Popular science has failed.

     Popularizing science once seemed like a wonderful idea. Knowledge that would otherwise be privilege of a handful few, would become a collective asset, enriching our intellect, and giving the people new ways of understanding the world.

    Yet the attempt to actually popularizing science has failed. Instead of enlightening the people, popular science has just given us a misinformed audience with high confidence, not to mention the numerous science bros that defend misogyny and racism with "scientific" arguments.

 

    A major reason is that we are constantly bombarded with information we barely have time to process, let alone getting a deeper understanding of. Hence, popularizing science is mainly about giving articles (often misleading) titles and pics that will attract the most clicks, while the content is either too short to be accurate, or too long to be actually read by most viewers.

 

    Another reason is that most people don't like science; they just like "cool" images. Hence, a popular biologist's post about genetic influences on IQ can just have an image of the double helix and attract readers, whereas a sociologist's post about the Flynn effect or the statistics indicating that having elder siblings can negatively affect your IQ, are barely noticed. There are simply no "cool" images for such posts.

 

    But the main reason is, or could be, that some information can only be really understood by experts, and often not even by them.

 

    It may sound elitistic, but it is not. You can't really grasp General Relativity without a hard background in Differential Geometry. This is by itself not a big deal, since the gist of General Relativity can be somewhat understood when conveyed by non-mathematical means, without in the least influencing how you perceive your everyday life. This doesn't seem to hold for popular biology, neuroscience, sociology, and economics (if we accept it as a science too).

 

    Perhaps the most eye-gauging example of how popular science has failed, and has actually led to fundamental misunderstandings, is how much are biological/neuroscientific explanations over-abused the last decades. Biological explanations are used even for the time we spent on our screens (!), even though no screens existed in our evolutionary history.

 

    It is genuinely sad to see even respected professionals like the Swedish psychiatrist Anders Hansen, explain our addiction to smartphones in terms of dopamine in the brain and how our ancestors were excited in the savannah, when one can just make the observation that we use smartphones because everyone else does and we are expected to be available, or because urban environments are dull and smartphones are often more interesting than one's surroundings. Why would we have to invoke neuroscientific and evolutionary explanations for smartphone addiction?

 

    If even experts are distracted and misunderstand things, one can only begin to imagine what happens with non experts. Pop science barely has changed anyone's views, and only makes them more bold in believing that their opinion is "backed by research".

 

    It could be that all this bombardment with light pop science causes more distraction and misinformation than enlightening. Perhaps we need fewer online articles and youtube videos (i.e. less pop science), and more in-depth books and documentaries, while finally accepting that some knowledge is for experts only, and could be misunderstood even by them.

 

    A more enlightened populace will most likely not come with more popular science, but with more reading in general, as well as humbleness. The humbleness to admit that your understanding of something you heard or read may be crude, or wrong.

 

    As of 2024, popular science has failed to make the people more enlightened, and has only given us crude "sciency" (i.e. biological/neuroscientific) parodies of explanations of sociopolitical issues, and bold idiots less willing than ever to question their opinions because they are "backed by science".

Rationality is good, but overrated

     Rationality. The tool of philosophers and mathematicians, the mother of Renaissance and Enlightenment, the cradle of advanced civilization, and the reason why they no longer behead you for insulting a deity. 

    No doubt rationality is generally way better than the lack of it. We can imagine a society where complete rationality prevails (well, sort of) , but we can't even begin to imagine a society where reason and logic are completely absent. Such a society would most likely not even be formed in the first place, and if it did, it wouldn't go far. Hence that modern western cultures give so much importance in it, that it is almost an insult to accuse someone of being irrational -sort of calling them nonsensical or plain dumb.

    We often disregard a (political, philosophical, professional, etc) opponent's views or suggestions  by associating them with feelings, conspiracy theories, guesses, matters of taste, and in any case irrationality. A form of anathema for quickly dismissing something -since if something is or seems irrational, then according to the implicit assumption of our culture, it is not even worth discussing. 

    Yet the last few years we tend to overdo it with being rational, and it actually starts to seem a little bit overrated. Treating rationality as the only compass towards the better has more profound ethical, political, economical, legal, and social implications than one initially thinks. And after a certain point, it doesn't really make much sense.

 

Justice and dignity are fundamentally irrational

    You are waiting at the bus stop. A guy randomly walks up to you, insults your family, and punches you in the face for no reason. He is at least as big and strong as you are. No one saw you, so there is no reputation at stake, and no witnesses in case you want to sue him.

    If you are completely rational, you will realize that hitting back will not undo his punch and insult. You will also calculate that there is a probability of you ending up severely beaten up if you hit back, and that even if you successfully beat him up, some witness may come from around the corner and perceive you as the attacker, so you'll end up sued by him instead. The completely reasonable choice here, is to let the person walk away without any consequence. 

    But would you do it? Would you be proud of yourself if you chose to act so? Would you be happy with your daughter marrying someone who chose to let such an offender walk away? If the answer to any of these questions is no, well, congratulations! You are irrational, and your irrationality is nothing to be ashamed of. 

    The example above rings two bells: dignity and justice (perhaps even manliness, but that is another story). Both are fundamentally irrational. You can't really put down in words why it would be shameful for you to let the offender go away, and if you attempt to do so, you'll realize that your explanations are completely irrational and made-up. No one ever gave you a lecture on how it would be shameful to the person randomly punching you at the bus stop to go away; it just feels so.

    Why it feels so depends on our sense of dignity, and that in turn depends on a  combination of evolutionary and cultural influences, both of which are irrational and flawed too.

    Justice is irrational as well. Can you even define justice? Why is it fair to hit back a person that hit you? This sounds like a eye-for-an-eye justice, and according to many if not most rationality fanboys, it is wrong! In fact, if we want to be completely rational, we should leave a murderer unpunished if we know for sure that he will never harm another person again, and just ignore the cries of the victim's relatives. We only care about logic, not about feelings, don't we?

    I perceive it as self-evident that justice and dignity are irrational, just like our everyday behavior, or even altruism. No one really disagrees that these forms of irrationality have even positive aspects. Even rationalism hools like Steven Pinker recognize that the irrationality of our social behavior has good aspects as well (e.g. running in a building on fire to help a stranger). But! When it comes to politics, the economy, and the law, rationality is the only way to go! Right?

    Well, I doubt it.

 

Do we really want a completely rational economy and legal system?

     Imagine an economist giving a lecture. He is a highly intelligent and academically successful technocrat, with years of experience in finance, and working experience in banks, off-shores, universities, and ministries. As you expect, our economist is extremely rational and mathematical, and has come up with a plan for powering up our economy.

    "By legalizing child prostitution, we will bring billions to the state! Pedophiles from all around the world will travel to our country for its' services, and this will propel up tourism as well. Thousands of new jobs will be created, and criminality will be reduced too, since no one will have to abduct a child and rape her! We will drug the children to prevent the psychological impact, and this will increase the profitability of pharma-corporations too!" 

    How does it sound? Rational, ain't it? Our economist described an actual method of growing the economy, -so why not follow it? Since it makes us richer, reduces criminality (for some definition of it), and provides a way to avoid the psychological impact to the children, what are your objections then? That it is not "right"? Says who? Elaborate. Give our economist a rational argumentation. He and his friends can always come up with rational counter-arguments.

    Legalizing child prostitution is wrong mainly because our gut feeling says it is. The gut feeling in turn depends on a combination of cultural and evolutionary influences. The argumentation to justify our gut feeling is made up after contemplation, and only when explicitly asked for it. The example above is far-fetched, yet makes the point quite clear: square rationality disregarding feelings and instincts may not be the proper path towards a better tomorrow.

    We would end up with monstrously inhumane economic and legal systems if we were to use pure rational reason to build them. Hospitals would deny treating you for being too old, and the cost of the treatment exceeds the benefit. Even killing non-productive people (e.g. persons with disabilities) might be an option now, since there often is no actual benefit in helping them. 

    The root of the problem is that much of what we take for granted in the Law and the Economy is irrational in the first place. Human rights, for instance, are not only a very recent social construction, but an irrational one: if we take all human rights one by one, there is no path of purely logical reasoning leading to them. Most of them actually just sound (and are) good.

    One might claim that they are like axioms in mathematics, but mathematical axioms derive from facts (e.g. you can actually draw a euclidean line from any point A to any point B on paper), whereas cultural "axioms" such a human rights and the value of human life... well, they are more related to feelings than mathematical axioms. And there is nothing inherently wrong about that.

    Our imaginary economist is not wrong about his "method" boosting economy. He is wrong for not taking cultural tamboos and human rights in the equation. Being rational is generally a good thing, but being too rational can make you weird, disgusting, or monstrous.

  

Where can we draw the line?

     So, what is the case then? How logical should we be to avoid becoming weird? Is there a magic percentage of irrationality allowed in argumentation on politics, economics, and the law? Or should we just advocate opinions based solely on "because that's how I feel"-a soft-sounding alternative to "because I said so"?

     Finding a magic percentage of irrationality allowed in is out of scope for this post. To be honest, I wouldn't bet my $5 it even exists. But we should sit back and think a second time before rejecting an  opinion altogether because it seemingly lacks clear, reasonable justification. Complete rationality is unsuitable not only for our everyday behavior (helping a stranger is irrational too), but even in political and legal debate.

    Our opinions are based on a combination of logical reasoning and gut feeling, and nothing is inherently wrong about that. It only becomes wrong when the illogical opinions of a minority make the life of the majority harder, but this can only be solved with more (actual) democracy, and not more rationality. Otherwise we will end up doing meaningless, never-ending debates, seemingly trying to find out who has the most arguments, but actually trying to sound smarter.

 

Things that right-wingers have a tough time understanding

 There was a similar post on this blog, but it was a translation of an older post with argumentation adjusted to Greek politics (and some awful imitation of my writing style when writing in Greek). This was written in English in the first place, and pretty much adjusted for an American audience (though the argumentation is pretty much valid for European politics too).

There will be some updates with extra points.

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1. Capitalism is not a meritocracy.

    According to the right-wing mythology, capitalism is a system where wealth is accumulated by the most capable, talented, and hard working.

