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Playing Politics Can Be Fun until It Unleashes Hell – Article by Joey Clark

Playing Politics Can Be Fun until It Unleashes Hell – Article by Joey Clark

The New Renaissance HatJoey Clark
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Most politicians and their followers are not cynical enough about politics. They hate the players but not the game. Unlike me, they are cynical sentimentalists, i.e. they idealize politics yet are cynical towards any suggestion human beings should be set free from political control.

Though it may smack of paradox, I consider myself a hopeful cynic – hopeful in man’s spirit but not his politics. Accordingly, my political cynicism flows from my disappointed sentimentality.

Most politicians are not cynical enough about politics. They hate the players but not the game. As Oscar Wilde wrote in Lady Windermere’s Fan, a cynic is “a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing” and a sentimentalist “is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.” Together the two bring harmony.

Torn apart, they are blind in their own unique way, and in this way, the 2016 political season has rendered much of the American populace sightless. Some wish to present this presidential election as a clear-cut contest between cynical pachyderms and sentimental jackasses, but the truth, to steal another line from Wilde, is rarely so pure and never so simple.

As much as they will deny it, political factions are motivated by a mix of cynicism and sentimentality, sometimes within the very same individuals.

Even the most sentimental nincompoops – those who shed tears or fall into fits of hosannas upon hearing the most platitudinous political speech – turn cynical and stone-faced when confronted by their political opponents.

Even the most cynical demagogues – those who spit piss and vinegar in response to the most innocuous statements from their enemies – turn sentimental and misty-eyed in the presence of a president they love.

It seems one politico’s hopes are another politico’s fears. They appraise their enemy’s price as too high yet see absurd value in their champions.

The Donald’s Sentimentality

For example, even Donald Trump is not cynical enough about politics. Trump may very well be cynical and downright churlish towards, well, almost anyone (even babies) on any given day, but he is certainly a believer in the need for strong government leadership. Trump has, indeed, boosted his popularity by stoking the flames of resentment, but the essence of this resentment is the betrayed sentimentality of “the people.”

Trump and his supporters idealize America just as much as the next group. Holding true to a golden age image of the country, they are disappointed by an ever-changing world that continually shatters their “perfect” picture of the nation. They are cynical of what they see as “un-American,” and they have hitched their hopes to Trump’s politics to save their culture as they see it.

Thus, Trump’s slogan may not be “Burn America Down” as Democrats would have you believe, but he is certainly a flaming nationalist. His program may not be great for many people living in America, but “America” is, indeed, the ultimate standard of good and evil on the Trump train. One cannot be cynical about politics qua politics and a nationalist at the same time. No, nationalism is for the teary-eyed evangelicals and patriotic bomb throwers, Trump being the latter. But how about the former?

Enter Hillary Clinton.

Hillary’s Cynicism

Hillary Clinton, like most progressives, prides herself on her forward-looking and optimistic approach. She and her ilk apparently claim to loathe cynicism. As Senator Cory Booker said at the Democratic National Convention surrounded by a friendly mob of fellow sentimentalists, “Cynicism is a refuge for cowards.” Of course, by “cynicism” Cory, Hillary, and their do-gooder cronies mean anyone who does not wish to consent to their progressive plans to save the world. To hear them speak about peace, love, and community one would think such things were impossible without the imposition of the state.

What makes progressives so sentimental about people using state power yet cynical towards people acting voluntarily, I will never truly know.What makes progressives so sentimental about people using state power yet cynical towards people acting voluntarily, I will never truly know, but I suspect they do not trust the motives of many of their fellow men, especially not Donald Trump. Their assessment of Trump may be correct, but their appraisal of their own sentiments is utterly lacking. Their worship at the altar of state power seems to have turned them blind to the ironies of the “progressive” history and project.

For instance, of all the ways Hillary could take down Trump’s fear-mongering, she chose to say this in her acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention:“Well, a great Democratic President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, came up with the perfect rebuke to Trump more than eighty years ago, during a much more perilous time. ’The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’”

Yes, Hillary, how wise of you to quote a man who brought us Japanese internment camps, turned away Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany, and set the price of gold based on “lucky numbers.” But, I suppose, since FDR is a demigod in the progressive civic religion, his cynicism and quackery can be overlooked, as can the ugly, cynical history of progressive policies such as the minimum wage.

Again, if only Hillary, Donald and their respective acolytes were more cynical about politics qua politics, we would all be better off. But what about the most cynical bunch in American politics today, the alt-right meme team?  How could a group of folks who “pretend” to be Nazis ever be helped by more political cynicism?

And why would one ever want to pretend to be a Nazi anyway?

Pretend Nazis Need Cynicism Too

Enter Charles Bukowski:

“At L.A. City College just before World War II, I posed as a Nazi. I hardly knew Hitler from Hercules and cared less. It was just that sitting in class and hearing all the patriots preach how we should go over and do the beast in, I grew bored. I decided to become the opposition. I didn’t even bother to read up on Adolf, I simply spouted anything that I felt was evil or maniacal.

However, I really didn’t have any political beliefs. It was a way of floating free.”

This is how Bukowski’s short story, “Politics”, begins, and his reasons for his posing as a Nazi – ”boredom” and “floating free” – sound quite similar to those prescribed to the alt-right “meme team” by that frivolous troll, Milo Yiannopoulos, and his colleague, Allum Bokhari, in their crash course on the alt-right:

These young rebels, a subset of the alt-right, aren’t drawn to it because of an intellectual awakening, or because they’re instinctively conservative. Ironically, they’re drawn to the alt-right for the same reason that young Baby Boomers were drawn to the New Left in the 1960s: because it promises fun, transgression, and a challenge to social norms they just don’t understand.

If this parallel continues into the future, things will probably not end well, at least not with mere lulz.

As Bukowski later relays in the story, his Nazi antics earned him disciples, but his acolytes took the whole charade much more seriously than he. After stumbling upon a Communist speaker outside of campus, one of his followers approached him with a bag of rotten tomatoes. Upon being told to put the tomatoes away, his follower said, “I wish they were hand grenades.”

“It occurred to me suddenly that my disciples hadn’t been listening to the speaker, or even if they had been, nothing he had said would matter,” writes Bukowski, “Their minds were made up. Most of the world was like that… I lost control of my disciples that day, and walked away as they started hurling their rotten tomatoes.”

