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What will happen to my website after I die? I had never considered it. I suppose that it really isn't an issue because I want an active website. With no way for me to change it I don't really care about it, I am not looking for that kind of immortality. I have considered turning out a book of the site at some time in the future, probably at least a year away, more likely infinitely far away. If a book does get published that will be a more lasting thing. I also hope that the memes in my site make their own way into other brains in their own memelike way. Naturally some of those memes will be particularly suitable for life in web servers and hard disks. Others will survive in other alien environments.

I do like the idea of linking up with like-minded sites. That is really what the web is all about, good links. While there are many sites out there that I am happy to link to, none is quite the same sort of site as my own. I suppose I am pleased about that, I like being distinctive. But I also like the idea of a protege site too. I had idly thought about what would happen if something catastrophic happened to my website, would it survive? It would have to be something spectacularly catastrophic to simultaneously wipe out my hard disk, several floppies, my laptop and my ISP's server. Even if that happened I could probably manage to reconstruct it from cached copies held on the computers of my regular visitors. It is fairly secure. Oh, yes, it is also cached by a search-engine or two as well.

Assuming that your site is reasonably suitable I suggest that we could exchange links as a first step. Another step is to exchange data. I could send you my entire site as a zipfile. This could be opened up into a folder on your drive and you could browse it to ensure that you don't plagiarize it too much, you could also act as an extra backup. Half way through that sentence I started to think about the memetics of computer terminology, I had to force myself to put 'folder' rather than 'directory', I still think in Windows 3.1. I suppose that will be a feature of speech that will age people just as 'wireless' or 'icebox' does. I then also thought that 'hoover' as a verb will soon go that way, as nobody uses a Hoover anymore.

Anyway. What now? I have checked out the URL you sent and I am baffled. Can you help unbaffle me? Is this thing your baby? How does it work, how should it work? I am very confused and intrigued by it. It seems to hook quite well on to a lot of internet meme hooks but it also seems suspiciously hollow, like a speech by Tony Blair. Is there any substance to it?

A few strange and unenlightening messages followed,
including an exchange about web design, which lead, in a round about way,
to the current fast-loading text-is-best style of Debate Unlimited.

The next message came as a result of Chris reading Kate.

Words move on. We import words from one language and change them, define them more narrowly.

Robot might have been a Czech word for slave but now it is the English word for robot, and robots have evolved faster than the words.

robot n.

1 a machine with a human appearance or functioning like a human.

2 a machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically.

3 a person who works mechanically and efficiently but insensitively.

4 S.Afr. an automatic traffic signal.

robotic adj.

robotically / adv. robotize v.tr. (also -ise). robotization / n. (also -isation).

Czech (used in K. Capek's play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), 1920), from robota 'forced labour'

I would define robots as very different entities. There are the robots which build cars and there are the machine operatives who attend them. Both can be called robots. There are the remote controlled cars with weapons on Robot Wars. There are the sci-fi Robots like Kryten and C3PO, and the lesser droids like R2D2. There are also the neural network controlled devices that have no external control, devices that are just beginning to be made. I see these as the truest robots. Not fashioned in the shape of men, not designed to rigidly do work for men but creatures designed partly by man and partly by their own robotic evolution.

At the moment only the dullest of such robots exist but they will develop, they will evolve extremely quickly. I would not be very surprised to meet a robot with a better IQ and reasoning ability before I die. The idea that we could make them in such a way as they could only serve us or obey the Three Laws of Robotics is rather quaint. It is based on a false fear, the idea that an intelligent robot would automatically act in its own selfish interests.

I would anticipate that selfish operation would take as long to evolve as any other ability, and we would be the "natural selection" that robots would be evolved by. Unless we were perverse it is unlikely that we would be able to select for selfish operation before we had selected for intelligent and co-operative practices. We would select for good and loyal robots that served our interests, avoided damaging themselves and responded instantly to our whims. A selfish streak could not develop unless we selected for it as the primary objective, above all other criteria, and if we did that we would deserve to be wiped out by our creations.

Selfishness is a primary motivation in biological life because it is the only way an entity can survive to replicate, such a characteristic would not be the driving force of robotic evolution unless it was driven by men on some kind of mission to replace humanity. Hardly a likely prospect. Machines will not act like living organisms unless we allow them to evolve that way.

