Month: March 2007

Net Neutrality in broken English and bad logic

The new net neutrality paper from Florida U. is absolutely hilarious:

Whether to legislate to maintain “net neutrality”, the current status quo of prohibiting broadband service providers from charging online websites for preferential access to their residential and commercial customers, has become a subject under fierce debate. We develop a stylized game-theoretic model to address two critical issues of the net neutrality: (1) who are gainers and losers of abandoning net neutrality, and (2) will broadband service providers have greater incentive to expand their capacity without net neutrality.

We find that if the principle of net neutrality is abandoned, the broadband service provider definitely stands to gain from the arrangement, as a result of extracting the preferential access fees from the content providers. The content providers are thus left worse off, mirroring the stances of the two sides in the debate. Depending on parameter values in our framework, consumer surplus either does not change or is higher, and in the latter case, while a majority of consumers are better off, a minority of them is left worse off with larger wait times to access their preferred content. The social welfare increases when compared to the baseline case under net neutrality when one content provider pays for preferential treatment, but remains unchanged when both content providers pay. We also find that the incentive for the broadband service provider to expand under net neutrality is unambiguously higher than under the no net neutrality regime. This goes against the assertion of the broadband service providers that under net neutrality, they have limited incentive to expand.

Aside from their use of pidgin English (“the current status quo of prohibiting…from charging”, “critical issues of the net neutrality,” “has become a subject under fierce debate,” “a majority are better off, a minority is worse off”) the authors embarrass themselves with a wholly nonsensical definition of the terms of the debate. As Scott Cleland points out, if net neutrality really were the status quo, legislation would not be needed simply to preserve it.

In fact, net neutrality legislation seeks to create a new status quo where light users of Internet subscription services are required to subsidize heavy users, and where telecommunications companies would be prohibited from offering non-Internet-based IPTV services unless competitors could access their private IPTV facilities for free (where “free” means for no additional charge beyond what they pay for Internet service today.)

Verizon and AT&T offer IPTV services today, so this is clearly not a question of preserving the status quo.

The professors jump through hoops in order to “prove” that light users should be required to subsidize heavy users, and then baldly assert that the only difference between 10 Megabit Ethernet on fiber (10Base-FL [sic]) and Gigabit Ethernet is at the transceiver level. No dudes, not even close: system interfaces, buses, and MAC controllers have to be re-engineered to run faster, and distances suffer.

Enlightenment fundamentalist

The latest criticism of Ayaan Hirsi Ali is that she’s an “enlightenment fundamentalist:”

Having in her youth been tempted by Islamist fundamentalism, under the influence of an inspiring schoolteacher, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is now a brave, outspoken, slightly simplistic Enlightenment fundamentalist. In a pattern familiar to historians of political intellectuals, she has gone from one extreme to the other, with an emotional energy perfectly summed up by Shakespeare: “As the heresies that men do leave/are hated most of those they did deceive.” This is precisely why she is a heroine to many secular European intellectuals, who are themselves Enlightenment fundamentalists. They believe that not just Islam but all religion is insulting to the intelligence and crippling to the human spirit. Most of them believe that a Europe based entirely on secular humanism would be a better Europe. Maybe they are right. (Some of my best friends are Enlightenment fundamentalists.) Maybe they are wrong. But let’s not pretend this is anything other than a frontal challenge to Islam. In his crazed diatribe, Mohammed Bouyeri was not altogether mistaken to identify as his generic European enemy the “unbelieving fundamentalist.”

Christopher Hitchens disputes this charge:

In her book, Ayaan Hirsi Ali says the following: “I left the world of faith, of genital cutting and forced marriage for the world of reason and sexual emancipation. After making this voyage I know that one of these two worlds is simply better than the other. Not for its gaudy gadgetry, but for its fundamental values.” This is a fairly representative quotation. She has her criticisms of the West, but she prefers it to a society where women are subordinate, censorship is pervasive, and violence is officially preached against unbelievers. As an African victim of, and escapee from, this system, she feels she has acquired the right to say so. What is “fundamentalist” about that?

I would embrace the “enlightenment fundamentalist” label. There’s no shame in being a fanatic for tolerance, secular democracy, science, and reason, and these are the fundamental values of Western civilization. Or were, once upon a time.

