So, a cop decides he doesn't like you. It might be nice if he could just walk into your home and maybe look around without a warrant. In California, he just might be able to. Seems all he needs to do is say "gosh, I think you may have been drinking and driving" and he can walk in and bust you. The reasoning (if you want to call it that) from the California Supreme Court seems to be that your diminishing blood alcohol level has the same legal standing as you deliberately destroying evidence (another reason that police can enter a home without a warrant).

So if you live in California, the next time you have friends over for a couple of drinks, make sure that you haven't pissed off any police. They can just walk in and bust you for being drunk, claiming a "neighbor tipped them off", and have a look around your apartment at the same time. Or maybe like the case which prompted the California ruling, if you've pissed off a neighbor and they see you drinking at home, maybe they'll claim you drove home. Who knows?

Of course, no one would ever abuse this, right? Of course not ...

(Note that this still doesn't give the police the right to search your apartment. However, if you have something in plain sight which the police officers might reasonably be expected to see, it can be used against you.)

Perhaps what most intrigues me about the UK are the inevitable cultural issues which will arise. Culture, when viewed without context, can be a curious thing. I've had women get very upset with me for holding a door open because I'm being patronizing to women. What??? I could equally argue that women in the deep South were the ones in the wrong for expecting men to run around and open doors for them. Give me a break, folks. Culture is culture and so long as all parties are consenting, no harm, no foul.

While culture is frequently exhibited in behavior (I still don't feel comfortable wearing a hat indoors but it's no longer universally considered rude), more often than not, the issues arise through language. When my brother in London told me he was getting pissed, I felt very uncomfortable until I realized he was "getting drunk". When I first moved to the Pacific Northwest, I couldn't help but laugh the first time a lady offered me a "pop" because I was used to little kids referring to "pop" and adults referring to "soda". I heard a grown woman talking like a little child.

Perhaps one of the worst issues with culture arose in Texas when I first realized that my friends' use of the word "nigger" was offensive. Vowing to not be a racist, I altered my vocabulary to show proper respect. This shocked my mother. She, to her credit, informed me that the word I was looking for was "black", not "negro". That I could have thought "negro" was acceptable tells you a lot about Texas culture (and perhaps why so many Texans like Bush).

I hugged Roger and Carolee goodbye last night. Due to scheduling difficulties, I might not see them before I leave. In fact, I might not see them again. The night before, I hugged Silke goodbye. That was tough. I love Silke dearly and she's a wonderful friend but I might not see her again, either.

A few days ago, I filled my car with gas, realizing that it was the last time that I was feeding this loyal beast. At just under 100,000 miles, she's never let me down. I've cared for her tenderly and fixed her few ailments and she's rewarded me by taking me hither and yon without complaint. Now I'm selling her to Schwern and it almost feels like betrayal.

I just bought my last bag of coffee beans over here. I walk by buildings and wonder if I'll see them again. I don't remember going through this years ago, when I moved to Amsterdam. But then, I wasn't a regular blogger at the time and this pseudo-memory wasn't available to me.

Unlike my rather disastrous adventure in Amsterdam, I've prepared carefully this time. All of the legal "t"s and "i"s are crossed and dotted. I've carefully built a solid resume, continuously improved my craft and blogged relentlessly with the intent of keeping my name out there. I volunteered for the Perl Foundation, wrote articles and, by a curious stroke of luck, have my name on the cover of a book.

It's not blind luck, though. Lady Luck has keen eyes and if you keep working at something, breaks come your way from time to time, so long as you're paying attention. And I have. Years of dreaming and always keeping this possibility in the back of my mind have paid off; I'm moving to the UK. I'm also getting rid of most of my possessions and have already started thinking about how my retirement will work out, decades from now. That will probably be my next big goal.

But what's a goal? Why do we have them? Many folks think that their purpose in life is to achieve their goals. They're wrong. Once you achieve your goals, then what? Is it time to die? No! They have it backwards. Their goal in life should be to follow their purpose and each person's purpose is to understand their driving needs and pursue them with integrity.

My driving needs are adventure, learning, and challenging assumptions (rebellion, if you will). Those are a dangerous combination and if I didn't know what they were, I'd still follow them, but perhaps in an unhealthy manner. How many people, not consciously understanding their driving need for adventure wind up cheating on a spouse? If they consciously knew that adventure was so important to them, there are plenty of ways they could satisfy this need without being dishonest.

