A very interesting and thought-provoking essay. This part in particular stuck out:
Otherwise monkeys would have self awareness and they don’t
This suggests the existence of other research that has both defined the concept of self-awareness robustly and made it testable enough that we can state as fact that monkeys don’t have it. Does anybody know what this might be alluding to?
It is a common arrogance, even among “scientists”, to assume that no other animal has self awareness or even emotions.
In the surprisingly recent past, “science” has declared the lack of sentience, consciousness, or ability to feel pain in any number of groups, from fish to human infants (no, really, they did open heart surgery on newborn humans without anaesthesia. http://www.nytimes.com/1987/12/17/opinion/l-why-infant-surge…). Often there seems to be no evidence behind these declarations beyond the convenience of the conclusions.
Can you point to any evidence even in the fringe sciences that would attempt to prove that monkeys have self awareness?
Actually, this is called into question in the fine article:
(Incidentally, Gallup’s mirror test — removing a paint splotch from your face while looking at a mirror — is not an adequate test of self awareness, even though it is touted as such. We have seen patients who vehemently claim that their reflection in the mirror is “someone else” yet they pass the Gallup test!)
The point is that awareness testing is not a fringe part of animal behavioral studies. This would be a potential area of research for mainstream animal behavior study (paired mirror tests).
Why would you need the fringe sciences to support the current scientific consensus on something? It’s like you’re asking for crazy physicists to prove that a feather and hammer will fall at the same speed in a vacuum. Everybody knows that.
to assume that no other animal has self awareness or even emotions.
No other animal other than monkey? I don’t think monkeys have self awareness either.
It’s because animals don’t communicate anything about themself, their signals are mostly based on pattern matching and direct response to events. They never communicate anything showing any evidence of an internal state.
They only communicate in response to external events, and maybe sensations from their bodies.
Even the chimps that did sign language never communicated anything showing any kind of internal state. (For example they never asked questions - events and things simply were.)
Emotions though, I agree animals have emotions. For example that sign-language chimp expressed sadness.
For animals to have self awareness they would have to show they are “thinking about something” - and I don’t mean thinking about a solution to a direct goal for a problem in front of them.
You only respond to external stimulus or sensations from your body.
Like in literally every non-biological context, everyone understands that similar systems in similar environments behave similarly. In my layman’s understanding of biology, the only difference between human brains and other mammalian brains is neuronal density; all the structure is the same as far as I’ve read. If the structure is the same, and the behavior and neuronal activity matches what we’d expect from self aware organisms, why reach for a ghost?
If you have to keep believing humans are somehow special, then associate that specialness with being the only creature with highly dextrous appendages that evolved with access to trees and metal that also farms.
You only respond to external stimulus or sensations from your body.
Oh really? So I never spent time simply pondering why this universe exists? Or why I like the color blue more than green?
In my layman’s understanding of biology, the only difference between human brains and other mammalian brains is neuronal density; all the structure is the same as far as I’ve read.
And yet humans are different. That’s the puzzle. You can’t say “I’ve solved the puzzle - there is no puzzle!” because there are obvious differences that you can’t simply ignore by saying “I don’t understand”.
It doesn’t work that way.
If you have to keep believing humans are somehow special, then associate that specialness with being the only creature with highly dextrous appendages that evolved with access to trees and metal that also farms.
No thanks. I choose reality instead. Where humans are in fact special, they have self awareness and language, and the ability to argue on the internet.
You can go on imagining yourself as a body without a mind if you like, I choose different.
Go read Blindsight by Peter Watts, and ponder why we have a mind - the book will show you it doesn’t have to be that way, yet it is.
Oh really? So I never spent time simply pondering why this universe exists? Or why I like the color blue more than green?
Those are sensations coming from your body. The mind is a physical phenomenon, like breathing is a physical phenomenon.
edit: What is measurably special about humans is our unprecedented ability to change our environment, which seems explainable soley with the combination of high dexterity, farming, and access to highly manipulable elements. Each of those characteristics aren’t unique to humans, but as far as I’m aware the combination of all three is. The cumulative changes of environment to the point where the immediate survival of the organism is guaranteed means the organism uses its facilities for things that aren’t directly related to survival. Recorded history started after agriculture. Cave paintings took a ridiculous leap in complexity and detail after agriculture.
edit2: What I’m asserting is that high level behavior only happens in a high level, non-immediate survival based environment. The onset of human society was not deliberate and did not happen all at once.