The alt-right don’t want to get rid of the establishment; they want to replace it.I must hand it to the alt-right trolls – they are quite creative and prolific and, at times, hilarious in their cynical pose – but there is a difference between political cynicism and a general cynicism about the culture at large. One must be careful not to let those rotten tomatoes turn into hand grenades. Sadly, the alt-right purveyors of “ironic bigotry” may think they are simply having a little cynical fun, but their actions seem directed only towards the political establishment without rejecting the whole paradigm of political action.

They don’t want to get rid of the establishment; they want to replace it. In particular, if one is to fight, say, the excesses of political correctness for the sake of liberty (a worthy endeavor in my opinion,) the focus should be on neutering the “political” aspects of that equation rather than letting basic human decency fall into the abyss of reactionary nonsense or a babyish nihilism, all the while serving the ends of just another political faction.

Politics Pollutes Culture

Yes, politics may often be downstream from culture as Andrew Breitbart said, but it can also pollute the river of culture if allowed to become too permeating. Once politics comes to define a people, all that is left is an impending battle over whose culture will be imposed through the power of the state. In the face of such a looming war, it is understandable that people often despair only to hurl invective and material threats towards “the others” seen as the source of their angst. In such a world dominated by political power, it is understandable that politicos see anyone who is cynical about their projects as a threat to human solidarity.

But the true root of the problem is not the other nor political cynicism; it is the lust to dominate and control others within each of us. The tyrant in you is the tyrant in me, and if we are not careful, even our so-called reactions against tyranny can mutate into movements to destroy something beautiful for destruction’s sake.

What if we all become hopeful cynics – cynical of man’s lust to dominate his fellows, yet lovers of man all the same? That said, we should recognize even our enemies’ capacity for creative action and fellowship in their darkest hours. If such qualities can provide solace, even in sardonic and sadistic forms, to a select few in their most despairing moments, what can creative action and fellowship provide when we direct our cynical pose toward politics in general instead of just our opponents? What if we all become hopeful cynics – cynical of man’s lust to dominate his fellows, yet lovers of man all the same?

If I am being honest, I do not know what this pose would bring about, but this is exactly why hope is a virtue. Bukowski might disagree; he wrote in his short story, “I promise you, this will hardly be the last war. As soon as one enemy is eliminated somehow another is found. It’s endless and meaningless. There’s no such thing as a good war or a bad war.” Maybe he’s right, and the war of all against all is inevitable, but I hope not. Nor do I wish to save the world. That is much too idealistic. As our dirty old man poet says elsewhere in his novel Women, “You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.”

Maybe, just maybe, each of us can first save ourselves and then others, one by one, with a hope in the uncertain beyond for man’s society if not his politics.

Joey ClarkJoey Clark

Joey Clark is a budding wordsmith and liberty lover. He blogs under the heading “The Libertarian Fool” at joeyclark.liberty.me. Follow him on Facebook.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

To Accept Aging and Death is to Choose Aging and Death – Article by Reason

To Accept Aging and Death is to Choose Aging and Death – Article by Reason

The New Renaissance Hat
Reason
April 1, 2014
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It is in the nature of things for people to become more accepting of the imperfect state of the world and the flawed human condition with advancing age, to lose that youthful indignation and urge to change all that causes suffering and injustice. We can blame a range of things for this, but I suspect that it has a lot to do with the growth in wealth and connections that occurs over the years for most individuals. Whatever your starting level, on average the 50-year-old you will be in a better place than the 20-year-old you. The gains you have amassed merge with nostalgia in a slow erosion of the desire to tear down walls and shake up your neighbors: things are better for you, and isn’t that a good thing? Not everyone is this way, of course, but it is a dynamic to be aware of in your relationship with the world. It is human nature to measure today against yesterday, and feel good about gains that are relatively large but absolutely small.

Acceptance of death and aging is the mindset I am thinking in particular here. The unpleasant ends of life are dim and distant myths when you are young and vigorous in your search for world-changing causes. It is the rare young individual who is willing to devote his or her life in preparation for a time half a century down the road. The older folk who feel the pressures of time and encroaching frailty are those who have become more accepting, however. To fight aging and work on rejuvenation treatments is an intrinsically hard sell in comparison to many other ventures. The youth think they have time to focus on other matters first, and the old have come to terms.

Nonetheless, with rapid progress in biotechnology year after year the number of people needed to get the job done is falling rapidly. Ten million supporters willing to put in a little time or money (rather than just a wave and a good word) and the careers of a few thousand scientists and biotechnicians is probably more than is needed at this point, a level of support that lies in a similar ballpark to that of the cancer or stem-cell research communities. We are not there yet, though support for scientific, medical approaches to the treatment and prevention of aging has grown in a very encouraging fashion over the past decade. At any time in the next year or so you might see mainstream press articles in noted publications favorably mention the SENS Research Foundation, regenerative medicine, Google’s Calico initiative, and progress in genetic science all in the same few paragraphs.

We are here, where we are, precisely because numerous people retained a youthful fire and verve, and indignation and horror of aging and death. Despite the ever-present opposition from a mainstream that once mocked aging research, these iconoclasts put in the work that has raised funds, created organizations, and changed minds: all seeds for tomorrow’s grand rejuvenation research community. This is a work in progress. But let us take a moment to admire some of the fire from those driving things along at the grassroots level:

Those Critical of Indefinite Life Extension Fear Life

Quote:

Accepting death is in fact choosing it. In the face of recent discoveries and progress in science, medicine, technology – it is a matter of choice. Pretending to be fearless in the face of death isn’t some form of heroism. It isn’t reasonable or courageous. It is quite the opposite. It is taking the easy way out. Let’s repeat it – death really is the easy way out. You fall asleep; you get a bullet; cancer kills you; some choose suicide; some accept aging and its effects as an inexorable given. The hard truth here that we should be prepared to acknowledge is: accepting death is the true cowardice, no matter the circumstances. Fighting it and choosing life is the true courage.

Critics of indefinite life extension, don’t put on a snide, condescending face and tell me that you aren’t afraid of death, because you are, too.

By your own knee-jerk flippancy, reactionary admission, you are also afraid of life. You’re afraid of death, and you’re afraid of life. You say, right to us, all the time, that you don’t want to bear to deal with the drastic changes, you don’t want to live without all your friends and family around, you don’t want to live with war still being a reality anywhere. You can’t stand all the jerks and the dangerous people, and rich people, or tyrants, controlling you for one decade longer than a traditional lifespan. The thought of it makes you want to jump into your grave right now to get away from this big, bad, scary life.