Others have different driving needs. Some need security or comfort (and not in the Maslow's Hierarchy sense) and find themselves too timid to take risks. Others have a driving need for justice and that, particularly when combined with a sense of adventure or rebellion, can lead them to do stupid things. Witness the Earth Liberation Front.

So my needs for adventure and learning have led me to pursue moving to Europe with a focus which has surprised me. It took me years to find my brother; it's taken me years to move to Europe. Anyone familiar with me knows that I'm often not a good "long-term project" kind of guy. I have a huge library of partially read computer books. I have tons of unfinished software projects on my computer. I have a screenplay I should rewrite but probably won't. But somehow I've pulled it all together enough to relentlessly pursue Europe.

The beast of my purpose, however, is only temporarily sated. It's gorging itself on the prospect of new adventure and learning but my rebellious streak is a separate creature altogether and it's one I've not entirely tamed. If anything will be my downfall, it's the latter.

I have just over a week left in the US and most of that time will be spent with Sean and Lil, the two people in my life who mean the most to me. They're both brilliant and wonderful people and leaving them is going to be the most difficult part of all of this. I don't mean that to slight the others who are close to me, but without Sean and Lil, gallivanting off to a new life would be much easier.

I'll keep blogging and letting people know what I'm up to. I'll read your blogs and keep track of your lives. I'll miss all of you -- a phone call or a blog entry isn't the same -- but I'll make new friends, too. Life is going to get very interesting soon.

The ancient Roman city of Colonia Augusta Firma Astigi was one of the largest cities in the world for its time. With 30,000 inhabitants, its olive oil industry was well-known and urns of its products were found throughout the ancient world. Archaeologists discovering the ancient city discovered wonderful statues, mosaics and many well-preserved buildings that would have provided a treasure trove of information about ancient Roman life.

"Would have"? Immediately after the discovery was made, Spanish officials destroyed the remains to make room for a car park.

Good to be reminded that the US isn't the only country churning out morons who don't realize that there are some things more important than simple economics.

I'm not going to talk about intelligent design proponents. I'm going to call a spade a spade and refer to them as creationists. Let's just get this straight: there is no "intelligent design". There are creationists who explicitly embrace God and ID proponents who lie and pretend that religious zealotry is not what's behind their campaign of deceit. Of course, I'm sure that God doesn't mind a little intellectual dishonesty to prop him up, right? Clearly the ID folks have realized that faith ain't enough, praise the Lord!

This is not to say that all who believe in Creation are liars. There are many well-meaning people out there who sincerely and devoutly believe in the story of creation and there are more folks who are swayed by the creationists arguments because the creationist campaign of lying and their very selective use of information has created a propaganda machine that politicians can only envy. However, when you look closely at the creationist claims, most of it boils down to one thing: evolution supporters don't know everything, therefore they're wrong, praise the Lord!¹

It's tough to find a better example of how far we are willing to go to lie to ourselves. It's tough to find a better example of the self-deceit we are willing to engage in when we can accept such a specious argument. And it's tough to keep a straight face while listening to it. So I won't. Praise the Lord!

( Creationists want to eat your babies )

Why is it that all of my friends who've seen "Brokeback Mountain" are quick to say that it's not a great film? They all say it was "good", but not "great". I suppose it's a subjective thing.

Me? I cried when I watched it. Really. It had a tremendous impact which I found very compelling. Yes, it had gay cowboys, but that's not the point! Why does everyone seem to miss that? It's about the conflict between those who chase their dreams and those who forgo them to remain "safe" and gay cowboys are a jarring image to illustrate that. It's a perfect metaphor for what we can aspire to as compared to what we settle for. Everyone else just sees gay cowpokes.

I was really moved by the film. tmonsta was there and she held me at the end as I cried. I know, it sounds silly to say something like that and I confess to feeling a bit awkward about writing that, but to say anything else about my reaction would be lying. Admittedly, given that I'm moving to the UK, it could be that the movie touched a nerve in me, but the point is the same.

( Spoiler alert ... )

There seem to still be a few folks who are a little unclear about what "civilization" entails, so I'm going to break it down into small, bite-sized pieces to hopefully shed a little light on the subject.

Ogg, Trogg, and Badnarik are three cavemen, living in their little cave. Part of the reason this situation has worked out is because, after due consideration, they've agreed not to kill and eat one another. They won't steal one another's clubs or loincloths and, perhaps most importantly, they've realized that the free rider problem of public goods is pretty tough to hide when there are only three of them.