Your cat prances up to you, swipes your face, and then runs away. Why does your cat do this?
They captured video of ape sitting early morning alone in the tree. It used sing language to say “peaceful”. That’s evidence of inner speech.
Not really, a simple neural network which associates images with words could do the same thing.
I fail to see what you’re saying. Are you saying that because a simple neural network could behave the same, such behaviour can’t thus be evidence of inner speech?
A simple neural network can accomplish symbol association by merely categorizing things, without any deep knowledge or understanding of them.
Neural networks like this are trained with pavlovian methods, and are not self aware or conscious. So such behavior is not at all evidence of any kind of self awareness or consciousness.
Yeah, the essay was good, but unsatisfactory in explaining why monkeys, dolphins, or even most other animals would not possess self awareness.
It’s easy to disregard others, when we don’t share a common tongue.
This sounds more like humans interpreting behavior rather than proof of that behavior.
When you’re referring to measured brain activity as “behavior”, you’ve redefined the word beyond any usefulness to neuroscience.
In that case someone should set out to investigate whether humans are self aware.
I think he had chosen the wrong words here, it’s foolish to think that great apes are not self aware. However they don’t have the kind of insight in their own thinking that humans posses. We can draw some conclusions on how they use tool or organize themselves socially and on the surface we might not be that different. Apes can teach each other how to dig for water in cases of drought, but their planning and preparation only goes so far. I think our self awareness is much more linked to curiosity and goal determination than anything. I don’t mean that it arises from those but that it is our inherent ingenuity of that made us conquer the Earth.
Whether the phrasing was intentional or not, monkeys are not apes.
Death as in “someday I’ll die” or in the “I’ll kill” ?
There was a footage on some simians ambushing and torturing (?) and killing another one.
Does anybody know what this might be alluding to?
According to the article,
Self-awareness is ‘other awareness’ applied to yourself where ‘other awareness’ is constructing meaningful models of other peoples minds in order to predict their behavior.
But as you said it seems like ‘monkeys are not self-aware’ was a presumption made by the author, i.e monkeys don’t have model for self. But, how can we verify this?.
He is saying’mirror neurons play important role in self but not that important otherwise monkeys would have a self’, so the original problem still remains.
Because he’s talking about “other awareness” and “self awareness” as distinct concepts. ToM includes both.
But hopefully we have paved the way for future models and empirical studies on the nature of self, a problem that philosophers have made essentially no headway in solving.
This final statement not only seems snide but also dumb to the difference between science and philosophy. (I’m not an expert on that difference but I can see that there is one. I can see that there is a clear difference in spite of the fact that each steps on the others’ toes, that each side attempts to take credit for the others’ insights at times, or makes snide comments at each other like this statement here.)
I think philosophers often free-ride on the discoveries of cognitive scientists without adding anything to the discussion. That doesn’t mean that philosophy can’t have its place, it’s there to ask questions but very often those questions are meaningless without the way to gain answers.
Well…Philosophy (“love of wisdom”) originally encompassed all of science. In a sense, once a discipline was able to be conducted more empirically, it split off. So at any particular stage, Philosophy will be trying to answer those questions we can’t answer empirically.
So I find the “free-ride” a little harsh. What happens over time is that more and more questions that used to be purely “philosophical” have more and more empirical answers.
I think it might be useful for Philosophy to be less its own specialty and more an umbrella for the whole enterprise of “love of wisdom”.
What happens over time is that more and more questions that used to be purely “philosophical” have more and more empirical answers.
I sometimes think this might be a bit of a positivist myth. Most of the domains where we’ve gained a great deal of empirical knowledge are domains which people always investigated empirically, albeit less systematically and with fewer available resources (e.g. astronomy). On the other hand, most of the big philosophical puzzles that Aristotle engaged with remain largely untouched by developments in science. E.g. Is it possible to make true statements about the future? How is change possible?
I sometimes think this might be a bit of a positivist myth.
Looks like an astronomy problem to me. Aristotle is also considered one of the early astronomers.
On the other hand, most of the big philosophical puzzles that Aristotle engaged with remain largely untouched by developments in science
Exactly my point. Of the problems they worked on (and they worked on everything they could think of), the ones that we have solved we now consider science, the ones that are still unresolved we consider philosophy.
Sort of like the definition of AI: if we solve it, it’s no longer considered AI.
