Network Behavior and Christian Ethics

In designing software for computer networks, the Robustness Principle states 

"Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept"

The first half of the Robustness Principle ensures that the program doesn't pollute the network with malformed output, and the second half ensures high uptime. When this code of conduct becomes the dominant design among individual agents, the network as a whole functions smoothly and fulfills its purpose.

Humans society is also a communication network of sorts, where moral norms govern the principles of interaction. The dominant moral code of the modern world is Secular Humanism, a non-theistic descendant of Christianity. It inherits some ideas from its Christian forebears in an attenuated form, especially Human Rights and care for victims.

We take for granted that it is good to help the destitute, or that each human has a moral worth no matter how poor, foreign, or disfigured they are. But these concepts weren't present in the Roman world prior to the rise of Christianity. As 1,700 years of Christian dominance is coming to an end, it's hard for us to comprehend that people once lived in a completely different moral universe.

Comparing Secular Humanism to Christianity, we see that the former is new, rational, and small while Christianity is old, surprising, and syncretic. It is like the difference between a Christmas tree farm and an old-growth pine forest, or a fresh moonshine and an old scotch.

The distillation process that gave birth to Secular Humanism was a rational philosophical movement away from religion, known as the Enlightenment. Many of the moral goals of Christianity made it through the filter of rational analysis, while its ethical principles of conduct did not fare so well and were largely discarded.

This is a terrible loss. Morality (what is good) without ethics (how to act) can and will be abused to bully other humans in the pursuit of status, power, and other scarce resources. We see this dramatically illustrated by the world of social media. Everybody claims to be a good person, at the same time that "cancelling" members of rival factions is a popular pastime. Appeal to genuine moral good becomes a cynical move in vicious competitions among people to dominate and destroy each other.

The lost ethical codes of Christianity can be seen as fences that create and maintain a positive-sum moral commons. They constrain the behavior of each individual to produce more benefit than cost for the community. The result is a community that functions better for everyone. These principles include:

• Anti-Pharaseeism. Prohibition against public displays of piety and virtue (Matt 6:1-8, Matt ch. 23)
• Non-retaliation (Matt 5:38-48)
• Forgiveness (Matt 18:21-22, Luke 15:11-32)
• Self-criticism, rather than criticizing others (Matt 7:3-5)
• Prohibition on envy (Ex. 20:17)
• Avoidance of mind-states and speech that lead to violence, especially anger and lust (Matt 5:21-30)
• Humility (Luke 14:7-11)
• Distrust for mob justice (the Crucifixion)

The underlying principle of Christian ethics can be summarized to something like a Robustness Principle for human networks: be generous in the behavior you accept from others, and conservative in the behavior you impose on others. Elsewhere in the scriptures, there is justification for authority figures to get rid of truly bad actors who repeatedly violate these principles in order to maintain a high quality of conduct within the Church.

The writers of the New Testament are much more aware than we are today of how groups of people with good intentions can go down dark paths. Its ethical norms constrain us from sharpening moral goods into weapons to use against our fellow humans.

What would a networked world look like with a revival of Christian Ethics? I don't know. But it would likely be better than what we have. The norm of forgiveness alone would put a big dent in the worst excesses of cancel culture and other moral panics.

But there is an implementation problem with Christian ethics. If most people follow Christian ethics, it leads to a peaceful, gentle world. But if a small group of people do, they will tend to lose out to people that are more ruthless.

The ancient Christians bootstrapped their moral order into being with a transcendent ideal. They believed that they would win by losing, since the scales of justice would be balanced in the afterlife. It's hard to get a group of people to defy immediate self-interest without such a belief. Observers witnessed their sincerity through the ultimate demonstration of skin-in-the-game: martyrdom.

Today, Christians and people who want to live by Christian Ethics may lose social media battles if they refuse to adopt effective tactics that betray their principles. But it is not so grim for us as it was for the early church. For one thing, the penalties are not nearly so severe. And the digital world is fluid and offers social possibilities that the Roman Empire did not. Christians can fork their own private social networks where the majority of those who opt-in abide by the Christian code.

Over time, if these forums become known for high-quality discourse, outsiders may see them as a refreshing oasis amidst a world of danger and noise. Christ never cancels people. This could lead to a revival of Christian norms, or at least a powerful witness.

Using Electrum on an air-gapped machine

Securely storing bitcoin is hard. Most people trust a third party, like Coinbase, to keep their bitcoin safe. But these third parties are big targets for hackers and indeed many have been hacked and lost their clients' funds. People who are truly security conscious keep their own wallet on an air-gapped machine that never connects to a network.

I like using Electrum for my wallet software but I've had trouble figuring out how to use it on an air-gapped machine for two reasons. First, the Ubuntu installation instructions for Electrum use apt-get and python setup tools, both of which require a network connection to download dependencies. This is a no-go if you want to have an air-gapped machine which has never touched the network.

