WiTricity – Wireless Electricity!
This story in the Boston Globe amazes me; the lede:
The latest technical advance out of MIT could dramatically change the drudgery of recharging portable devices: An MIT research team has figured out how to wirelessly illuminate an unplugged light bulb from seven feet away.
The reporting is far less technical than I would like to see, and the only explanation I see is that the researchers use “a carefully designed magnetic field to deliver power to such devices from a range of 10 to 15 feet.”
It is of course well known that magnetic fields induce electric current. You may have seen electric toothbrush chargers that can charge through the plastic waterproof casing, requiring no metal-to-metal contact. They work by generating an electromagnetic field through the casing, inducing current flow within the toothbrush to charge its battery.
Maybe I’ll update this as I read more about it. Obvious questions that come to mind:
- How do you charge efficiently? My understanding is the little inductive charges in toothbrushes aren’t very efficient, which is tolerable because they don’t use much power anyway.
- How do you prevent major side effects from occurring, either if something comes in between the charger and device, or if the field spreads out farther than desired. A magnetic field powerful enough to transfer substantial amounts of power could really do some damage. You would think any metal object in the vicinity could become electrified, not to mention people with pacemakers.
Pretty amazing technology, if it ever becomes practical.
Technorati Tags: science, technology
Government as Your Financial Planner
Liberal as Massachusetts is, sometimes I think my home state is not as bad as others when it comes to nannyism — the trend for government officials to infantilize citizens by treating them as incapable of making their own decisions.
But our attorney general Martha Coakley does have a taste for nannyism, seen in her belief that appropriate prescription drug treatment is a matter for prosecutors, not simply doctors and patients. She scratches that itch again today in her assertion that government is a better financial planner than the citizen (insert your favorite Big Dig joke here…). Her office has decided to ban “foreclosure rescues:”
Coakley said she would seek comments from the public over the next 28 days for proposals to make it illegal for lenders to inflate a borrower’s income on their mortgage application, to make mortgages that borrowers clearly cannot pay; and to provide credit when it is not in the interest of the homebuyer or an existing homeowner who is refinancing a property.
The government, or any impartial arbiter, I would argue, does have a legitimate role in defining what constitutes a legitimate contract. In addition, there’s not always a clear line between outright fraud and a fair contract that just isn’t the best deal for someone. So perhaps Coakley is doing the right thing; I haven’t researched “foreclosure rescues” and can’t say I know anything about them other than what I read in this article.
Yet it really sounds as though she is overreaching, telling citizens they are too stupid to avoid making a bad decision and can’t be held responsible if they do.
I am, however, somewhat sympathetic to her wish to ban lenders from “inflating” a borrower’s income; it’s plausible that some shady lenders would use misleading, ambiguous or obscure fine print to substantively alter the terms of a contract, for which borrowers should not be held responsible. But of course it depends on what “inflating” actually means.
Worse still is the idea of forbidding mortgages that the borrower “clearly” cannot pay. If it is “clear” to the lender that the borrower will default on the loan, the lender would not make the offer; if it is “clear” to the borrower that he or she can’t make the payments, then the borrower would not accept the loan. The strong presumption is that the government is a better judge of what someone can pay than both the lender and the borrower, each of whom knows their financial situation far more intimately than the state.
One can, of course, sympathize with someone who gets in more debt than he can handle; it happens to many well-meaning people. But that is what bankruptcy is for. We’re going down a dangerous road if we allow the government to protect us from our own decisions. It is one thing to have welfare and bankruptcy law in situations where a person is in a hopeless situation. It is another for the government to interfere in decisions that might possibly result in a hopeless situation — but might not.
Of course, the two are connected: once you decide to protect people from the consequences of their choices, you realize that paying for it (health care, welfare benefits, bankruptcy courts, etc.) can be expensive. It’s the next logical step for the government to directly interfere in people’s choices. But, of course, it’s in making bad choices, or seeing others do so, that we gain the wisdom to make better choices — including, of course, whom to elect to office.
The trend toward protecting people from bad choices will result in the population getting dumber, leading to even dumber politicians getting elected, leading to progressively dumber laws getting enacted: it’s the death spiral of the nanny state.
Technorati Tags: law, libertarianism, nannyism, welfare
Digital Privacy
Today Apple began releasing DRM-free music, which naturally engendered much commentary in the blogosphere. I thought there was an interesting post and comment thread over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog.
The post makes an interesting technical point about the DRM-free songs: the digital files are still embedded with the customer’s name (and possibly other unknown identifiers). Although there are no technical restrictions on copying, doing so might allow a copyright-holder to identify the source of a file uploaded to a peer-to-peer network, for example.
