[00:00.000 --> 00:01.740]  And game theory.
[00:04.650 --> 00:18.850]  As hackers, it is our fundamental nature to take control of technology, not out of a sense of fear, but as a basic creative impulse to take things apart, figure out how they work, and explore their creative uses.
[00:18.970 --> 00:20.910]  And we've all heard that a thousand times.
[00:21.190 --> 00:23.410]  But there is much truth to it.
[00:23.650 --> 00:31.230]  This drive is effectively a force of nature, and I for one simply could not live in a world where I couldn't take control of the technology.
[00:31.250 --> 00:31.950]  in my life.
[00:32.650 --> 00:38.370]  Unfortunately, many influential entities have strong incentives to take control out of our hands forever.
[00:38.750 --> 00:44.670]  These entities include political and economic elites, along with their subordinated counterparts in the media.
[00:45.090 --> 00:54.710]  By elites, we just mean people or organizations that wield disproportionate power in a given area, relative to the general populace.
[00:55.070 --> 01:02.570]  And we're concerned in this case with people who have disproportionate political power, and disproportionate economic power.
[01:02.790 --> 01:06.470]  To understand what these people want, and how they're going after it.
[01:06.990 --> 01:09.410]  And also, how we can deal with them.
[01:09.750 --> 01:13.150]  It's good to look at their incentives, or their basic motives.
[01:13.410 --> 01:19.710]  To understand what these incentives are, we have to understand there are people behind these incentives.
[01:20.310 --> 01:22.010]  Our world is made up of people.
[01:22.210 --> 01:25.750]  So, I'm going to start with a basic overview of human incentives.
[01:25.750 --> 01:30.210]  And this may seem very reductionist and inhuman.
[01:31.010 --> 01:38.410]  It's a somewhat common viewpoint in economics to reduce people to sets of equations describing their behavior.
[01:38.690 --> 01:53.570]  While you can't make very accurate predictions on an individual level, when you do take people in aggregate, statistical averages across huge populations, it does become a relatively useful tool for understanding a very complex problem.
[01:54.390 --> 01:57.490]  So, incentive structures are not inherently sinister.
[01:57.750 --> 02:04.070]  The challenge of every society is to align the interests of the individual with the interests of that society.
[02:04.370 --> 02:15.490]  In general, we do this fairly well, and it often doesn't matter what kind of character you have, because if you like pleasure, and you dislike pain, you'll follow most of the rules most of the time.
[02:15.850 --> 02:21.690]  There are always loopholes, but people of basically good character tend not to abuse them.
[02:21.830 --> 02:30.170]  The problem is that people in all organizations who are people in organizations who are powerful are powerful are powerful because they are good at getting power and good at keeping power.
[02:30.430 --> 02:36.310]  People in organizations who are rich are good at getting money and good at keeping money.
[02:37.570 --> 02:43.350]  In general, anything that exists, exists because it is good at existing.
[02:43.590 --> 03:00.450]  Whether we are talking about living organisms or cosmic structures like stars and planets, it seems to be a mechanical fact of nature, at least over the time frame of some The drive to exist is at the basis of all motives and incentive structures, whether we are talking about animals,
[03:00.690 --> 03:06.330]  human beings, political systems, corporations, religions, cultures, or nations.
[03:06.630 --> 03:26.010]  If political powers, corporations, or wealthy investors have the opportunity to alter society's incentive structures through legislation to suit their interests at our expense, and they do not take it, they will be defeated and replaced by political and corporate powers willing to exploit every opportunity.
[03:26.590 --> 03:35.790]  Consequently, you can guarantee that any entity will first and foremost look out after its own survival to the exclusion of everything else.
[03:35.910 --> 03:42.890]  And this is true whether you are talking about industrial monopolists, government agencies, or even national public radio.
[03:42.890 --> 04:01.750]  In our case, the situation is that two entrenched groups of elites, the political and economic elites, who have successfully subordinated a third group of elites, the media, are being threatened by a new emerging elite, which they weren't prepared for because it could never before have existed in all of human history.
[04:01.750 --> 04:14.070]  It was made possible a mere half-century ago by the military industrial complex and the peripheral technologies related to developing the atom bomb and understanding the dynamics of the Cold War that ensued.
[04:14.670 --> 04:25.630]  Ultimately, this new elite, if it's even fair to call it that, threatens the dominance of the entrenched powers that be, just as emerging media threatened the dominance of the entrenched powers last century.
[04:25.630 --> 04:28.630]  In that case, the entrenched powers won.
[04:29.150 --> 04:32.390]  New media were successfully co-opted and subordinated.
[04:32.670 --> 04:36.310]  In this case, I think we'd like to see a different outcome.
[04:36.570 --> 04:38.650]  That is the prospect I want to discuss.
[04:38.970 --> 04:48.210]  Although it seems a bit unrelated, it's important to begin with basic human incentives to understand what people want so we can predict what they will do in aggregate.
[04:48.210 --> 04:53.390]  We'll start with a basic human being and follow its incentives from birth until death.
[04:53.570 --> 05:04.430]  Because this basic trajectory drives a great deal of the behavior that we see from our personal lives to our working lives to politics and economics and the seemingly blind forces of history.
[05:04.710 --> 05:10.450]  So when a child pops into the universe, the first thing it has to do is acquire resources from its parents.
[05:10.830 --> 05:13.470]  Its top priority is to survive to adulthood.
[05:13.470 --> 05:17.910]  So, at first, it cries when its needs aren't met, and this seems to work.
[05:18.130 --> 05:28.590]  Of course, a child must continue to please its parents in order to get things it likes, like food, toys, money, clothing, tuition, a new car, or the family inheritance.
[05:29.010 --> 05:40.970]  Early childhood is concerned with very difficult subjects like language acquisition, symbol grounding, constructing some model of physical reality that represents physical reality.
[05:41.690 --> 05:45.690]  But, when a child reaches school, things get interesting.
[05:45.950 --> 05:49.090]  It suddenly has to survive its teachers and its peer group.
[05:49.330 --> 05:54.270]  The parents want one thing, the peer group wants another, and the teacher wants something else.
[05:54.710 --> 05:59.850]  Kids often tend to favor the peer group, and this can create conflict with the parents at home.
[06:00.190 --> 06:08.970]  Of course, if a child has siblings, this is a much more complicated problem, because siblings will often fulfill some kind of role in the family.
[06:08.970 --> 06:15.230]  You might have the brainy one, or the strong one, or the athletic one, or the tough one, or the clowny one.
[06:15.350 --> 06:18.490]  And this can happen in social peer groups as well.
[06:18.670 --> 06:25.690]  So, quite often, people will develop a proto-personality based around what social roles are available to them.
[06:25.910 --> 06:31.550]  The real crisis hits when children discover the opposite sex, and that's really the motor that drives human behavior.
[06:33.030 --> 06:37.810]  Suddenly, the struggle for power and peer status becomes vicious.
[06:38.170 --> 06:42.450]  Posturing takes over, the entire personality contorts to impress the opposite sex.
[06:42.650 --> 06:50.230]  And this full-time preoccupation lasts straight through college, where social life is often predicated on access to the opposite sex.
[06:50.230 --> 06:54.810]  But, for most people, this never really goes away.
[06:55.330 --> 07:06.510]  The really difficult problem for the individual comes when one has to integrate into the ecosystem or the economic system, which is usually after high school or college.
[07:06.770 --> 07:15.570]  This is when all your hopes and dreams and ambitions collapse into a mess of futility, when everything you want in life turns out to be completely inaccessible.
[07:15.570 --> 07:20.810]  You can't get what you want, you can't even get what you think you're entitled to, and you never really had a shot.
[07:21.190 --> 07:23.690]  This drives a lot of young men into rages.
[07:23.930 --> 07:31.770]  They fly off the beam, try to change the world, start revolutions, join rock bands, or find religion and enlist in the military.