    It doesn't take much thinking to make this myth fall apart. In most countries (e.g. India, Pakistan, Nigeria, etc) no matter your IQ and willingness to work, the probability of living a decent life is very small, let alone becoming a multimillionaire. Right wingers typically get around this small detail of our world by attributing this situation to non-western cultures, and claiming that it isn't so in the west (or the USA in particular).

    Now, let's get our facts straight.

    Imagine someone who is extremely skilled and intelligent, has studied for decades, works hard, and saves lives. Any doctor could be that, and especially a neurosurgeon.

    Yet bother taking a glance on the forbes' list of billionaires: you will not find a single neurosurgeon there.

    Just like you will not find a phd mathematician, or a rocket scientist, or a kernel programmer, or a nuclear physicist. You will only find the people extracting surplus value off the rocket scientist (e.g. Elon Musk), the kernel programmer (e.g. Bill Gates), etc.

    Capitalism is exactly what the word says: an -ism (i.e. sociopolical model) where the most powerful are the ones that own the most capital.

    Gaining capital has barely anything to do with being skilled and hard working, especially if we take in to account the non-western countries (no matter the culture, most are capitalist too). If the fact that Kim Kardashian makes more than a nuclear physisist or that the forbes list does not comprise of neurosurgeons and phd mathematicians, does not convince you, I don't know what will.

    Gaining capital is about extracting it from the ones who actually produce it, not about being talented or hard-working.

    Thinking that the forbes list comprises of the most hard-working persons or capable minds, is almost like thinking that the MTV charts comprise of the most talented artists. "Almost", because sometimes an artist on the MTV charts may actually have some talent.


2. Businessmen/entrepreneurs don't innovate; scientists and engineers do.

    There is some confusion as to who is the actual innovator and mastermind behind modern technologies. Society wants to you believe that it is businessmen and entrepreneurs who are behind your technological advancement, but this actually is far from the truth.

    The ones who innovate are scientists and engineers. Some businessmen may have an engineering degree, but just because you have studied guitar does not mean you are a musician, let alone a composer. Not to mention that most businessmen don't even have an engineering degree in the first place.

    Elon Musk did not design the electric cars his companies sell; the engineers that work there did it for him. Bill Gates did not design or write the code for Windows; the programmers he hired did it for him. The list can go on for ever.

    A businessman only solves the financial problems for his own business, not the technical problems that improve your technology. As a matter of fact and precision, even the financial problems are seldom if ever solved by the businessmen themselves -they hire financial analysts to do the job for them

    Thinking that the CEOs of tech corporations are the masterminds behind technology, is fully equivalent with believing that the CEOs of publishing companies are the masterminds behind literature.


3. When scientists and engineers innovate, they are, more often than not, government-funded.

    Yes, you read that right. The microprocessor, the computer, the internet, and most of your medicine, owe their existence to government-funded research.

    Just like sending humanity to space (USSR) or landing it to the moon (high tax USA of the 60s) were achieved by government-funded research.

    One of the most persistent myths by capitalists to justify privitazing everything is the technological advancement that supposedly was a result of the private economy. The real reason behind it was actually the increase of population (larger population  more hands working & more brains thinking), which in turn can be attributed to a combination of related and unrelated factors, but we are not writing a book here.

    Most of the technological advancement that improved your life can be traced back to government-funded programs like DARPA in the USA, or projects such like CERN in EU.

    No sane investor would invest millions or even billions for a hadron collider (can you even imagine a way it would be profitable?). But the thing is, the HTTP protocol came about when the scientists in CERN needed an efficient way to access data stored on other machines.

    You can find numerous similar examples with details on the internet, but I will encourage you to read "the entrepreneurial state" by the prize-winning economist Marianna Mazucatto.

4. Basic economics only applies to "basic" economies.

    Basic economics is just like basic physics: pretty sufficient to describe a simple system, but falls apart when attempting to describe anything more complex.

    Newton's equations can describe a simple planetary system (e.g. a star and a couple of planets), but fall apart even when trying to describe large planetary systems, let alone star clusters, galaxies, and black holes . Newton's equations have became useless long before coming anywhere near to describe star clusters and black holes, and the infinitely more complex Einstein's equations come into play (though even then one needs massive computational power to actually make precise descriptions).

    Same with basic economics. You may describe a simple economy using them -e.g. a (isolated and self-sufficient) village with a dozen economic players-, but you are not going to describe a chaotic supersystem of banks, states, monetary funds, incomprehensible legal systems, international politics, shareholders, and  tight interdependence between all of them.

    So, before trying to oWn ThE liBz with bAsIC eCoMoMicS, make sure that those economics are actually meant to describe the real world.

    You won't describe or make predictions for a star cluster with basic Newton's equations. You won't describe or make predections for the international economy using basic economics. Fox news "analysts" and PragerU have deceived you.

5. Welfare state is for the "irresponsible" / "weak"? Isn't this the case with the law and the police?
`
    "What?! A welfare state, with tax-funded college, healthcare, regulations, and economic safety nets for everyone?! You want the government to be your daddy?? All these taxes are hurting the economy! And why should the taxpayer pay for your weakness and irresponsibility? *You* are responsible for your economic situation, and no one else! As for the big corporations, they will realize that [*insert bad stuff here*] is non viable and the market will regulate itself."

    this sounds exactly like:

    "What?! A lawful state, with tax-funded police force, a legal system, and juries for everyone?! You want the government to be your daddy?? All these taxes are hurting the economy!  And why should the taxpayer pay for your weakness and irresponsibility? *You* are responsible for your safety, and no one else!  As for the criminals, they will realize that robbing everyone isn't viable and society will regulate itself"

    A welfare state is as much a prerequisite for a civilized society as much as a legal system and a police force is.

    Abolish the police and the law, and you will end up with groups of armed bandits breaking into your house while you sleep, murder you, rape your wife, and take everything valuable. Theoretically, you will be able to defend yourself with your guns, but 1. they are more than you, 2. why should all this happen? Can't we just have a police force and a law?

    Abolish the welfare state and deragulate everything, and you will end up with the big corporations buying up everything and forcing you work from dawn to sunset for pennies. Theoretically, you would be able to survive by "starting your own business" and working 90h/week, but 1. Google and Amazon are way stronger than you are, 2. why should all this happen? Can't we just have regulations and an economic safety net for everyone?

6. You have been lied to in your whole life about the communist regimes.

 

    "Communism only ever brought famines, suffering, and destruction!1!". This is what we have been told about communism. And we have been told that this much, that is has become a part of our culture -pretty much in the same sense that worshipping Kim Jong Un has become a part of North Korean culture.

 

But bother checking this out:

 

 

 

    This is the life expectancy in China before and after the communist revolution, as found on Statista.  A similar pattern is noted in the USSR.

 

    The so-called communist regimes of China and Russia did not have as good living standards as the West, but they were very very better than what they replaced. Statistical facts such as life expectancy, infant mortality, and literacy, speak for themselves: life was even more awful in the Tsarist regimes and pre-communist China respectively.

 

    Yes, there were famines in the beginning, but they were the last to ever happen in those countries. Famines were a routine in Tsar's Russia and Imperial/Republican China. If famines were the rule or even frequent Mao's regime, how come and the Chinese population grew that much under Mao? Would the population more than quadruple under Mao if the Chinese were indeed starving?

 

    Some of the so-called communist regimes had a standard of living that was somewhat decent even by the Western standards -namely Tito's Yugoslavia (which you, more likely than not, have not even heard of) and Ho Chi Minh's Vietnam. The average citizen there lived like a low-to-middle-class westerner; not enviably well, but definitely not very bad either.

 

    I don't know if implementing communism in the West would be a good idea, but I can assure you of this: communism did not only bring "famines, suffering, and destruction". China's population would not have increased that much under communism; and Russia would not become an industrial superpower that sent humanity to space under communism, and all this despite the WW2 casualties and material destruction.

 

    You have been lied to in your whole life. Bother asking who lied to you and what was the purpose.

 

Was the USSR a nice place to live? No. Was the USSR a hell on earth? Also no.
The percentages of USSR nostalgia are more than clear.

 

 

7. Not everything depends on your choices, never did, never will, and that is the case with everyone else too.

 

    Most of your life is determined by three factors that are completely our of your control: the country you were born in, the year you were born in, and the income of your parents. Being born in Danmark is different than being born in Botswana, being born in 1950, 1980, and 2010 are different, and being born to a CEO is different than being born to a janitor.

 

    Each and every of these three factors largely determines the career choices available to you (would I have been able to become a programmer if I was born in 1830?), your probability of getting an education and its' quality, your possibilities of seeking a better life abroad, and even your personality traits (unless you believe you would be equally peaceful if you were raised by the Taliban). 

    Another factor that plays too much of a role is your gender, but if we go into this you may dismiss my argument as "woke", so let's pretend it is not on this list.

  

    Then there is other stuff our of your direct control but have a huge impact on your life. The stock market, international politics, bank policies, environmental issues, and the choices of everyone else. You simply don't exist in a vacuum. The 2008 recession, the covid-19 outbreak, and the war in Ukraine should have washed away such delusions.

   

    The "you-control-your-own-life" narrative is the narrative of the oppressor. It serves him in multiple ways: by making you feel guilty for your situation as if it all was your mistake, by giving you vain promises that you can just stop being poor by trying a little harder, and by making you bowing down to him because he somehow deserves being in power thanks to his supposed right choices. This form of propaganda works, because you love believing life is fair and everyone gets what they deserve. Well, they don't. Ask the parents of any child with bone cancer.

    International politics, stock-market fluctuations, wars, diseases, health issues, pre-existing socioeconomic conditions, your parents' wealth and debt, your country, all are completely out of your control, yet form your daily life and define your fate.

 

    Instead of pretending that we all get what we deserved because it all depends on our past choices and ourselves only, we should accept that many things are accidental or dependent on others. A world where no one lives a living hell for choices they didn't make is perfectly possible. But the first step towards it is to accept how things are. I understand your need to feel like your life is under your control or that life is fair and just, but this may not be the case.

 

    And whenever you hear someone claim that it all depends on your choices, ask this: what defined the available choices in the first place?

