We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Natalie got there ahead of me but I also noticed the preposterous attempt by the pseudo-liberals of Crooked Timber to lecture us “Schmibertarians” in the ‘correct’ libertarian stance towards Iraq.
I thought it might be informative to examine the Crooked consensus and some of its logical implications. I would summarise the “Samizdatistas are schmibertarians” argument – and anyone who suspects I’m setting up a straw man here is invited to read the relevant posts and particularly the follow-up comments – as follows:
- ‘Proper’ Libertarians oppose major government programs funded by coercive taxation, the Iraq war is such a program.
- ‘Proper’ Libertarians are wary of any kind of social-engineering, so the neoconservative plan to remodel Middle Eastern countries as democracies is futile folly.
- Thus anyone who supports the war against Saddam is necessarily a sham libertarian who just thinks it’s cool to blow things up.
My first reaction was to the irony of being lectured in ‘correct’ libertarianism by a bunch of egalitarian, social-engineering collectivists who presume to identify as “Liberal”. Indeed it is precisely because this previously unambiguous term has been suborned by those who display a cavalier disregard for the classic liberal values of autonomy, individualism and limited government that many of us reluctantly adopt the libertarian moniker in the first place.
The premise behind the argument is dubious to say the least. It is generally taken to be the case that arguments are accepted or opposed on their own merits and without reference to whether they conform to some theology to which those making the argument are perceived to subscribe. I were to argue against, say, a Creationist, it would seem to me to be a pointless task to identify what a ‘real’ Creationist ought to believe prior to debunking his theory. Indeed, the logical consequence of a position which states that the correct libertarian ought to oppose the Iraq war according to libertarian first principles is that those who oppose the war are implicitly endorsing those specific libertarian principles. So, the next time some wonky twig proposes a massive government intervention or other, one can remind him that, as his opposition to the Iraq war demonstrates, such social engineering ought to be avoided.
It is also curious to note the partial isolationism adopted with regard to Iraq, considering the enthusiasm regularly displayed for action against third world ‘exploitation’. Thus, according to the Crooked Timber moral calculus, it is not ok to interfere in the affairs of another country if its citizens are being tortured or murdered but it is ok to interfere to prevent those (remaining) citizens getting a good job with a dreaded multinational corporation!
There has been a disturbing development in which PayPal seems to be threatening to withdrawn its services from blogs which violate their acceptable use policy. Fair enough on the face of it, as it is certainly PayPal’s right to offer to do business on whatever terms they wish.
But then take a look at what those terms are:
The Policy prohibits the use of PayPal in the sale of items or in support of organizations that promote hate, violence, or racial intolerance; items which graphically portray violence or victims of violence; or items closely associated with individuals notorious for committing murderous acts within the last 100 years.
So… write about or show pictures of the victims of a terrorist atrocity, or show pictures of Osama bin Laden and suddenly no more PayPal for you, as Bill Quick of Daily Pundit has found out.
They do not want to do business with Bill Quick? Well I am not so sure I want to continue to do business with PayPal then. Clearly Samizdata.net is going to have to review whether or not we will continue to have those PayPal buttons you see at the moment in our sidebar.
Well, miracles do happen. For a while, I was labouring (scuse pun) under the view that no British Conservative MP would ever set foot (or fingers) in the blogosphere.
I was wrong. The Conservative MP for Henley and all-round media superstar, Boris Johnson, now has a blog.
I only hope he has some inkling of what he has let himself in for.
For years, a certain type of person wrote letters to national newspapers and was frustrated that none would be published. Letter Editors would refer to their submissions as ‘nutter letters’, pinning some to the office noticeboard for the amusement of their colleagues.
Now these letter writers have moved into the age of the blogosphere. They are blogroaches now, but not ordinary ones. They are a type of superbug – the taxpayer-funded blogroach. They have nothing to do all day, except to collect jobseeker’s allowance or, more likely, incapacity benefit (which the government encourages them onto to massage the unemployment figures).
