2002 Dec 30: Evolution of Cooperation

I've been reading Richard Dawkins over the holidays, and was especially taken with Chapter 12 of his 1989 edition of "The Selfish Gene", called: "Nice Guys Finish First". It focuses on the theme of human cooperation, and seems like something I should have read long ago!

It's an explanation of the game theory of the "Prisoner's Dilemma", a simple game where the winningest strategy is characterized as "tit for tat" (start cooperative, then match the moves of the other, be they cooperative or aggressive). A very wide variety of conceivable strategies has been tested, some "nice" (those that never initiate aggression, like tit for tat), and some that are "nasty" (those that may initiate aggression and even attempt to exploit nice strategies). In a Darwinian simulation where the point system includes winning additional copies of one's strategy, tit for tat becomes dominant, and cannot be successfully "invaded" by "nasty" participants, except temporarily.

The rules of the game obviously determine the outcome, and may not be very realistic in these elementary games. But to get the "nice guys finish first" result, it is crucial that the game must continue indefinitely, and that it not be a "zero-sum" game. In temporary or zero-sum games, all manner of "nasty" approaches are successful.

Darwin saw the Earth as a limited resource within which there was a struggle for survival, and accounted for many "nasty" behaviors in the animal kingdom this way. Modern industrial world prosperity gives the impression that human cooperative efforts tap unlimited resources (including the anticipation that space travel may open up the entire universe as a resource). But could the perception of the rules be more important than the reality? Perhaps when we perceive the universe as a place that rewards effort with success and security, we make possible cooperative behaviors that enable that result.

And perhaps the religious concept called "faith" simply amounts an insistence that life is not a zero-sum game, regardless of evidence to the contrary. The essence of faith may be that it is preferable to live under the illusion of a non-zero-sum world, even if local evidence may not support that. Doing so may offer the only hope of escaping from zero-sum behaviors!

This line of thought leads me to all sorts of questions. Given a scientific approach to revering the universe, is it realistic to view our world optimistically, or pessimistically (zero-sum)? We know we live on a life raft Earth that will run of out of even "renewable" resources eventually (billions of years), but it's a little early to strategize an endgame. Can we escape from the need for faith or do we still need a faith that the universe as a whole is abundant and, at least on average, rewards cooperative efforts with win-win results? Certainly, this is not a self-evident feature of a world where life is as hard as it is in many places.

2002 Nov 22: Who's an Idiot?

Ok, so it looks like the Bush administration may have had some method in its apparent madness during the past several months. As Andrew Sullivan writes in Salon today, it now appears that the credible threat of unilateral action on the part of the US may have led to a UN agreement to act on the Iraq issue, combined with a clear opening to act further in the event that Iraq misbehaves. But, Sullivan is far too quick to accuse Brent Scowcroft of idiocy and disingenuousness in trying to respin his earlier stand on a unilateral preemptive threat against Iraq, in a Washington Post Op-Ed.

Have we not been treated, during these past several months, to a spectacle of internal dissension within the Bush administration, between the advocates of aggression and those of diplomacy? Perhaps that was all for show as well? Could it not be that voices like Scowcroft's were absolutely critical to achieving the path we are now on? After all, Scowcroft argued principally against the preemptive strike that was being threatened, and that has so far been avoided. Perhaps the role of such voices has been to make sure that such rash talk did not turn into rash action.

When a nation finds the right course during such difficult times, and that nation is a democracy, it is by design that contention is turned into consensus. Andrew Sullivan does us all a disservice to so quickly resort to gloating and name-calling. We are not nearly out of the woods on this one, and have a lot more decisions to make. Democracy isn't a competition between two ideologies in which one or the other wins. It is a process whereby differing perspectives are tested against each other in order to arrive at the best possible course of action, so that we all win.