 

8. You are not as politically incorrect as you fantasize you are.

    Being a racist and a homophobe is only politically incorrect in a very limited sense. Most of the world still is openly racist and homophobic, and even in the West, racist and homophobic views are usual or  the rule. Unless you think Greece, Serbia, Albania, Poland, Russia and many others aren't a part of the "West". Still, even if you define "the West" as just the USA, bigotry is still rather usual.

    Wanna really be politically incorrect?

    Try openly supporting Osama Bin Laden. Now, that would be politically incorrect. Just like pedophile advocacy would be politically incorrect. Actual politically incorrect views are more often than not socially incorrect too, and could make you a true pariah in your country, workplace, or even close friends and family.

    Not only you are not a pariah, but your idols like J. Petersson and Ben Shapiro are overly overpromoted by the media. You should sit back and think a second time before claiming that influencers with hundreds of millions of followers whose videos pop up in Youtube's suggested, are politically incorrect and under persecution. 

    Those influencers have made up a narrative in which they are being hunted down like medieval witches -and you have fallen for it. Well, they are not. They just give you more elaborate versions of the same views you held thirty years ago, and present any disagreement (which was completely non-existent until very recently) as persecution. There is no real political incorrectness in what they say, and no real persecution against them either.

     Your views are common and boring. They have been the norm for decades and sometimes for centuries, and still are the norm in most of the world including the West. They are widely accepted, predictable, and tedious. You aren't revolutionary for sticking to the old and boring, and you aren't politically incorrect either. What you call political incorrectness is mostly bigotry.

    Bigotry does not make you as politically incorrect as you like to fantasize, let alone special. It just makes you a bad person.

 

Ο "πολιτισμός" της ατιμωρησίας.

 Με αφορμή ένα thread για τις βαριές ποινές και τις συνθήκες στις φυλακές.

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    Σκεφτείτε έναν γραβατοφόρο οικονομικό αναλυτή. Μεταπτυχιακά, σερτιφικάτα, εμπειρία σε τράπεζες και εταιρείες, και αποφασισμένος να πολιτευτεί. 

    Ως είθισται, ο γραβατοφόρος αναλυτής είναι ορθολογιστής μέχρι το κόκκαλο, και μιλάει πάντα με επιχειρήματα και στοιχεία -δηλαδή στατιστικές και αριθμούς.  

    Και έτσι, αποφασίζει να αξιοποιήσει τις ορθολογικές του ικανότητες για την ανάπτυξη της οικονομίας. 

    "Νομιμοποιώντας την παιδική πορνεία", ξεκινάει ο οικονομικός μας αναλυτής, "θα αποφέρουμε δισεκατομμύρια στο κράτος. Θα ενισχυθεί ο τουρισμός, γιατί παιδεραστές από όλη την οικουμένη θα επισκέπτονται  τη χώρα μας για τις υπηρεσίες της, ενώ θα αυξηθούν και οι θέσεις εργασίας. Σύμφωνα με τις στατιστικές που κρατάω στα χέρια μου, μπορούμε να αναμένουμε μέχρι και 8% ανάπτυξη μόνο στα πρώτα δυο έτη. Συν τοις άλλοις, θα περιοριστεί η εγκληματικότητα, αφού πλέον οι παιδεραστές δεν θα χρειάζεται να απαγάγουν παιδάκια και να τα βιάσουν! Τα παιδάκια θα ναρκώνονται για να μην καταλαβαίνουν και να μην έχουν ψυχολογικά προβλήματα μετά."

    Συνεχίζει παραθέτοντας πλήρη στοιχεία από κάποιο αφρικανικό κρατίδιο που ακολούθησε αυτή τη... πολιτική, και είδε οικονομική άνθιση και μείωση της εγκληματικότητας.

    Αν είστε στοιχειωδώς φυσιολογικοί, θα τον έχετε διώξει πυξ-λαξ πολύ πριν προλάβει να σας αναπτύξει την επιχειρηματολογία του -και θα είναι απόλυτα υγιής η αντίδρασή σας. 

    Σε κάποια πράγματα οι ορθολογισμοί και οι στατιστικές δεν βρίσκουν κανένα έδαφος. Δεν έχει σημασία τι επιχειρήματα παραθέτει κάποιος υπέρ της παιδικής πορνείας. Εφόσον είμαστε εγκεφαλικά υγιείς, την αντιλαμβανόμαστε ως τόσο θεμελιωδώς λάθος που δεν θα γίνει καμία συζήτηση επ'αυτής.

    Κάτι αντίστοιχο (θα έπρεπε να) ισχύει και στην αντιμετώπιση των εγκληματιών σαν VIP πρόσωπα. 

    Περίπου όπως ο προαναφερθείς "ορθολογιστής" οικονομολόγος, εμφανίζονται κατά καιρούς διάφοροι αντίστοιχοι στομφώδεις "ορθολογιστές" νομικολόγοι, κοινωνιολόγοι, ψυχολόγοι, εγκληματολόγοι κ.α., που μας αναπτύσσουν με... επιχειρήματα, ότι το να αντιμετωπίζουμε τους εγκληματίες όχι σαν εγκληματίες, αλλά σαν παιδάκια που έκαναν κατά λάθος μια αταξία, μειώνει (!) την εγκληματικότητα.

    Και αυτό δεν ισχύει μόνο για πλαστογράφους ή 19χρονους παπακοκλέφτες, αλλά για βιαστές και δολοφόνους.

    Με μια σύντομη έρευνα στο google  θα βρείτε πληθώρα άρθρων για το ότι οι χώρες που κατάργησαν τη θανατική ποινή είδαν μείωση της εγκληματικότητας, καθώς και για το ότι τα κράτη που έχουν τετράστερα ξενοδοχεία για φυλακές έχουν τα μικρότερα ποσοστά υποτροπής εγκληματιών.

    Πολύ μεγάλη συζήτηση μπορεί να ανοίξει εδώ για την αιτιακή συσχέτιση μείωσης εγκληματικότητας και κατάργησης θανατικής ποινής ("correlation is not causation", που λένε και οι καλοί μας φίλοι και αξιόπιστοι σύμμαχοι Αγγλοαμερικάνοι), όπως πολύ μεγάλη συζήτηση μπορεί να ανοίξει και για το ότι οι περισσότεροι φονιάδες/βιαστές ούτως ή άλλως τελούν τετοια πράξη μόνο μια φορά (άλλο αν το νετφλιξ μας δείχνει τα βιογραφικά των κατα πραγματική συρροή βιαστών/δολοφόνων), και αν μετά εγκληματίσουν ξανά είναι για να κλέψουν επειδή δεν βρήκαν δουλειά. 

    Δεν θα ανοίξει όμως αυτή η συζήτηση. Όχι εδώ τουλάχιστον. Θα σταθούμε σε κάτι αλλο: 

    Πόσο πολύ διαφέρουν οι "ορθολογιστές" νομικολόγοι/κοινωνιολόγοι/ψυχολόγοι από τον "ορθολογιστή" οικονομολόγο του παραδείγματός μας;

     Δεν είναι μόνο η προστασία των παιδιών τεκμήριο πολιτισμού· είναι και η Δικαιοσύνη ένα πολύ σημαντικό σκέλος του.

    Και στην έννοια της Δικαιοσύνης, ενυπάρχει και η έννοια της Τιμωρίας. Άνευ της δεύτερης δεν υπάρχει και η πρώτη -και αυτό κατά βάθος παραμένει κοινώς αντιληπτό ανεξάρτητα από τη πλύση εγκεφάλου ήντινα εξ'απαλών ονύχων δεχόμεθα για να ταυτίσουμε την Τιμωρία με κάτι πρωτόγονο και ξεπερασμένο. 

    Άγνωστο αν κάποιος φιλόσοφος έχει σκεφτεί κάποιον ορισμό της Δικαιοσύνης, αλλά σίγουρα μπορούμε να δώσουμε έναν ικανοποιητικό ορισμό στην έννοια της Τιμωρίας. Τιμωρία σημαίνει στέρηση. Είτε της ζωής σου, είτε ουσιαστικών δικαιωμάτων και δυνατοτήτων σου.

    Όταν ένας βιαστής στη Δανία για περίπου μισή δεκαετία τρώει τσάμπα φαϊ σε μια φυλακή-τετράστερο ξενοδοχείο, με δικό του δωμάτιο, τηλεόραση και βιβλία στο κελί, κοινωνική συναναστροφή με άλλους κρατουμενους, πρόσβαση σε ιατροφαρμακευτική περίθαλψη και ψυχολόγους, τι ακριβώς στερείται; Το δικαίωμα να πάει στα μαγαζιά; 

    Αυτή είναι όλη και όλη η συνέπεια για κάποιον που κατέστρεψε ολοσχερώς μια ζωή; Αυτή είναι όλη και όλη η "στέρηση" που έχει; Πού είναι η Τιμωρία; Πού είναι η Δικαιοσύνη; Πού είναι ο πολιτισμός καν; 

    Αδιάφορο αν κάτι τέτοιο θα μειώσει την εγκληματικότητα. Εξίσου αδιάφορο με το ότι η νομιμοποίηση της παιδικής πορνείας θα δυναμώσει την οικονομία. 

    Αν είναι να νομιμοποιήσουμε την παιδική πορνεία για να έχουμε ισχυρή οικονομία, μη σώσουμε και την έχουμε. Και αντίστοιχα, αν είναι να απαλοχαϊδεύουμε τους εγκληματίες για να μειωθούν τα ποσοστά εγκληματικότητας, μη σώσουν και μειωθούν. 

    Το μόνο θετικό που υπάρχει με τον "πολιτισμό" της ατιμωρησίας, είναι ότι αν τυχόν κάποιος μας σκοτώσει το παιδί μπορούμε να περιμένουμε 5-10 χρόνια να αποφυλακιστεί για να πάρουμε τη κατάσταση στα χέρια μας. Το πολύ πολύ να πάμε 5-10 χρόνια σε προπληρωμένο ξενοδοχείο.     

Will AI replace software engineers (or any other professions)?

Written by a software developer with several years of industrial experience, and an academic background in Computer Engineering (including Machine Learning).