What isn’t clear to me is whether there is simply a name and account number embedded, or if there is more extensive watermarking.
The comment thread unfolded somewhat predictably, but well illustrates the different perspectives people take on intellectual property. There were two main perspectives:
1. Ominous Privacy Threat: People from this point of view found it unwelcome that music files could be tracked to an individual purchaser. This perspective has two subtypes: those who might want to engage in illegal file sharing, and those who see embedded metadata more as a general threat to privacy.
2. No Worries: Many commenters were more sanguine, observing that the only privacy “threat” was to people who break the law by illegally sharing files.
As is common for online discussions, there were many bad analogies and misinterpretations. For example, a commenter made a comparison to government wiretapping, sardonically adding “if you aren’t doing anything wrong, then there’s nothing to worry about.” This, however, is not really comparable, since wiretapping is an intrusion that may occur without you doing anything illegal or wrong, whereas you need to publicly share your downloaded music files before anyone can finger you for breaking copyright.
As a straight point of logic, I think the No Worries camp has the better of the argument. Those people placing higher value on privacy or anonymity can probably find a way to strip the metadata, or convert the file to other formats, and it’s understandable that Apple would choose to embed the customer’s information considering how reluctant the music industry has been to give up DRM.
But there are some Big Picture questions that I think merit addressing:
1. Tracing as a Point of Law: Many people reacted by pointing out that tracing is only of concern if you are breaking the law; their implication is that an embedded name and account number are sufficient proof that you illegally shared the file.
The trouble is that digitized intellectual property is “leaky” compared to tangible property: there are many, sometimes fairly innocuous ways a file can be illicitly shared. Most obviously, hardware on which IP is stored can be stolen (especially iPods or laptops). Less obviously, network permissions are often set too loosely allowing others to access files without your knowing. And sometimes other people have physical access to your computer (think about all the traffic going through a college dorm room). That a digital file with your name on it has leaked out doesn’t necessarily mean you shared it.
When you buy something physical, like a big screen TV, you own it, and enjoy the benefits of ownership as well as the costs of protecting your property (installing locks on your doors, burglar alarms, insurance, etc.). When you download music, you don’t enjoy the same benefits of ownership; technically all you have bought is a license to play music. If you don’t get the benefits of ownership, it seems dubious you should bear the costs of protecting the music on behalf of the record company.
2. Slippery Slope: Apple’s putting your name in a music file you downloaded is not really so monstrous. Many commenters noted Apple has always done so, although I find that objection irrelevant because only now is the music being touted as unprotected. But I agree it’s not such a big deal.
In the long run, however, we have to realize that as the digital paper trail follows more and more of our actions (and purchases), liberties we previously thought we had will become ever more constrained.
That’s very abstract so let me give an example. Let’s say GPS tracking technology keeps dropping in price, and more car manufacturers begin installing them in vehicles. They realize, however, that drivers who drive over the speed limit put more wear and tear on their cars. By linking GPS data to another database of speed limits, they can find if you are exceeding the speed limit and thus truncate or void your warranty. It’s easy to see why insurers and police agencies would be interested in such data as well.
You don’t have anything to worry about unless you’re breaking the law, right? Well, most of us do periodically commit minor infractions of the law. How many of the people insisting enforcement of IP is no problem always come to a complete stop at stop signs, never disobey the speed limit, never used alcohol before the legal limit, or never experimented with drugs? Probably not many.
And of those who do follow the law to the letter, but “made mistakes” in the past, are they willing to confess to the police and accept a citation — or prosecution — for breaking the laws they purport to believe in? Probably not many at all.
But we can ignore that with a wink and a nod, because no one’s going to know about it; no one’s going to do anything about it. There’s no way to prove it — yet.
We should be more honest about lawbreaking. It is not such a shameful thing, in of itself. It depends on the law. With that in mind, the discussion over intellectual property hinges on what sort of lawbreaking you are willing to stomach. File sharing is illegal, but I’ve known many people who are not otherwise criminals who don’t see a problem with it. Perhaps they are wrong, but perhaps the law is wrong. I don’t want to get into a detailed argument about IP — this post is verbose enough.
But I do want to stress there are going to be many more of these seemingly minor bits of information tying our identities to things we might prefer to keep private. Any one item, like this one with Apple, will seem minor and tolerable, but what is the cumulative effect? Eventually almost anyone can be prosecuted for one infraction or another, and who actually is prosecuted will be at the discretion of those in power.
Is Sex by Fraud Rape?
