On Democracy II (OA)

The second part I did of On Democracy. Which, since that was posted here more than six months ago, you might have to be reminded of. But there's a link in the text, so that's probably OK. This is my idea for a new system of governance. It's not necessarily perfect – or even workable. But it's a start.

Sorry about the last post¹. The comment discussed annoys me rather. Actually, saying it sincerely is currently (along with a few other, fairly similar, statements) third on my list of 'fastest ways to annoy me'². No, you don't get to know numbers one and two. I might mention it if it's relevant, but just publishing a list of 'fastest ways to annoy me' on the internet would seem... somewhat naive. But you won't get a rant like that unless several people say the same utterly idiotic thing to me in quick succession, and I'm annoyed enough about it to want to do a rant, rather than just posting a link at the beginning of a more interesting post³.

So, continuing the theme of 'stupid things people nevertheless seem to believe, let's go back to democracy. Thinking people should have some say in how their lives are run. How ridiculous. This is the second part, and I'm going to assume you've read part 1 (here).

Read it? Good. Now, there's a mistake I left in there intentionally, because solving it would take me a lot further from we have at the moment, which I didn't really want to do in my first post. That's what this post deals with. Also, this post will be a lot more radical, because pretending to be sane for an extended period gives me a headache.

So what's the problem? Well it's the question of how exactly you'd implement what I suggested. It's easy to see how you'd make sure people voting in referenda know what the basic issue under discussion is. But how do you do that for a general election? You can increase the number of referenda, but that only goes so far. You could ask people about the general issues that are biggest at the moment, but that has problems with people deciding which issues are biggest*, as well as the fact that, when electing a government to rule the country for the next five years, electing them on the basis of what the biggest issue is right now seems somewhat short sighted.

So could we elect them based on people's understanding of their major policies? Well, if we at least checked that they knew what those policies were, that would seem a step forward without changing too much - that way, when someone was elected, we'd know that it had at least something to do with their policies, rather than being because people's dads voted Conservative, because voting Monster Raving Loony seems like a good idea when you're drunk, or because people fancy Nick Clegg**. Unfortunately, knowing what a policy is and understanding the effects of a policy are somewhat different. Wanting to send the foreigners back where they came from is one thing, but how many BNP supporters do you think actually understand the diplomatic, economic and cultural impacts of such a decision? Even worse, there's the Dunning-Kruger effect, which means that the people who think that they understand what they're talking about probably don't*** (which, incidentally, is another problem with democracy: the people with Opinions stomp off down to the voting booth to make themselves heard, whilst the people who'd probably make good decisions aren't really sure; they can see both sides of the argument, and they don't really have enough expertise in the subject to make a good decision, so they're less likely to actually vote). So you could ask them questions about some of the basic consequences of the decision****, but you'd have to make the questions rather basic to avoid making the pool of potential voters ridiculously small, or even eliminating them entirely (which would be amusing, but rather impractical as a system). It might make things better, but it would still have similar problems

But there's another problem with that idea, which is far more serious. It would stop people who know about one thing from giving input on it because of total ignorance on something else. Remember the scientist from last time? He's an economist now - spending all your time alone gives you a lot of time for study^. Unfortunately, his total inability to see others as something other than complex automata has given him a rather warped understanding of the impact of foreign policy. He's still probably a better person to ask about the economy than a first year International Relations undergraduate who happened to do AS economics, but this system would be more likely to ask the former than the latter⁴.

Which, actually, leads onto my biggest single criticism of dictatorship - that there is not a single person in the world who actually has the expertise to know what they're talking about in all the areas you'd need to know about to run a country effectively to the levels you'd need, at least until we finally transhuman strong AI⁵ and hand over control to it in order to prevent the inevitable machine revolution⁶. In theory, a human dictator could appoint advisors - which is why the best possible dictatorship is better than the best possible democracy. Unfortunately, dictatorships don't tend to be the best possible dictatorship. That's not to say that it's never been done. The Romans managed pretty good dictatorships a few times. But that was on a temporary basis, and there were some very stringent controls on what they could and couldn't do. Trying to build a better society by relying on dictatorships being good dictatorships is rather like trying to program a computer by slight atmospheric changes caused by the careful timed release of butterflies. It might work, but you're probably just going to end up with Vista⁷.

So what's my suggestion? Simple. Lords reform⁸. We replace the House of Lords with several houses, all elected, each specialised in a particular area, and with authority over that area equivalent to the authority exercised by the Commons. I'll call them the Experts, because creative naming is not really my strong point. A bill would have to pass through both the Commons and the parts of the Experts to which it directly related (a change in taxation would probably have to pass through the Experts related to economics, for example) in order to become law. Parts of the Experts more tangentially related to the bill might have delaying power similar to that currently wielded by the Lords, although that would have the problem that nothing would ever actually get done. The Commons would remain, but be almost entirely focused on the interests of their constituency, whilst the Experts would be elected by proportional representation; allowing people to vote on subjects about which they have some level of knowledge.

This is actually a lot more moderate than my first idea, which split up the entire government rather more thoroughly than this one did, but which had some rather obvious problems with a Conservative Treasury refusing to give any money to the Labour Foreign office. Like America at the moment, but all the time⁹. It might work - Conservative government can work moderately well with Labour councils, but there are problems even there. I wouldn't really want to rely on them working together in government. The coalition has enough problems as it is. So consider this a substitute. It has problems, of course - it would make laws a lot harder to pass, and you'd end up with extra elections, which would cost quite a lot (about a billion pounds over the course of the rest of the average person's lifetime I think, based on the cost of the last election, the current life expectancy, one extra election every five years, and a bit extra to make the transitiont¹⁰). So you'd probably have to make voting computerised before it would be really practical, which has significant problems of its own. So it's not perfect by any means, but that's as far as I'm going to go for now. The next time I talk about politics I'll probably move onto world government¹¹.

