The Inmates ARE Running the Asylum

In his book, The Inmates are Running the Asylum, Alan Cooper illuminates many of the problems with computers and technology these days - in particular that too many of the people making the important decisions don't really have the end user's best interests in mind or heart. Think about this again when you get to the end of this article.

I have a MSc in Computer Science from Simon Fraser University, and part of the the credit to obtaining that degree was that I created the curriculum for SFU's first course in User Interface Design, and I taught the first two semesters of this 3 year undergraduate course. By the way, the course turned out to be very popular, and I am told it still is. The point is, anyone who has anything to do with user interface design or human experience issues should read this book.

However, I am not thinking about computer user interface issues at the moment, although I often still do, rather I am thinking about human-human user interface issues.

When I was about 10 years old my mother was diagnosed as a Paranoid Schizophrenic, although in retrospect I suspect she more more affected with Schizoaffective Disorder. To get right to the point I spent almost 30 years dealing with someone who was difficult, sometimes impossible to reason with. Over time I learned to manage my own emotions and reasoning than futilely try to manage hers, although I did learn to have some success with managing her, except in the last few years where that became impossible.

One of things I observed over and over again was that often she would say something that seemed to have some real or rational basis, and I was seduced into believing that, and I would sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to give her the benefit of the doubt and try to operate on what she was saying had some validity. Most times I would simply discover I was tricked into yet another wild goose chase. To be clear, there were many times she said things that were completely valid, but my point is that too often I accepted statements from her as valid that I should have known better not to.

A few years ago the community I was living in had a woman whose mental health issues seemed very similar to my mother's. However, having 30 years of experience with that I was not so inclined to accept the validity of her statements without considerable skepticism. However, many people in the community who has no such experience as mine fell into the same pattern that I use to fall into - trying to give her the benefit of the doubt no matter how outlandish her statements were. Sadly there were even some who recognized her weakness and used this further their political goals by supporting her in public forums, making her a spokesperson for their latent agenda. In the end her downfall was that she simply went too far, and when people stopped arguing with her, you knew no-one was giving her the benefit of the doubt any more.

I find this quality, many of us share, to tolerate unreasonable statements very interesting. Sadly, even when what someone says is clearly unreasonable, there are those who will choose to agree with it when it suits their special interests. This is even more fascinating when there is general agreement that someone is 'Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs' yet people continue to give them the benefit of the doubt and/or endorse them.

Now if I were a trained psychologist, which I am not, I might have some special insight on how you can take this quality of human nature to tolerated irrational and extreme statements, and become an expert in that field.

Now if I were a powerful and wealthy special interest group, which I am not, I might set about creating a 'think tank' and hiring some PhD psychologists with those very special skills and compensate them for finding ways to use their special knowledge and insight towards my own propaganda purposes.

The end result of this might be political campaigns where the rhetoric seems more similar to someone, or someones, with Schizoaffective Disorder or Paranoid schizophrenia - and this would be totally acceptable by other politicians, by the media and journalists, and by the public at large because by-and-by we all seem so tolerant of people making irrational statements - especially if it is not generally agreed they are Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

What is the advantage of this approach to campaigning? Well - if you have extreme ideological views, or if you have an agenda that is not in the best interests of a majority of people, realistically you do not have a hope in hell of getting a majority of people to agree with you on everything - but, because people are so tolerant to irrational statements and views, they are likely to move in your general direction; and that is good enough for now. Next year, just rinse and repeat the process and you can pull even more people in the direction you want them to go. Remember who won the race between the turtle and the hare?

Now you may be thinking "that Eric Kolotyluk is some sort of evil twisted bastard for even thinking up such an diabolical Machiavellian scheme" - but I suggest the thing you should be thinking is - "if Eric Kolotyluk can think up this sort of evil twisted diabolical Machiavellian scheme, then who else can think this up, and how much money and power do they have at stake in the game?"

Freedom of Speech

Wikipedia

Freedom of speech is the political right to communicate one's ideas via speech. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used. In practice, the right to freedom of speech is not absolute in any country and the right is commonly subject to limitations, as with libel, slander, obscenity and incitement to commit a crime.

For most of my life I have not struggled with this concept as I have simply held it to be an ideal or principle that was obvious. As a child I was generally encouraged to speak up, ask questions, challenge claims, and generally say my piece. True, from time to time I was punished for some of the things I said, and usually they were the stupid things children say that inappropriate. However, often enough as a child I was punished for expressing myself, and even as I child I was pretty clear I was being punished because of revealing inconvenient truths.

Mind your speech a little lest you should mar your fortunes.
William Shakespeare

Rather than argue the obvious (laughing out loud) merits of freedom of speech, I will set forth to argue against it, or at least to argue for better limits on it.

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.
George Washington

There is very much more insight in George's words than appears on the surface.

Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.
Voltaire

The point I am making is that it not hard at all to abuse the right to freedom of speech. And in most cases it is a right and not a privilege. In general the privilege of speech is about who and how big your audience is, and not what you say. I have come to believe of late that the people who argue most ardently of their right of free speech usually have the most privilege to speak and have the most deceptive things to say.

In practice the most deceptive forms of speech are designed to limit other people's privilege to speak, and all to often even people's right to speak. This corollary follows from George's insight I believe as it does too from Voltaire's. It then follows that if you are practicing such deception, you would protest most ardently for your own right to free speech, fearing that if you do not protest then surely your deceit will be illuminated by more reasonable people.

For example, throughout history while many of us enjoy living in a democracy, there are always cabals seeking to suppress other people's right to vote, consequently their right to free speech. Recently in Canada we have had a scandal of 'robo calls' designed to misdirect target voters to their polling place and/or time. Interestingly enough this closely follows similar scandals in the United States in many places. In some cases malefactors in this sin are entire state governments who pass legislation to limit access to voting on the incredibly transparent excuse to reduce voter fraud, simply to exclude those most likely to vote against them or their friends.

While there are very stringent rules that limit free speech in areas of defamation such as libel and slander, during political campaigns these limits are rarely enforced. In other contexts, such as a court of law, the limits of speech are extreme - under testimony speech is not a right, or a privilege, but actually an obligation - whereby perjury can have harsh consequences. This should come as no surprise when the outcome of the trial may sentence the defendant to pay a fine, be incarcerated, or even forfeit their life. And here is the point I do not get at all - when it comes to electing someone to lead a country, who has the ability to commit the country to a war costing a trillion dollars and killing hundreds of thousands of persons - the political campaign is treated with no more seriousness than a TV reality show.

My argument is thus: if we can use such critical limits to speech in the trial of a single person where the outcome may simply be inconvenient, should we not use at least as critical limits to speech in a political campaign where the outcome could be giving the elected the power to tyrannize millions or even destroy the world. Here are some simple principles I believe should hold in political campaigns and elections:

1. Exodus 20:16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
   Deuteronomy 5:20 Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbour.
   Penalties of libel and slander should be most extreme, and arguable in court.
2. A campaign platform should be a legal contract. If an elected official later deviates sufficiently from that contract then the harshest penalties of 'breach of trust' or even 'treason' should apply.
3. Opinion must be separated from fact. "In my opinion gay people should not have the right or privilege of marriage" is very different from "The vast majority of people are against gay marriage." The former statement gets a pass, while the latter should be prosecutable as it is unsupportable and clearly deceptive. In particular the statement "God hates homosexuals" should be prosecuted on several levels (a) hearsay - no-one can speak for God, (b) hate - appealing to hate or inciting hate is clearly a crime in most modern countries, (c) defamation - it makes God sound like an awful person an sullies his/her reputation.