Not having got out much recently, they have lost many of their social skills, and seem less able to interact with others with courtesy and respect. For this reason alone, workfare has a lot going for it.
In having nothing to do all day, they inhabit other people’s blogs writing tediously long essays which tangentially refer to a blog’s point. They write 500 to 1000 words each time, and often get shirty if a proper response is not made by the blog’s author. Fortunately, Samizdata combines big readership with a high level of reader participation, meaning that its writers can sit back and let Paul Coulam beat up such annoying people. These blogroaches do not understand how to make their points graciously, normally regarding the blogs they infest as evil, and depositing their words of ‘wisdom’ on each and every article.
The taxpayer-funded blogroach assumes that everyone has as much time as they do for blogging, and should take their views seriously, and publish proper responses to them – or retract what they have said. In reality, bloggers on popular blogs tend to have real jobs and thus a fraction of the time to write for a blog. Spending hours responding to unemployed blogroaches seems pretty tiresome.
Some blogs solve this problem by just not allowing comments. Others delete blogroaches on sight. But the taxpayer-funded blogroach considers this to be restricting his right to free speech. Newspapers were wrong not to publish his letters and so are blogs. Apparently.
RC Dean correctly identifies the blog-banging of Rather and his forged document as an exercise in distributed intelligence. So, can this model for cooperative intellectual activity be applied to other tasks? Can the combined power of the Internet be brought to bear on other creative tasks, rather than just the destruction of the pretensions of forgers and their mainstream media dupes?
Open Source software famously makes use of distributed intelligence. And I seem to recall hearing on the British BBC1 TV show The Sky at Night that the Internet is also already used to do combined astronomy. Also, I recall reading, but do not recall where or when, about a list of famous maths problems that have baffled the greatest maths minds for centuries, which have now all had cash prizes attached to them.
But in the case of those maths problems it is only the publicising of the problem that uses the Internet. The solutions will pretty much come from individuals. Or is that wrong? Will major proofs of major theorems get themselves constructed line by line, in public, with dozens of different mathematicians chipping in with their own pennyworths, with each step not being enough to justify a journal article, but the combined effect being mathematically stellar?
Could a film script perhaps be concocted in this way? → Continue reading: Some more distributed intelligence
Recent events in the United States have demonstrated the effectiveness of political blogging on the reporting of the presidential campaigns in the established media. They also provide a useful comparison with the United Kingdom where this relationship between the media and the blogosphere has not been cemented. The difference that blogs have had in the political cultures of both countries lead on to wider questions about the preconditions required for the political bloggers to play such a useful role, as they do in the United States.
There are distinct aspects of the development of the blogosphere in the United States that could not be replicated in the United Kingdom. Both the political culture and the press is far more decentralised and local, allowing new entrants to disseminate information and find new audiences with far lower barriers. The press in the United States was also far more highbrow and expected to maintain high standards of accuracy and objectivity by its readership.
By contrast, the British press has taken a far more visible role in forming and leading public opinion with a greater emphasis upon comment, sometimes likened to a published version of talk radio. Facts and objectivity are not as important in the British press as they are in the United States. It is also a far more centralised concern reflecting the concentrated nature of the British state and the Westminster village. Such a small circle breeds tighter and more incestuous networks of journalists and politicians who maintain control over the flow of information between the political class, the press and the interested public.
The other key difference between the two countries lies in the attitude of the professional towards blogging. → Continue reading: The Blogosphere and the Open Society
I frequently hear “Oh blogs, they don’t really have any influence” and “What real difference do blogs make?” – Individually it is certainly true that popular blogs like Samizdata.net or even Godzilla-blogs like Instapundit are dwarfed in numbers of eyeballs they attract by major newspapers and TV networks… but just as a single piranha is not so fearsome a beast, a large school of them is another thing all together. When you look at a blog, you are just looking at a single node: you need to stand back and look at the network.
