Ryle’s The Concept of Mind, Chapter 2 – Knowing How, Knowing That

In this chapter Ryle seeks to convince us that there is no Ghost in the Machine. The intuition that there is some mental ‘inner’ precursor to external actions is wrong. “…When we describe people as exercising qualities of mind, we are not referring to occult episodes which their overt acts and utterances are effects; we are referring to those overt acts and utterances themselves” (Ryle 2000, p26).

Ryle seeks to move us from thinking about an inner mental life, some of which leads to or initiates external behaviour. Instead, the view (as I understand it) that he wants us to develop is that our mental life is either expressed in a way observable to an external observer, or in a way that is not. When we talk we are vocalising our thoughts, and when we merely think (in words at any rate) we are doing the same activity a talking but not vocalising it. The introduction of the Category Mistake in the previous chapter was intended to prepare us for this move. Ryle gave an example of the visitor to Oxford University seeing the colleges and libraries, but wondering where the university is. Public thought (e.g. talking to someone) and private thought (e.g. talking to yourself without vocalising) are like the colleges and libraries, and the mind is the university.

Knowing How and Knowing That

Ryle draws a distinction between knowing how and knowing that. This distinction appears to map onto declarative and procedural knowledge.

Misunderstandings and Feints

“Misunderstanding is a by-product of knowing how. Only a person who is at least a partial master of the Russian tongue can make the wrong sense of a Russian expression” (Ryle 2000, p58). Feinting also requires knowing how. It is the “art of exploiting”, or provoking, your opponent’s premature conclusion of what course of action you are following (Ibid.).

Quotes

"They ridiculed questions, for fear it would make their ignorance plain"

The Judging Eye, Scott Bakker

Ryle's The Concept of Mind, Chapter 1 - Descartes' Myth

The Official Doctrine

In Chapter 1 Ryle outlines the ‘Official Doctrine’ of the Mind, that mind and body are distinct (substance dualism). Bodies are in space and time, and are ‘mechanical’ (roughly, they are causal systems). Bodies are public, in that their activities can be scrutinised by other parties. Minds on the other hand are in time, but belong in a kind of ‘mental space’ that is linked to the relevant body but isolated from other things in the physical universe. We are blind to the minds of others, and take it on a sort of faith that other people also have minds as we cannot observe them directly.

We have a privileged access to our own thoughts and feelings, and access that nobody else enjoys. This privileged access gives us a direct appreciation, we sort of watch and observe them. While we might be wrong or uncertain about things that occur in the external world, we cannot be mistaken about the happenings that we observe in our internal world.

Ryle calls this the Official Doctrine, as it was the dominant and explicitly/implicitly held belief about minds at the time the book was published in 1949. Ryle refers to the official doctrine “abusively” as the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine.

Can you tell Ryle isn’t a fan of the Official Doctrine?

(Another wonderful turn of phrase about the Official Doctrine is Daniel Dennett’s ‘Cartesian Theatre’).

Category Mistakes

Ryle introduces the idea of a ‘category mistake’, whereby someone has incorrectly categorised an entity and then proceeded to treat it as though it belonged to that category. His famous example is of a visitor to Oxford or Cambridge university being shown various aspects of the university, e.g. various colleges and libraries, but then asking “But where is the university?”. The visitor has committed a category mistake, he has already seen the university (or at least parts of it) but is expecting something more because he considers universities to belong to the same category of things as colleges and libraries. Another example is the Home Office and the British Constitution both being ‘institutions’ but being radically different. Or expecting the ‘average family’ to be a similar sort of entity to an actual family (you can’t actually live next door to the average family).

Siri arrgh

Apple's digital assistance - Siri - is a feature that almost works really well, but because of its anthropocentric qualities that 'almost' is enough to drive me crazy. That, and its almost-great voice recognition means that Siri is possibly the first bit of technology that I've ever had that I shout or swear at.

