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When does 1/2 and 1/2 equal 1/4?

Watching the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour a while back, I saw two members of the Senate Intelligence Committee talking about the report they completed regarding intelligence failures relating to the war in Iraq. They claimed part of the culprit was a groupthink mentality where everyone viewed the evidence with a predisposed conclusion that weapons of mass destruction must exist in Iraq. My immediate reaction was how 1984-ish the term "groupthink" is and whether or not I should just tune out the report altogether.

But then I listened a little more and was surprised at what was said. Apparently all the reports about unmanned vehicles spraying deadly chemicals or reconstituted nuclear arms programs or mobile biological weapons factories were tagged with caveats that were ignored to reach the conclusion that Iraq must be doing something bad. In other words, there was a possibility -- or better yet a probability -- that there were no unmanned vehicles or nuclear bombs and the like.

And finally the reasoning and logical part of my brain kicked in. If there were warnings that these reports could be false, then the probability of them all being true is less than any one of them being true. Remember probability? So take two bins, each with half red and half blue socks. You take a sock from one, then a sock from the other. The probability of picking two red socks is... 25% since it's 50% for each bin, then you multiply the two together to get 25%. In other words, it's less likely you'll draw two red socks when you combine the probabilities.

Replace my above example with "true" for "red" and "false" for "blue." So the reports of Iraq's weapon stockpiles were possibly true or possible false, then the likelihood that all of the reports were true is less than the probability of any one being true. This triviality of mathematics didn't stop the government from presenting all of this evidence to the United Nations as fact and reason for war. Nor did I see any other nation call the U.S. this. I suppose there weren't any math majors as analysts in either the U.S. or any other countries.

All you conspiracy theorists need to take some math lessons too. Recent scares are building up to the moment when a world government will form and stamp out all freedoms? Chemicals in the water and subliminal messages on TV keep us subdued and pacified? Tin foil hats can reflect electromagnetic waves that aliens send down to brainwash us? That's about as likely as frozen Walt Disney driving around America with Spuds MacKenzie and zombie Ronald Reagan running people down in their '68 Cadillac Eldorado convertible.

We as humans somehow buy into these conspiracies. Magic bullets, the Illuminati, Santa Claus -- they're exciting compared to the dullness of reality. We're willing to suspend our disbelief even if a situation is completely improbable. We're creatures of suspicion; the simpler an explanation is for a situation, the less likely it's the real answer.

Rather than plea to simple reason, we argue from fear, misunderstanding, and complexity. We've been doing this for ages, holding on to ideas that we laugh at today -- that the sun revolved around the earth; UFOs crashed in the desert and were taken to Area 51; that Bert and Ernie are gay.

It's harder to accept a simpler explanation due to pressures at the time keeping those explanations as the "truth" -- because the earth was created by God and therefore must be at the center of the universe; that the government would obviously cover up the alien landings with a blanket of lies; two men who share a bed for decades (yet miraculously stay the same age) must be gay.

The reality of the situation may be boring, but at least we're more sure of this than the previous theories -- the earth revolves around the sun; a high altitude weather balloon crashed in the desert; Bert is a figment of Ernie's imagination like that character Brad Pitt played in Fight Club.

Besides the human instinct to believe the unbelievable, two other related culprits at work here. The first is an error of selective judgement where, given a set of facts and observations, you come to a conclusion that is isn't supported by those facts and observations. You can omit parts of your observations when coming to this conclusion, but the error is entirely in your reasoning about those observations rather than the observations themselves. You know, like how O.J. Simpson got off for murdering his wife. Of course he did it. All the evidence pointed to him. The gloves were "too small?" Yeah, right. The only person who didn't know that O.J. did it was... well... who didn't believe that O.J did it? I rest my case.

The second and far worse error is selective observation. Rather than coming to the wrong conclusion given a set of facts, the result of selective observation is a set of facts and observations that can lead only to a specific conclusion. Often this information is skewed, removes any observations that don't support the conclusion, or even has fabricated information inserted when the results didn't come out as expected. How about the Kennedy assassination? We all know there had to be multiple gunmen, but the government only believes in magic bullets so that's what they concluded. Maybe once all the people involved die we'll find out the truth.

The reason selective observation is worse than selective judgement is that when you make the wrong judgement, you can always go back to the facts and draw a new conclusion. When your observations are skewed, then there's no way to guarantee a correct (or at least a better) judgement from those observations. In other words, the information that you chose not to commit (or to commit incorrectly) means all results based on that information is flawed.

