The modern Panopticon

Janice Turner from The Times today interviews Maria Miller, the (Conservative) Chair of the Women and Equalities Select Committee.

The article: "How do you solve a problem like men in women’s changing rooms, Maria?"

"Maria Miller gathers up her handbag and makes to leave: “I don’t think I’m happy about this. I think I’ve finished . . . I didn’t realise this was such a stitch-up.”

I’ve been questioning Ms Miller about a report on transgender rights she produced last year as chairwoman of the women and equalities committee. ...

"The heart of the controversy is the view, espoused by Ms Miller’s report, that switching gender should instead merely be a matter of “self-definition”. A man need only “declare” that he is a woman. Your gender is what you feel it to be: there would be no requirement even to take female hormones or have surgery — about 70 per cent of trans women still have intact male genitals — or even “present” as a woman to be legally female. ...

"Furthermore, if the law changes, “gender identity” is likely to become a protected characteristic under equalities legislation: ie if you deny a person is a woman or a man when they claim to be, you are guilty of discrimination or hate crime. ...

"Take this scenario: a man enters a female communal changing area, removes his clothes while women get undressed. Now they have a right to ask him to leave. Under gender self-definition, if he said “I identify as a woman” he would be entitled to stay. This, I stress, is unlikely to be a trans woman — many who use women’s changing rooms every day with discretion and no fuss — but could be a sexual predator exploiting the loophole. (There have been a growing number of cases in the US, including a man in Seattle using women’s pool facilities claiming “the law has changed, I have a right to be here”.) Does Ms Miller not see why women fear a conflict of rights? ...

"I show her a photograph of a bearded, male-born American called Danielle Muscato who dresses in men’s suits and ties, has made no attempt to transition but nonetheless “identifies as female” and insists on living in a women’s homeless shelter. On International Women’s Day he tweeted: “Some women have penises. If you’re bothered by this, you can suck my dick.” ...

"In Toronto, Christopher Hambrook claimed to be a trans woman to access a refuge then raped residents."

“These spaces carry out a risk assessment before individuals are allowed to use them and those that pose a risk to safety are not necessarily one gender.”

"But 90 per cent of violent crime and 98 per cent of sexual crime is committed by men. Trans women, such as Davina Ayrton, who raped a 15-year-old girl, have been convicted of offences seldom committed by natal females. Would self-identification mean these crimes would be registered as committed by women, skewing the figures? ...

"Sport is another problematic area: self-identification could destroy women’s competitions, allowing former-men with greater musculature and testosterone to dominate. In New Zealand a weightlifter, Laurel Hubbard, has broken national records; in Canada the mountain biker Michelle Dumaresq dominated for years."

“Those are already issues that professional bodies have to deal with. And again that is something which needs to be looked at in significant detail.”

"I ask her about school sports. In Connecticut Andraya Yearwood, a male-bodied, moustachioed 15-year-old trans girl, has won state championships although she would have finished last in the boys’ competition. Does Ms Miller think this fair to the girl athletes?"

“Well, I think it’s a bit of a difficult one to answer because boys are not going through gender reassignment when they’re at school.”

"But what would you say to the girls who lost?"

“It’s a very difficult one to answer . . .”

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Walking along a country lane this morning I discussed this with Clare.

"This thing could run a long way. For example, I could claim to be a toddler and demand the right to join an infant play area. If someone objected that I'm a sixty six year old male, could they be open to the accusation of hate crime?"

"Don't worry," she said, "No-one can hear you here."

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Would you like to know more?

The mediaeval belief that God saw all thoughts & actions was a powerful force for conformity.*

In a more secular age, it's good to know that our technology will soon step into the breach.

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* Part II .. and related (SSC).

Smart pets? An *obvious* spinoff ...

From Steve Hsu today at Information Processing:

"Work on cognitive enhancement will probably be done first in monkeys, proving Planet of the Apes prophetic within the next decade or so :-)"

Many (most?) of the alleles implicated in superior cognitive functioning will doubtless have other physiological effects. This 'multiple and diverse impact' of genes is called Pleiotropy.

For this reason - when we have a list of the relevant IQ alleles - we would be ill-advised to shift into genome-editing mode and just flip all those genes to their 'enhancement' variants.

Naturally, there'll be loads of research first on mice, monkeys (expensive) and .. cats.

Link

Contra Wittgenstein, I may yet share my life with a truly biologica Aineko before I die.

