Bruce Schneier’s article on the IoT, and the danger it presents. Hits the highlights of security, crypto, and economic drive.
“The world-size robot is less designed than created. It’s coming without any forethought or architecting or planning; most of us are completely unaware of what we’re building. In fact, I am not convinced we can actually design any of this. When we try to design complex sociotechnical systems like this, we are regularly surprised by their emergent properties. The best we can do is observe and channel these properties as best we can.”
We hear about Wallace’s courteousness in acknowledging Darwin’s priority; this paper shows how Wallace kept reading the book, making valuable suggestions for future editions, and in general being the dream reviewer that so many people despair of ever finding. Even though there were matters on which Wallace and Darwin never agreed. They just rock!
“For years, China’s leaders have feared that they’re losing their grip on the ideological loyalty of the country’s youth. According to official rhetoric, the forces wresting away young minds are cultural warfare waged through alluring foreign pop culture and the infiltration of “Western values.”
In late 2013, China established a national security committee to focus on “unconventional security threats,” including Western culture. A senior colonel working with the committee said that Hollywood movies were dangerously altering the thinking and values of China’s youth.
President Xi Jinping gave his first signal that higher education would be a key battleground in this struggle. “University Communist Party organs must adopt firmer and stronger measures to maintain harmony and stability in universities,” he reportedly told a meeting of university Communist Party officials. “Young teachers have many interactions with students and cast significant [political and moral] influence on them. . . They also play a very important role in the spread of ideas.”
“This is big and dark,” Minzner said. “This is several years in the making and it will likely roll out in colleges over the next several years. We don’t know how far it will go.”
Relating to that, I have sometimes wondered whether recent government policies to lower the number of foreign students & graduates in the UK might backfire by degrading UK-Chinese relations in the long run.
There are ~100k Chinese students in the UK, which presumably translates to a flow of ~30k per year. Although small compared to China’s population, reducing that flow might eventually have some impact on how the Chinese and UK states relate to each other, since those students are relatively likely to be China’s movers & shakers of tomorrow, and relatively likely to have some Western Liberal Democratic Values™ rub off on them.
Why Do DMT Users See Insects From A Parallel Universe?
“This is an informal collection of tales regarding the strangest of possibilities—encounters with praying-mantis like entities which occur after ingesting enteogenic compounds. Why is this so common? Nobody seems to mention spiders or grasshoppers, always mantids!”
The 25th Amendment, explained: how a president can be declared unfit to serve”
“Yet that’s precisely why the 25th Amendment gives the power to the vice president and the Cabinet secretaries here. Their judgments won’t be skewed by political bias against the president’s party. They work with the president up close and see him in private. So if they see deeply troubling things, they are the ones who have the ability — and, arguably, the responsibility — to act.”
Elon Musk Is Wrong. We Aren’t Living in a Simulation
“Once more, embracing an all-encompassing massive world simulation defeats its very nature. If the simulated apple replicates all properties of the apple, the simulated apple is the apple. ”
“And a simulated world is a myth too. The fact is that all minds we know of, human minds and possibly animal minds, are embodied and situated: they have a body and they partake of the physical world. We have never met a disembodied mind. We always meet bodies in the world.”
This paper by Kenneth Marcus describes a rhetorical technique called Accusation In A Mirror, which was used in Rwanda in the events leading up to genocide. Here’s a quote which summarizes the technique.
“The basic idea of AiM is deceptively simple: propagandists must “impute to enemies exactly what they and their own party are planning to do.” In other words, AiM is a rhetorical practice in which one falsely accuses one’s enemies of conducting, plotting, or desiring to commit precisely the same transgressions that one plans to commit against them. For example, if one plans to kill one’s adversaries by drowning them in a particular river, then one should accuse one’s adversaries of plotting precisely the same crime. As a result, one will accuse one’s enemies of doing the same thing despite their plans. It is similar to a false anticipatory tu quoque: before one’s enemies accuse one truthfully, one accuses them falsely of the same misdeed.
“This may seem an unlikely means of inciting mass-murder, since it would intuitively seem likely not only to fail but also to backfire by publicly telegraphing its speakers’ malicious intentions at times when the speakers may lack the wherewithal to carry out their schemes. The counter-intuitiveness of this method is best appreciated when one grasps that its injunctions are to be taken literally.”