Looks like an astronomy problem to me. Aristotle is also considered one of the early astronomers.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. My point was that Plato and Aristotle (and other early astronomers) realized that astronomy had to be based on observation. No-one (except perhaps a few cranks that no-one remembers) has ever tried to do “armchair astronomy”.
the ones that we have solved we now consider science, the ones that are still unresolved we consider philosophy.
I think the distinction is really just the distinction between empirical science and metaphysics, which is a distinction that Aristotle would also have made, though perhaps in slightly different terms. For this reason, I think the image of armchair philosophy gradually yielding ground to science is wrong. Broadly speaking, philosophers have always worked on philosophical problems using philosophical methods, and scientists have always worked on scientific problems using empirical methods. There hasn’t been any great shift from one to the other. What has occurred of course is a shift in prestige: society currently values empirical science much more than it values philosophy.
You are equating “philosophy” with what philosophy looks like today (“armchair astronomy”).
The point is that this wasn’t the case, philosophy was the umbrella that included everything.
Heck, just look at the title “Doctor of Philosophy”, which is the name for doctorates in both the sciences and the humanities. Not just for doctorates in today’s specific sub-discipline of philosophy.
Well sure, but I take it that the change in the way the word ‘philosophy’ is used is not the interesting development. That’s not what people usually mean when they talk about philosophical problems becoming scientific problems.
I don’t think so. The suggestion is usually that questions which used to be in the realm of philosophical speculation are now being addressed using empirical scientific methods. That would amount to more than just a change in terminology.
That’s not even wrong.
Philosophy has been pivotal in shaping human civilization, laws, morals, government, arts, and even science itself.
I think philosophers often free-ride on the discoveries of cognitive scientists without adding anything to the discussion.
That’s a pretty bold claim to make without citing any specific examples.
I think philosophers often free-ride on the discoveries of cognitive scientists without adding anything to the discussion.
Actually, cognitive scientists emerged after millennia of philosophic treatments of the matter (although they approach things with a different methodology of course).
That said, I don’t think we have many, if any, philosophers today. All the main perspectives in philosophy have been played out from the time of Pre-Socratic philosophers to the 20th century.
Today we mostly have tame and bland tenured academics in Philosophy departments — a pale shadow of philosophers of yore, and not so original to boot.
As a discipline, philosophy is largely abstract argument without content. In this sense, HN is philosophical.
How much philosophy do you know?
Do you think you have free will? Some philosophers argue convincingly that you don’t. And if there’s no such thing as free will, where does that leave the notion of punishment in the criminal justice system? I think that’s “content” if there ever was such a thing.
Should we be socialists or capitalists? Is one system better than the other? What does it mean for an economic system to be “better” than another anyway? On the basis of philosophical arguments regarding these questions, people have been inspired to violently murder those who they see as perpetuating injustice. Surely, then, these arguments are not just “abstract” and “without content”.
It’s very difficult to explain why science is as successful as it is, or why we should put our trust in the results of scientific inquiry. The history of science is littered with mistakes, after all; who’s to say that the expert scientific consensus isn’t wrong today? So when you encounter someone on the street who says “I think global warming is nonsense,” what sorts of arguments will you use to try and persuade them otherwise?
The problems of philosophy don’t go away just because you’re not looking at them.
Should we be socialists or capitalists? Is one system better than the other? What does it mean for an economic system to be “better” than another anyway? On the basis of philosophical arguments regarding these questions, people have been inspired to violently murder those who they see as perpetuating injustice. Surely, then, these arguments are not just “abstract” and “without content”.
Most socialists viciously reject all association with the kind of nonmaterialist, non-scientific, ahistorical kind of philosophy you’re trying to justify here. We use “metaphysics” as an insult and “liberal metaphysics” especially to sneer at our opponents for trying to draw moral justification from a kind of Platonic realm of Forms rather than from the material needs of human beings.
I’m sure you have some thoughts to add in response, but my point is that socialism itself, as usually taught, is not a very good example to make your point with.
I’m aware that socialists don’t frame their claims as moral claims. I’m not entirely sure if they’re correct to do so, but I’m aware nonetheless.
I’m also aware that some socialists hold views of agency that render the notion of “persuading someone to be a socialist via argumentation” incoherent. Hopefully such debates don’t prevent me from using the history of socialist thought as an illustrative example of philosophy that is decidedly not “abstract argumentation without content”.