Taking this back to the case of war in Iraq, certainly there was selective judgement on the part of the Bush administration to take and present the intelligence as fact without caveat. From the perspective of everyone else, we cope with the observations given to us by Bush et.al.; if we're to believe what the government tells us, we have no other conclusion to draw except that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Unless, of course, we believe the U.N. weapons inspectors.

Maybe given more time, the U.N. inspectors would have turned up something. So here's the final flaw that felled Bush's arguments. Given this premise -- Iraq has weapons of mass destruction -- proving the affirmative is much more difficult than proving the negative. A word-bender for you: we can never be certain that Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction. Think that over a few times. Said differently, we can never be certain that Saddam was right when he said Iraq destroyed all its WMD. However, we can easily prove they did have WMD simply by finding them. Some might claim that's impossible too, but I say proving Saddam right is the more difficult proposal of the two. We can keep searching Iraq forever for WMD and never find them. And we will never be sure that there were never any WMD unless we find them.

Most people probably won't think this deep about Iraq, probability, logic errors and the like (nor work themselves into confusion like I did in that last paragraph). However, I would desperately hope that our government is doing this kind of thinking. I like to believe that the steady decline in Bush's job approval and agreement (or rather disagreement) on whether the country is headed in the right direction is the result of the American people are grading him on his logic and coming to a new conclusion of their own.

My political persuasions aside, the lesson here is to please take the time and become more math and logic literate. There is no better pleasure than laughing in the face of a person who can't make a coherent argument or understand facts, statistics, and probabilities. Or make up words. Like "Kosovians" or "resignate" and "subsidation" or "subliminabable." Because even if George W. Bush doesn't excel at logic or statistics or forming cohesive statements, at least we know he's creative.

It's about five dollars

This saga starts at the San Francisco Farmer's Market. It's held at the Ferry Building, at the north end of Market Street in downtown. Every weekend hundreds (thousands?) of people and dozens of booths make this a nice place to do your shopping for fresh foodstuffs if you live in the city. There was no lack of tasty treats for whatever your appetite desires from what I saw.

As I was walking over to the building, I passed by some artists showing their wares and a randomly parked BMW Z3. The BMW was being offered in a raffle. The only requirement for entry is writing down your name, phone number, address, and a couple of other random pieces of information (like age, email) on a little sheet of paper then putting that paper in the appropriate box.

That's all? Just a little information about myself? Hm... Well, I'll probably get some telemarketing calls and maybe some junk mail, but for the chance to win a nice, new BMW...

But wait a minute. They're giving away a BMW for nothing. I mean, I'm not stapling a $5 to the sheet I drop in the box. And the car costs a lot of money. I don't know exactly how much, but I'm sure it far exceeds what's in my bank account right now.

So, the BMW-giver-awayers must be getting something of value to cover the cost of the car, right? In other words, if all I'm giving them is my name and such, then that must be worth something. Something as in dollars.

Like five dollars.

Random uninformed numbers to make my argument seem logical: Say they're giving away a $25,000 car. 5,000 people enter. That means the value of each name is about $5, and certainly more because the people giving away the car must be making profit on our names and information or they wouldn't have much incentive to invest the $25,000 to invest in the car in the first place.

Your personal information has value. Whole industries are built on this -- collecting information about you, what you buy, your demographics, your friends, and what raffles you enter where you give out your name and address.

Another example: Some guy was out on the street giving away free Domino's personal pizzas to whoever would fill out his little form, presumably for a credit application or something similar. Again, about a $5 investment because us students are high risk for credit card companies, where the credit card company is sure to make back that $5 investment in interest payments. And I was hungry too...

While those are examples of giving out information, most "invasions" of privacy are much more subtle: associating your credit card number with your grocery purchases to build a profile of your shopping; using cookies or spyware to track your web surfing habits; the cameras the government planted in my glasses to keep track of everything I see and do.

Now that I think about it, those "savers cards" you get at the grocery store that they use to track you usually save me about $5 when I use them...

Legally, you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy in public spaces. While I agree, I think that anytime it takes more than an individual human's effort to track what you do, it should be illegal. In other words, computers have made "invasions" into privacy much easier -- storing your purchases in a big database available at the click of a mouse. If a person was following you around, writing down by hand everything you did, I would be OK with that. But if it took two or more people to do it, or one person plus a computer (scanning your groceries at the register), then no -- that's too much. Anyway, I think it would be funny if you went to the grocery store, picked up a basket or cart, and then picked up your person to follow you around and record all your purchases.

But again, we value our privacy, and our privacy has a value. Therefore, that grocery store guy can follow me around and write whatever he wants, but I get a free pound of tuna steak. That's right -- tuna steak. I can't afford the good eats on my income (or lack thereof). My grocery store privacy is worth at least $15 of tuna.