Robots will not be allowed to directly build their own replacement generations and so they will not develop as selfish creations, but as slaves to our whims, as we will be the force that determines their evolution. Evolution does not work in the interests of the replicator, but in the interests represented by the forces of the evolutionary process. In biological evolution there is no distinction between the replicator (the nucleic acid) and the force (the differential survival of that nucleic acid). But in robotic evolution there will be a big distinction, the evolution will be in the interests of those who determine the process of replication, which should be us, unless we are incredibly foolhardy.

You must be very naive if you think that people get elected because of the forces of money. Electoral processes are far bigger than the budgets of the campaigns. Nobody can buy an election. You cannot buy any election, the best that money can do is to sway and colour a campaign a small degree. Money follows political success, momentum, it does not create it. No democratic politician is answerable to evil hidden forces of big money, although many are slightly influenced. It is rather like the horses at the Grand National, they don't need jockeys to make them want to run fast and jump fences.

Politicians want to be elected to improve things, they don't need any puppetmasters to pull their strings. I can see no reason to think that a single world government is likely to be taken over by "bad guys" any more than it is likely to be taken over by lesbians or Martians. But I also predict that even if the world government worked more efficiently and fairly than any society or government has ever done in the history of humanity there would be people like yourself queuing up to decry it as the greatest despotism ever seen. For the simple reason that being a political rebel is seen as cool and macho.

While I was at University I got very annoyed by the people who said that "it's all the same struggle, comrade". Linking every right-on anti-establishment cause as if they were all fighting the same hydra-headed enemy; the reactionary, homophobic, fascist, Barclays banking, anti-student grant, racist, anti-miners, pro-meat, vivisecting, whale-nuking Tories and the running dogs of imperialist something or anothers in the police, oh yeah, and McDonalds too, obviously. Well, I have news for you, it never has been the same struggle and it never will be, don't expect to find me or any other person who agrees with some of your ideas on the same side of every barricade.

Martin

Ohh, that was a bit rich

I too have been in the USA and I have direct experience of being involved in a real election campaign, I worked for three months unpaid in 1984. I met the candidate, stayed over at his house, manned the telephone lines from a Jewish law firm making free local calls to voters at home, I worked my way through computer print outs of voters names in order to do ethnic targeting of mailshots, I printed posters and I stood by the freeway and held them up to passing cars, I joined the candidate at 7 am meeting the guys going into the factory gates and I worked on fund raising and I saw the fund raising process first hand. If there was some big business conspiracy there I would have seen it. Money does not buy election wins, the money follows good candidates and good campaigns into winnable elections. Money flows into successful political campaigns in a very similar way to money flowing into football clubs. There is no evil conspiracy to make Manchester United successful, success breeds success.

Money flows into election campaigns which are going to win. You could not make people vote for Michael Jackson and his chimpanzee to be the next Presidential ticket just by throwing money at the campaign. The extent to which election campaigns can be influenced by money varies according to the society, culture and the legal framework. The potential for abuse of financial leverage over politicians can be mitigated by limiting the money that can be spent on each campaign, by making such spending transparent, by making political donations transparent and by providing a counterweight in the form of state subsidies to parties. I would support the subsidy of all parties that achieved 5% of the popular vote or more, to a modest level, and proscribing spending and fund raising limits at approximately three time the subsidy level. That should be sufficient to keep politics free from undue influence by vested interests.

Much as I hate the stance of GWB and his crew I have to admit the fact that they secured the election victory and they did so while under intense pressure and public scrutiny. The message that GWB would ignore the interests of the environment was fully aired and it did not sway enough people in enough states to deny him the Presidency. At least some people fought the good fight. I did my inadequate best to send his father into historical insignificance as a one-term Vice President.

As far as anarchy goes I cannot see how you have failed to notice my contempt for it. Environmental improvement is best achieved by government action. Remember a boring pressure group called the Campaign for Lead Free Air? They had a single objective, they organized, they used conventional political channels, they achieved their objective and they disbanded. Not a single missile was aimed at any police officer, not a single item of property was damaged. No fun at all. They didn't even torch a single petrol station. And what did they achieve? Before they started unleaded petrol was unavailable, now it is compulsory, and now 100 modern cars produce less pollution (excepting CO2 obviously) than even a lawnmower. Left to the style of "political action" that you seem to be encouraging I can see instead simply a lot of jumping up and down and making a lot of noise, lots of fun obviously, a lot of people feeling very worthy and pumping themselves up with righteous indignation but very little real actual achievement.