[07:31.990 --> 07:37.010]  Of course, you've got to make sure it's the right religion and the right military, or John Ashcroft will come after you.
[07:38.310 --> 07:41.050]  Ultimately, most people succumb to the mating instinct.
[07:41.630 --> 07:53.430]  Something clicks, and they think such and such a person is so wonderful, nothing else matters, all I need is so and so, and sure enough, they get married, get pregnant, get a mortgage, and become completely dependent on the status quo.
[07:53.730 --> 08:00.170]  This turns many people into reactionary conservatives, and basically wipes out many people, life over.
[08:00.470 --> 08:04.730]  They have to work very hard just to pay for the basic needs of their offspring.
[08:04.730 --> 08:11.790]  Their kids grow up and leave home, they have to pay for college, often taking out mortgages, which they have to pay off again.
[08:12.050 --> 08:20.550]  Save for their retirement, and then they grow old and retire, which leaves them very little opportunity to work for active social change.
[08:21.750 --> 08:25.090]  And unfortunately, that seems to be a basic human life.
[08:25.150 --> 08:32.710]  Because if we didn't make that kind of sacrifice for our children, then there wouldn't be that many children to keep the species going.
[08:33.490 --> 08:40.190]  There are ways to make this work, if you're clever about it, if you get married at just the right time and save wisely.
[08:40.730 --> 08:43.990]  But you have to have the right advantages right from the start.
[08:44.230 --> 08:52.310]  And many people just end up tricked by nature into early dependency and mediocre lives in suburbia with two Buicks and a washing machine.
[08:52.910 --> 08:57.730]  But this is the trajectory that drives a great deal of our political and economic systems.
[08:57.730 --> 09:05.610]  When people talk about family, family values, marriage, marriage and family are sacred institutions, that's what they're talking about.
[09:05.830 --> 09:11.650]  Because these people are... they have very strong vested interests in these institutions.
[09:11.950 --> 09:17.210]  They've sacrificed a lot for them, and they've worked so far as far as many people are concerned.
[09:17.990 --> 09:22.450]  Now, as far as I can tell, there seem to be five major universal motives.
[09:22.770 --> 09:25.110]  And this is admittedly very reductionist.
[09:25.950 --> 09:30.110]  Food, sex, money, social status, and meaning.
[09:30.390 --> 09:39.590]  If you dangle any one of these in front of people, they'll whimper and contort and prostrate themselves, violate their most sacred principles, and dance around like little imbeciles.
[09:39.730 --> 09:41.450]  And we're wired to be this way.
[09:41.450 --> 09:44.830]  Our motives are fairly obvious on evolutionary grounds.
[09:45.090 --> 09:46.510]  Meaning is a bit more speculative.
[09:46.810 --> 09:51.950]  But there seems to be a need for a feeling of connectedness to something larger than oneself.
[09:52.430 --> 09:59.690]  This is probably what religious leaders refer to when they justify their existence with talk of a spiritual hunger.
[10:00.490 --> 10:07.530]  Often this manifests as religious chauvinism, ethnocentrism, nationalism, racism, war, and genocide.
[10:07.530 --> 10:13.630]  In any event, these five major motives, well, we have to ask where they come from.
[10:13.810 --> 10:18.910]  I expect they arise from what could be called a genetic principal-agent problem.
[10:19.210 --> 10:29.890]  A principal-agent problem is a problem in economics where the principal, or owner, wants one thing, and the agent, which could be a manager, wants something else.
[10:30.550 --> 10:38.410]  This creates conflicting interests, and it's very hard for the principal to structure incentives to make the agent act in the principal's interest.
[10:38.730 --> 10:45.950]  In animals, we could say that genes are the principals, and we are the agents.
[10:46.470 --> 10:51.470]  Genes encode information about the environment, which is useful to their reproductive success.
[10:51.950 --> 10:55.430]  Genes want you to perpetuate them, but you could have other ideas.
[10:55.770 --> 11:02.490]  So, genes attempt to control you by aligning your hedonistic sensations with their reproductive interests.
[11:02.490 --> 11:13.090]  Things that feel good usually are good for your survival prospects, like not getting too hot or too cold, and making sure you have enough to eat and enough to drink, getting enough sleep.
[11:13.430 --> 11:17.450]  The basic things that people enjoy tend to be good for them.
[11:17.870 --> 11:28.050]  There are some exceptions, but one can think of genes as trying to learn the appropriate utility function, or a happiness metric for an agent in an environment.
[11:28.050 --> 11:36.170]  However, genetic controls are easily manipulated or circumvented, and it takes a very long time for genes to encapsulate new environmental information.
[11:36.250 --> 11:42.910]  So, if the environment changes in non-geological time frames, you generally need something else to deal with it.
[11:43.770 --> 11:53.010]  Environmental information that changes too quickly to be encoded genetically, but not so fast that it requires real-time sensory input, can be transmitted through other means.
[11:53.290 --> 12:03.730]  Religious, cultural, and family values influence behavior by associating artificial responses with certain stimuli to account for things missed by genetic encoding.
[12:03.950 --> 12:14.370]  For example, the belief that hard work is inherently virtuous and indulgence is inherently bad is a common value which has been successful in the people who hold it.
[12:14.370 --> 12:18.830]  Of course, they don't know why they believe these things.
[12:19.250 --> 12:31.610]  And the end result is that people are full of beliefs that they hold vigorously, but they have no idea why they hold these beliefs or where these beliefs came from.
[12:33.250 --> 12:41.610]  So, they start engaging in behaviors that they think they thought of, but these behaviors were really programmed into them in many cases.
[12:41.610 --> 12:58.190]  So, to make a metaphor to the computer, we can look at values as code which influence behavior by affecting one's utility function or happiness metric or hedonistic sensations in an almost Pavlovian manner.
[13:00.810 --> 13:12.530]  Interactions between these distributed values or this distributed code can manifest as what one could call institutional automata or computer programs.
[13:12.730 --> 13:21.370]  Information processing entities like religions, political systems, or market structures that forge alliances and wage wars of survival with each other.
[13:21.370 --> 13:23.130]  And you'll often see this.
[13:23.250 --> 13:26.250]  One religion aligning itself with a given political model.
[13:26.750 --> 13:34.290]  Or one culture aligning itself with a certain religion aligning itself with some kind of economic beliefs and the like.
[13:34.710 --> 13:41.990]  The problem is once these social institutions have manifested, they become independent of the individuals that constitute them.
[13:42.210 --> 13:49.970]  They want to survive at any cost and will corrupt their values accordingly and impose themselves by force regardless of the decisions of individuals.
[13:49.970 --> 13:52.010]  These are not memes.
[13:52.430 --> 13:55.690]  These are computer programs built from memes.
[13:55.910 --> 14:03.290]  Or in keeping with the genetic metaphor, DNA strings that regulate the expression levels of their various values in order to survive.
[14:03.650 --> 14:11.110]  What is interesting about institutional automata is that they are selected by evolution to thrive in an environment of human incentives.
[14:11.110 --> 14:18.370]  All interactions with the real world are mediated through people according to what they want and need.
[14:19.270 --> 14:23.190]  Catastrophe occurs when the environment changes rapidly.
[14:23.450 --> 14:37.010]  And this is usually due in our world to technology so rapidly that these institutions that were once so successful and rational start inducing irrational behavior in people.
[14:39.730 --> 14:43.250]  Nothing is evolved to cope with modern rates of change.
[14:43.630 --> 14:50.890]  But we can ask where our values come from and whether they are really appropriate for a given environment.
[14:51.510 --> 15:01.770]  The problem is that while values can be reassessed and changed, institutions which impose values will struggle to survive no matter how destructive those values are.
[15:01.770 --> 15:13.730]  These institutions can be religion, but quite often dangerous ones are market hegemons whose business models or ecological dominance are threatened by a changing environment.
[15:13.730 --> 15:23.270]  The dominant species in the landscape of human incentives has traditionally been the political elite who command the state and its police and its military.
