Security = Coercion

Many of us are familiar with Recaptchas, albeit most us don't know what they called. They are those warped words we type in to create accounts or make payments online. The reason for their existence is to prevent computer bots from trying to create accounts or stealing people's identity.

ReCAPTCHA was a project started by Luis von Ahn at Carnegie Mellon to digitize, well, everything. Most of the text we are looking at in Recaptchas are taken from old manuscripts (hence why some words look like real words, but are rather odd, simply because they could be from Middle English or a proper noun).

The human mind can easily recognize various things which are naturally programmed into our minds. In fact, this natural software is so good we tend to project things like faces or animals into ambiguous patterns and shapes, such as clouds or pieces of toast. Computers, on the other hand, can only do this if it has been told to do so. But computational recognition is fairly good. With the app Google Goggles one can snap a picture of Loose Lucy's logo, a fairly warped logo, and can tell you exactly what it says and where the closest store location is. But Recaptchas randomly warp the text or add odd features such as a difference transparency shape over the text or an irregular line through the text. Since the digital scanning of old print and archaic fonts are generally enough to prevent a typical bot from recognizing the text, a little warpage wouldn't hurt to stop even the most advanced bot from recognizing the text (even Google Goggles... try it).

Since humans with fairly good accuracy can decipher these warped texts, while computers cannot, it makes for a reliable security measure, so that a computer bot cannot hack my saving's account and transfer the funds to an offshore account. Many of us remember that these originally contained only one word, but in recent years they now contain two words. Most of us don't really care that a second word was added. I, on the hand, am very over-analytical (acquaintances of mine tend to give me grief for this) and I was curious why a second word was added.

Luis von Ahn is also responsible for another idea that utilizes human recognition over computational recognition (once again, something computers aren't that good at) : it is called the ESP game. Essential, in search engines we can type a word such as "rabbit" and we will get images of rabbits. Now, a computer cannot actually find pictures of rabbits with images alone. So people were needed to look at images and give labels for the images. When multiple people used the same descriptive words for the image it can be an accurate description of the image, and those words are used as metadata for search engines (this is why if you type in "rabbit hole" you might get a few images of "butt holes"). Thing is, people don't like doing these things for free, at least not willingly. They originally packaged this as a sort of game, hence ESP game, but it wasn't very fun.

So how did Carnegie Mellon, Google, and other digitized resources get people to willing provide this sort data for free? By adding a second word to Recaptcha texts in online transactions and account creations. The first word is used to make sure you are a human and not a bot, while the second word is added into ReCAPTCHA's and Google's databases for image metadata. (I'm noticing right now that I can put labels on my own blog for Google to use).

So it's official, security and coercion have fused. Security, a capitalistic idea we conjured up to prevent something like coercion (as well as theft, rape, murder, assault, etc...) has now been infiltrated by the very things it was built to prevent. Are these intangible constructs faulty because the people who invented them for a specific purpose can now use that construct was a gateway for its own antagonism? It is something like the movie The Net, in which a computer security program is used to steal identities, eliminate identities, and ultimately kill their victims... except this is so low-key, under the radar, and practically negligible and convoluted that it is difficult to tell if it is ethical. Even worse, most people don't seem to care.

Prove you're human:

Mass Intelligence

We all know people are pretty stupid (a subject I tend to work with from time to time). We even recognize moments when we as individuals act completely oblivious and idiotic. I was discussing just how stupid people could be with two co-workers of mine today, and I decided to throw a curve ball at them, namely that there is intelligence in the masses. In other words, individuals independently act pretty stupid, but in the masses people tend to be quite intelligent. I am a firm believer in mass intelligence for several reasons, but the big reason is that it is a natural occurrence and common in the animal kingdom.

Of course, we all tend to think that if individuals are stupid, then their stupidity only augments as one adds more individuals to the equation. This can be so in small groups, but as groups gain momentum the intelligence spikes. There are several examples, and I will discuss only four. The first one is a natural example in the animal kingdom : ants.

That's right, ants. If we watch a single ant we notice a pattern : there is no pattern. They act rather chaotically and individually, idiosyncratically whimsical. Add a few more ants to the equation and the chaos propagates. There does come a point of critical mass in which there will be enough ants that order begins to rise. These insects develop caste distribution systems and can even preform some extraordinary tasks. For instance, ants, if they need to cross a gap, say from one branch to another (relative to an ant), they will start linking with one another to form a bridge across the gap like an anamorphic particle sponge (that's team work!). Now how can a bunch of stupid individual ants preform such an amazing task? Simple, entropy of stupid declines at a critical number of ants until the intelligence in masses begins to rise.

