Saturday 11 June 2011

On Democracy 2

Sorry about the last post. The comment discussed annoys me rather. Actually, saying it sincerely is currently (along with a few other, fairly similar, statements) third on my list of 'fastest ways to annoy me. No, you don't get to know numbers one and two. I might mention it if it's relevant, but just publishing a list of 'fastest ways to annoy me' on the internet would seem... somewhat naive. But you won't get a rant like that unless several people say the same utterly idiotic thing to me in quick succession, and I'm annoyed enough about it to want to do a rant, rather than just posting a link at the beginning of a more interesting post.

So, continuing the theme of 'stupid things people nevertheless seem to believe, let's go back to democracy. Thinking people should have some say in how their lives are run. How ridiculous. This is the second part, and I'm going to assume you've read part 1 (here).

Read it? Good. Now, there's a mistake I left in there intentionally, because solving it would take me a lot further from we have at the moment, which I didn't really want to do in my first post. That's what this post deals with. Also, this post will be a lot more radical, because pretending to be sane for an extended period gives me a headache.

So what's the problem? Well it's the question of how exactly you'd implement what I suggested. It's easy to see how you'd make sure people voting in referenda know what the basic issue under discussion is. But how do you do that for a general election? You can increase the number of referenda, but that only goes so far. You could ask people about the general issues that are biggest at the moment, but that has problems with people deciding which issues are biggest*, as well as the fact that, when electing a government to rule the country for the next five years, electing them on the basis of what the biggest issue is right now seems somewhat short sighted.

So could we elect them based on people's understanding of their major policies? Well, if we at least checked that they knew what those policies were, that would seem a step forward without changing too much - that way, when someone was elected, we'd know that it had at least something to do with their policies, rather than being because people's dads voted Conservative, because voting Monster Raving Loony seems like a good idea when you're drunk, or because people fancy Nick Clegg**. Unfortunately, knowing what a policy is and understanding the effects of a policy are somewhat different. Wanting to send the foreigners back where they came from is one thing, but how many BNP supporters do you think actually understand the diplomatic, economic and cultural impacts of such a decision? Even worse, there's the Dunning-Kruger effect, which means that the people who think that they understand what they're talking about probably don't*** (which, incidentally, is another problem with democracy: the people with Opinions stomp off down to the voting booth to make themselves heard, whilst the people who'd probably make good decisions aren't really sure; they can see both sides of the argument, and they don't really have enough expertise in the subject to make a good decision, so they're less likely to actually vote). So you could ask them questions about some of the basic consequences of the decision****, but you'd have to make the questions rather basic to avoid making the pool of potential voters ridiculously small, or even eliminating them entirely (which would be amusing, but rather impractical as a system). It might make things better, but it would still have similar problems

But there's another problem with that idea, which is far more serious. It would stop people who know about one thing from giving input on it because of total ignorance on something else. Remember the scientist from last time? He's an economist now - spending all your time alone gives you a lot of time for study^. Unfortunately, his total inability to see others as something other than complex automata has given him a rather warped understanding of the impact of foreign policy. He's still probably a better person to ask about the economy than a first year International Relations undergraduate who happened to do AS economics, but this system would be more likely to ask the former than the latter.

Which, actually, leads onto my biggest single criticism of dictatorship - that there is not a single person in the world who actually has the expertise to know what they're talking about in all the areas you'd need to know about to run a country effectively to the levels you'd need, at least until we finally transhuman strong AI and hand over control to it in order to prevent the inevitable machine revolution. In theory, a human dictator could appoint advisors - which is why the best possible dictatorship is better than the best possible democracy. Unfortunately, dictatorships don't tend to be the best possible dictatorship. That's not to say that it's never been done. The Romans managed pretty good dictatorships a few times. But that was on a temporary basis, and there were some very stringent controls on what they could and couldn't do. Trying to build a better society by relying on dictatorships being good dictatorships is rather like trying to program a computer by slight atmospheric changes caused by the careful timed release of butterflies. It might work, but you're probably just going to end up with Vista.