Now this situation has worked out fairly well when one day, Trogg is screwing around and falls off a cliff and gets hurt. Ogg immediately goes down to help him and Badnarik, after a bit of consideration, does the same. They help Trogg back to the cave and after a good night's sleep, are relieved to discover that Trogg is sore, but relatively unhurt. No harm has come of this unfortunate incident, but Ogg and Trogg were pretty miffed that Badnarik was hesitant. It seems that Badnarik was relaxing in the shade and didn't think it was fair he had to get up and help Trogg back to the cave.

A few months later, a deep freeze sets in and wipes out Trogg's garden. Ogg has a bit of extra food saved, but not enough to feed Trogg. Badnarik is in the same position. However, if both Ogg and Badnarik chip in, Trogg can be fed. At this point, Badnarik has had enough! "That's socialism!", he grunts!

Despite their limited language, Badnarik, through a series of grunts and elaborate hand gestures manages to explain that he's in favor of lowering taxes, slashing bureaucratic regulation of business, and charitable -- rather than government -- welfare. In short, Badnarik views their three-man cave as a de facto government and because government welfare is compulsory (unlike charitable welfare), it is the equivalent of theft. Badnarik has always viewed Trogg as being a shifty, lazy sort of individual and he doesn't care if Trogg starves to death.

Ogg grunts "This is our cave. Love it or leave it."

The problem that Badnarik faces is one of democracy. If two out of three cavemen vote in a laissez-faire system, that's OK. That's how democracy works. If two out of the three cavemen vote to help one another out in times of need, that's OK too. That's how democracy works. (Hint: socialism is an economic system. Democracy is an electoral system. Don't get this wrong or you'll look like an idiot).

It's fine for people to voluntarily vote to help one another. Yes, there are those who will be upset that the majority didn't vote their way and it's OK to try and convince others to change their mind, but helping someone when they're down is not theft! When the majority of people vote for something, that's democracy, not theft.

Naturally, in a world of more than six billion people, the situation is a little more complicated than this. Communism's fatal flaw is that it kills incentive to produce, so productivity plummets (socialism has the same flaw, but not as severely). There's also the previously mentioned free rider problem. If someone is willing to abuse a system, they can siphon of resources that should rightfully go to those who really need help. Identifying abusers of a system is considerably more difficult when populations explode.

Ogg's "love it or leave it" comment is also worth considering. People (rednecks and conservative types, typically) sometimes say that about America. Of course, sometimes loving a country means that you want to stay and make it better. That's OK. The US is a democracy, remember? We're supposed to be allowed to dissent. (Don't pitch the "this US is actually a republic" argument unless you can clearly explain how splitting this hair effects things).

"Love it or leave it" also fails on another ground: what if there is no other cave? While many Americans want to limit or even eliminate immigration (both legal and illegal), many other countries are doing the same thing. Very few people are in a position to leave, so telling them that leaving is their only recourse is foolish, despite what Billy Joe and friends seem to think. You disagree? Find me a country where the majority of people here would actually want to live in and can legally emigrate to. Seriously, find me one. Many folks would love to hear it.

So what's the clear solution to these problems? There is none. Society has grown too large and too complex for a "one size fits all" solution. Solutions necessarily entail compromise, though some fail to recognize this. We need to live together, play together, work together, and not steal one another's clubs. The failure in thought that many have today is that they are insisting upon passive measures to help society. Refrain from killing. Refrain from stealing. Refrain from active measures that will cause harm.

Passive measures are not enough in a society as large as what we have. We need some active measures, too. When Trogg falls down a cliff, go down and help him. If Trogg is starving, feed him. You know what three of the most successful active measures the US has undertaken to help folks are? Social Security (it did and still does exactly what it was originally intended to do), the Interstate Highway System and the Rural Electrification Act. All three of these programs have had huge benefits for the US economy and not one of them could be successfully handled by private firms because in the short run, there's no profit in many of them. In the long run there are huge profits but it's tough to divert those profits to individual firms.

Naturally, there are plenty of other government programs (education, anyone?) which have reaped huge benefits and others which have been dismal failures. That's the nature of these things, but we muddle along somehow. Though the US clearly has many areas in which it needs to improve, from an economic standpoint, we have succeeded magnificently (on the large scale. Individually, it's often a dismal failure).

So that's your intro to civilization. Badnarik isn't happy with our success model, somehow confusing choosing to help one another with theft, but it's worked. There are those who would cheerfully abandon active government measures to help one another, thinking that the bigots and Christian Taliban in this country are going to open up their pockets to help those they don't like, but that's not what we've voted for and if you disagree with how we voted, that's OK. But saying that how we voted is tantamount to theft is saying that democracy is theft.