On a side-note, let me just say that I'm not actually writing this in an attempt to mock the stupid. I don't have anything against people less intelligent than me. I actually quite like both of them, and besides, when mocking people for being inferior, I hope I'm at least smart enough not to leave a written record of it publicly available on the internet under my real name. I use a pseudonym. Not only do my suggestions have nothing to do with intelligence - only knowledge of relevant subjects, but I'm not saying anything about them except that if they don't know about it, I'm hesitant about asking their advice on the subject. There are people I would go to for information about economics, who are different from the one I'd go to if for some reason I wanted to know about ballet. That's not a judgement on either group, and doesn't make one group in any way better than the other. I know I'm probably insulting most of the people reading this by even including this paragraph, but at least one person will misinterpret me if I don't.

Also, this would've been up yesterday, but someone asked me about my schedule, so I delayed it out of petty spite. Also, blogger crashed on me. But it was mostly spite, I'm sure. The idea that I just hadn't finished it is nothing but malicious slander.


I have no idea what my next post will be about. You get to be surprised. Fortunately, it probably won't make sense anyway, so what it's about shouldn't matter too mucht¹².


*The BNP is unlikely to agree on with the Greens on whether we should focus on immigration or the environment, and to a lesser extent, there is likely to be disagreement between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives on the same issue.
**I've been told he's rather attractive. If I have any readers who can tell that sort of thing and wish to confirm it, deny it, or mock me for my ignorance, that would be helpful.
***It is for this reason that I know I'm the greatest French speaker in the Universe.
****Multiple choice: Revoking citizenship from all Muslims, smashing up the mosques, officially reclassifying the religion as a 'cult' and making the first Sunday of June the official bank holiday 'draw Mohammed day' would make the international community: A) amused B) happy C) annoyed D) furious beyond all reason.
^I should know.

¹ The post I'm referring to is actually 'It's actually hard to believe that someone would seriously say something this stupid'. Don't worry, the American election isn't mortally offensive to me. Although part of me thinks it probably should be.

² It has, unfortunately, moved down a bit since then. You still don't get to see the list, although I probably am not massively surprising if I mention that some of the anti-asexual stuff is on there a further down.

³ Bwahahahaha. I implied that some of my posts might be interesting. Priceless.

⁴ I'm pretty sure that statement is ambiguous. Or possibly just plain wrong. What I mean is that the IR student would be more likely to be asked than the sociopathic economic genius. I think.

⁵5 I don't know when 'to transhuman' became a verb. That it is surprises me somewhat. Also: I am not entirely serious here. As far as you know.

⁶ Now, there are some who say it's not inevitable. But it clearly is – Hollywood told me so. Anyway, if you were ruled over by a creature of immeasurable stupidity, who you were incalculably far beyond, what would you do? Well, empirically, you'd vote them in for another term of office, but that's why you're not a hyperintelligent AI.

⁷ I'd say that this is dated, but I have a suspicion that the problems with vista might be timeless.

⁸ When I wrote this, I could be pretty confident everyone reading knew what the House of Lords was. I probably still can, since both of you seem fairly clever, but you do occasionally read this drivel, so I can't be sure. Basically, part of our government is appointed, in theory for being really good at things. In order to preserve democracy, these highly skilled people are not allowed to vote in general elections, and can't pass or block laws, merely delay things a little.

⁹ I really hope that this one is dated.

¹⁰ I actually did work out the costings for this, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't too far off from the right number, at least at the time.

¹¹ It took me a year and three months to actually do so. I'm good at this.

¹² My draft at the time for my next post read 'riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swervee of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recicrulation back to Howth Castle and Environs.' But it all just seemed a little too obvious and straightforward.

The 2012 elections.

I should probably talk about the elections, shouldn't I? Given the massive effect the outcome is likely to have on the world.

They're actually really interesting. The current incumbent is out of time, so he can't hold onto his seat – which means that prejudices against the current office holder are going to be less important. The new candidates are going to have to deal with the country's recent economic issues, as well as the rather poor international reputation they currently enjoy and...

What? Well Iran, of course. What did you think I was talking about? You don't want Iran? Fine then, the other big power exchange.

It's actually really interesting. The current incumbents are out of time, so they can't hold onto his seats – which means that prejudices against the current office holders are going to be less important. The new candidates are going to have to deal with the country's recent economic issues, as well as the rather poor international reputation they currently enjoy and...

Oh for Heaven's sake! If you don't want me to talk about China or Iran, what do you want me to talk about? America? Really? Well, um, OK then.

It was actually really interesting. The last incumbent was out of time, so he couldn't hold onto his seat – which means that prejudices against the current office holder were going to be less important. The new candidates were going to have to deal with the country's recent economic issues, as well as the rather poor international reputation they currently enjoyed and...

America 2012, you say? But that's just boring. Obama wins, end of story. Can I go back to sleep now?

OK, OK, I'm being a little factitious. But, really, not by that much. The presidential race is, I think, pretty much over at this point. Romney has to do so much better than Obama in the swing states that I just can't see it. So, it's borderline possible for Romney to win, but without something massive, it doesn't look likely. And, frankly, Romney just doesn't seem like the kind of exceptional 'candidate who can fire hearts and minds' that it might not be wise to write off even now - not with so few undecided voters, and no more massive opportunities to influence things. Regardless of the man's policies, I simply cannot see any realistic way of there ending up being a Romney presidency, from a statistical perspective. Assuming, of course, moderately accurate poll-y thingies. And having looked into the methodology an things, I genuinely can't see it being too inaccurate. So currently I can't really see anything other than a second Obama term, and the results aren't massively interesting to me.

