Thousand Yard Stare

I have said before that I don’t think that the all-pervasive incivility on the internet is helpful. I’m going to have to be a little careful here as I now intend to slight most of humanity. I will speak in sweeping generalities and you can rest assured that it doesn’t apply to you.

The massive improvement in global communications is a wonderful thing and will lead to major advances in civilisation. I have no doubt. One of the first great services it has provided is to highlight how dumb most of us are… Let me re-phrase that. It has highlighted how ill equipped most of us are to engage in well-informed discussion on a wide range of topics. We need education and lots of it. The top priority of every government on the planet should be education. Starting with the fundamentals but taking each student as far as they can go.

Pick any topic. Go to an internet site discussing that topic and read the discussions. Now read up on the topic yourself – if you aren’t already an expert. Now go back and read the discussions. They are choc-a-block with misinformation that would be easily corrected by a brief study of the subject. The only practical solution is more education. Far too many people are taking as factual the rantings of fools on blogs and those spouting opinions either for media outlets or in response to things they read there.

The ignorance is startling. Yesterday we had a person running for high political office in the US reveal that they had no idea that the first Amendment to the US Constitution specifically prevents the State from meddling in religion.

“Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?” Christine O’Donnell.
Coons responded that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion.
O’Donnell asked: “You’re telling me that’s in the First Amendment?”

I’m picking on one person there but this sort of thing goes on all the time. We need all 6.3 billion of us educated. The sooner the better.

Imagine it is a hundred years from now. Could be as little as thirty. Someone cooks you a perfect fillet steak and then tells you that it was produced by tissue culture. Is your attitude to the meal you just consumed changed by the knowledge?

Mine would be. I would be pleased that no animal had to be killed to satisfy my hunger. I would be pleased that there was now a way for me to be omnivorous without having to consider the welfare of the animals I am consuming. Until we have tissue culture, it will remain a priority for me to encourage suppliers to make the lives of the creatures I ingest as pleasant as possible right up until their lives are switched off as unexpectedly, for them, and as painlessly as possible. Um.. the creatures; not the suppliers. As an example of this sort of thing; I am pleased by the sudden rise in the popularity of free-range eggs. I look forward to this philosophy spreading to other animal products.

Our species is clearly supposed to be omnivorous and it takes a little effort for us to operate successfully as vegetarians. Our teeth are dead giveaway on this. Even the fact that our jaws have become smaller of the last million years or so supports the idea that we were eating more meat (and cooking it). There is a biological imperative at work here that exists independently of all human constructs – such as “rights”. However, as with many things, our mental capabilities have reached a point where we can consider more sophisticated implications of our actions, even if they are instinctive, and we can empathise with others, including the beasts of the fields.

It has always seemed clear to me that treating other things in a way that you would not wish to be treated yourself is bad for one’s self-esteem. I believe this is a profound thing that extends even to inanimate objects. For example, if we make robots that are more or less humanoid, I reckon that it would be a sign of mental weakness to maltreat such a machine. “Kicking the cat” is wrong. Kicking the robot would be wrong as well.

Producing all meat for consumption by tissue culture would have other implications. We would still needs large crops to produce the materials to feed the tissue culture machines. We wouldn’t need the huge herds any more though. We should also be able to trap and process the waste products of the tissue culture factories so as to reduce the environmental burden of producing the vast quantities of meat we consume.

We are very good at narrowing our worries down to what we feel we are capable of addressing. As I write this I do not contemplate the misery and death of the innocents in the Sudan. Likewise I do not consider the confusion and terror of the line of cattle trudging into the abattoir. But the problem is there. It lurks. I don’t like it. I try not to kid myself about how the world really works. One vote at a time, one purchase at a time, we need to work on solving these lurking problems. The sooner we can make large scale tissue culture viable the better. Until then we should treat our animals as well as practicable and not delude ourselves about the true nature of the world as it currently functions.

I read a lot of stuff about Apple online. Many, many references are made to the hype that surrounds the company. It is taken for granted that Apple creates all this hype. While not quite denying that, I see it differently.

Exactly what Apple does is plain for all to see. Steve Jobs gives a keynote presentation where he presents the company’s products and then there are some adds in the media. That’s it. All companies do this so what’s the rest of the story?

Let’s start with the keynote. For example, Steve showed off the iPad and said it was “magical”. If I was an Apple shareholder or one of the engineers who designed the machine I would be very happy that he presented it in an enthusiastic manner. The alternatives make no sense. Oh! First I should say, surely no one thinks Steve was suggesting the thing was literally “magical”. Some of the flames on the web had me wondering on that point.

The first alternative would be deadpan – neutral. “Here we have the iPad. A team of engineers have worked hard on this for many months and the company has invested a lot of resources. We hope you like it. Next…” If I was a shareholder I would be downcast. Surely he’s allowed to say it’s nice to use. I have one. They are great to use! Which adjectives are allowed. If he says “It’s great”, is that hype? Or did it only become hype when he used the word “magical”? The second alternative would be to downplay it. “We have this new tablet… not sure whether it’s a laptop or just a bigger Touch. You decide. Next…”

This is madness. He didn’t hype it. He just showed off the machine proudly and said it was great – as you would expect.

Then there’s the ads. Same argument really. The ads say their stuff is great. Duh. If you check the advertising budgets of Apple and Microsoft I don’t think Apple’s comes up as huge.

So where does that leave us? Apple must be very happy about the hype that surrounds all their products but I reckon the bulk of it is created by the interesting physical and technical designs that they produce and the fact that they do not release details of these things before Steve’s keynotes. The rest is done by the folks in the community who are interested to discuss this stuff. This group definitely includes those who disagree with the design decisions made by Apple. Because their equipment often has bold design, the people who buy it become more bound to it then is the case with more “standard” equipment. They often become evangelical and so the buzz becomes even greater.

In short, a lot of the “hype” is not directly created by Apple, but indirectly. They earn any benefit that comes from it by the nature of their products.

In the 1770 census report of the county clerk of Grafton County, New Hampshire, to King George III:

Your Royal Majesty, Grafton County, New Hampshire, consists of 1,212 square miles. It contains 6,489 souls, most of whom are engaged in agriculture, but included in that number are 69 wheelwrights, 8 doctors, 29 blacksmiths, 87 preachers, 20 slaves, and 90 students at the new college. There is not one lawyer, for which fact we take no personal credit but thank an Almighty and Merciful God.

We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realise that we are apes.

Richard Dawkins

The implications of this are what I have tried to address from time to time. It underlies all our actions.

Millions of barrels of oil safely reach port

Douglas Adams – The Origin of God