[15:23.650 --> 15:28.710]  In our world, these people are often organizations who wield political power through legal means.
[15:29.010 --> 15:32.910]  Often they are political leaders, lobbying groups, or political powers.
[15:33.150 --> 15:37.850]  They have disproportionate power over the state relative to everyone else.
[15:37.850 --> 15:41.330]  The state itself is a monopoly on violence.
[15:41.830 --> 15:43.390]  It decides who gets what.
[15:43.870 --> 15:49.470]  And like an old high school teacher of mine used to say, decides who gets what coming down the barrel of a gun.
[15:50.450 --> 15:55.470]  Without democracy, a ruler's incentive is to stay in power at any cost.
[15:55.730 --> 15:58.630]  Hence, serial monopolists and dynasties.
[15:58.830 --> 16:04.730]  A ruler typically has a class of people who exist to legitimize his rule and justify the status quo.
[16:04.730 --> 16:09.590]  These people could be religious leaders or economics professors.
[16:10.270 --> 16:14.270]  Elites usually cloak self-interest in veils of religion and ideology.
[16:14.730 --> 16:23.590]  Now, the big trick with political elites is that no political system can survive if it cannot sacrifice people for its interests.
[16:23.850 --> 16:27.530]  It must induce you to give up your life to protect it.
[16:27.530 --> 16:34.410]  So, an architecture of manufactured loyalty and consensual delusion is often required.
[16:34.710 --> 16:37.570]  This involves collective mythology and jingoism.
[16:38.310 --> 16:42.870]  Now, some people see through this stuff and consequently get denounced for lack of patriotism.
[16:43.030 --> 16:48.590]  Which I think is stupid because legitimate democracies shouldn't need jingoism.
[16:48.790 --> 16:52.430]  So, I have to wonder about these jingoists.
[16:52.610 --> 16:55.570]  What really are their attitudes towards democratic traditions?
[16:55.570 --> 17:01.410]  The problem with political elites is that they reap the benefits while the people pay the costs.
[17:01.730 --> 17:04.810]  This asymmetry of incentives leads to disaster.
[17:05.130 --> 17:12.130]  Leaders will frequently play chicken with the fates of their people in situations such as globalization, sanctions, or war.
[17:12.950 --> 17:15.770]  Despotism may have worked on a small tribal level.
[17:15.910 --> 17:18.430]  It may even work in the computer game civilization.
[17:18.550 --> 17:21.390]  But it is a catastrophe on a larger scale.
[17:21.630 --> 17:23.830]  So, democracy corrected this problem.
[17:23.830 --> 17:32.750]  As an interesting aside, from a mathematical standpoint, no democratic system can consistently express preferences.
[17:33.070 --> 17:39.590]  This was proved by Kenneth Arrow in, I think, 1975 under fairly soft assumptions.
[17:39.610 --> 17:46.470]  So, it turns out that designing the optimal voting system is completely impossible because it cannot exist.
[17:47.410 --> 17:53.270]  American democracy was immaculately architected in the face of this mathematical impossibility.
[17:53.530 --> 17:55.450]  And it works very well.
[17:55.630 --> 18:00.490]  In the eyes of many people, it is the crown jewel of the enlightenment.
[18:00.970 --> 18:06.350]  There are difficulties, as always, in respecting the rights of minorities while expressing the will of the majority.
[18:06.350 --> 18:09.550]  But our Constitution does seem to handle this well.
[18:09.550 --> 18:17.290]  Still, as the authors of the Federalist Papers made clear, the threat of special interests taking over government is ever-present.
[18:17.650 --> 18:27.330]  The special interests that are always threatening to take over our government tend to be market elites, individuals and organizations with disproportionate economic power.
[18:27.730 --> 18:31.470]  At present, the state is weaker than it has ever been.
[18:31.470 --> 18:35.610]  Post-Thatcher and post-Reagan, the state is destroyed.
[18:35.610 --> 18:39.030]  It has very little control over anything.
[18:40.190 --> 18:58.930]  The story that gets repeated in many introductory economics classes is that once there was feudalism, and it was bad, but we were saved because in order to finance wars, monarchs granted increasing powers to the merchant classes until finally the merchant classes pushed for rights of their own,
[18:59.010 --> 19:03.710]  and this ultimately brought the blessings of the liberty to the rest of the world.
[19:03.770 --> 19:05.190]  And that's somewhat correct.
[19:05.190 --> 19:11.270]  What they forget to mention is that soon enough, people lost control, and the markets took over.
[19:11.490 --> 19:14.270]  Market mechanisms and their institutional structures.
[19:14.510 --> 19:18.890]  And markets need massive institutional support.
[19:19.090 --> 19:35.350]  And that's something that we have learned watching the failures of economic transition in many countries, where we liberalized without giving a thought to establishing rule of law, or legitimate democracy, or consistent rights, or the freedom of the press,
[19:35.410 --> 19:38.110]  which is an absolute crisis in Russia right now.
[19:38.390 --> 19:45.050]  The mobs have taken over, and it's going to be incredibly difficult to take that country back.
[19:47.410 --> 19:53.750]  So, in this regard, they are like self-reproducing computer programs.
[19:53.750 --> 20:02.610]  In a sense, you could draw an analogy to the machines in the matrix, in that we're completely dependent upon them, but they are out of our control.
[20:03.150 --> 20:12.650]  So, by a self-reproducing computer program, or a self-reproducing automaton, we mean something that runs by itself and can produce reasonable facsimiles.
[20:12.930 --> 20:24.170]  The selection mechanism is whether these can maintain themselves in the presence of entropic forces in the environment, which is done by responding appropriately to the environmental stimuli.
[20:24.530 --> 20:27.490]  In essence, are they good at existing?
[20:29.010 --> 20:33.250]  Markets are particularly responsive to real-time environmental change.
[20:33.410 --> 20:40.950]  They're computationally simple, and in a sense, approximate a numerical representation of human wants, needs, and incentives.
[20:41.330 --> 20:43.810]  Markets are adapted to people.
[20:44.050 --> 20:46.670]  All interactions are mediated through people.
[20:46.670 --> 20:49.150]  All computational work is done by people.
[20:49.310 --> 21:00.510]  But the market themselves and their massive institutional support structures form an environment or ecosystem which also provides a nice home to a certain invasive species.
[21:00.970 --> 21:12.470]  And this species would be the corporation or the firm, which tend to chase markets across the planet, you could say, like bacteria on rotting flesh.
[21:12.470 --> 21:15.350]  Market environments are highly dynamic.
[21:16.030 --> 21:20.450]  So firms are, of necessity, extremely responsive to their environment.
[21:20.810 --> 21:34.430]  And what is really bizarre is that corporations are granted legal status as human beings with equal access to rights, equal access to the law, just like everybody else has.
[21:36.150 --> 21:38.870]  Except they have limited liability.
[21:38.870 --> 21:41.850]  They're not held accountable for their actions.
[21:42.150 --> 21:46.870]  They have disproportionate wealth and disproportionate political representation.
[21:47.050 --> 21:53.730]  They can sue anybody out of business, whether they're right in their suit or not.
[21:54.170 --> 22:01.210]  They can change the rules to put their competitors out of business or to stop competitors from entering the market.
[22:02.090 --> 22:04.870]  They are sociopathic.
[22:05.230 --> 22:10.030]  They have in mind to dominate markets as a species might an ecosystem.
[22:10.410 --> 22:17.530]  And in that regard, we can draw an analogy to the AIs in the matrix in that they care only for their own continued survival.
[22:18.630 --> 22:31.070]  Market power itself comes from, among other places, monopolistic devices such as brands, patents, copyrights, control of distribution channels.
[22:31.070 --> 22:39.990]  Control of standards or asymmetric competition such as mobile capital versus immobile labor.
[22:40.470 --> 22:46.910]  A corporation or group of corporations first invades an ecosystem, then sets up barriers to exclude competitors.