You, my friend, are afraid of life. Living scares you. You think of life and you cower. You see the challenges of life and you’re too scared to face them. You wouldn’t dare form and join teams and initiatives to meet those challenges on the intellectual combat fields of dialectics and action. You don’t have what it takes. Life isn’t for you. It’s not your thing. So love your death, fear your life. Do that if that’s what you want.

I am afraid of death. It scares me to think of losing my life. I value my life. I have no shame in that. That is the reasonable thing to do. What I have shame for is that anybody would think that being afraid of death might possibly be something to mock.

You mock us for being afraid of death. We are afraid of death; it’s a logical and positive thing to be afraid in the face of it. It reminds a person to take action against danger. It’s your being afraid of life that is to be mocked. So stand up and tell us how afraid you are of living. We promise not to look upon you with too much shame, and we promise to lend you a hand if you need help crossing over to the land of reason.

Reason is the founder of The Longevity Meme (now Fight Aging!). He saw the need for The Longevity Meme in late 2000, after spending a number of years searching for the most useful contribution he could make to the future of healthy life extension. When not advancing the Longevity Meme or Fight Aging!, Reason works as a technologist in a variety of industries. 

This work is reproduced here in accord with a Creative Commons Attribution license. It was originally published on FightAging.org.

Those Critical of Indefinite Life Extension Fear Life – Article by Eric Schulke and Wioletta Karkucińska

Those Critical of Indefinite Life Extension Fear Life – Article by Eric Schulke and Wioletta Karkucińska

The New Renaissance Hat
Eric Schulke and Wioletta Karkucińska
March 23, 2014
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What a repugnant, disdainful, knee-jerk flippancy to flop out of one’s mouth to mock anybody for being afraid of death.

If death doesn’t arouse fear, then what is fear?

We know what fear is. It’s having the sense to understand the level of loss that something imposes upon a person. It’s a no-brainer to understand that life provides value that would diminish to an extensive level if it were to be lost.

Let’s make this even clearer by spelling out what the dictionary tells us about fear.

fear

verb \ˈfir\

: to be afraid of (something or someone)

: to expect or worry about (something bad or unpleasant)

: to be afraid and worried

a :  an unpleasant often strong thought caused by anticipation or awareness of danger

b (1) :  an instance of this (2) :  a state marked by this

:  anxious concern :  solicitude

:  reason for alarm :  danger

I don’t have the courage to be robbed or run over; nor should I, or anyone. I have the emotional maturity to understand what my fear is telling me and to equip myself with the courage to join in on the assault on the terrible beast of aging. Watching incredible things unfold in the universe and world, seeing that it is all just the tip of an inconceivably large iceberg, and then seeing that it will be arbitrarily terminated in another of endless, terrible, horrific events for all involved, is alarming. It should concern you that you are standing on the deck of this great star-ship called Earth, and that you might fall off. You should be able to be aware of, and anticipate danger that is ahead. Your stake in the universe is at stake. Your DNA crawled out of your mother’s womb, drove a spike into the universe, asserting a claim in this realm, and death comes along like a miscreant walking up to a land-claim stake, and rips it out and throws it in the river.

“What are you, afraid of death?” They say.

“Don’t be a coward.”

“Because you’re too cowardly to accept death, the rest of us have to help you with your stupid little excursions?”

It’s as though they are saying, “What are you, afraid of cancer? You sissy, your mother and brother have cancer? So what? Don’t act like a wimp. Cancer is what happens. People live, people get cancer. Don’t accept the ice cream and the music if you’re going to whine about the cancer, it’s part of the package. If I could lift a finger to stop people from dying, then I wouldn’t do it.”

Or, it’s like that jerk that you know urging people to walk into woods where there are predators with humans as prey.

“Come on man, walk forty miles through the jungle there. Don’t worry about the lions, mosquitoes, and rhinos. You’ll get through fine, just goooo.” What terrible advice, and what a terrible kind of advice to condone and not discourage!

They are like the trash-talkers on the rodeo machine, where a round of people sit at a teeter-tottering table in the middle of a bull pen while they play cards and talk smack to each other for not continuing to sit in the bull’s eye of imminent death.

Pretending to be fearless in the face of death isn’t some form of heroism. It isn’t reasonable or courageous. It is quite the opposite. It is taking the easy way out.

What’s more is, that although being afraid is a sensible, logical part of it, the overriding part of it is that most of the people that I talk to that want to live long into the future, do it first and foremost because of their love for life. Most of the people that I know have been thwamped over the head with passion bugs of various kinds by flipping over galactic rocks like philosophy stones, quantum particles, history books and science boulders.

Fighting death has been for ages treated as a battle destined to be lost. How many times, when faced with a loss of a loved one, have we heard “Well, that’s the way of life”? How can one NOT notice the bitter irony and hypocrisy of that statement? How can death EVER be called an element of life, something to accept? It’s the very OPPOSITE of life, NOT part of it, and it is high time we should start seeing it as such. Let the blinders fall from our eyes, once and for all.

We appreciate our opportunity. We appreciate the rarity of humanity and the mind-blowing mysteries we have the privilege to continue to be submersed in. We understand that culture and tradition do not govern the big picture of what it means to exist here.

What it means to exist here is that we are the rare opportunities to know existence. What kind of extremely rare miracle would spring out of the mud after eons of nothingness and then declare that fleeting, flippant, empty cultural traditions of intellectually straitjacketed ancestors of itself are the best dictates for how it should face the big picture of the rapidly unfolding, multifaceted, and to-be-unfettered dreams-come-true (multi?)universe? Would you say that your grandmother’s old typewriter manual is the best guide for figuring out how to fix and program your computer?

What kind of jaw-dropping, paradigm-quaking miracle would spring out of the mud, find science and technology, industry and physics, communications superhighways and knowledge warehouses at the ends of high-speed trails, and all the rest – in many cases at its disposal or within reach of it – and then decide that the best thing for this miracle of the universe to do would be to return to the mud? I can’t tell you how disappointing it is to realize that many of our fellow human beings still think that. It’s also hard to understand exactly how they could think that in a world that emphasizes the value in good, positive critical thinking. They know better than that.