You are right when you say that dictatorships have existed in all times and will do again. If there is a power vacuum then dictators will step in to fill it. That is why I am against a power vacuum! That is why I am in favour of democratic action. If the good people walk away from government the government will not wither away, it will be taken over by the bad people. Or to be more accurate it will be taken over by worse people. I think it might do you some good to consider the possibility that the people are not supporting your anti-capitalist stance not because they have been hoodwinked by some great conspiracy but because they don't actually agree with you. And any demonstrations through the streets of London or wherever else you plan to do it will receive the typically proletarian response of "Anarchy? My Arse! What dem layabouts need is a proper job." But if your lot like a good pitched battle with the police, they are your mob, they are hell bent on torching McDonalds, they are your people, you must follow them, you are their leader.

No good comes from violent demonstrations. They are futile and self-defeating. They alienate the mass of the public. For 90% or more of the British public the mayday thing is just some gruesome spectacle of stilt walkers, fire-eater, mimes, assorted layabouts marching up and down and 90 minutes of stone throwing and petrol bombs at the end. The issues? What issues? They are not interested. I don't mean to fall out with you but this is a major difference of opinion, and it is not an attitude that I have tried to hide. It is quite clearly to be seen across my website, especially in "My Struggle " (English translation of Mein Kampf) "Anarchy, No Solution" and "Macho Politics".

I do want to see a much less capitalist world but I don't see how the rejection or sidelining of democratic political processes can be of any help. "Drop your illusions about machoism, sometimes a rebellion is the right thing to do. " I agree, I could have written that myself. Drop the machismo, stop playing the juvenile lead 'angry young man' and recognize that sometimes rebellion is the right thing...but usually it isn't.

I am sure you would love to have been a real freedom fighter, pitting yourself against a real tyranny. But to be a Nelson Mandella, a Martin Luther King, or a Che Guevara you need a real tyrant to oppose. Tony Blair, Asda and McDonalds are hardly in that league; they are not denying you any major freedoms. To act like rebels in the face of consensus politics makes you into a laughing stock. To act like rebels against the wishes of the public makes you a public nuisance.

People who try to save my soul annoy me, I am sure that the general public have a similar attitude to the arrogance of young men who try to impose their ideas on the rest of society. If the people want to be saved they will seek salvation themselves.

Martin

We bathed our hot heads for a few weeks and let the dust settle.

Big Change

Well, how was it for you? I know I'm shagged.

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I know what you meant.

They might change a few times over the weeks and months, they might get more alike, they might get more distinct. I am making this up as I go along. Some zones have much more material than others, so it would not be sensible for them all to be clones.

I am impressed by how much faster and smoother it loads. The background colour appears, there is a slight pause, and then whoosh, it is all there. Very impressive, it gives me quite a buzz. The previous version had the pop pop pop pop of graphics appearing in seemingly random sequence, nowhere near as impressive.

I have had another go at my site, taking on board what you said, it is now much more consistent, almost as "corporate" as yours. ;-)

You're young and single. That is the explanation. From an evolutionary perspective the ideal partner for any single man of any age is a fourteen to twenty year old virgin with symmetrical features that matches the generally perceived notions of beauty in your society. That holds for all societies, all ages of men. You are looking for a wife who could bear you multitudes of attractive children. Or at least that is what the search criteria you are using suggests.

For chimpanzees an ideal female is available and obviously fertile, chimpanzees are not looking for a wife, just something fertile of the right species to impregnate. For a married man in a stable relationship it makes sense for me to be fixated on that image too. I am not in the market for a wife, just for sex, at least my body is, my brain though knows it had better keep this all theoretical, as it likes being attached to all parts of its body.

To answer your point about fertility fat women are not generally infertile, only if they have complications. Obesity does not generally cause fertility problems. (My children prove that). In contrast too thin women often stop menstruating. I would doubt that Geri has bought any tampons this year, or most Olympic competitors either. Extreme exercise and starvation directly reduce fertility.

I am not saying that I find only fat women attractive, or even more attractive, just that I find them attractive. I find Page 3 girls very attractive, natural young girls that are not over-developed with muscles or artificial additives of any kind. But I don't say that only such girls are attractive, big distinction.

