Checksum Arcanius

Erik, of Freedomdown.net asks:
“Is it really that hard to imagine that people sometimes just do things because they are the right thing to do?”

And I respond (it was a comment, but it got way too long):

No, it is not hard to believe that, because this is often why people do things. I made no claim to the contrary. What I do believe is that, when you take the aggregate of what the CIA does, it is not “the right thing.” So where does this behavior arise from, when there are, no doubt, many people in that organization trying to do the right thing – trying to protect us from terrorism; trying to save lives; trying to make the world a better place – not because it is neccesarily in their immediate self interest, but because it is the right thing to do?

And the answer I always arrive at is that there is another motivation that drives the organization as a whole that is different than what drives most individuals. And, from the way I understand incentives, the thing that makes successful government bureacracies is far different than what makes a successful corporation (ie, pleasing the customers). The primary driving incentive for government bureacracies – and this is no fault of their own; it is an effect of the system – is to increase their size and stature in the system. No other goal, as an organization serves everyone in the organization. Individuals may be strongly motivated to do the right thing, but the organization rarely is. And from the track record of the CIA, I would doubt that it has, as an organization, always had the best motivations.

Conprendez-vous?

Some people apologize too much. When I say “Some people”, I mean people like Bobby and Angela. Bobby is funny, because when I mention that he really doesn’t need to apologize so much, he apologizes for apologizing so much. Angela, well, she just pretends to apologize for apologizing too much, because she knows I find it funny when Bobby does it, because, well, I told her so.

In other news, Austin made a pretty good apology at each of the last TRC leadership meetings, but his lack of action after each one is disconcerting. Maybe his should therefore be termed “under apologies” or “premature apologies”, because, for goodness’ sake, finish screwing off before you spend the energy apologizing. Actually, I don’t know if I mean that last sentence, but it was fun to write, and for that I make no apology.

A bike trip is in my future. A long bike trip. A very long bike trip.

I learned this today, when Scott called me. After the usualy formalities (or, more appropriately, in our case, informalities), he proposed the idea. At the same time, a little cellphone blip caused the word “bike” to be muffled, and all I heard was “_____ trip from Maine to Florida.” Since we have previously been on a road trip, I assumed that the blank word was “road,” so I immediately proposed that we start from here, drive to Maine, and then down to Florida. Then he repeated himself, and this time, I cauhgt the word “Bike.”

Oooooooooooh. I readily agreed. East coast? Be prepared – we’re coming, summer of 2005.

It seems strange to me that people who read my Blog will talk to me in person, or on AIM, and comment on something that I wrote in my Blog. You see, there is a mechanism built into WordPress (the Blogging software I use) to add comments. Using this mechanism, your comment becomes part of the fabric of the website, and ultimately, makes the site better, in my opinion; this I like. Occasionally, I have added somebody’s online comment to the Blog myself. Commenting lets others see different points of view, additional thoughts, and so on. All of this is good.

So why don’t more people leave comments? Spending just a short time thinking about it, I came up with two ideas:

1. WordPress offers no mechanism for editing comments. If you mess up, you think you’re stuck with what you accidentally said. Or you could submit another comment, correcting the previous one, but then you just feel kinda dumb and you never comment again. Well, have no fear – Ryan is here. If you mess up on your comment, you can contact me, or submit another comment. I will usually fix up the comment for you, and delete the extraneous one. WordPress keeps no history, so no one will ever know you messed up, and I will quickly forget too.
2. Writing comments can be a scary experience. Once its in writing in the public view, it becomes much more real than a simple AIM message to me, or an in-person comment in passing. Unfortunately, this is a false sense of security. I use Trillian, and I have it set up to log all of my IM conversations. Nothing you say to me goes unlogged. Sure, its not neccesarily online, but there’s only previous bad experiences stopping me from changing that. Also, I remember everything anyone says to me, so telling me in person isn’t neccesarily safe either ;-)

If that wasn’t enough to scare you off, its time to post a comment. It is your destiny.

If you are in the mood for a thought-provoking read, check out this article from the American Spectator (text copied in “more” text below, in case of link rot).

My take on it is that the CIA is just like every other government bureaucracy. By this I mean that its underlying motivation is not to do its job – ie, gather intelligence – rather, its primary motivation – as a whole – is to keep itself alive. The most effective way to do this, for any bureaucracy, is to grow itself so large and integrate itself into the system so well that removing it would be unthinkable.

The CIA, just like countless other government bureaucracies, is well suited to this task, and as a byproduct is not very well suited to any other task. In fact, the CIA carries out “intelligence” only so far as is necessary to accomplish its real goal. And the sad fact is, the worse the CIA does its job, the better their real agenda is served. After all, intelligence failures lead to commissions that suggest even more government and even more bureaucracy. As I said before, the CIA is not alone in this regard. The worse social programs do at actually alleviating social problems, the more money will be put into those social programs. The worse public schools do, the more money will be put into public schools. These and other institutions become excellent at doing just well enough to appear to be useful, while ensuring that they do poorly enough to require more money to expand their bureaucracy, further entrenching their ultimate goal.

This “ultimate goal” I am speaking of is rarely, if ever, the goal of any person in the organization. But it becomes the focus of the group’s efforts, because it is the only goal that serves everyone’s purposes in the organization – namely, job security, social advancement, political influence, or other wealth, power, or personal goals. Everyone’s agenda in the bureaucracy is promoted by the expansion of the bureaucracy, so the bureaucracy, if it is successful, ends up expanding. It is economics at is best and worst.

These programs – created usually by high-minded ideals that put the group above the individual – end up having the most perverse effect of all – namely, the exact opposite of the intended effect. That is, the group is hurt more than before, and the individual is demeaned instead of uplifted, as the idealists imagined would happen. Such is the way of all socialist programs, and that is what all of these programs are. They are an insidious cancer that eats away at society until it crumbles, just as every civilization before has, and just as every civilization to follow likely will.

In short, when freedom is hedged in favor or equality, social justice, or some ethereal greater good:

1. The good rarely is seen, or if seen it is fleeting.
2. The freedom is forever lost
3. A new bureaucracy is born or an existing bureaucracy is expanded

I believe that people have proven time and again that they will come together to serve the greater good, when it is necessary to do so. No coercion is needed for this to happen. And if a people is unwilling to come together for the greater good, then it is time for that people to waste away. I believe that government expansion only dulls this sense of duty to fellow mankind – after all, its not my war to fight. Its the government’s. What attitude could be worse?

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I just returned from a short run with my brother. It was a good experience. Neither of us are in excellent shape, but we handled the experience alright. We also had some old-school fun playing with wet concrete and trafic cones.

Today was also my first day of school, again. I’m taking Linear Algebra from a none-too-exciting teacher, whose saving grace is a fairly high number of mistakes that the students can keep correcting. I’m not sure if thats a good thing or a bad thing yet.

Finally, I got ahold of 3ds max version 6 today; I’m going to begin dabbling.

Over the last two days, I have spent 14 hours at the Seattle Robotics Society‘s Robothon. The primary activity was letting people know about the Titan Robotics Club and FIRST, but we also competed in the Mini Sumo competition. Things went quite well in that arena, and we captured second place in the beginner’s division. Quite a feat for our first time robot builder, Justin.

This evening, I created a fun video from the competition footage. Windows Movie Maker is becoming pretty durn good, although its still not up to iMovie’s mark. Linkin Park, of course, found its was into this video as well. If you want different music, you join the TRC’s video team and do it yourself! (This offer is for real, by the way).