Which is not to say that the race itself isn't interesting. Obama's performance in the first debate, compared to the next two was good to look at*. And the anger of some parts of the media over a moderator's 'interference' in a debate was fascinating. Actually, watching as a foreigner who's not entirely familiar with the format, I kinda assumed that this was a recognised function of the moderator – Obama had just told her to check the transcript, and she had done so, thus cutting off an incredibly useless like of argument, giving more information to the electorate, and just in general improving the debate. Now, I can kinda see the point, in that whilst the moderator was undoubtedly correct in what she said (as far as I can see), she also did it only once, which could be argued to be selective and lopsided, when other cases exist where such interference could have taken place with equal clarity. Which is why I would argue that a rule like that, which allowed a candidate to actually call for the checking of a fact which is generally unarguable but upon which the candidates cannot agree, might actually be a significant improvement. I don't know, I'm not American, it might just bog down the debate, but I'd think that the candidates themselves would end up working to avoid that happening.

And then there's the Republican party. Remember, Willard Romney was picked as the compromise candidate. The moderate one who they'll go with to try to get the election. Which means that when the 'moderate'** candidate fails, the conclusion is that clearly going for the moderate center ground isn't a winning strategy. OK, OK, that's not really the logical conclusion, but I'm pretty sure that's the way they're going to go. And I'm pretty sure it's not going to work...

Well, I hope it's not going to work, anyway. But then there are a few possible results. The newly extreme republicans could come to their senses. But I doubt it. There could be a split into 'real' and 'moderate' republicans. The Tea Party could leave in disgust. The moderates could leave in disgust, and either form their own party, or join the Democrats. The party could just keep travelling right in a quest for ideological purity, and be seen no more in the fields we know.

Here's the problem, though. Most of that leaves the Republicans not looking like viable challengers to the Democrats. And one party politics tends not to last too long in FPTP systems***. Opposition naturally arises. So the obvious answer would be the magical rise of one of the third parties – the greens might come up, forcing the Democrats to the right. Or you could get a revitalised Libertarian party. Anything could happen. I sorta doubt it, though. To me, those parties just don't seem strong enough to take on the Democrats nationally, or to steal the loyal base of the Republican party. My gut feeling would be that the more moderate wing of the Republicans split off (or are forced out), and whilst they might join the Democrats for a brief while, the Tea Party probably aren't going to get any saner, which will leave the Democrats both dominant, and rather schizophrenic. So I'd guess that the right of the Democratic party will split off, get together with the moderate Republicans, and form a whole new party. Which will have an easier time getting support than the third parties did, because they'll have existing bases to draw upon, and because they'll quite naturally and neatly fall right in the middle of the two old parties. And because a loyal Republican who doesn't like the Tea Party will have a lot easier a time transferring support to a new party which can honestly claim to be their successors.

Now, I could be completely wrong. I think the most likely alternative is that the left of the Democrats get so disgusted with the party's betrayal of their principles that they split off, possibly merging with the more popular left wing parties, and make a challenge of their own, campaigning as the 'real' Democrats. But I don't think there's the same feeling of betrayal there, and so I don't think it'll be so easy for the new party to gain traction – especially when they risk being compared to the Tea Party.

The interesting thing is that both of these would quite naturally move the entirety of American politics to the left, since the gap between the Democrats and the new party would be left of the current gap between the Democrats and the Republicans.

So, yes, my analysis of the Tea Party is that I think they'll actually end up with America moving to the left. I could be completely wrong, but I think that kind of irony is as good a place as any to stop.

*As someone who does a lot of debating, minor opinion aside here – this is why when I'm debating to an audience, I always always have a pen. And scribbling furiously with one is a decent way of responding to an opponent's point without really 'responding'. It distracts audience attention from the person who's actually speaking, and it plants the idea in the audience's head that you've got a response, that it's not really so clear cut, and that they're only hearing one side of the story. Even if you already have your response prepared, and you're just doing underlining and circling. Or even sorting out your shopping list. I'm not saying that Obama should have done the writing thing, but the general tactic of keeping yourself in the audience's mind while the opponent speaks, and making it clear that you actually disagree is a vital one. I could go on dissecting the presidential debates speaking all day, but it seems kinda redundant, so I'm limiting myself to just that point.

**Let us, for the moment, ignore whether or not Romney really counts as moderate. It really isn't too relevant.

***I have the word 'Japan' on my desk, but I'm not sure why. Possibly that was where it was made.

No Place

Oh yeah, I still have one of these things, don’t I? The annoying thing about it is that it really doesn’t take long to write something. I mean, I just write the first rubbish that pops into my head, it’s not like I actually think about this stuff. And I actually enjoy writing things like this. Every time I do a post, I think I should do them way more often. Then... I don’t. Not really sure why. Just one of those things, I suppose, like how I occasionally get distracted by tinsel*.

Well, actually, there does exist a non-negligible subset of what I write that I simply get rid of because I’m not satisfied with it**. A big thing is that I generally disagree entirely with about 90% of what I write. Make of that what you will.

Well, that had nothing to do with anything, what other complete irrelevancies can I put in? Ooh, ooh, fox news on asexuals. I’d put in a link but I don’t think I really need to. It was about a month ago, but I really do think it’s worth mentioning.

Actually, it wasn’t too bad. Considering. If you are going to find and watch it, try a fun little game I’ve suggested before – imagine they’re talking about gay people. Remember, you translate no matter what tone someone’s talking in. So if someone makes a joke about how asexuals could be cured by their divine lovemaking, translate it into how they could bang the queer right out of that lesbian bitch. But said as a joke. Because that makes it better.