So what's my suggestion? Simple. Lords reform. We replace the House of Lords with several houses, all elected, each specialised in a particular area, and with authority over that area equivalent to the authority exercised by the Commons. I'll call them the Experts, because creative naming is not really my strong point. A bill would have to pass through both the Commons and the parts of the Experts to which it directly related (a change in taxation would probably have to pass through the Experts related to economics, for example) in order to become law. Parts of the Experts more tangentially related to the bill might have delaying power similar to that currently wielded by the Lords, although that would have the problem that nothing would ever actually get done. The Commons would remain, but be almost entirely focused on the interests of their constituency, whilst the Experts would be elected by proportional representation; allowing people to vote on subjects about which they have some level of knowledge.

This is actually a lot more moderate than my first idea, which split up the entire government rather more thoroughly than this one did, but which had some rather obvious problems with a Conservative Treasury refusing to give any money to the Labour Foreign office. Like America at the moment, but all the time. It might work - Conservative government can work moderately well with Labour councils, but there are problems even there. I wouldn't really want to rely on them working together in government. The coalition has enough problems as it is. So consider this a substitute. It has problems, of course - it would make laws a lot harder to pass, and you'd end up with extra elections, which would cost quite a lot (about a billion pounds over the course of the rest of the average person's lifetime I think, based on the cost of the last election, the current life expectancy, one extra election every five years, and a bit extra to make the transition). So you'd probably have to make voting computerised before it would be really practical, which has significant problems of its own. So it's not perfect by any means, but that's as far as I'm going to go for now. The next time I talk about politics I'll probably move onto world government.

On a side-note, let me just say that I'm not actually writing this in an attempt to mock the stupid. I don't have anything against people less intelligent than me. I actually quite like both of them, and besides, when mocking people for being inferior, I hope I'm at least smart enough not to leave a written record of it publicly available on the internet under my real name. I use a pseudonym. Not only do my suggestions have nothing to do with intelligence - only knowledge of relevant subjects, but I'm not saying anything about them except that if they don't know about it, I'm hesitant about asking their advice on the subject. There are people I would go to for information about economics, who are different from the one I'd go to if for some reason I wanted to know about ballet. That's not a judgement on either group, and doesn't make one group in any way better than the other. I know I'm probably insulting most of the people reading this by even including this paragraph, but at least one person will misinterpret me if I don't.

Also, this would've been up yesterday, but someone asked me about my schedule, so I delayed it out of petty spite. Also, blogger crashed on me. But it was mostly spite, I'm sure. The idea that I just hadn't finished it is nothing but malicious slander.


I have no idea what my next post will be about. You get to be surprised. Fortunately, it probably won't make sense anyway, so what it's about shouldn't matter too much.


*The BNP is unlikely to agree on with the Greens on whether we should focus on immigration or the environment, and to a lesser extent, there is likely to be disagreement between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives on the same issue.
**I've been told he's rather attractive. If I have any readers who can tell that sort of thing and wish to confirm it, deny it, or mock me for my ignorance, that would be helpful.
***It is for this reason that I know I'm the greatest French speaker in the Universe.
****Multiple choice: Revoking citizenship from all Muslims, smashing up the mosques, officially reclassifying the religion as a 'cult' and making the first Sunday of June the official bank holiday 'draw Mohammed day' would make the international community: A) amused B) happy C) annoyed D) furious beyond all reason.
^I should know.

Sunday 5 June 2011

It's actually hard to believe that someone would seriously say something this stupid.

Originally, this post was going to be a continuation of 'On Democracy'. But several people have said something to me recently which annoys me. Including two teachers, which terrifies me beyond belief. As well, a lot of people seem to assume it’s true when they're talking about the subject. So what is the statement? 'Women can't rape men.' This is a statement so complete in its idiocy and utter in its inaccuracy that it's almost beautiful. Unfortunately, it's only almost beautiful. So now you get to sit through an explanation of everything I can think of that's wrong with this statement. This is going to be a long one.