Also, you seem to be unaware of the diversity of thought in contemporary moral realism, if you think that all moral realism is equivalent to Platonism.
Also, you seem to be unaware of the diversity of thought in contemporary moral realism, if you think that all moral realism is equivalent to Platonism.
I’m well aware of moral naturalism, and ascribe to it myself. However, defenses of “philosophy qua philosophy” and that sort of ilk are almost never about any form of naturalism. If you are a fan of seriously naturalistic philosophy, done well and in accordance with the best scientific evidence, than you probably belong on the Science side of the insipid “science versus philosophy” flame-wars, and your favorite philosophers actually spend portions of their books arguing exactly that. Because they have to, over and over again, ad nauseum.
Because otherwise, the Platonism-of-the-gaps people will rush in and declare Platonism About Everything, which is what they really want.
So for instance, I think that Derek Parfit really needs to see a therapist, because if you actually assert that “if naturalism were true, … I would have wasted much of [my life]”1, then you’ve got a problem. You should not need Platonism about X, for any value of X; you should be disinterestedly considering whether Platonism is true (I damn well think it’s not).
I’m well aware of moral naturalism, and ascribe to it myself.
Huh. Well, I’m an error theorist. ;)
If you are a fan of seriously naturalistic philosophy, done well and in accordance with the best scientific evidence, than you probably belong on the Science side of the insipid “science versus philosophy” flame-wars
I don’t see why I have to pick one side or the other…
I consider my outlook to be thoroughly naturalistic, yet I still find myself frequently defending philosophy to people who misunderstand it. That doesn’t mean I support all types of philosophical work that are being done, or that I think all philosophical questions are equally valuable.
Because otherwise, the Platonism-of-the-gaps people will rush in and declare Platonism About Everything, which is what they really want.
Who are these Platonism-of-the-gaps people? I sort of see where you’re going with this, and I agree with you that a lot of what is done in analytic philosophy is misguided, but I also want to be careful to avoid using the word “Platonism” as a pejorative for everything I disagree with.
Thanks for that Parfit quote, by the way. I think that’s pretty hilarious.
Who are these Platonism-of-the-gaps people?
I would go ahead and label them as the entire “robust realist” school of thought in meta-ethics, and we can then throw in large portions of the people doing philosophy of mathematics (the original Platonism in modern philosophy), many people’s positions on semantics in philosophy-of-language (ie: they think of semantics in a way that requires Platonic propositions to exist in order to give semantic content, as opposed to merely pragmatic content, to sentences), and of course the endless droning claims of dualism in philosophy of mind.
I would grant these people a lot more charity if they could all get together and agree on what exactly the Immaterial or Platonic Stuff is supposed to actually be, and how it comes into contact with the physical world, not only through supervenience but through some form of actual causation. Instead, since they don’t have a unified account of the Immaterial, it looks (admittedly, from the outside) as if they’re just working in separate fields and positing various forms of Immaterial Stuff as disparate “solutions” for all the problems they refuse to allow to be solved naturalistically.
Naturalism can at least shunt off the hard work of explanation to actual sciences, and when that work gets done, naturalism ends up with philosophical accounts that don’t require new and different forms of spooky stuff for each and every thing we want to explain.
I pretty much entirely agree with you. I reject all of the non-naturalistic positions you’ve outlined.
I find it disappointing that non-naturalism is seeing a resurgence in metaethics, especially since I’m not even a moral realist to begin with. It’s clearly just a lot of people grasping at straws.
For modern lines of development regarding Platonism (or something like it) in the philosophy of math, you might want to check out Ladyman and Ross’s “Every Thing Must Go”. They attempt to argue from insights from quantum mechanics that relations are real, but objects are not. I haven’t read the whole book, but I believe they’re explicit in stating that their position is not Platonism as it’s classically understood, even though their position sounds suspiciously similar to it.
Even though I’m not a dualist of any kind, philosophy of mind is still the area where I’m the most sympathetic and forgiving towards spooky explanations. Consciousness is pretty weird, after all. So when someone wants to defend property or even substance dualism, I think they’re wrong, but not crazy; and yet physicalism completely dominates in philosophy of mind, while moral non-naturalists get a free pass on their weak “well, it SEEMS like there are morals, therefore morals” arguments. It just feels completely backwards to me.