BONUS FEATURE: For no extra charge, see today’s Opinion Journal on Ms. Ali:

This worldview has led certain critics to dismiss Ms. Hirsi Ali as a secular extremist. “I have my ideas and my views,” she says, “and I want to argue them. It is our obligation to look at things critically.” As to the charges that she is an “Enlightenment fundamentalist,” she points out, rightly, that people who live in democratic societies are not supposed to settle their disagreements by killing one another.

Amen.

Objects in blogs smaller than they appear

Bjørn Stærk was one of the classic, anti-idiotarian warbloggers, like me a cheerleader for the invasion (we used to say “liberation”) of Iraq. He’s done some re-thinking and abandoned the main principles of war-bloggerdom, and I endorse his message:

Who were these people? They were us. “Us”? This seemed a lot clearer at the time. Us were the people who acknowledged the threat of Islamist terrorism, who had the common sense to see through the multicultural fog of words, and the moral courage to want to change the world by force. It included politicians like George W. Bush and Tony Blair, it included the new European right, it included brave and honest pundits, straight-talking intellectuals in the enlightenment tradition.

And then there were people like me, who labelled ourselves “warbloggers”, and called our friends “anti-idiotarians”. Phew, all those labels! Now, anyone who knows me knows that I’ve been drifting away from where I started for years. They’re going to laugh if I pretend that I’ve ever been an Islamophobe, or that I was among the most eager of the Bush supporters, and use that to claim special insights into these people. Some of the ideas I criticize I believed for a long time, some for a short time, and some I never liked at all.

And by “us” I don’t mean that everyone thought alike, I mean that there was an identity based on an unspoken agreement about who were “ok” and who weren’t. And – God help me – I was ok. I haven’t been for a while now, but it’s only recently I’ve realized just how little there’s left of what I believed five years ago. Our worldview had three major focus points – Iraq, terrorism and Islam – and we were wrong about all of them.

When you’ve been attacked, it’s easy to get swept up in emotion, and that’s what happened back in 2001. I believe the lust for war would have subsided sooner in many of us if the blogs weren’t simply an echo chamber for un-critical reinforcement of existing biases, but that’s essentially all they are.

Read me first

Writing in The Guardian, the esteemed technologist Seth Finkelstein offers a clear and concise picture of Wikipedia’s delusional alternate reality:

One of Wikipedia’s major public relations successes has been in misdirecting observers into a narrative of technological miracles, diverting attention from analysing its old-fashioned cult appeal. While I don’t mean to imply that everyone involved in Wikipedia is wrapped up in delusion, that process is a key factor. A charismatic leader, who peddles a type of spiritual transcendence through selfless service to an ideal, finding a cadre of acolytes willing to devote their lives (without payment) to the organisation’s projects – that’s a story worth telling. But not abetting.

This is particularly interesting to me at the moment, because one of the faithful is trying to get me banned from editing the Wikipedia article on Net Neutrality, simply to silence a point of view.

Wikipedia is the place to go when reality doesn’t live up to your expectations. Wiki-reality is so much better than real reality that once you go there, you’ll never come back. Kudos to Seth, information entropy’s biggest enemy.

David Isenberg, who should be basking in the afterglow of his successful Freedom to Connect conference, is very upset with The Guardian for publishing Seth’s opinion. The poor dude should join the debate rather than try to silence other points of view. Oops.

UPDATE: The ultimate Wikipedia bogey-man is Daniel Brandt.

UPDATE: See The Register for a cute satire If Surgery Was Like Wikipedia.

Trivia at risk?

A new development in the Wikipedia fake credentials scandal:

After pressure over the weekend from Wikipedia’s Il Duce Jimmy Wales, the encyclopedia’s most illustrious fake professor Ryan Jordan has resigned his post at Wikia Inc.

Wikipedia depends on the kindness of strangers, and if their support stops, it will have to shut down. And then where would we find the life stories of the participants in American Idol season 2? Oh, the humanity.

No good deed goes unpunished

Ayann Hirsi Ali is a hero to many who want to see the war on Islamic terrorism end in a victory for the West. But every hero has her critics, and Ali is no exception. For some of the most mind-bending perverse logic you’ve ever seen, check the Newsweek article attacking Ali from the pro-Muslim and pro-feminist (!) point of view:

Other Muslim women interested in reform aren’t exactly in step with Hirsi Ali. “I wish people had been nicer to her,” says Muslim author and feminist Asra Nomani. “But I don’t blame Islam. I blame really messed-up people who’ve used religion to justify their misogyny.” As staunchly patriarchal strains of Wahhabi Islam infiltrate Muslim cultures outside the gulf region, many modern female followers are wondering how to embrace their religion without succumbing to its more sexist demands. And they’re coming up with answers that don’t require them to abandon either their religion or their culture. In the Middle East and South Asia, a strong majority of Muslim women recently polled by Gallup believed they should have the right to work outside the home and serve in the highest levels of government. Here in the United States, dozens of scholars like Ithaca College’s Asma Barlas, Harvard’s Leila Ahmed and Notre Dame’s Asma Afsaruddin have challenged widely accepted interpretations of the Qur’an. “They are Islam’s Martina Luthers,” jokes Nomani. “They are my heroes.”