Now does this occur with humans? Yes. I only need to give three examples to demonstrate the variety of intelligences that reside in the human masses. Since there are different types of intelligences, we will look at three : survival, accuracy (in numbers), and optimal path coordination.

Survival. If one ever reads the Darwin Awards one would know that people do some pretty stupid things that put their own lives in danger (often taking them). So, if we assume that stupidity grows as the masses grow, then how do people survive catastrophes? Let's look at one of the most remarkable example of humans cooperating, staying calm, and working through heavy stress under violent conditions, while ultimately surviving : the terrorists attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11. Of course, there was some looting and vandalism, but those are mostly outliers. In comparison, there were millions of people who stayed calm (relatively calm for such an event), helped each other out, and cooperated with one another as well as with the authorities. It was so amazing that so many people could work together through such an event that it stunned the media (I still remember CNN wouldn't stop commenting on how cooperative people were being). In fact, the whole nation shaped up. People volunteered, MTV started playing music again (a rather amazing event), and we all started respecting firefighters and police officers for what an immensely difficult job they have.

This is survival through cooperation. Humans are naturally a communal species. We evolved and survived through cooperating in groups. It seems logical that in times of catastrophe we would revert to our primitive instincts that helped us survive over the millenniums : communal cooperation.

So, can we be intelligent in other ways? Yes. In fact, we can even be smarter than an expert on some very fundamental things like guessing the weight of an ox (article here). In the early 1900s Francis Galton, a renowned statistician went to the country fair. While at the fair there was a contest to see who could most accurately guess the weight of an ox. Expert cattle farmers believed they could accurately guess the weight of the ox given their experience, but they were always off by a few pounds. But the layman was even worse, usually being off by many more pounds. But when all the guesses were averaged together the collective guessed the most correct. In other words, the average guess was closer to the actual weight of the ox than the experts on their own.

The other way in which people are intelligent is in pathway coordination. This is something that people are absolutely horrible at when in small groups. Actually in small groups they are worse than when they are by themselves. I am often met with frustration when I am walking down the sidewalk and I am approaching a group of, say, three people, and they walk abreast. I particularly get frustrated when none of them budge and think that I will some how magically walk through them (or vice versa). Then last minute one of them (usually the one I target deliberately) just barely budges and we still collide and the other person gasp in amazement that I would walk right into them. Every had this happen?

Now, if one goes to New York City into a location such as Time Square, aside from it being densely crowded, traffic flow is fairly consistent for a sea of people. In fact, people hardly collide unless someone stops to take a picture. Why is this so? If you watch a high speed video of people walking through Grand Central Terminal at rush hour one would notice something quite extraordinary : there appears to be coherent paths that people follow (an example of this can be found in the Ron Fricke film Chronos). In fact, the paths are so consistent and coherent that they are identical to particle flow. There are a minimum number of paths that are localized on transit vectors from platforms to exits. Note that none of these paths are physical, but rather abstract constructs of human activity. These paths to not intersect, but rather merge and depart, which optimizes the flow of particles / individuals, while avoiding interferences. How does this happen at rush hour with hundreds of thousands of people every hour, but three people cannot accommodate a single individual walking down the sidewalk?

I can really only give an opinion or a guess, but it seems plausible. It is because in the masses usually a single objective is initiated. In 9/11's case it was to survive, and the survival of the individual depended on the survival of the collective. In guessing the ox's weight the collective's objective was strictly guessing the ox's weight. At Grand Central Terminal the objective is to get to work or home as quickly as possible, and the only way to do that is to go with the flow; to go against the grain is to cause delays for yourself, the collective, and if the collective is delayed then that means further delays for the individual.

Additionally, I would suspect that when the collective is focused on a common objective those that go against the grain are easily canceled out, and that everyone striving together to achieve a the common goal will ultimately succeed by sheer numbers alone. This is probably why riots and protests are often successful.

Ad Hoc :

One may think I completely pulled from James Suromiecki's Wisdom of Crowds. Point in fact, I have never read the book. In fact, I have never heard of the book until a moment ago when I was searching for some articles or books on the subject for further research. I was rather stunned that he finds that there are three primary intelligences in masses, and that the ones I discuss are pretty much the same thing. I actually feel like not posting this writing for the simple reason that it is already been discussed elsewhere. But, I will anyway.

Climate Change : An Uncertainty Principle

I have hesitated to write about Climate Change for a number of reasons. The big one is that I know many people who I associate with do believe we, that is human activity, is to blame for Climate Change. But if I don't give your religious views any respect to critique, then your views on atmospheric climate certainly deserves the same.

Let me state this from the get go : I do not believe we understand enough about atmospheric climate patterns and behavior to make any definitive long-term predictions or assumptions on how the future of the biosphere will turn out. Let me repeat that : we do not understand enough about the earth's atmosphere to make any good predictions about what it will be like in a few years. Hell, meteorologist can't even accurately predict the weather for next week, let alone next decade.

