Byzantine Reality

While I’ve got a short break from school and the like, I’ve been looking over playing Metal Gear Solid again. Before I do so, I’ve heard a bit online and offline about Metal Gear Solid 3′s boss team, the Cobra Unit, being markedly superior to it’s successor’s team, the Beauty and the Beast Unit. Since MGS4 is so fresh in my mind I fought it off for quite a while, but now I think I can talk about it a lot better than before.

The appeal of the Beauty of the Beast Unit to me is numerous: they’re awesome looking women with amazing technology backing them up. They’ve all got post traumatic stress disorder and as a result are consumed by the emotion that bears their name. Although it turns out that Screaming Mantis is manipulating them to form a cohesive unit, each of them is formidable in their own right. But that’s not the real question at hand here; we really care about how they stack up against MGS3′s boss unit, and after some consideration, the Cobra Unit really is the better team.

The Cobra Unit consists of members who willingly join together to serve The Boss’  goals, whereas The Beauty and the Beasts (as we’ve already stated) are being controlled by their master, Screaming Mantis (and likely Psycho Mantis). Thus the Cobras are far more cohesive and believable as a real “team” than the Beauty and the Beasts. Furthermore, the Cobras provide a much more interesting and unique gameplay experience than the Beauties. The battles against the Beauties are pretty standard as far as today’s games go; you shoot them until they go down, and sometimes they have a little patterm you have to learn to accomplish this. But two of the Cobras provide really unique boss fights.

The battle with The End can go a number of ways: you can have a sniper duel in the forest area, or you can fast-forward your game clock so that he dies of old age, or you can even shoot him before the duel and avoid the battle altogether. Although I chose the first (still a unique battle), the fact that you have all these options available adds to the possibilities involved. Furthermore, the “battle” with The Sorrow isn’t even a conventional battle. You encounter everyone you’ve killed in the game thus far and finally reach him, resulting in a very easy or very difficult battle depending on how you’ve played the game. Once you’ve reached him you “die” and need to revive yourself using a relatively obscure (but occasionally mentioned) item which is certainly not obvious to figure out the first time through.

Although I love the futuristic tech and the pure insanity behind the Beauties (and the male voice dubbed under their voice really sells it), I suppose I agree with the “popular opinion”. The Beauties are amazing, but they don’t quite have the cohesion and the interesting gameplay that the Cobras yield.

“There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.”
– Thomas A. Edison

Would it be unethical to make this Weapon? How many lives would we save by making a Weapon that would constantly check Man’s dark side and keep us away from war? Yet to make something so brutal, so malicious, it inherently feels so wrong, doesn’t it? But let’s look at it a little bit closer, shall we?

The question is not whether or not this is feasible. The advances we have made in the last fifty years are so numerous it would be frivolous to argue otherwise. The relevant questions are (1) what this machine / force would be and (2) what this would do to humanity.

To follow on with Edison’s quote, I do not believe this terrifying force would be a simple weapon (like a gun). For it to be something that truly scares humanity, it must act on its own. If the weapon if so brutal, it can simply not be used and alternatives can be invented. Thus it must have its own mind. Two examples immediately come to mind (of similar nature): The Patriots (of Metal Gear Solid) and Helios (of Deus Ex).

Both are artificial intelligences that aim to help humanity, acting as benevolent dictators to some extent. The Patriots control content (in their words, they create context) and claim to keep humanity from destroying themselves. They are much less forceful than Helios is; they do not try to stop war, but keep it at a level they consider to be “healthy” given the state of the world. Helios, on the other hand, appears to have no objection doing whatever is necessary to keep humanity “under control”. It controls the Internet and everything even remotely electrical and is well aware of what it believes it has to do to save humanity from itself.

Neither of these “beings” have taken this role for selfish reasons: they both aim to protect humanity from itself. They both see humanity as a curious baby with a fork near a light socket, seemingly desperate to kill itself. They act as if they are our parents, talking down to us and taking away our toys (in Helios’ case, stripping power from all the government buildings) as if we are children.

This is not to repeat what I have said earlier about the Patriots’ rant on how humanity cannot take care of itself and needs a guardian. This is to expand on it and bring it into context. Our civilization is not a point right now where true democracy can work. In fact, a benevolent dictatorship is exactly what is needed to save this world from itself. As American citizens, we have come to the point where on the whole, we don’t really care about what happens in other countries or really what happens here. It’s an analogy to the South Park episode where the two candidates for South Park’s mascot are a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich: you’ve got different options, but when it comes down to picking a viable choice, it’s going to suck.

