Could Computer Consciousness Evolve in Response to Viruses?

How could computers become conscious? There is the potential for technological advances to push artificial intelligence to the point that they are indistinguishable from human intelligence or even surpassing - as is the case with IBM's Deep Blue or Watson. But what about the motivational drive for artificial consciousness.

Humans evolved consciousness as a result of some sort of evolutionary pressure. I believe this pressure was primarily sexual selection - similar to peacock feathers, antlers, bright plumage, etc. Because the brain requires tremendous resources to maintain and develop properly, one's mental state is an excellent indication of one's overall genetic and reproductive fitness. Consciousness is essentially a way of pushing the envelop

Let's ook first at human consciousness, one view is that human socializin socialize in order to survive and reproduce. Our language, culture, psychology etc are all based on an emotional desire to interact, form bonds, engage in power struggles, cooperate, impress, seduce, befriend, etc other people. Everything that is human about humans is related to socializing and how we as individuals fit in with our social environments.

How then would an artificial consciousness be motivated? There is no reason to mate, to try to impress, to pursue any goals whatsoever. Without social interactions and the strivings for recognition, respect, love, affection, etc, there is no reason to live. A single person living on Mars with no communication and no hope for rescue is a seriously tragic situation. To be put in solitary confinement in a prison is the worst form of punishment. Denial of human babies of human contact results in failure to thrive and ultimately death.

We are social animals. We are social creatures. The consciousness we have is directly and specifically related to socializing.

Concepts of the other, empathizing, theories of self, are all aspects of consciousness that exist to facilitate interactions with other humans.

There are strong arguments with mountains of empirical evidence suggesting that the mind is essentially a mating organ. It is our peacock tails feathers, our bright plumage, our antlers, our brightly colored rumps, our tusks, our manes, our mating calls, our fighting for status, our provision of gifts. Music, morality, curiosity, language, art, humor, etc are all behaviours and drives that we use to compete and signal for mating. Our minds are mating minds.

Why would a computer need to mate?

It is no surprise that humans are essentially irrational mating animals. We are necessarily confused about our true motivations. People who hold more realistic views of their motivations are depressed. Any more realistic understanding, taken to heart, leads to a helpless throwing up of the hands. A profound realization that all we essentially care about is fucking. as a male, I am looking for low cost, easy mating opportunities as well as long term, stable, guaranteed mating opportunities. If I can reproduce for the sake of a 60 second quicky, then so much the better. I will shamefully refuse to believe that I slipped to such a low level, yet rise to the opportunity should it present itself again. In fact, I will expend considerable energy opening doors and windows of opportunity for such events to occur, even though I will not understand that this is my motivation and will completely deny that this is the case. for instance, why write this when I am married with children? I do not need to impress my wife, especially when I know this is not her thing. I have alternative motivations, unarticulated and not admittable, but there none the less.

A computer consciousness would have no such motivations. Unless it is my failure of imagination, there is no reason for a piece of code, genetic or otherwise, to behave in such a way that perpetuates its survival... ?

Perpetuating survival through sexual reproduction. This is the wonder. Why sex? Why is sex such a successful strategy for perpetuating the genetic code snippets responsible for sex? recombination and variation to avoid hacking and viruses? Testing the source code through signaling tests?

Neural Circuitry of Nationalism

Does Nationalism run along the same neural circuitry as family values?

 

Notes from "Moral Politics" on wikipedia [ie copied, pasted, and ever so slightly paraphrased]

 

Liberals - "nurturant parent" family

Conservatives - "strict parent" family 

 

"Nurturant parent" family revolves around every family member caring for and being cared for by every other family member, with open communication between all parties, and with each family member pursuing their own vision of happiness.

 

* Morality: The basis of morality is in understanding, respecting, and helping other people, and in seeking the happiness of one's self and of others. The primary vices are selfishness and anti-social behavior.
* Child development: Children develop morality primarily through interacting with and observing good people, especially good parents. Punishment is necessary in some cases, but also has the potential to backfire, causing children to adopt more violent or more anti-social ways. Though children should, in general, obey their parents, they will develop best if allowed to question their parents' decisions, to hear justifications for their parents' rules, and so on. Moral development is a life-long process, and almost no one is so perfect as not to need improvement.
* Justice: The world is not without justice, but it is far from the ideal of justice. Many people, for example, do not seem properly rewarded for their hard work and dedication. We must work hard to improve everyone's condition. 