Accepting death is in fact choosing it. In the face of recent discoveries and progress in science, medicine, technology – it is a matter of choice.

Some people will smugly respond with the assertion that quality is obviously better than quantity. They say that acquiring more happiness now in exchange for taking away their chance to live for continued decades and centuries, is not irresponsible and wrong.

To them we say, our ancestors toiled and struggled through untold and long-lasting hardships to deliver their progeny, you, here to where you are so you can have the opportunities and the ever-brighter futures the generations of your ancestors hoped for, worked for, and achieved. You and your opportunities are their achievement, and I urge you to keep in mind thoughts of not wanting to let them down. You don’t live it up now and then throw away the chance your ancestors gave you. Your job is to survive first, and build empires later. You accept the tough times so that you may continue to earn opportunities to work to build more and more goodness into your life – be that through the completion of more dreams, the building up of more enterprises, the satiation of more curiosity, the fulfillment of more adventure, etc. The tough times help you to savor the good times more. When the ship is on choppy seas and might go down, you hold on tight and work twice as hard. Our ancestors didn’t raise us to throw in the towel. As far as I have ever seen, modern-day Homo sapiens did not evolve with a gene for quitting.

You are set for all the challenges that fighting for life brings. Let’s repeat it – death really is the easy way out. You fall asleep; you get a bullet; cancer kills you; some choose suicide; some accept aging and its effects as an inexorable given. The hard truth here that we should be prepared to acknowledge is: accepting death is the true cowardice, no matter the circumstances. Fighting it and choosing life is the true courage.

Critics of indefinite life extension, don’t put on a snide, condescending face and tell me that you aren’t afraid of death, because you are, too.

By your own knee-jerk flippancy, reactionary admission, you are also afraid of life. You’re afraid of death, and you’re afraid of life. You say, right to us, all the time, that you don’t want to bear to deal with the drastic changes, you don’t want to live without all your friends and family around, you don’t want to live with war still being a reality anywhere. You can’t stand all the jerks and the dangerous people, and rich people, or tyrants, controlling you for one decade longer than a traditional lifespan. The thought of it makes you want to jump into your grave right now to get away from this big, bad, scary life.

You, my friend, are afraid of life. Living scares you. You think of life and you cower. You see the challenges of life and you’re too scared to face them. You wouldn’t dare form and join teams and initiatives to meet those challenges on the intellectual combat fields of dialectics and action. You don’t have what it takes. Life isn’t for you. It’s not your thing. So love your death, fear your life. Do that if that’s what you want.

I am afraid of death. It scares me to think of losing my life. I value my life. I have no shame in that. That is the reasonable thing to do. What I have shame for is that anybody would think that being afraid of death might possibly be something to mock.

You mock us for being afraid of death. We are afraid of death; it’s a logical and positive thing to be afraid in the face of it. It reminds a person to take action against danger. It’s your being afraid of life that is to be mocked. So stand up and tell us how afraid you are of living. We promise not to look upon you with too much shame, and we promise to lend you a hand if you need help crossing over to the land of reason.

We once thought the Earth was flat or that all planets revolved around Earth. Many people who have threatened to disrupt tradition and the ways things have been at given times in the world’s history, have faced persecution and shunning for their discoveries. The life of helping move the world forward was hard because the work didn’t often ride forward in a parade of activism and public cheer and action. It would ride forward one hard-fought campaign at a time, one shovel-full at a time, at the hands of small groups of dedicated people working hard to ring the bell of freedom at each new level as humanity continued to expand out into the big picture of the universe and existence. They kept their minds fine-tuned and well-oiled with awareness and focus on what it means to be alive, gathered information, moved humanity forward in various ways, and proved the huge number of skeptics wrong. Life must have felt like hell for them, but they held on and won.

They chose to be courageous in their LIVES. Are you ready to open your mind and face some difficulties in the struggle for life? Would you rather fall asleep and miss out on miracles or stay wide awake and live them?

Eric Schulke was a director at LongeCity during 2009-2013. He has also been an activist with the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension and other causes for over 13 years.

Wioletta Karkucińska is an author and longevity activist in Warsaw, Poland.

Universal Surveillance: PRISM and the Litmus Test for Liberty – Video by G. Stolyarov II

Universal Surveillance: PRISM and the Litmus Test for Liberty – Video by G. Stolyarov II

 Will enough Americans respond with outrage and exercise their First Amendment rights to bring an end to the totalitarianism-enabling NSA PRISM surveillance system?

References
Petition to Pardon Edward Snowden
– “Rand Paul planning class action lawsuit against surveillance programs” – Aaron Blake – The Washington Post – June 9, 2013
– “In the Face of Universal Surveillance: PRISM and the Litmus Test for Liberty” – Essay by G. Stolyarov II
– “PRISM (surveillance program)” – Wikipedia
– “Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations” – Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Laura Poitras – The Guardian – June 9, 2013
– “Google, Apple, Facebook & AOL Deny Participating In Alleged NSA “PRISM” Program” – Danny Sullivan – Marketing Land – June 6, 2013
Project Meshnet
DuckDuckGo
– “How Scared of Terrorism Should You Be?” – Ronald Bailey – Reason Magazine – September 6, 2011
– “Futile Temporary Totalitarianism in Boston” – Article by G. Stolyarov II
– “Russian politico: U.S. ignored Tsarnaev intelligence at its own peril” – By Cheryl K. Chumley – The Washington Times – June 4, 2013

In the Face of Universal Surveillance: PRISM and the Litmus Test for Liberty – Article by G. Stolyarov II

In the Face of Universal Surveillance: PRISM and the Litmus Test for Liberty – Article by G. Stolyarov II

The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
June 11, 2013
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Ladies and gentlemen, most of what do you using the Internet or your phone is being tracked by the National Security Agency via its PRISM surveillance program.  If you thought you could take measures to escape such monitoring, it is too late; the program has been operating, clandestinely, since 2007. It took the heroic courage of Edward Snowden, a former CIA and Booz Allen Hamilton employee with access to information about the full depths of this travesty, to reveal this astoundingly invasive operation to us six years later. Snowden has – at the risk of his own comfort, his income, his freedom, and possibly his life – given us the invaluable knowledge that the world is quite unlike what most of us thought it to be. Glenn Greenwald, the perceptive Guardian journalist and long-time defender of civil liberties, is also a champion of human freedom, dignity, and justice, because of his outstanding work in publicizing these abuses before a worldwide audience.