This is also not to say we should all be involved in politics. Trying to be moderately involved in politics has given me an incredible frustration that I would not wish on other people, and to those that have chosen this for their lives, you are either very brave or very stupid. I hope it is the former.

In a civilization where more Americans care about American Idol than America, it is not fair to have a democracy. It is not fair for me or you to be judged by our peers when our peers care about what will be for dinner or what will be on TV tonight than our fates. And I surely can’t blame them (too much that is). We certainly do need to pay more attention to the world around us, and stop being scared of every stupid little terrorist thread that turns out to be a hoax, but there is a lot going on in the world. Too much for one person to take in.

That’s why our benevolent dictatorship cannot be run by a human in the strictest sense of the word. It must be by something that can process data at a much faster rate we can but still has the heart or decision-making skills to guide us forward as a race. The Patriots and Helios surely are selfish beings concerned with their survival, but they certainly care more for our survival than we ever did. And they have the means and the motive to save us.

But if they take a strict approach and become, as Edison says, a force that will be so appalling that man will abandon war forever, what will we become? If we stop being something so core to our existence, we certainly will no longer be human. Knowing the power of these beings and their all-pervasive nature, would we be reduced to beings afraid of our supposed savior(s) until the end of our days? Or would they know better and prevent us from thinking these things? For our sakes, I hope they would.

Perhaps the best approach in this dangerous line of thought is to do as we always try to do when we have two competing ideas: combine them. Perhaps when we are all somewhat augmented / computerized we will have the brainpower and the ability to make these decisions for ourselves in a truly democratic fashion. But as we go along the away, we must not forget that always, there is only a plank between one and Perdition:

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Over the course of the last few years I have unintentionally ran into a number of sources proclaiming the power of the situation and how strongly our environment impacts us. I have already posted about one of these sources, the Metal Gear Solid series (notably the 2nd game), and the excellent discussion about it here (Gene and Meme), which is definitely worth a read and even more so to those familiar with the material it covers.

Another excellent source of information on the reasons why the situation must be considered when analyzing a problem is the book The Lucifer Effect, which reads as a case study on the power of the situation. It is an excellent read, showing that although the situation does not provide an excuse for the actions of individuals, its effect must be taken into account.

Yet why do we almost always deny the power of the Situation? Zimbardo suggests a number of reasons in “The Lucifer Effect”, one of them being that our Western culture emphasizes individuality as opposed to collectivism (not a new find) and that as a result, we are inclined to blame individuals as opposed to situations. Yet I would go a step further and claim that the very intangibility of a situation versus an individual makes the situation an unlikely scapegoat.

In fact, we see that happen in our lives all the time. When we have to report failure to our bosses, which is more likely: telling them that it was caused by an individual (ourselves, our boss for not being clear, our co-workers for some reason), or a situational reason (the relationship between us and our boss makes it difficult for us to give them honest answers, we’re afraid of hurting other people’s feelings so we don’t tell them bad news that they need to know, etc)? From what I’ve seen, it’s overwhelmingly individuals that get blamed for failures and not situations, and when the situation does come up, the individual still takes the full brunt of the blame.

All the games in the Metal Gear Solid series take on the issue of the situation, and the second game in the series asserts that anyone can be made to do anything given a particular situation. The trailers for the upcoming fourth game shows soldiers implanted with nanomachines that appear to regulate their chemical flow (and thus their emotions) and thus, their actions are regulated.

It is not too far off to see armies of the future implementing something along these lines, and once they become ubiquitous, countries can inexpensively produce a well-trained army. A quick Google search reveals that the United States has a National Nanotechnology Initiative and has a budget of $710 million as of 2003 (surely comparable or larger now). Furthermore, the same article [1] lists a number of nanotechnologies developed or under development ranging from sensor networks that give commanders an accurate view of the battlefield without using soldiers to “flexible bullet-proof battle armor that can not only reject or filter out chemical agents and toxins but also weigh less than the average 120 pounds of equipment that today’s special forces carry on a three-day mission.”

The Metal Gear Solid 4 trailer informally dubs the regulating of war as a number of different things, but the phrase that sticks with me is “battlefield control”. Seeing the way our current technology is going and the variance of ethics across the globe (not to say only unethical people would support this), it is inevitable that some nation will implement something along these lines, and once the first one does, others will follow.

Whether or not this technology would be ethical to use is something I’ve already written about earlier. Yet after reading “The Lucifer Effect”, I believe that post needs to be supplemented to reflect what I’ve learned since then.