Martin

It's annoying making mistakes in pages, I know when I post them that they are going to get a lot of hits in the first few days, but normally they don't get highly polished until after that time. I could do with a sub-editor.

I don't think many people would really listen to Shaggy's lyrics, I have been subjected to that video about twenty times and never picked up any nuances other than the superficial fuck 'em and forget 'em attitude. (Oh, but have you noticed that woman whose nipples stand out even in motorcycle leathers... that is an image that can never be erased from my memory.)

Why is Jamaican seen as the definitive cool, hard accent? There must be something special about Jamaica that created a special form of super-male rogue role model. Have you heard the theory that Colin Powell (Co-lin, what an arse-wipe of a name!) is actually related to our late great Enoch Powell, the Powell family had a big plantation in Jamaica, many of the slaves took the name of the owner on their emancipation, and most of them were "mulattos" by that time anyway.

I have a very serious reading suggestion for you, The Origin of Virtue by Matt Ridley. It looks at morality, trade and social organization for our species, taking the long biological perspective and it is quite in tune with many anarchist sentiments, a theme which runs throughout the book. It looks at what morality and virtue are, where they come from and what they do for us, he is a rational atheist and an intuitive evolutionary thinker. You won't like everything it has to say, but some bits you will love. Ridley passes the bibliography test, I tend to look at the bibliographies in new books now to see if they refer to other authors I admire. If you haven't already read it I would suggest that you make it your top priority, I loved it so much I got fined for keeping it too long.

On the subject of things being in opposition to what you might imagine at first think I think that is a thin argument. A lot of blood and guts films are sold as being anti-violence in order to get a favourable review from the critics with IQs in three figures but they make sure that they have an "un-cut version" for the video market, there is a lot of hypocrisy about in the entertainment world. I remember something about Cliff Richard saying something about not realizing that people might get the wrong idea from the song "Devil Woman", even Saint Cliff uses sleazy sexual mental images to sell his records, ' I was wrong to sing it, I didn't realize...'

Tramp, yeah, I suppose you are right. I will have to check out my thesaurus for some more suggestions, I want a good long list for maximum effect. The law is the crystallization of the will of the people, in theory at least. If it is wrong let's change it. Rejecting it as being some force of evil oppression is silly juvenile posturing. Think about the mathematics, take one inherently moral individual, multiply by sixty million and you get what? A force for evil? Regarding the government as evil and the people as perfect is silly. We are society, we are the electorate, we are the taxpayer, we are the market, we are the species. Forget THEM, there is no them. Only us. Bad mouthing the government is no different to bad mouthing the people. Of course things can be arranged better; but by abolishing laws and throwing stones at our public servants?

"If a king imposes great taxes, and a rogue steals from the king, who is the thief?" Both of them.

If a great people impose a fair tax and some scumbag signs on the dole, works on the side and protests against the tyranny of the system who is the victim?

"The truth is so.... dull." I'm not so sure about dull, but there is nothing inherently exciting or life affirming about the truth, but so many people expect the truth to leap up and down and make them feel great. Truth isn't either dull or not, truth just is. Expecting the truth to be exciting or obviously significant is one of the commonest weaknesses of our species.

"This is law. It is not right, it is not justifiable in a free society. I want to change this law, but have no power to do so."

Excuse me? You have the vote, you can stand for election, you have the Internet, what more do you need; super-powers, a guerrilla army?

You can hardly claim to be in the same category as a slave or the disenfranchised. Your lack of power comes entirely from the fact that most of the causes you espouse are simply NOT POPULAR. Stop feeling so sorry for yourself and hard done by. You are making the assumption that because the people are not agreeing with you they must be being manipulated in some evil way, that is not the most logical and obvious deduction under the circumstances.

A society needs to protect itself against the forces that would threaten it. Democratic societies do this by the sanctioned use of power; military, police and when necessary by preventative action such as breaking up violent conspiracies and terrorist cells. As long as the government is democratically accountable within a free society injustices will be kept to a minimum, even if that minimum is uncomfortably high.

Given the option I would rather be unfairly accused of sedition by a democratic government than be attacked by the likes of the Real IRA or the psychos in the militias. If the current laws over-step the mark I suggest that you make a democratic protest about it. Write to the newspapers, petition your MP, use the Internet. But be careful, most people do not think that they are likely to be the victim of such terrible injustice, and most people have nothing to hide, most people would just think you were a rent-a-mob whinger.