2002 Nov 5: Re-elect Gore in 2004

This is the best bumper sticker to come down the pike in a long time! And Gore has recently redeemed himself in my view by taking a strong stand on the Iraq pre-emptive strike question. It seems to me that Clinton, Gore and some others, including the late Paul Wellstone, have been speaking the truth on this issue, while many democrats have their heads in the sand, hoping this will go away. It won't, and there are already indications that there will be an election advantage to those democrats with the integrity to call it like they see it, rather than running to hide from the issue.

2002 Oct 31: Happy Halloween

The Boondocks kids can't get this topic out of their heads, either. Not even for Halloween, or perhaps especially not for Halloween.

2002 Oct 19: Osama Wants YOU to Invade Iraq

It's great to see an effective slogan appear that makes the case against preemptive military action against Iraq. The original is posted at TomPaine.com , along with a great deal of background material. Apparently, this was first published in the NYT op-ed pages. I discovered it in Salon's article on what has become a phenomenon. Apparently, there is a great deal of thinking going on in this country on this subject. Enjoy.

2002 Sep 26: Letter to Congress
To Sen. Barbara Mikulski, Sen. Paul Sarbanes, Rep. Steny Hoyer

I'm writing to express alarm at the apparent determination of our administration to take the war against terrorism to Iraq. I've seen no evidence to date that Iraq has participated in the 9/11 attacks, or any other terrorist actions against the US. Neither does there appear to be evidence that Iraq is harboring Al Quaeda terrorists. Therefore, by the administration's own criteria, Iraq appears to be an irrelevant distraction from the matter at hand presently. I would prefer to see anti-terrorism resources put into real threats against US assets.

The festering situation with Iraq and the weapons inspections that have been on hold since 1998 has demanded action since at least that time. But I don't recall it ever coming up during the 2000 election. Both the prior and current administrations appear to have ignored this situation for far too long, with potentially serious consequences in the future. However, a bit of common sense appears needed here, which is not served by mixing this up with the current terrorist actions.

We normally hold up our legal system as a model to the rest of the world, and we should do the same when planning our own international behavior. Iraq is nation with a checkered past, but that does not lessen its rights in the court of international law. It is a full citizen with the right to be held innocent until proven guilty. The threat of actions that could possibly be taken is insufficient to justify a disciplinary military action, and we must require probable cause for such actions. In this country, the keeping of lethal weapons is not deemed to indicate lethal intent, and use of these weapons is thought justified in self defense. Iraq's prior offenses have perhaps disqualified it from the right to hold such weapons; yet it persists in their acquisition. The appropriate response to this kind of offense appears to be a program of probation and inspection, and not invasion. It is when the weapons are used that this requires disciplinary action.

It was a relief to see the matter taken to the UN this past week, suggesting that, for all the tough talk, the administration will keep on a course of international mediation of this situation. I believe that the rash and unilateral course that has been discussed since June would put the USA in the position of being itself an international outlaw, bringing upon us the legitimate reproach of the world community, and a potentially catastrophic breakdown of relations with the Arab/Islamic world.

Congress should support the Administration in staying with this course, to the best of its abilities, and resist anything like a "preemptive strike" against Iraq.

2002 Sep 15: Apple Committment to Internet Standards

It looks good. Putting Unix underneath the Mac OS really gives the impression of a company that is building the "computer of the internet". And it doesn't hurt that the world wide web was developed on NeXT workstations, whence OS X has come to us. On the face of it, we would seem to be headed toward an age where companies fight to be the one that does the internet best, using standardized languages and formats for everything from plain text to movies.

But what is the reality? Some companies (maybe Apple, too) are still hunting for the competitive edge of being the only company to do communications in a particular (proprietary) way that catches on and gives them something like a monopoly. Lately it seems more and more that Apple's commitment to internet standards is at the very least a bit soft. They are talking a good game while continuing to engage in proprietary shenanigans. What the consumer wants is a great way to create things and get work done (already in place with the Mac) and a great way to share that fun and work with collaborators, customers, clients, and family.

