August 19th, 2011 |
Published in
News | 4 Comments
Technology has come a long way, hasn’t it? Fortunately (or unfortunately) for me, we could never afford braces while I was growing up. As a consequence, my mouth contains unspeakable horrors, a jumbled mess of crooked trolls, crowding haphazardly around a fresh carcass. I’m not kidding. While my smile won’t crack any mirrors, I have the overbite of a horse and the canines of a timber wolf. And like an unbalanced chair, my wobbly bite has ushered in periods of intense jaw cramps over the last few years.
My laziness has finally been overcome by my propensity for aggravation, so it’s time to finally fix this shit. Invisible tooth wrangling technology has gotten much better since the process was introduced, and is now applicable to moderate cases like mine, instead of folks who already had braces and just needed a slight update because they didn’t wear their retainer. Getting everything arranged was much more involved than I suspected, however.
The Mold
The process started by visiting my dentist and having them squirt an unholy purple and green slime into a giant mouth guard which I gnawed on long enough for them to obtain a relatively accurate snapshot of my bite. My bite is horrible, by the way. I already mentioned it’s crooked witch-like clasp, but I didn’t realize just how bad my teeth were until I saw the mold. The right side of my upper teeth is partially caved in, instead of rounded outwards like you’d expect. I knew my right canine was rather unorthodox, but the mold revealed a bunched mass of several teeth, like they were building a shambling rugby team.
Immersing my teeth in goo and waiting for it to harden, required about an hour of my time. Then they sent me on my way, and I started the waiting game.
Waiting game?
Well, Invisalign is a company based in California. Their process of laser-activated plastic only takes place there. And worse, the dentist and a specialist have to work together on producing the actual model of my mouth and all the intermediate steps required to rearrange everything properly. This takes weeks of back-and-forth. My case was apparently extra complicated, because I didn’t hear back from my dentist for two months. This shouldn’t have been surprising, really, because I actually had molds taken last year, and my case was too difficult to handle back then. Some recent fairy magic or demonic insight rendered my case manageable recently, but little else.
Yet, miraculously, the aligners were finally produced, and I was called in for my fitting. Oh, how little I suspected.
How Unfitting
I’d done some research, and I was aware of a few certain little-known facts about the aligners. They are braces, in a way. Instead of anchoring to other metal pieces fit over the teeth, they snap onto epoxy-based anchors built onto the tooth itself, somewhat like enamel-colored outcroppings. Remember when I said my case was complex? I need twelve of those hateful, jagged bastards. My teeth now resemble an overzealous rock-climbing wall aching to host a frenzied thrill-seeker.
So, how do they actually install those things? I’m glad you asked! My dentist scraped a flat surface into my teeth, squirted some epoxy into a template, and pressed upon it with the weight of a thousand obese elephants, all while his assistant zapped the compound with a UV gun until it set. But it wasn’t over yet! Inevitably some compound leaked between the template and my teeth, which meant grinding off the excess with a dental drill! Hurray! And while I expected much of this, what I didn’t expect was that the tight “pop” which is good for flossing, is bad for Invisalign. For the aligners to attach properly, those spaces needed to be . . . widened. So in he goes with a dental file, whereupon I experience a rather disconcerting series of sawing noises as he struggles to wedge the dental implement deep enough to produce a usable gap.
None of that actually hurt, but I would hardly provide it as a party favor. And though my dentist likes putting on a pleasant and confident air, I suspected he was haggard and broken inside. Still, the worst was yet to come.
No Escape
Before they let me scamper away, it was time to clip on the first set of aligners. This was the part I’d been waiting two months for! Except I failed to properly account for just how tightly the aligners fit. Academically, I understood they’d be snug enough to wrench my teeth into different parts of my mouth, but the anchors—all twelve of them—made it incalculably worse. In the same vein as an arrowhead, the aligners clip on smoothly enough, but removing them requires an act of God tantamount to parting the Red Sea. And I don’t have to defeat one or two, but six for each aligner, three on each half of my mouth.