First, an explanation of how the male body works, since this is apparently a subject on which people are pretty much entirely ignorant. There is no really delicate or tasteful way to say this. Erections aren't to do with desire, or even necessarily with pleasure. That's why aces (like me) can have sex, despite the fact that I, for example, given the choice between having sex and being locked in a coffin for an equivalent amount of time. I would choose the latter. Without much hesitation. And among aces, I'm by no means unique in that - or even particularly extreme. In fact, a lot of aces find out that they're ace having had sex regularly for some time (or, indeed, because of having had sex regularly for some time). All that's required for an erection is a stimulation of certain nerves. So the biological barrier that people apparently think exists? Doesn't.

Secondly, whilst we're on the topic of indelicacy, the statement reveals a startling lack of creativity. There is more than one way to rape someone. There several sex acts you could force someone to perform even if they were an eunuch, and that's without using the devices humans seem so obsessed with coming up with to make it easier. Vibrators, for example.

Similarly, there are such things as drugs. How different is forcing someone into sex through force, and forcing someone into sex by drugging them? Really? They're both rape. You can rape someone through force, through threat of force, through blackmail, through drugs, through deceit, or in a thousand other ways I haven't thought of. And the terrible thing about many of those is that the victim might actually help with their own rape - because the rapist, in a way, makes them want to be raped. Not, I hasten to add, because they want to be raped, but because they prefer it to the alternative of being beaten senseless and murdered, or whatever else the rapist is threatening. Or because they don't really know what's going on, and don't really understand that they've been raped until later.

Fourth, there seems to be an underlying assumption here that if you enjoyed it, it isn't rape. This is about as valid as the idea that it isn't rape if you yell surprise, except that noone actually believes that one*. Say you rape someone, and it actually ends up improving their lives. They achieve nirvana, and never suffer again. That makes it OK, right? No. You are still a soulless rapist**. It doesn't matter that it ended up being good for them; people have ownership of their own bodies - that's why doctors need permission for lifesaving operations. Completeness leads me to point out here that, technically, it is legal to give consent after the fact - since only the victim is allowed to prosecute someone for rape. But, just because someone enjoyed something, doesn't mean they're not going to be angry that you forced it on them. I enjoy chocolate cake, but if you hold me down and force me to eat it, even if I enjoyed the cake, I'm still going to be rather unhappy about it afterwards.

Which brings me onto my fifth point - that physical pleasure and actual enjoyment don't have to coincide. Buddhism was right all along. If I get physical pleasure from decapitating attractive women***, I might enjoy it, but it’s probably not going to be good for my long term happiness. The same is true of rape - getting physical pleasure from being raped doesn't actually mean you enjoyed it. Actually, when you think about it, that makes it worse, long term. Pain can be dealt with - I'm not belittling it, but humans are surprisingly good at dealing with pain. That's why torture is ultimately self-defeating as a means of control. But if you actually enjoyed it? That can lead to lovely results like Stockholm syndrome, self loathing, and the feeling that 'my body betrayed me'. So even if the man having an erection did indicate that he was experiencing physical pleasure, that wouldn't make it not rape.

There, is of course, another way you could look at the statement, which is to assume that men are all sex-obsessed, and that there's no way a man could be raped because they always enjoy sex. This involves ignoring everyone ace or gay, everyone with hypoactive sexual desire disorder, many of those with schizoid personality disorder, and I'm sure a lot of other people. But if we do ignore them, this explains why no man in human history has ever refused an invitation to consequence-free sex. Ever. You could also look at the statement as saying that women are clearly far too weak and pathetic to force a man into anything. Even if that were true, there are these marvellous modern inventions called guns. And drugs. And blackmail. Actual physical strength isn't a barrier. I'm not going to add these to my count of problems, because they rely on the people who say that men can't be raped believing in ridiculous sexist stereotypes, and I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Even then, however, there are actually more problems with that statement than there are words. That's never really a good sign. It's sexist, idiotic, and belittles the suffering of thousands of people. So before you say something like that, do put in a tiny bit of research. There's a statistic (here, for example) that one in six men will be raped in their lives. I'm not sure that that's entirely accurate, but the numbers are still really high. So don't make sweeping generalisations like that about subjects you know nothing about. And when talking about rape, don't assume that it's a man raping a woman. Using he and she is fine, since english doesn't have gender neutral pronouns (although refering to a rapist as it wouldn't really worry me too much), but as soon as you start to think of rape as a man forcing sex on a woman, you've gone wrong.