By the way, no other cave wanted Badnarik, so he stayed. When he finally fell down a cliff, Ogg and Trogg grudgingly carried him back to the cave and applied a splint to his broken leg. They still think he's an asshole, but an agreement is an agreement. Badnarik, oddly enough, didn't protest the help.

As some of you may know, Google's corporate motto is "Don't Be Evil". Maybe that's their corporate motto for others, but not for themselves. Check out these side-by-side comparisons of Google image searches for "Tiananmen" on their normal image search and the one they provide for China.

Obviously "Don't Be Evil" doesn't apply when massive profits are at stake. Or maybe objecting to censorship is just a cultural prejudice.

Despite the provocative title, this post is not political. Further, despite your political affiliation, the title "Why You Willingly Accept the Deaths of Innocent People" is perfectly accurate.

Most of you have cars. Most of you drive cars at times that you don't need to. Even I, who drives far less than most people, am guilty of this; I like the convenience. However, every time we hop in our car, we accept the fact that there is a non-zero chance that someone will die as a result.

Economists have long known that there's a simple way of eliminating vehicular-related deaths: eliminate vehicles. Of course, this trades some deaths for other deaths. If all vehicles were eliminated tomorrow, the economy would be destroyed, people would starve, critical medical supplies wouldn't be transported, people injured in accidents couldn't get to hospitals in time, etc. However, even if you cite this as a reason we still need cars, you probably hop in your car to drive to a restaurant, a beach retreat, visiting friends, etc. These are all "optional" trips (though still important to the economy) which significantly increase the chances that innocent people will be killed. Though we rarely think about this explicitly, we silently accept these deaths as the price we pay for this convenience.

Estimates of automobile fatalities in the USA vary between 30,000 and 40,000 deaths per year. This is a hard number to judge as this probably doesn't count pollution-related deaths or injuries which kill people much later, but let's settle on the 40,000 number for a moment.

The automobile industry is offering more and more life-saving features in their cars. Anti-lock brakes, seat belts, and airbags only touch the surface (incidentally, SUVs have been found to be more dangerous than most vehicles because of the increased odds of the other driver dying -- minivans are much safer). However, manufacturers are working on new lifesaving technologies. Imagine that your car warns you when you're traveling too close to someone. Your car won't start if you're intoxicated. Some cars beep if they think you're nodding off. New technologies are even being invented which can detect if your car veers outside of the lines.

Now imagine that 10 years from now we have a host of lifesaving devices and automobile related deaths are cut in half (unlike victims, I suppose). Instead of 40,000 deaths, we'll have 20,000. Typically we blame drivers for automobile deaths, but when cars take over more responsibility, problems will happen. Imagine you're tailgating and your car applies the break and someone behind you hits you, causing an accident. Imagine that you're swerving outside of the lines to avoid a pedestrian and your car tries to correct. Imagine that the ABS fails and you, not knowing how pump your brakes, hits the car in front of you. Imagine that you swerve outside the lines and your car doesn't correct or beep and warn you. In short, there are tons of ways in which fail-safe devices can fail.

That's the problem. The manufacturers won't be able to think of every contingency and all software has bugs. So by making a car much safer and reducing deaths, all of a sudden people who have lost family members will be more likely to blame the car's manufacturer than drivers. Unless we can figure out a way to handle this appropriately, there could be many, many lawsuits. As a result, automobile manufacturers will be put in a curious situation. If the lawsuits stemming from their life-saving devices are too expensive, it might be better for them to remove the devices, despite knowing that more people will die. But then they'll get sued by people whose cars don't have the devices. Maybe it's better to not add too many safety devices in the first place?

Think this is far-fetched? It's already happening.

It is clear that airbags save lives. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, airbags have saved 6,856 American lives. However, over the last 10 years, airbags have also killed 175 people.

Lawyers for the families of those injured or killed point to numerous confidential settlements reached between automakers and plaintiffs. They claim these settlements prove that automakers know airbags are defective.

The more safety devices there are the more lawsuits there will be no matter how many lives are saved.

I can't help but think about consciousness right now. What does it mean "to think"? How are we "conscious"? One question which has longed plagued artificial intelligence researchers is the very name of their field is almost meaningless because we cannot define what it means to be intelligent. There's a long standing thought game about intelligence. In 1950, British mathematician Alan Turing conceived of something we now call the "Turing Test"¹.

