Re: "How You Guys -- that's right, you GUYS -- Can Prevent Rape"

Now, let me say at the start that I understand where the author is coming from. I've more friends than I would like who've been raped, some on a regular basis. I'm very well aware of how it can mess someone up. So please put aside the "oh noes he's attacking the rape victim" shtick.

The author, however, completely does not seem to grok the raper's perspective here. She tries, really, but all it amounts to is a emphatically third-party, analytic, "these things happen from other people" sense. Classifying rapists by motive: anger, power, or sadism. Seriously, wtf - do you think ANYONE reading this is going to say "oh right, I'm a sadist, that's why I'm likely to rape someone; I should stop that"?

The rest of it is equally either preachy (rape is bad! [norly?]) or otherwise unempathic (describing the "false" masculinity of machismo purely on a "my values are better than yours" level).

I have two simple suggestions that might actually work. For males.

1. Make consent, in the form of active participation, emphatically macho, and the lack of it ridiculous.

AKA "If you couldn't make your partner BEG you to fuck them, you're not a real man."

2. Practice (solo or with a partner) backing off from horny mindstate.

This is somewhat of an extension of the tradition Masters & Johnson type technique. Essentially, males more than females (me included) can get very single-minded once in a horny mindstate. With low enough inhibitions, and a lack of expectation / need of partner's active participation, that can lead to rape - i.e. where you just want to have sex, and you literally can't stop thinking about it, things start to cloud up in the drive towards climax.

Practicing getting horny and then just doing something else entirely helps with that, and can make hearing "no" or any variant thereof (e.g. anything that's not "YES PLEASE NOW") a lot easier to take and act on. It also has the major fringe benefit of making for more controllable, longer-lasting, more enjoyable sex for both partners.


FWIW, these are both things that I practice.


Sorry that it's not quite as neo-feminist as the original article, but I think it's a lot more realistic.

And as a side note: why is it that these things are always written by female rape victims, and not male ex-rapists... yet claim to be aimed at helping potential rapists avoid it? This seems utterly ludicrous to me.

... really annoys me.

When I do it and realize it I want to slap myself. E.g. some types of rants, or the stereotypical valley-girl gossiping thing.

This is one reason I rarely if ever enjoy atheist or theist "discussions" (like the one I'm listening to now out of meta-interest); they seem so totally masturbatory. And worse when they say how horrible the nasty (opposite)s are when they don't air the obviously rational, moral, and just plain Better views of the hosts.

Meh.

*stops banging head against desk in favor of dinner and sewing*


In other news, my apartment manager gave me a letter saying that to get my parking restored, I would have to submit an inspection report from an official Acura dealer oil change to prove that my car is drivable.

This is several MONTHS into things. Last time I talked to her she said nothing about it. And after I drove my car off the lot. And submitted requests 2-3 times 'cause she "lost" them.

What started it? I had to replace my battery. I fixed it by buying a battery at the local shop, and replacing it myself. And gave her a written notice that yes I had fixed it. She did not find this to be adequate proof that I had done so, nor was the fact that I could drive the car off the lot. (Which I did when they threatened to have it towed... for not being drivable.)

At this point I think she's just being intentionally obstructive.

At least I'm leaving soon.

Went to the fabric store today to get some stuff for the kilt. Fusible interfacing for the waistband & beltloops, linen to act as structural interfacing, cotton for pocketses.

So I asked for some help finding the right materials. The lady had some suggestions...

Fusible interfacing? She gave me a light knit white fusible cotton. (I got a black woven midweight fusible cotton.) Also, being told that all interfacing "feels the same" when I ask whether something I'm pointing to is light, mid, or heavyweight? Not helpful.

Linen? She suggested a linen/lycra blend. (WTF? The whole point of the interfacing is to be stiff, not stretchy! I got the stiffest, crease-holding-est stuff I saw that still felt good.)

Cotton? I specifically said "something light and very tightly woven". As she repeated that she gave me a heavy, very coarse weave cotton. Coarse enough that I could see the holes in the weave from a couple feet away. Again, WTF?