Even I – despite my strong libertarian convictions and considerable skepticism of centralized authority – could not have imagined that virtually all of the large technology companies to whom I had entrusted large amounts of my personal information – Google, Facebook, Skype, Microsoft, YouTube – were participants in the surveillance, enabling the NSA to build covert backdoors into their systems to steal the most confidential possible personal information. From e-mails, to search histories, to credit-card transactions – all of this is within the NSA’s reach; all of this could be used to destroy the reputation and life of anyone suspected of being a threat. It is only by the mercy, or the oversight, or the higher priorities, of our political masters that any of us retain vestiges of the freedom we think we have.

Upon finding out about the massive scope of this surveillance, I struggled to figure out what I could do to regain any expectation of privacy that I had even a week ago. If only one or two private companies had “partnered” with the NSA to facilitate the indiscriminate monitoring and data collection,  it might have been possible, with a few judicious restructurings of one’s habits, to avoid any services of those companies. But it seems that almost all of the major players on the Internet – the ones into whose hands hundreds of millions of us voluntarily (and, in retrospect, foolishly) entrusted vast amounts of personal data – are participants. Apart from taking the drastic (and, in many respects, self-undermining) step of ceasing to use most of the tools of the Internet and mobile technology altogether, one can do very little right away to insulate oneself from the surveillance, and even if such insulation were possible, the data already collected by the NSA are a sunk cost. It is not clear whether these companies chose to involve themselves in PRISM voluntarily, or whether they were browbeaten into it by the NSA and the Obama administration, as a price they needed to pay for being allowed to remain successful and relatively unhampered by politically motivated persecution. The companies are certainly not helping their case by denying all knowledge of their evident involvement in PRISM, using near-identical phrasing (composed by whom, I wonder?) which only prevents them from explaining any elements of their participation which might have been involuntary.

While it would have been supremely satisfying for me to simply disassociate myself from any of the companies implicated in the PRISM surveillance, they are, at present, embedded too deeply into the fabric of our lives. A gradual, evolutionary process will need to occur to enable individuals to discover ways of taking advantage of all the benefits of networked technologies, while preventing the present centralization of Internet activity from ever occurring again. The Meshnet project for creating a decentralized Internet is an intriguing concept supporting this goal.  Also helpful are anonymous search engines such as DuckDuckGo, which I have begun using in place of Google. Over the coming weeks, months, and years, it would benefit us all to think of creative ways to avoid the unwanted disclosure of our private information through the centralized Internet behemoths. As for information that we intend to be public, there seems to be no harm in disclosing that anywhere. The NSA and even Barack Obama himself may read The Rational Argumentator and watch my videos without any objections from me; indeed, this would do them much good. But I draw a clear line between the public and the private aspects of my life, and I intend to be the one who draws that line.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, but some conspiracies are indeed real, and in this case, the conspiracy theorists were right. Right, too, were those who proclaimed for years that the Obama administration represents a fundamental undermining of basic American values – to which I will add that this administration is opposed to basic human values of liberty, privacy, dignity, and the presumption of innocence. This is not routine political malfeasance; it is the wielding of an overarching apparatus of monitoring – a prerequisite to complete social control – that the KGB of the Soviet Union and the Stasi of Communist East Germany could not have dreamed of possessing. Those oppressors of old had to use actual human beings to monitor political dissidents – which severely limited their reach. The default data harvesting and algorithmic mining of the PRISM program does not require a human being to find spurious “associations” with alleged threats – based solely on combinations of keywords or contacts within one’s social networks.

The system works by focusing on all those within a few “degrees of separation” from the central suspects. You could have a phone number that differs by a digit from that of a terror suspect; if someone within that suspect’s network calls you by accident, you might be flagged as a suspect, too.  Sheer curiosity about certain subjects, visitation of certain sites, mention of certain topics in e-mails or private video chats and text messages, could get you flagged. It is not a matter of doing nothing wrong and thus having nothing to hide. With this much data, taken wildly out of context as is always possible with algorithmic data-mining systems, any person’s behavior can be construed as having nefarious motivations. Any sufficiently inconvenient individual can be portrayed as an enemy by Leviathan. This is why no American is safe from his own government unless the wholesale dismantling of the PRISM system and any related surveillance measures occurs. An executive order from Obama could achieve this, but it is doubtful that Obama would issue such an order. Massive public outrage, from within and outside the United States, might, however, set in motion the political processes that would discredit this heinously intrusive system. This is no time to cower in fear, to hush up the expression of one’s honest thoughts because one is unsure about the consequences. Now, more than ever, it is essential for every one of us to make full use of our inalienable First Amendment rights.

The extensive surveillance apparatus in the hands of the administration can be readily deployed to create actual totalitarianism with the snap of a finger. For a small-scale proof of concept, witness the frightening lockdown and militaristic mobilization that occurred in Boston in the wake of the Tsarnaev brothers’ bombings – which, as must be emphasized, the same apparatus of total surveillance and police-state response failed to prevent despite repeated warnings from Russian intelligence.

And yet I know that I am not an enemy. Neither are you. Most of us are peaceful, productive citizens of purportedly free nations. We wish harm to no one and wish only to lead our lives in peace, prosperity, and self-determination. I – and hopefully you – exercise the inalienable basic human right of free speech, a right enshrined in the American First Amendment, a right for whose defense the American Founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Edward Snowden knows what it means to make such a pledge, and what its consequences can be in a world ruled by might rather than by right. This is why it is imperative that he be pardoned, if charged, for any alleged “crimes” that the U.S. government perceives him to have committed.  If you do nothing else, please go to WhiteHouse.gov and sign the petition requesting his pardon. This is, after all, Constitutionally protected speech. If the administration begins to persecute those who signed the petition, then it would be clear that this country is too far gone. Moreover, if Edward Snowden should meet an untimely end, from whatever apparent cause, I would have no doubts of the origins of his demise, and it would also be clear that this country is too far gone.