Tony Blankley over on Townhall.com has written an interesting article called A revolution in news:
As in all revolutions, first, the old order must be destroyed, then we will learn both the strengths and the shortcomings of the new order. We got a glimpse of the Internet blogger’s strength this past week.
For three quarters of a century until last week, when CBS News had entered a fight it had been an unfair mismatch for its adversary. The credibility, research capacity and gate-keeping monopoly of CBS would overwhelm its victim. But last week, it was breathtaking to see, moment by moment, the Internet blogger’s advantage.
[…]
As each of these experts added their information to one blog, other bloggers would monitor it, pass it on, add a new fact, reorganize the analysis and synthesize new information. If new information proved wrong, it was corrected by yet another expert in the blogosphere. Mistakes were cheerfully admitted and instantly corrected.
[…]
The Internet bloggers picked CBS’s story as clean as a school of piranhas would pick clean some poor water buffalo that wandered into their river.
This is the distributed intelligence that has been discussed here before. Blogs have in many ways been over-hyped but that is mostly because it is not blogs that are the revolutionary driver… it is the blogosphere.
Old media is learning the hard way to be sure of their facts because somewhere out there, sitting in front of a computer in Biloxi or Berlin or Bombay, is someone knows the subject you claim to be an expert in a damn sight better than you do with a whole lot of bloggers looking over his shoulder.
An awesome glimpse at the potential for distributed intelligence is occurring right now in the blogosphere. A series of ‘newly discovered’ memos purporting to show that George W Bush failed to fulfill his national guard duties has, in the matter of a few hours, been subjected to the distributed intelligence of the blogosphere, and have been pretty conclusively shown to be forgeries, as far as I can tell.
The speed and apparent quality of the analysis of these memos is stunning, as the blogs allow the assembly of the observations, recollections, and thinking of dozens of people in real time. The mainstream media must feel the Polish horse cavalry trying to stop the blitzkrieg in WWII.
Warning: Powerline is getting buried with hits from a Drudge link right now, but keep trying.
Update: Just to reinforce the point, commenter Dave Sheridan points out that its not just distributed intelligence, it is actually a glimpse of the face of the true god of liberty, spontaneous order.
I have always suspected the notion blogging will lead us into a wonderful future of ‘participatory democracy’ was one of those ideas which withers away to nothing under closer scrutiny. Sure, we can ‘fact check the asses’ (as Ken Layne put it) of the established political/media classes but that only makes us bloggers ‘participants’ in the sense that calling the cops when the party next door is making too much noise makes you a ‘participant’ in the next door’s party.
Samizdatista Jackie Danicki spotted an interesting fact that well known writer and commentator Theodore Dalrymple is now a contributor to the Social Affairs Unit blog, publishing under his real name, Dr Anthony Daniels. The SAU has scored quite a coup by getting such an excellent contributor signed up.
The blogosphere continues its march into the mainstream.
The BBC is running a competition:
BBC News Online wants your nominations for the best political websites and blogs, preferably with a UK focus. We are looking for lively, thought-provoking sites that stimulate genuine debate, rather than just pushing a particular narrow viewpoint or agenda, but all suggestions are welcome.
I know of a political blog that is lively, thought-provoking and stimulates genuine debate. In fact, it must surely be a shoe-in for the title of ‘Best Political Blog’.
I would tell you the name but…modesty forbids.
As we used to chant at demonstrations, “the whole world’s watching!” Except this time it is not the media acting as the intermediary between watcher and watchee.
The whole world is watching the political reporters this time around and the most important blog stories will be the ones they do not talk about. This is not to mention the unposed and ‘off the cuff’ imagery we will be seeing.
Are DNC parties better than LPC parties? Do they have an equivalent to the Kansas Caucus? Enquiring minds want to know!
A note to any of our compadres who are attending: The National Space Society will be holding a party there. Drop by and say hello to George Whitesides.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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