Of course they wanted me to demonstrate my ability to fasten and remove the trays self-sufficiently. My brain-damaged bumbling merely convinced the assistant I should repeat my aborted attempts until I managed something repeatable. I still can’t do this right, and have resorted to wedging part of an aligner between my thumbnail and a molar and pushing up or down, and proceeding along the gum line until it successfully pops off. The amount of pressure this requires is ridiculous and rather painful, so I started looking for some other removal method. Thankfully this is a common issue, and I can just buy an Outie on Amazon to solve my problem.
Managing
The ol’ in-and-out practically ensures I won’t eat snacks anymore. Flossing, brushing, and cleaning the aligners between meals is pure madness, and taking them out is like, well, pulling teeth. I imagine anyone with braces has to deal with something similar, and in some ways they have it worse because flossing and brushing around a bunch of wires and mounts looks abysmally tedious.
But unlike people in braces, I can only drink water while I’m wearing these. Liquid is outright evil, and tea, coffee, and pop of any kind, contain acids, dyes, and sugar. Like an insidious taint, these things all lurk in the imperceptible gap between aligner and tooth, helpfully transforming enamel into Silly Putty. Since I’d rather not have my teeth dissolved like Alka-Seltzer, I’ll stick with plain water for the duration.
Did I mention I’ll be wearing these for at least the next year? Currently I only have eleven sets of trays to straighten my teeth, but then I’ll get another series of aligners to rectify my bite—the whole reason I pursued correction in the first place. My dentist estimated twelve to fourteen months, and since eleven trays only accounts for about five of those, it’s pretty clear he’s taking an iterative approach instead of just assuming all thirty trays can be modeled accurately based on the movement he wants. I respect that, and since he’s probably the best dentist I’ve ever had, I trust he’s making the right decision. Should I have consulted an orthodontist? Probably. Hopefully Dr. Jeff’s competence makes up for his lack of that particular degree.
All in all, the first couple days of wearing these things is equal parts agonizing, annoying, tedious, and weird. Without major oral surgery, I couldn’t have gotten any kind of braces before my wisdom teeth started coming in when I was seventeen, or after I had them removed when I was twenty four. But I still took my sweet time. Remember, I’m lazy.
I guess that’s just how life works. At least pain doesn’t form memories very well. If I took these off tomorrow, I’d have a very hard time remembering just how uncomfortable they were for the first few days. I trust that effect will persist for the duration, so I can handle it. I expected most of this, but it’s different actually experiencing it firsthand. But I need some kind of correction, and any avenue I pursued would have its share of associated agony. I’m fine with a little discomfort now if it means freedom from jaw cramps.
Until Tomorrow
July 19th, 2011 |
Published in
Database, Tech Talk | No Comments
A few months ago, Greg Smith of PostgreSQL fame suggested I submit a proposal to the new Postgres Open conference here in Chicago. Some of us residents of the Midwest have long waited for a PostgreSQL-related conference of our very own, and now the glorious day has finally arrived. I was asked to submit proposals to other conferences, but the travel involved quickly put me off; now I can be lazy and still help spread The Word.
But what is The Word, and why am I spreading it? Well, I’m not. Not really. PostgreSQL as a database engine really advocates itself, and though this happened a number of years ago, it has reached a level of maturity and complexity that necessitates expert intervention. Because it sucks? Quite the opposite, actually. What started as a proof of concept—much like the Linux kernel—has grown into a veritable development platform. It’s not just that SQL and the set-theory which drives most databases is an anathema to garden-variety coders, because language-slingers will eventually see the light. But for every logical process, there’s a dark incantation; for every standard usage pattern, there’s a sheer drop into oblivion.
A good example of this is the topic of my presentation, actually. I won’t go into much detail here so I can preserve the suspense, but sometimes even the best intentions and experience can be counter-intuitive or otherwise not suggest a feasible solution. A good DBA is also part System Administrator, knowing the basics of RAID, the operating and file systems lurking beneath their favorite database engine, and every nook and cranny of the software itself. A math background for set theory helps with insight to how databases think. A CS degree will at least touch on Big-O notation to help explain and decipher SQL performance difficulties. Having a solid knowledge of programming language theory will encourage scalable stored procedures, for all those times an application developer needs help. All of these things and more, are just the barest of beginnings.
