14/01: Ethical hackers don't create religions
In the course of one of the usual discussions over at PZ’s place on religious weirdness we have observed, we got to talking about Joseph Smith and that hilarious ‘Book of Abraham’ fiasco of his. My observation on this was that what’s at once kind of funny and scary about what Smith was. As in: the guy wasn’t even that good a con man, by many measures. Hardly the smoothest operator at all. You really do get the impression, in retrospect, that he just wasn’t that terribly bright.
And yet, he still got the game going, founded himself a religion, set himself up as a prophet. And his thing is still going today.
And, predictably, there are true believers for whom even the really quite incontrovertible evidence you get from that particular incident (and it’s not even the only one you’d think should be able to seal the deal) still isn’t enough to shake ‘em off Mormonism. They make excuses for it—say Smith was, see, directly inspired by some angel—the fact that it turns out that the stuff from which he claims to have translated to his newest bit of silly turned out to be a couple of run-of-the-mill Egyptian funerary texts which didn’t really say anything like he claimed them to say isn’t a problem—see, the angel just provided those to give ‘im something to do with his hands while he was being inspired…
The other observation I drew from this—tho’ it’s by no means the first time I’ve said it, nor is it exactly an original observation—is that probably, generally, to pull what he did, you don’t have to be particularly smooth. The fact is, there are things people want to believe—about themselves, about the world. Fill that need, and essentially, they do most of the work of fooling themselves for you…
All of which adds up to: you could probably almost create a religion by accident. And you’d really be playing with fire if you started doing experiments on live subjects and in the real world to find out just how easy it is. Cue Randi’s somewhat frightening experience with ‘The Great Carlos’—a ‘medium’ he and a friend concocted just to see how far they could take such a game (not to mention as something of an object lesson to anyone watching)…
The verdict on how far you can take it? Alarmingly far. The real kicker: when Randi and the friend he’d engaged to play the ‘medium’ (one José Alvarez) played out their punchline, and Alvarez explained it was a hoax, it wasn’t real—and even demonstrated the methods by which he’d faked ‘possession’—there were still people who refused to believe it wasn’t real. They made up explanations to fit: Alvarez was being forced to confess, and so on…
I got to thinking, it’s funny, but it reminded me of one of the first things you learn, working anywhere near computer security…
Which is: do not fuck around with self-replicating code. Or, at the very, very least, be really incredibly careful with it, and do not ever let it get near the wilds of the net. An early experience with the Morris Worm—an (allegedly—or so it is claimed by its creator) experimental and intended-to-be-benign worm that wound up seriously messing up the net is generally brought up as an object lesson. The author did get expelled from Cornell, and did get charged and convicted…
Sadly, however, it’s a little less practical to slap those who convince others they’re hearing voices to which everyone should be listening with some community service time, probation, and a fine… Exploiting vulnerabilities in other people’s computer systems is illegal. Exploiting vulnerabilities in other people’s wetware, not so much…
Anyway, my point: no, we can’t jail you for it (or not unless your donation structure badly abuses tax law, anyway)… Nonetheless, decent people just don’t do this shit. Because it has a way of making a mess of things. And a way of getting away from you. Sure, I’m sure it’s tempting, sometimes—easy money, even, if you pull it off… And I’m pretty sure that was much of Smith’s motivation, for example (and rather more obviously, Hubbard’s)….
But you can’t shut it down. Contagion and dispersal, I’m afraid, have a way of making that impossible. Any idiot can set a beast like that loose. Catching it again, hell, you might as well as dump a glass of dioxins in the ocean, with the expectation that later, you’re going to track down each individual molecule, and pluck it back out.
So no, ethical hackers do not create religions.
And yet, he still got the game going, founded himself a religion, set himself up as a prophet. And his thing is still going today.
And, predictably, there are true believers for whom even the really quite incontrovertible evidence you get from that particular incident (and it’s not even the only one you’d think should be able to seal the deal) still isn’t enough to shake ‘em off Mormonism. They make excuses for it—say Smith was, see, directly inspired by some angel—the fact that it turns out that the stuff from which he claims to have translated to his newest bit of silly turned out to be a couple of run-of-the-mill Egyptian funerary texts which didn’t really say anything like he claimed them to say isn’t a problem—see, the angel just provided those to give ‘im something to do with his hands while he was being inspired…
The other observation I drew from this—tho’ it’s by no means the first time I’ve said it, nor is it exactly an original observation—is that probably, generally, to pull what he did, you don’t have to be particularly smooth. The fact is, there are things people want to believe—about themselves, about the world. Fill that need, and essentially, they do most of the work of fooling themselves for you…
All of which adds up to: you could probably almost create a religion by accident. And you’d really be playing with fire if you started doing experiments on live subjects and in the real world to find out just how easy it is. Cue Randi’s somewhat frightening experience with ‘The Great Carlos’—a ‘medium’ he and a friend concocted just to see how far they could take such a game (not to mention as something of an object lesson to anyone watching)…
The verdict on how far you can take it? Alarmingly far. The real kicker: when Randi and the friend he’d engaged to play the ‘medium’ (one José Alvarez) played out their punchline, and Alvarez explained it was a hoax, it wasn’t real—and even demonstrated the methods by which he’d faked ‘possession’—there were still people who refused to believe it wasn’t real. They made up explanations to fit: Alvarez was being forced to confess, and so on…
I got to thinking, it’s funny, but it reminded me of one of the first things you learn, working anywhere near computer security…
Which is: do not fuck around with self-replicating code. Or, at the very, very least, be really incredibly careful with it, and do not ever let it get near the wilds of the net. An early experience with the Morris Worm—an (allegedly—or so it is claimed by its creator) experimental and intended-to-be-benign worm that wound up seriously messing up the net is generally brought up as an object lesson. The author did get expelled from Cornell, and did get charged and convicted…
Sadly, however, it’s a little less practical to slap those who convince others they’re hearing voices to which everyone should be listening with some community service time, probation, and a fine… Exploiting vulnerabilities in other people’s computer systems is illegal. Exploiting vulnerabilities in other people’s wetware, not so much…
Anyway, my point: no, we can’t jail you for it (or not unless your donation structure badly abuses tax law, anyway)… Nonetheless, decent people just don’t do this shit. Because it has a way of making a mess of things. And a way of getting away from you. Sure, I’m sure it’s tempting, sometimes—easy money, even, if you pull it off… And I’m pretty sure that was much of Smith’s motivation, for example (and rather more obviously, Hubbard’s)….
But you can’t shut it down. Contagion and dispersal, I’m afraid, have a way of making that impossible. Any idiot can set a beast like that loose. Catching it again, hell, you might as well as dump a glass of dioxins in the ocean, with the expectation that later, you’re going to track down each individual molecule, and pluck it back out.
So no, ethical hackers do not create religions.
Eamon Knight wrote:
Based on a recent exchange with a 9/11 troofer at Recursivity, I am struck by how true this is, and it’s not limited to religion <i>per se</i> either. The guy just <b>wants</b> to believe there’s a Big Government Conspiracy behind 9/11, and siezes on the flimsiest excuses as "evidence".