Siri's latest shenanigans/quirk/bug is when activated while a podcast is playing it detects the last word or two that was said on the podcast and try to respond to it. This is infuriating, especially as there doesn't seem to be any easy to use mechanism to carry on with an interaction once you've said no to something. So I get this a lot:

1. Activate Siri while podcast is playing
2. Siri does something (or fails to do something) in response to the last word or two spoken on the podcast
3. I tell Siri that no, I don't want whatever it is trying to offer me
4. Siri becomes unresponsive to voice commands
5. Me: "Hey Siri.... Hey Siri...... HEY SIRI.... SIRI... SIRI... HEY SIRI..... AAARGH YOU &*()*$"(*"$%%%"

There's probably something to say here about the intentional stance, about how trying to build human-like interfaces builds expectations of human-like interaction, and so on... but its late and Siri has made me cranky.

Partisanship and Identity Politics

I've been reading some interesting articles and 'Twitter storms' recently that generally assert that majority and privileged groups (usually white males) should not give an opinion on matters that relate to those not in the majority or privileged group. These assertions can range from politely pointing out that the speaker may not know what they're talking about, to anger that they're even expressing an opinion. To avoid any current controversies* the example I'll link to is of a debate that was scheduled to be held at an Oxford University college on abortion, that at least in part caused outrage because the speakers were all male. I bumped into a good response from Steve Bruce (2000) to these partisan assertions that the views of out-groups should not be seriously considered :

"One good reason to be suspicious of this argument is that it is not offered even-handedly, We do not find sociologists arguing that only aristocrats can usefully study aristocracy or that only fascists can study fascism. Such special pleading is offered only by people on their own behalf. Often it has the appearance of being a lazy way of asserting (rather than demonstrating) the superiority of their claims. Clearly, possessing some trait may be useful in understanding others with the same characteristic."

I think Bruce is right, though I would weaken his position that special pleading is only offered on people's own behalf to it being often offered on their own behalf.

We would not try to claim that the views of doctors about cancer patients should be discounted if those doctors have never had cancer, or that only astronauts have anything useful to say about astronauts. A plutocrat might have a very distorted and false view about the life of poor people, and is likely to not have recent experience of being poor, but she might be fully capable of understanding and sympathising with the life of the poor. It is entirely possible that a plutocrat can be right, and the poor person wrong, about something to do with the life and situation of the poor person.

Bruce goes on to say:

"In drawing a line between insiders and outsiders, we have to impute to the group a patently exaggerated (if not downright false) set of common experiences and interests. Obviously not all women or members of ethnic groups share the same experiences or hold the same values. Margaret Thatcher may have been Britain's first woman Prime Minister, but she was remarkably unsympathetic to what feminists defined as women's interests."

We should avoid the temptation to exclude people or groups from public debates because they don't belong to a particular club. If we are tempted to say that Group X cannot understand the situation of Group Y, or that they should not be allowed to express a view, we should turn the relationship around and ask if the reverse is true. If we find ourselves tempted to allow Group Y to comment on Group X but not the other way around, we should pause and examine our reasons to see if they are of equal worth.

ReferenceBruce, S. (2000) Sociology, a very short introduction. Oxford University Press.

As an aside, I've found Oxford University Press' "A Very Short Introduction" series to be excellent.


* You can interpret this as laziness if you'd like. You won't be hugely wrong.

Platonic Babies

A story idea

Babies are born knowing. Their minds are fully functioning, and they understand the secrets of the universe. Unfortunately, they are unable to have any direct control over their bodies, and are unable to interact with the outside world. There comes a point for every baby where they make the choice to initiate changes in the brain that will allow them to come to control their bodies and interact with the outside world. The price is high however, and they have to sacrifice all but a small kernel of themselves in order to bring about the change. Their self dies, all their knowledge is lost, but they leave behind a small seed to grow into a new person. The rest of their life is spent struggling to slowly relearn a fraction of what they once knew but sacrificed in order to live in the world.

Tolerating Intolerance?

Are liberals required to tolerate intolerance? Is it paradoxical or hypocritical if they do not?

Tolerance is a strategy to maximise liberty, it is not an end in itself. Liberals should encourage toleration to bring about more liberty, but should be against tolerance when it reduces liberty.

Tolerating the individual lifestyle choices of others, even when you strongly disapprove of those choices, increases liberty. If people wish to wear hats, then a liberal should at a minimum avoid discouraging people from wearing hats. The result of this toleration is that people wear or do not wear hats as they wish; more liberty! A liberal should be against (i.e. intolerant of) someone trying to force others to wear hats, because their actions reduces the liberty of others.