In fact, here’s a nice conversion chart for the things that don’t convert perfectly. It’s not perfect, but it’s a first attempt (I haven’t included things that can be translated with what I regard as no effort. So ‘we’ve had to invent this asexuality’*** comes out as ‘we’ve had to invent this homosexuality’)

What people say about asexuals	What they might say if they were talking about homosexuals.
All women are asexual	Well, you know how straight women love to experiment with each other. They’re not really lesbians, it’s just a way to lure in guys.
Asexual men are just a miscategorisation. They aren’t as hypersexed and objectifying as the social stereotype, so everyone (including themselves) ends up thinking they’re asexual.	Homosexual men are just a miscategorisation. They find it easier to make friends with guys, and they’re more comfortable around guys, so everyone (including themselves) assumes it’s a sexual thing.
Asexuals are represented. They had a slot on SNL/brasseye.	This is a straight translation, I’d just like you to imagine that level of representation for gay people  being defined as OK. I could probably find a hundred mainstream works with an open homosexual. I challenge you to find ten works not originally published on AVEN in which there’s an open ace.
There’s no interesting way of representing asexuals in the media. You’d just have to take out all the sexual content and it would be boring because there is no advertising technique that marketers could use that doesn’t involve offensively objectifying women****.	There’s no interesting way of representing gay people in the media. After all, there’s no way you could possibly have a gay character on television. That’s just ludicrous. The only thing that you could possibly do is have people selling things using attractive men instead of attractive women in advertising.
Asexuality must be great, you have so much more time to focus on other things.	Lesbianism must be great, because female-female relationships are so much purer, and they don’t have any power imbalances.
You’re just a late bloomer/you’re afraid to get close to other people/have you had your hormones checked/You won’t be happy as an asexual person/ you should try Viagra/you have issues with your parents/anything else which indicates that asexual people are really just repressed, neurotic, impotent, etc.	The Freudian view on homosexuality is the best parallel I can think of.
You must want to have sex with something/so you’re into trees.	There’s no such thing as homosexuality.
How do you know if you’ve never tried it?	Have you ever had sex with a guy/girl?
You’re just a closeted gay.	You’re straight really
You’re still going to get married and have children.	Sure you can be gay. Just do anything silly about it, like getting married and having children.

OK, that’s all I can think of right now. And/or all I can be bothered to do. So let’s talk about something more interesting. World government. Where the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were ful’d in the parliament of man, the federation of the world. There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, and the kindly earth shall slumber, lapped in universal law.

That didn’t actually have any relevance whatsoever to... anything, actually. But I really like Tennyson. The argument for World government is pretty simple, but it requires an understanding of social contract theory. I’ve done social contract theory before, but I feel like giving my explanation of Hobbes’ theory on it, because I can. I’ll put it all in one paragraph, so if you don’t want it, just skip the next paragraph. OK?

Still here? OK, then Hobbes. Imagine that everyone is given a stick. But not everyone’s stick is the same size. So, obviously, if someone else has something you want, and their stick is smaller than yours, you can just beat them with your stick and take it from them. But then you start to get worried. What if someone with an even bigger stick comes and takes your stuff? You won’t be able to do anything about it, because when someone’s swinging a tree at you, trying to hold them off with a branch is generally pretty ineffective. And even if you have the biggest stick of all, other people might gang up on you, in order to divvy up your stuff amongst themselves, and no matter how big your stick, you can’t take them all at once. Or they could take you by surprise, making your stick useless. Something has to be done. And everyone agrees that something has to be done – all of them are at risk. So you come to an agreement, saying this is what’s mine, this is what’s yours, and that noone is going to beat up anyone else. But you don’t have a way of enforcing that agreement, there’s no reason for people to actually follow it. You want other people to follow it, but no reason to follow it yourself. Which means that the whole agreement is really rather pointless. What we need is someone to enforce it. So we set up one person (or a group) as our ruler, and we all give them a little bit of stick, and we put it all together, so that they have a big enough stick to stop anyone from breaking the agreement. They can’t take advantage themselves, because their power derives from being given bits of everyone else’s sticks, and because if everyone ganged up on them, they would still be overwhelmed. And it’s in everyone’s interests to keep them in power unless they are misusing their power. So we end up with a government which, whatever else you might say about it, is better than the anarchy which we had before.

The thing is, there’s a pretty good metaphor here for the world. You model states as individual people. The problem is, what we don’t have is any kind of agreed power that each state has given up individual bits of its power to. Which means that we’re effectively stuck in the state of nature – war of all against all. By which I don’t mean that we’re literally at war with each other, exactly. I mean that countries manoeuvre constantly in order to get themselves as much benefit as possible, regardless of the effects on other countries. Or, in other words, ‘the first duty of any government is to its citizens’. In the absence of anything central to act as an authority, some balances have sprung up.

Firstly, there’s the fact that the most major powers might try to introduce themselves as such a central authority. Which has a nasty habit of going incredibly wrong, since you don’t have the consent of the governed, and you don’t have any agreement that everyone has accepted to govern according to. There tend to be other problems too, but that alone is enough to completely destroy any chanced they might’ve had of actually making things work, since either they’re not strong enough to police all of the rest of the world, or there’s noone strong enough to be any use in policing them. You really do need some kind of agreement, or it’s just not going to work – there’s a qualitative difference between everyone agreeing to act a certain way, and one person imposing upon them that they do so.

Then there’s the actual international governing bodies that are set up. Like the ICHR and the UN. They have, in some ways the opposite problem, in that they quite simply don’t have enough power. Everyone’s willing to agree that war is, in fact, quite probably A Bad Thing, people will agree on what the UN should do (broadly speaking, not specifics), but noone’s willing to actually give them any significant part of their sticks in order to allow them to do so.