What are the indicators? First, consider that Apple doesn't provide a Unix/internet file sharing tool as part of the Finder. When you pull down the Go menu and choose Connect to server..., you get a list of what can be found on the local or Appletalk networks, and a place into which to type an address. This being a Unix-based OS with built in ftp and http file serving, you'd think you could punch in something like ftp://fileserver.domain.net, and start a session with any Unix box anywhere in the world, just like you can with any web browser. And you would think that the result would be to show that disk in the Finder as being mounted to the local computer, so the Finder could browse and download the files on that other Unix fileserver. With appropriate privileges on the server, one ought to be able to delete and edit files on it, or copy files to it and reorganize its folder structure.

None of this is possible, for reasons I cannot fathom. The Jaguar Finder reportedly can at least do what a browser does, but it still can't really file share with FTP fileserver peers. Strangely enough, the Finder can make Appleshare-like connections to Windows PCs, or even be a Windows fileserver, and it can do Applesharing across the internet (to Macs only, of necessity) if you know how to address other Macs out there.

Another indicator is that Apple has not put the effort required into OS X PDF files, to make them truly useful as a platform-independent document format. Apple didn't want to pay Adobe royalties for use of their software to generate PDFs, so they developed their own tools. This speaks well for the openness of the PDF format, but there were some glitches. At first, OS X PDF files actually contained resource forks (for the embedded font information). This renders the files useful only on Macs, and woe to you if you should try and transport the forked file through an email system that probably doesn't understand such things.

More recently, the files have become network standard data files that can be moved to other computers and viewed or printed by PDF readers. But problems remain with embedding of fonts that will be needed on remote systems to view the documents. Here again, Apple doesn't seem truly committed to cross-platform compatibility, in this case for documents.

Consider next .Mac, which is about as proprietary as it can be. It was conceived as something that only Mac OS9 users could take advantage of, as an inducement to upgrade to the latest Mac OS. Steve Jobs waxed eloquent about how Apple controlled both the software and the hardware needed for iTools, as it was then called. Now you can connect a Windows PC to an iDisk and use some of the features, including file sharing, but don't try to FTP to your iDisk. It isn't allowed. What's with that, huh? What about internet compatibility?

Another sorry case is HyperCard. Once a simple object-oriented programming language for everyone, HyperCard foretold the importance of hyperlinks in creating a world wide web. But then it pretty much stalled out by never adopting the open web site in place of the proprietary card stack. By now, I thought that we would have a world wide web of HyperPages that would implement a simple programming language to make programming and a world wide code base accessible to everyone.

Finally, consider Appleworks. One could easily argue that Microsoft has been more interested in that than Apple, having defined a generic, open, and published file format called the Rich Text Format (RTF). Most word processing programs can read and save to that format, including Appleworks, but Apple has not been a leader in defining even more powerful open file formats. Microsoft, in comparison, is rumored to be experimenting with XML document formats for its Office suite, perhaps egged on by the open source software community, where this has become a standard.

I think it's high time for Apple to make good on its professed commitment to internet standard ways of doing things and storing documents. It could make a good start at that by implementing FTP in the Finder, making high quality PDF files that travel well, opening up .Mac to internet standard access protocols, and taking a leadership position in its office suite file formats. Even better, it could revamp HyperCard into HyperPage, giving us all a way to program as well as to use programs written by others.

2002 Sept 10: The Path to Peace

A speech Bill Clinton gave to a Third Way conference in London, entitled "The Path to Peace", appeared in Salon the day before the anniversary of 9/11. Subtitled "The only way to beat terrorism is for the U.S. to unite the world, not divide it", the subtext was the debate over what to do about Iraq. The clear implication of the piece was that we should not be rattling sabres and talking about unilateral pre-emptive strikes against Iraq, but rather working toward a United Nations approach to the problem. This message, coming from a source in the previous administration, appears to have gone over like the proverbial lead balloon. Salon appears to have buried the article (though it is still online at the link above), and I could find not a single letter to the editor in reaction to it. Nevertheless, it appears to me to be one of the most incisive views of this situation.