But thousands of people do it every day, so I’m clearly not suggesting DBAs are some kind of super-human oracles. What I am implying though, is that so much background introduces a lot of room for interpretation, wrong guesses, red herrings, and blind alleys. What happens if an application is slamming the database and the developers have already implemented several intermediate layers of cache? What happens if indexes and simplification have already optimized all of the main queries crossing the database? What happens when the database is far too large to run from memory, but active tables constantly churn the OS inode cache in such a way disk throughput is pegged over 90% utilized for hours at a time? Fix it! Fix it now! Why haven’t you fixed it yet?!
Aaaah! What now?! Bigger server? Sure. More memory? A SAN, MSA, or DAS with more dedicated spindles sporting a BBU and immense write cache? May work. Vertical scaling through multiple read-only mirrors? That’ll require architectural changes so writes are directed toward the data master, or the introduction of PGPool as an intermediate layer, not to mention the requirement of maintaining a full database copy on every server. How about Horizontal scaling, then? Sharding, data segmentation along logical or hashed server assignment is perfect, but requires even more architectural and application changes!
All of these things are feasible and recommended long-term solutions in various scenarios, and my presentation will cover another, more immediate solution along the same lines as SSDs. But I won’t just talk about what we actually did, but why. What led to that decision, and more importantly, why a lot of other things—including SSDs—wouldn’t have worked. For OLTP databases that take thousands or tens of thousands of transactions per second, being a good DBA isn’t enough. Sometimes hardware and existing architecture can actively thwart the most valiant effort. The trick is in knowing how to fix it anyway, and that’s one incantation I can impart.
If you’re in the Chicago area during September 14th to the 16th, go ahead and drop by. Bruce Momjian and a few other notable PostgreSQL names will be there, too! It’ll be an honor to be there, and I hope many of you are too!
June 2nd, 2011 |
Published in
Book, Review | No Comments
Alastair Reynolds has been both one of my favorite, and most hated authors. I tend to enjoy his one-shots more than his series, maybe because he doesn’t have time to write himself into a corner. So too with House of Suns, a book I neglected reading for over a year because I was so put off by Absolution Gap‘s meandering nonsense.
Gladly, House of Suns returns to what I love about Reynolds’ writing. It’s told from one of three perspectives throughout, and while it’s a bit jarring between the transitions because it’s all written in the first person, it’s also an interesting technique. Abigail Gentian’s family owns and operates one of the most extensive cloning facilities available, and to follow a pressing sense of responsibility to explore, she clones herself one thousand times, hops on one thousand ships, and sets off. No matter where these ships go, they congregate after every trip around the galaxy to share what they’ve discovered. And like pretty much every single Novel by Reynolds, there is no superluminal transit; it’s all done at sub-light speed, even six million years after Abigail’s departure.
The reason provided is that the universe strives to preserve causality, as light can transmit information, and traveling faster than that, even through utilizing wormholes, would violate that fundamental law. Because Abigail’s offspring are effectively immortal, this doesn’t really present a problem, but it’s still irritating to imagine a future constrained to such relatively slow transportation. Yet partially because of time dilation and frequent bouts of stasis, the Gentian line has outlived effectively every other human civilization, which garners a certain amount of respect.
And at least this time, that’s not enough to save them. They’re under attack, and the tale of their bare survival in the aftermath is what this novel is really about. Purslane and Campion, the two other perspectives that convey the story, spend the first third of the book just getting to their reunion, but afterwards, it’s up to them to discover the source of the attack, and possibly prevent something even worse. All in all, it’s very straight-forward. What’s interesting is that even though I complained incessantly about how pointless Consider Phlebas was, the sense of discovery here disarms a very similar problem.
Presented on a canvas that covers literally millions of years, where one chapter alone advances the clock by sixty-two thousand years, I still didn’t get a sense of how tiny this event was. It was significant because all life in the galaxy was theoretically at risk, but insignificant thanks to the time-scale and the lack of lasting impact by all the transient blooms of human civilization. This tells me Iain M. Banks does something in his novels that Alastair Reynolds does not, and while I can’t quite put my finger on it, the disparity is quite stark.
Perhaps it’s because a narrative actually exists here. The way Hesperus was indispensable and yet incapacitated throughout, was a unique touch. The back-story for Valmik, a man who transformed his merely human existence into something much greater over his six-million years of tweaks. The only thing that really frustrated me was that Reynolds expects us to believe such a being can barely overcome a single Machine Person. It’s also transparent that while Reynolds writes hard sci-fi, he simultaneously disregards technology, treating it as a mere afterthought.