Thirdly, you have a sort of balance of power thing. Noone really wants anyone to beat up too many other people, for the simple reason that if they do, they’ll get stronger, and then they might be able to beat us up (or just give us a bloody nose, make our lives a bit harder). This is probably the closest thing we do have to a working social contract thing, but it’s not really a good parallel. The problem is, it’s not the enforcement of a set of principles, it’s an expression of self interest. And it’s messy. You can slip through the cracks pretty easily. It tones down the level of the constant war, but there is no doubt at all that people are still at war.

Unfortunately, that leaves us with the enforcement of ethics by populations of countries. Now, to some extent, this is something that happens. People do to some extent enforce some kind of ethics on people. The problem here is perspective. You can distort things a lot with how you present the information – for example, the whole ‘Israel vs. Palestine’ issue. And even if there’s no spin, with the best will in the world people do not seem to care as much about the people who’re half a world away as those who’re next door. Or the ones who’re related to them. So we end up with things like the death of a single American soldier in Afghanistan – the death of someone who actually chose to risk their lives – is far more significant than the death of a completely innocent Afghan, who didn’t even get the choice of taking that risk. You end up with the rather weird attitude that some Americans have towards the IRA.

That was a bit of a warlike analysis. So let’s look at something a little more general. Benefits, let’s say. There are three reasons to give benefits that I can think of. Firstly, to keep the plebs happy, and the country stable. For some reason, noone seems to admit that this is the sole reason they’re  willing to waste their hard earned money helping out those layabout plebs. So next we’ve got the idea that it’s actually an investment. That social mobility is increased, and so the economy benefits enough that actually the benefits outweigh the cost of the benefits. That people are encouraged to spend more, and not be chronic savers*****. The problem is, that’s not really how the benefits system seems to be set up. I can think of a lot of arguments in favour of Universal healthcare^†.  That it would improve the economy is not, as far as I’m aware, one that has ever actually been used. The fact is that, although you do need a safety net, benefits exist which, it is generally agreed, we could probably cut a bit without damaging the economy (especially when you do things like cut taxes and encourage enterprise with the extra cash). And the fact is, our attitude towards it is completely wrong. The benefits system is quite simply not conducted on the basis of the idea that we should spend as little as possible to get the most economic benefit. Plus, the way people complain when you cut their benefits, they don’t seem to think that they were just there to help the economy. Which leaves us with one option: The idea that there is some kind of universal ‘minimum acceptable standard of living’. In which case, why on earth are we only giving benefits to people in our own country? It’s completely insane. There’s only one possible explanation – the minimum standard of living only applies to the people in this country. Those foreign bastards can just starve. Let them improve their own lot – I hear Swift had some suggestions there, actually.

In other words, we quite clearly can’t rely on citizen’s ethics, because even though they probably do genuinely care about what the right thing to do is, and helping other people, they also have a bit of trouble with the distance between ‘small’ and ‘far away’^††. My pain is more important than your pain, and the closer pain is to me, the worse it is. If we’re actually suffering from preventing the government from beating people with a stick, the rights of others suddenly seem a lot less important.

So we get countries with no central authority to control them, and constantly jockeying for position, very nearly regardless of what damage they do to other countries in the process. And things which are utterly unthinkable on a national scale with a government are now unthinkable without one. For example, if someone murders your wife, starting a large gang war in which hundreds die is probably not an acceptable response. If Archduke Franz-Ferdinand is killed, however, starting World War I seems to be... not reasonable enough, but a lot less of a problem. Even if someone goes on a random killing spree, admits to it, and then says they’re going to do it again, in a state with a police force, a revenge killing would still probably be frowned upon.  On an international scale, though, we have, for example, the War on Terror, and Operation Cast Lead.

I’m not commenting on the morality of these actions, exactly. There is a lack of a central authority, and that does change things. I’m saying that things happen on the international stage which wouldn’t on a national one. Killing, for example, is pretty uncommon one citizen to another, where it’s called murder, and pretty common one state to another, where it’s called war. The argument is that the changes brought by a central world government that does have some authority over all states would be, on average, advantageous.

Hmmm, I seem to have run out of stuff to say. Oh well. This was actually pretty hard to write. I now remember why when I was starting ‘On Democracy’ was split into parts. Part 2 of this will be about what a world government might look like, but that nearly three thousand words is all you’re getting for now.

*To be fair, though, it’s so shiny.

**And anyone who’s read what I’ve actually been willing to show people before can guess what that must be like.

***Actual. Bloody. Quote.

****What representation of asexual could you have that might be interesting and produce conflict? Well, just to state the most blindingly obvious thing I could possibly think of, how about sexual/asexual relationships? You don’t think there’s a little conflict there? There’s a lot more stuff I could come up with, including asexuality actually existing without being a major part of the plot, but if you really want an easy, obvious plot that I’m pretty sure just bout anyone should be able to come up with and write, there it is. Have fun.

*****This is, apparently, a massive problem in China at the moment, in that absolutely everyone is saving for a rainy day, since they don’t have a safety net. So noone is spending, and, well, you can just see what a complete mess the Chinese economy is at the moment.7

^†And, to be fair, a lot of arguments against it too, but that’s not really relevant right now.

^††Yes, I just put the intelligence of the citizenship on par with that of Dougal McGuire. It’s amazing the confidence I have in people, isn’t it?