Tolerance of intolerant views is justifiable when those views are not overly reducing the liberty of others. Liberals should be intolerant of intolerance that reduces the liberty of others. Thus, if people make bigoted statements in public about hat wearers, then those statements should be tolerated if they do not adversely impact the liberty of people who wear hats. Toleration does not preclude disagreement or debate, so the liberal can still be free to criticise hatist views. If the bigoted statements about hat wearers has the impact of restricting their liberty (e.g. it makes it more difficult for them to be in public, or to get a job) then those statements and views should not be tolerated.

Liberals are required to tolerate intolerance when that intolerance is not adversely impacting the liberty of others. It is not hypocritical to be intolerant of intolerance when the targeted intolerance is reducing liberty.

Quotes: The Thousandfold Thought

Some quotes:

“You understood that when men stop bowing, the emperor ceases to rule, that when the whips are thrown into the river, the slave ceases to serve. For an infant to be an emperor or a slave or a merchant or a whore or a general or whatever, those about him must act accordingly. And Men act as they believe. “You saw them, in their thousands, spread across the world in great hierarchies, the actions of each exquisitely attuned to the expectations of others. The identity of Men, you discovered, was determined by the beliefs, the assumptions, of others. This is what makes them emperors or slaves … Not their gods. Not their blood".

Doubt begets understanding, and understanding begets compassion. Verily, it is conviction that kills. 

From Bakker's The Thousandfold Thought, Book 3 of the Prince of Nothing

Intentional Systems Theory and HCI

Intentional Systems Theory

Intentional Systems Theory is a theory about how we understand and predict the behaviour of different sorts of systems. It suggests three different approaches, or 'stances', to predict the behaviour of systems. Having a rough understanding of these stances is a useful aid in understanding how people understand different systems.

The Physical Stance - the physical stance is based on physical laws. For example, we predict what will happen when something is dropped based on our understanding of gravity. We predict where water will go, and how balls on a snooker table will move using the physical stance.The physical stance is in a sense the 'truest' stance, and in principle the behaviour of any system should be describable using it, but for many systems it is not a practical approach.

The Design Stance - the design stance is based on assuming design in a system or artefact. For example, when figuring out a novel artefact believed to be an alarm clock, we don't try to understand it in terms of physical laws or even circuit diagrams. We make design assumptions; such as an alarm clock will have some way of setting a time for the alarm, and at that time it will do something (such as making a noise) that has a reasonable chance of waking us up, and so on. With the design stance we assume an artefact has a purpose, and we figure out how it should be used to fulfil that purpose.

The Intentional Stance - with the intentional stance we assume that something can be usefully predicted as though it had a mind complete with things like beliefs and intentions, and that it will act rationally based on what is in its mind. This is how we interact with other humans, and how we understand the behaviour of animals. We don't know that Fido and Rover (who are dogs) have a mental life anything like ours, but by assuming they have things like beliefs and intentions and that they will act rationally on them, we are able to predict their behaviour.

Using the Stances to Understand Systems

The intentional stance can be usefully applied to things like computers and robots, and frequently are. Trying to predict the behaviour of a rock by thinking about what beliefs it has will get you nowhere. Assuming the moon is designed and has some purpose doesn't yield any insight into its future orbits. Similarly, people don't feel betrayed by rocks, or that the moon doesn't like them.

In contrast thinking of a computer opponent in a game as being an intentional system is useful: your opponent has an intention to kill your game character; you can assume it has beliefs such as your current location; it may even be trying to guess where you will go next; and, it will act rationally within its means to meet its goal of hunting down and killing your character.

The different stances provide insight into how people react emotionally to different systems and artefacts. One cannot really be angry with an artefact considered with the physical stance. In the case of the design stance, you can be angry at the designer of an alarm clock, annoyed at yourself for not using it properly, and frustrated when it doesn't work properly, but you can't be angry at the clock, or feel betrayed by the clock. People can (and do) feel betrayed or let down by computer game characters, and even devices like smartphones. (This may get worse as they take on human-like characteristics with their embedded personal assistants).