[22:47.230 --> 22:56.470]  That's what people are talking about when they say, well, I had to drop out of college because the window of opportunity in that market was closing.
[22:56.470 --> 23:00.670]  That ecosystem was having barriers put up around it to protect it from competition.
[23:01.430 --> 23:06.770]  Now, a firm is evolved to survive or prey on human incentives.
[23:07.090 --> 23:09.710]  This is why firms are immune to individual actions.
[23:10.250 --> 23:12.390]  They can always replace defectors.
[23:12.550 --> 23:23.470]  If a CEO decides one day he's lived a bad life and is going to stop with the United Fruit Company, he's tired of killing people, he'll be replaced.
[23:23.470 --> 23:27.370]  And that firm will drum up a lot of money to find someone out there.
[23:27.590 --> 23:33.650]  And with close to 300 million people in this country, you will find someone out there willing to replace him.
[23:33.650 --> 23:46.130]  To maintain ecosystem dominance, monopolists will often bribe political elites through campaign contributions, the support of lobbying groups, the support of think tanks.
[23:46.610 --> 23:59.190]  And they often trade favors with the media through advertising, public relations, stock offers, which you might not be aware of, and other special relationships.
[23:59.190 --> 24:04.270]  Very often, a group of corporations will agree implicitly to share an ecosystem.
[24:04.710 --> 24:06.390]  This is not conspiracy.
[24:06.410 --> 24:11.370]  It is simple tit-for-tat, iterated game theory, the golden rule.
[24:11.670 --> 24:19.330]  It happens all the time in nature, from birds sharing the bugs in an ecosystem to energy firms dividing up local markets.
[24:19.670 --> 24:26.130]  Now, Robert Axelrod did the groundbreaking work in this, showing that tit-for-tat is a very stable strategy.
[24:26.130 --> 24:28.450]  It's very easy for people to learn this.
[24:28.590 --> 24:32.610]  It's very easy to understand when someone else is doing tit-for-tat with you.
[24:32.750 --> 24:50.450]  If you accept an energy bid and some guy's bid of $10 million and $206 at the end, well, that might inspire you to think, maybe he wants to offer me the 206 area code of the energy market.
[24:50.450 --> 24:55.670]  And so you might say, okay, I'll, you know, bid this and I'll give you the 512.
[24:56.310 --> 24:58.890]  And in fact, that actually does happen.
[24:58.890 --> 25:11.210]  And it's a problem with people who develop auctions to stop corporations from embedding these secret, yet very difficult to prove, agreements to divide up markets.
[25:13.410 --> 25:20.690]  Unfortunately, the subservience of the media in all of this is a grotesque case of negligence to humanity.
[25:21.190 --> 25:28.510]  Among everything else that happened last century, new media technologies kept springing up and threatening to inform the people.
[25:28.710 --> 25:33.070]  But every time a new medium would pop up, it would be systematically co-opted.
[25:33.070 --> 25:43.670]  Communists and fascists, and especially the Nazis, pioneered it as a control mechanism, while Western democracies excelled at placating their own citizenry and selling products.
[25:43.970 --> 25:45.590]  The pattern is fairly clear.
[25:45.810 --> 25:55.990]  Poetry and press in World War I, cinema and radio in World War II and later Korea, TV and NAM, cable news and desert spectacle, the Internet and spectacle part two.
[25:56.410 --> 26:00.110]  And every time afterwards, the elites learned to control these new media.
[26:00.110 --> 26:09.850]  Probably right now, the Pentagon is figuring out how to control the Internet, just like it controls the newspapers, television networks and radio stations in times of war.
[26:10.470 --> 26:14.410]  The failure of media are too many to enumerate.
[26:14.650 --> 26:18.210]  But two rather irksome phenomena are worth mentioning.
[26:18.590 --> 26:23.450]  What I like to call the apathy engines and the distraction engines.
[26:23.870 --> 26:29.390]  Apathy engines tend to be PR firms and media figures who propagate apathy.
[26:29.390 --> 26:37.750]  They often do this by producing easy-to-remember one-liners, which allow people to feel empowered by defending the status quo.
[26:38.110 --> 26:52.670]  So guys will say things and advocate policies against their own self-interest, because it offers them the opportunity to win an argument or sound like a clever guy, or sound like the tough guy who holds up the regime.
[26:52.670 --> 26:55.950]  And you'll hear them say things like, why punish success?
[26:56.250 --> 26:58.170]  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
[26:58.710 --> 27:00.350]  Al Gore invented the Internet.
[27:01.510 --> 27:04.770]  Two people trade if it makes them both better off.
[27:05.030 --> 27:07.430]  A rising tide lifts old boats.
[27:07.730 --> 27:11.210]  Everyone who supports abortion has already been born.
[27:12.050 --> 27:14.770]  Software patents help the little guy.
[27:15.470 --> 27:16.890]  Do the crime.
[27:17.210 --> 27:18.670]  Do the time.
[27:19.450 --> 27:20.850]  Life's not fair.
[27:21.270 --> 27:21.970]  Deal with it.
[27:22.270 --> 27:27.530]  Or the most ridiculous one is, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.
[27:27.730 --> 27:38.610]  Which is followed by this sinister snickering, as if the government ever helps people in ways other than giving them a lot of free money, agricultural subsidies, and social security.
[27:38.610 --> 27:45.610]  And every time you repeat one of these lines, you're helping to sabotage opposition to the status quo before it gets started.
[27:46.250 --> 27:50.110]  The distraction engine would be the entertainment industry.
[27:50.450 --> 27:57.150]  Things like rock and rap, which do nothing but reinforce behavior that keeps people in place.
[27:57.410 --> 27:59.090]  Pop music is the worst.
[27:59.270 --> 28:03.230]  In order to sell, it has to be as utterly bland and inoffensive as possible.
[28:03.230 --> 28:09.290]  So, encouraging conformity and copulation is the order of the day.
[28:09.750 --> 28:16.650]  Most songs you hear on the radio will praise these two questionable motives.
[28:17.170 --> 28:24.630]  In between entertainments, we get advertisements telling us how personal inadequacies can be compensated for with products.
[28:24.910 --> 28:27.450]  And sadly, it really is how we compensate.
[28:27.850 --> 28:31.290]  We need movies to fulfill things missing from our lives.
[28:31.290 --> 28:36.670]  We look up to celebrities who lead comfortable lives that we can never have.
[28:37.230 --> 28:45.090]  Celebrities are a pantheon of deities for a culture of monotheists held up for us to gaze upon as we lie in the gutter.
[28:45.470 --> 28:46.630]  So much for media.
[28:47.790 --> 28:54.370]  Computers and communications technology, on the other hand, aren't yet entirely co-opted and controlled.
[28:54.370 --> 28:57.670]  I think it's imperative that we keep it that way.
[28:58.110 --> 29:02.790]  Because technology, in a sense, defines what we are as a species.
[29:03.170 --> 29:06.330]  You cannot separate humans from their technology.
[29:09.030 --> 29:11.210]  Writing is one technology.
[29:11.530 --> 29:13.950]  It gave us external data storage.
[29:14.350 --> 29:22.010]  You no longer had to have a town man who would recite the traditions of the culture from one generation to the next.
[29:22.010 --> 29:27.470]  Now, people do criticize that oral tradition as being prone to errors, etc.
[29:27.910 --> 29:40.390]  I actually speculate that that oral tradition allows the storyteller to look at the environment around him, alter the stories appropriately, such that his group might behave a little more rationally.
[29:40.990 --> 29:45.710]  Get rid of old values that don't work in a particular environment.
[29:45.710 --> 29:52.770]  Now, mathematics, which was made possible by writing, gave us external symbolic manipulation.
[29:52.870 --> 29:55.970]  It enabled the existence of science and reason.
[29:56.230 --> 29:58.430]  It is the basis of Western civilization.