My Internet privacy is up for sale too. You can have it at the small cost of a high-speed dedicated connection (DSL or cable modem, your choice) plus $1 per hour of surfing payable to my PayPal account or in Amazon.com gift certificates. And I promise you it's good stuff too.

Anyone else interested in buying other aspects of my privacy can inquire via email using the email link at the main menu. Other suggestions include: friends and associates, music listening, TV watching, sleeping, and eating habits (including restaurants, alcohol, and snacks -- it's a bargain!).

What? They're already tracking that information? Shit... In that case, live streaming videos from my apartment are available at the low, low cost of $5 a month. Though I promise you nothing worth even that much is going on here...

You knew this was coming...

My fear, noted in my previous rant, has been realized. In short, the choir was in attendance at the 2004 Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference and was summarily preached at. Not even Slashdot, stalwart of (libertarian?) technology news, had a story on CFP. I suppose conferences are not the proper venue to invite the general public to learn more about these issues.

A friend of mine would quickly add that the troops need time to discuss strategy among themselves, to be made aware of the goings-on in their individual camps. While I agree, this raises the question of when should the focus change from rallying the troops to stirring passion on the home front.

The realization that my fears had come true occurred as I was having a conversation with a non-technical non-lawyer after the conference proceedings. He noted the lack of a primer for people interested in these issues such as himself; even if you're interested in the issues, most of the conference will go over your head if you don't understand the vocabulary we use or if you're not aware of the current events or if you don't know the laws and policies involved.

So several of us will take it upon ourselves to find a solution to this problem. This gets back to that previous rant, namely coming up with ways to get other people to care. Education is a necessary part of that. The lack of pedagogy is alarming to me, and (of course) I defer voicing my opinion on pedagogy until some future rant.

But here are the major themes as I saw them that were presented at the conference as well as questions I was left with, including extra cynicism (cynicism you've all grown to love and cherish by now I hope...).

• The lack of coordination between law, policy, and technological efforts

  I think someone at every session suggested or outright said that we need more interaction between the different camps (lawyers, policy makers, technologists, industry, etc) to reach better solutions. But wasn't this the point of CFP in the first place -- to foster exactly this communication? If so, then why is this communication not happening? My guess is that we're too busy in our own little worlds to find time to do this large scale coordination... Maybe they'll fix this by the next CFP (yeah, right).

• "National security" as the new Catch-22

  Any time that something seemed questionable, like collecting databases with info about you and using them together to determine if you're exhibiting terrorist behavior, the "national security" exception was invoked. You can't question this without being unpatriotic, and no patriotic person would question the need for greater national security, right? "National security" is also like that newsgroup law about Hitler -- as soon as you mention Hitler, the conversation is over because there's nothing you can say to come back against Hitler (just like from Office Space -- "You know, the Nazis had pieces of flair that they made the Jews wear"). Once someone cites "national security" as the justification for action, all other arguments lose merit.

• Lack of research funding, interest in pursuing such research, and research in the wrong areas

  Doug Tygar, U.C. Berkeley professor, hit the nail on the head with this one. Nearly all of the problems presented at CFP would benefit from deeper research. Not only do we need to find money and people to pursue these topics, that also implies we should trim other less fruitful but related areas of research (trusted computing comes to mind).

• "Clarifying" versus "disagree"

  The conference was remarkably civil, despite the very brave representatives from Microsoft, DirecTV, the Bush Administration (the Department of Justice), and more willing to play in the lions' den. Rarely the civility broke down and people got a little angry. But the essence of this comes down to one word: "clarify." If I disagree with you, I start a comment with "I want you to clarify..." rather than "I don't agree..." because I assume some people have to try really hard not to start a Jerry Springer-like moment while on a conference panel, no matter how funny such an event would be.

• Definitions

  For a conference called "Computers, Freedom, and Privacy," I only know what computers are. Freedom and privacy are too broad and relative to discuss without having definitions for them. This is especially important as those definitions change in different contexts -- privacy in email is much different than privacy in web surfing habits. I've got a rant around here somewhere that deals with the definition of freedom -- I'll get around to it some other time...

• Unsophisticated users, sophisticated systems and laws

  Users are stupid. Technologies are too complicated and arrive too rapidly for individuals to learn to use them successfully with respect to laws and privacy and the like. Also, most users don't understand laws, licenses, copyrights, and legal issues surrounding these technologies. Are we somehow responsible for teaching people these issues? Or should we aim for the lowest common denominator and dumb down technologies and laws? I am truly dumbfounded for how to solve this, but get me a bottle of whiskey and a computer and I'll gladly provide words on the subject... or just wait a few more weeks until I formulate a legitimate opinion and put it up here.