I say we don't understand enough, simply because that is the damn truth. For instance, what is the worst green house gas of them all? Methane? Worse than methane... It is WATER VAPOR. That's right, humidity! (Just think it over a bit). Humidity is so ubiquitous and ever in flux that it is hard for meteorologist to model it's behavior, hence why humidity predictions are usually highly erroneous or absent entirely. Modeling humidity in atmospheric science can be done, but the effects of it's presence and fluctuations is a bit like trying to model the results of psychic activity, i.e. consciousness, in political revolutions. Consciousness is present, it can be modeled and followed individually and collectively, but the results of consciousness's presence in political revolutions is a bit hard to predict (particularly when we are just watching conscious activity).

Now, I'm no meteorologist, but if I know a few things about thermodynamics, then there shouldn't be much flaw to my argument here. Five years ago the mean global temperature was on the rise since that volcano in the 1980's erupted and cooled down the earth from over 50 years of warming. Everyone was all worried about the ice caps melting and where the polar bears would live. What happens when ice melts into water? The water cools down. Ice caps were melting, and lo and behold we receive one hell of a winter this year. Am I on to something or am I not doing this right?

Numerous Bostonians have been telling me that this by far the worst winter they have experienced yet (just like my mother says this year's summer in SC is the worst yet (every year)). We have had something like three times more snow this year than the average for the past decade. Really? I'm from South Carolina and I am getting along just fine. Aside from more snow than last year, this year doesn't seem as bad as last year to me. Grow a set of balls. Boston is next to the Atlantic Ocean. As the sun moves from east to west it takes longer for the land next to ocean to warm up because of the oceanic thermal mass. This is why California is much warmer than we are.

But wait! Isn't this a good thing? It's cooling down. It was suppose to be getting hotter and hotter and hotter. Why are we complaining? Now, as for the ice caps coming back from their melted state, that seems to be something I don't have an answer for (because I'm not a meteorologist). My guess is that with cooler ocean temperatures they will come back. And since no one has been talking about ice caps melting for the past two years, I assume they are getting along fine.

Let me give a bit of recent history on the earth's climate. Anyone remember the weather five years ago? Of course you don't, memory doesn't hold on to discomforts. But remember all those hurricanes? They kept getting worse and worse, and then Katrina hit and everyone thought the end was near (literally). Just like the predictions for massive, unrelenting, anarchic crime waves in the 1980s, we were predicting hurricanes to be absolutely outrageous and monstrous terrors. Then 2007 rolled around and what happened? NOT ONE HURRICANE. Well, there was one, a Cat 2 and it hit Texas from the Pacific. And the next two years were pretty pathetic with hurricanes as well.

Just because it snowed more this year doesn't make it a pattern. In fact, just because it gets colder each year for four years in a row doesn't make it a pattern. Climate change is a long-term event, remember? Now, if it kept getting colder (or warmer) each year for 50 years running, then there is something different all together. We are jumping the gun when we call these events "climate change".

That's not climate change, that's weather, and it has anomalies, fluctuations and changes as well. I'm not saying that it isn't happening, nor are we to blame. I am simply saying we don't have the slightest clue how the atmosphere works. Hell, it took us 6,000 years to figure out that the earth was spinning and that's what made the sun, moon and stars (appear) to move. It also took us about 13,000 years to put wheels on our luggage.  We've been studying the atmosphere for maybe about a century.

One thing's for sure, no one is worried about Santa Claus.

Darwin Awards : Architects Learning from their Mistakes

I was recently reviewing some of the most recent nominees for the Darwin Awards. Whenever I do read the Darwin Awards I always flashback to certain moments in my past in which I have done some plain, good ole fashion dumb things. Many of those things certainly could have lead to my own demise (and they probably would have landed me on the Darwin Awards had I actually kicked the bucket). None of them I am going to recount here. But needless to say I lived, and because I lived, I learned. For some people this doesn't happen : some live and don't learn, while others don't live and certainly don't learn. But for those who don't live, we who live to hear about their stupidity do learn from their misjudgment.

The same might be said for designer, though usually fatality is normally not a factor. We learned a lot of how cities work and how people live in cities when we started building Cobusian Radiant Cities. What are these Radiant Cities? They are the housing projects, or more commonly called The Projects. They are that bad end of town that is nothing more than government funded slums. They were originally conceived as Utopian cities where everyone can live comfortably and happily ever after. The Pruit Igo housing project taught us that they are certainly one of the worst ideas ever rendered by the Modernist. Pruit Igo, three years after it was built, underwent major structural renovations... that is it was demolished, because of the massive amounts of vandalism, rape, murder, theft, and drug dealing it propagated.