An example of this is the final approach of the Silver Wings, Purslane’s ship. Whether through accumulation of vast technologies or sheer momentum, it callously swats away attempts to stop its advance, obliterating entire fleets. The Gentian line is apparently only susceptible to nebulously foreboding Homunculus weapons—another creation he never justifies. Reynolds is all about mass, energy, speed, time dilation, and basically anything involving known physics, and tends to gloss over his own magical devices. It’s somewhat disappointing, but understandable considering his chosen genre.
In any case, I consider this novel a vindication of my faith in his work. It’s not much, but I like this kind of quiet, feasible storytelling on occasion.
May 19th, 2011 |
Published in
Book, Review | 7 Comments
I don’t believe I’ve read anything by Iain M. Banks before, and after Consider Phlebas, I’m not sure I want to.
Now, this isn’t a matter of a terrible novel that made my eyes bleed, or some horrible techniques that drove me insane. I’m not even sure Mr. Banks writes books like this as a matter of course, or simply in a study on methods to cripplingly depress his readers. The worst part of this is that it’s very well written and highly engaging. It’s just… so revoltingly hopeless from approximately every aspect, I’m certain this book has lead to the suicide of at least one person.
Which is unfair, because this novel has everything I normally like. A massively advanced AI is being pursued across the galaxy and narrowly escapes. And it’s up to Horza, our shrewd anti-hero, to retrieve it from its hiding place. He’s a shapechanger, you see, and excels at that kind of thing. It also helps that he’s been on the protected planet where the AI absconded with itself. Along the way, he literally nearly drowns in a latrine, is shot, stabbed, blown up, abandoned in space, loses everything he’s ever loved, and ultimately fails in his mission.
I actually wanted all that to happen, by the way. Horza is probably the worst being alive, as portrayed here. He’s working for a race of aliens who are basically acting as the police of the universe, only because they haven’t developed and are consequentially not “ruled by” AI. He’s a bigot against all things artificial, and is willing to take part in events that lead to the deaths of billions, based on that premise. But Banks does such a good job making him a sympathetic character, I actually felt bad for the worthless bastard. He doesn’t really know what’s right, and admits he might be wrong. He’s the underdog in a lot of ways, and lost everything pursuing his decision.
It’s not even really his fault. He comes from a race despised by the rest of humanity because we’re apparently a bunch of superstitious asshats, so his entire race basically threw in their lot with the aliens who consider humans much like we look upon ants. His shapeshifting is nothing but a convenient tool, to them. He openly mocks their religion, and hates everything else about them, but their disdain for AI is enough to garner his loyalty. I really, really wanted to hate Horza, but I found myself secretly hoping he’d succeed.
Which is what makes his eventual (highly expected and anticipated) failure even worse. He emotionally connects to his pursuers, goes against his own biases, and eventually becomes a likable character. After a fashion, anyway. You get to watch him mature, and then after being teased for hundreds of pages, it’s all for nothing. The Culture, the AI society that created the advanced AI that started this whole mess, even admits its capture won’t change the final result of the war. So why? What was the point? It was a minor skirmish in a war that apparently lasted for decades and killed untold billions. Why did we just read about the pursuit of one inconsequential AI during the end of the war, told from the perspective of one unlikable and ultimately doomed patsy?
Because it’s not the destination that matters, but the adventure in getting there. Except I hated this adventure. The only thing that kept me reading was want for a resolution, and I didn’t even get that. The writing itself is fantastically engaging and does Banks credit, but it’s so fantastically depressing and pointless, I actually wish I didn’t read it at all. It’s like almost every novel by V. C. Andrews; a space opera need not necessarily emulate a soap opera.
April 13th, 2011 |
Published in
Contemplation, Essays, Writing | No Comments
I’d first like to begin by saying I’ve written about this topic several times already. But while those were basically artistic impressions, this is an outright essay on the mild disquiet I feel every day while embedded in this society, and what probably causes it. I’m warning you right now that it’s exceedingly long… about twelve pages going by word-count alone. You’ve been warned.