The three stances are useful ways of thinking about different systems, and in understanding how other people think about things in the world.

The Stances and HCI

When designing a user interface the goal is to provide the user with something that allows them to usefully understand and successfully interact with the system. The user interface does not need to be like the system it is for, it can be a fiction (or 'user illusion') that provides a simple or intuitive model of the system to make it easier to use. The three stances provide a designer with three distinct approaches to designing a user interface. The designer should select the most appropriate stance for each element, or for the overall interface, depending on how the product should be used.

A user interface using the physical stance will include features that encourage the user to think in terms of physical systems. Physical controls like joysticks and mice that create a corresponding movement in the system when the user moves their hand are an example of physical stance interface elements. Another example would be a touch-device that supports 'swiping' between different views in a way that corresponds to moving and manipulating physical artefacts. Users explore physical stance systems and discover ways of using them.

User interface elements that use the design stance will have features that are 'like' other design stance artefacts, they will suggest purpose to the user, and intended use. The user will identify features of the user interface (buttons, controls, etc) that look like they are supposed to be used in a certain way, toward a certain goal. Logical and sequential grouping of controls will help to emphasise the intended use. Users learn how to use design stance systems.

Systems that use the intentional stance promote discourse, affect, and human-like (or perhaps animal-like) interactions. These systems exploit a pre-existing system model that users have (i.e. of a mind, or mind-like thing). Such systems can focus on the pre-existing model of interaction, and build upon it. However, while a model of a design stance system can be made explicit and specific to the designer's needs, to an extent the gross model properties of an intentional system may be fixed. Users engage with and enter a discourse with intentional systems.

Footnotes

This article undoubtedly draws on: Dennett, D. (2011) Intentional Systems Theory, in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind, (eds. McLaughlin, Beckermann, and Walter). Oxford University Press.

The Darkness That Comes Before

Some quotes:

"...though he consorts with man, woman, and child, though he lays with beasts and makes a mockery of his seed, never shall he be as licentious as the philosopher, who lays with all things imaginable"

"Children questioned as much to be rebuffed as to be answered, as they must in order to learn which questions were permissible and which were not."

"We seek absolute awareness, the self-moving thought. The thoughts of all men arise from the darkness. If you are the movement of your soul, and the cause of that movement precedes you, then how could you ever call your thoughts your own? How could you be anything other than a slave to the darkness that comes before?"

From Scott Bakker's The Darkness That Comes Before: Book 1 of the Prince of Nothing. 

Materialism (Equivocations Episode #1)

The word materialism has multiple meanings that can become confused (sometimes deliberately). Materialism can mean (roughly): the philosophical view that all that there is, is made up of energy and matter, and by understanding the laws of how these things interact we can (in principle) gain an understanding of how the universe works. I'll call people who hold this view materialists. Materialism can also mean (roughly): an excessive focus or valuing of material goods, i.e. jewellery, cars, fashion items, etc. I'll call people who this term applies to materialistic.

By giving these views separate labels it is clearer to see that they are distinct views. A materialist might prefer to leave an austere life, forsaking material wealth, and focusing on matters of spirituality and love. There is no reason to suppose that a materialist is materialistic. Similarly, someone who is not a materialist, say a Christian who believes in souls and a heavenly realm, would not be a materialist as they believe in more than a material universe. They could however be rather materialistic. While not all Christians are materialistic, it is quite clear that many can be and are.

Exiting Games

Interesting to see here that Broken Age breaks the normal convention of exiting computer game menus by using a more familiar convention; putting an X in the top right corner of the screen. A good and consistent approach for pointer driven interfaces.

Quotes - Ballantyne's Stories from the Northern Road

"It doesn't do a town any good to drift away from regular intercourse with other people. Ideas become concentrated."

Tony Ballantyne's Stories from the Northern Road. 

The Problems of Conciousness, part 2

The Problem of Mechanism

This problem seems to be roughly "how do you go from neuron stuff to experience stuff". It is clear from various experiments and brain damage cases that we do move from neuron stuff to experience stuff, but how does it happen?