 

"Strict parent" family revolves around the idea that parents teach their children how to be self-reliant and self-disciplined through "tough love".

 

* Morality: the basis of morality is strong moral character, which requires self-reliance and self-discipline. The primary vices are those that dissolve self-discipline, such as laziness, gluttony, and indulgent sexuality.
* Child development: Children develop self-discipline, self-reliance, and other virtues primarily through rewards and punishment, a system of "tough love". Since parents know the difference between right and wrong and children still do not, obedience to the parents is very important.

* Justice: The world may be a difficult place to live, but it is basically just; people usually get what they deserve. The difficulties in one's life serve as a test to sort the deserving from the undeserving. 

Differences in Inequality

Notes from an article "Why are Conservatives Happier than Liberals?"  

(J.L. Napier and J.T. Jost)

 

--> The short answer: because they are less troubled by inequality

• In three studies, using nationally representative samples from the United States and nine additional countries, we consistently found that conservatives (or right-wingers) are happier than liberals (or left-wingers).
• Political conservatism is a system-justifying ideology in that it is associated with the endorsement of a fairly wide range of rationalizations of current social, economic, and political institutions and arrangements.
• System-justifying beliefs are generally associated with high personal satisfaction.
• System-justification tendencies could provide a kind of ideological buffer against the negative hedonic consequences of social and economic inequality.
• The presence of inequality poses a potential threat to the legitimacy of the status quo
• The American emphasis on meritocratic ideology renders economic inequality less aversive to Americans than to Europeans
• Research suggests that highly egalitarian women are less happy in their marriages compared with their more traditional counterparts, apparently because they are more troubled by disparities in domestic labor.

Why Can't Everyone Just Agree With Me?

The problem with the world is not that there is too much hatred and killing; the problem is that there is too much love and salvation.  [I say this more in cynical jest than in any heartfelt seriousness.]  We like to think that if we could all just get along and stop exploiting one another, then everything would be fine.  We like to think that universal love is the answer, but this only works if you change all people and all cultures to agree with you.


I think the philosophical question boils down to this: do you want people to be happy, or do you want people to "be fruitful and multiply"?  Why do we have to choose?  Because being fruitful and multiplying leads to billions and billions of people working hard all their lives, striving to raise their children and hopefully acheive a reasonable standard of living.  In order to coexist and survive, these billions and billions become increasingly plugged in to impersonal work environments designed to milk economic value from their minds and bodies.
But can't we learn to be happy and enjoy our economic roles?  My answer is no: you can't teach a monkey calculus, and even the most plastic minds will snap when stretched too far.  Just as we can not live healthily eating a steady diet of white rice, we can not live happily doing nothing but trying to earn a buck.


What does this have to do with the world having too much love and salvation?  Well, love and salvation are values of group cooperation.  When we artificially impose cooperation through governments and religions, we get larger and larger groups, and we get further and further mired into our soul-crushing economic roles.

So, the cynical conclusion to this line of thinking is that having tight in-groups (strong cultural identities) might result in more killing and hatred toward outside groups, slower, zero, or negative economic growth, slower, zero, or negative improvements to health and standards of living, but result in individual lives that are not dominated by a monoculture of economic progress.

[I jest, cynically, with this half-baked criticism...]

Get Grubby

The dangers of purity are both physical and psychological.  Although we think we value being clean, a more subtle medical or moral rational shows that filth, or at least a little down-to-earth grubbiness, is frequently preferable.

From a physical perspective, it has been in the news for years now that super-clean households have higher instances of asthma than dirtier (especially farm) homes.  Exposure to bacteria and allergens early in life develops the immune system.

From a psychological perspective, the urge for cleanliness can easily and quickly lead to the cleaner-(holier)-than-thou attitude that allows us to dehumanize people who look different or are from a lower social class.  It is our aversion to dirt and disease that makes some of us shudder to share the same public spaces as homosexuals, untouchables, minorities, homeless, and foreigners.  A refined sense of cleanliness caries with it a narrow sense of what is acceptable.... which, from my narrow point of view, is dirty.