It’s not clear what “being nicer” would have meant: no clitorectomy, fewer beatings, and a better arranged marriage, or not being disowned? Some people are just so hard to please.

Linklove to Roger L, Simon.

Why the Kyoto Protocol won’t work

China and India are exempt from the international agreement to limit greenhouse gases. With China set to pass U.S. as world’s top generator of greenhouse gases that’s pretty much a joke:

Far more than previously acknowledged, the battle against global warming will be won or lost in China, even more so than in the West, new data show.

A report released last week by Beijing authorities indicated that as its economy continues to expand at a red-hot pace, China is highly likely to overtake the United States this year or in 2008 as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

This information, along with data from the International Energy Agency, the Paris-based alliance of oil importing nations, also revealed that China’s greenhouse gas emissions have recently been growing by a total amount much greater than that of all industrialized nations put together.

“The magnitude of what’s happening in China threatens to wipe out what’s happening internationally,” said David Fridley, leader of the China Energy Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Back to the drawing board, fellow global-warming fanatics.

Open Patent Office

This is a promising application of Wiki technology for a knowledgeable group of real people:

The government is about to start opening up the process of reviewing patents to the modern font of wisdom: the Internet.

The Patent and Trademark Office is starting a pilot project that will not only post patent applications on the Web and invite comments but also use a community rating system designed to push the most respected comments to the top of the file, for serious consideration by the agency’s examiners. A first for the federal government, the system resembles the one used by Wikipedia, the popular user-created online encyclopedia.

“For the first time in history, it allows the patent-office examiners to open up their cubicles and get access to a whole world of technical experts,” said David J. Kappos, vice president and assistant general counsel at IBM.

This will be good if and only if the citizen reviewers are expert and accountable, and under those conditions I’m enthusiastically for it, especially since professional reviewers have the last word.

The Wikipedia Scandal Continues

Nick Carr reports on the latest twist in the Wikipedia phony credentials scandal:

Head Wikipedian Jimmy Wales, having previously defended the Wikipedian administrator Ryan Jordan, who faked an elaborate online identity – “Essjay” – as a distinguished religion scholar, has this morning asked his beleaguered colleague to resign, saying that his “past support of EssJay in this matter was fully based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on.”

Seth Finkelstein highlights the core of Jimbo’s belated reaction:

It doesn’t matter that Essjay lied to the New Yorker reporter about his credentials, making Wikipedia look good to the media – a matter Wales has known about for weeks. No mention of the dishonesty of using degree falsification to endorse Wikipedia in a letter to a professor. That’s lying to those outside The Family.

But he used his false credentials in content disputes. That’s serious! It’s an IN-WORLD offense! It’s inside The Family.

It all started with a Wikipedia official lying to the New Yorker:

Essjay was recommended to Ms. Schiff as a source by a member of Wikipedia’s management team because of his respected position within the Wikipedia community. He was willing to describe his work as a Wikipedia administrator but would not identify himself other than by confirming the biographical details that appeared on his user page. At the time of publication, neither we nor Wikipedia knew Essjay’s real name. Essjay’s entire Wikipedia life was conducted with only a user name; anonymity is common for Wikipedia admin-istrators and contributors, and he says that he feared personal retribution from those he had ruled against online. Essjay now says that his real name is Ryan Jordan, that he is twenty-four and holds no advanced degrees, and that he has never taught. He was recently hired by Wikia—a for-profit company affiliated with Wikipedia—as a “community manager”; he continues to hold his Wikipedia positions. He did not answer a message we sent to him; Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikia and of Wikipedia, said of Essjay’s invented persona, “I regard it as a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it.”

Wikipedia fans claim Ryan Jordan is an exception and most of the paid staff and volunteer editors are honest. My experience in Wikipedia editing, including the inevitable content disputes, administrative blocks, and arbitration requests leads me to believe that Ryan Jordans are more the rule than the exception in Wikipedia land. It’s a project that’s built on unpaid, anonymous labor, and the only thing they can possibly be getting out of it is emotional payback (read: a fantasy life.)