It wouldn't look very good coming from you, with your anarchist and trendy anti-capitalist connections. I am reminded of the time when Vinny Jones brought out a book about how to play dirty, it would have been a lot more impressive to see a book passing on a lifetime's experience in playing dirty and getting away with it by Gary Linekar. Think about it. The best thing you could do is to team up with as wide a spread of people as possible on this issue, and play it as a stand-alone single issue.

"Personally, I would be in favour of a system where the people vote on specific issues, not to elect representatives to do so. I want to vote for or against each act of parliament." So everybody will vote for every spending measure, and no taxes, if anybody votes at all. I'm with Churchill on this one, representative democracy is the worst system devised by man, except for all the alternatives. The bigger the organization less practical it is to run directly. Even worker co-operatives, like the one the Mayday rioters looted, run with an executive board out of simple practicality.

By the way, if your imaginary ideal scenario came to pass what causes do you expect the young men who enjoy feeling they are persecuted by society will be espousing?

Which way will I be voting? Rather obvious if you see the state of play in the Cheadle constituency, I'll be voting for Patsy Calton, the Liberal Democrat. The sitting Tory is a lightweight, just lobby fodder, he doesn't deserve to win, not that I would vote for him. If Labour was in second place I would vote Labour, if it was a tie I would vote Liberal Democrat, they have some chance of voting independently. In the Euro-election I voted green, knowing there was a slender chance of them being elected given the PR system, Lib Dem for my second preference.

I have never encrypted my emails, and never felt that I had anything to hide, if you don't want people to read your messages should you be sending them? Is secrecy such a wonderful right to have? Does it have utility for the whole of society? I am not sure. What I will say is that I would have no problem in fighting an evil government in whatever way seemed appropriate. I just don't feel that all governments must be evil just because it is fun to fight governments.

I strongly suspect that there will always be people decrying the evils of any government. If there was a God there probably would be a Satan too, and he would be fighting the perfect God in the name of fairness. Well, that's a load of tosh, but the point stands, I don't see how there could ever not be a bunch of young men (I'm not backing down on the macho thing) decrying any system of government. That is not to say that you are wrong, but I think you should carefully consider what fights are worth fighting for their own reasons, and ignore any fights that are just good for a laugh.

I did vote Tory once, see, I have no fear of the skeletons in my cupboard.

I would be in favour of making the hacking into of email and telephone messages an offence, along with the spreading or profiting from any material gained in that way. The police should need to get a warrant for all interceptions, using the same burden of evidence for suspicion as they do for criminal search warrants; confidential and fair, the British way.

One little blob that used to be blue has now turned orange! That is me down there, the little orange blob on the left, the Cheadle constituency. The big blue area to the SW is Tatton, the constituency where I grew up and my parents still live (although now separated). Notice how all the small constituencies seem to be red, Labour support is concentrated in the urban areas. The blue Tory areas are the rural and affluent suburban areas, large area, but few of 'em. Liberal Democrat (orange) seats are scattered in rural and urban areas, the fairly even spread of support for the Liberal Democrats in all areas conspires to reduce their representation so that since W.W.II they have always had a lower proportion of seats than their popular vote. That is why Proportional Representation is so popular among Liberal Democrats.

Sorry about Archie. But Patsy Calton got in with a majority of 33, one less Tory MP! Terrific. It made it worthwhile going to vote through a hailstorm. Who do you most hope and fear to be the new Tory leader?

I have been polishing the pages today, deleting bits which would not be interesting to a lot of people. Correcting the odd spelling mistake that might distract people and making sure the links are set to open correctly in respect to the frames. I hope you don't think I have left too much embarrassing stuff in. I have found that embarrassing stuff is good content. But that might be a factor of being older. I was following a woman yesterday who wore a yellow polka dotted vinyl rain hat and I thought to myself, that is the biggest advantage of age, you are much less concerned with trivial matters such as appearance. Do you ever watch Daria? (It's on MTV, so I don't get a choice at work) Being young can be like being in the Fashion Club, it's not my idea of a fulfilling life. How can you be yourself, and comfortable with it, if you are obsessed with what people think about you? But, is that the pot calling the kettle black, considering the amount of time I spend tweaking things on my website. Whatever. ;-)

© 1999 - 2008 by Martin Willett.

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