The Massachusetts supreme court says “no.” The case involved a man who had sex with his brother’s girlfriend by entering her bedroom with the lights out, pretending to be his brother. The court decided that the law has “for two centuries defined rape as sexual intercourse by force and against one’s will and that it is not rape when consent is obtained through fraud.” The court said the legislature would need to change to the definition of rape. Given that the same court found there is a right to gay marriage without awaiting legislative change, this reasoning strikes me as rather inconsistent.
My view is that, whether it is called rape or not, obtaining sex through fraud is a serious crime. Perhaps it is not as bad as using force, just as swindling someone is not as bad as directly using violence to obtain money, but it still deprives the person of the ability to make her own choices.
Although justice was not served, it is possible the court was correct insofar as having its hands tied by the legislature. Under our system the “lawmakers” in the legislature are supposed to be the source of law, so if they haven’t made the law, then it doesn’t exist.
This case illustrates the uselessness of the legislature. The legitimate function of courts is to discern justice, with justice seen as existing independently of any one person or group’s viewpoint. Having to rely on the legislature to create good law (and avoid creating bad law) impedes the courts’ ability to do justice.
The obvious objection is that we need a division of power; we do not want judges to have total discretion in deciding law. That is a good objection, but it would be a non-sequitur to infer a legislature is needed to supply the courts with law. Eliminate the legislature and establish competition between courts, so that judges must be fair, impartial, and respectful of people’s rights in order to protect their reputations.
Technorati Tags: law, philosophy, rape
“There is nothing immoral if there is nothing in charge.”
Said Al Sharpton in his debate with Christopher Hitchens, repeating a common argument against atheism.
What I find so weird about this argument is that it attempts to reject moral relativism, yet it is, itself, a moral relativist argument. It says that morality does not exist independently and is relative to the whim of God.
Murder is wrong, for example, because God says thou shalt not kill. But if, next Tuesday, God decides you should disembowel your neighbor and drink blood from his skull, then it is righteous and justified to do so, according to this argument. One can hope God would not demand such a thing of you, but even the religious admit they cannot fully know God’s plan.
And even if you believe God is too benevolent to do such a thing, or that God is unlikely to communicate such a wish, if you adhere to this argument you must admit it would be rightful to disembowel your neighbor and drink blood from his skull if God did unequivocally demand it of you. He is the only source of morality, after all.
Yet, incredibly, even within the very argument from which I quoted, Sharpton claims:
“When you raise the issue of morality, if there is no supervisory being, what do we base morality on? Is it based on who has the might at a given time, who is in power? [.. ]There is nothing immoral if there is nothing in charge.”
It is his own argument, not the atheists’, that is an appeal to power, to say the only possible source of morality is from someone “in charge.” Of course, it is well known logical error to believe rightness necessarily inheres in power or authority.
Sharpton’s faulty belief springs from another logical error, the argument from ignorance. He doesn’t know or care how morality might arise without God, seems to refuse to consider the possibility, and uses that ignorance as the basis for his belief that morality comes from God. (I’ve previously discussed ways to think about morality without relying on religion.)
Reading about this debate reminded me of Glen Whitman’s instructive post on the subject. Whitman notes the vague idea that morality comes from God can be considered more precisely, viewing God as either the “knower” or the “decider” of morality. If you view God as the decider of morality, then, as elaborated above, you have an essentially an amoral, relativistic view of morality that simply hinges on doing whatever the guy who shoots lightning bolts out of his fingers tells you to do. If, however, you view God as the knower of morality, you have conceded morality exists independently of God.
Technorati Tags: morality, philosophy, religion
Brazilian Anarcho-capitalism
Good link from Jesse Walker at Hit & Run showing how private militias have developed in Brazil to protect the poor, since the state has failed to deliver in this regard. Quoting:
Startling transformations like Roquete Pinto’s are increasingly visible across Rio, as for-profit “militias” made up of active and former police officers, private security guards, off-duty prison guards and firefighters evict drug gangs from slums where violence used to be out of control….
In this city of 6 million people, one of the world’s most violent, “the police provide security for the rich” and “the militias are the security of the poor,” said Marina Maggessi, a congresswoman and a former senior drug-control official. She has mixed feelings about the militias, saying they represent the “collapse of the state.”
First gaining strength in 2003 as an alternative to ineffective, often corrupt police, the illegal security forces have mushroomed since late last year and now control about 90 of Rio’s 600 “favelas,” Maggessi said. Success in slums like Roquete Pinto, meanwhile, fuels their expansion into others.
I of course do not have the “mixed feelings” Ms. Maggessi expresses.