From: Marcus, Kenneth L., Accusation in a Mirror (2012). Loyola University Chicago Law Journal, Vol. 43, No. 2, pp. 357 − 393, 2012. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2020327
The Marcus 2012 paper references a 1999 Human Rights Watch report that has a few more details:
“The propagandist proposes two techniques that were to become often used in Rwanda. The first is to “create” events to lend credence to propaganda. He remarks that this tactic is not honest, but that it works well, provided the deception is not discovered. The “attack” on Kigali on October 4-5, 1990 was such a “created” event, as were others – the reported discovery of hidden arms, the passage of a stranger with a mysterious bag, the discovery of radio communications equipment – that were exploited later, especially during the genocide.
The propagandist calls his second proposal “Accusation in a mirror,” meaning his colleagues should impute to enemies exactly what they and their own party are planning to do. He explains, “In this way, the party which is using terror will accuse the enemy of using terror.” With such a tactic, propagandists can persuade listeners and “honest people” that they are being attacked and are justified in taking whatever measures are necessary “for legitimate [self-] defense.” This tactic worked extremely well, both in specific cases such as the Bugesera massacre of March 1992 described below and in the broader campaign to convince Hutu that Tutsi planned to exterminate them. There is no proof that officials and propagandists who “created” events and made “accusations in a mirror” were familiar with this particular document, but they regularly used the techniques that it described.
Short Online Texts Thread
Bruce Schneier’s article on the IoT, and the danger it presents. Hits the highlights of security, crypto, and economic drive.
“The world-size robot is less designed than created. It’s coming without any forethought or architecting or planning; most of us are completely unaware of what we’re building. In fact, I am not convinced we can actually design any of this. When we try to design complex sociotechnical systems like this, we are regularly surprised by their emergent properties. The best we can do is observe and channel these properties as best we can.”
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/02/security_and_th.html
Schneiers IoT post this week, on the collection of papers of IoT sec.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/02/security_and_pr.html
It’s a good article. Schneier makes good points.
I like Cory Doctorow’s perspective on the Internet of Things, including the EFF’s Apollo 1201 plan to get rid of DRM within 10 years. Here’s one place where he talks about it. http://craphound.com/news/2016/08/25/talking-about-the-pro-security-anti-drm-business-model-on-the-oreilly-radar-podcast/
I also read the Internet of Shit twitter feed to keep up with the latest security flaw-ridden monstrosities. :) https://twitter.com/internetofshit
that is a fab twitter feed, thanks !
Wallace’s annotated copy of Darwin’s Origin of Species
We hear about Wallace’s courteousness in acknowledging Darwin’s priority; this paper shows how Wallace kept reading the book, making valuable suggestions for future editions, and in general being the dream reviewer that so many people despair of ever finding. Even though there were matters on which Wallace and Darwin never agreed. They just rock!
Why’s Beijing So Worried About Western Values Infecting China’s Youth?
https://www.chinafile.com/features/whys-beijing-so-worried-about-western-values-infecting-chinas-youth
“For years, China’s leaders have feared that they’re losing their grip on the ideological loyalty of the country’s youth. According to official rhetoric, the forces wresting away young minds are cultural warfare waged through alluring foreign pop culture and the infiltration of “Western values.”
In late 2013, China established a national security committee to focus on “unconventional security threats,” including Western culture. A senior colonel working with the committee said that Hollywood movies were dangerously altering the thinking and values of China’s youth.
President Xi Jinping gave his first signal that higher education would be a key battleground in this struggle. “University Communist Party organs must adopt firmer and stronger measures to maintain harmony and stability in universities,” he reportedly told a meeting of university Communist Party officials. “Young teachers have many interactions with students and cast significant [political and moral] influence on them. . . They also play a very important role in the spread of ideas.” “This is big and dark,” Minzner said. “This is several years in the making and it will likely roll out in colleges over the next several years. We don’t know how far it will go.”
and http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/13924/china-s-post-1980s-generation-between-the-nation-and-the-world
Relating to that, I have sometimes wondered whether recent government policies to lower the number of foreign students & graduates in the UK might backfire by degrading UK-Chinese relations in the long run.