[1] Forbes.Com, Nanotech On The Front Lines, accessed 06/27/2007

The question of when it is permissable to control the flow of information has been on my mind for quite some time now. It first came to be relevant when I played Metal Gear Solid 2 for the second time and getting to the end of the game, where this is said:

Rose: You’re being silly! What we propose to do is not to control content, but to create context. [1]

It is this line specifically that irks me, although I will quote others as I investigate the connections between content and context as well as whether it is permissable to create and regulate context. Specifically, I plan to argue that it is permissable to regulate context given certain conditions.

Let’s start by differentiating between content and context ala Webster’s dictionary [2]:
Content: substance, meaning
Context: setting, environment

Although these definitions are somewhat vague for those not familiar with the phrases, there is an easier way to distinguish between the two: Context is the more generalities of speech, concerning itself with what things are said, while content is more specific, concerning itself with how things are said.

With that out of the way, an important issue remains. When I began wondering about this issue, my intuition led me to immediately believe that it is unjust to regulate context (or content) regardless of the reason. Such an extreme position made me even more suspicious of its validity, and only then could I begin to investigate the issue further.

The environment around us (including ourselves) has led to natural selection, the concept that certain genes flourish or fall based on their surroundings and how prone they are to survival. A similar mechanism exists for memories: culture. Culture has propagated ideas/memes through time, and in the process, they have changed in order to survive. It was believed that the planets orbited the earth in a circular orbit as demonstration of God’s will made manifest. When it was proved that the planets did not orbit the earth and that the orbits of the planets were not perfect circles, the memes changed and others came to replace it (ala creationism today, amongst others).

But are all memes good? Of course not. Racism, hatred, and violence have all prevailed to this day and in many places, are stronger than ever. Furthermore, the advent of the Internet has allowed information to survive without any necessity whatsoever. In the past, information only survived if someone thought it worthwhile enough to pass through oral tradition or believed in enough to publish on paper, which was rare at the time.

“Most great works of art, knowledge and salvation have been already created, but are 'lost beneath strata of trash’ because the civilization has become a 'mechanical milker of the Muses'." [1]

The Internet has value, don’t get me wrong. But for every eBay and every Google, there are a thousand sites promoting hatred, violence, or utter stupidity (mostly this last one) in some shape or form. The Internet allows us to hide behind our IP Address and although it is a great forum to learn what is really on one another’s mind, the truth is devastating. We need to stop the reckless proliferation of suffering in this world. Now.

The perfect situation goes as follows: your omnipotent and omnibenevolent God watches over you and helps you along though life giving you exactly what you need to grow as a person but not be corrupted by the failings of those around you.

So ideally we could have an Artificial Intelligence whose sole function is to govern us through information control. But this phrase is a little too strong, as there is not absolute domination here. Information should not be completely controlled. Everyone should still see the truth. But we should not allow people to use half-truths to justify lies to themselves just because they’re afraid of facing themselves and the world around them.

Raiden: Create context?
Colonel: The digital society furthers human flaws and selectively rewards development of convenient half-truths. Just look at the strange juxtapositions of morality around you.
Rose: Billions spent on new weapons in order to humanely murder other humans.
Colonel: Rights of criminals are given more respect than the privacy of their victims.
Rose: Although there are people suffering in poverty, huge donations are made to protect endangered species. Everyone grows up being told the same thing.
Colonel: Be nice to other people.
Rose: But beat out the competition!
Colonel: “You’re special.” “Believe in yourself and you will succeed.”
Rose: But it’s obvious from the start that only a few can succeed…
Colonel:You exercise your right to “freedom” and this is the result. All rhetoric to avoid conflict and protect each other from hurt. The untested truths spun by different interests continue to churn and accumulate in the sandbox of political correctness and value systems.
Rose: Everyone withdraws into their own small gated community, afraid of a larger forum. They stay inside their little ponds, leaking whatever “truth” suits them into the growing cesspool of society at large.
Colonel: The different cardinal truths neither clash nor mesh. No one is invalidated, but nobody is right.
Rose: Not even natural selection can take place here. The world is being engulfed in “truth.”
Colonel: And this is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper.
Rose: We’re trying to stop that from happening.
Colonel: It’s our responsibility as rulers. Just as in genetics, unnecessary information and memory must be filtered out to stimulate the evolution of the species.
Raiden: And you think you’re qualified to decide what’s necessary and not!?
Colonel: Absolutely. Who else could wade through the sea of garbage you people produce, retrieve valuable truths and even interpret their meaning for later generations?
Rose: That’s what it means to create context.
Raiden: I’ll decide for myself what to believe and what to pass on!
Colonel:But is that even your own idea?
Rose: Or something Snake told you?
Raiden: Ahh
Colonel: That’s the proof of your incompetence, right there. You lack the qualifications to exercise free will.