As a rather boring proponent of various documentaries, I recently ran across The Trap directed by Adam Curtis. It’s a three part series outlining how society has reached its current form, suggesting that elements such as Game Theory, Negative Freedom, and to a certain extent, pharmaceuticals and their ilk, have built a system of distrust and ultimate suppression of the individual. Further, it systematically explains what each piece contributes to this lumbering dystopia we apparently inhabit. Unfortunately—or fortunately, for us—Curtis makes several assumptions concerning his observations that fail to account for the self-organizing traits of large societies themselves, and does not consider that many of his hypotheses are actually backwards.
But backwards how? Curtis begins the journey with Game Theory. John Forbes Nash, probably one of the most infamous names in the field, made himself available for this documentary. The Trap purports that Nash, a paranoid schizophrenic at the time of his discoveries and advocacy, naturally constructed his hypothetical proofs to impart a certain level of mistrust and logic not commonly experienced by an average person. Indeed, assumed betrayal was central to several of these, and became a requirement for many of the mathematical models to function at all. During the Cold War, this level of distrust was considered healthy, especially given the alternatives. The root assumption implies than every person is always interested in advancing their own cause. Given these two aspects, Game Theory was effectively adopted worldwide as a method of quantifying performance, because it also works as functional equilibrium of balanced greed. The flaws in this are legion, which The Trap makes abundantly clear. Is that enough however, to fundamentally alter civilization?
Part three of the documentary unequivocally says no. While the second episode describes, at length, the part an individual plays in this new paradigm, it’s when the documentary gets to Negative and Positive Freedom, that the final pieces fall into place. Positive Freedom is the freedom to fulfill one’s desires, while Negative Freedom is the freedom to remain independent of outside influence. Isaiah Berlin’s position that Positive Freedom always becomes a tool of oppression, provided justification for Western governments to enforce Negative Freedom. The Trap suggests this philosophy is directionless, and while freedom is attained, a system that hasn’t been properly bootstrapped falls into chaos of competing exploitation. The link to Game Theory is strenuously reinforced by the assumption that competing desires will reach a natural and desirable equilibrium. But can such a stalemate lead to progress? That actions of Governments enforcing Negative Freedom itself has devolved into Positive Freedom, because that ideal is seen as fulfilling one’s potential to be as free as possible. It’s an interesting dichotomy that is presented as evidence that Society is less free.
But this isn’t a book report. Whether it’s Positive Freedom, Negative Freedom, Game Theory, or dehumanization to fit those designations, human psychology is far more complicated than application of a few misguided simplifications thereof. The Trap’s greatest flaw is not hyperbole, but naiveté. It’s very tempting to believe paranoid greed fueled by crude models of human behavior on a massive scale can degrade governments and individuals to work against their own interests. Yet this is no different from arguments posited by philosophers for thousands of years. Plato’s assertion that “Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous,” is an easy example of this. Blaming misapplied knowledge or techniques is nothing new, and that very persistence of this paradigm demands an alternative explanation. Game Theory and Negative Freedom, no matter their paranoid or ambiguous goals, are merely a reflection of sufficiently advanced societies, not a tool to control them. They’re manifestations of a larger guiding force, and it’s one that arises naturally from self-organizing systems. Knowing how this mechanism operates is the true key to understanding culture and the punctuated equilibrium that seems to define it. This Leviathan of an operating society is critical to its survival, but requires certain concessions from an individual that mimic these theories without being driven by them.
Game theory for example, is a gross oversimplification of human motivation. While it’s true many cynical philosophies explain that even altruistic behavior is ultimately driven by selfish interests, the manifestations therein are legion. Human interaction also closely matches pack behavior in may respects. Taken at its most simplistic, would it be in the best interest for a person in a lower position to undermine his superior to get ahead, support her to obtain recognition, or leave for greater rewards elsewhere? These alternatives could lead to the downfall of a corporation, the establishment of a strong competitor, or any number of infinitely variable consequences. This simply can not be modeled by Game Theory alone. The excuse that Game Theory demands its participants mimic completely logical selfish entities is benign. Attempting to apply Game Theory by encouraging self interest is ultimately futile, because it may be in someone’s self interest to seek spiritual enlightenment or other charitable conduct, which undermines the very model. Emotions and their inspired application simply can’t be reduced to such an internally consistent mathematical representation. Game Theory may have had limited success during the Cold War due to sufficient polarization, but it’s hardly a universal solution to a successful society.
