Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • July 8, 2010 8:27 AM

Why is it that those that set themselves up as societies moral and other guardians are usualy more degenerate than the common populous?

We hear excuse after excuse for our supposadly “betters” both politicaly and legaly when they show worse moral behaviour than you would expect of ally cats.

Their sort of morals I can cheerfully do without, as I expect most of us could.

Then of course we have those whos job it is to enforce our codified morals, and for them no moral outrage is of any use to curb their thirst for breaching the moral codes they are supposed to uphold.

As has been noted on this blog the LEO’s are running scared of camera phones etc and you realy have to ask what it is they are scared of?

Saddly as has often been pointed out,

“what is sauce for the gander is not of necescity sauce for the goose”.

Clive Robinson • July 9, 2010 12:05 AM

@ kkangaroo,

Behaviourist -v- anti-behaviorist has a long history.

I cannot remember the paper that debunked the rats in a maze issue, but the author found all previous papers failed to take sufficient care in designing their experiments to rule out sound / smell and other ques the rats actually picked up on.

And this is a fundamental issue in all experiments involving living creatures capable of some degree of self determinism (which is a debate for another day).

The issue of “man as a cog in the wheel of the production machine” is still very much open.

Most studies show that complex tasks are more easily quickly and accuratly performed when broken down into small simple repetative tasks.

However as you rightly say all creatures with some degree of self determination require stimulation whilst they work to perform “optimaly” otherwise they go looking for it.

But importantly it is not clear if the stimulation actually needs to be part of the job in hand or the larger context of the direct environment the work is carried out or even the larger context of a segment of society.

And this debate has been going on since the Quakers and the manufacture of choclate products.

Part of this is the “sense of belonging” by an employee to the organisaion they work with, also the satisfaction or pride in doing a job well. And a whole heep of other intangables that a cost accountant or time and motion advisor does not see or take into account.

For instance the case of the “office door”, just about every study has shown that the ability to have some control over a workers immediate environment effects their performance. The less
control the more lowly they feel within their environment. Which has two immediate disadvantages for any reasonable employer. Firstly it encorages wastefull “trial by combat” amongst people who spend more time working out how to “get one up” or “making a point” than doing their job. And secondly “key worker loss” that is nearly all jobs including the apparently most mundaine require “knowledge” to carry out and this knowledge comes in two forms that which is related to the job or task and that which is related to the environment where the job or task is performed. When a worker leaves for whatever reason they take some or all that knowledge with them.

Now these two issues meet in “trade secrets” not just of the employer but of the individual employee. One way to get status is by being the only person who knows how to do a particular task and keeping it from others to retain a competative edge. Usually it is by protecting a “knack” of the job, that is say knowing that materials (such as wood) have non uniform properties and knowing how to use those properties to best effect both in the final product and in the value added process of doing the task with minimal wasteage / time etc. The loss of this knowledge to an employer can range from a minor inonveniance to a major loss of function and even the loss of the business.

However there is a hidden cost to society in this ability to be incontrol of the envionment of the individuals workplace. It manifests itself in many ways and is a way some people establish their position by inflicting it on others (it is a form of work place bullying). And importantly it is not just critical to the work performance of those being subjected to it but also to their long term health.

Primate studies have shown that things like arterial scrolosis and other “stress diseases” go up rapidly in those that lose status or control of their environment in some way.

But importantly these issues are only just starting to come into the light of science or logic, and we don’t even have measurands for them to work.

So how do such things come from the unknown darkness into the light of Man’s perception of nature and logic?

Well as Douglas Adams once put it “That’s the job of us working philosophers”.

The problem of both Wittgenstein & Russel was that their fundemental and unstated assumptions where wrong. Which gave rise to issues (the well known one being of Russel trying to prove 1+1…) which in turn gave rise to modifications to others assumptions.

Unlike the beliefs prevalent at their time we now know that mathmatics and logic have limitations and cannot provide us with all the answers (something the Hard AI bods spend their time fighting ;).

And in our turn we will find out that some of our fundamental assumptions are wrong the route by which we find this and the answers starts in what some may call “philosophical musings”.