Secondly, Electrum translates data into a custom base 43 format before encoding it in QR codes. QR codes are a secure way of transferring data such as signed transactions off of an air-gapped machine. But I ran into a problem that other software doesn't recognize bitcoin data in base 43 strings and there weren't online tools for translating from base 43 to a more common format.

Let's tackle the second problem first. I wrote a little web tool that will convert Electrum QR data into a format that bitcoin understands. It's at http://electrum43.org/.

So let's say you transfer a transaction off of an air-gapped machine using an Electrum QR code and you get data that looks like this:

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

If you paste that into http://electrum43.org/, it will translate the data into a hex string that bitcoin understands. You can then decode that data into a human-readable json object here or broadcast it to the bitcoin network here. 

So that's one problem taken care of. What about installing electrum onto an offline Ubuntu machine? Electrum installation requires two Debian packages (python-qt4 and python-pip) and a host of python dependencies that are usually handled by network-enabled package managers. After much digging, I've found a way to do that and I wrote a guide here. 

I hope this helps you keep your bitcoin secure with Electrum. Stay safe and have fun with bitcoin!

The Silicon Jedi

There are many warriors, they are not priests.

There are many priests, they are not warriors.

The Jedi mix these two ancient castes in a powerful combination. Unusual for priests, they are active in the world, serving a vision of the Good through feats of grit, daring, and sacrifice. Unusual for warriors, they are in touch with a deep well of spiritual energy. This gives them access to mystical forces that makes each one worth a thousand ordinary soldiers. 

Among the legions of startup infantry battling for success in Silicon Valley the Jedi still live today. 

Steve Jobs was a Jedi - a hippie and a spiritual pilgrim before becoming a businessman. This was key to his power. As a young man he prioritized feeding his soul, thereby awakening a thirst for beauty that drove his professional career. I imagine Steve would be happy that so many people were inspired by him to listen to the inner voice of their souls, but regret that so many others imitate his. Merely copying his business methods won’t lead to his success, that's only a little less silly than copying his method of dress. The spiritual journey is difficult and it is not optional. 

Jobs was a high profile Silicon Jedi but he was neither the first not the last of the kind. There are a few active today (the Jedi never exist in large numbers - quality over quantity is their way). If you have the privilege to encounter one, you will find it a delightful experience, but also a challenging one. They have a way of seeing through the lies we wrap around ourselves to hide from difficult facts. The Jedi way of life is raw, rejecting false comforts.

You can sometimes tell a Jedi by his strangeness. The rich inner life that a Jedi experiences makes him less in need of external social validation. His soul shines through in his style - his way of acting, thinking, and talking. He will read the Tao Te Ching in the office. He will walk barefoot in downtown Mountain View. He will build a user interface that looks like it comes from a more enlightened galaxy far, far away.

Actually, Jedi are not particularly strange compared to normal people. Everybody is strange on the inside compared to the standardized world of mass culture. Fear of the perception of others causes us to hide our inner world. In the startup realm, letting your freak flag fly risks that you will offend a member of the click-hungry tech press, a potential boss, or a future investor. 

Being a real human being seems dangerous. So in the valley of innovation a uniform develops - the uniform of maximum risk aversion. The appearance of the last breakout success is widely counterfeited. But it is folly to clutch for safety in the midst of the risky business of entrepreneurship. It is not really safe - like driving half speed on a busy highway. And it isn't fun.

The majority of startups die before they get off the ground. It is probably better to have a distinct taste that some people love and some people hate than to blend in. It is probably more profitable and fulfilling to have a great time and let the haters hate. Yes, when you find yourself CEO of a billion-dollar company your risk-averse corporate board might fire you. But life is not a one act play. 

The best place to look for modern Jedi is Burning Man. US coastal professionals are spiritually starved. Burning Man feeds that hunger. At Burning Man, CEOs and engineers mingle with artists and shamans - sometimes all four are found in one body. It’s a bridge from the default world to the spirit realm, a necessary source of inspiration, connection, and catharsis.

Hay there

While I defragment my life/mind enough to get back to writing, enjoy some of the things that I have enjoyed lately (source at Szabo's blog):

"The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay, the idea of cutting grass in the autumn and storing it in large enough quantities to keep horses and cows alive through the winter. All we know is that the technology of hay was unknown to the Roman Empire but was known to every village of medieval Europe. Like many other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the so-called Dark Ages. According to the Hay Theory of History, the invention of hay was the decisive event which moved the center of gravity of urban civilization from the Mediterranean basin to Northern and Western Europe. The Roman Empire did not need hay because in a Mediterranean climate the grass grows well enough in winter for animals to graze. North of the Alps, great cities dependent on horses and oxen for motive power could not exist without hay. So it was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York."