I don't know whether the lady I asked for help was incompetent, uber hurried, or misandristic... but the selections she suggested were all significantly wrong, even though I explained pretty clearly what it was for and showed her the kilt-in-progress.

Hmph.

I still like the store - it has a lot of neat things - but the service, for me at least, has always sucked to the point of being useful only for pointing me in the approximate direction of where I might find the right stuff.

I wonder if this is what women get when they try to get anything computer or mechanics related.


On the plus side, I called ilyx while there and got much more cogent & helpful advice. :-) Huzzah.

Also, I now have fabric and can continue kilt-making. Huzzah again.

Now to see if I can st^H^H take inspiration from SeV pocket designs...

Just took it.

Let me say that was probably the single most insulting test I have ever taken. I would be embarassed to give that to 7th graders, let alone grown adults with a college education. Seriously.... *long division*? Asking me what 3/4 equals in decimal notation? WTF? And complete bullshit PC essay questions. Ugh.

I'm tempted to write a nasty letter to the CBEST people demanding my money back and compensation for my wasted time.

Is the state so desperate for teachers that the pass rate on such a test is still on a bell curve? If so, that's pretty damn depressing.

Windows has symlinks. It hides them though. Hides them very tricksily it does.

Which is a FUCKING PAIN IN THE ASS behavior when a backup folder is riddle with hidden hardlinks (sorry, 'junctions') to the REAL, CURRENT file structure. NOT APPROPRIATE. Backup folders should be easily and SAFELY deletable.

*finger to whoever decided not to give Windows decent integrated symlink display and editing* (seriously people. 'properties' should NOT lie to me about location or the fact that it's not really a real folder it's actually a hardlink to another one that ISN'T supposed to be deleted)
*cheer to toranin and the people who wrote things to get around it*

Lots of people have a bad reaction to being asked what an "average" ___ is. Whether it be an average day, salary, ingroup person, time, whatever.

The overt reason is that things actually have a range, variability, etc.

But why not just answer in terms of mean & s.d.? It needn't be formal like that of course, but you can still (for normally-distributed variables, which most ones seem to be) just describe the average and the 2 s.d. range (and possibly the fringe range also).

I guess it's just another oversimplification that people stick to despite the availability of better responses.

Why is it that people can claim simultaneously that there should be strict rules for who is allowed to become an adoptive parent (even of a baby) - showing competence, financial and psychological stability, etc - but that there should be no rules for who is allowed to have a baby the usual way? And they argue vehemently for the unshakable moral foundation of both positions...

It seems to me to be a necessary conflict, if you put aside complications like the cost of paying off the system (that's fair) and fulfilling whatever conditions the baby-donor has.

Either everyone is a suitable parent, or not.

People don't want to admit that most people aren't suitable parents because then that brings up eugenics and forced sterilization and people find that outrageous and immoral etc.

And they don't want to allow anyone to be a parent just by asking for a baby 'cause, well, most people aren't suitable parents. :-P This, despite the number of kids in need of adopting.

... should really not be so painful or take more than a second.

You get a kill signal. Save whatever required to get yourself back to your current state in a separate "this was my last state" default location. Perhaps have a couple of those on rotation in case on corrupts. And exit. Preferably, have this state or a recent one already saved or prepped, in case of impolite termination (e.g. power loss).

Why need separate user interaction? Why take minutes just to close down? Save, release your memory, and terminate. Disk writes do not take all that long. And it's a very rare operation in most cases (finance and data management aside) that is on a true transaction (in which case, finish it or roll back, and use small transactions) or a non-seekable state (do you really have to start all over again from the beginning? Why?)

Yeesh.

Some of the organizations with which we work really could use better communication skills.

I read these things really trying to figure out wtf they want / are trying to say / etc. and whether it's something I need to do something about, and half the time I seriously have almost no idea - there are three possibly relevant words buried - somewhere - in a pile of form letter, random irrelevant bits, etc. This whole system needs some very serious redesign.