Although the preceding passage is a little long for those not used to this stuff (I definitely wasn’t ready for it the first time I played Metal Gear Solid 2 and was adequately ready the third time), this is the crux of the speech and the entire game itself, along with the line before it, which was the first quote used.

The inherent downside of having any being (organic, mechanical or otherwise) with so much power is obvious, but I believe that the alternative is worse and that the risk is worth it. This is an information overload, and not even a pertinent information overload. Fuck the great works of society, as it is us who is 'lost beneath strata of trash'. But perhaps some of the great works will be needed to push us forward…

With that said, there are still many ethical issues concerning the legitimacy of context control. The main practical issue is that it is impossible to construct or employ a perfectly benevolent being under any real-life situation for an indefinite amount of time. Therefore, this agent will eventually make decisions that are not beneficial to humanity and thus cause some damage to humanity.

From a utilitarian point of view, this may be acceptable. If the agent causes few problems compared to not having it, which could cause many problems, then the agent is still the better choice. However, it may be difficult to argue for the erasure of free will in exchange for an agent who is not perfect.

There is something more disconcerting here though: context control ALREADY EXISTS. Implementing context control sounded so controversial to me because although I subconsciously knew it was there, I did not consciously recognize its influence. But it is there. The media tells you the news that you talk about with your friends and family. Your culture tells you what is acceptable to do, what is acceptable to wear, what is acceptable to see. What you think is good and bad, who is attractive and who is not, and what values are sought after and which are deplorable have all been taught to you in some form or another [3]. But this is generally felt to be so decentralized that no great harms could come to pass. Then what of racism? And what of selfishness? Or how about the reckless propagation of violence?

Yet the way context is being controlled is simple: show the people what they really want to see. People inherently like violence and tragedy to some degree (or else people wouldn’t slow down to see car accidents), so the news is polluted with stories of death and destruction. People have become so irrational as a whole that we have polluted our memespace. I’ve already said this, but read it again. Closer.

Rose: Billions spent on new weapons in order to humanely murder other humans.
Colonel: Rights of criminals are given more respect than the privacy of their victims.
Rose: Although there are people suffering in poverty, huge donations are made to protect endangered species. Everyone grows up being told the same thing.

Colonel: Be nice to other people.
Rose: But beat out the competition!
Colonel: “You’re special.” “Believe in yourself and you will succeed.”
Rose: But it’s obvious from the start that only a few can succeed…

Colonel: You exercise your right to “freedom” and this is the result. All rhetoric to avoid conflict and protect each other from hurt. The untested truths spun by different interests continue to churn and accumulate in the sandbox of political correctness and value systems.
Rose: Everyone withdraws into their own small gated community, afraid of a larger forum. They stay inside their little ponds, leaking whatever “truth” suits them into the growing cesspool of society at large.
Colonel:The different cardinal truths neither clash nor mesh. No one is invalidated, but nobody is right.
Rose: Not even natural selection can take place here. The world is being engulfed in “truth."
Colonel: And this is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper.
Rose: We’re trying to stop that from happening.
Colonel: It’s our responsibility as rulers. [1]

The problem isn’t with the way context and content are controlled. The problem is with us. If we cared as a whole about growth and achievement, hell if we cared as a whole about seeing other people happy more than ourselves, this issue wouldn’t exist. Many issues wouldn’t exist if we would just shut the fuck up and give a crap more about somebody else. That’s why it’s not our rulers’ responsibility to babysit us. We need to stop crying about what so-and-so did and grow up and act our damn age.

Yet my experiences have shown me that we are still an “immature species” paralyzed and controlled by fear. If you need some kind of real life example to make the case for you, here[4] it[5] is[6] . [4] does the best job of summarizing it all up, but [5] and [6] are even more recent examples.

References:
[1] JunkerHQ.Net, Gene and Meme, accessed 08/15/06
[2] Webster, Content / Context, accessed 08/15/06
[3] Wikipedia, Values, accessed 08/17/06
[4] Schneier.Com, What the Terrorists Want, accessed 08/25/06
[5] World of Warcraft.Com Forums, Guy drops iPod in toilet, police think he’s a terrorist, accessed 08/25/06
[6] Hardware Reviews, Guy plays with PSP, police think he’s a terrorist, accessed 08/25/06