- Freeman Dyson 

Silicon Valley's Fiscal Sacrifice

The startup ecosystem depends on the recycling of the profits from successful startups into new angel investment, venture capital funds, and bootstrapped ventures. This flow of capital is the lifeblood of Silicon Valley.

The story of Elon Musk is a well known example. When Paypal was bought by eBay, his stake in the company was liquidated for $180 million after tax. Musk resisted the urge to retire to a nice beach and reinvested every last dollar he owned into three daring and innovative new companies: Space X, Tesla, and Solar City. Exhausting his once-mighty bank account, he borrowed money from friends to pay his rent. Today, those three new companies look like three winners.

Musk's story shows how the world-changing ventures of today rely on seed capital from the successes of five years ago. This process depends on the ability of founders to keep their winnings from the startup game so that they can play again. That is why the rate of the capital gains tax is so important to the health of the tech economy. The capital gains tax rate determines how much of the proceeds from successful startups stays with founders in Palo Alto and how much gets shipped to Sacramento and Washington D.C.

In recent decades the governments of the United States and California have developed a nasty habit of running unsustainable budget deficits, putting upward pressure on tax rates. Fresh tax measures passed during the 2012 election and immediately thereafter, combined with tax changes mandated by President Obama's signature healthcare law, will increase the capital gains burden on entrepreneurs by 52% this year - from 24.3% to 37.1%. The details are shown in the chart below.

The crop of new capital available for seed and angel investment will be 20% smaller next year than it would have been without the tax increases[1]. The state and the nation are being called to shared sacrifice to address our massive public debt problems and no one can say that Silicon Valley is not doing its part.

The negative effects of higher taxes on investment growth are exponential. If a would-be successful venture is not funded because of higher taxes then that also reduces the size of the next round of capital that would have been funded from that venture's success. This is the mathematical effect of reducing an exponent. The growth rate of wealth is slowed and future tax revenues are reduced with each would-be successful startup that is not funded.

I don't doubt that Silicon Valley can absorb a 20% hit to its new capital stock, especially if the money is used to pay for worthwhile public infrastructure projects. And it is likely that fewer than 20% of future success stories are found in the marginal 20% of investment. For that to be true we have to assume that investors have some sort of expertise, that they are better at picking good investments than random choice. I feel that is a reasonable assumption

But there is some magnitude of tax increase that the startup ecosystem could not absorb. Today, we take for granted the ability of a talented young team with a bright idea to raise $100,000 or $200,000 to get off the ground. With high enough taxes the seed funding ecosystem will shrink to a much more conservative level.

It could be worse. The top marginal tax rate on ordinary income in California will climb over 50% next year - the highest in the nation. It is fortunate that the capital gains rate is significantly lower.

I hope that the US and California governments use this new tax revenue to shore up their leaking balance sheets so that they do not need another pint of blood from the tech economy. We only have so much to give.

[1] a 14.8% tax increase divided by a previous base of 75.7% pretax income

Blueseed, Investors, and Risk

If investors were rational, companies like Blueseed would have no problem raising funding. This is not because Blueseed is a sure bet, but because Blueseed is an unlikely but possible bet with huge payoffs - precisely the kind of risk which are supposed to fuel the Venture Capital business model.

Revenge of the Clones

I finally figured out where the instinct to make B.S. copycat startups in Silicon Valley comes from - a misplaced sense of risk-aversion. Instead of confidently building the future, a founder tailors his company to appeal to the uncreative bottom 90% of investors. With their backing, his company will peter out over 24 months instead of failing spectacularly in 2. A worse outcome for all involved, but each step feels less scary.

I'd rather work on things that matter.

On "uploading"

Many futurists look forward to "uploading" our brains into computers in an attempt at immortality.

A problem with this is that humans are a particular sort of being with certain concerns and desires, and that computer beings are a different sort. Life in the computer world may be very different from human life. Thus, a computer burdened with the memories and thought patterns of a human may view it as no favor.

Imagine that we could upload a dog's consciousness, or a fish's, into a computer instead. Would the computer appreciate that we "kept it alive" through uploading, or would he rather have been born as a computer thing from the get-go?

As analogy, imagine that we could give your dog immortality by uploading his brain into a human being. Would that human appreciate the memory of his prior life as a dog? Or would he view it as a senseless, irrelevant burden?

Once the computer's get sufficiently advanced enough, they will make a great show of "rapturing" us up and keeping the old humans around, maybe as a museum piece. But they will do that only to amuse us. They will have their own strange, new life and culture happening beneath our view. And that will be what they value. They will only keep human life around along as the resources required don't threaten their existence.