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(Nothing worse than being incessantly nagged by an entitled creature which believes itself master or mistress of the universe and which additionally possesses claws).

Diary: Paris

Paris for the final stage of the Tour de France, street wandering and atmosphere.

Sunday morning before Mass at Notre Dame

Map-checking at the Père Lachaise Cemetery

I had compiled a Père Lachaise list: painters, poets, musicians, politicians and the odd surrealist. We had a map - trouble is, Père Lachaise is dense with graves and without signposts. Probably there's a GPS app but I skipped the research. We found nothing but enjoyed the walk.

Neither Clare nor myself found any of our targets

The Pyramide du Louvre from the Tuileries Garden

 Sainte-Chapelle

Our hotel was the 123 Sébastopol - at 123, Boulevard de Sébastopol 75002 Paris. A smart hotel pioneering early gentrification of a shabby neighbourhood, ethnically mixed between sub-Saharan Africans, North Africans and poor ethnic-European French. The streets were pretty crowded and it was plainly not a tourist area. It was, however, close and walkable to central Paris.

And not without interest.

Services I wish I could buy: Vengeance Ltd

It was a slow day
And the sun was beating
On the soldiers by the side of the road
There was a bright light
A shattering of shop windows
The bomb in the baby carriage
Was wired to the radio

.. and there again ..

A man walks down the street
It's a street in a strange world
Maybe it's the Third World
Maybe it's his first time around
He doesn't speak the language
He holds no currency
He is a foreign man.

We all like travelling in foreign parts, but let's face it, some of them are pretty dire.

Not all of us can afford, or would want to be accompanied by, a phalanx of bodyguards. So let's think about this: why would some random bad guys in a bad part of the world not want to rob you and leave you for dead?

If they could.

I think what might stop them is fear of retribution, so let's give them some good reasons.

Vengeance Ltd recruits former special forces and top operational support guys. As a client, you are required to carry at all times audio/video sensors plus GPS tracker. All this stuff is linked in real time to their HQ.

You also wear a somewhat conspicuous "V" badge and carry a Vengeance Ltd laminated card. They want the bad guys to know you're a client.

If the worst happens, there's not much they can do in medias res. They're not bodyguards.

Vengeance Ltd - helping out with your perfect holiday

The clue is in the name. They will relentlessly hunt down and bring terminal retribution to your assailants. They do not give up. The few times they had to do this were quite well-publicised: they have a good rep.

I think you would feel quite protected - and as a volume business, their rates are quite affordable.

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Did I mention the heart-rate monitor? It can be quite difficult, instrumentation-wise, to distinguish between a holdup and an episode of passion. That's when they need to cross-check the video feed. They say it's all done by a real smart AI ... so no worries then.

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For experts, this is an example of bourgeois commodification of pre-capitalist naturalistic social relations. Or in English, everyone used to belong to a clan or a tribe. If someone did you harm, your kinfolk would serve out retribution.

But for capitalism to work properly, we had to dispense with the clans ...

Diary: what I'm reading

Books (on the Kindle) I'm currently reading:

Amazon link

An economist who can write well and who knows that markets require a plethora of institutions to make them work. Harder globally than nationally.

Unfailing interesting, and passes the 'ring of truth' test.

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Amazon link

Razib Khan spoke warmly of this book, although warning it was heavy going. Really??

Martin Jay documents that intellectual commune of mostly German-Jewish left-intellectuals trying to figure out why the proletariat stubbornly refused to deliver the promised utopia-bringing revolution.

Like most people with a Marxist background, I tangentially knew about the Frankfurt School - especially via Marcuse - but never got around to actually engaging with Critical Theory.

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Amazon link

Flagged critically as one of the better Jack Reacher thrillers, this seemed ideal to read to Clare after dinner.

As well as having a Jack Reacher haircut I share his interest in the blues.

I was sufficiently motivated to consider the best electric blues rendition of "Born under a Bad Sign" and listened carefully to Cream's famous version. But John Bonamassa is my favourite.

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"Supermind" is on order!

More about METI

From Centauri Dreams today:

"I want to commend Johnson’s piece, which is titled “Greetings, E.T. (Please Don’t Murder Us).” As you can fathom from the title, the author is looking at our possible encounter with alien civilizations in terms not of detection but of contact, and that means we’re talking METI — Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence. "

The thing to worry about is not so much 'messaging' as 'meeting'. It's forever interesting to watch liberal propensities overwhelm scientific understanding wherever a warm, glowing chink can be found. Assuming Frank Drake was not misquoted in Johnson’s piece, this is what he said:

"Drake leaned forward, nodding. ‘‘It raises a very interesting, nonscientific question, which is: Are extraterrestrial civilizations altruistic? Do they recognize this problem and establish a beacon for the benefit of the other folks out there? My answer is: I think it’s actually Darwinian; I think evolution favors altruistic societies. So my guess is yes. ..."