Now do we blame Minoru Yamasaki for designing Pruit Igo? (Yamasaki design the World Trade Center, which so happened to be destroyed in a similar fashion under different circumstances). Or do we blame Le Corbusier for even thinking up the Unite prototype? OR... do we thank them for teaching us a thing or two? Do we thank them for risking and ruining their reputations to teach us such things?

How about a different example. I'll stay with architects. The John Hancock Tower in Boston, MA designed by I.M. Pei (he designed the glass pyramid in front of the Louvre) was a major disaster. He wanted to maximize the glass glazing and minimize the mullions that hold the glass in place. Turns out that the sizing of mullions simply was not enough. In short, what happened was that temperature fluctuations caused the glass panes to fail. Although this was a huge and costly failure, engineers certainly learned plenty about engineering glass facades from the John Hancock Tower's mistakes. In fact, the engineering of full-glass facades would not be where it is today if Pei and Partners had not stuck their reputations out on the line. Although Pei's reputation was tarnished, most engineers don't really blame him that much, simply because they learned a lot from these failures.

So what about other architects? Ones that we love to point and wag the finger at for their mistakes? Frank Gehry is particularly under the gun right now, since a good deal of his buildings are leaking. Do we wag the finger at him for designing buildings that are inevitably going to have faulty construction? Really, we should be thanking him for giving us a plethora of designs that we should never repeat. Renzo Piano teaches us something at the California Academy of Sciences that inverted glass domes naturally create waterfalls (no, the wet-floor signs did not come with the architecture). We should thank him for teaching us that.

I always enjoyed this particular quote from Frank Lloyd Wright : "If it doesn't leak, then it's not architecture."

We thank individuals of the Darwin Awards for teaching us to not do stupid things like depressurizing your anus with six atmospheric units of pressure, or trying to muffle the noise of a firecracker by placing it between your thighs. We also thank them for displacing themselves from the gene pool. Why shouldn't designers be thanked for having bad ideas that turn out to monstrous? Why not thank them for placing certain design ideas outside the design "idea pool"?

Sometimes faulty designs aren't the worst that can happen to a building. For Peter Eisenman this is certainly the case :

My Informal Fallacy Is YOUR Problem

It has been evident throughout human history (at least since the bicameral period) that humans don't like to be the ones to be blame, and we often send the blame to someone else. Evidence : Nuremberg Defense, Twinkie Defense, Charles Manson Defense, and What-should-I-do? Defense (see my The New Defense : What Should I Do? posting). A new one I have just recently encountered with one of my roommates is : if I am at fault it is because it is your fault, therefore I have no fault whatsoever. To see how this informal fallacy plays out, some background is needed.

About two months ago I had a suspicion that one of my roommates or one of their friends / significant others was using my soap and shampoo. Of course, because I was using the soap and shampoo it was hard to tell if it was only me. So about three weeks ago I bought a second reserve of toiletries and kept them in my room until I needed to shower. After a week it was quite clear that soap and shampoo have a half-life of about two weeks, that or someone was using my shampoo and soap without my permission! I could have confronted them about it. But I decided that since the soap and shampoo in the shower is my property, then I can do whatever I want to it. So I add some urine to the shampoo mix, and micturated on the soap. I kept this up for about two weeks.


Then one of my roommates approached me last night and angrily inquired as to if I was "pissing" in the shampoo (that is my shampoo). Well, now the guilty has been revealed. But, oh no, that's not my roommate's problem, it's my problem. Then my roommate proceeded to tell me : "How dare you piss in shampoo bottles!" Great red herring fallacy. The problem clearly isn't that they were essentially stealing from me, it's that it is blasphemous to urinate in shampoo. Therefore I am at fault. I am at fault for defiling something at was mine. 

It's right on par with killing my cat (even though I don't have a cat). It's my cat, I can do what I want with it, and if I want to poison it, then that is my right. NO! The cat is a living sentient entity, and you can't kill it. Therefore I cannot urinate in my shampoo (this is a generalization of what actually was said). Nice straw man fallacy.


It is as if we are all living like children being blamed or commanded by parents with illogical fallacies (parents typically use fallacious dialogues to rear their children, typically with bifurcation, or false dilemmas).


If I may redirect towards a previous posting Do You Know What You Are Asking For?! If people really want to return to the "Golden Days", to a time of simplicity, then our manners of interacting with one another need to be simpler. I have a suggestion : Take responsibility for your own actions. It makes things far more simpler, because then we don't have to navigate the blame web.

In the words of Bill Maher:
"Grow up or die." (Yes, that is a bifurcation fallacy)