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Introduction

    Chat-GPT replacing programmers -among other professionals. Writers, journalists, academics, translators, help-desk technicians, and even lawyers. In the long term, no profession seems to be safe from chat-GPT-like Artificial Intelligence (AI) -capable of understanding human language and solving our problems within seconds.

    The case with software engineers (or programmers, if you prefer a less fancy title, though the two are not exactly the same) is pretty interesting, because nothing seemed to threaten our profession in the short term or even in the long term. 

    Virtually all low-code platforms were no more capable than delivering complex code, than 2005 Google Translate was capable of delivering accurate translations on more than a few words. Now chat-GPT writes pretty impressive functions, and refactors chunks of code better than most senior devs would. 

    So, what happens with programmers in the future? Or any other profession actually?

 

General assumptions

    Let's begin with something few would disagree with: chat-GPT is bringing a revolution. And when mentioning Chat-GPT, we don't necessarily mean OpenAPIs Chat-GPT itself, but the level of AI that rendered it possible. More likely than not, there are numerous competitors to Chat-GPT coming within the next months.

    Yet like every revolution, the outcome is tough to predict; it may lead to more freedom, like the French revolution, or it may lead to a disaster. In fact, historically speaking revolutions are more likely to have very controversial outcomes (like the Russian revolution), or clearly disastrous outcomes (like the peasants' revolt of 1381 in England, or the 1523 rebellion in Germany), than leading to something good. 

    One could argue that we are now talking about a technological revolution, but this does not make it very different. The industrial revolution has so far a controversial outcome, with some intellectuals regarding it as the beginning of the end for humanity thanks to climate change. 

    No matter the approach, we can begin with two assumptions. Firstly, chat-gpt style AI is bringing a revolution. Secondly, a revolution may have good outcomes, but it happens pretty often that it leads to a disaster. 

    But what disaster could the chat-GPT possible cause? Isn't AI meant to make our lives easier, free up our time, and lead to a better living standard for all of us?

    This sounds very nice and plausible, but in the current economic model, no technology is meant to make our lives easier; they are only meant to increase the profits of the owning class. 

    We produce way more food than we actually consume thanks to the modern industrial technology, yet a huge portion of it is thrown away without being consumed, while millions of people are starving. The industrial technology that could very easily be used to satisfy the need of all of us, is only used to increase the profits of people investing on a vague notion of productivity.

    The case with housing is pretty much the same, as we build houses easier and quicker than ever, and in many countries the amount of empty apartments far surpasses the number of the homeless. Still, working class people have to pay large portions of their income just to retain the right of living in a house or apartment they will most likely never get to own. 

    There are plenty of examples one can come up with, and they all "converge" to the same conclusion: no matter how technology makes our lives easier too, it is mostly meant to increase the profits and power of the owning class.

    I have no intention of writing (yet another) "lefty" rant here. But understanding that our current economic model is meant to serve only a handful, is vital before pondering our original question: what happens with our professions during or after the AI revolution? 

 

What happens to our professions then?

    Before abstracting and giving a general reply for all professions, I will try to give an answer for us programmers. 

    We can regard it as certain that AI will decrease job postings. It is already known that in many (if not most) companies, there are periods when developers don't have much to do, and spend their time on improving existing code or working on side projects. And of course, like virtually all professions including a desk, pretending to be working (a well-studied and widely known phenomenon we are typically reluctant to openly talk about).

    Now that improving code and even generating it becomes easier, these periods will become even longer. In a completely rational economy following the current economic model, one would expect lay-offs, but our economy is not rational. 

    We constantly invent new professions that barely produce anything just to keep everyone busy on an 8+ hour schedule. Millions of people in the western world spend their days on pointless meetings or editing excel sheets, just to retain the right to live in a house. Book lovers might appreciate the writings of David Graeber on the topic.

    Whoever has worked in a modern company is aware that many people with fancy-sounding professional titles, do actual work less than a couple of hours per day, and spend the rest of it literally pretending to be busy. It is the result of insisting that everyone must work at least eight hours to get access to food and housing, while industrial production and population increase have rendered it unnecessary that everyone works that much in order for society to have such needs covered.

    So, even though one might expect that many developers will now be laid off because they won't have much to do in their 8 hours, our economy is actually irrational and does not lay off professions that do not do actual work in their 8 hours. 

    But there is a vital difference between other office-related professions and ours: our profession was meant to be productive in the first place. The fancy-sounding "digital product  marketing communications super manager" was never meant to be productive all day long; the primary function was for other managers and CEOs to have an audience in their meetings (my apologies to any digital product marketing communications super manager who felt offended). 

    Now that the periods we won't be doing actual work will be even longer, fewer positions will be available. Why hire someone for a technical position if there isn't very much to do there? Why not hire him with a fancy title and use him as audience in meetings instead?

    The need for developers will drastically decrease, though never cease to exist, for the following reasons:

    1. We are often busy debugging and adding features to existing projects, and it is extremely unlikely that AI will be able to do it anytime soon. This will keep us busy for at least several years to come.

    2. Even if de-novo development  is carried out exclusively by machines within 10 years, someone will still have to check if the codes are safe to use. 

    3. Corporations will always need someone to bear legal responsibility for bugs that result in data breaches or lost money. 

    4. Corporations that have human developers too will be de-facto more trustworthy than random startups that just use generated code. 

    5. Someone has to program the AI platforms. Relatively few programmers will be active here, but there will be some.

    But AI will dramatically decrease job postings for developers, not to mention that many of us may switch to other professions literally because of boredom. Checking and refactoring generated code has nothing to do with the creative and joyful process of creating the code from scratch, solving problems, and knowing that the product is your creation.

    This is of course nothing that is very likely to happen withing this decade (not even job positions for train drivers and cashiers are drastically decreased in the last 30 years). But it will happen pretty long before we, millenials, are about to retire.

    You can use your brain's capability for abstraction and use more or less the same logic for all professions. Legal reasons and trust issues will always keep humans busy, so there isn't a danger that we are replaced. Instead, there are the very real dangers of us ending up being the constantly bored and depressed supervisors of the machines, or the equally bored and depressed audience of managers and CEOs talking to meetings. 

    That is the most likely (and best case) scenario. The less likely and worst case scenario is that mass layoffs are coming, and we all imagine the consequences.

    In either case, with the current economic model, AI will not be used to make our lives better.

You are a delusional monkey.

 Written after an interesting, albeit short, discussion at my workplace about our unique individuality and impression of who we are.

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    You. An individual. A unique, special person, with a complex personality, and part of the most powerful species on the planet. That is what you are. Or maybe...?

    We all like to perceive ourselves as unique and special, and that is pretty much expected; having such an impression of yourself not only helps you overcome psychological difficulties of the everyday life, like stress, but can even have an evolutionary benefit compared to someone who just perceives themselves as merely a common member of the group. 

    Our impression of ourselves as special and significant is the starting point of cultural phenomena such as religions promising us an eternal life (how significant are you if your existence is temporary?), and the individual-uber-alles modern western way of life . 

    The general assumption is that no two persons are completely alike, and that everyone is unique. Neuroscientifically speaking, no two brains have the very same structure and synapses between the cells, but this seems to be  the case for life forms we typically perceive as "lesser", such as rats. Yet even if it wasn't so and unique brains were limited to humans, it soon becomes clear that being unique is rather commonplace. 

    Really, how much does uniqueness matter if there are at least eight billion unique personalities on the planet?

    And if we bother thinking a little deeper, even our uniqueness is up to debate; yes, our brains indeed differ, but most of that difference doesn't seem to have much of an impact on our behavior and capabilities. After all, if we were fundamentally different, how would we ever be able to form up societies and collaborate, or even communicate with one another?

    It seems like all humans are variations of a common theme. Unless highly neurodivergent (e.g. the mentally ill), we all share the same emotions, see the same colors, hear the same sounds, and have pretty much the same capabilities at various degrees. Use and understand language, extract information by looking at symbols, have a certain understanding of numbers, and making more or less successful predictions of the behavior of the ones around us. 

    Not only our general capabilities, but even our special personality traits are not really unique or even ours. Most aspects of your personality and behavior are "lent" to you by the people you came in contact, or even your favorite Netflix character. 

    Your opinions, the way you talk, the way you show your interest to someone, the way you show your frustration or anger, the tone of your voice, even the way you pronounce particular words in particular contexts, most of what constitutes what we call a personality is taken by the people one came in contact with, watched behaving -like a Netflix character-, or empathized with -like a book character. What makes you somehow unique, is which aspects of other peoples personalities you choose to adopt. 

    In any case, even if we accept we are somewhat unique, unique is not a synonym to special or significant, and for my part I can't find something negative about that. It is OK not to be significant. Grasping this will make you overcome your existential dread. We are the products of a series of statistical accidents, and that is nothing to mourn about. 

    We are more or less delusional monkeys. We have "extended" the capabilities and traits of Chimpanzees and just "override" some of them (if you are a Java developer, you get the meaning here a little better). There doesn't have to be any real uniqueness or significance in us to take care of ourselves or enjoy life.

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PS: You are not even the most powerful species on the planet; species of bacteria are. 

Apor med atomvapen.

Det är nog allmänt vedertaget att det som pågår nu i Ukraina kan leda till tredje värdlskriget, och även om det inte utbryter nu då ska det i all sannolikhet ske om några år.

    Innan vi fortsätter, det är bra att förklara en liten grej på förhand: livet är ingen Netflix-serie. På Netflix-serier och Hollywood-movies, finns det alltid "good guys" och "bad guys", och det är alltid klart vem är vem. De "bad guys" är "bad" hela tiden, och samma gäller de "good guys". Men i livet så är det inte alltid så -det händer oft att det handlar om "bad guys" vs "bad guys", och det händer ibland att några "bad guys" agerar som "good guys", eller vice versa. 

    Det som pågår i Ukraina just nu är egentligen "bad guys" (Ryssland) vs "bad guys" (NATO, som använder Ukraina som proxy), varav båda visste att båda har atomvapen och att det finns nukleara reaktorer i sina länder. Med tanke på att båda visste att ett krig mellan dem kan hota männskligheten,  men ingen ville sluta provocera den andra som och valde istället att bråka,  är det otänkbar att vilken som helst sida kan betraktas som "good guys". 