Clinton poses our problem as "the most enduring one of human history: can people derive their identity primarily by positive association or does life's meaning also require negative comparison to others?... Our challenge is to figure out how people can enjoy the benefits and identity of their discrete communities and still successfully be part of larger communities."

Clinton is onto something very important here, I believe. It often seems to be basic human nature to harbor a dislike for other groups, whether or not cause has been given. That dislike grows into snobbery, implying loss of respect and condescension.

A snob is defined as "someone who admires and cultivates relationships with those considered socially superior", and conversely as "someone who looks down on people considered to have inferior knowledge or tastes". Snobbery appears closely related to discrimination, and discrimination is highly valued among humans. We are encouraged to discriminate in our choice of family, friends, and associates, and indeed, the judicious choice of friends is a measure of one's own quality of character.

But we distain prejudice, which is discrimination according to criteria thought to be spurious or irrelevant. Use of the prefix "pre" grants the benefit of the doubt to the prejudger, who evidently may have failed to consider the matter in sufficient depth before judging. In other words, a judicious choice of friends is made according to criteria that are accepted by society at large, while the contrary is interpreted as a rash choice which reflects poorly on the guilty party, and may be grounds for his or her own demotion to the object of snobbish scorn in some circles.

But "snob" is a derogatory term in our democratic society, and hardly considered a mark of character, though we often speak with admiration of a "discriminating" person, for example as a purchaser of goods and services. A snob, on the other hand, may be too obvious in the exercise of discrimination, with an emphasis on the negative side of the definition. This is not thought to reflect superior knowledge or taste. Rather, it is considered a mark of character to be too busy admiring and cultivating the right relationships to squander time and effort discouraging the relationships we do not wish to cultivate. Since relationships only thrive on attention, it should be sufficient to simply ignore those we wish to avoid. For those living positive, productive, lives, there is not much temptation or time to engage in snobbery.

However, it seems that entirely too many humans are engaged in more or less overt snobbery that far too often goes well beyond just looking down noses. In fact, it seems that much of the hatred in this world can be traced to some form of more or less aggravated snobbery, in which the judgment of inferiority becomes mutual, then overt, and eventually violent, as in many racial or ethnic relationships. Ignoring an undesirable relationship is not possible in some cases, giving rise to inevitable snubs and slights that are often reciprocated and then escalate into deliberate offenses and eventually violence.

It all originates as snobbery, which is nothing more than the dark underbelly of our simple preferences for the company of other human beings. And we all are so snobbish. We are not content to own a cat; at any opportunity, we may make snide comments about dog owners. We are not content to drive a Honda; we must persuade Ford owners they are suffering. Or we must help owners of foreign cars see the error in their ways of not buying from their countrymen. And please don't get me started on the rivalry between users of different types of personal computers! All of us, from the lowliest and poorest to the wealthiest and most talented, are daily engaged in comparing ourselves and our friends with other groups of humans that we find lacking in intelligence, courage or other qualities of character. It seems at times that the whole of human self-esteem is based upon the satisfaction of "looking down noses" at someone we can feel better than.

Is snobbery a human trait, or does it correspond to something instinctual in other species? Is it a trait we have benefited from in an evolutionary sense? Does it have survival value? Were we "naturally selected" for it, or is it somewhat incidental? Is it simply a judgment that the objects of our snobbery are beneath us and undeserving of propagating genes? Is it a way for us to come to terms with the fact of survival of the fittest? Are we finding a way not to care about those who are doomed, and even perhaps to help them achieve their destiny? Are we naturally inclined to find an evolutionary battle, whether or not it is necessary? What is snobbery, that it can grow to hatred and violence?

2002 Sept 5: Open Letter to the Environmental Movement

Salon published a letter to environmentalists subtitled "Why you're losing the war to Bush and Cheney". It argues that, despite the best intentions and considerable accomplishment, the present environmental movement is failing to do the job of persuading first world countries to clean up and use renewable resources.