It will come as no surprise when I say that I don't know what the answer is. However our view is from the inside, from within the bubble of conciousness. We are blind to the workings of our brain, we only 'see' some of the results of its workings. Our experience is based on what makes it into conciousness, and no more. What does it make it is likely to to be processed, and to some degree incomplete. We should not expect the answer to the problem of mechanism to make intuitive sense. We might already have the answer, but not be willing to accept it.

What would the answer look like? What more are we looking for above and beyond the neurons and brain structures that when stimulated just so give us these experiences?

The Problem of Duplicates

Philosophical zombies are 100% identical physically and behaviourally to a concious human being, but lack concious experiences. You can talk to Zombie-Fred and be completely unable to determine whether he is a zombie or not. He'll talk to you about sports, tell you how much he likes a particular movie, and gaze with (seeming) admiration at scenes of natural beauty. Yet Fred has no concious experience. If you poke Zombie-Fred, various neurons and things will do the same as they would do in your body, but what goes on in Zombie-Fred's mental life is just some message that he got poked, with no actual concious feeling or sensation involved.

The argument that accompanies this is something like:

1. Zombies are identical to humans in every way, except they don't have concious experiences.
2. Physical activity in a human brain identically replicated in a zombie brain does not result in concious experiences.
3. Therefore, there needs to be something extra to create conciousness.

Counterargument: Zombies aren't real.

Is there much more to say? Perhaps I am being too quick at dismissing zombies, but zombies don't seem to be an explanation to fill a gap in our understanding, they seem to be something that is creating a gap that isn't there.

How can Zombie-Fred pass as a proper human without having a conciousness? Doesn't Zombie-Fred need something in its place? It would need some sort of rule or ability to talk about feelings of true love, or how excruciating a pain is, or how joyously vibrant a shade of green is. This would probably not be a difficult problem, and would be something well within Zombie-Fred's abilities, but Zombie-Fred would have something that humans don't have; some sort of "faking having a conciousness" module. However, wouldn't this in principle be an observable difference?

China Brain

If our minds are just the results of neurons arranged in a big complicated machine, wouldn't it be possible to produce the same effect via some different arrangement? The China Brain thought experiment concerned getting billions of Chinese people to replicate the behaviour individual neurons, such that collectively they were simulating a brain. Why Chinese people? I have no idea.

The work that this thought experiment (or intuition pump) does is to show that the China Brain could  be "possible and it is functionally equivalent to a normal human being, it supposedly presents the illustration of the absent qualia hyopthesis. Block concludes that functional organisation is not what determines or fixes phenomenological conciousness" (Tye 2007). I think that is a well placed 'supposedly'. The intuition is to dismiss the China Brain. My response is to consider that the China Brain should, in some sense, have its own conciousness. It seems fantastical, and hard to countenance, but it seems where evidence and reason leads. I suppose this could make me a die-hard physicalist, unwilling to consider a non-physical account of conciousness no matter how absurd my position seems to be. But, the China Brain thought experiment doesn't give a reason to reject the possibility of conciousness, only an intuition not to. Intuitions can be useful, but they aren't answers. 

The Problems of Conciousness, part 1

Conciousness. Probably the most intimate and direct thing that we can know of, yet still somewhat strange and elusive.

I've started some background reading from the Blackwell Companion to Conciousness, and I'm having an interesting time reading Michael Tye's 'Philosophical Problems of Conciousness'. I'm not quite getting some of the problems, and I'm not sure whether this is due to a failure to fully appreciate the problems or if I'm a hardline materialist/physicalist.

What follows will be a very brief synopsis of some of the problems, and my initial thoughts in response. The subject of this blog entry is:

Tye, M. (2007) 'Philosophical Problems of Conciousness'. In Velmans, M., and Schneider, S. (eds.) The Blackwell Companion to Conciousness. Blackwell Publishing.

The Problem of Ownership

The problem of ownership is explaining how the mental objects of conciousness (feelings etc.) can be physical "given they are necessarily owned and necessarily private to their owners" (Tye 2007). The idea here seems to be that the mental objects and experiences are private in the sense that nobody else can have them, and nobody else can have access to them. I own my pen, and I can give it away to someone else so that they can own it.