But, I don't have nearly the power to make that happen, so I have to just try to make a little oasis of sanity.

Sometimes international business is frustrating.

Edit:
Q: What do electrical systems, cardiovasclar equipment, and cattle have in common?
A: I HAVE NO IDEA WTF.

One of the greatest real arguments for certain religions (and against all others, from their perspective) is that of morality. Namely, 98% of us agree that we want to live in a mutually just and pleasant society. One in which people treat each other well.

Prescriptive morality is still the dominant force, and probably the first. Somebody says that they know how people should act, from authority. People believe them. It plays out the way we have seen with fundamentalist religions of all kinds: it has some certain benefits (when the dictums are in fact good* ways to be ethical). It also has major drawbacks; I won't bother going into the details, since this has been discussed ad nauseam already.

Descriptive morality is where one simply says what people actually do. It is the thing that people who have religion will invariably have a problem with, because it gives no direction. It seems to say that everything is okay; people can do anything; chaos; etc. This isn't quite so, but nevertheless the problem is there.

The reason people really make moral decisions is because a balance of empathy. Trying to maximize the benefit for things with which they empathize, not particularly caring about ones with which they don't. This is true of both decisions we socially consider to be very ethical ones - e.g. self-sacrifice to save your family, a stranger, etc - and of ones we don't - e.g. neo-Nazism, which is essentially a matter of empathizing overwhelmingly with one's race and not with others'. The reduction of this empathy towards someone is proven to reduce decisions that benefit them. (Viz. Zimbardo etc.)

However, this doesn't give any directionality; doesn't give an answer to the valid theist's underlying question, namely: what should we do to ensure that society works well?

The answer, IMO, is to acknowledge the realities of descriptive morality that I refer to above, and apply them as teaching. If people act for the benefit of things and people with whom they empathize, to the possible detriment of others, then the answer is simple: intentionally teach people to feel empathy with populations and entities whom we socially want to be benefited.

It is unnecessary to teach anything else other than how to correctly understand the current situation of those entities, and how to predict the consequences of one's own actions with respect to them. Full morality will precipitate.

That simple. Hopefully the consequences are clear.

Thought of by http://ted.com/tedprize (BTW, the TEDTalks are I have seen so far are all excellent and I recommend watching them)

You get one wish, $100k (or several million, if you hook the right people), and the ear of some very influential people. What do you wish for?

My idea:

Include, in every primary school in every country throughout the world (as much as possible), good teaching in logic*, creativity**, and meditation***. Do it in America by 2020. Do it in all "developed" nations by 2040. Do it worldwide by 2060.

* Every person, by 15, should be able to spot logical fallacies in their own and others' logic, call people on it no matter what their status (e.g. being trained to spot errors in teachers' and politicians' logic on their own), engage in polite and productive debate with anyone, and be aware of all of the most common cognitive errors. They need not have all the knoweldge, but they must know how to think well.

** This is, to put it mildly, an extremely difficult subproblem, and nothing I have seen has ever solved it well on a large scale with people who were not already well-primed to begin with.

*** dogma, supersitition, woo, and religion free - i.e. no bullshit, no theory about chakras etc., no statements whatsoever about religious elements. Just the techniques.


I have others - e.g. completely open, open-source, online government; many global justice issues; many technologies that will change the world once developed*; my own projects; etc... but I think this is the one that would have the most dramatically revolutionary effect on the world, and within two generations max. Each of the three components would have revolutionary effect on culture, politics, religion, etc.

That's the intent.

So the meme: what would you wish for?



* Techs
1. Cheap, low battery, worldwide, completely suffusive Internet access (like citi-wide wifi, for the globe)
2. Full, implantable, sensory & motor cortex level HCI
3. Human brain level computational power for <$1000 and < laptop size
4. Fully dynamic 3d interface with touch sensitivity, texture, etc - pocket sized
5. Generic nanotech
6. Direct brain-to-brain neural linking

Ockham's razor: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

Translation: Don't postulate new entities unless necessary.