[29:59.250 --> 30:02.570]  Recently, computers gave us external cognition.
[30:03.050 --> 30:04.150]  That's new.
[30:04.150 --> 30:17.270]  A kid with a computer can, in some areas, outperform an unenhanced math professor, an unenhanced chess champion, or an unenhanced research librarian.
[30:17.630 --> 30:19.850]  We can take math to entirely new levels.
[30:20.050 --> 30:24.850]  Before, we were limited by manipulations that could be performed by individual humans.
[30:25.310 --> 30:26.550]  Now, we're not.
[30:27.190 --> 30:33.650]  Computers are likely to play as strong a supporting role across sciences as mathematics and writing.
[30:33.650 --> 30:38.250]  Some science may even be rewritten in computational terms.
[30:39.070 --> 30:43.410]  There's a big push to do that by some people, notably Steve Wolfram.
[30:44.710 --> 30:57.170]  Conrad Suse in Germany in the late 60s, early 70s, was speculating that maybe some of the laws of physics would be better captured by automata models.
[30:58.250 --> 31:08.450]  This external cognitive apparatus is coupled with the Internet, telephone, and cellular networks, which constitute a planetary nervous system.
[31:08.650 --> 31:11.730]  It's now a fundamental part of what we are as human beings.
[31:12.690 --> 31:21.310]  Political and market elites have no more business controlling your technology than they have controlling what books you read and what math you study.
[31:21.310 --> 31:26.030]  When cognition is external, thought police become real.
[31:26.370 --> 31:30.150]  When cognition is distributed, surveillance is mind reading.
[31:31.170 --> 31:33.350]  Censorship is debilitating.
[31:33.650 --> 31:35.630]  Everyone has a right to be human.
[31:36.110 --> 31:40.610]  And today, that means having control over the technology in your life.
[31:41.030 --> 31:46.510]  External data storage, writing, is seen as a sacred human right.
[31:46.510 --> 31:50.090]  External symbolic manipulation.
[31:51.070 --> 31:53.390]  External symbolic computation.
[31:54.470 --> 32:02.010]  Mathematics and computer science must also be elevated to their rightful status as sacred human rights.
[32:02.570 --> 32:10.810]  Anytime someone else's business model is not compatible with human rights, that business model has to change or be made to go out of business.
[32:11.070 --> 32:14.090]  That is the only way to safeguard what few rights we have.
[32:14.090 --> 32:31.130]  For the last 50 years, since the hydrogen bomb ushered in the dawn of the modern age, a new kind of elite has been crawling out of the suburbs and quietly infesting telephone networks, radio waves, university computer systems, academia, bulletin boards, and the Internet.
[32:32.170 --> 32:37.770]  The entrenched political and economic powers were too busy manipulating the media to notice.
[32:38.010 --> 32:40.730]  By the time they caught on, it was too late.
[32:40.770 --> 32:42.230]  We're already here.
[32:43.530 --> 32:46.190]  So who is the technological elite?
[32:46.550 --> 32:50.830]  Well, right now, it's anyone with the brain power to take control of technology.
[32:51.330 --> 32:54.070]  Anyone can be part of this tech set.
[32:54.390 --> 32:58.030]  All you have to do is take things apart and figure out how they work.
[32:58.170 --> 33:00.250]  Like a child or a scientist.
[33:00.610 --> 33:02.970]  It's amazingly democratic in that regard.
[33:02.970 --> 33:08.910]  But if political and market powers get their way, control will be taken out of our hands permanently.
[33:09.170 --> 33:13.710]  And you can't yield to the hands-on imperative when technology is not in your hands.
[33:15.950 --> 33:25.950]  The alternative to authoritarian control, co-opting the technological elite, as was done with the media, may be difficult because there are too many of us.
[33:26.110 --> 33:32.230]  And having grown up on the margins, we may have value systems that are not compatible with being co-opted.
[33:32.230 --> 33:40.030]  It is, of course, possible to co-opt a small number of high-tech firms willing to cooperate with the entrenched powers.
[33:40.190 --> 33:47.630]  So legalized monopolies granted through software patents and bizarre copyright clauses may be a viable route.
[33:48.070 --> 33:51.310]  Either way, the tech ends up out of our hands.
[33:52.190 --> 33:56.310]  Technology is supposedly the daughter of science.
[33:56.650 --> 34:02.950]  So we could look at the mother to see where the daughter will be going in a few years.
[34:03.290 --> 34:10.570]  The attitude held by authorities is that scientists should be on tap, but never on top.
[34:11.110 --> 34:18.390]  I think it was Winston Churchill who first voiced that opinion, among some other unsavory ideas he had.
[34:18.390 --> 34:25.730]  Now, academia and the grant system do seem to keep scientists just complacent enough.
[34:26.550 --> 34:30.030]  The DMCA has really been pushing that in recent years.
[34:30.350 --> 34:39.730]  The downsizing of research budgets under Reagan and the closure of research labs across the country is pushing it in that regard.
[34:39.730 --> 34:43.210]  But so far, people are still barely complacent enough.
[34:43.670 --> 34:49.190]  Now, tech is different because people empowered with computers and communications technology are dangerous.
[34:49.590 --> 34:55.270]  There are some extreme ideas out there held by people who seldom engage in reality testing.
[34:55.550 --> 35:04.750]  There are some extreme truths out there that have been previously unknown to people who have never been exposed to those realities.
[35:05.310 --> 35:07.430]  They will change the world tremendously.
[35:08.130 --> 35:15.110]  Authorities may have to choose between letting people have technological power and a police state.
[35:15.110 --> 35:17.730]  My guess is that they will choose the police state.
[35:17.950 --> 35:22.770]  Because fascism usually pops up when people are frightened of slipping in economic status.
[35:23.370 --> 35:29.550]  As for where the tech set came from, everyone has their theories and traditions.
[35:30.250 --> 35:34.490]  And mine is a little less standard and perhaps less flattering.
[35:34.990 --> 35:43.910]  It seems to me that the offspring of the military industrial complex probably came from the military industrial complex itself.
[35:43.910 --> 35:52.990]  If I had to pinpoint our trajectory, I might say the Institute for Advanced Studies, RAND, and Los Alamos.
[35:53.490 --> 35:56.890]  The comma would be one John von Neumann.
[35:57.070 --> 35:59.650]  But that's very far in the past now.
[36:01.890 --> 36:07.890]  I do think that there are multiple strains within the tech set.
[36:07.890 --> 36:11.870]  There are people who came out of a military background.
[36:11.870 --> 36:17.010]  The people whose existence is made possible by the productions of the military industrial complex.
[36:17.310 --> 36:18.510]  They built the bomb.
[36:18.750 --> 36:24.490]  They built the first computers in America to calculate how we could build this bomb.
[36:24.490 --> 36:26.110]  Would it ignite the atmosphere?
[36:26.470 --> 36:28.370]  All sorts of problems.
[36:28.370 --> 36:32.610]  And, of course, it was John von Neumann behind much of that.
[36:32.730 --> 36:35.990]  And behind the push to build the H-bomb and the escalating arms race.
[36:36.170 --> 36:38.390]  Which then funded a lot of game theory.
[36:38.610 --> 36:41.790]  Which also produced the neoclassical economic system.
[36:41.930 --> 36:44.490]  Which is the model that the rightists use.
[36:44.690 --> 36:46.010]  The so-called free trade.
[36:46.130 --> 36:46.930]  Liberalize everything.
[36:46.970 --> 36:47.670]  No protection.
[36:47.930 --> 36:48.910]  No social anything.
[36:49.510 --> 36:53.310]  Laissez-faire in the invisible hand will rise everybody's boats, I suppose.
[36:53.310 --> 36:59.390]  There is also a strain that came out of the phreaking community.
[36:59.570 --> 37:02.230]  Out of Abbie Hoffman and the yippies.
[37:02.290 --> 37:04.530]  People dedicated to social change.
[37:04.790 --> 37:05.850]  Playing with technology.