    Kriget nu är kulmineringen av en konflikt som har pågått i decennier, och vi ser bara toppen av isberget eftersom det har funnits många hemliga möten där inga kameror fanns, samt flera hemliga dokumenter vi inte har sett. 

    Dessa innebär att det är minst sagt löjligt att låtsas att bara Putin är "the bad guy", eller att det är hans personliga fel att kriget utbröt. Konflikten mellan USA/EU/NATO och Ryssland har pågått i omkring sjutti år, och framtidens historierna (om det kommer finnas någon framtid längre fram) ska ha mycket jobb med att förklara hur och varför det blev så.

De så-kallade "think-tanks" av NATO och Ryssland kunde se kriget komma, men de förstås brydde sig inte om det. Kriget är ju profitabel för de hög-uppsatta sedan urtider, och det knappt är en tillfällighet att USA planerade slösa $700.000.000.000 (!!!) i "försvar" under 2022. Man kan lätt ställa frågan, hur ska dessa profits användas efter en mutual annihilation, men det är lättare för de rika att låtsas att ingen ska våga använda atomvapen.

NATO hade lovat i mitten av 1990-talet att den inte skulle expandera österut, men den egentligen skitade i löftet och expanderade vidare. Putin meddelande NATO redan i 2009 att han inte skulle acceptera att Ukraina skulle bli en medlem av NATO, och det var ganska förväntat. Skulle USA acceptera det om Kuba planerade bli en medlem av en anti-USA equivalent av NATO?

NATO skapades som försvar mot USSR och börde ha slutat existera efter att USSR gick sönder, men det var ganska lönsam att behålla det för att fortsätta sälja vappen till länder som Grekland och Turkiet. NATO fortsatt betrakta Ryssland som en elak fiende även om Ryssland gjorde inget mot dem, och bestämde sig att släppa Ukraina in i den för att kunna hota Ryssland. Om man funderar lite på det, det finns ingen riktig anledning till det; det handlar egentligen om att någon stark vill "show off" sin makt för någon annan stark.

    Så, trots att Putin var klar om att han inte skulle acceptera det om Ukraina blev en medlem av NATO, våra politiker i västvärlden övertalade en comedian som råkade bli Ukrainas ledare, att riskera sitt eget folk så att Ukraina skulle bli en NATO-marionett till.

Man skulle tänka att Ryssland hade inget att bry sig om. För min egen del, om jag var Putin och Ukraina ville bli en medlem av NATO, jag skulle skratta däråt och påminna om att jag har ett flertal vapen och även atomvappen ifall mitt land blir direkt hotad. Och med tanke på att NATO misslyckades även i Afghanistan, det är minst sagt urlöjligt att den skulle även försöka starta ett krig mot Ryssland på riktigt.

Men människan är egentligen bara en glorified apa, och en apa gör sin bästa för visa sin makt för att behålla sin plats i en påhittad hierarki. Därför NATO skitade i löftet att inte expandera österut, och gick vidare med att göra så delvis för pengarna, och delvis för att "skrämma bort" Ryssland genom att visa sin "makt". Nu gick Ryssland vidare med att starta ett krig för att visa sitt eget makt, och därmed "skräma bort" EU och NATO, .

Vi löper en stor risk av att sluta existera som art, och anledningen till det är att vår teknologisk advancement var inte i samma takt som vår mentala. Människan är fortfarande en apa i hjärnan, och apor ska göra sin bästa för en plats i hierarkin, samt för ännu flera bananer även om de redan har många. Så är människan, och det ser ut som att ett fåtal rika i Ryssland och västvärlden kan riskera allt för en plats i någon idiotisk hierarki, samt några pengar till.

   

    Det är ingen "good guys" vs "bad guys" som på Netflix. Det är "bad guys" vs "bad guys". Och i grund och botten apor vs apor, men dessa apor har atomvapen istället för sten.

How ethical is it to test the IQ of your prospective employees?

     To begin with, and with genuinely no intention of being boastful or sounding arrogant, the scores of the IQ tests I have taken so far in my life are not exactly low. You can be certain that my motive for posting this is not that I got a bad score at some IQ test -on the contrary, I actually scored very high just yesterday when asked to take one after applying for a job. 

    But I know better than anyone that I am by no means the super-smart person that test claims I am. I often do silly things, sometimes mess things up at work, not to mention several unwise life decisions I've made. I don't know if I'm stupid (they/we never do!) , but I know I ain't as above average as that test result says I am. 

Flattering, but just because something sounds good it does not mean that it is true. 

    Yet I wouldn't claim I reject the notion of IQ testing altogether. Several years ago I had the curiosity to pay MENSA to take the IQ test (and paying for something like that is actually a very good sign that you may be stupid), and I also got a pretty good score, similar to the one of the recent test  -even though the too tests were not at all alike. This kind of consistency may indicate that those tests actually measure something pretty reliably -definitely not intelligence itself, but something (perhaps an ability to score good at IQ tests).

    So my motive for this post is neither some low score I got, nor to doubt about the reliability of IQ tests measuring something. This posts is to cast some doubt on whether it is ethical to test the intelligence (if we suppose that IQ tests actually test that) of your candidates as an employer -and it doesn't seem to be. 

    If someone is actually pretty unintelligent for a particular job, that becomes apparent in the interview. To demand that your prospective employees take an intelligence test (that is, IF such a thing actually exists) merely sets a burden to the ones that may score pretty low yet would otherwise fit fine for the job. Testing the intelligence is not only unfair for low-scorers that otherwise fit for the job, but based on erroneous assumptions as well: who told you that your employee will use the full range of his intelligence at the workplace?

    Even we, software developers, whose profession has a reputation of needing a higher-than-average intelligence, do not use our full mental capabilities at our everyday work. A "highly intelligent" developer would not be noticeably better than an average one in debugging a Weld-exception after updating  the version of Wildfly. The nature of many tasks is such that a high intelligence would not play a big role.  So, unless you are looking for some chief engineering architect for Google, a high intelligence does not make much difference than an average one, and in some cases even a lower-than-average might suffice. 

    I won't even elaborate in detail for selecting prospective employees for supposedly "unskilled" professions (the very notion that "unskilled" professions even exist is a classist myth to justify outrageously low wages). It would be at the same time shameless and idiotic to test for the intelligence of candidates for low-wage workplaces. 

    Even if someone applying for a low-wage job is intelligent, he will most likely deliberately be inefficient since you don't pay well;  there is no motive in being an efficient slave of the bosses. And even when it comes to someone being unintelligent, this kind of testing might only be used to justify horrible working conditions -as if someone born with lower capabilities does not already have enough of a burden, they should live a true hell at their workplace and have economic trouble too. 

    Testing for the intelligence or, more accurately, what supposedly is indicative of the intelligence of a candidate, has another issue as well: is makes it even more stressful and painful to apply for a new job, even for good scorers. I, a high scorer of IQ-tests (which are NOT intelligence tests), got very stressed when noticed that I had to take an IQ test for that job. And this, even though I already have a job and I am in no hurry of getting a new one. I can't even imagine the stress if I had to take IQ tests while desperately looking for a job to pay the rent.

     Nor I can imagine the depression a jobless worker might fall into, if they were desperately looking for a new job not to get evicted, and got a low score. Why the funk would you put your candidates through this? Are you that inhumane that have thought of such issues and ignored them, or are you that stupid that you didn't even think of them in the first place?

    If someone is that stupid that is unsuitable for a job, you will notice during the interview. It is needless to put your candidates through such stress (and low self-esteem if they happen to score lower than the average), and idiotic to sincerely believe that your employees use their full intelligence at the workplace. Someone with an IQ of 120 will not necessarily use the whole of it and be more productive than someone with an IQ of 90. That is, if the IQ tests actually measure intelligence.  

    I, a good scorer, find this idiotic. I will happily accept that if you blame my disagreement to my stupidity -thereby accepting my argument that such tests do not mean much.

Ένα μάτσο ηλίθιοι με κατσαβίδια στο χέρι

 Με αφορμή μια συζήτηση που είχα πρόσφατα με έναν φίλο επί τεχνολογικής προόδου, κλιματικής αλλαγής, κ.α. .

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    Ο σύγχρονος ανθρωπάκος φαντασιώνεται ότι είναι τέρας ικανότητας και ευφυιας. Και φαινομενικά έχει  βάσιμους λόγους να το πιστεύει·  χειρίζεται μηχανές, είναι εξοικειωμένος με τεχνολογίες που οι άνθρωποι πριν 100 χρόνια θα κοιτούσαν αποχαυνωμένοι, και ενίοτε έχει δεξιότητες όπως π.χ. επίλυσης ανώτερων μαθηματικών. 

    Πιθανότατα και εσεις, θεωρείτε τον εαυτό σας πολύ ευφυέστερο και ικανότερο από τους προγόνους σας ή τους "πρωτόγονους" λαούς που δεν έχουν ρεύμα. Έχετε σκεφτεί όμως ποτέ τι θα συνέβαινε αν κάποιος μας κατέβαζε το διακόπτη της ΔΕΗ; 

    Χωρίς ρεύμα και τηλεπικοινωνίες δεν είμαστε ικανοί στη κυριολεξία για τίποτα απολύτως. Αν κάποιος μας στερούσε το ρεύμα και το ιντερνετ, θα μέναμε να κοιταζόμαστε μεταξύ μας σαν βρέφη που δεν μπορούν ούτε τα οπίσθιά τους να σκουπίσουν. Όλα αυτά που κάνουμε ή που νομίζουμε ότι κάνουμε, βασίζονται στο ρεύμα, τις τηλεπικοινωνίες, και κυρίως τη δουλειά άλλων (θα μιλήσουμε παρακάτω για αυτό). 

    Χωρίς ρεύμα και ιντερνετ δεν θα έχουμε στη κυριολεξία ούτε να φάμε, αφού όλα μας τα φαγητα όχι μονο χρειαζόμαστε κουζίνες και φούρνους για να τα προετοιμάσουμε, αλλά παρασκευάζονται σε βιομηχανίες που χρειάζονται ρεύμα και τηλεπικοινωνίες για να λειτουργήσουν.