• The Internet and computers have a long and deep memory

  Exemplified by Gmail (1 GB of email storage) and the Internet Archive (storing the web since 1997), people don't realize that pretty much everything that we do on the Internet or computer networks is stored somewhere. Even if this is mostly limited to the web now, it will very quickly expand (if not there already) to email, instant messaging, voice-over-IP (Internet telephony), and all other present and future net communications, and even things we don't usually associate with computers like your purchasing records, travel plans, health information, financial statements, and so on. The scariest example of how information like this can be used against you at the conference was how your credit information can be used to deny you insurance or even jack up your rates if your credit history makes you seem like an at-risk individual or how that credit info can be used to discriminate against groups. Even though nobody explicitly stated the problem as I did here, this is the sleeper issue that worries me most from the conference. Information can be used against us just as it can be used to help, but what if information is permanent and can be collected from disparate sources? Think if Orkut and Gmail shared information and fear Google. I think I'll revisit the information permanence problem later...

• Can or should digital technologies reflect analog systems?

  This is the big question I left with after the conference. Many of the presentations implied that while we want the benefit of digital systems, we also want all the capabilities of physical world systems. For example, electronic voting systems should have some human verifiable or auditing method for performing recounts just like recounting paper ballots. Can we really have it both ways in every case? If we can do it, that doesn't mean we must do it...

• The philosophers, social scientists, economists, average joes, etc...

  Much of the conference focused on three things: law, policy, and technology. This ignored many important other parts like social repercussions of technology, law, and policy change, economic aspects that affect the development of such things or measurable results of changes, philosophies that underlie our beliefs, or even the beliefs of everyday people (not in attendance at the conference). Many important opinions and points of view were missing from the conference as a result. Hopefully future CFPs will take this into account when inviting panel participants. On a similar note, I don't think I heard the word "ethics" mentioned once, even if that was the subject of nearly every discussion.

I leave you with the eternal question that plagues my mind: If nobody cares about these issues, should we do anything about them? Most people scoff at the question -- "Well of course we should do something" in the kind of way that implies we know what's better for them than they do for themselves. The deeper implication of the question is whether or not everyone should care about these issues. If so, what can we do to achieve that?

Answers, of course, are left as an exercise to the reader.

Home is a feeling

I wrote this a few years ago on a previous incarnation of the web site. I was reminded of it because of some recent events so here it is again. Minor edits made, mostly grammar stuffs.

I was inspired by something I read today to write about homesickness. First, let me be clear that I am NOT homesick; I enjoy Austin alot and would much rather be here than there (except for Monday nights at the Flying Saucer). But anyway, time for a meloncholy digression.

So about being homesick... that was me when I went to college. Yes, I cried when my parents left (no, I'm not ashamed of it, well, not any more). But there was more to it than that. I hated the high school I went to because it was full of fake people -- not fake as in non-existant people, but fake as in "daddy bought me a brand new mustang for my 16th birthday" people. I didn't belong to that click; I had my own friends, all of whom fell outside the Plano preppy-kid norm by quite a bit.

So when it came time for me to choose a place to go to for college, I decided to go anywhere that wasn't Texas so I could migrate away from the Plano stereotypical people and branch out from my old friends. Most of my other high school friends chose to go to UT or stay close to home, and I can't blame them either. I live in Austin now and this is a great place, but college was my first opportunity to get out of the nest and away from all of that for the first time, and I wasn't about to pass it up.

And I ended in St. Louis, Missouri. And I cried when my parents left because they were the last tie I had to anything - ANYTHING - that I knew in my 18 years previous to then. For the first time in my life, I was truly on my own.

Then there was the bout of homesickness. Homesickness isn't wanting your mom and dad or your friends - it's about wanting something familiar. The intersection you drive by every day. Watching a video with your friends. The feeling you get when you know exactly where you are beacuse you know the roads or the buildings that well...

Homesickness lasted a while, but then I started meeting more people and growing new friendships - the exact reason why I decided to go somewhere far away from the rest of my friends. And my new freinds and I bonded and had fun, and the unfamiliar became familiar, and the homesickness faded.

And then came the first big homecoming - Thanksgiving. Everyone went home to see their folks and friends - and for me, this was the first time I visited home since I left school. It wasn't quite what I expected.

The first thing I noticed were the little things - oh, he got his ear pierced. Wow, Texans really do have accents (you pick up on the slightest twang when you've been away from it for four months). Hey, how have you been? You know the routine...