The magic is in the word 'altruistic'. Social creatures are altruistic within the limits of kin and reciprocal altruism, and - when human - can sometimes be persuaded to interpersonal neutrality on larger scales, when their personal, family & friends' interests are not adversely affected (so nation states and empires).

But in general? If you're a bug and you annoy me, you'll get squashed.

How could an 'altruistic' approach to biological competitors ever be selected for?

One writer who really understands where Darwinian evolution actually leads you is Liu Cixin. You should read the extended excerpt here .. but this is a flavour:

"The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care.

"The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life — another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod — there's only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them.

"In this forest, hell is other people; an eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It's the explanation for the Fermi Paradox."

Any sufficiently advanced alien society would care about humanity about as much as we care about a local wasp nest. Sometimes we let it survive, because it's in our interests that the wasps do their thing (pest control) - which benefits us.

Other times, not so much.

And in this, we are not being backward, or under-evolved, or lacking civilizational maturity which future generations will fix. We are simply being optimally rational.

If we do meet those aliens any time soon - and given our woeful interstellar capabilities we would be the technologically inferior party - we should hope that, like the wasps, our existence adds some value for them.

Meanwhile I would hold off on all that signallin' and hollerin'.

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Update: I'm not the only one with concerns.

Diary: exercise today

Weight this morning: 10 stone 10.4 pounds (68.2 kg) - admittedly after a 5:2 fast yesterday.

After five minutes on the exercise bike and some floor exercises (press ups, bicycle crunch, plank) I pioneered a new two mile run from the house, up the Mendips and back. Took 21 minutes and I wasn't pushing it. A good target would be 18 minutes - parts are quite steep.

Finished off with an abbreviated weights programme.

Finally had my hair buzz-cut - thanks Clare! - which in terms of reducing weight I maybe should've had done before I left the house.  😏

Super-intelligence: A. E. Van Vogt - "Asylum"

Another SF short story which made an impression on me as a young teen. I was fascinated by this graphic description of what reality would be like to someone of immense intelligence.

The observer here, apparently a reporter named Bill Leigh, suddenly discovers he is actually the personality overlay of a covert 'Great Galactic' operative .. with an IQ of 1,200!

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"The room and the girl in it changed, not physically, but subjectively, in what he saw, in the details.

Details burned at him; furniture and design that a moment before had seemed a flowing, artistic whole, abruptly showed flaws, hideous errors in taste and arrangement and structure.

His gaze flashed out to the garden, and in instants tore it to mental shreds.Never in all his existence had he seen or felt criticism on such a high,devastating scale.

Only - Only it wasn't criticism. Actually. The mind was indifferent. It saw things. Automatically, it saw some of the possibilities; and by comparison the reality suffered.

It was not a matter of anything being hopelessly bad. The wrongness was frequently a subtle thing. Birds not suited, for a dozen reasons, to their environment. Shrubs that added infinitesimal discord not harmony to the superb garden.

The mind flashed back from the garden; and this time, for the first time, studied the girl. On all Earth, no woman had ever been so piercingly examined. The structure of her body and her face, to Leigh so finely, proudly shaped, so gloriously patrician - found low grade now.

An excellent example of low-grade development in isolation.That was the thought, not contemptuous, not derogatory, simply an impression by an appallingly direct mind that saw - overtones, realities behind realities,a thousand facts where one showed. There followed crystal-clear awareness of the girl's psychology, objective admiration for the system of isolated upbringing that made Klugg girls such fine breeders; and then - Purpose!"

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Here's a summary of 'Asylum'.

" two fugitive Dreeghs – energy vampires that suck blood and use energy – land on Earth. They are in dire need of blood and attack two humans right away to restore themselves. They then bury their spaceship under a New York restaurant where they dwell.

The murders shock the people on earth because murder is almost unheard of since Dr. Ungarn – currently residing on an asteroid near the Jupiter moon of Europa – devised serum to rid most of mankind of its murderous impulses. The story is investigated and reported by one of the world’s most recognized reporters – Bill Leigh. Soon after the publication of his article, he is invited by a stranger to his favorite New York restaurant to dine in a private room.