    Ο "πρωτόγονος" (ή σκέτα πρωτόγονος, αν προτιμάτε) του Αμαζονίου ξέρει και κάνει ένα σωρό πράγματα για να φροντίσει τον εαυτό του. Παπάδες. Κατασκευάζει αυτοσχέδιες παγίδες για ζώα με τα χέρια· ξέρει όλη τη διαδικασία που χρειάζεται το για να φάει ένα ζώο αφότου το πιάσει χωρίς να αρρωστήσει· κόβει ξύλα και κατασκευάζει το σπίτι του μόνος του, έστω και αν αυτό είναι μια ταπεινή καλύβα· προσανατολίζεται στη ζούγκλα χωρίς gps· ξέρει ένα σωρό φυτά που τρώγονται και άλλα που είναι δηλητηριώδη· γνώσεις και δεξιότητες που ο smartphonάκιας του πολιτισμού δεν είναι σε θέση ούτε καν να ονειρευτεί πως αποκτά. 

    Αντίστοιχα πράγματα ισχύανε για τον προπάππου μας από το χωριό, που μπορεί να μην ήξερε να λύσει διαφορικές εξισώσεις, αλλά πάντως ήξερε να κάνει ένα σωρό πράγματα -από το να φυτέψει επιτυχώς ντομάτες και να 'χει να τρώει, μέχρι να φτιάξει πηγάδι με τους συγχωριανούς του για να αντλεί νερό.

    Εμείς, με τις φανταχτερές τεχνολογίες και τα smartphones, δεν ξέρουμε, ούτε κάνουμε για τίποτα αν κάποιος μας στερήσει τις τηλεπικοινωνίες και το ρεύμα. Δεν είμαστε τόσο ικανοί όσο θα θέλαμε να πιστεύουμε. 

    Ούτε και τόσο έξυπνοι. 

    Πέρα από το γεγονός ότι τα εγκεφάλια του μέσου χαχόλου δεν πάνε σπιθαμή παραπέρα από το τι σειρά θα δει στο νετφλιξ και τις τάσεις της μόδας, και ότι παρά την παιδεία οι περισσότεροι απέχουν παρασάγγας από το να χαρακτηριστούν φιλόσοφοι, ακόμα και η υποτιθέμενη "τεχνική" ευφυια  και κατάρτιση είναι παντελώς ανύπαρκτη στους περισσότερους ανθρώπους. 

    Χρησιμοποιείτε smartphone και υπολογιστές. Κατανοείτε όμως και πώς δουλεύουν; Ξέρετε τεχνικές λεπτομέρειες για την ARM αρχιτεκτονική του επεξεργαστή στο smartphone και το πώς διαφέρει από την x86 του υπολογιστή σας; Τη δομή των λειτουργικών τους συστημάτων, έστω; Κάποια γνώση του πώς δουλεύει μια κάρτα δικτύου και του τι ισχύει για τον driver της στο ΛΣ; Εναν όρχι γνωρίζετε, κοπελιές και παλικάρια. 

    Εδώ όμως διαφαίνεται και ένα άλλο ζήτημα: ακόμα και στους πολύ "τεχνικούς" ανθρώπους, κανένας δεν γνωρίζει όλα τα προαναφερθέντα μαζί και σε βάθος. Άλλοι ειδικεύονται στα ΛΣ, άλλοι στις κάρτες δικτύων, άλλοι στις αρχιτεκτονικές επεξεργαστών, δεν υπάρχει όμως πληροφορικός που θα μπορούσε να φτιάξει smartphone ή υπολογιστή από το μηδέν. Να ενώσει δισεκατομμύρια τρανζιστορς για επεξεργαστή, να κατασκευάσει τυπωμένα κυκλώματα, να γράψει τον kernel μόνος του, κτλ. 

    Το ίδιο ισχύει για κάθε τεχνολογία επίσης. Υπάρχει μηχανικός που μπορεί να φτιάξει αυτοκίνητο από το μηδέν; Να κατασκευάσει τον κινητήρα μόνος του, το κιβώτιο ταχυτήτων, το τιμόνι και τα φρένα, κτλ, από πρώτες ύλες; 

    Όλα αυτά είναι το αποτέλεσμα της συλλογικής συνεργασίας και του μακροχρόνιου μόχθου εκατομμυρίων τεχνικών, ερευνητών, επιστημόνων, και εργατών, που ο καθένας μόνος του περιοριζόταν σε ένα πολύ μικρό πράγμα. Και, μεταξύ μας, η πρόοδος έγινε πρωτίστως με retarded trial and error και δευτερευόντως με εις βάθος κατανόηση και ιδιοφυή σχεδιασμό. 

    Η ανθρωπότητα δεν είναι τόσο έξυπνη όσο θέλει να πιστεύει. Ούτε λίγο ούτε πολύ, είμαστε ένα μάτσο ηλίθιοι, άλλοι με κατσαβίδι, άλλοι με σφυρί, και άλλοι με γυμνά χέρια, που από αυτούς που έχουν κατσαβίδι άλλοι ξέρουν μόνο να βιδώνουν και άλλοι μόνο να ξεβιδώνουν, αυτοί με το σφυρί ξέρουν μόνο να κοπανάνε πρόκες όπου τις δούνε, και αντίστοιχα οι υπόλοιπου ξέρουν π.χ. να βάζουν το ένα τούβλο πάνω στο άλλο χωρίς να καταλαβαίνουν πραγματικά γιατί. 

    Και όλοι αυτοί οι ηλίθιοι με τα κατσαβίδια και τα σφυριά στο χέρι, κάπως έχουν καταφέρει να χτίσουν ένα μεγάλο και φαινομενικά αξιόλογο κτίριο. Αντέχει όμως και σεισμούς; 

    Ο τεχνολογικος μας πολιτισμός και η ανθρωπότητα γενικότερα, θα αντέξει π.χ. μια ηλιακή καταιγίδια που θα δημιουργήσει πρόβλημα στα δίκτυα ηλεκτροδότησης για μήνες;  Ή μήπως μοιάζει πιθανό να αντέξει την επερχόμενη κλιματική αλλαγή;

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Biology and the Left: Does a disagreement even exist?

Introduction

     After several decades of Freudian and Marxian explanations to human behavior and social phenomena prevailing in academia, the plain old biological determinism seems to be making a roaring comeback, with plenty of research indicating that individual behavior and traits can be a result of genetic factors. 

    This has resulted to heated debates about phenomena related to criminality, mental capability, and social behavior, not to mention race, with people mainly from the left side of the political spectrum dismissing the research of the last couple of decades as biased or even completely fake. To an impartial observer, this may seem like a disagreement between biology and the left. 

    Yet the left, like most non-experts and even several experts, seems to have misunderstood the indications of the research, without even realizing that it can actually favor leftist views. 

The main controversies in a nutshell  

    Without getting into much detail, we can name some of the main controversies related to conclusions of biology (often plain statistics presented as biology by the media).

• Influence of genetics on complex behavior. 

    The research of the last decades indicates that our genes can play their role even on complex behavior. Anti-social tendencies, criminality, sexual preferences, mental illness, and proneness to substance abuse, have been confirmed to be genetically influenced. The proof is often statistical, based on twins raised by different families, and biologists have so far few particular genes to point out for particular behaviors, and even less whose precise mechanisms are known. The findings are often backed by neuroscience.

• The role of biology in sexuality and gender-related behavior.

    According to the research, not every aspect of gender-related behavior is socially constructed. There have been recorded plenty of cases in which an infant had to undergo sex reassignment surgery for medical reasons, and experienced gender dysphoria later in life. There are cross-cultural studies and meta-analyses showing that there are differences between the genders that cannot be explained in purely sociological terms.

• Differences between human populations

    The term "race" has found its' place in the trash of pseudo-science since decades, yet some of the implications of the so-called "scientific racism" seem to have been backed up by recent research. Those  include statistical differences between human populations in intelligence, aggressiveness, sexual behavior, even when the socio-economic background and living standards are pretty much the same. African Americans, for instance, had been found to score lower on IQ tests than white Americans of the same socioeconomic status, leading to further research that suggest innate differences between populations.

• Biological basis and inheritability of IQ  

    Much research on IQ suggests that it is genetically influenced -since twins raised from different families have pretty much the same IQs, with minor deviations, and people tend not to score much differently than their parents. The so-called "Flynn effect" is a strong indication that one's IQ is influenced by environmental and economical factors as well, yet fails to explain the IQ similarities between twins. 

• Various implications of evolutionary biology and psychology 

    These implications include, but are not limited to, the notion that humans may be selfish and/or aggressive in nature, that even altruism can actually be masked egoism, that hierarchies and discrimination can be a part of our nature, and that we may have an innate inclination to particular behavioral patterns, independently from our nurture. 

Taking the research with a grain of salt

    Even though we have no reason to believe that the research is biased, it should be taken with a grain of salt. As mentioned, much of the research is based on plain statistics, and when it comes to statistics there are literally dozens of things that can go wrong. This kind of statistical research, presented as biological by the media and popular science websites, often neglects to take into account  epigenetic factors that can alter the expression of genes, or factors that can alter the brain of a person during its' early development, thereby affecting ones personality in the long term.

    A prominent example of something that is hardly taken into account -since there is limited control over it-, is the life-style of a mother during pregnancy. The nutrition, stress levels, and even body fat, of pregnant woman has been shown to affect both the expression of genes on the baby, and its' neurological development. 

    Which means that, for instance, the indications of IQ differences between white Americans and African Americans of the same income, even if true, they are not necessarily to be attributed to genetic factors, but to epigenetic, or factors related the differences in the lifestyles of pregnant women between the two populations. 

    Same applies to the research on twins adopted by different families at birth. It remains uncertain whether their similarities in e.g. their IQ are to be attributed to their genes per se, or to epigenetic factors, and even their mothers' lifestyle during pregnancy. The gene-based explanations also do not explain their differences when they exist, thereby making clear that even if the genetic influence on social traits is existent it is definitely not the sole factor.

    Last but not least, most of the statistical research that ends up indicating the influence of our genes on complex traits and behavior, is deliberately arranged so that "all factors are equal". That is, the participants are more or less from the same socioeconomic background, often come exclusively from developed countries, and with no medical problems. Yet in real life, these factors are almost never "equal", and researchers have actually a tough time making them so.