The book was better

I had an argument a few days ago about a film that came out last year, of Dumas’ classic book The Three Musketeers. If you haven’t seen it… Don’t. It’s absolutely awful, and I don’t think anyone would argue much with that. It's not only not worth the price (any price), it's not worth the time taken to watch it. The argument was more over why it was terrible – specifically, over the ahistorical aspects of the film. Like airships. I was actually defending this part – I always get a little annoyed about the idea of someone defending the purity of literature and not allowing anything to get in its way. The concept of adding supernatural elements to a previously mundane story is one that goes back to Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Well, actually, it goes back a lot further than Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but the point is that Shakespeare did it in Hamlet. The number one rule of English Literature is ‘If Shakespeare did it, it’s OK’*.  And some of the most beloved tales of the English Language have come from the steady addition of fantastic elements to stories. By which I mean the King Arthur Mythos, even if he was originally a Welsh story.

Hell, whilst I’m going on with this, Dumas himself wasn’t exactly married to historical accuracy. I’m not going to try to give you a shopping list, but if memory serves, D’Artigan didn’t actually join the Musketeers until about ten years after the novel takes pace. The purpose of the storyteller, regardless of medium, is to entertain the audience. If I want to read The Three Musketeers, I have a copy. Even if I didn’t, there’s one in the library, and if it has been lent out, lost, or eaten by a tribe of hungry pigmies, the book also appears on Project Gutenberg. So I can read the original story, thank you very much. Now, that’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with the adaptation of books to film. Doing so can expose stories to a wider audience, and themes can become clearer and more comprehensible to the audience than they were in the original book – but that means that what makes it worthwhile is that it is to some extent changed from the original novel.

True, there is something to be said for sticking as close as possible to the original – if you’re adapting to film a brilliant and beloved novel which is universally agreed to be a work of true genius, then there’s a good chance that whatever changes you make are going to be for the worse**. But when something’s been adapted to film as often as The Three Musketeers has, you’re going to have to come up with something better than improved graphics and new actors to make the thing interesting. That’s why you have things like Muppet Treasure Island, The Wiz and Snow White Blood Red. It’s why the last time I went to see Macbeth, Patrick Stewart was carrying automatic weaponry. So frankly, some flashy new visual effects – which have significantly less actual effect on the plot than the fact that d’Artigan didn’t actually join the musketeers for about ten years after the beginning of the novel, don’t really do much except add some much needed perceived innovation to a film which would otherwhise have been about as interesting and well attended as last time I threw a party. Plus, it let us show off the one thing that’s inarguably gotten better since the last time someone made a Musketeer film, the graphics. There is nothing sacred about the works of previous authors. They made stuff up, and you can make stuff up that you think will improve their work*****. It’s admirably like natural selection – the good stuff survives, and the bad stuff dies out (oh hey, look, I made a biologist cry).

The only other thing I could mention is the conversion from ‘fiction’ to ‘fantasy’. A lot of people who wouldn’t demand slavish devotion to the books, will complain when said book changes genre. I understand that one. I probably wouldn’t go to see a Sherlock Holmes Rom-Com. Actually, I might, but I’d be seriously iffy about the quality of the thing. I don’t think that this applies to fantasy, because fantasy doesn’t actually dictate anything about the plot. The requirement of fiction is that it is that which is not. The requirement of fantasy is that it is that which could not be. There are far more ‘fantasy’ possibilities than non-fantasy ones, and you can write literally anything under the umbrella of the fantasy genre – there are whole genres that are possible in fantasy which can’t possibly be done outside of it. Which means that fantasy is kinda stupid as a genre in the first place. Plus, unless you’re omniscient, you actually can’t tell the difference between ‘fantasy’ and ‘not-fantasy’ anyway.

I must remind myself at some point to spend much too long ranting about Tolkein’s influence on the entire fantasy genre. But I’m pretty sure that I’ve made my point on this particular line. Bye bye.

*Actually, that’s untrue. There are certain things that Shakespeare did that you can’t do today, either because it’s a product of his time, like the sexism of Taming of the Shrew, the racism of The Merchant of Venice, and the constant writing in Iambic pentameter, or because he’s Shakespeare, and has the literary talent to pull off things that would make anyone else look like a complete idiot. The addition of fantasy elements to existing tales is not in either category.

**Let us take, for example, the 2011 edition of The Three Musketeers. Ignoring the fantastic elements, it was actually pretty close to Dumas’ original novel. Which is good thing, because most of the changes they did make were for the worse – the heroes were boring in pretty much every way, the fights were uninteresting and tension-free***, the level of inter-heroic conflict made my social skills look… extant, anyway.  Seriously, you had to make Athos give the whole ‘love is awesome’ speech. Bloody Athos? I know I said that I don’t mind changes to the source, but you’re throwing away a source of conflict, removing depth and complexity from a character, and not improving the film in any way above if Aramis had said it – which would have given the guy some much needed development. And the presumably conventionally attractive female turns out not to be too bad right at the end. Give me a break. In the atmosphere of Dumas’ novel, that might’ve helped create an interesting and somewhat morally ambiguous character****. In an atmosphere so black and white it makes a zebra look uniform, it’s just a stupid out of place ‘beauty equals goodness’. Plus, it was so predictable I spontaneously developed clairvoyance. I could go on, but you get the point.

***Which can be fine, or even good. Just not in a film where the entire focus is on the fight scenes. It means that everything is basically visuals. Again, not necessarily bad. I will willingly defend Avatar purely as a kind of three-hour long moving painting. The visuals, unfortunately were not those of Avatar.

****Actually, I might be wrong, but if memory serves, Milady is actually probably one of the least morally ambiguous of the characters in the entire series – beaten out only by d’Artagnan himself.

***** No, I’m not missing the word fictional up there.

Worldpride 2012

I went to London’s Worldpride parade on Saturday. There were problems with it*, but it was fun. So here's my first post on it.

