Open Source as God: A Religious Thought Exercise

I think the flaw in your analysis is that the world has already adjusted to the prospect of increased information flow, and pre-existing sources of power and control have redirected their efforts (with moderate-to-high levels of success in most cases) from more traditional avenues to controlling the flow, context, and content of information.

Obviously the notion/practice of "controlling" information has been around for as long as the notion of information itself and the practice of its dissemination. The emergent quality is one of priority and proportional resource allocation. Additionally, as many governments (our current administration included) have made clear, power sources are willing to pursue a scorched-earth policy in regards to the credibility and authenticity of information. Rather than relinquish their chokehold on content/context etc., they're willing to use their power to cast perpetual doubt on all information.

Even before the internet explosion, American political conservatives were pursuing this scorched-earth policy by erecting their own "scientific" foundations to spout convenient data with a gloss of scientific legitimacy. The War on Drugs has benefitted vastly from distortions and outright lies that it disseminates at will to lower-order medical establishments; after all, doing illegal drugs is a crime, and law enforcement knows more about crime than doctors do, so obviously law enforcement agencies know more about illegal drugs than medical experts do.

As if the preceding weren't bad enough, the very technological advancement that will allegedly lead us to a golden age can undoubtedly be used to create better and better "fakes" of both audio and visual media. Mass digitalization has only accelerated and facilitated the process. No matter how good our fake-sniffing technology may become (and the rule seems to be well established that it simply cannot keep pace with skilled fakery,) things that better fool the human senses will gain more traction in less time. The old adage will require only minor modification: "A lie can be downloaded to every PC in the world before the truth can e-mail it to the lab."

I might have more to say later about open-source projects and how they fit into this tangled web.

Your hopes that this would be an interesting read were well founded. I have a single criticism, but it's a practical one, and since you acknowledged fully that your post was a thought experiment, take my critique with a large grain of salt. Like sea salt.

I think that you're very right to suggest that the type of enlightenment you're talking about would require widespread access to the internet. I don't know what actual internet-availability statistics looks like (I'd be thrilled if you knew were some were that I could look at), but I think that relatively few people have regular access to the internet, especially outside of America. Not only is some sort of "hookup" required - a phone like, cable, sattelight, whatever - but you also need an interface, and as of now that pretty much means a computer. Computers aren't cheap, and third world countries and their people have many and varied expenses higher on their list of immediate needs than computers. Food, water, and shelter come to mind as prime examples.

Compounding the proglem is education. People not only need access to information, but they need to be equipped to interpret and use that information. Again, the burden falls on underdeveloped countries, which are usually those that would benefit most from the "rehumanization" that you describe.

In my mind, this almost makes your prediction self-defeating. I mean, the fact that so much of the world lacks for resources and education is both the reason that your thought experiment is so promising, but also its largest hindrance.

On another note, something that I found especially interesting was a connectio I drew between two separate aspects of your post: the example you used of a hive of bees or colony of ants when talking about emergent properties, and your thought that "God" could be an emergent property of human community.

The sci-fi geek in me began imagining that spreading access to the internet could not only accomplish what you describe later in your post, but also bridge the gap between biological and cultural evolution, in effect beginning the transformation of humans into a hive society.

I think your prediction is much more likely than mine, but you just wait until you can actually get a wireless antenna hooked straight into your brain. You won't be laughing then. Unless you're mind-reading bash.org. Actually, if anything like what I've described ever happens, and the content distribution of the internet doesn't change substantially, we'll probably all just be masturbating a lot more.

I find it interesting that the two of you chose to focus on power and access, which -- conveniently enough for me -- aren't really relevant to the single most interesting phenomenon here which is the response behavior of the network.

I think I used a tornado example in the original post: If a tornado hits Tumbleweed, NE, as a result of that information spreading, money and volunteers can quickly fill the need created by the disaster. Next time you read about a minor tragedy in the paper, check to see if "supporters have set up a web page to collect donations;" I've run into that pretty often. Next time I do, I'll post a link here.

Web-savvy political candidates are also realizing that they can raise huge amounts of money by appealing to wider audiences than their constituents. Without any strict organization, money is going to where it will do the most good -- away from someone facing an easy victory to someone in a tight race.

In both of these examples, I think it's the direct person-to-person communication that is causing the effect I describe. Neither doctors nor law enforcement seem to have made much of an impact on the actual distribution of drugs, and I think that anyone trying to control information will meet similar success trying to control P2P communication.

As far as access goes, I think the "tornado victim" example shows that universal access isn't necessary. I mean, the computer would probably be sucked up and dropped ten miles away in a neighbor's corn field, but the help will still come. This sort of example is what I mean when I'm talking about how I think the emergent property of a group of human beings is God. It fills the role of God the provider.

On the other hand, maybe Republicans are right, and only those rich enough to afford a G5 and a T3 get to have anything to do with God.

I can't afford a G5, but my computer does just fine, plus I've had high-speed internet for most of the last five years, and neither has done much for my personal relationship with God. Imma go play me some video games now.