But I do not believe that this country is too far gone, yet. We may be teetering on the brink of totalitarianism, but I have hope that the fundamental decency of the American people – and the residual adherence in this country to founding American principles – will overcome the depredations of the current American government. Another vitally important project that calls upon the participation of as many Americans as possible is the class-action lawsuit spearheaded by Senator Rand Paul against the NSA PRISM program. (You can sign up to join the lawsuit here.) I have been critical of Rand Paul’s stances (particularly his endorsement of Mitt Romney) in the past, but on the issue of NSA surveillance, he is perhaps the most powerful ally that friends of liberty have within the United States, and we need all of the allies we can get right now. If Rand Paul can help to dismantle the Orwellian apparatus of the NSA, then any of his past errors of judgment would pale in comparison.

Nearly forty years ago, Richard Nixon lost his office because he authorized spying on a few political opponents. Those were the days! Barack Obama and his administration, often with the explicit support of many Members of Congress, have for years authorized and condoned spying on hundreds of millions of Americans and even more citizens of other sovereign jurisdictions – individuals over whom the United States has and ought to have no legitimate power whatsoever.  What will be the result of these disclosures for Barack Obama’s tenure in office? The principles of justice suggest strongly that Obama should resign or be impeached and then removed from office, for his transgressions in the realm of surveillance alone are orders of magnitude greater than those of Nixon. Along with Obama, all of his senior executive officials should resign, in addition to senior Members of Congress from both parties – including Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Dianne Feinstein, Mike Rogers, and Peter King – all of whom have expressed unequivocal support for the violations of our Constitutional rights via the PRISM program, and some of whom have even stated that Edward Snowden is guilty of treason. Yet these politicians are the ones who have violated their oaths of office to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I do not mean to single out any one wing of the two-party establishment which has created the Orwellian security state in the U.S. after September 11, 2001. Leading Republicans, including many who held prominent posts in the Bush administration, deserve plenty of the blame for laying the groundwork for the PRISM system. What is needed is not a mere change in political parties (for that achieves nothing), but a change in the fundamental understanding of the role of government, held by those in government.

But will the impeachment or voluntary resignation of Obama and some of the other most powerful people in the United States – indeed, in the world – realistically occur, or will they be able to successfully portray their completely unbidden intrusions into all of our lives as being “for our own good”? Will they frighten and bamboozle us into believing that we need their monitoring of our lives, which we know to be lived innocently, in order to protect us from the threat of terrorism which, according to Ronald Bailey of Reason Magazine, is four times less likely to kill any of us than a lightning strike?  With a surveillance program this pervasive – one so clearly endorsed by officials from both parties, from the very top down – it is unlikely that the powers that be will merely decide to sacrifice a few of their subordinates and let them take the blame for this gross violation of the privacy of many (perhaps most) human beings.  It appears that the American elite has been backed into a corner; either it will vigorously defend the PRISM system as a united front – or it will need to capitulate to human decency and acknowledge the gross moral failures involved at the highest levels.

The outcome will depend on how much public outrage arises. Are Americans going to passively roll over and accept an Orwellian level of surveillance as a fait accompli, or will they let their profound displeasure be known? I, as an American citizen, do not approve of this intrusion into my personal life by the very elected officials and their appointees who are supposed to function as the guardians of freedom. I urge all Americans to use peaceful methods of speech, petition, and creative advocacy to express their absolute disapproval of PRISM. Moreover, I hope that foreign governments and their citizens will send a strong message to the Obama administration and Congress that the monitoring of innocent persons outside America will, likewise, not be tolerated. Whether or not PRISM will continue is the litmus test for liberty in the United States, and perhaps in the remainder of the world as well. The outcome of this series of events will determine whether might or right will shape the future of humankind.

Illiberal Belief #24: The World is a Scary Place – Article by Bradley Doucet

Illiberal Belief #24: The World is a Scary Place – Article by Bradley Doucet

The New Renaissance Hat
Bradley Doucet
June 9, 2013
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Will the world end with a bang or with a whimper? Will terrorists shake the very foundations of civilization by setting off suitcase nukes in major world cities, or will the continuing contamination of the environment with toxic man-made chemicals give everyone on the planet terminal cancer? One way or another, the apocalypse, it seems, is just around the corner. Or is it?
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In fact, neither of these fears is anywhere near as threatening as many people believe them to be. Dan Gardner, columnist and senior writer for the Ottawa Citizen, has written a book called Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear, published last year and newly available in paperback, in which he tries to put such fears in perspective. According to Gardner, even factoring in the 3000 deaths from the unprecedented destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, Americans are more likely in any given year to be unintentionally electrocuted than to be killed in a terrorist attack. Of course, the real fear is that terrorists will get their hands on nuclear weapons. But while this risk does exist, there are also very substantial obstacles that make such a scenario extremely unlikely. Even if, against all odds, a terrorist organization managed to detonate a nuclear bomb in a major American city, killing on the order of 100,000 people, this would be roughly equivalent to the number of Americans killed each year by diabetes, or by accidents, or by infections contracted in hospitals.As for the fear that toxic man-made chemicals are responsible for increasing incidences of cancer, it hides several misconceptions. For one, it implies that the natural is good and that the man-made is bad. In fact, most pesticides, for instance, are not man-made but occur naturally in the foods we eat. Our fear of toxic chemicals also tends to ignore any consideration of dose, since we tend to panic over insignificant parts per billion that are far below the thresholds found to kill lab rats. As toxicologists are fond of repeating, even water is poisonous in large enough quantities. The fear of environmental chemicals, natural or man-made, is also misplaced in that the American Cancer Society estimates they are responsible for only 2 percent of all cancers, as compared to lifestyle factors (smoking, drinking, diet, obesity, and exercise) that account for a whopping 65 percent. Finally, when adjusted for age and improved screening procedures, incidence rates for all cancers except lung cancer are actually declining, not increasing.
***

The Great Riddle

Why are we so much more afraid of terrorism than diabetes? Why do we pay so much attention to minuscule environmental hazards while essentially ignoring much larger lifestyle risks? Contrasting Europeans’ blasé smoking habits with their outsized fear of genetically modified organisms, Gardner writes, “Surely one of the great riddles to be answered by science is how the same person who doesn’t think twice about lighting a Gauloise will march in the streets demanding a ban on products that have never been proven to have caused so much as a single case of indigestion.” To take just one more example, we fear statistically non-existent threats like child abduction and therefore keep our kids indoors, depriving them of exercise and contributing to sedentary lifestyles that have a very real chance of cutting years off of their lives.