I'm not sure the concept of ownership contained in this idea is correct. I own my pen, yes. I wouldn't own my child, nor would I own my favourite colour, or my boss. Do I own my arm? Yes. Not in the sense that I own my pen, but I still sorta own my arm. I could say my arm is part of me, but I think it would be more accurate to say it was part of my body.

Do I own my mental objects and experiences? I don't think it would be right for people to have unfettered access to these things without my consent. So perhaps I am asserting some sort of ownership over them. I can go further and say that I think that these mental objects are me. They might not be the whole of me, I have a store of memories for example, but they are a key component of me. Feelings and experiences as they occur are me being me. Without that I (as a mental entity) am not there. I don't own me, I am me. Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" taken a step or two further.

Are my thoughts and feelings private? Well, yes. In one sense I don't think they necessarily are so. In the future could we rig up some sort of machine to record feelings and play them back in someone else's head? Maybe. This doesn't quite work because fully fledged persons may not have the exact same experience or thought even though they undergo the same 'Playback'. Thoughts and feelings surely don't exist in isolation, they will draw on past thoughts and emotions. That pang of loss will have shades of different sorrows for each of us. But, what are we saying here? If we ran a bit of software, or set of data, in a bunch of different computers we'd expect to get the same result. But only if we ran it in computers that were functionally the same, and shared the same relevant state. If we ran our data on multiple computers, which had other software running, or other data in memory accessible and relevant to our data, then we'd expect different outcomes or at least different machine states. Why expect something different from human brains?

I don't think we own our mental objects in the sense of owning property, and I'm not sure that they're private in the sense intended by Tye.

The Problem of Perspectival Subjectivity

This problem is that there is something that physicalism doesn't account for in conciousness. It is possible to understand something, but for that understanding to be incomplete until you have experienced it. "Phenomenally concious states are perspectival in that fully comprehending them requires adopting a certain experiential point of view. But physical states are not perspectival in this way" (Tye 2007).

Tye gives the following example:

"A man who is blind and deaf cannot experience lightning by sight or hearing at all, but he can understand fully just what it is, namely a certain sort of electrical discharge between clouds".

This man understands lightning, but cannot experience it. There is some sort of gap. I agree. I'm not sure quite what the problem for physicalism is though. (I should probably make a quick aside to say that I really do get that there seems to be some sort of fantastical jump that is hard to grasp or accept arises from the machinery of the brain...).

The brain process things. Our concious experience is the result of a number of sub-systems processing various inputs, such as sense data and memory retrieval. Imagine there is a little black box labelled 'Experience Machine' in our brains. Various inputs going into the black box, and out pops our concious experience. Understanding all that there is to know about lightning is not the same thing as experiencing it. In considering it, different inputs are going into the little black box. The inputs are thought objects about lightning. They are not going to be stored and represented in the brain the same as a direct past or current experience of being in the vicinity of lighting, and they will not be accompanied by visual and auditory sense data. What is going into the little black box when thinking about lightning is not the same as when experiencing it externally. So we should expect different things to arrive in our conciousness.

On this account, we would only expect a full understanding to be like actually experiencing it if we were able to simulate the little black box in our heads and were able to marshal appropriate inputs. If we could feed into the little black box all of the inputs that would go in when directly experiencing lightning, then we would expect to have the concious experience of it.

I have not given an account for the little black box labelled conciousness, but I think I have sketched out why we should expect a complete 'understanding' to be lacking the sense gained from having a concious experience of it.

Believing Bullshit, by Stephen Law

A couple of highlights from my read through of Stephen Law's Believing Bullshit.

"Any given set of observations can be explained by a number of theories. To use the jargon of the philosophy of science: theories are underdetermined by the evidence."

" as we'll see later in “But It Fits!” any theory, no matter how nuts, can be made to “fit”—be consistent with—the evidence, given sufficient ingenuity. It doesn't follow that all theories are equally reasonable, or that we can never fairly conclusively settle the question of which among competing theories are true on the basis of observational evidence."

"Many belief systems often start with a mystery—they offer to explain what might otherwise seem rather baffling."