This is not a rule of logic. It's a meta rule-of-thumb. It does not have anything to do with whether a theory is more or less "probable" or "true" than any other theory. It only has to do with whether a theory is more or less useful than another theory.

Theories that don't require postulating a bunch of new entities - which would then require explaining of course - are more useful than ones that do, because they're generally simpler to predict and make stronger / more testable claims.

E.g. a theory that postulates that there is a sentient deity is less useful than one that does not, all other things being equal (e.g. how well the theory matches all observed data). But the deific theory may indeed be true, and the razor does not give any reason to suppose one more probable than the other. This works similarly for e.g. theories involving dark matter, quarks, Santa, CIA conspiracies, UFOs, etc. Simpler theories are, simply, more useful.

It annoys me when people - generally "skeptics" with poor logic - try to use the razor to say that a theory is "unlikely" or "wrong". If anything, I'm even less tolerant of bad logic from "skeptics", because at least they generally claim to be using (and highly value) the good sort - whereas people on the woo fringe often don't care whether they're being logical... so at least they cannot be accused of hypocrisy.

I think that e.g. home ec or American history propoganda classes should be replaced with a good class on logic and forensics. Imagine how much that would be valuable and affect society - and be retained - vs some bullshit about how the Patriotic Forefathers won the Righteous War on the Evil People.

This site got me thinking about it. And this speech from H2K2, or rather the original essay which I remember reading years ago, not long after I first had Internet access, which was probably around 1993-1995. It was in the last couple years of the dominance of Gopher, just before the WWW really started to catch on (at least in ways I could access).

So, my perspective on these issues.


Warez (aka "pirated software") - I pronounce it "wares", not 'wah-rez' or 'way-rez'.

I've never been involved in warez except as a user of releases. I would bet that I am about 3 hops away from a release group; I know people I suspect are involved in the scene. But I've not had any interest in that, and I'm aware that security is a major issue for them, so I have never really asked for details.

My ethics about use of warez is relatively simple. It clearly is not direct theft, i.e. one in which you are stealing something from someone else in a way that deprives that person of the item. It is possibly indirect theft, i.e. if you obtain something through warez that you would otherwise have paid for, then you cost the seller that money you would otherwise have paid.

I'm a cheap bastard, so that means that if I can't obtain software for free I probably can't afford to pay for it, and thus I'm not in that category. Ergo, my obtaining software for free is not theft of any kind.

However, I have strongly advocated for others who *can* afford the cost of the software to just buy the stuff legit.

It is however ethical IMO to try software through warez that you do intend to buy if it is actually worth the money (i.e. if you would, in the opinion informed by having used the warez, decide to buy it if you couldn't get the warez)


Cracking

I've never done it, but I am fairly familiar with the theory. I simply have not had a need to actually try my hand at it.

Similarly, I'm only theoretically familiar with anti-cracking techniques, except to be certain that my level of skill at doing so is not going to surpass the skill of a good cracker.

I have only ever released one piece of software to the public; that was my shareware program SaiD3U aka Palm Familiar, a D&D companion software for Palm OS. I discontinued it because of legal reasons; essentially, the terms of the D&D owner corp's quote-unquote "open gaming license" were such that a viable program for a small-memory, slow-cpu platform was simply not worth the effort. (Essentially it would have required that all algorithms covered by the OGL be in plain text, aka XML, rather than hardcoded.) I made a couple hundred off of that in registrations while it was still in beta. I probably could have made a decent amount if I fully released it. Ohwell.

SaiD3U/PF had a serial-based registration system that I'm pretty sure would have been trivially easy to both crack and release a keygen for. I made no effort to guard against that, as I figured anyone skilled enough to even know how to start was skilled enough to be not worth my effort to try to stop. And also that my app wasn't nearly a big enough target for someone to try cracking it. :-P

(FWIW I have since almost certainly lost all the soure code, keygen program, and god-mode compilation .prc. If someone is really really interested I could be convinced to go looking through my backups and archives as it may be around there ... somwhere. But damned if I know where.)