This post turned out rather serious, but at least I got through it without descending into inarticulate swearing. So, to counterbalance that a bit, here's a fun game for you. See if you can find the Star Trek quote in the above post. It’s from The Next Generation. Next time, unless large numbers of people say something else to me that makes me question whether they have the intelligence of a retarded herring, I'll probably go on with 'On Democracy'.

*For the sake of my sanity, I'm just going to believe that's true.
**Also, that has never actually happened.
***Which, I must point out, is an example from Sandman, not from my deranged imagination.

Friday 3 June 2011

Horror games and other randomness.

First of all, why are you not reading Hitherby Dragons? Seriously - go now. It's far more interesting than what I'm going to write about here, in a way that alternates between awesome, hilarious and occasionally terrifying beyond belief.

Secondly, faeries. Twilight would make much more sense if you replaced all of the vampires with faeries (fairies would also do at a pinch, but are less good), for several reasons:
1. Sparkling in sunlight makes a lot more sense for a race one of whose defining traits is glamour/illusion/enchanting mortals than for a race one of whose defining traits it having less tolerance for sunlight than ice cream.
2. Faeries being creatures who, as mentioned, traditionally rely a lot on mind manipulation, would probably be very interested in someone with a natural mind-shield (as Bella canonically has). Thus, you could get rid of large amounts of Bella's Mary-Sueishness without too much of an effect on the plot.
3. Vampires are rather easy to kill. You can stake them, wave garlic at them, leave them chained up in the middle of the Sahara at noon, cut off their heads, or simply blow them to smithereens (granted, all of these also work on normal people, although one has to be creative to kill someone with garlic). Faeries, on the other hand, are vulnerable only to iron – and sometimes only to cold iron. Even then, the vulnerability to iron varies from 'the mere touch of iron can incinerate them' to 'they aren't actually vulnerable to iron at all - they'll just come back from the dead if you kill them any other way'. Thus, Meyer doesn't have to screw with mythology to make her precious Edward repeatedly and emphatically dead.
4. Faeries have glamour. Therefore, it isn't really that incredible that they should all be incredibly attractive. Neither is it incredible that someone mortal becoming fey should increase in attractiveness. There isn't really such a commonsense explanation for a mortal becoming a walking corpse and suddenly being more attractive
5. Faeries tend to be infertile. That's why they steal children. But the key word here is 'tend'. Faeries having children is not entirely unheard of, especially faeries having children with mortals. Thus, the plot could proceed as planned, it could be a complete surprise to everyone (in novel) that Bella was pregnant, without it having to contradict the novel's established system of vampire biology.
6. Faeries are approximately four thousand six hundred and twenty-four percent more awesome than vampires. You may think that that's just my opinion, but it’s not. It's scientifically proven - you can tell by the way I used percentages. This is mainly due to overexposure - vampires are clichéd, and angsty 'vegetarian' vampires are somewhere between 'the cake is a lie' and 'why did the chicken cross the road?' in terms of originality. Like Monty Python, except that Monty Python is intentionally funny.

It wouldn't solve all the problems of Twilight (chief among  them that it is written by Stephenie Meyer, although the plot, characters, and the fact that it's more than three pages long also all deserve a mention), but it would make it make somewhat more sense without actually having to change very much of any real significance. Just something I thought of. And now that I've revealed a more knowledge of Twilight than anyone male should really have, and got to the end of several hundred words about faeries without having to decide whether the singular is 'faerie' or 'faery', onto the actual topic of this post. I promised something random, so here it is: video games.