The answers to this “great riddle” are partly to be found in human nature. We have gut reactions to dangers that are more dramatic, like terrorist attacks and plane crashes. These rare events also are more likely to make the news, both because of their drama and because of their rarity. Another thousand people died today from heart disease? Ho-hum. Fifty people died in a plane crash? That hasn’t happened in months or years, and the visuals are exciting, so that’s news!

Be Afraid… Be Very Afraid

Irrational fears not only lead us to make bad choices, like driving instead of flying, which place us in greater danger. They also allow government officials to manipulate us more effectively and insinuate themselves more deeply into more and more areas of our lives. The disproportionate fear of terrorism has been nurtured and used to justify a protocol of time-consuming security checks at airports, the warrantless wiretapping of phone calls, the tightening of international borders, and of course, two ongoing wars with huge costs both in terms of lives and money. The exaggerated fear of environmental dangers, for its part, has led to increased taxation and regulation of production, empowering bureaucrats and lobbyists while acting as a drag on innovations and economic growth that could be of even greater benefit to human life and flourishing. (See Gennady Stolyarov II’s “Eden Is an Illusion”.)

We are prone to fear all kinds of things we really shouldn’t, fears that can be and are reinforced by the media out to tell an entertaining story; by companies out to sell us an alarm system or a new drug; by activists or non-governmental organizations out to elicit donations and support; and by politicians out to win elections and accumulate power. The only way to counteract this is to inform ourselves about relative risks and becoming comfortable dealing with numbers and statistics in general.

There is no such thing as a risk-free world, but despite the real dangers that exist, we in the developed world in the twenty-first century are better off than any other people who have ever lived. We have our human ingenuity to thank for the startling advances in fighting diseases and increasing lifespans that characterize our time. We shouldn’t let our equally human irrational fears get the better of us and push us into giving up our freedom in exchange for ersatz safety.

Bradley Doucet is Le Quebecois Libré‘s English Editor. A writer living in Montreal, he has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness.

Futile Temporary Totalitarianism in Boston – Video by G. Stolyarov II

Futile Temporary Totalitarianism in Boston – Video by G. Stolyarov II

The aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings of April 15, 2013, showed all too clearly that totalitarianism does not need decades of incremental legislation and regimentation to come to this country. All it needs is the now-pervasive fear of “terrorism” – a fear which can give one man the power to shut down the economic life of an entire city for a day.

This video is based on Mr. Stolyarov’s recent essay, “Futile Temporary Totalitarianism in Boston“.

References

-“U.S. Cities With Bigger Economies Than Entire Countries” – Wall Street Journal – July 20, 2012
– “Adding up the financial costs of the Boston bombings” – Bill Dedman and John Schoen, NBC News – April 30, 2013
– “United Airlines Flight 93” – Wikipedia
– “Richard Reid” – Wikipedia
– “Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab” – Wikipedia
– “Homicides decrease in Boston for third straight year” – Matt Carroll, The Boston Globe – January 1, 2013
– “List of motor vehicle deaths in U.S. by year” – Wikipedia
– “How Scared of Terrorism Should You Be?” – Ronald Bailey, Reason Magazine – September 6, 2011
– “Terrorism Risk Insurance Act” – Wikipedia
– “Business Frets at Terrorism Tag of Marathon Attack” – Associated Press – May 13, 2013
– “TIME/CNN Poll Shows Increasing Number Of Americans Won’t Give Up Civil Liberties To Fight Terrorism” – Tim Cushing, TechDirt – May 6, 2013

Futile Temporary Totalitarianism in Boston – Article by G. Stolyarov II

Futile Temporary Totalitarianism in Boston – Article by G. Stolyarov II

The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
May 13, 2013
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Everyday life in the United States is still semi-free most of the time, if one goes about one’s own business and avoids flying or crossing the border. Yet, the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings of April 15, 2013, showed all too clearly that totalitarianism does not need decades of incremental legislation and regimentation to come to this country. All it needs is the now-pervasive fear of “terrorism” – a fear which can give one man the power to shut down the economic life of an entire city for a day.

The annual Gross Domestic Product of Boston is approximately $326 billion (based on 2011 figures from the Wall Street Journal). For one day, Boston’s GDP can be roughly estimated as ($326 billion)/365 = $893.15 million. Making the rather conservative assumption that only about half of a city’s economic activity would require people to leave their homes in any way, one can estimate the economic losses due to the Boston lockdown to be around $447 million. By contrast, how much damaged property and medical costs resulted directly from the criminal act committed by the Chechen nationalist and Islamic fundamentalist brothers Tamerlan and Dzokhar Tsarnaev? An NBC News article detailing the economic damages from the bombing estimates total medical costs to be in excess of $9 million, while total losses within the “impact zone” designated by the Boston Police Department are about $10 million. To give us a wide margin of error again, let us double these estimates and assume that the bombers inflicted total economic damage of $38 million. The economic damage done by the lockdown would still exceed this total by a factor of about 11.76 – more than an order of magnitude!

It is true, of course, that the cost in terms of the length and quality of life for the three people killed and the 264 people injured by the bombings cannot be accounted for in monetary terms. But I wonder: how many years of life will $447 million in lost economic gains deprive from the population of Boston put together – especially when one considers that these economic losses affect life-sustaining sectors such as medical care and pharmaceuticals? Furthermore, to what extent would this lost productivity forestall the advent of future advances that could have lengthened people’s lives one day sooner? One will most likely never know, but the reality of opportunity cost is nonetheless always with us, and surely, some massive opportunity costs were incurred during the Boston lockdown.  Moreover, one type of damage does not justify or excuse another. However horrific the Boston bombings were, they were not a reason to further hinder innocent people.

Bad policy is the surest and most powerful ally of malicious, hate-driven miscreants like the Tsarnaev brothers. On April 19, the day of the lockdown, Dzokhar Tsarnaev, the sole surviving Boston Marathon bomber, hid inside a boat in a private backyard, incapacitated and nearly dead from a botched suicide attempt. Dzokhar wanted only to end his own life, and yet he could never have caused more trouble than he did during those hours, because, while the lockdown was in place, bad policy was inflicting more economic damage than the Tsarnaev brothers’ crude and clumsy attack could ever have unleashed on its own.