It’s common for leftist critics of anarcho-capitalism to object the poor would be left out to dry. Yet it’s an equally common observation, perhaps by some of those same critics, that the state favors the rich and politically connected over the poor. These two points seem to contradict: if the state does such a bad job protecting the poor, why would would it be so bad to remove it from the equation? A critic could resolve the contradiction by arguing that even if the state does a bad job protecting the poor, protection would be even worse, or non-existent, under anarcho-capitalism. Yet Jesse Walker’s example shows that not only can private protection develop in the slums, it can do for profit. The market works for the poor just as it does for the rich.
Another misconception about anarcho-capitalism is that protection organizations would just go to war against each other until one emerged as ruler. Quoting from the original article:
The surprise is that the gangs aren’t fighting to hold their turf. In the few known cases where they did, militia gunfire turned them back.
Voluntary militias and defense firms do not (usually) go to war against each other because of simple economics: warfare will drive up costs and damage a firm’s reputation, making it less attractive to customers relative to its competitors. The hard problem for anarchism is the start-up problem: how to initiate a situation where such a peaceful equilibrium exists. If the market develops with too few competitors there is potential for a cartel or monopoly to form. A related and even bigger problem is how to start up when the state is still going strong — obviously the case in Brazil. It will be interesting to see how things unfold there.
Technorati Tags: crime, libertarianism
Mass Murderers, a Dime a Dozen
April 16 was only a slightly extraordinary for me, as there was a power failure at my office when I arrived (big spring nor’easter in New England). For more than two dozen families in Virginia I’m sure it was the worst day of their lives.
In trying to gauge my reaction I find myself with an odd sense of apathy. I’ve barely read anything about it, other than noticing the initial reports. Everyone’s talking about it, making me think myself odd for not wanting to know. But I have a sense of having been down this road before: the incessant analyzing, condemning, and deploring the actions of a madman, at least until the next one comes along.
Though I know little about this particular case, it seems to me a central goal of such a crime is to make oneself the center of attention, to make oneself significant after a life of insignificance. In lieu of doing something creative that inspires other people, do something to shock and horrify. Perhaps, in one twisted sense, a killing spree is a form of creativity, insofar as it creates a very visible change from one state to another. But it is so not original.
I was shocked after Columbine, very shocked after 9/11, utterly revolted after Daniel Pearl, but seemingly after Pearl’s murder I’m no longer surprised by the extent to which human beings will brutalize one another.
After Columbine I became very interested in the lives of Eric Harris and Dylan Kleibold — I still remember their names (less sure about the spelling). I wondered what made them tick, what made them want to go out in an orgy of bloodshed. I could even relate to their feelings of alienation at school, though I could never condone their response. I was angry at them, but also, in large part, bemused.
Then came 9/11, and I was pretty damned angry about that, too, but I still wanted to understand the mindset of the hijackers, to imagine what they were doing and thinking in the hours leading up to a terrorist attack.
Then came Daniel Pearl’s murder (I was going to write, aptly, senseless murder, but it is just too cliche). Despite being revolted by the crime, I remember not caring very much at all who did it, or why.
The killers are all pretty much the same, all having some demented, half-baked rationalization for killing innocents, or not even bothering with the rationalization but just taking their anger out on the easiest targets available. Since I’m a news junkie I’m sure it won’t be long before I come across reports and analysis explaining the motivations of this particular lunatic, but for the moment I’ll relish in the bliss of ignorance, neither knowing nor caring about him.
It makes me wonder, in not caring, if I should worry I’m becoming cold just like killers are, dehumanizing them as a class, but the difference is judgment: I judge them, in observing their actions as individuals; they don’t judge, but kill anyone in a category they hate, or anyone at all.
So fuck ‘em. Fuck this killer, and fuck the next one. They’re all about the same.
Technorati Tags: mass murder, crime, Virginia Tech
Liberty & Equality
Catallarchy » Another reason why libertarianism won’t happen
Interesting post by Patri Friedman on Catallarchy, citing experimental research suggesting people may be wired to resent inequality, and will choose to reduce incomes of the more affluent and raise incomes of the less affluent. Friedman and the commenters lament this means it will be more difficult, though hopefully not impossible, to move to a libertarian society. I see misplaced priorities at play.
Libertarians are mistaken to associate their philosophy with pure capitalism. Given the choice between state planning and laissez faire capitalism, libertarians choose laissez faire capitalism, and there are sound theoretical and empirical reasons for this choice. Yet it could be a mistake to assume that a libertarian society must be simply a copy of modern western societies, minus the welfare state, military-industrial complex and other trappings of a mixed economy. Perhaps there are non-governmental, but also non-capitalist (i.e. not for profit) institutions that would develop (or need to develop) once we delete the state.