As most people even vaguely in hacker mindset, I think that:
* obscurity is not security
* if enough people want it to be cracked, it will be, period; maximum time 6 months (e.g. StarForce took about that long to be broken)
- viz. Windows Vista activation is not yet cracked (there's a workaround though, which is time-limited to june '07). But I'm certain it will be way before then, even though I'm also certain that Microsoft paid a lot of people a lot of money to prevent just that
* cracking-prevention programs are often counterproductive, as they can be buggy, introduce other problems, or otherwise harass both legitimate and pirate users
* harassing pirates is an ineffective way to get them to stop or to buy the product, but only to make them want to crack the harassment
* cracking is ethically neutral, as (per above) it's the implementation that is ethics-bound


Hacking

Again, I've never done it in the "break into someone else's system for malicious purposes" sense. I have broken into systems for other (beneficient) purposes, though generally through (to me) relatively simple methods. I don't consider myself particularly skilled at it, but here I am comparing myself against what I know to be the standards amongst those who are.

Malicious purposes (e.g. virii to install rootkits to operate an eggdrop zombie farm) are by definition unethical an I am strongly opposed to them.

Neutral purposes can be ethical if done properly & carefully, e.g. purely for curiosity, exploration, etc; if the legitimate owner can't get in and needs a "locksmith" who can, etc.

Whitehat pruposes - e.g. breaking into a system and then telling the op how to fix it - are a good thing.

That's all I have to say about that.


"Hacker"

To me, this is not a label describing a particular set of activities (viz., cracking, system compromise, etc) but rather a general worldview and approach to things.

Components (some core, some cultural):
1. Curiosity. Wanting to know how things work, even if you have no particular intention to use them, just because - rather than being satisfied with the dumbed-down-instructions version
1.1 Analytical mindset. Desire and ability to figure out how things work in their detailed subcomponent parts and in gestalt. Applies to everything. (This post is an example.)
1.2 Rationality. Using valid logic routinely as a matter of course standard wherever it is applicable, e.g. to any empirical question and many emotional ones. (Emotion is frequently considered "irrational", but I disagree - it merely has a different axiom set and places a far higher stress on associative inference than inductive logic does.)
2. Control: Desire to be maximally in control of systems; irritation at artificial limitations to this, like restrictive permissions, poor design, etc.
2.1 Configuration. Desire to have things configured just right - which is essentially a matter of making up for poor design. (Note how many hackers are still happy with well-designed things, like ipod's UI)
2.2 Freedom. Extreme dislike of any sense of restriction on fulfilling personal desires or whims (even hypothetical ones), whatever the source.
3. Information freedom. Desire to have most information (with ethical limits) be as free and easily found as possible.
4. Humor
4.1 Recursivity and self-reference
4.2 Cross-discipline puns
4.3 Intellectual / dry / witty / serious humor
4.4 Terseness
5. Meritocracy. Lack of instinct for "respect for authority" or respect for people by virtue of the positions they hold. Strong instinct for respect based on acheivements, talents, skills, or other personal qualities.
5.1 Personalization. Strong dislike of depersonalizing, "soulless" systems.
6. Design aesthetic. Love of good design, things that Just Work Right, are Pretty, are Shiny, are Powerful, or are otherwise Good Things (tm).
7. Personal drive. Belief in one's own desires, interests, etc. Holding one's own values as more important than those of the surrounding culture. Disdain / pity for people without strong personal interests as borderline-zombies.
7.1 Internalization over obediance. Belief that un-internalized rules are borderline useless; that they will be "cracked anyway" if someone wants to; and disobeyed when not enforced. Thus a preference for internalized, consensus-based governance; decentralization; generic anti-authority / anti-centralization stance.
7.2 Drive-based learning. Learning things when and where they are useful to learn, or expected to be in the future (unless they come under 'curiosity for its own sake' above). Dislike of being forced to study facts that are irrelevant, uninteresting, rote, and bullimically regurgitated.
8. Systems approach. Belief that most things are systemic, rather than one-time exceptions; that the source of a problem in the system itself must be fixed rather than patching the symptoms; that systems are a powerful tool. And conversely, that systems can be evil inasmuch as they take a life of their own and start existing to sustain themselves, rather than to serve their original beneficial purposes, and that when that happens they must be reformed (if possible) or destroyed and replaced (if not).