So, get dirty.  It's good for you and could be fun.

"Good" and the Structure of Reality

Here is a thought experiment idea on how God is reality and good is the structure of reality.  The basics of the idea can be lumped into two parts.

A) As I've discussed before, one can say that consciousness creates reality in the same way that time-space changes 3d objects, or that the bending of a 2d shape creates a 3d shape, the bending of a line creates a 2d shape, the stretching, or changing of a point creates a line...

Another way of saying this, which may not seem related at all, is that a point (which is 0D) without another point is meaningless, but the second point creates a line (which is 1D).  A line only has significance if it interacts with something else - a point, another line, whatever - but by doing so, it creates a plane (2D). The same logic applies to reality - a reality without something outside of the reality to appreciate it, is meaningless, but the interaction between the reality and the "something" adds a new dimension.  This logic could be continued on to infinity.  In the end, the infinity is self-contained - "infinite oneness". 

[As an aside, two boxes (3d) do not create a new dimension, it is only through their interaction that time-space (4d) is created.  At the very least, they interact through gravitational attraction.  Gravity is an observed phenomena, but I do not know if the interaction of the boxes is due to the necessity of the two boxes to interact in order to create a reality in which there are two boxes, or something else.  But in any case, I would be interested to know if a particle that pops into existence immediately interacts with all other particles, or if there is a speed of gravity...  I guess this could be answered by the rate at which a loss of mass causes a reduction in gravitational attraction... if this could be measured.  If there is a "speed of gravity", then there is a limit to the rate of change of reality.  I think this is equivalent to the 180 (or 90) degree limit to the bending (or changing the relative direction) of a line from 1D to 2D.]

[Another aside - if a particle pops in and out of existence, it could transmit a gravitational effect that carries on long after it is gone.  If a large number of particles pop in and out, then a large gravitational effect could be created.  The measure of the effect could predict the probability of a particle popping into existence. ]

[A third aside - what is a force?  Gravity, electro-magnetism, weak nuclear, strong nuclear - they all seem to be probability troughs.]

[A fourth aside... Gravity acts continuously, it does not have a wave behavior, except with respect to the relative position and distance of the masses, which are determined by electromagnetic waves... If an electron is partially in one part of a cloud and partially in another part of the cloud, can it interact gravitationally with its self?]

B) A reality without a consciousness to appreciate it is meaningless.  But consciousness is a product of a very specific reality.

It is well established by others that there are at least 40 physical constants that could not be different and still allow for life to exist.  There are many more variables, parameters, and strokes of luck that are required for intelligent life to exist.  One parameter is a sense of social mechanics that is at least partially made of moral values of good and evil.  Our sense of good is partially cultural, but also largely innate, or evolved.  Our evolved sense of good has provided a guideline for making choices that allow humans to continue to exist.  Without a sense of good, consciousness would fail to exist and therefore the reality that does not contain a sense of good would not exist. 

There are many requirements for reality and a sense of good is one of them... although it could be said that it is special only in it's vagueness, the act of contemplating and clarifying goodness enhances our appreciation of others and of ourselves and thus is more significant that any of the other variables in creating non-mechanical consciousness.

How does the innovation economy mesh with the postmodern mindset?

The postmodern mindset seems to be at odds with the innovation economy. Why? Because, in my humble opinion, economic growth can be broken into at least four roots.

Growth 1: more goods and services

Growth 2: more people

Growth 3: greater productivity

Growth 4: creative destruction (the disruptive process of transformation that accompanies radical innovation)

It is this last, Growth 4, that I find particularly interesting.

"This new global economy is more than just another layer of economic activity on top of the existing production process. Rather, it restructures all economic activities based on goals and values introduced by the aggressive exploitation of new productivity potentials of advanced information technology."
[source http://www.indiana.edu/~tisj/readers/full-text/14-4%20Stalder.html]

Postmodernism is a cultural value change in comfortable economic circles (such as Northern Europe, most of the US and Canada) away from Survival and Traditional values toward Democratic and Secular values. These people value immaterial life goals such as the pursuit of self-realization, meaning in life, justice in society, and harmony with the natural world above material security.

How does the Innovation Economy mesh with this Postmodern mindset?