Jordan, like countless other Wikipedians, created a persona for himself that represented what he wished himself to be, and he stomped through Wikipedia pretending it was real for so long he became deluded enough to believe it.

Someday I’ll write about what goes on behind the scenes at Wikipedia, and it won’t be pretty.

Teaching the hive mind to discriminate

Writing on his blog, Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein invokes the name of the sainted Hayek to endorse the decentralized nature of Wikipedia and other peer-production exercises:

Developing one of the most important ideas of the 20th century, Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek attacked socialist planning on the grounds that no planner could possibly obtain the “dispersed bits” of information held by individual members of society. Hayek insisted that the knowledge of individuals, taken as a whole, is far greater than that of any commission or board, however diligent and expert. The magic of the system of prices and of economic markets is that they incorporate a great deal of diffuse knowledge.

Sunstein fails to appreciate that markets are a special case in group dynamics, where knowledge is maximally distributed. So I pointed that out to him:

Wikipedia is all about process, and because its process is so different from Britannica’s, it’s not really accurate to describe it as an “encyclopedia”. Wikipedia is actually the world’s largest collection of trivia, gossip, received wisdom, rumor, and innuendo. It’s valuable because any large collection of information is valuable, but not in the same way that the verified, expert summaries in an encyclopedia are valuable.

If it’s true that the “knowledge of individuals, taken as a whole, is far greater than that of any commission or board,” it’s also true that the sum of their prejudice, mistaken beliefs, wishful thinking, and conformance to tradition is greater.

All of this is to say that group endeavors like Wikipedia produce breadth but not depth. For some endeavors depth is important, but for all others it’s fine to consult the rabble.

Marketing, for example, can gain much by mining the dark corners of Wikipedia; engineering and medicine, not so much, as knowledge is not dispersed at the depths as it is at the surface.

Which brings us back to Hayek. Markets do a great job of bringing information about the wishes of buyers to bear on the consciousness of sellers. Everybody who participates in a market is an expert on the subject of his own wishes or his own product. But when you leave the realm of buying and selling, expertise is not as widely dispersed as participation, and then the decentralized model falls down.

And then we’ve got a little back-and-forth with Tim Wu on Tech Lib, where Wu says:

So its obviously true that decentralized and centralized systems are better for different things, as RB points.

One thing I think is interesting, and don’t quite understand, is how often, however, humans tend to underestimate the potential of decentralized solutions

That’s what Hayek was getting at in his paper — there’s no question that if you put a perfect, planned economy next to an unplanned economy, the planned economy will win. Hands down.

But we aren’t good at knowing when information problems will cripple what would have been the better system.

So maybe we’re overcompensating, as RB suggests, in the direction of decentralized systems, but I happen to think we have to fight a perfectionist instinct that drives us too over-centralization

Just ask Napoleon III

Here’s the essential issue, as I see it: It’s undeniably true that information exists nearly everywhere, hence the potential information present in a large group is greater than that in a small group, and that’s why markets allocate resources better than committees. But it’s also true that misinformation exists nearly everywhere, so there’s also a huge potential for large groups to be misguided.

So the real question about information and group scaling is this: are there procedures for separating good information from false information (“discrimination”) that are effective enough to allow groups to be scaled indefinitely without a loss of information quality? It’s an article of faith in the Wikipedia “community” that such procedures exist, and that they’re essentially self-operative. That’s the mythos of “emergence”, that systems, including human systems, automatically self-organize in such a way as to reward good behavior and information and purge bad information. This seems to be based on the underlying assumption that people being basically good, the good will always prevail in any group.

I see no reason to believe that groups have this property, even if one accepts as given the fundamental goodness of the individual. And even if some groups have this property, does it follow that self-selecting groups do? Polling, for example, seems to pretty accurate when it’s done by random sample. But self-selected polling is notoriously inaccurate. If a web site puts up a presidential preference poll and supporters of one candidate or another urge each other to vote, the results are skewed.

This is what happens in Wikipedia and many open source projects: participation is limited to people with an interest in a particular outcome, and they distort the process to get the desired result. Participation is not automatically tailored to align with expertise, as it is in markets.

The methods we have for separating fact from fiction, such as the expert opinion, scientific method and random polling, don’t scale to arbitrarily large groups.

Hence the work of large groups is suspect.