"Putting these various points together, we can sum up by saying that, in order for a theory to be strongly confirmed, that theory has to stick its neck out with respect to the evidence. It has to be bold, to risk being proved wrong. If a theory either fails to make any predictions, or if it makes only vague and woolly predictions, or else if it predicts things that are not particularly unexpected anyway—if, in short, it takes no significant risks with the evidence—then not only is it not strongly confirmed, it can't be."

"amazing coincidences are inevitable. There are billions of people living on this planet, each experiencing thousands of events each day. Inevitably, some of them are going to experience some really remarkable coincidences." 

Believing Bullshit is all about the 'dirty tricks' people can play in presenting their theories and ideas to you, and how to spot these tricks and respond to them. If this sounds vaguely interesting it is well worth a read.

You may also be interested in Law's blog.

Reinitialising...

Well lookee here. I still have a blog. Maybe it is time to do something with it again.

On gated communities

"Living in a gated community and employing hired muscle to keep you comfy does not mean that you live in a little utopia. It means you live in a dystopia and happen to be one of the privileged"

- Iain M. Banks (2012). The Hydrogen Sonata, p619

More Informed Choices Around Tax Avoidance

How about....

The tax authorities (i.e. HMRC) compiles and publishes data for every company which shows the revenue received by a company and the proportion of tax paid on that revenue. This could be supplemented by legislation whereby at every transaction point a company is required by law to show the published 'tax ratio'. This could even be presented as a handy infographic that shows a target point for what should be typical corporation tax. There could be a very limited number of additional information points, such as whether the company is a charity. The tax indicator on the infographic could potentially have top ups for things like charitable given.

It would also be handy if the infographic showed the ratio of salaries (well, total reward..) within the company (including holding/owning companies/all companies within a group) between the top earners versus the bottom earners.

Though perhaps overly heavy handed the infographic could display some helpful stats to help understand the implications of the numbers, e.g. what the impact is on school funding etc. Where applicable government procurement might stipulate a minimum percentage of taxation paid by a company. Individuals might choose to opt into a system whereby their payment cards will not accept an authorisation with a company that pays tax below a certain threshold.

This system would help everyone in society to make a more informed choice in how they direct their money. If people are content or supportive of a companies taxation level, or perhaps think that the product or service on offer is so superior that the lower rate of taxation paid is a worthwhile trade-off  Alternatively, people may choose to take their custom to another business on the basis that the transaction will be more supportive of public programmes such as infrastructure building, education, etc.

The market is often considered by many to be 'right', and should that it should be left unguided in order to produce better outcomes. Two problems with market forces however, and I don't mean to imply there are only two, is that an aggregate of individual choices does not represent the collective will, and that a lack of information distorts market activity. Providing consumers with greater information will allow them to make more informed choices with regards to how they wish to direct the flow of capital.

Of Drones, ethics, and remote working

A recent topic of ethical debate relates to the use of military drones. As well as the current issues we should consider what the future might have in store for us, and I have outlined below a couple of potential ethical issues relating to the remote operation of drones.

Blurring Training and Operations
We are nearing a point where the experience of a training simulation will be more or less indistinguishable to an actual operation. Because operation of a drone is mediated via a software interface it should soon be possible to have the fidelity of the training software to match that of an effective operational human-drone interface. This could be achieved by increases in the fidelity of the training simulation to match the operational experience, or via lowering the fidelity of the operational experience to match the training experience. 'Real life' fidelity and information feeds are not required to effectively pilot a drone, and indeed abstracted interface elements may even be beneficial. At this point, due to the remote nature of operating drones, it may be possible to insert real operations into a series of training runs without the operator even knowing. As far as the operator is concerned they could be practicing a scenario, and not realise they have been swapped over to the real thing.

Outsourced Warriors
Once the scenario outlined above becomes possible, we could potentially see outsourced warfighting to gamers. I mean this in two senses. The first that suitable games available to the general public could be used to train relevant warfighting skills into to the general populace. In the second sense actual operations could be outsourced into gaming networks, such that players are usually playing a simulated game but every so often (knowingly or unknowingly) they are performing actual missions.

Redundancy
By the time we get to the point where the scenarios outlined above could be reality it may be a moot point anyway; the machines might be better off executing missions without us.