The Trap implied many of these conclusions, but did nothing to address the performance metrics used by governments it suggested as proponents of Game Theory. That those governments apply Game Theory to objectively suggest quotas for many business and government operations is presented, but the source of these projections is not. What were the inputs? What calculations were performed? What controls were used? Which subjective decisions were made to select variable interaction? Any of these can vastly alter quotas, but this point is never raised. The quotas themselves are considered the failure in the system, given how they’re circumvented in several examples or subverted outright. The situation is very similar with adhering to the letter of a law while ignoring the spirit which inspired it—a very human reaction. And it’s a human reaction because the quota is treated with contempt; instead of meeting a quota using any technique available, it becomes something to defeat. Instead of being an objective goal, it becomes a subjective one. The problem is, Game Theory does not fit human psychology, so it gets transformed to something which does. The human reaction to the tool is to neuter it, or find a method of interpreting the rules to justify existing behavior.
An even more cynical explanation is that Game Theory isn’t even new. The formation of the United States government was driven by the idea that people are selfish, and that power is a corrupting influence. Several roadblocks, from separating government powers, to explicitly denying certain abilities from the government, were created specifically to disrupt oppressive tendencies. And even these safeguards can be dismantled given enough collusion. This gives us the chance to examine Positive and Negative Freedom, in fact, because the US government is a clever combination of both concepts. The ideals of liberty, freedom to be left alone, is a central tenant in several documents. Yet a central government is necessary to coordinate many aspects of a sufficiently large country, which is a manifestation of Positive Freedom. By separating the powers of government, theoretically it can not become a dictator or oppressor with the power it wields.
Indeed, either of these things by themselves is demonstrably destructive. Negative Freedom for instance has no inherent safeguard to prevent Monopolies or collusion from permanently controlling a market or resource. And once such control is established, there is little to no incentive to innovate, leading to aimless stagnation. But Positive Freedom at its logical extremes is equally detrimental. Citizens now have direction and purpose as dictated by whomever or whatever wields the reigns that control the society, but has no real mechanism to limit that power. Even the most benevolent ruler can eventually be replaced by a malevolent one, and the limitless control to better society becomes an equally potent tool to corrupt it. It’s the position which has the mandate, not the person. The new ruler’s whims, even in amiable circumstances, can result in an overall loss of progress. The road to Hell is indeed paved with good intentions. And again, these flaws are either explicitly described or assumed as understood by The Trap. However instead of being guiding elements of society, these interpretations of freedom are merely indicative a society exists. Any particular form is transitory, so long as the overriding goal of maintaining smooth operation is fulfilled.
And thus Leviathan is born. Born in almost the literal sense because human society viewed as a single entity fits all four requirements for a living organism. It’s an entity that at its extremes, represents nearly seven billion cells. Given a hospitable planet, a colonization effort would serve to create subsequent entities. Our mastery of the environment is sufficient proof specialization responds to novel and varying stimuli. Ant colonies are already considered a single organism, and there is little suggesting humanity is immune from this kind of convergence into a single super-organism.
This alone is not a novel proposal. However, in viewing society from the perspective that Leviathan exists, presents abundant complexity reductions in behavioral patterning. In order for such an organism to function, many things are required: information exchange, resource management, transportation, immunology, and so on. Education for instance, is seen as important by most individuals, but to a larger organism only the most basic techniques are necessary. Reading and Writing enable internal communication and message passing between specialized systems. Literature, while desirable, is superfluous. Mathematics leads to Chemistry and Physics, which aids in construction of the tools of society. Music? Art? Distractions. Higher tiers may embrace more advanced applications of theory to produce guiding influence, but many creatures survive without a brain. So too, does Leviathan; it is an amoeba of specialized organs that doesn’t purposefully accomplish anything.
The implications here are vast. Humans are social creatures. It’s one of the reasons for our success and development of language. Despite this, not even the most capable human can master every technique, absorb all knowledge, or perform all tasks. Not only is self-organizing a trait of our species, but so is specialization. This type of spontaneous formation leads to functional groups comprised of several positions to ensure proper operation. The interaction of these clusters produce a modern society built upon trade. It’s an economy of scale that allows cooperation between loosely aligned clans to produce efficiency that would never otherwise exist. Thus a business, or a corporation, or a government become various essential organs, and once established, will defend themselves as such. This becomes more true as the power of each individual organ increases; just as no person can live without a heart, the modern world would have a difficult time reflecting its current form in the absence of international banks.