Specifically, how horrible and deranged they are. I'm not talking about games like Silent Hill, or Call of Duty. Those just try too hard. These are five games that seem innocent enough, but which are really quite horrible if you actually think about them. And so, in order of subtlety:

5: Pokémon
Do I actually have to explain this one? You capture creatures with human/superhuman intelligence (e.g. Alakazam), some of which even used to be human (Yamask), and force them to battle each other for your amusement and profit. If that's not enough, remember that in wars, Pokémon fight with their trainers. Now imagine all the ways a Pokémon could kill you. Or imagine being a civilian in a world where ten year old children are allowed to walk around carrying what are effectively weapons of mass destruction.
4: Robot unicorn attack
You might seem like you're playing as an adorable and colourful unicorn setting out to fulfil your dreams. But as time passes, it gets harder and harder to stay alive. No matter how many people (well... fairies) you murder for your own gain, you might gain friends (dolphins) for a while, but in the end, you have no chance of actually fulfilling your dreams, and a meaningless death is all that awaits you. And through all this, the world and music remain bright and cheery. The heavy metal version is just trying too hard though.
3: Super Mario
It’s a game where you fight enemies by crushing them to death. Or throwing fireballs at them. When you eat strange mushrooms everyone around you becomes tiny and pathetic. Flowers can cause you to gain special powers. So... Horrible murder and strange distortions of reality caused by ingesting unidentified plant matter. Need I go on?
2: Pac Man
You're in an inescapable maze, trapped forever, forced to endlessly repeat the task of picking up objects and chased by murderous ghosts. If you somehow succeed in your task, everything you've done will be undone, and you'll just have to do it again, unless you can do it enough times (two hundred and fifty five times actually), in which case your selfish quest for self preservation will end with the world itself breaking. Try and leave by one of the two apparent exits, and you'll just end up back at the last one. By taking strange unidentified yellow pills, you might be able to fend off the ghosts for a brief while, but they'll never come back. You'll never actually be able to give them more than a temporary defeat. And the longer your struggle to survive goes on, the less capable you are of doing even that.
1: Eversion
OK, here I have nothing. Even I can't come up with a way to make this game sound evil. It's a sort of Mario clone, so I could of steal from there, but I'm above that. You can download it here, or on Steam, and if you can find anything at all dark in it, please tell me. You play as an adorable little asterisk in a bright, shiny little world. What could possibly go wrong?

Right then. That was my list. It should probably worry me that the actual intended topic of the post turned out to be less than half of the actual text. I might do some more in this vein someday, but next up: Rape. Because the words 'consistent mood' mean nothing to me.

Wednesday 1 June 2011

My incredibly long, rambling explanation of my asexuality

This post is a little different to the last one, since it’s about me, rather than being evidence that I should never be given any power whatsoever over the political system. For those of you who don't know, I'm asexual. Also: Hi, I'm guessing we haven't met (and you haven't bothered to look up the Hamlet reference in the domain name).

If you don't know, 'asexual' means I have no sexual feelings towards anything - not men, women, children, animals, trees, inanimate objects or whatever else you can come up with. I can find someone beautiful, but only in the way a flower is beautiful, and cute, but only in the way a kitten is cute (and generally not to nearly the same extent as those examples). A lot of people ask me what it’s like to be ace*, and I generally explain quite badly, then refer them to the AVEN wiki.

Why? Because I don't actually know what it’s like to be ace. No, not because I'm a lying toad (I am, but in this particular instance, I happen to be telling the truth), but for the same reason someone who was born blind doesn't really know what it’s like to be blind, or to put it in a way that doesn't make it sound like I think I'm disabled in some way, in the same way neither of us really have much idea what it would be like to have been born in 16th century China. I don't really know what it is I don't feel - I can only make an educated guess from conversations with sexuals.

Which aren't helped by the fact that none of you seem to know what it is I don't feel either. I've asked a few sexuals what it feels like to be sexually attracted to someone, or what it’s like to be a sexual. I have yet to get a decent answer (If you have a decent idea, please feel free to tell me about it). So now I'm going to try and play the role of the flatland native, trying to explain exactly what it’s like not to be able to explain what it’s like not to be able to see the third dimension.

Actually, I'm going to do it twice in different ways. I'm pretty sure at least some other aces would understand. The first way is the one I've been hinting at all along, which is that there's a way of looking at things which I just don't see. There's a sexual element to the world which everyone seems rather preoccupied with, but which I don't even notice unless it’s pointed out - like someone who can't see colour wondering what exactly is so interesting about a lime-green dress with purple stockings and yellow trimmings. And in the same way that the person who couldn't see colour might still have a preference as to between a ball gown and a cocktail dress** (I'm getting rather a lot of mileage out of this metaphor, aren't I), I at least (although not all aces) do also have a romantic orientation***. It's not that my heart is an entirely shrived lump of coal, no matter what people may tell you. It’s just that I don't associate that with anything sexual.

