I am Julian Assange.

I want information so that I can hold my government accountable. If my country acts improperly and in my name, I want the proof. I want to know if there actually is no evidence proving weapons of mass destruction. I want to know if America is working with Israel to overthrow Iran’s leadership. I want data that has not been spun by reporters that work for publishers and broadcasters with political and business goals that conflict with the facts. I want to know.

I am Julian Assange because I know unfettered information is valuable to democracy and a peaceful world. I can make the best decisions with the most knowledge. I can vote for the best candidates. I can support the smartest policies to help my country and the world. I am not naïve; I know that not every operation can be transparent but I have a right to know its outcome and how it has affected my country and me.

I do not believe Julian Assange has done anything wrong. The cables that have been published have all been printed in newspapers and redacted to protect individuals at risk. I do not want my country to prosecute a man whose actions are changing the way we get information and how we make critical decisions. I now know that my president and my country’s military have not been honest about the war in Afghanistan. I know that my country has killed civilians and that we have refused to acknowledge our mistakes. I have learned that our allies are secretly consorting with our enemies.

I am also Pfc. Bradley Manning. I know that if I saw the disturbing information come across my desk that I would have confronted the conflict between my oath of service to my country and the immorality of its behavior. I do not believe I would have been able to ignore American helicopters gunning down journalists carrying cameras. I believe I would have acted on my conscience and found a way to reveal the facts. There was a reporter at the My Lai massacre in Vietnam but there was only a gun camera on the US helicopter in Iraq. And the Internet. And Bradley Manning.

I believe that governments are out of control and citizens have a decreasing belief that they can influence decisions. WikiLeaks and the Internet are empowering individuals and groups with information. Julian Assange and Bradley Manning are the first two faces and voices in a crowd that will soon be too big to control. Their arrests and charges and even prosecution will only spawn a broader resistance against war and deception and corruption. The Internet is now the reporter. This is the way the world is. I do not want to hear that there will always be wars and spying and death. I want information to prevent them and to build peace.

I am saddened that Australia’s government is once more acting as a lapdog for American interests and is not demanding sovereign rights for one of its citizens. I am also distressed that the president of my country who ran for office promising a transparent government is trying to find a way to prosecute a foreign national, and is preventing Pfc Manning from speaking with his family. WikiLeaks has shown there is an America in civics textbooks and an America that functions differently in the real world. Adequate information might move us closer to the ideal. I no longer trust my president. I do not trust my congress. I place my trust in facts and I do not get them from most of the media. But I still want to know.

I am Julian Assange. And if you care about the truth, you are, too.

Also at http://moorethink.com

This was originally posted here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/i-am-julian-assange_b_793583.html

To support Wikileaks visit here:

http://wikileaks.audreywatters.com/support.html

I’ve also been reading up some about quantum physics, and the idea of the evolution of physical properties of the universe. I’d like to read more about the ideas and work of John Wheeler and David Finkelstein (both being suggested researchers to investigate when I asked Ben Goertzel about a starting point on evolving physical laws).

This, combined with working on stuff for OpenCog, has led to several immensely surreal moments. Mostly while lying in bed about to drift of to sleep, when all reality and time collapses into a single point. Well perhaps not all reality, but at least my life and memories. Possibly this is a cognitive effect of memories being more easily retrievable in the state just before sleep? At any rate, given that: I think free will is just an immensely useful illusion of consciousness, and that physics tells us that the fabric of reality is space-time instead of two perpendicular concepts. It’s not infeasible to believe that seeing the future is possible. In fact, that’s exactly what intelligence does. We make predictions about the future. The question is, can we make predictions on things that, based on our limited of knowledge about the universe, are essentially random or make predictions that are more probabilistically accurate than our past experience allows?

I’ve also bought Outside the gates of science by Damien Broderick, which should be an interesting read. The book addresses some of the paranormal effects in experiments that have been deemed statistically significant but as of yet cannot be rationally explained (actually I bought this last year, I just have lots of reading queued up).

Hofstadter asks whether the meaning is in the code or the interpreter?

Which came first? The chicken or the egg?

DNA isn’t exactly like that, because the existing form affects the expression of the code. Which in turn affects the expression and replication of said code. DNA should more be likened to an attractor in a complex system. Under this view, the concerns with genome research taking away our free will (whatever that concept means to you) are unfounded.

Zen seems to be a sort of holism to the extreme… dissolving the self to become one with the universe and achieve enlightenment.