And what does defense mean? An immune system. Police. Prisons. Methods of suppression large and small from repression to incarceration to distraction, all serve to preserve a functioning system. This need not be malevolent, just mindless efficiency as seen from the perspective of a neutral entity. This applies to organs which—through inaction, corruption, or failure—no longer fulfill their original function. Either these organs are replaced by an equivalent structure, or otherwise made redundant. This doesn’t always mean progress, as any owner of an appendix might attest. Disruptive is a very vague term, but in this context merely means external to established methodology. Thus in the right context, a peaceful activist or visionary is just as provocative as a hardened criminal. Notable historical figures such as Galileo or Martin Luther King Junior experienced this reaction firsthand.
But some ideas can be timely indeed. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity paved the way for revolutionary advancements in physics that made technology such as the transistor possible. The internet began as a Defense-funded technology but ended up becoming a new nervous system for global interaction. What was once a lumbering and very loosely coupled creature transformed into something much more efficient and comparatively nimble. Yet this comes at a cost. As before, groups remain comprised of individuals filling specialized positions. However a global talent pool also implies a dynamic skill bidding system, driving efficiency further. Employees begin to resemble, except in the most highly sought or difficult to automate tiers, interchangeable components. This suppression is not driven by evil or conspiracy, but as a natural culmination of a varied hierarchy of interactive precision ingredients.
It’s easy to forget that these ingredients are thinking, feeling individuals. People with lives and emotions, goals, ideals, hopes, and dreams. But it’s all of these things that are either ignored or punished by Levithan’s internal structure, which strives for efficiency and repetition. Negative Freedom is effectively lubrication and Game Theory the grossest, lowest common denominator presumption to quantify human interaction. As soon as a more repeatable model than Game Theory comes along, it will most likely enter the global psyche as a new government tool to promote citizen productivity and happiness. There’s really no mystery here, and good testament that Aidous Huxley’s Brave New World was just as prophetic as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. In essence, the combination of both are the extreme conclusion of a society driven by amiable workers embedded in a strictly managed machine.
Leviathan is very real. And though it’s not alive, its presence can be felt. A disillusioned idealist wonders why society never changes, why corporations steamroll the rights of individual citizens, why citizens rarely overthrow brutal regimes, why the rift between rich and poor is always widening. It’s simply how we self-organize, whether driven by instincts or a need to abstract our complex surroundings. But what do we gain by knowing this? Can removing ourselves from the system to observe it objectively, result in better social engineering that’s actually capable of avoiding the worst aspects of our limitations? Is being cognizant of the Leviathan we collectively create, give us the ability to control its DNA and produce something more benevolent to ourselves? I can’t say. It’s a monumental undertaking, and while cultural anthropologists and psychologists have historically been instrumental in explaining human behavior, few have offered their expertise in designing a better society. And even if they did, the general populace retains vehement distrust of this type of overt eugenics. But The Trap claims this has already been done with Game Theory at the very least, suggesting more complete models could just as readily be adopted.
Leviathan is a romantic notion for cynics and writers like myself. It’s the ultimate suppressive influence; always looming, making a man feel out of place, forgotten and unwanted. It’s what makes us work long hours in jobs we hate, only so we can numb our tortured minds with TV or video games or the internet before starting the next day over again. It’s everything we hate in education, as teachers get demonized and standardized tests evaluate the quality of each cog schools produce. But it’s also nothing. It can’t think, can’t feel; even if it did, we’re vital to its survival. Nobody wants their heart to hardly function, doing only the bare minimum to get by. It’s in the creature’s best interests the components of its organs are not only efficient, but content. Drugs can not bring enlightenment. Turning our minds off can never make us free. But neither can merely accepting what society has to offer. The real question: how to affect change without accidentally triggering an immune response. If we can master that, we can literally transform civilization into whatever we want, provided it doesn’t kill our host.
For us to truly mature, we must master the Leviathan.
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