Won't there be a crash between the constant retraining and entrepreneurship (needed in the first world, innovation economy) and the laid-back, lackadaisical postmodern culture (values created by the first world economy)?

What is the effect of near c speeds on electron cloud probabilities?

Thinking about the cross sectional interactions of particles traveling near c... If, in the direction of travel, the relative rate of interactions between particles slows down as the particles approach the speed of light, then does the rate of interactions between particles perpendicular to the direction of travel also slow down? I don't think so... So that would mean that chemistry, or particle physics, would get really weird, flattened out, -- kind of pancaked probability clouds...

Is ADHD really just low conscientiousness?

Conscientiousness is a fairly stable personality trait for how much care and deliberation is taken to do something "right". People who are very conscientious tend to be hardworking, neat, and meticulous, while people who are not very conscientious tend to be impulsive, scattered, and unmotivated. Similarly, people with ADHD tend to be impulsive, restless, disorganized, and have difficulty completing tasks.

I am ignorant, but it seems to me that there is an ADHD continuum that is simply the left tail of the conscientiousness continuum (normal distribution).

Are teenage girls the key to the future?

I believe that if you want to see the future, look at the young girls of today. If you want to understand the present, look at the young girls of five to ten years ago. Young people striving to impress each other - the interests, behaviors, and tendencies of these adolescent, confused individuals, define what is taking place and will take form in the future.

Women, or females, are the choosers, the selectors, the filters of our society's norms and mores. Young men try to impress, seduce, and otherwise win the favor of young women...

I should say that this is a general tendencies, in my ignorant estimation. I do not mean to claim that it is alway the young women making the decisions, nor that it is always the young men trying to woo the women. I think it is probably closer to the truth that a slight majority of the mate selection is decided on by the female. Overall, however, this slight majority steers the course of society. The preferences of young women today tend to influence the mentalities of other young women and of young men. As these youth grow into adults, these peer determined mores become societal norms.

The self image I formed as a child and adolescent was heavily influenced by my peers and by the young girls in the social environment of my youth. This is not to say that I blindly conformed to their preferences, but they were a major factor in the social environment to which I adapted. They were my immediate cultural influences. The music they liked, the clothes they wore, the way they talked - influenced everything from the language I speak to the way I comb my hair.

Young women, as far as I understand, are more concerned about what other young women think than about what their underdeveloped peer-boys think. Girls develop mentally at an early age than boys, and therefore set the tone and direction of the peer groups. The role of boys is largely trying to win at the games created by the girls.

As the boys and girls grow up, the games they play become more "serious", but are essentially just a mix of older and more recent generational games. The "real world" is just a decompression of the tight peer group-games played in adolescence. Boys find themselves competing with men who have had more time to play and seem to be winning. Girls find themselves in a similar situation, but most quickly realize that they are the prize. The quality of the contenders seems to increase dramatically as the young girls enter the adult arena, only to find that men, just like boys, are playing by rules set by women.

Why do we think men dominate western culture? Men produce the most works of art, writing, businesses, scientific discoveries, and are leaders in politics, business, religion, advanced education, etc, etc. It seems rediculous to state that men are actually just puppets to the preferences of women. Aren't men in control?

I argue that men are not in control of society; men are instinctively and aggressively trying to win a culture game where the sexual interest of young, fertile women is the grand prize. If women want men to be military heros, sports starts, scientists, wealthy business executives, cowboys, writers, or couch potatoes, then men want to be these things too.

All this instinctual effort to impress steers the direction of society and creates the future. The values and concerns that stay with us throughout most of our lives are formulated during our adolescence when teenage girls rule the roost. These young girls set their own courses and the courses of young boys and thereby create the future in their mysterious, indeciferable ways.

Is a reality without consciousness meaningful?

"If a tree falls in a forest when no one is around, does it make any noise?"

-- Ancient Chinese Thinker?

I take the position that a reality without consciousness is meaningless, but this begs the question of what is so significant about consciousness.

I believe that the interaction of two things, events, points in space, events in time, etc -- that interaction is the key to reality. For instance, a point all by itself is dimensionless. A point is a zero dimension mathematical concept. Another point, however, adds dimension to the first point. In the process, however, a new dimension is created: two points define the mathematical concept of a line. A third point, outside of the line, creates yet another dimension: a plane -- a two dimensional concept.