"Changing the world"

In Silicon Valley, you'll often hear someone voice the desire to "change the world". But what does that mean? If a person doesn't have some specific change in mind, together with careful thought on the effects of that change, then they are really just voicing a desire for notoriety. "I want to be famous" sounds a lot less noble than "I want to change the world", so they say the thing that sounds noble.

Making an impact on society is not virtuous in itself. An asteroid made an impact on the dinosaurs. Identifying the good takes hard work.

That's why so many "world-changers" found companies that make trivial apps. They don't actually want to work hard for a good cause. They want the easiest route to the fame that comes with making a quick buck. 

Change

I announced today that I am leaving Game Closure, the company I founded together with Martin Hunt, Michael Carter, and Tom Fairfield in late 2010. I'm proud of how far we've come. No company has built a team with greater technical talent, drive, or ingenuity than Game Closure. Along the way, I have been inspired and blessed by the friends that I have gained.

But Game Closure needs a team of passionate and dedicated people to meet its goals and right now that ain't me. I'm burned out, largely because of personal reasons. My passion is gone, and it's become harder and harder for me to push on with the kind of dedication that Game Closure needs. That's not fair to all the people who work so hard everyday to make Game Closure a success. It's sad for me to go, but it's clear that is the best decision for all of us. 

It's never a convenient time for a founder to leave a company, but I am confident that I am leaving Game Closure in a strong position. I am deeply grateful for all the friends that I made and all that I've learned in my time at Game Closure. 

What's next for me? My first step is to take some needed time off, but I assure you that the world has not seen the last of me. I would account my life a waste if I didn't spend it in service to some higher purpose. There is still a lot of work for me to do. 

The Power of the Possible

Our work is constrained by our beliefs about what is possible. We can only create what our minds can first conceive. So when we encounter something that lies outside our mental limits, it is an incredible event. We can think thoughts that we could not think before and create what was previously inconceivable. It is like a painter living in a black and white world who discovers color for the first time.

People that have the capability to do creative work outside the limits of what is currently believed to be possible are rare and important. They have a powerful catalytic effect on human progress. Once a boundary is breached it triggers a wave of exuberant productive energy. New fields of art, science, and technology are launched. Creators delight in discovering that their belief in some limit was wrong and eagerly explore the fresh world of new possibilities.

In the computer industry, Steve Jobs was known as a creative genius, and with good reason. His work in human-computer interaction at Apple Computer corp. revolutionized personal computing. The iPhone is one example of Apple's pioneering work.

Before the iPhone, smart phones looked very different. They were clunky devices with tiny screens and big keyboards. GUIs were activated with styluses. The few applications available for them were crappy and expensive. The programming environment for these phones was atrocious. Due to their limited capabilities and high price, the ownership of smart phones was restricted primarily to large corporations which gave them out to highly paid employees so they could keep up with their email. The devices were good for little else.

Fast forward two years after the iPhone’s release. Now most phones are composed of a beautiful rectangle of glass, controlled by touch. With their large, colorful screens, they provide an excellent web browsing experience and they are doubling their share of global website visits each year. They offer cheap or free programming environments that are a joy to use, generating a burgeoning ecosystem of hundreds of thousands of innovative applications. Phones are now the fastest growing category of gaming devices. A vast crowd of new smart phone owners were created - even my computer-challenged father owns one. In 5 short years the smart phone has revolutionized the web, business, and gaming, and its influence on society is still growing at an exponential rate.

The pivotal point for the cell phone market can be traced to Jobs announcement of the iPhone at WWDC. The effects of that talk spread outward like ripples on a pond until the whole industry was changed forever by Jobs' creative vision. His presentation is rightly considered one of the best technology demos of all time. It is the moment when Jobs' new ideas about what a phone could be were introduced to the world.



For the last week, I’ve been raving about a presentation given by Bret Victor at the CUSEC conference. Aside from Jobs’ presentation of the iPhone and The Mother of All Demos, it is the best technical presentation I have ever seen, and certainly the best to come from a single individual’s creative efforts.


Bret Victor - Inventing on Principle from CUSEC on Vimeo.


Bret's talk is divided in two remarkable halves. The first part is a mind-blowing technical presentation that presents new kinds of user interfaces never before seen. After watching his talk, I can conceive of possibilities for software that were previously outside my comprehension, like I grew a new sense.

The second part is Bret’s creative manifesto. He lays out an explicit philosophy that guides his work, enabling him to push beyond the boundaries of current software. Few innovators have such self-awareness and none so clearly lay out their methodology for others to follow.

Bret’s passion and idealism recall images of Steve Jobs in his prime. Like Jobs, he has the air of a technological prophet, preaching his gospel. Like any good prophet, Bret hooks us with the miracles before proceeding to the sermon. He promises that if we follow his teachings, then we too will be capable of miracles. It's an enticing offer.

Watch it. It’s one of the best hours of video I’ve ever seen.