In this test, a human judge interacts with two subjects. One is another human and the other is a computer. The judge can only communicate with them via text and he or she must be able to determine which is the human and which the computer. If the judge cannot tell, Turing argued that the computer should be considered "intelligent". Though Turing himself later doubted whether this was meaningful, it's still widely cited as an example of what an "intelligent" machine should be able to do.

This seems a bit farfetched at first. Even in the late 1960s a software program called "Eliza" (play with a Javascript version here) was capable of carrying on limited conversations with people. Allegedly some people got pretty caught up in Eliza and how it behaved as a primitive psychotherapist. For example, here's a quick "chat" I just had with Eliza:

> Hello, I am Eliza.
* Hello Eliza. I am Curtis.
> Do you believe it is normal to be Curtis?
* I certainly hope not!
> What does that suggest to you?
* I don't want to be normal.
> Why don't you want to be normal?
* Normal is boring.
> That is quite interesting.

Of course, this is all very simplistic but over 30 years ago when this software was created it was revolutionary. The original author went on to write a book disabusing people of the notion that there was anything even remotely approaching intelligence in Eliza. All Eliza did was analyze what you write and produce canned responses using programmed patterns and substitutions. This, however, begs an interesting question. How is this behavior different from what you and I do on a larger scale? Do you ever find yourself "borrowing" a phrase that someone else uses all the time? Does someone ask how you're doing and you say "fine" without thinking about it?

"Ah", you reply, "But that's different!" I learn these things. The computer can only handle what intelligent people program into it.

Not so fast. I have released an open source software package called AI::NeuralNet::Simple². This is a very primitive software package for learning how neural networks operate. Neural networks are interesting because they have "neurons" connected by "synapses" which adjust their weight to stimulus. Mine is what is technically called a "feed forward back propagation network". In this type of network, information is "fed forward" through the network and the network outputs an answer. The correct answer is given to the network and the results are "back propagated" through the network. The network then adjust the weights of its synapses and you keep training the network until it learns to give correct answers. What is fascinating about this is how the network ultimately is able to give correct answers to questions it has never been given before. Further, these networks are very fast and can often be better at "guessing" answers than humans.

Reading about neural networks in games can be illuminating. One author described how they were trying to train their game armies using information from the book "The Art of War". In one battle, the human controlled armies showed up only to discover the computer controlled armies were nowhere to be seen. Then the human army was ambushed by the computer army which was hiding. They had never taught the computer to do that; it figured it out on its own. In another example a computer in Texas as part of an ambitious attempt to teach a computer enough knowledge to reason as a small child could asked the question "am I alive?"

Still, though these examples seem unsettling to some, we're still capable of tracing out the exact manner in which the computers behave, no matter how "human" it seems. There is no "thought" there, though it sometimes seems as if there is.

So perhaps what distinguishes us from computers is emotion. That's also something AI researchers are thinking about. If we can simulate emotions in computers, perhaps they can function better? Imagine a deep space probe noticing that its power levels have lowered. Perhaps it will "fear" death and starting shutting down all non-essential systems in an attempt to stay alive longer. Or perhaps a piece of software will get "angry" when it fails to complete a task but realizes the failure is caused by another piece of software over which it has no control. If it gets angry often enough with another piece of software will it start seeking alternate means of completing its task? By allowing computers to experience a rich range of emotions, who knows what complexities will emerge?

Still, this seems like we're faking it. These aren't emotions. The computers aren't thinking. And if I'm sitting in a room chatting with a computer via a chat client, the computer isn't intelligent, is it? Well, why not? How complex do I have to make that computer before we find we can no longer trace its behavior? What if we can eventually build a quantum computer with the computational ability of the human brain? Does the thing doing the thinking have to be sitting in a bucket of blood before we respect it? And with the advent of nanotechnology, it's conceivable that we could build up an analog of our brain, molecule by molecule, and eventually "switch it on". Will that be intelligent? Where do we draw the line? How? Why?

The problem with such idle speculation, of course, is what I referred to in the first paragraph. We don't know what it means to be intelligent. So many of us go through lives on autopilot, engaging in behaviors automatically and clinging to illogical beliefs in the face of evidence and yet we're still intelligent. I think.

---

1. The test was allegedly based on an old party game. In this game, a man and a woman go into a room and guests communicate with them only by written messages. The goal of the game was for the man to convince the party goers that he was actually the woman.

2. It's based on the neural network in the excellent book AI Application Programming by M. Tim Jones.