    

Do these implications really mean anything?

    Suppose for a moment that all of the above is not only true, but that each and every sociological or psychological explanation we give to social phaenomena and individual behavior is wrong. Suppose that races in an 18th century sense do exist, that complex behaviors depend entirely on our genome, that our IQs are purely genetic just like gender-related behavior and sexuality, and that we are indeed of selfish nature. 

    Should this affect how we lead our lives and treat our "inferiors"? 

    Even if races did exist, and even if races of color were indeed of lower intelligence and higher aggressiveness, would that give us the right to treat people of color like garbage? To conquer their homelands and control their natural resources? To pay them less and socially exclude them? To enforce our "genetically superior" culture upon them? Perhaps preventing them from having children with us or even having children in general?

    Even if IQs were indeed purely genetic, would that render it right e.g. not to care about the education of people with lower IQs on the grounds that "they are not going to become smart anyway"? Would that justify paying them so low wages that they can barely pay their bills? Shall we make the lives of people with low-IQs a true hell for a choice they didn't make?

    Even if there is an evolutionary background favoring sexist behaviors, should this affect how we treat our women?  Force them to just take care of their (our) kids because that is what chimps do? 

    Even if gender-related behavior is purely genetic, is this supposed to mean that whoever  deviates from the norm should become an outcast, or even put to death as in some countries? 

    Even if our nature is indeed more selfish than altruistic, should we just make shameless and obscene selfishness a guide to our lives? Should we just "live for ourselves", pretend that there is "no society, but only individuals"? When some of our cells claim that "there is no human body, but only individual cells", the cancerous tumors they become end up killing that human body, including themselves. Are you sure this "logic" is a wise guide to follow?

    It seems that even if these implications were true (they aren't!), they would really mean absolutely nothing when it comes to society and politics, and if we made the mistake take them at face value or use them as policy makers, we would end up living in an hellish mixture of brutal late-stage capitalism and nazism, which would almost certainly lead to our extinction, and a life not-so-worth-living for the vast majority of the people before that extinction eventually occured.

Biology describes how nature is, not how human society is supposed to be.

    The examples above should have convinced you by now that the observations of biologists are neither a guide to our morals, nor suitable policy makers. That is, even if they actually were the ones proposed above. Races in the 19th century sense do not exist, it is still disputable whether our nature is more selfish than altruistic, sexist and gender-related behaviors are far from being products of pure biological evolution, and IQs are not purely genetic either. 

    The claim is that even if we were in a parallel universe where they were, it would still be wrong to use such observations as policy makers. Which means that in our own case, where those hypotheses are far from being technically true, this fact is not even debatable: one cannot use such premises as moral guides or policy makers.

    

Does the Left deny science? 

    Short answer: no. 

    Long answer: there are indeed some far-leftist "denominations", including some ultra-anarchists or communists, that just obviously deny every scientific observation challenges or seems to challenge their beliefs. But isn't this the case with virtually all parts of political spectrum? Even the so-called centrists will deny science if it refutes their beliefs, and indeed do so when it comes to e.g. economic policies. 

    The left, in general, does not deny science more than its' opponents. Asking if a political affiliation denies science is the equivalent of asking if someone is speaking loudly during a  party in a night club: everyone does, so, given the context, we can only say "yes" if he does so to a degree that everyone notices. Which means that the most proper answer to that question is a plain "no". 

    Whether there is a disagreement between scientific consensus and leftist beliefs is another question. It initially seems that modern science, especially biology, refutes most of the core leftist beliefs. Yet this is far from being the case, not only because science actually indicates something else than what pop science websites claim in their titles, but also because most of the debates named above, are to a great extent moral and not technical. For instance, even if races in the 18th century sense did exist, there would still be nothing right with slavery. 

    It seems that, morally speaking, there is not even a disagreement, as science was never supposed to dictate our morals in the first place.

    

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©George Malandrakis

INBooks in Växjö: Not to be trusted!

This was initially meant to be a Google Review. Yet Google's policies explicitly mention that no reviews from a current or former employee reviews may be published on Google Reviews, and since my Google account was apparently somehow connected to INBooks, my review got filtered out right after being posted.

Which means that, according to Google, if your employer is fraudulent and untrustworthy like in this case, or even if he sexually assaults you or physically bullies you like in other cases, you have no right to let the customers know. We, who want to give our money exclusively to companies that respect their employees, cannot just take a look at the Google reviews of a company to make sure that this is the case. 

Still, there is nothing illegal or morally wrong in informing the would-be customers and employees of a company about its' trustworthiness and quality, so I chose to post the review here instead. 

In case INBooks AB proceeds to sue me, they have the right to know in advance that not only there is nothing in the review below that breaks any law, but also that I have no money to pay in damages (at least, no money that the Swedish state can touch), so suing me would be pretty pointless. And shameless, given the circumstances.

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I was unfortunate enough to work for INBooks AB. I was assigned a very important project despite having barely two years of experience, and was left all alone to cope with it along with their main project without much help or supervision. I would push new chunks of code yet would only once in a blue moon get any kind of feedback -except for my major task, for which I literally never got an opinion. I was promised a tillsvidare anställning, and while looking for an apartment in Växjö I informed my superior that the only landlord so far willing to give one to me, the immigrant, wanted me to keep it for at least a year, otherwise I would have to pay three rents if I wanted to leave. He encouraged me to proceed, giving me vain promises of soon getting the tillsvidare contract. I was promised to have it within a couple of weeks. That was during the end of February 2020. Not even twenty days afterwards, I was informed that I had delayed my project -while I was never even given a deadline for it, and no one ever bothered asking me how it was going. I was given ten days to complete it, otherwise my 6 months contract would not become a "tillsvidare". Still, my superior gave me his word that even if I didn't succeed, I would not be fired straight away. Instead, I would stay there until my 6 months were over, and then seek for a job somewhere else. I delivered everything in a couple of days, since the main functionalities were ready, and I spent the rest debugging and improving the code, and waiting for some kind of feedback from a senior developer. I had not gotten any kind of feedback on my assignment for a couple of weeks, so I almost begged them to look at it so that I would know if everything was fine, and they pledged to review it and inform me later that day. They are still reviewing it. Ten days after the discussion I had with my superior, and even though I delivered my project, I was announced that I was being fired on that very day. Not just not having my contract extended, as he had promised, but that I had to pack up and leave straight away. I had been promised that even if it wasn't delivered in time, I would just not get an extension of my contract. I delivered it in time, and actually more than a week before the final deadline. And instead of getting the tillsvidare anställning I expected, I was fired straight away. Not even one month after being repeatedly promised a tillsvidare anställning, not even one month after being encouraged to sign to rent an apartment in the vicinity for at least a year. They claimed that I wasn't suitable for them, that I don't fit into their team, and even that my codes do not work (!!!). The day of our previous discussion I  showed the superior who informed me I am fired, a major functionality depending on the others working without any problem whatsoever, and he congratulated me. Now he was claiming that "according to the Senior Developers" (who still had not bothered to even look at my codes), my codes were not working, even though everything was tested again and again before being pushed and even though he had seen them in action himself. When I asked for details about the codes that were supposedly not working, I did not get a reply. Just like I did not get a reply on why didn't anyone look at them earlier and inform me -I had been waiting for weeks for feedback. Or a reply on why did he claim that I would in no case get fired straight away. Or a reply on why I was left working all alone, while they knew I was just a junior developer. The only "answer" I got was something like "there are many whys, but they don't matter".

I was thrown out of the company that repeatedly promised to keep me "for a long time" right after delivering my assignment. I was lied to and exploited. I ended up on the verge of becoming homeless, since because of the coronavirus no one was hiring, and I literally hadn't a single krona to pay for the rent. If you cannot trust them as a coworker, how can you ever trust them as a customer?

How to effectively protect sensitive data. Even from the CIA.

Update 19/2/2019: I apologize for not warning you in the introduction earlier. The present article assumes that you do not use commercial OSs (i.e. Windows) that track your behavior and activity and even sell info about them to third parties. That was mentioned in the 6th advice. 

It is also assumed -though not explicitly mentioned- that you use a full drive encryption or/and work in encrypted Virtual Machines, or work with live OSs that utilize the RAM instead of writing on a HD (i.e. Tails), thereby preventing attackers from recovering digital footprints of the data you have worked with (e.g., images saved in thumbs.db, if you have been unwise enough not to deactivate them). The digital footprints that can put your secrets in danger are to be described in a forthcoming article.

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Introduction 
The tools used by the states to protect their secrets are double-edged swords: they allow dissidents -and, unfortunately, common criminals- to protect theirs, just like they enable you to do so.

The common perception that security agencies and corporations can access all of your data is a myth. That could be the case if someone uses commercial OSs that track everything one does, but not if someone is deeper into computer security. There are some certain methods to hide your sensitive data from literally everyone.

I boldly and proudly proclaim that if you carefully use the methods to be described, nobody will ever access your secrets, unless quantum-computing methods are developed in the future (a scenario to be described in the final section of the article).

Who would want to protect data even from the agencies of his country or the corporations without being a common criminal?

• Journalists about to reveal something they are not supposed to.
• Politicians hiding data disastrous for governing opponents.
• Dissidents of oppressive regimes and dictatorships. 
• Atheists of radical Islamic countries.
• Scientists wanting to protect their ideas and/or inventions.
• Technology researchers wanting to protect their work from competitors.

1. Don't just encrypt them.
There is no guarantee that the algorithms of an encryption tool are properly implemented in code. Even if algorithms as Rijndael and Serpent are secure and powerful by a mathematical aspect, how can you be sure that their implementation in code is not buggy, thus allowing attackers to execute attacks similar to the simple yet ingenious padding oracle attack?

Furthermore, who can assure you that the software company that developed the encryption tools has not deliberately allowed backdoors that enable the authorities bypass the encryption? Or even sent the passwords you are typing to an agency? If you are a i.e. journalist intending to publish something you are not supposed to, you might want to be sure that the related data would be secure even if the police were informed about your plan.