The writer argues that we can only make a successful case for environmental protection by invoking the legacy we are leaving our descendants on Earth, and exploiting the willingness of people to invest heavily and sacrifice for their children and grandchildren. He proposes a reconstitution of the environmental movement around this theme, to focus attention on longer time scales, beyond our current everyday interests. There are some specific action proposals, even reorganizations of government toward a longer ranging future perspective.

This letter reverberates with themes in which I'm very interested: human regard for the environment and planet, DNA and evolution, the heritage we pass on to future generations, even the future of human life on Earth. What do you think? Is there a new theme here that environmentalists should heed and act upon?

2002 Sept 3: Sudden Loss of Connectivity

During all the web site updating that went on this weekend, our two month old Apple Airport died (actually its a refurbished early model, so it's more like two years old). It's lights went from blinking to steady red, and there was no more signal. This immediately disabled all of our five computers because those that were not on wireless were using the Airport as an ethernet router, with the Airport managing the connection to the outside world. Three computers could be reconfigured to use the DSL modem directly, but the other two were out of commission.

The reaction from our chat and e-mail addicted teenage daughters was predictable near-hysteria. WHAT! No internet?! OHMYGOD! Thankfully, not all the computers were out of commission for long. Whew! This all makes one wonder at the power of the internet to enslave us. It seems like it must be a good thing to be focused on communication with ones peers, doesn't it? And it will lead to a broader awareness of the world and all the different people in it, won't it? Sure hope so...

2002 Sept 2: What are those pictures?

A few words of explanation about the banner here: That is a photograph of the aurora over the south pacific and antarctica from space (defense meteorological satellite program). You can see the longitude-latitude grid superposed. This is during a major space storm, so there is a huge region filled with auroral forms. The forms have fascinated me most of my life, and are extremely cloud like, reflecting a fluid phenomenon consisting of flows, eddies, whorls, and other kinds of turbulent features. Because of the way the geomagnetic field links things together, these forms reflect motions in a large region around the earth, out to the distance of the moon on the night side of the Earth. My spouse Gwen says it looks like Pegasus running through the surf, which doesn't seem to be too bad an analogy. You can find more on my NASA site, in the link at the right.

The photo on the right is Amelia Earhart, in a miniature of a poster published by Apple Computer as part of their "think different" advertising campaign. Apple has since decided that their computers should appeal to a broader audience than those who "think different." But Amelia lives on in our memories. Isn't she gorgeous?! I recommend a little book called "I Was Amelia Earhart", by Jane Mendelsohn (see link at right under "Reading"). She was lost in the south pacific leg of her flight around the world, and in this book, the author imagines what might have happened between her and her male copilot.

2002 Sept 2: First Entry: 'blogs away

I guess I'm susceptible to trends. I've noticed that weblogs are becoming quite popular, and some of them are very interesting. There is a whole software industry engaged in automating things for weblogs, to make it easy to submit items and to update a site. Userland software charges $40 for their software, which I tried and found to be rather cumbersome, and set up to maintain a duplicate of the entire site on a base computer. That's nice, but it then struck me that the web site template I've been using for my family site and indeed all my sites would serve eminently well as a 'blog page. So here is the first entry to launch a weblog.

The idea of the 'blog will be to simply be a journal of thoughts and links that I find interesting. I'd also like to include images that seemed interesting, with commentary. I think this simple template will allow all that and I can just copy the index file and enter an item in it from anywhere, upload an image, or whatever. One needs to know just a very small amount of html for that, and perhaps that much html is a basic literacy requirement these days?

As a first image of interest, I submit one version of a graphic intended for posting on a web site, to state one's intent that the material on that site should be open to any web browser. That is, in place of the frequent practice of trumpeting the browser software for which a site is optimized, one places instead notice that the html code and other elements are designed to comply with WWW standards. Another such graphic is posted at the bottom of this column...

© 2002 Tom E M, Moore Family, Inc. ™