike Den Beste, I do harbor some doubt in my beliefs, mainly because I recognize them as beliefs. They are not facts and I must concede the idea that my beliefs are incorrect. Like all sets of beliefs, there is an aspect of my beliefs that is very troubling and uncomforting, and there is a price we all pay for believing what we believe. And yet, believe we must. If we required our beliefs to be facts in order to act, we would do nothing. The value we receive from our beliefs outweighs the price we pay, or so we hope…

I suppose this could be seen by Steven to be missing the forest for the trees, but the reason I posted it is because the issue of beliefs discussed above fits nicely with several recent posts I made under the guise of Superstition and Security Beliefs (and Heuristics). They might provide a little more detail on the way I think regarding these subjects.