There are ~100k Chinese students in the UK, which presumably translates to a flow of ~30k per year. Although small compared to China’s population, reducing that flow might eventually have some impact on how the Chinese and UK states relate to each other, since those students are relatively likely to be China’s movers & shakers of tomorrow, and relatively likely to have some Western Liberal Democratic Values™ rub off on them.
Why Do DMT Users See Insects From A Parallel Universe?
“This is an informal collection of tales regarding the strangest of possibilities—encounters with praying-mantis like entities which occur after ingesting enteogenic compounds. Why is this so common? Nobody seems to mention spiders or grasshoppers, always mantids!”
http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/pc/dmtinsect.html
Robotic overlords beware, there is a preying mantis behind the curtain...
The 25th Amendment, explained: how a president can be declared unfit to serve”
“Yet that’s precisely why the 25th Amendment gives the power to the vice president and the Cabinet secretaries here. Their judgments won’t be skewed by political bias against the president’s party. They work with the president up close and see him in private. So if they see deeply troubling things, they are the ones who have the ability — and, arguably, the responsibility — to act.”
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/9/14488980/25th-amendment-trump-pence
Elon Musk Is Wrong. We Aren’t Living in a Simulation
“Once more, embracing an all-encompassing massive world simulation defeats its very nature. If the simulated apple replicates all properties of the apple, the simulated apple is the apple. ” “And a simulated world is a myth too. The fact is that all minds we know of, human minds and possibly animal minds, are embodied and situated: they have a body and they partake of the physical world. We have never met a disembodied mind. We always meet bodies in the world.”
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/we-dont-live-in-a-simulation
This paper by Kenneth Marcus describes a rhetorical technique called Accusation In A Mirror, which was used in Rwanda in the events leading up to genocide. Here’s a quote which summarizes the technique.
“The basic idea of AiM is deceptively simple: propagandists must “impute to enemies exactly what they and their own party are planning to do.” In other words, AiM is a rhetorical practice in which one falsely accuses one’s enemies of conducting, plotting, or desiring to commit precisely the same transgressions that one plans to commit against them. For example, if one plans to kill one’s adversaries by drowning them in a particular river, then one should accuse one’s adversaries of plotting precisely the same crime. As a result, one will accuse one’s enemies of doing the same thing despite their plans. It is similar to a false anticipatory tu quoque: before one’s enemies accuse one truthfully, one accuses them falsely of the same misdeed.
“This may seem an unlikely means of inciting mass-murder, since it would intuitively seem likely not only to fail but also to backfire by publicly telegraphing its speakers’ malicious intentions at times when the speakers may lack the wherewithal to carry out their schemes. The counter-intuitiveness of this method is best appreciated when one grasps that its injunctions are to be taken literally.”
From: Marcus, Kenneth L., Accusation in a Mirror (2012). Loyola University Chicago Law Journal, Vol. 43, No. 2, pp. 357 − 393, 2012. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2020327
The Marcus 2012 paper references a 1999 Human Rights Watch report that has a few more details:
“The propagandist proposes two techniques that were to become often used in Rwanda. The first is to “create” events to lend credence to propaganda. He remarks that this tactic is not honest, but that it works well, provided the deception is not discovered. The “attack” on Kigali on October 4-5, 1990 was such a “created” event, as were others – the reported discovery of hidden arms, the passage of a stranger with a mysterious bag, the discovery of radio communications equipment – that were exploited later, especially during the genocide.
The propagandist calls his second proposal “Accusation in a mirror,” meaning his colleagues should impute to enemies exactly what they and their own party are planning to do. He explains, “In this way, the party which is using terror will accuse the enemy of using terror.” With such a tactic, propagandists can persuade listeners and “honest people” that they are being attacked and are justified in taking whatever measures are necessary “for legitimate [self-] defense.” This tactic worked extremely well, both in specific cases such as the Bugesera massacre of March 1992 described below and in the broader campaign to convince Hutu that Tutsi planned to exterminate them. There is no proof that officials and propagandists who “created” events and made “accusations in a mirror” were familiar with this particular document, but they regularly used the techniques that it described.
From: Human Rights Watch, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda, 1 March 1999, 1711, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/45d425512.html