:P

You don't get a personal relationship with God. You are God (In a way. Don't get too excited)

But what you're talking about ultimately is a reallocation of resources based on volunteerism, which in turn is based on the widespread distribution of (percieved-to-be-reliable) information and the easy (perceived-to-be-reliable) transfer of currency/etc. I'm arguing two big things.

First, a network that distributes information will necessarily attract ne'er-do-wells. This is no problem, you say, if the entire community takes responsibility for filtering the information. Well, unfortunately, a classic collective action problem precludes this as a serious possibility. Furthermore, existing power nodes can actively prevent effectual verification of information. The same networks used to transmit so-called objective data are used to disseminate ideological messages and solidify ideological support (where verification matters very little.) We live in a world where there is sadly no bright line between these two functions. Whatever amorphous boundaries may still exist are being eroded daily.

Second, the presence of a juicy network that provides an easy way to reallocate resources will be a constant target for hiijacking of all kinds, from hoaxes to direct hacking. Obviously, there's really no such thing as community policing- the skillset required is severely prohibitive. So you need some sort of organization; this organization becomes a power node. Hello recursive city.

I do understand to some extent your insistence on divorcing the theoretical phenomenon you're contemplating from any predictive model of what might happen on a global scale were it to become a mainstay of global communication. By the same token, however, you have to understand that human nature is going to have an influence on the phenomenon itself. When everyone is sort-of God, and God starts producing results, at the very least people will constantly be trying to get God to do them a favor. At worst, the constant struggle between conflicting desires will produce even more strife than the God that wasn't doing anybody any favors.

Whether you intended to or not, you're bringing in another one of my favorite cool biology/game theory concepts (apart from emergent properties) -- the "evolutionarily stable strategy" (ESS). ESS is essentially the "prisoner's dilemma" on a much larger scale. Stated simply (in the biological realm), it is a strategy that, when employed by all members of a population, is resistant to exploitation by other strategies.

In our "internet allocation of resources" example, I think that in the hypothetical situation you're describing, you're imagining a totally "virgin" or benevolent network being invaded by "ne'er-do-wells." Indeed, if a perfect system existed it would be extremely vulnerable to invasion by a "greedy" strategy. A system of organisms is too complicated to have any one strategy that is stable. Any one strategy would be extremely prone to invasion by another.

So what you get when you examine a community is a combination of strategies which are in equilibrium. As an example, let's create a fictional community of 100 people on an island, and that they hunt for food. THere are only 2 strategies that can be employed by these people, "generous" and "selfish." If everyone were generous, a single selfish person does a lot better for themselves than everyone else, which leads to even more selfish people. If everyone were selfish, perhaps nobody would get enough to eat. Somewhere in between there is a balance of strategies, let's arbitrarily call it 85% generous/ 15% selfish, which resists change in either direction. If more people become generous, then there is a greater incentive to being selfish, but if too many people become selfish then everybody is hurt by it.

I don't know if I would say that we're at that balance point between "altruistic" and "selfish" in terms of internet-driven distribution of resources, but I would argue that we're close to it. Because of that, I don't think there's any danger of the system being raped as you imply.

I'm basing my opinion on the observation of altruistic resource distribution and the assumption that the intentions of the individuals comprising the internet community is close to an ESS. I'm not saying that there won't be people who try to exploit the system -- they're a necessary part of it. I'm describing a "neat" emergent property that I see in the networking of people, and provocatively calling it "God."

It's a very interesting theory, but I'm simply unconvinced it can successfully attach to a network composed of sentient individuals; tit for tat, I offer up one of my pet theories, despite the fact that I really don't understand it: the very act of observation changes that which is being observed.

Thoughts?

Alright, a macro application of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle which is that we can't measure both the position and speed of a particle because the act of observing affects it. I guess it's even easier to show how observation changes behavior in a social setting.

But I think that the application of that particular theory in this instance leads into the theory that "any doom that can be predicted will not occur," which I consider to be, as Al Franken would say, "kidding on the square."

You seem to think that the system will degenerate because of milicious actors. I would argue that your prediction alone makes that outcome less likely. I'm not sure how the liklihood of my hypothetical "enlightened age" is affected by me hypothesizing about it. Perhaps it is also less likely, but I think that in this sense, it's the bad outcomes that are reduced by prediction.

I guess since this is becoming a discussion of various theories and laws, you could now bring in Murphy's Law: If there is more than one way to do something, and one of those ways will end in disaster, then someone will do it that way.

Far from asserting that "any doom that can be predicted will not occur," my main point in bringing up the uncertainty principle is simply that individual sentient beings can conceivably become aware of a quasi- or pseudo-ESS at work, and will consciously react to the system itself, rather than reacting to only the smaller behaviors that make up the system.

Generous people will observe those individuals "lucky" enough to be selfishly benefitting from the ESS and this observation could produce a wide range of negative reactions, from discontinuing their "generous" participation to attempting to "switch sides."

The problem is, none of the "selfish" people are going to want to take one for the team. The net result is that the conscious observation of the ESS will create a massive coefficient of (metaphysical!) friction within the system. It will fall apart in short order, and will create a lot of chaos and conflict while doing so.

It's a lot like how economics majors are more likely to pre-emptively screw you because they've been taught that people screw people over. If I could find you a cite for that random assertion, I would be a far better man than I am.