You'll note that these have very little to do with what someone actually does per se, though the mindset lends itself better to some jobs (programmer, designer, artist) than others (corporate wageslave, advertising, yesman, etc). It is also ethically neutral; I consider the blackhat/whitehat or hacker/cracker sort of distinction to be a completely separate one, and that people can be any combination of the above.

Only an incidental byproduct of this is being a skilled computer programmer. I have only had a handful of computer projects I wanted to accomplish - I learned what was necessary to accomplish them. I am not particularly interested in/by programming for its own sake, though I certainly appreciate programming as an art form. I am thus quite (or completely) unskilled in a number of areas of programming, simply by virtue of the fact that they have never been needed to accomplish something I felt like accomplishing.

This is why I would describe myself as a 'hacker', and consider it a term of praise when applied to others.


Schooling vs education (a short rant)

One thing I think is a terribly unforunate truth in the original Hacker's Manifesto - one echoed by almost all hackers I know - is of the extent to which our schooling failed us. Betrayed us even, as schools should exist to teach, and we of all people hunger to learn.

Schools are not too bad for educating most people, I suppose. I wouldn't really know; I have little empathy for that area of things. I only know my experience and those of my peers.

I have been in "gifted" programs throughout my life; this meant I took advanced versions of courses and (for math only) was several grades ahead by virtue of outside schooling (Kumon). I was held back from being blanket promoted some number of grades; my opinion on this matter was not particularly sought or understood, so I don't know how or why that happened. I was utterly bored for 99% of school, with all the ego-destructiveness of that boredom. I was not, until relatively recently, driven enough to be able to overcome that and learn for myself except in limited ways. I was smarter than most of my teachers. I had a scant few who were worth anything; I remember those. Some, like Colin Quinton (my chemistry teacher in HS) were later corrupted by the system themselves, which is an amazingly sad thing to see happen.

I don't know whether it would be possible to solve that problem while still working within the existing system. On the one hand, to teach me properly - i.e. to really fully max me out - would require an individually tailored program, and probably some very smart teachers. On the other, retaining all the psychological and social support any human needs would be very challenging.

The halfass approach - where with mainstreaming I have always been too different to be assimilatable anyway and the opportunities I was given for self-teaching were too daunting and unsupported - is simply not viable.

It has to be solvable. I believe that part of it is to teach people by giving them real projects that they would be self interested in pursuing. Not busy work that is challenging purely for the sake of being work. From my perspective that is straight abusive. Not things that are completely dissociated from the real world, real projects, real useful things. Not the stupid shit that I remember from elementary and junior school, and much of high school - the glorified posterboards, 'art' projects in English and history classes, etc. Absolute trash. To make me really learn, you have to first make me care.

Once I care, damn near all you have to do is help me along the way - answer questions as they come up, provide interesting things to read and problems I could solve, etc. Play with serious toys. This was always true.

I think in all this that I am completely not unique. I would guess that most of my fellow hackers feel likewise, and many of my friends who are not hackers.

I'd like the problem to be solved before it comes time to educate my own children, but I will educate them myself if I think that is the best available solution.

(This is of course one of the reasons for my interest in teaching as a profession, though I don't know if I would find satisfaction in teaching at the level at which I am complaining about here, i.e. in elementary and middle school, unless I were exclusively teaching hackers like myself - that could indeed be very rewarding, if combined with the usual assortment of other gigs.)