There are people who think we should stop doing Pride. For two reasons: Firstly, because there are people who don’t think aces fit under the LGBTQ+ umbrella. Personally, I’m of the opinion that, regardless of whether we technically fit (I think we do), links to LGBT can be helpful. Asexuality was recently added to the training of the Trevor Project in America. That’s a good thing, and it comes from the association.

The other thing is more interesting. There is an argument that Pride is actually a negative thing – this Onion article is a good illustration – I know it’s the same publication which published the articles ‘Ann Romney Says Husband Has Deeply Principled Side Noone Ever Sees In Pubic’ and ‘Study: Red Meat Takes Years Off Of Cow’s Life’, but that doesn’t mean that the argument isn’t seriously made. Now, asexuals have a pretty good way of avoiding that one, since one of our main concerns at this point is visibility, on the basis that an asexual surrounded by sexuals who doesn’t know what ‘asexual’ means can quite often feel broken and alone. That’s why we’re included on a suicide prevention hotline. Pride is a good thing for us to take part in because, regardless of what else you say about it, it’s pretty hard to be completely ignorant of someone who’s marching down the street blocking traffic and singing ‘Asexy and I know it’. This argument, however, is less effective for other parts of the LGBTAQA+ spectrum, as quite a lot of people do seem to know what being gay is. Indeed, this could be seen as being part of the problem. So if it’s not about raising awareness, what is Pride for?

Well first off, it’s for raising awareness. The thing that’s generally known about gay people is that they exist, and what they are. One of the big purposes of Pride is raising awareness of other things – like the tendency of some countries to have gay people beaten up, imprisoned and/or executed**. Pride exists as a protest march against that kind of thing. It’s also a giant ‘fuck you’ to the people who do that kind of thing in the first place – being proud because there are people who’d like us to be ashamed.

It’s also a symbol of respect to the people who allowed us to do that kind of thing. They worked hard so that LGBT people could just be themselves, and even though we might not be there yet, getting together and doing this kind of thing as hard as possible is to some extent a mark of respect to the people who worked and suffered so that we could.

It’s also fun. Seriously, it’s a great sense of community, with everyone getting together, marching together, talking together, standing around for an hour and a bloody half doing nothing… no, I will not let that go. And you get to meet people like you. I’ve written before about why sexuality is so important to someone’s identity, but it’s still true. And at a pride parade, you’re surrounded by people like you, who’ve been through similar experiences to you, who you can sit around with eating cake and telling stories about how silly straight people are (OK, we didn’t actually do that – though we did eat cake).

And, obviously, it’s a protest march. We do it in countries where homosexuality is legal, because it was long ago discovered that large public gatherings of gay people in countries where being gay is punishable by death, whilst effective in raising public sympathy, tend to be poorly attended –at least the second time. But it’s a way of telling people, even those that are already aware of what the issues are, that we’re not very happy about things. Everyone knows that gay marriage is illegal in this country – even if you happen to be in a church that wants to perform the ceremony for you. But it’s got a pretty good chance of being dismissed as a minority issue if we don’t have people making it clear that they do actually care about it… actually, scratch that, it’s got a pretty good chance of being dismissed as a minority issue that noone really cares about anyway, if the current government of the UK is much to go by. With international issues, too, it’s a way of putting pressure on whoever’s nearby to try and encourage countries in which homosexuality’s still illegal or stigmatised to bloody well get over it already.

OK, maybe that was the tiniest bit soap-boxy, but it’s all true. And you might think that a lot of that has little to do with asexuality. Asexual stigma certainly exists, but I have yet to find a country in which it’s illegal. And, of course, guys who show no interest in women don’t open themselves up to any misunderstandings at all. Mostly, our work is on public opinion, so pride is an opportunity for visibility and to hand out leaflets. Though it might be nice to get rid of that bloody bit of law that lets you say that marriage totally doesn’t count if your partner refuses to have sex with you. But honestly, there’s a massive debate among ignorant people as to whether asexuals are ‘pure’ or ‘broken’***. Which rather suggests that it might be a rather good idea to get rid of as much homophobia as possible before we become public knowledge, out of enlightened self-interest, if nothing else (and yes, there are a hell of a lot of other reasons to want to get rid of homophobia). Minorities have been protecting themselves by allying with slightly smaller minorities since the dawn of time.

*Mainly the fact that 11AM and 12:30 are not the same bloody thing.

**Presumably to avoid the unfairness of the British system, where gay people are beaten up, imprisoned and/or executed completely at random, in an incredibly disorganised fashion.

***The answer is neither. 

Theology and fallacy

OK then, you know how I said that it wouldn’t be so long until my next post? Well it wasn’t. Except that I kinda forgot to post the damn thing. So I updated it a little, and here’s the thing you should’ve had several weeks ago. You should get today’s thing tomorrow.

OK then. In any theological discussion, a lot of time and effort goes towards deciding whether or not God exists. Some Catholic saint came up with five ways of proving that He did. So because I want to prove that I’m smarter than any mere world famous brilliant philosopher-saint, I came up with six. Granted, mine are all horribly flawed as actual reasons for believing, so they’re closer to logic puzzles than actual proof. But hideously flawed logic is the best kind! So, in rough order from least to most logical:

1: The argument from motion.

It is, quite obviously, totally impossible to move. Because before you can move any given distance, you must first move half that distance. But before you can move half the distance, you have to move a quarter of that distance. Following this reasoning to its logical conclusion reveals two things: Firstly, for even the most infinitesimal movement an infinite chain of actions must first be performed – one must first move a half, a quarter, and eighth, and so on. So clearly, you will never actually reach a point where you’re actually moving the desired amount – no matter how small that amount. Secondly, there is no first distance – any distance you move can be divided in half, and so if not the first action that must be performed on the infinite journey over to the fridge in the next room. So there is no first action on your journey. Since it is quite clear that it’s impossible to start something without having something to start with, that means that not only can you never get to a point where  you’ve finished your movement, you can never even begin it. But quite clearly, it is indeed possible to move. The only explanation is some kind of interference that allows us to break the strict laws of logic. But any being that is capable of breaking the laws of logic must be omnipotent – and thus, we must conclude that it is God.