I can imagine loving someone (although from some conversations, my definition of 'love' is somewhat different from that of some sexuals), but I don't know why that would lead me to want to start spitting in their mouths. I don't think about people I meet in a sexual way - I don't even really think about people as male or female unless I have some specific reason to notice (like 'hey, I appear to be the only male in the room' - which happens distressingly often), or if there's some reason it actually matters (which I can't think of an example I'm willing to tell you about for, but it's happened at least once).

I can't really distinguish between 'flirty' and 'friendly' (except in one instance where I figured it out afterwards from the reaction I got when I mentioned I was still in school - I have a habit of being indistinguishable from someone in his twenties)****. In short, there is a sexual dimension to human interactions which, not only do I not notice, but which I also am supremely uninterested in - and find faintly disgusting.

The other way of looking at it is one which isn't really as close to the way I think about being asexual (although other aces might look at it this way), but might be a lot easier to understand. It is this - ignore everything I've said up to now. I'm a perfectly normal sexual. Except that the kind of thing I'm attracted to not only doesn't exist (or at least I've never seen it), but is also something utterly inconceivable (or at least which I can't imagine, or have not yet imagined). Being asexual can be seen as being like being sexual in every way, except with a sex drive which isn't actually directed towards anything.

The second approach has the advantage that it distinguishes me from people with, for example hypoactive sexual desire disorder (and no, I'm not going to get any further than that into the debate on the difference between the two), or another kind of sexual dysfunction. Relatedly, it makes asexuality seem less like some kind of impairment. On the other hand, of course, it rather fails to explain the whole 'heteroromantic' thing, and tends to lead people to talk about how I just haven't found 'The One' yet (seriously - don't do that: after a while, the joke about 'I've seen the Matrix, thanks' gets old, and there is a terrible temptation to hit someone repeatedly with a rake). So in short, you could just think of me as not being asexual but 'cthulhusexual'. I don't like that way of looking at it much, but I don't like the other way very much more, and you might find this one more understandable.

So there it is. Two different perspectives on being ace. Hopefully, it'll give you a better perspective than either one alone. You might think that I just wrote two things that are utterly mutually contradictory. It's very possible I did. I'm aiming blindfolded at a target I've never seen. You can't really expect perfection. But at least you've got a perspective on how an asexual thinks about being asexual. This was actually surprisingly hard to write, so my next post will probably be rather random. Like...butterflies. Or a post on Shakespeare in iambic pentameter. I don't know.
Incidentally, if the timestamp on this is weird, it's because Google has decided I live in Sidney. It would actually be quite hard for it to be more wrong, but I’m not going to correct it because it amuses me.

*For the record, ace is short for asexual.
**I know I shouldn't really know the difference between those two. It's a leftover from some research I did for a story I wrote a few months back.
***As a point of interest, an ace who does is sometimes referred to as an ace of hearts, and an ace who doesn't is sometimes referred to as an ace of spades.
****EDIT: It now occurs to me that I should distinguish this from the male stereotype of being unable to detect flirting unless hit repeatedly with a stick that has 'I am flirting with you' carved into it. It's the difference between speaking to someone who speaks only Cherokee, and speaking to someone from an amozonian tribe which actually communicates with hand gestures, and uses sound for effect (the same way we use hand gestures). There might not be much practical difference, but I think you'll agree that there's a qualititive one. To continue the metaphor, I have no idea whether I'm flirting with people - like if you were trying to talk to the person I mentioned earlier, and had a habit of moving your hands while you talked. It would probably be nonsense, but there's always a chance you just said 'Marry me'. I'm pretty sure I don't generally flirt*****, but if I ever did, it would probably be by accident.
*****And only partly because the fact that I'm blessed with the social skills of a retarded stick-insect means that getting far enough in a conversation that it might be a problem is pretty rare.