[37:06.190 --> 37:10.910]  Who were not directly involved with the military industrial complex itself.
[37:11.090 --> 37:12.410]  But there's a great deal of overlap.
[37:12.870 --> 37:15.970]  And many of the first idealistic hackers who constructed the net.
[37:16.050 --> 37:20.290]  Which was supposed to be a device that would stay up during a nuclear attack.
[37:20.290 --> 37:24.290]  Were actually funded by the Department of Defense.
[37:25.230 --> 37:31.870]  The military industrial complex more or less created this technological world that we live in.
[37:31.950 --> 37:33.530]  I think as a side project.
[37:33.870 --> 37:36.990]  Or side effect of the atom bomb.
[37:37.210 --> 37:40.330]  The cold war realizations about entropy.
[37:40.750 --> 37:41.510]  Information theory.
[37:44.450 --> 37:47.230]  Cracking cryptographic systems and the like.
[37:48.290 --> 37:51.770]  But regardless, that's just my particular theory.
[37:51.970 --> 37:55.310]  And I don't actually know where we came from.
[37:56.110 --> 37:58.330]  Nevertheless, an increasing trend.
[37:58.950 --> 38:03.490]  Of creeping and devastating force over the last half century.
[38:03.870 --> 38:08.610]  Has been the incorporation of computing and communications technologies.
[38:08.610 --> 38:12.090]  Into every aspect of our lives and world views.
[38:12.430 --> 38:14.850]  From day to day living and business models.
[38:15.150 --> 38:18.570]  To research, science and academic disciplines.
[38:18.950 --> 38:21.950]  Now with the Internet linking collective human knowledge.
[38:22.150 --> 38:25.810]  And exposing people to new ideas and alternative information sources.
[38:26.330 --> 38:28.870]  We may even be due for a new renaissance.
[38:29.450 --> 38:34.130]  Now post 90's that might sound like dreadful Silicon Valley rhetoric.
[38:34.130 --> 38:37.190]  Of how we're going to develop the third world.
[38:37.410 --> 38:39.310]  And give water to two billion people.
[38:39.450 --> 38:41.350]  Who don't have access to clean drinking water.
[38:42.710 --> 38:46.310]  But there really may be a renaissance of sorts.
[38:46.530 --> 38:47.890]  At least in America.
[38:48.090 --> 38:49.170]  Which I think needs one.
[38:49.530 --> 38:52.150]  There has been a lot of renaissance based fiction lately.
[38:52.670 --> 38:55.890]  Coupled with an increasing sense that we are living in the dark ages.
[38:56.750 --> 38:59.450]  Materializing against the supposed spiritual hunger.
[38:59.450 --> 39:00.830]  That fuels ignorance.
[39:01.190 --> 39:05.070]  Is a new curiosity about ration and reason.
[39:05.670 --> 39:08.330]  And what is the scientific method.
[39:08.910 --> 39:12.230]  And it's very sad to say this.
[39:12.410 --> 39:15.610]  But we now have a compelling incentive.
[39:15.970 --> 39:18.870]  To understand the world that we live in.
[39:19.310 --> 39:20.270]  So maybe.
[39:21.030 --> 39:23.090]  This is an exciting time to be alive.
[39:23.390 --> 39:25.830]  Similar in some regards to one century ago.
[39:25.830 --> 39:27.950]  When the clockwork model of the universe.
[39:28.390 --> 39:29.830]  Of perfect determinism.
[39:30.050 --> 39:31.250]  The ordered society.
[39:31.550 --> 39:32.090]  Of Queen Victoria.
[39:32.770 --> 39:33.850]  And Europe's dynasties.
[39:34.170 --> 39:35.790]  Appeared stable and timeless.
[39:36.390 --> 39:38.510]  Yet collapsed only a few years later.
[39:39.050 --> 39:41.390]  Some of our timeless models of reality.
[39:41.650 --> 39:42.690]  May collapse.
[39:43.090 --> 39:44.090]  They may fall apart.
[39:44.470 --> 39:45.350]  In short order.
[39:45.830 --> 39:46.950]  What is driving this.
[39:47.190 --> 39:48.290]  As far as I can tell.
[39:48.830 --> 39:50.570]  Is largely a new world view.
[39:50.750 --> 39:52.910]  That's based to some extent on computation.
[39:52.910 --> 39:55.450]  Which is a science built up.
[39:55.830 --> 39:56.770]  Around a device.
[39:57.670 --> 39:57.930]  Of course.
[39:58.230 --> 39:59.030]  Writing and mathematics.
[39:59.350 --> 39:59.710]  In a sense.
[39:59.870 --> 40:02.130]  Were built up around the devices of paper.
[40:02.390 --> 40:02.970]  And pens.
[40:04.490 --> 40:05.850]  As one example of.
[40:06.350 --> 40:07.470]  A model of reality.
[40:07.690 --> 40:08.790]  That we accept as a.
[40:08.910 --> 40:09.990]  Moral imperative.
[40:10.310 --> 40:11.830]  And inherent spiritual truth.
[40:12.410 --> 40:14.070]  Free market fundamentalism.
[40:14.390 --> 40:16.990]  Or the so called neoclassical economics program.
[40:17.490 --> 40:19.430]  Has been propped up for decades.
[40:19.430 --> 40:22.110]  In light of knowingly faulty mathematical.
[40:22.730 --> 40:23.270]  Underpinnings.
[40:23.930 --> 40:25.470]  And it has been computer science.
[40:25.850 --> 40:26.710]  More than anything else.
[40:26.870 --> 40:28.330]  That has identified these faults.
[40:29.150 --> 40:30.290]  It first proved that.
[40:31.130 --> 40:31.850]  Nash equilibria.
[40:33.370 --> 40:34.670]  Game theoretic solutions.
[40:35.010 --> 40:36.390]  To these economic models.
[40:36.570 --> 40:38.010]  That are completely detached from reality.
[40:38.990 --> 40:39.870]  You can't solve these.
[40:40.030 --> 40:40.890]  People can't solve these.
[40:41.010 --> 40:42.390]  They're what you call in computer science.
[40:42.490 --> 40:43.070]  NP complete.
[40:43.310 --> 40:44.230]  Meaning that you have to test.
[40:44.530 --> 40:46.170]  Every single possible solution.
[40:46.390 --> 40:46.910]  To these things.
[40:46.910 --> 40:48.910]  Now Nash didn't actually have.
[40:49.010 --> 40:50.450]  That much involvement in economics.
[40:50.610 --> 40:50.990]  What he did.
[40:51.110 --> 40:51.590]  Was just prove.
[40:51.690 --> 40:52.550]  A fixed point theorem.
[40:52.770 --> 40:54.070]  To abstracted game theory.
[40:54.450 --> 40:55.310]  But people took that.
[40:55.450 --> 40:55.990]  And applied it.
[40:56.370 --> 40:57.110]  Then Robert Axelrod.
[40:57.670 --> 40:58.930]  With his computer simulations.
[40:59.410 --> 40:59.530]  Of.
[40:59.670 --> 41:00.930]  Game theoretic.
[41:01.430 --> 41:01.690]  Players.
[41:02.170 --> 41:02.650]  Incentives.
[41:02.870 --> 41:02.930]  And.
[41:03.270 --> 41:04.430]  The way that game theoretic.
[41:04.630 --> 41:05.090]  Models spread.
[41:05.270 --> 41:05.410]  Said.
[41:05.710 --> 41:06.110]  Hey guys.
[41:06.290 --> 41:07.390]  This Nash equilibrium.
[41:08.070 --> 41:08.370]  Where.
[41:08.610 --> 41:09.470]  Everyone just.
[41:09.810 --> 41:10.150]  Defects.
[41:10.290 --> 41:11.470]  Because it's in their best interest.
[41:11.670 --> 41:12.410]  Never to cooperate.
[41:13.310 --> 41:13.990]  That doesn't work.