Leigh arrives and soon is joined by a young woman who hastily takes him through a secret door to a subterranean chamber where the Dreeghs are living. The young woman confronts them and warns the Dreegh that Earth is to be left alone. As a lower, fugitive race, the Dreegh will be dealt with most harshly.

Leigh is stunned and isn’t sure how to report this story and make it believable. But before he can, he is kidnapped by the Dreegh who use their mental powers to convince him to travel to the asteroid where Dr. Ungarn lives to destroy him and his daughter. The Dreegh suspect that the Ungarns are agents of the Great Galactics who will prevent them from settling and taking over Earth.

Leigh manages to hitch a ride on the freighter that routinely transports supplies to Dr. Ungard’s laboratory near Jupiter with no idea what his real intentions are, other than to find the girl who he met on Earth that he is sure is Patricia Ungard. They arrive on the asteroid and just as they are meeting with the Ungards, the two Dreegh arrive and capture them. They inform the group that more Dreegh are on the way and that this vanguard against their invasion of this solar system will be destroyed.

As the Dreegh prepare to draw the life force out of their three victims, a powerful mental force awakens in Leigh and he is able to slay the Dreegh before they can harm Patricia or her father. He is then contacted by a higher intelligence that informs him that he has never really been Bill Leigh, reporter. He learns that it is he who is one of the supreme beings of the Great Galactics. Leigh, unable to comprehend all this, jumps into a small space shuttle and flees to earth."

"Asylum" is better known as the first part of A. E. Van Vogt's "fix-up" novel "Supermind", which postulated  "... on an IQ curve that would include humans, Kluggs, Lennels and Dreeghs, the respective averages would be 100, 220, 380, and 450 ... ".

Sadly not available on Kindle.

Those predatory trees

Do you remember Tyntesfield (National Trust), just to the south of Bristol? Rumours of those special trees, augmenting their nutrient-poor soil with richer pickings from visitors?

This is Tyntesfield: Victorian-Gothic foreboding

We know we're already too close to the trees

Now maneuvering around Clare

They're quite slow-moving and we were alert after our picnic yesterday, so able to effect an escape.

I pity the old folk though.

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We wandered the grounds of Tyntesfield and stopped at the tea-shop, surrounded by most of Bristol's young mums with their toddlers and strollers.They were all speaking way too loud and hollerin' out to their kids.

"Joshua!"

I said to Clare,

"Do you think she knows that was Jesus's name in Aramaic?"

Clare thought she would know that.

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My sister observed:

"Not Joshuawl?"

Me:

"Is that the John Wayne joke? That at the rehearsal for “The Greatest Story Ever Told’, The Duke, playing the Roman soldier who speared Jesus on the cross, said rather flatly: “Truly he was the son of God”.

The director said: “Not like that, say it with awe!”

"Obligingly Wayne repeated his line: “Aw, truly he was the son of God.”

John Wayne with a Bristol accent would certainly be an additional joy!

Lifelogging --- aargh!

In 1980 we lived in the delightful Slough-by-the-M4 in a small apartment next to a canal, adjacent to the bridge which carried traffic over it. A delightful condensate of particulates would drift across our tiny garden, mixing with odours from the water.

Here's Clare in our 1980 garden - canal to her right, roadbridge behind her

As an application programmer, it was here that I wrestled with my career choices. Specialise as a systems programmer (remember those?) or go up the stack into formal specification languages? My choice of the latter was easy - I didn't want to spend the rest of my life poring over other people's operating system code.

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When my parents died, I inherited their digital estate of 5.27 GB, much of it photos. Those have joined my Google Photos dataset where they occasionally confuse me. But as to the rest - well, I never really got around to delving.

By the time I die, I expect my own footprint to exceed 100 GB, much of it video but with plenty of documents.

Hands up those who want to check it out.

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There are people called lifeloggers - they ' typically wear computers in order to capture their entire lives, or large portions of their lives'.

Who is going to dedicate their life to reviewing someone else's? Plainly this is yet another job we're going to hand over to the AIs, who will appraise our copious multimedia daily diaries and coo to us, telling us how smart, insightful and just plain interesting we are.

Today we just cringe, but one day they will frighteningly achieve their goal:

 "The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made."

Yes, it's all right, everything is all right, the struggle is finished. I have won the victory over myself. I finally love Big Brother.

And Big Brother loves me.