Then I started noticing something different - like all the old bonds that we used to have weren't quite there. That even though we were all still good friends, something was missing. I had missed 4 months of their lives as they were going through the same growth that I had.

But then I realized the biggest change - my own change. Even in a short 4 months, I had become a little more jaded, a little more grown up... And with my new freedoms at school, home just wasn't the same place that it used to be. Sure it was home, but it didn't carry the same weight that it used to. School offered something different -- something unlike anything else I had experienced up to that point. I was more eager to get back to school than I was to catch up with my old friends...

And that was about it. I briefly caught up with my old friends then went back to school. When I got back to school, I had a disjoint sense of what home was. Home/school wasn't home - it was my occupation for 9 months then I returned to home/home. And home/home was a temporary location until I went back to school... It didn't offer the same sense of home-ness that it used to.

Now, Austin is home. It feels 'right' when I get back here. It welcomes me back when I walk off the plane or drive over the border or even going around town. Home/home is still home, but more in a nostalgic sense. My parents, the dog, old friends... That's not to slight my friends in any way - I love them to death, but I'm only a guest when I visit now, not a resident. It offers a complacency that I can't get anywhere else, but it's not the same home that it was during my 18 years of living there.

Home is a feeling. It's a place that you feel safe and happy in. I had no home for my college years only because it was too disjoint - family and old friends and new friends and new experiences. Now that I have some more permanence in my life, this feels like home.

And because I believe in not repeating what someone else said better...

When I see a place for the first time... I notice everything, the color of the paper, the sky, the way people walk, doorknobs, every detail.

Then, after I've been there a while, I don't notice them anymore. Only by forgetting can I remember what a place is really like... so maybe for me forgetting and remembering are the same thing.

David Byrne, True Stories

and homesickness is forgetting and remembering those details...

So take this however you will. Just remember that a place is only as much a home as you make it.

CFP 2004: Preaching to the choir

The Computer Freedom and Privacy Conference for 2004 is quickly approaching and I'm pretty pissed off. This is a conference for exploring issues in, go figure, computers, freedom, and privacy. To me, it's as much a catch-all as "alternative rock." Sure, freedom and privacy are important, but then again...

I was checking the list of speakers to find the interests represented at the various sessions during the conference. I estimate that at least 3/4 of the participants are representing left-leaning organizations or universities (and university types tend to also sway left). Occasionally there's a government official or corporate interest represented, but largely this is a "pat yourself on the back" kind of clinic for the liberal-type front line fighters in the freedom and privacy battle.

So who in their right mind would defend less privacy or less freedom? Of course everyone wants freedom and privacy. Just like mom and education and apple pie, nobody could defend decreasing freedom and privacy and live to tell about it, especially at a conference held in Berkeley.

Is this the most self-serving conference ever? I would absolutely love the opportunity to go and (fraudulently) profess my hatred of freedom and privacy. You know -- explain to everybody how futile their efforts are and destroy their dreams that they're actually "making a difference." Bring blight and strife across the lands and leave a swath of destruction in my wake.

But I digress... I feel sorry for any representitives of the MPAA or RIAA and the like. They're outnumbered and certainly will have many hard fought arguments ahead of them during that week. I'm on their side -- not that I agree with their point of view, but I like rooting for the underdogs.

This conference is the ultimate collection of subjects that the left-leaning people care about that everyone else doesn't care about. Does this mean we shouldn't care about these issues? Of course not, but we don't have solutions to most of the problems. Will open source software fix the issues with electronic voting systems? Absolutely no, and most people wouldn't know the difference between an open-source powered electronic voting system versus a proprietary one.

My concern is the lack of concern about these issues. Surprisingly, there's only one session about organizing people for protest and change, but that was about sites such as MoveOn.org and the like. The conference presenters are ice skating uphill; they don't realize that most of their problem isn't solving the issue at hand but rather creating a movement behind their beliefs.

And this brings me back to where I started from. Bring in more RIAA people, more anti-privacy folks, more anti-freedom advocates. Make them show their true colors. Piss people off. Generate a following of others not part of the intellectual elite or conference participants. These people are trying to start a rebellion but don't realize it. Don't they understand that the issues they're fighting for can stir the passion of everyone in this country or maybe even start a worldwide movement?

I suppose not... Instead, they'll enjoy buffets and organized discussions and leave the conference with "contacts" and not come to any new conclusions about how they can achieve their goals. If these issues are so fundamental to every person in this country, then why don't most people care? Or do they care and are apathetic to the calls to fight?

Lawyers and technologists make bad evangelists. I think I'll hire Mr. T or someone of similar standing when I start my campaign. At least then people outside those who already care might actually listen...