A possible way to prevent such scenarios could be to multiply encrypt your sensitive data, with various encryption algorithms in different encryption tools. The odds that two distinct tools developed by other companies are both flawed are rather negligible. An easy solution would be to encrypt your data with winRAR in the first place, thus securing them with AES of 256-bit key, and reencrypt the .rar using i.e. Serpent or Kuznyechik with another tool (i.e. Veracrypt).

Veracrypt provides an exceptional variety of encryption

algorithms even for the most paranoid. But you can
always add some more layers of encryption.

When it comes to the .rar encryption, even though winRAR uses plain AES, the nature of the .rar files does not allow for a quick brute force attack since many computations must be carried out in order for the headers to be checked. Tomshardware carried out an experiment in 2011, and no more than 15.000 passwords per second could be pushed for .rar even with the use of GPUs. In comparison, about 500.000 passwords per second could be pushed for an encrypted .zip. Even though the computational power has more than tripled ever since, with rar5 files using a BLAKE2 checksum instead of a CRC32 a brute-force would be extremely slow, since the former message digest demands considerably more time to be deduced.

Update 19/2/2019:  Keep in mind that RAR keeps unencrypted copies of your data in your .temp files, which means that it is secure if and only if you open them in encrypted drives or VMs, or in OSs such as Tails that use RAM exclusively -thus not writing anything on your disks. Read the 19/2/2019 update before the introduction.

When it comes to serious encryption tools, such as Veracrypt or Truecrypt (with the former being the successor of the latter), it is imperative that you use another encryption algorithm. You may prefer Serpent, which is technically more powerful than Rijndael, yet too slower to be chosen as the AES. Twofish and camellia are also a good alternatives. If you belong to the conspiracists who think that algorithms developed by westerners are deliberately flawed, you can trust the Russians and use Kuznyechik instead (even though it is not that powerful).

Since there is always the probability that some OSs or even encryption tools keep track of your passwords and perhaps even sent them to some authority -no matter how paranoid it sounds. It is highly unlikely, yet not impossible. Other paranoid measures you may take to prevent it besides the aforementioned use of several different tools, is the avoidance of commercial OSs, as well as to work without being connected to the internet.

The only problem with the multiple encryption method is that it creates a "babooshka" of encrypted files which is technically unbreakable even with all known (2019) "futurist" methods used by quantum computers. That means, that if you forget the password or the data gets corrupt, your files are lost forever. 


2. Use a message digest instead of a plain password.

This is more of a smart way to create passwords for the encryption than a protection method.

We are all fully aware that the use of passwords nowadays is widely considered ineffective and insecure, and many corporations actively try to replace them by bioidentifiers (i.e. fingerprints or photo of a user's face). The reason is not only that the agencies need a database of our bioidentifiers without us being aware of it, but also that using passwords is actually considered insecure nowadays. Yet there is a minor detail we have to take into account: it the use of passwords that is considered insecure, and not passwords per se.

The reason why is that many users choose easy-to-guess and easy-to-remember passwords, which allows attackers to carry out successful brute-force attacks without having to wait a long time. Since computational power nowadays is more than ever, thus allowing brute-forcing software to try literally billions of passwords per second, it is easier than ever for an attacker to recover i.e. a 7zip password. Yet there is a solution if someone wants a strong password that is tough to guess and remember, and yet easy to deduce if you remember what you've done: message digests!

Message digests are the results of hash functions such as SHA1,  MD5, or BLAKE2. The passwords you use on a website are actually stored as message digests, and whenever you try to log in with a password the message digest of that password is deduced and compared to the one saved in the DB. It is impossible to deduce the initial passwords from the message digests, since hash functions are constructed deliberately to prevent reverse engineering of the results.

By using hash functions as password generators, you can get passwords that are impossible to break by using simple ones as keys. It is recommended that you use an offline hashing tool, such as HashCalc (contact me if deleted), so that you won't transfer your passwords online. The password "123456" gives the message digests below:

Why use a password when you can use its' message digest 
or a message digest of one of its' message digests?

Imagine using the sha512 digest as a password! Pretty hard to break with brute force, ain't it? Even for an easy password such as "123456" there are 14 different possible passwords only from the famous message digests, as the attacker has no way of knowing which one you used, or even if you used a message digest as a password.

• Tips: You can use even harder passwords to generate message digests, and may use a HEX string instead of the text string (even though that prevents you from including other characters than 0-9 and A-F in your password). Another method would be to use one of the message digests to generate other message digests (i.e. using the sha256 M.D. to generate a password based on the MD5 digest). You may also add some symbols at the end, for extra strength. 

3. Hide them in encrypted Virtual Machines and change the VM's keys'.

As I was messing with my virtualbox's files one day, I noticed that there was this parameter for my encrypted VM drivers:

Change the KeyStore parameter, and lure the attackers
 into believing that your encrypted VM is damaged.

This property, named "CRYPT/KeyStore", can be found in the Virtual Machine Definition file, which is stored along with the VH in the same folder. It is nothing but the key used to check the validity of the password. If you try messing with that property (always make sure that all virtualbox-related processes have terminated, even those running in the background, else the initial key will mysteriously pop up again) you will realize that it has a well-defined structure, allowing someone to edit only particular parts of it without making VirtualBox mark the whole drive as "inaccessible".

That key is generated once you choose a password for to encrypt a VM, and the passwords you insert to decrypt it thereafter produce a key that is checked against the one appearing in that string. If they match, then the system proceeds to decrypt the drive using your pass. But what if you are a Turkish hacker suspected for stealing super top secret files from Erdogan using a virtual machine? It wouldn't be nice if the Millî İstihbarat Teşkilatı hacked into your VM with a brute force or a cold boot attack and saw what you did, wouldn't it?

The solution is to edit the key above so that even if they somehow found your password they would never be able to decrypt the drive; the password's digest wouldn't match the string and the system would not proceed to the decryption. You will have to reedit the file before and after opening the VM but at least you'll be safe.

• Method to lure the attackers into believing that the VM is useless: change the key so that it would match a password as "123456". It results in that the password appears correct and the Virtual Drive damaged beyond repair -the data is decrypted with a wrong password thus resulting to unreadable gibberish. Give it a try but be careful -I have crashed several systems with such "experiments" as a youngster. 

The string matching to 123456 appears below:

          <Property name="CRYPT/KeyStore" value="U0NORQABQUVTLVhUUzI1Ni1QTEFJTjY0AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABQQktERjItU0hB&#13;&#10;MjU2AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEAAAADp5hcZ/RTjQcIScDhrfS1BFeiar2va&#13;&#10;jQWkl0b+b6y8oyAAAABQ8ToJ8c3Omh3p555zN26b02znT4k+akUfjN7A7vxxLyBO&#13;&#10;AACeV7TMA9AzllKd94T8EQQyIpTNLuztie5hOgN1WDp3qOAiAgBAAAAAjFNc1+WL&#13;&#10;kGEMx+IquRdDPJ4bJ/umShtj/7q+46NayOfkIZlTtjLol+vM3Z/J10V8trHIL8Mb&#13;&#10;mI2+wUYhsREupQ=="/>


4. Never store them in multiple devices.

This does not need much elaboration, I guess. Storing a file in multiple devices can make it extremely difficult to get rid of if needed. One backup device containing is enough -what are the odds of it getting lost or damaged the same day as the original?

Yet since it is always probable that transmission errors will occur upon copying the file, thus rendering them useless because of the encryption, it would be prudent to have at least two distinct copies of them stored in your backup device -as well as in your main HDD.


5. Always manage to wipe the RAM after opening or editing them. 

All of your passwords and even files you opened are stored in your RAM, which could allow an attacker to recover them despite the encryption. The most effective way to wipe your RAM is to completely shut down your computer for at least five minutes: it has been proved that RAM can actually retain the data for thirty seconds to two minutes after shut down, thus allowing agencies to execute a cold boot attack and fully recover it.

Another method to wipe your RAM would be to initiate a fork attack in your own system until rewritting all of your RAM and running out of it, but that would result to a crash.


6. Shred the initial unencrypted files.

OK, that may be too kitsch, but should always be mentioned. It is well known that when a user deletes a file the data on the disks stays as it was. It is not the data itself that gets deleted -it is the space upon which the data is saved that is marked as free. But until other data is written on it, it can be recovered. Which means that you should always manage to shred the files -that is, to actually wipe their data- before marking the space as "free".

If you use Linux, the "shred" command would be very useful for that purpose -unless you use an SSD. If you use windows... switch to Linux because everything you are doing is tracked.

• Tips: Change their titles before deleting them, as they can serve as evidence that they were in your system. And manage to clear command history so that no one will find out what you've done.

7. Avoid SSDs

The SSDs are based on flash memory. Unlike HDDs, a flash drive can wipe and rewrite data on the same physical address for a limited number times before getting useless: rewriting data on the same part of the flash drive considerably diminishes its' life-span, since once a part gets damaged the whole device is unreadable. 

Corporations selling SSDs have resorted to a technique called wear-leveling, preventing the OS from knowing the actual physical address of the data and returning a logical one instead. Once the user demands that the data on an address is rewritten, the SSD's controller writes the new data next to the physical address, marks it as free, and edits the address table to make the logical address point to a new physical one. 

That means that to actually get rid of sensitive files on an SSD you may have to fully rewrite it -and no one can call it an effective way. If you want to be sure you have gotten rid of unwanted data, always use an HDD.

8. Beware of the quantum computers!

So far the brilliant and powerful Grover's algorithm to be implemented by quantum computers, threatens to make 128bit keys as breakable as the 64bit ones. Always manage to use encryption of at least 256bits, as 128bits are not easy to brake and there will not make much of a difference in the foreseeable future. A cipher using 512bit keys, such as RC5 or Kalyna, might be more secure against Grover's algorithm.

Yet it is possible that other similar methods are to be developed, and quantum computing threatens to render useless all -or at least most- of our current cryptography. Still, we have good reasons to hope that more powerful cryptographic methods, such as lattice-based cryptography, will prevent even quantum computers from accessing our data.

Always manage to be well-informed about new bugs in the encryption and software in general, as well as about newly developed quantum decryption techniques. And manage to add a layer of lattice-based cryptography to your files as soon as it is available!

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©George Malandrakis
All rights reserved