In some ways I see the use for this viewpoint while meditating and as a relaxation technique. In particular the concept that all the universe and time in static and immutable, and time and space is mere illusion, has a remarkably calming influence (at least for me). In some ways this reminds me of something I did that was somewhat odd as a kid. I think I first thought this around 5… I found time strange, and my memory of it also strange, thus I decided to imprint a distinct memory of that moment. I was sitting at the dinner table and I focussed on the fork I had. I can remember this moment, whereas many other parts of my early childhood are but a blur. There are other moments too, such as when I was riding a bike home in a ridiculously strong wind at age 11… again I committed this to memory because I reasoned “this is incredibly hard work, I feel exhausted! But in but 30 minutes I’ll be at home and this will purely be a memory. In fact, it may as well not be happening since this is a small fraction of my total experience at any time and will continue to get smaller as I continue in my life.”

Did other people do this too? Or was I just a somewhat strange kid?

Zen philosophy is somewhat relaxing and find kōans play novel games with the logic in our heads. As a life philosophy however, I think it’s flawed since the separation of us from the rest of the universe is what makes us human. In fact, it’s what life is all about. The localised increase in pattern and extropy within a system. Maybe Zen boils down to being an acceptance of possible the heat death of the universe when everything becomes a homogeneous soup? Which, if time is but an illusion has already happened and is the culmination of the universe’s evolution!

Before I sign off, time for a kōan:

A monk asked Zhaozhou, “What is the meaning of the ancestral teacher’s coming from the west?” Zhaozhou said, “The cypress tree in front of the hall”.
case #47 of the Book of Serenity

Zen also seems to have mastered the art of surrealistic humour.

“Is someone you work with taking Provigil to give them an extra competitive edge? I’ve spoken with one executive who says he uses it regularly to work twenty hour days, and the buzz lately is that it’s the “entrepreneur’s drug of choice” around Silicon Valley. Over the last week two separate entrepreneurs have mentioned it casually in conversation, and one said he tried it once and loved it.”

An interesting conversation was had at a friend’s bday dinner about drug prohibition, and I meant to mention this kind of thing while dining. Another reason I think the whole recreational drug thing needs to change or be approached without a maxim of “drugs are bad” is because performance enhancement is going to become more common.

What’s so funny is that entrepreneurs apparently aren’t interested in typical drugs – instead they find the one that gives them a mental and stamina advantage.

“What’s so funny” about this statement is that I’m sure this is a completely false claim. It’s merely more socially accepted to take drugs to be a more productive member of society. Thus it’s easier to admit this to colleagues. Possibly it conveys “I’m a hard worker”, not that it really does (since you can still be unproductive even if you’re awake), but the dissonance between the reason behind taking drugs and the public’s perception of it is annoying.

I’ve personally talked to several entrepreneurs who’ve had the seeds of their business inspiration arrive while under the influence.

Note however I’m not saying innovation and new ideas can’t be arrived at without drugs, since that’s patently untrue.

What gets me, is that the opposition in political debates and in the media almost ALWAYS is complaining or reacting to something the incumbent does. This, in my opinion, lowers their value. Instead, I’d be immensely more impressed if they worked with the incumbent, subtley trying to mould policies to be more inline with their values. Or by offering alternatives, but not by blaming the incumbent for a problem. Just state “this is the way things are now” – don’t go down the path of blame, it’s pointless. Work together for change and improvement, demonstrate WHY you think something will be an improvement over current circumstances. Do all this, and you as a politician, and as a political party, will look like you have value, like you should be in power if you are not already, instead of a whiny little bitch.

My spatial mind felt a mite expanded after watching it.

Haven’t been writing much here due to being very busy. I’ve moved to Wellington, I went to Kiwiburn, I’ve started contract work continuing my PhD work part time, and also developing artificial general intelligence for OpenCog.

It’s a shame, because at least APHIS and CFIS were doing something useful, the whole war on terror thing is so ridiculous, because if someone was half-intelligent and really wanted to cause mischief, then the smoke screen of apparent security wouldn’t be barrier.

It just arrived. But one of the zippers is broken off, and my Travel Security Agency/Her Majesty’s Revenues and Customs registered lock was removed. Now these locks are MEANT to be opened without damage by custom’s people. But it seems New Zealand Customs doesn’t do this, they just break the fuckers off. I rang them and they just laughed at the suggestion that they’d have a master key for them (which other countries do).

My advice: next time you go travelling don’t bother buying the expensive $30 TSA locks, just buy a few shitty $2 shop jobs. So much for buying something to last, instead it’s a disposable throwaway culture in New Zealand official-dom. Green and clean New Zealand? Whatever.

(I might be particularly pissed off since it was annoying enough to have my bag left behind, and this is just the thing that’s put me over the edge).

In particular, the comparison to mountaineering is quite nice:

The truth is that recreational drug taking is like mountaineering. When all goes well, as it does most of the time, the experience can be fun and even profound. Not only can the experience be great, it can also give the adventurer insights into his or her own character and the workings of the brain, insights that can be applied to the rest of life. But drug taking, like mountaineering, can be dangerous.

Let’s all grow up, stop pushing lies and have an honest debate about drugs