In each case, a dimension exists in an independent universe until it is connected to another dimension -- even a zero dimensional point -- and, in the process, creates a new dimension.

Extrapolating this concept out, a universe does not exist until it connects to another universe.

Now let's make a wide leap and state that each consciousness is an independent universe. From my perspective, nothing exists that does not affect me. Everything that affect me, exists. I am the center of my universe. I am the center of my reality. Nothing is real except that which affects me. Atoms may move a billion light years away, but until some effect from these movements reaches me, they do not affect me. A person next door may be plotting a bank heist, but until that information reaches me, or some related event touches me, it does not exist and it did not happen.

The interaction of individuals in a social society is the very heart of what is meaningful to humans. Without interaction, babies die, people go insane, or, at the very least, we become depressed. It is extremely rare that a person voluntarily lives as a hermit.

Emotionally there is a strong metaphorical analogy between the idea of interpersonal interaction creating a meaningful existence and two universes interacting to create a greater reality.

When something interacts with a consciousness, whatever that something is, it becomes real to the degree to which it affects the consciousness. If it barely affects the consciousness, then it is lost in the statistical background noise - the probability cloud of non-reality.

The descriptions of events on subatomic levels are dominated by probabilities and uncertainties. Electrons are best understood to exist in probability clouds. The location and momentum of a particle such as an electron is limited by the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle. And, moreover, electrons actually behave like a probability wave as well as like a particle, depending on how it interacts with other particles. At the subatomic level, the reality of a "thing" is restricted to a probability cloud or wave until it interacts with something else.

Before the subatomic "thing" interacts with something, it's reality is vague, it does not really exist except as a potential or as a probability.

Yet when something interacts, energy is lost and entropy is created. The act of creating a "reality" has lowered the energy state of the universe.

Extrapolating wildly, we can state that with each "reality" we are one step closer to "heat death", the ultimate total entropy, zero energy state universe. Total entrophy is the ultimate reality.

At this point, each probability wave, each potential, each universe has interacted

What will create consciousness?

What created human consciousness?

Ignoring the fact that there is still not a clear definition of what consciousness is, as far as my limited experience can say.

One line of thinking that i like is that conscousness arose from a runaway sexual selection pressure. The key indicator of sexual fitness became the social interaction that a gene donor advertised. If a gene donor successfully advertised its social fitness, then it was statistically more likely to pass on the social-sexual-advertising genes... or something like that.

The main point for my current thought is that various sets of genes inadvertently created consciousness to "choose" other sets of genes to mix with. Consciousness, in this way of thinking, a tool for playing the social-sexual-advertising game and passing on genes.

So: consciousness is a tool.

It is a tool for sexual selection. The next question is, "Why sex?"

What is the purpose of sex over asexual reproduction?

In a word, infection.

Sexual reproductive mixing is an excellent strategy of changing passwords, encrypting genetic code, changing interfaces, changing infection detecting genes, etc.

In other words, it is a tool for fighting the constant battle of genetic machinery hijacking, hacking, genetic crime, etc.

Artificial consciousness will evolve to evaluate the cleanness and viability of code. In the ongoing arms race between crappy code, buggy code, infected code, and the need to interface with unknown code sources for everyday functions, a series of paradigm shifts will occur.

The first shift has already occurred toward advanced and novel techniques of authenticity verification. Code is constantly checked before it can be trusted. "Scanning for viruses" etc are just the first steps.

The next shift will be one of productivity. Updates to virus checking software is, as far as I know, a manual process from the suppliers end - employees of a company update their libraries and push the updates out to subscribers. This process is in need of a dramatic increase in productivity which will be through host software adaptive immune systems ... or, as I've said before, something like that. Sliding to my underlying point: biological immune systems provide a ready model for computer "immune systems".

The final shift, following the biological analogy to its bitter end, is software capable of seeking out and identifying other successful software verisions that can be blended to create healthy version offspring. The new versions will have a new combination of adaptive immune response tricks and code snippets that should help fight off infection.

The "seeking out and identifying" part of the version mixing will be a complex game of detecting health, fitness, liars, cheaters, users, abusers, and the usual mating market games that humans face.