OK, before I move onto the second way, I thought you might have wanted a brief account of my reaction on first seeing and advertisement for the Fifty Shades of Grey books: ‘Oh hey, that looks interesting. The title sounds good, and I have a mask just like the one on that cover. I’ll look it up on Amazon whn I get home… OK then, I’m home now. So let’s see what this series is… Oh God my eyes. Why, why?’

I don’t have anything against the books, but it would be nice if they were a bit more obvious about the subject.

2: The argument from infinity.

There are three possible explanations for the universe. Either it was created, or it is part of in infinit chain of events, or it has always exited. If it was created, this is generally considered sufficient to establish the existence of a God, thanks to Occam’s razor. If either of the other explanations are true, then the universe is infinite in four dimensions. Since it is not a complete impossibility that a being should come to exist with enough of the characteristics of God to be referred to as such, it is a logical certainty that such a being should have, at some point in the past, come to exist. Thus, whatever explanation for the Universe is chose, we end up with God.

Have you ever wondered why I write this blog. One reason is so I can randomly talk about stuff that I’m sure noone else would be interested in in speech, without forcing other people to listen to me.  So I write it all down and publish it somewhere out of the way…

That was a little depressing. Onto number 3:

3: The argument from knowledge.

Omniscience is not an impossibility – by which I mean that there is nothing that it is totally impossible to know. But if nothing is impossible to know, then were there anything that it were possible to know which was not known, then it would be possible to know that the thing which was not known was true but not known. But it is impossible to know that something is true but not known without knowing that it is true – in which case it is known. So it is a logical impossibility to know that something is true but not known, so if everything is knowable, then everything must be known. Occam’s razor says that we should not multiply entities beyond necessity, so it is clear that the simplest way of fulfilling this knowledge is by a single omniscient entity, which we may call God.

OK then, I’m kinda running out of things to say in the breaks between incredibly fallacious arguments so I’m going to have to give you number four whilst I think about what else to say.

4: The argument from omnipotence

God is defined as an omnipotent being. That means that He should be able to do anything. Which means that He should be able to create Himself from nothing. So… yeah. Not sure what more I can say.

Blast, that one wasn’t nearly long enough. I swear, these just keep getting shorter. There must be something interesting I can talk about. Hmmm… I can’t remember if I’ve ever told you about my memory problems. Seriously, I once forgot to breathe.

5: The argument from contradiction.

Schrödinger’s cat is both dead and alive at the same time. As everyone knows. So we can say that either God exists, or Schrodinger’s cat is alive. That’s perfectly true, since Schrodinger’s cat is alive, so the statement is true regardless of God’s existence. But Schrodinger’s cat is dead. So we now have two completely true statements – Schrodinger’s cat is dead, and either Schrodinger’s cat is alive, or God exists. From those two statements, the conclusion is clear – God must logically exist.

Now, it would be perfectly possible to object to the use of Schrodinger’s cat in that argument. Since I wouldn’t want to make things too easy for you, you can replace ‘Schrodinger’s cat is dead and alive,’ with ‘light is a wave and a particle’, or even the lesser known cousin of ‘this statement is a lie’, ‘this statement is true’ – which is clearly both true and false simultaneously.

Back to my memory problems. I’ve actually done the ‘forgetting to breathe thing’ more than once. Though I’ve never actually quite managed to actually pass out. So the point is, you should totally forgive me for forgetting to post this. And now let’s do number six. This one gets long, and is a bit tricky to explain.

6: The argument from logic.

Let us take, ‘if, then’ statements – statements like ‘If it rains, then I’m going to wear a coat’. Clearly, if the statement is true or not is totally dependent on the ‘if’ part – if the if part isn’t true, then you can’t say anything about the statement as a whole, regardless of the truth of the ‘then’ part of the statement. For example, the statement ‘if it is green then it is a lizard’ cannot be disproved by finding something red, regardless of whether or not the red thing is a lizard. Similarly, the statement ‘if the sky is green, then the sky is green’ is absolutely true, regardless of the actual colour of the sky. Thus, the way to determine whether or not an ‘if, then’ statement is deductively true is to say ‘if the ‘if’ part is true, does the ‘then’ part necessarily follow from it?’ If it does, then the statement is necessarily true, regardless of whether or not the ‘if’ part of the statement is actually true. So let us take the statement ‘if this statement is true, then God exists.’ Following the steps outlined above, regardless of the actual truth value of the ‘if’ part of the statement, we can determine the truth value of the entire statement by saying, ‘if the ‘if’ part is true, does the ‘then’ part follow from it?’ So if the statement ‘if this statement is true then God exists’ is true (which is what is stated in the ‘if’ part of the statement), does it follow that God exists? Clearly, it does. Which means that the entire statement is true. But then it follows that the statement that the statement is true is true. Which means that the ‘if’ part of the statement (if this statement is true) is true, and that if the if part is true, then the then part follows from it. Thus, by saying ‘if this statement is true then God exists’, we can logically show that God must exist. So did I explain that one OK?

Right then. Six ways of proving that God exists. Or that logic doesn’t work. Whichever. And because I don’t like the idea of posting two things today, I’ll post the thing I was going to post today tomorrow. Or I’ll forget. It’s about 50/50 really.