[41:13.990 --> 41:15.990]  These computer models have it working.
[41:16.210 --> 41:17.270]  Nature shows it working.
[41:17.590 --> 41:17.910]  I mean.
[41:18.030 --> 41:19.870]  According to this neoclassical program.
[41:20.810 --> 41:22.090]  OPEC wouldn't exist.
[41:22.330 --> 41:24.050]  Because every individual country.
[41:24.330 --> 41:26.230]  Has an incentive to produce more oil.
[41:26.470 --> 41:27.310]  When some guy is.
[41:27.710 --> 41:27.990]  You know.
[41:28.090 --> 41:29.570]  Agreeing to restrict the oil production.
[41:29.750 --> 41:31.070]  So all of OPEC would fall apart.
[41:31.670 --> 41:32.050]  But you see.
[41:32.350 --> 41:33.490]  Free market economists.
[41:33.690 --> 41:35.650]  They don't think very far in the future.
[41:35.650 --> 41:35.970]  They.
[41:36.130 --> 41:36.650]  Didn't.
[41:36.650 --> 41:36.990]  Think.
[41:37.450 --> 41:38.770]  Really one step into the future.
[41:38.950 --> 41:39.430]  On this one.
[41:39.790 --> 41:40.970]  Because anytime you have.
[41:41.190 --> 41:43.230]  A continued cooperation with people.
[41:43.430 --> 41:44.270]  Future interactions.
[41:44.730 --> 41:46.370]  You want to cooperate with them.
[41:46.610 --> 41:48.290]  Because it's not a zero sum game.
[41:48.470 --> 41:51.610]  And OPEC does a lot better by cooperating in the long term.
[41:51.810 --> 41:53.230]  And milking us for a lot of money.
[41:53.630 --> 41:56.170]  Than they get by having one guy defect once.
[41:56.530 --> 41:59.170]  And then have to sell oil at free market prices.
[41:59.170 --> 42:02.090]  For the time until oil runs out.
[42:05.420 --> 42:06.380]  So the recent.
[42:07.160 --> 42:08.460]  Worldwide failures.
[42:08.820 --> 42:10.320]  Of IMF policies.
[42:10.900 --> 42:12.100]  Which have destroyed.
[42:12.460 --> 42:13.300]  Many countries.
[42:13.540 --> 42:14.680]  And many people's lives.
[42:15.520 --> 42:17.980]  Are based on these neoclassical models.
[42:18.380 --> 42:19.720]  So these abstract ideas.
[42:20.040 --> 42:22.420]  Have devastating real world consequences.
[42:22.920 --> 42:25.000]  Yet no one ever thought to ask.
[42:25.160 --> 42:27.900]  Do these models in some way correspond to reality?
[42:31.950 --> 42:34.210]  The failure of supply side economics.
[42:34.430 --> 42:35.290]  In the 1980's.
[42:35.450 --> 42:36.690]  The idea that lowering taxes.
[42:36.910 --> 42:37.690]  Would increase revenue.
[42:39.070 --> 42:39.230]  Well.
[42:39.650 --> 42:40.470]  That didn't work.
[42:40.850 --> 42:41.510]  Oddly enough.
[42:42.410 --> 42:42.550]  So.
[42:42.930 --> 42:45.090]  I would advise the hardcore libertarian.
[42:45.350 --> 42:46.010]  Free market types.
[42:46.150 --> 42:47.310]  To start backpedaling now.
[42:47.710 --> 42:49.190]  There's a very good way you can do that.
[42:49.290 --> 42:49.610]  Just say.
[42:49.710 --> 42:51.370]  Well I had to adopt an extremist position.
[42:51.570 --> 42:52.790]  Because the state was too strong.
[42:53.090 --> 42:53.470]  And you know.
[42:53.510 --> 42:54.670]  I didn't really think it.
[42:54.770 --> 42:55.270]  And now you know.
[42:55.350 --> 42:55.810]  What with terror.
[42:55.970 --> 42:57.150]  We've got to strengthen the state.
[42:57.150 --> 42:57.610]  Back to.
[42:58.230 --> 42:58.790]  Fascism.
[42:58.990 --> 42:59.510]  And capitalism.
[42:59.970 --> 43:00.510]  And you know.
[43:00.710 --> 43:01.790]  Our old way of doing things.
[43:02.490 --> 43:05.010]  I expect computing and communications technology.
[43:05.530 --> 43:08.230]  To become as important as traditional writing and mathematics.
[43:08.730 --> 43:11.730]  And that is why it is imperative to establish a precedent right now.
[43:11.870 --> 43:13.390]  That computation belongs to the people.
[43:13.590 --> 43:15.410]  Not to the politicians and businessmen.
[43:15.610 --> 43:17.330]  We have an opportunity right now.
[43:17.610 --> 43:20.550]  We cannot afford to lose computing and communications technology.
[43:20.990 --> 43:22.290]  As we lost the media.
[43:22.290 --> 43:24.570]  Fortunately the struggle for control.
[43:24.750 --> 43:26.310]  Between the people and the authorities.
[43:26.570 --> 43:27.610]  Is strongly asymmetric.
[43:28.050 --> 43:29.450]  By exploiting these asymmetries.
[43:29.650 --> 43:32.110]  We should be able to keep fire in the hands of mortals.
[43:32.530 --> 43:34.990]  Special interest groups succeed in corrupting democracy.
[43:35.430 --> 43:37.770]  Because they have a huge incentive to support legislation.
[43:38.070 --> 43:40.370]  Which benefits themselves at public expense.
[43:40.970 --> 43:43.170]  And while the cost to society may be high.
[43:43.550 --> 43:45.750]  The distributed cost to each member of society.
[43:45.750 --> 43:48.190]  Isn't high enough to inspire mobilization.
[43:48.770 --> 43:51.230]  Consequently checks and balances are less stable.
[43:51.610 --> 43:53.750]  When financial interests are lopsided.
[43:54.790 --> 43:56.390]  A middle ground compromise position.
[43:56.870 --> 43:58.450]  May not be tenable.
[43:58.950 --> 44:00.670]  Because special interests have shown time and again.
[44:00.770 --> 44:01.950]  That they will hammer away.
[44:02.430 --> 44:03.350]  At the middle positions.
[44:03.870 --> 44:06.070]  Until they get their extreme interest fulfilled.
[44:06.690 --> 44:08.650]  Now there are many inherent asymmetries.
[44:08.810 --> 44:10.290]  That favor the people on this one.
[44:10.510 --> 44:12.310]  As long as we keep up the good fight.
[44:12.890 --> 44:14.530]  Cryptography and distributed communications.
[44:14.530 --> 44:17.810]  They are too asymmetric to be controlled without a police state.
[44:18.350 --> 44:20.310]  Our constitution should protect us.
[44:20.670 --> 44:21.530]  Data can be encrypted.
[44:22.430 --> 44:23.470]  And it can be cracked.
[44:23.630 --> 44:25.730]  But it is impractical to do it.
[44:26.530 --> 44:27.950]  Information once out of the bag.
[44:28.050 --> 44:29.130]  Is out of the bag forever.
[44:29.330 --> 44:32.010]  Provided that we are always here to keep it out of the bag.
[44:32.730 --> 44:34.730]  This increased access to information.
[44:35.050 --> 44:37.170]  Empowers increasing numbers on our side.
[44:37.430 --> 44:40.950]  While the powerful interests are fixed in number and financial resources.
[44:41.530 --> 44:43.190]  Anytime we know how to do something.
[44:43.190 --> 44:45.010]  Even if not immediately necessary.
[44:45.250 --> 44:47.470]  Means that should someone be presented with the need.
[44:47.630 --> 44:48.630]  It will be possible.
[44:49.330 --> 44:51.830]  Security of information is easier to achieve.
[44:51.970 --> 44:53.710]  Than anonymity and obscured signal flow.