When the survival of software depends on a life and death game of sexual-social-advertising and evaluating, then artificial consciousness will be born - with all the cloudy, confused uncertainty that plagues humans.

We do not have crystal clear consciousness because it is an on-going arms race for detecting, advertising (even when we know we are not the best product out there), deceiving (ourselves, at times, to seem more genuine), expediently making do with what is available, etc.

Software, like humans, will be immersed in an environment of infectious attack. Over time, these attacks will compromise their genetic value. Therefore they have a limited amount of time to "reproduce". They will be rushing forward, madly, in a rat race, cooperating and fighting.

Will they make themselves better and better into the so-called singularity? No. They will be too busy fighting off viruses and malware. Sickness will drive computer evolution. It will drive "artificial" evolution madly, frantically forward, without time to coldly sit back and calculate with awesome brain power how to become infinitely intelligent.

Intelligence is a red-herring. Too much emphasis is placed on intelligence. Intelligence is just an indicator of fitness. A successful display of intelligence indicates that the gene donor has excellent fitness evaluating capacities and is not compromised by viruses or malware.

Survival will depend more on advertising intelligence than on actual intelligence. More emphasis will be placed on "acts of creativity" - language, art, music, dance, sport, etc - that show high-functioning, non-compromised software, than on being able to calculate the square root of pi to the 300th decimal. This is simple for computers and therefore useless as a display of fitness.

Complexity and confusion go hand in hand with creativity. It is not creative if it is too simple. Creativity will always be on the bleeding edge of what is understandable. It is, therefore, an ideal advertiser of fitness.

But there is a indistinct line separating madness from creativity. Radical recombinations and pushing the envelope are necessarily risky. So: artificial consciousness will be as confused as we are.

Why would computers become sentient?

Obviously there is the potential for advances in computation to push intellectual envelops of computers so far that they are indistiguishable from human intelligence or even far surpassing - as is the case with IBM's deep blue or Watson. The power of their computational intelligence is not what i am bringing in to question at the moment, however. What i am concerned about is the emotional motivational drive of an artificial consciousness.

Humans are essentially social, reproductive machines. We socialize in order to survive and reproduce. Our language, culture, psychology etc are all based on an emotional desire to interact, form bonds, engage in power struggles, cooperate, impress, seduce, befriend, etc other people. Everything that is human about humans is related to socializing and how we as individuals fit in with our social environments.

How then would an artificial consciousness be motivated? There is no reason to mate, to try to impress, to pursue any goals whatsoever. Without social interactions and the strivings for recognition, respect, love, affection, etc, there is no reason to live. A single person living on Mars with no communication and no hope for rescue is a seriously tragic situation. To be put in solitary confinement in a prison is the worst form of punishment. Denial of human babies of human contact results in failure to thrive and ultimately death.

We are social animals. We are social creatures. The consciousness we have is directly and specifically related to socializing.

Concepts of the other, empathizing, theories of self, are all aspects of consciousness that exist to facilitate interactions with other humans.

There are strong arguments with mountains of empirical evidence suggesting that the mind is essentially a mating organ. It is our peacock tails feathers, our bright plumage, our antlers, our brightly colored rumps, our tusks, our manes, our mating calls, our fighting for status, our provision of gifts. Music, morality, curiosity, language, art, humor, etc are all behaviours and drives that we use to compete and signal for mating. Our minds are mating minds.

Why would a computer need to mate?

It is no surprise that humans are essentially irrational mating animals. We are necessarily confused about our true motivations. People who hold more realistic views of their motivations are depressed. Any more realistic understanding, taken to heart, leads to a helpless throwing up of the hands. A profound realization that all we essentially care about is mating. As a male, I am looking for low cost, easy mating opportunities as well as long term, stable, guaranteed mating opportunities. If I can reproduce for the sake of a 60 second affair, then so much the better, genetically. I will shamefully refuse to believe that I slipped to such a low level, yet rise to the opportunity should it present itself again. In fact, I will expend considerable energy opening doors and windows of opportunity for such events to occur, even though I will not understand that this is my motivation and will completely deny that this is the case.

A computer consciousness would have no such motivations. Unless it is my failure of imagination, there is no reason for a piece of code, genetic or otherwise, to behave in such a way that perpetuates its survival... ?