Libertarians acknowledge there could be charities in a libertarian society, but this often seems an afterthought, with the market seen as the driving force of social organization. Perhaps, instead, we should focus more on theorizing various social, religious, or extended-family types of organizations that would spring up on a large scale to provide some level of mutual aid and assistance for the indigent or disabled, or more broadly to pool resources among like-minded people.
Perhaps we should incorporate a variant of the Potlatch feasts seen in tribal communities of the Pacific Northwest, where high status is achieved not by accumulating wealth but by giving it away. Or perhaps we can learn from the hreppur, a mutual aid organization practiced in anarchistic medieval Iceland. According to this piece by Birgir T. Runolfsson Solvason:
[...] the Hreppur was composed of a minimum of twenty farms, and had a five member commission. Among other duties, each Hreppur was responsible for seeing that orphans and the poor within its area were fed and housed. It did this by assigning these persons to member farms, which took turns in providing for them. How long each farm had to provide for the person was determined by the wealth of the farm.
The Hreppur also served as a property insurance agency. It assisted in case of destruction wrought by fire and diseases of livestock. If a farm’s kitchen burned down, the other farmers in the Hreppur would pitch in to build a new one. If both kitchen and living quarters burned, then half of each was paid for. In case of disease, if more than a quarter of the livestock died, the other farmers would assist either by contributing money or livestock.
This describes geographically-based organization (a cluster of farms), though geography is only one possible organizing principle. People who who today would be social democrats could form their own clubs, regardless of geography, to pool resources in aid of the poor.
I attribute the general irrelevance of libertarianism today in large part to our unwillingness to address egalitarianism. We may rightly oppose state-enforced egalitarianism but that doesn’t mean we have to dispense with the concept altogether. While I don’t think people, in general, are egalitarian enough to support socialism or communism, they do seem to mistrust inequality enough that they continue supporting state redistribution of wealth. Libertarians need to provide a non-coercive alternative to shed our reputation as being too “atomistic.”
Technorati Tags: libertarianism, philosophy, welfare
Spelling Flames are Lame…
…but I really hate when people make this mistake:
Intellegent Gun Law Passed in Texas « The Libertarian
The content of the post is encouraging, at least, pointing to a story that says Texas is becoming more liberal about allowing people to use lethal force in self defense (“liberal” in the proper sense of the term).
“The right to defend oneself from an imminent act of harm should not only be clearly defined in Texas law, but is intuitive to human nature,” [Governor] Perry said on his Web site.
Now you’re talking.
Anything Goes Here
Much as I’ve enjoyed some of the technical articles at O’Reilly.com, Tim O’Reilly’s idea for a blogger code of ethics strikes me as a really dumb one. In fact his initial “draft” proposal generated so much criticism he had to backpedal (which is what I’ve linked to), but unfortunately he did not give it up.
A “blogger code” cannot work because a blog is fundamentally about individual expression, so each blogger will interpret the code in his or her own way, rendering the code meaningless. The code idea is intended to provide some measure of standardization, analogous to the Creative Commons copyright license, but since bloggers will have varying interpretations it won’t help them avoid having to set a policy.
The analogy to intellectual property is inapt because people vary infinitely in how they will react to certain words and expressions, but vary much less in how they want to protect their work. Intellectual property licenses lend themselves to standardization; “acceptable speech” does not.
O’Reilly backpedaled and asserted there should be “modular axioms,” designated with icons, instead of a blanket code of conduct. While that is a slight improvement, it fails to recognize the difference between words and actions: a blogger can put an icon in the sidebar, but that icon has no meaning whatsoever unless the blogger enforces it exactly as described — and more likely than not, bloggers will still vary in their interpretations of what is acceptable and what is not.
For the code to work, then, bloggers must cede their independence to the central code-making authority. A blogger cannot be allowed to stain the good reputation of the code by failing to adequately enforce the rules (either not enforcing them, or enforcing them selectively). It is this possibility that has agitated so many people about the code — the possibility of a schism on the web with a cartel of “approved” dominant bloggers setting the standard for what people are allowed to say.
I haven’t felt the urge to blog in a while, but reading O’Reilly’s post irritated me to no end. It’s written in a bland and bureaucratic style, like a corporate press release or CEO pseudo-blog (er, maybe that’s what it is?). He says, “I’m not a big fan of political correctness,” but he is promoting political correctness, orthodoxy and conformity in a major way.
I’m all for civility, but sometimes you just gotta say “fuck that.”
Technorati Tags: code of conduct, O’Reilly
