The Policeman Inside

[nospam-seesignature at ceddec.com]

>Kent Crispin wrote:

>However, the "anarchy" in cryptoanarchy is quite structured.  (I was
>quite seriously criticized for using a dictionary definition of
>anarchy, you may recall...) If there were *no* rules, then murder is
>OK, and ownership means nothing.  Furthermore, cryptoanarchy requires
>the sanctity of contracts, which implies a whole bunch.

Of course I can get confused when some cryptoanarchists links the militia
movements (which aren't properly anarchic) with cryptography.

A second point is that it requires an internet social structure that
allows for reputation capital - contracts are enforced technologically
(e.g. you did or not digitally sign something so the truth of a violation 
is not really subject to argument in an idealized version), but the only
recourse is to spread true negative gossip, which requires recursive
reputation capital - i.e. I must be already known to be truthful and not
petty for someone to believe such gossip, and the target of the gossip
will have to have a history of cheating.

>The whole notion of "the policeman inside" is stupid sloganeering.  Of
>*course* we have a policeman inside -- we have something that tells us
>(at least some of us) that murder, theft, and dishonesty are 
>behaviors to be avoided.  We have something that tells us (some of us) 
>it would be foolish to make a habit of running red lights.

Others can't seem to tolerate the idea that there should be any lights and
we should rely on our ability as drivers to avoid killing each other.

My point with on internet pornography, etc. is that we should avoid such
things out of convention (a red light that is not under surveillence) so
as to avoid the requirement for law. 

On Wed, 26 Nov 1997, Greg Broiles wrote:

> "The policeman inside" is neither a conscience nor an instinct towards
> self-preservation. I'm familiar with the term being used to refer to the
> internalization of a system of external rules, coupled with a belief in
> pervasive surveillance and/or the adoption of the viewpoint of an external
> supervisor, such that one with a "policeman inside" learns to fear
> punishment at every moment and in every situation. See, for example,
> Bentham's Panopticon or Foucault's _Discipline & Punish_ for more on the
> topic. 

I have more reading to do.

For the moment I can accept your definition, but it doesn't change the
real world:  Even if no one ever watches a junkie shoot up, the needle
containing the HIV virus will still infect him and he will still incur
that punishment.  Good and evil are not like Schrodinger's cat where
observation is necessary to determine the outcome.  The second assumption
is a society where there are bad laws - the system of external rules in
your above description are tyrannical. 

But to return to the root, I don't think anyone that has said "that it is
not right to advocate nasty things" (e.g. kiddie porn being posted to the
internet) is doing so because of your definition of the policeman inside,
they do so because they think the act is intrinsically wrong.  The only
other reason is that doing so is bad from a propaganda standpoint - most
people will dismiss the most rational argument when it is said by a nasty
person.  They aren't in perpetual fear of punishment.

> Also, you may note that two of the three terms you used as examples of
> "wrong" behavior themselves imply judgments and a moral position - "theft"
> and "murder". Whether or not the taking of a physical thing is "theft" can
> be a complex question, that has a lot to do with contracts and agreements
> and socially constructed ideas about property. Similarly, "murder" is (to
> adopt a broad definition) an unlawful and intentional homicide - which,
> again, presupposes certain judgements about relationships between people.

Or these may not be merely be societal conventions, but trancendent truths
(Natural Law to use the old-fashioned term).  Moreover, it is not a
complex question unless lawyers get involved, or we start making the
definitions fuzzy in some other manner.  Of course definitions of evil
acts presupposes moral judgements, but anything else presupposes
relativism (which in itself is a moral judgement) or worse. 

This is one of the reasons I get so upset about the state of our
educational system.  If words don't have a solid meaning, or that the
vocabulary is too small to work to express the concepts necessary to
describe things, then the result is a relativism by default since no one
knows what "ownership" or "property" or "theft"  means.  These words have
had fixed meanings in many languages for thousands of years.

There is a lot of semantic confusion, but if semantics doesn't exist, then
every message ever posted disappears into Babel.  Otherwise you have to
use the existing words, moral implications and all.

> It's easy to say that "theft and murder are wrong", because wrongness is
> part of the meaning of the terms "theft" and "murder". It's much less
> satisfying to say something like "it's wrong to take things that someone
> else thinks they own, unless they're mistaken or you have a superior claim"
> or "it's wrong to shoot someone who didn't deserve to be shot".

I only see it as an expansion of the definition.  If I have a true claim
on something, I own it and taking it from me without my consent is theft
by definition; If I am mistaken, then I didn't own it in the first place.
You can also continue this recursively (take - move, remove, destroy,
control...) so you can expand "theft is wrong" into a book.  And this
might be to the benefit of those who don't yet understand the concept of
theft.  But it won't help those who understand and reject that concept.

A serial killer might consider a law against murder as tyrannical, and
thus have a "policeman inside" that prevents him from murdering for the
wrong reasons (instead of having a properly formed conscience), but in
either case the murder is prevented.

> It's the creation of a "policeman inside" which causes people to lose their
> ability to make judgements about which people (if any) ought to be shot and
> which people deserve to keep their stuff. And that loss of the ability
> (cognitive and moral) is, I think, a direct cause of the very crimes (theft
> and murder) you mention.

The ability to regulate one's self is being wasted on complying with silly
or immoral rules (I filled out the form so give me my government benefits)
rather than on civility. 

It is easier to be a pro-government automaton than to be a free moral
agent.  And in that I agree that it is probably the cause of those crimes. 
But the government has a stake in creating automatons and to keep people
in fear, so instead of creating moral agents who won't murder and rob,
they let crimes continue to scare people into abandoning their free will.

And in that sense, a "policeman inside" is a far worse evil because it is
subtle - it passes for morality but is an abandonment thereof.

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