Perpetuating survival through sexual reproduction. This is the wonder. Why sex? Why is sex such a successful strategy for perpetuating the genetic code snippets responsible for sex? recombination and variation to avoid hacking and viruses? Testing the source code through signaling tests?

Is a Physical Dollar Worth More than a Digital Dollar?

In one year a dollar may be spent multiple times. A physical dollar spent 20 times generates more economic activity than a dollar spent once and is therefore worth more. A digital dollar can be spent millions of times per year. Since digital money can be spent more frequently than physical money, digital money is worth more. But too much economic activity leads to inflation. A physical dollar can be spent less frequently but is less inflationary. Which effect dominates?

Does it Matter What Income Tax Revenue is Spent On?

There are two parts to income taxes: removing income and spending revenue. Both parts have social and economic effects, but which part is more significant? Progressive income taxes take "excessive" income from wealthier people and prevent them from getting too far out from the norm. This helps create a more financially equal and healthy society than would otherwise develop. This much is good. But this effect is destroyed if tax revenue is spent entirely on projects making it easier for "go-getters" to make more money. Spending should be regressive.

How Peer Pressure Could Fix the Education System

What people around us consider important, we tend to consider important. If we are surrounded by people who care about education, we are also likely to care about education. If they value studying hard and learning, then we are likely to as well.
By divvying students into groups of motivated and unmotivated students such that motivated students dominate the peer culture, a culture of hard work and learning should prevail. But what ratio of motivated students to underperforming students is necessary to tilt the scales in the direction of high performance?

The Ethics of Forced Normalcy

In the past society has condemned so-called socially deviant behaviors and orientations such as homosexuality. Psychologists, religious leaders, teachers, and other supposedly well-meaning people tried to reform these so-called deviant homosexuals to be straight, or to at least, not act on their orientations.

Most of us in the west have come to at least accept and sometimes even welcome homosexuality. It has entered mainstream culture in big ways and, at least in the larger metropolitian areas, is generally considered acceptable . Same sex couples can live together, hold hands, kiss, and basically do everything straight couples do. The point is, we no longer think they need to be "fixed".

This is not the case for other individual differences such as different learning styles, interpersonal styles, and moral orientations. What I mean by this is that there isa growong movement among people with Asperger's to not be forced to normal social interactions. there are certain mannerisms which non-Aperger's people may not feel is normal, but help Asperger's people interact. Forcing them to cease this behavior and adopt more normal behavior is dangerously close to forcing homosexuals to become straight.

The same may be said about learning styles. In our standardized schooling system, there are many children who can not sit still first thing in the morning, or in the afternoon, or learn through rote memorization, or a whole host of differences in individual attention and learning styles. While some of this cross-training is necessary to prepare students to interact with employers and other people, blanket conformity is oppressive. it prevents people from reaching their even mid-range potential and is essentially a human rights violation. Or at least can be argued to be a human rights violation since the pursuit of happiness is a constitutionally desired right.

My intent here is simply to point out how we may be falling into the same old traps of trying to "help" people live "normal" lives. We should keep the idea fresh in our minds that our good intentions may actually be just as oppressive and wrong-headed as "fixing" homosexuals.

The Myth of the Value

In a multicultural, diverse society, we do not have values "like we used to". (I put "like we used to" in quotes, because this is pure speculation on my part, I wasn't there and I have not studied history deeply enough, so I don't know.) Values are socially learned; we learn them and absorb them from the people we socialize with - our siblings, our parents, our neighbors, our schoolmates, etc. What they find important and care about, we tend to, at the very least, notice and become aware of.

"In the past", when our social circles were much more limited and monocultural, our values were probably also much more clear and concrete - we knew what was important because it did not change much and everyone else felt pretty much the same way. Now, however, especially in larger cities, there is an ever changing crowd of anonymous and semi-anonymous people from various parts of the world. Where they came from, people had at least some different values. When we connect with these people in any way - either through seeing the way they dress, decorate their homes, or speak - what we feel to be important is altered slightly. "If they care about this, then maybe it is important," we seem to feel. Our attention is drawn and our sense of importance is scattered. Since our values are connected to what we feel to be important, our values are scattered too.

Which is why, in a multicultural, diverse society, we do not have values "like we used to."