[44:53.830 --> 44:56.950]  But I would hope that one-off anonymous actions for whistleblowers.
[44:57.110 --> 44:58.330]  Could remain possible.
[44:59.510 --> 45:01.910]  Authorities forced to act on the behalf of special interests.
[45:02.070 --> 45:03.650]  Are restricted by our constitution.
[45:04.310 --> 45:05.030]  By their time.
[45:05.250 --> 45:06.690]  By their financial resources.
[45:06.690 --> 45:10.390]  They can't fight us effectively without destroying the constitution.
[45:11.030 --> 45:14.230]  And I hope they can't get away with doing that.
[45:14.530 --> 45:18.790]  You also have laws that are not uniform across nations.
[45:19.050 --> 45:23.570]  And that will allow you to escape certain irrational laws.
[45:23.970 --> 45:25.930]  Corporations do this to escape taxation.
[45:26.550 --> 45:28.290]  To escape human rights legislation.
[45:28.510 --> 45:32.290]  To escape labor unions and labor protection laws.
[45:32.290 --> 45:35.030]  So we might as well take advantage of it.
[45:35.190 --> 45:36.590]  Because they certainly are.
[45:37.110 --> 45:40.770]  So people and organizations in power have very little foresight.
[45:40.950 --> 45:42.990]  They care above all for staying in power.
[45:43.190 --> 45:46.510]  Or at least exiting power with as many gains as possible.
[45:46.770 --> 45:48.070]  Left to their own devices.
[45:48.070 --> 45:50.480]  They will behave like a greedy search algorithm.
[45:51.110 --> 45:52.500]  Regardless of future consequences.
[45:53.080 --> 45:56.180]  Their approach to control is to manipulate incentives.
[45:56.460 --> 45:58.360]  They view behaviors as markets.
[45:58.700 --> 46:00.760]  To discourage behaviors they do not like.
[46:01.000 --> 46:04.120]  They pair exclusion from the market with high cost.
[46:04.480 --> 46:06.700]  Exclusion is achieved through technical barriers.
[46:06.900 --> 46:11.040]  And outlying communication of knowledge and tools to circumvent these barriers.
[46:11.460 --> 46:13.940]  Raising the cost means raising the cost of being caught.
[46:14.320 --> 46:16.020]  This can come from catching many people.
[46:16.160 --> 46:17.280]  Or from catching just a few.
[46:17.440 --> 46:18.600]  And punishing disproportionately.
[46:18.940 --> 46:20.440]  Which is more common.
[46:20.440 --> 46:23.400]  We can defeat the technical barriers.
[46:23.600 --> 46:24.480]  And we have to.
[46:24.620 --> 46:32.920]  Because any time a self-interested automaton or agent or rational creature has coercive power over another.
[46:33.120 --> 46:38.560]  The subjugated automaton will be forced to act in the interests of the dominant one.
[46:38.760 --> 46:40.880]  As mechanically as night follows day.
[46:41.460 --> 46:44.880]  This is why freedom is preferable to subordination.
[46:44.880 --> 46:47.500]  The more power authorities have.
[46:47.680 --> 46:51.180]  The more power they can use to consolidate their power.
[46:51.820 --> 46:52.160]  Conversely.
[46:52.820 --> 46:54.000]  The more freedom we have.
[46:54.160 --> 46:58.580]  The more freedom we can use to propagate freedom from mobs and tyrants.
[46:59.200 --> 47:01.700]  We can easily defeat technological barriers.
[47:01.960 --> 47:03.100]  If we keep trying.
[47:03.760 --> 47:06.800]  Law is not necessarily a moral authority.
[47:07.540 --> 47:09.320]  It is a coercive authority.
[47:09.320 --> 47:13.160]  It is increasingly unreliable in areas of science and technology.
[47:13.440 --> 47:16.240]  Especially when the special interests are writing the rules.
[47:16.600 --> 47:23.320]  We need to be able, when necessary, for the good of humanity to circumvent certain irrational laws.
[47:23.640 --> 47:28.320]  Perhaps we could ultimately take back freedom of the press and the electromagnetic spectrum.
[47:29.020 --> 47:33.280]  Or as many people here are doing, enable better alternatives.
[47:33.280 --> 47:36.840]  We have a window of opportunity right now.
[47:36.860 --> 47:43.620]  To stop special interests from doing to computing and communications technology what they did to media.
[47:44.080 --> 47:46.900]  If we can circumvent digital rights management.
[47:47.220 --> 47:50.100]  Serial number embedding and other affronts to anonymity.
[47:50.480 --> 47:51.100]  Spyware.
[47:51.440 --> 47:52.100]  Surveillance.
[47:52.320 --> 47:54.480]  We can defeat the technical barriers.
[47:54.480 --> 48:04.620]  If the EU and other victims of intellectual property imperialism fight against software patents and proprietary protocols.
[48:04.620 --> 48:08.160]  We can see strong pressure for legal reform.
[48:08.460 --> 48:10.860]  The laws may change very slowly.
[48:11.160 --> 48:16.560]  But if we consistently defeat technical barriers and keep the people empowered.
[48:16.560 --> 48:21.640]  We can establish social norms that will force the laws to change.
[48:21.640 --> 48:26.180]  Above all, at any cost, and by any available means.
[48:26.240 --> 48:28.680]  We must continue to exist.
[48:28.980 --> 48:34.780]  Because we are the front line of defense against the technological tyranny of special interests.
[48:49.430 --> 48:51.610]  Any questions for the speaker?
[48:52.850 --> 48:53.330]  Yeah.
[48:55.910 --> 48:59.710]  Oh, I haven't put it on the net yet.
[48:59.710 --> 49:00.390]  I will...
[49:00.390 --> 49:03.430]  You can google me, Jason Kroll, in the name of the speech.
[49:03.670 --> 49:04.430]  We all will.
[49:04.730 --> 49:05.030]  Yeah.
[49:05.430 --> 49:05.590]  Oh.
[49:07.350 --> 49:07.850]  Too awesome.
[49:10.050 --> 49:16.930]  Yes, if you want to get that speech, I suppose I'll have to write it up in a readable, legible format for you.
[49:17.150 --> 49:23.410]  It will be available on Eskimo.com slash hyena or tilde hyena.
[49:23.410 --> 49:29.710]  You can also get it from magicpeacefarm.com slash hyena.
[49:29.910 --> 49:32.070]  That's probably the best one to go to.
[49:34.530 --> 49:36.350]  Magicpeacefarm.com slash hyena.
[49:36.530 --> 49:40.350]  If you google me, I'm sure it will pop up once I get it written.
[49:41.490 --> 49:41.970]  Thank you.
[49:43.890 --> 49:46.190]  Do we have about one more minute left?
[49:46.190 --> 49:48.490]  Does anybody have a burning question for Jason?
[49:48.490 --> 49:49.050]  Yes, sir.
[49:49.790 --> 49:51.130]  Who are just all of them?
[49:51.270 --> 49:54.430]  Why are they more trustworthy than people who are referring to the government?
[49:54.970 --> 49:56.810]  Because there are more...
[49:57.770 --> 50:02.770]  The government contains a very small number of people with very specialized interests.
[50:03.010 --> 50:11.530]  The people as a whole have more people, and our divergent interests tend to average out, which is why we're a little more trustworthy.
[50:12.090 --> 50:12.570]  Yes?
[50:14.530 --> 50:15.270]  Oh, no.
[50:42.000 --> 50:51.040]  Well, they often talk one thing, but their models, their think tanks, their conclusions are used to justify policies that are very hurtful to many people.
[51:05.850 --> 51:10.670]  Yes, they're paid for results.
[51:16.400 --> 51:27.220]  Well, I doubt they would be willing to work there if they didn't in some way believe in what they did, and if they were financially dependent on employment in a think tank, I think they could adjust their values to compensate for that.
[51:31.080 --> 51:32.760]  Oh, okay.
[51:32.940 --> 51:33.200]  Thank you.