Only after the lockdown was lifted could a private citizen, David Henneberry, leave his house and notice that his boat had a loose cover. As Thomas Jefferson would have told the Bostonians, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Virtually every time malicious plots against innocent civilians are actually foiled – be it the takedown of United Airlines Flight 93 or the arrests of attempted “shoe bomber” Richard Reid and “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab – it is the vigilance of ordinary but courageous individuals that truly enhances the safety of us all.  Policies that create martial law, prevent people from leading their lives, and result in SWAT-style “sweeps” of people’s homes in search of a single individual not only do nothing to actually help capture the violent wrongdoer, but also subvert the liberty, prosperity, and quality of life for many orders of magnitude more people than any criminal cell could ever hope to undermine on its own.

Would any other dangerous condition, one not thought to be “terrorism,” ever provoke such a wildly disproportionate and oppressive reaction? Consider that Boston had 58 homicides in the year 2012. Many cities’ murder rates are much higher, sometimes reaching an average of one murder per day. Was a lockdown initiated for every third homicide in any American city? Traffic fatalities claim over 30,000 lives in the United States every year – or 10,000 times the death toll of the Boston Marathon bombing, and ten times the death toll of even the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Are entire neighborhoods shut down every time there is a deadly car crash? If this were the accepted practice, all economic life – indeed most life in general – in the United States would grind to a halt.  Yet, while the most likely and widespread threats to our lives come from very mundane sources, bad policies and distorted public perceptions of risk are motivated by fear of the unusual, the grotesque, the sensational and sensationalized kinds of death. And yet, in spite of fear-mongering by politicians, the media, special interests, and those who rely exclusively on sound bites, the threat to one’s personal safety from a terrorist act is so minuscule as to safely be ignored. In fact, as Ronald Bailey of Reason Magazine discusses, the odds of being killed by a lightning bolt are about four times greater!

 Ironically enough, the very act that precipitated the Boston lockdown might not even officially be designated a terrorist act after all. If you thought that this was because politicians are suddenly coming to their senses, think again. The real reason is somewhat less intuitive and relates to insurance coverage for the businesses damaged by the attacks. Most commercial property and business-interruption insurance policies will cover losses from criminal acts, but explicitly exclude coverage for acts of terrorism, unless the business purchases special terrorism coverage reinsured by the federal Terrorism Risk Insurance Program. However, for the terrorism exclusions in many ordinary commercial insurance policies to apply, an act of terrorism has to be formally certified as such by the Secretary of the Treasury (and sometimes other officials, such as the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security). (For more details on this turn of events, read “Business Frets at Terrorism Tag of Marathon Attack” by the Associated Press.) The affected businesses really do not want the bombings to be formally classified as terrorism, as this will impede the businesses’ ability to obtain the insurance proceeds which would be integral to their recovery.

 I have no objection to the federal government refraining from certifying the bombings as a terrorist act in an effort to avoid needless bureaucratic complications that would impede recovery. However, I also detest Orwellian doublethink. If the bombings are not terrorism for one purpose, then they cannot be terrorism in any other sense. If they will not be used to justify depriving businesses of insurance proceeds, then surely they must not be used to deprive the rest of us of our freedom to move about as we wish, to pursue our economic aspirations, to retain the privacy of our homes, and to otherwise lead our lives in peace. If the bombings are not certified as terrorism, then all fear-mongering rhetoric by federal politicians about the need to heighten “security” in response to this “terrorist” act should cease as well. The law of non-contradiction is one type of law that our politicians – and the people of the United States more generally – urgently need to recognize.

I certainly hope that no future bombings of public events occur in the United States, not only out of a desire to preserve the lives of my fellow human beings, but also out of grave concern for the possibly totalitarian reaction that would follow any such heinous act. I enjoy living in peace and relative freedom day to day, but I know that it is only by the grace and perhaps the laziness of America’s political masters that I am able to do so. I continue to hope for an amazing run of good luck with regard to the non-occurrence of any particularly visible instances of mass crime, so that the people of the United States can find the time to gradually become enlightened about the real risks in their lives and the genuinely effective strategies for reducing those risks. There is hope that the American people are gradually regaining their common sense; perhaps they will drag the politicians toward reason with them – however reluctant the politicians might be to pursue sensible policies for a change.

Technology as the Solution to Existential Risk

Technology as the Solution to Existential Risk

The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
April 2, 2012
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What is the relationship between technology and existential risk? Technology does not cause existential risk, but rather is the only effective means for countering it.

I do not deny that existential risks are real – but I find that most existential risks exist currently (e.g., risks from asteroid impacts, a new ice age, pandemics, or nuclear war) and that technological progress is the way to remove many of those risks without introducing others that are as great or greater.  My view is that the existential risks from emerging technologies are quite minor (if at all significant) compared to the tremendous benefits such technologies would have in solving the existential risks we currently face (including the biggest risk to our own individual existences – our own mortality from senescence).

My essay “The Real War – and Why Inter-Human Wars Are a Distraction” describes my views on this matter in greater depth.

In short, I am a techno-optimist, one who considers it imperative to restore the Victorian-era ideal of Progress as a guiding principle in contemporary societies. The problem, as I see it, is not in the technologies of the future, but in the barbarous and primitive condition of the world as it exists today, with its many immediate perils.

As a libertarian, I believe that the entrepreneurship and innovation in even semi-free markets can address existential risks far more effectively than any national government – and bureaucratic management of these efforts would only hamper progress while incurring the risk of subverting the endeavors for nefarious objectives. (The National Security Agency’s recent attempt at a total surveillance state is a case in point.)

But fears of technology are our greatest existential risk. They have a real potential of halting progress in many fruitful areas – either through restrictive legislation or through the actions of a few Luddite fanatics who take it upon themselves to “right” the wrongs they perceive in a world of advancing technology. I can point to examples of such fanatics already exploiting fears of technologies that are not even close to existing yet. For instance, in a post on the LessWrong blog, one “dripgrind” – a sincere and therefore genuinely frightening fanatic – explicitly advocates assassination of AI researchers and chastises the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence for not engaging in such a despicable tactic. This is the consequence of spreading fears about AI technology rather than simply and calmly developing such technology in a rational manner, so as to be incapable of harming humans. Many among the uneducated and superstitious are already on edge about emerging technologies. A strong message of vibrant optimism and reassurance is needed to prevent these people from lashing out and undermining the progress of our civilization in the process.  The Frankenstein syndrome should be resisted no matter in what guise it appears.