Anyway, I’m not quite sure what prompted you to take the discussion down this path. There is much in contemporary analytic philosophy that I find problematic and even indefensible, but when I’m trying to impress upon people the importance and relevance of philosophy, I don’t mention the shortcomings until the person has a deep enough understanding to take a nuanced view of these issues. This is just like how, if you’re trying to convince the global warming skeptic that the scientific consensus is to be trusted, you don’t start off by talking about the replication issues in psychology. When I talk about philosophy with people, my main goal is to convey the point that there are important philosophical questions that are worth thinking seriously about.
I like this comment. Honestly it makes sense; that is not to say that philosophy doesn’t have a place in science, but I would liken it to writing a website in assembly as opposed to JS, etc.
That last sentence is particularly ignorant in light of contemplatives reliably showing that the self we know is basically an illusion. People can be shown this reliably through meditation. To those that have glimpsed this fact his research seems particularly foolish. I call it a fact since it’s akin to a magic eye picture…people have either seen what’s there or they haven’t, it can’t really be argued.
His research seems, to me, to be the neurology of a delusion, albeit an absurdly common one. What would be much more interesting, and what I believe others are studying, is the neurology of those who have managed to move past this illusion.
The neuron fired not only (say) when the monkey reached for a peanut but also when it watched another monkey reach for a peanut!
These were dubbed “mirror neurons” or “monkey-see-monkey-do” neurons. This was an extraordinary observation because it implies that the neuron (or more accurately, the network which it is part of) was not only generating a highly specific command (“reach for the nut”) but was capable of adopting another monkey’s point of view. It was doing a sort of internal virtual reality simulation of the other monkeys action in order to figure out what he was “up to”. It was, in short, a “mind-reading” neuron.
I don’t really see how this follows- maybe the neurons are just recognising things that happened, like seeing a peanut being picked up. That doesn’t require “adopting another monkey’s point of view” or “figuring out what he was up to”. It could just be the brain attempting to verify that the action happened, which is going to be seen regardless of who made it happen.
How he defines self awareness: “‘other awareness’ applied to yourself” is a self awareness we entertain as children but definitely not real self awareness or the self awareness we posses after reaching any level of even moderate development.
“Self-awareness is ‘other awareness’ applied to yourself where ‘other awareness’ is constructing meaningful models of other peoples minds in order to predict their behavior” ^ This is totally circular. You(others) have some way of guiding your(their) own behavior before being aware of others and using that to construct a model of behavior and self.
This essay is armchair philosophizing completely removed from any real experience. I’d go so far as to call it psychologically harmful to anyone that entertains the essay as true and attempts to apply the ideas presented in it to understand their self.
This theory is reversing the cause and effect. Self-awareness is not the primary because it is a consequence of free will, i.e. the capacity to direct the focus or object of your consciousness. Initially the focus of attention is external to the mind for its obvious survival value and the higher animals clearly have some primitive ability to direct their focus. But the step they cannot (or have not made) is to direct that focus onto their own cognitive states (i.e. self-awareness) and discover such things as anger, jealousy, want, love, motivation, etc. From there its a small step to project that certain other animals have similar internal states that explain their behaviors, i.e. mirroring. Hours of observing others animals perceptually would never lead to mirroring nor self-awareness. It is a projection of our observation of the internal states of the only consciousness you can or ever will directly observe, your own.
“Mirror” neurons sound more like “concept” or “verb” neurons, rather than a subset of “command” neurons. Firing when its monkey “reaches for a peanut”, and when it sees another monkey “reaching for a peanut” sounds like it means the verb “to reach for a peanut”.
It also seems unlikely that a single neuron would carry a complete meaning in themselves… like probing a single bit in a data structure, you might be able to tell if it’s odd or even, positive or negative, but probably need a constellation of bits/neurons to make sense of it.
But he may be simplifying in this high-level essay, and I haven’t read papers in the field.
The man is simply saying that the underlying neurological mechanism (i.e. mirror neurons ) used to decode others behaviour and possbily make a prediction about “what they’re up to” is used also to decode/simulate our own actions, which is really what we call self awarness. This actually makes quite a lot of sense, and I don’t see why some pople detect a circular dependecy here..
At sensory level our own “doing” is not really different then sombody else’s “doing” , and that can pe processed by the same mechanism, but reconized as “our own doing” based on additional cues..
2007 article
A very interesting hypothesis nevertheless. There are pathologies in which theory of mind is impaired. For example Baron-Cohen studies that aspect of autism. There might be hypotheses formulated what that means for self-awareness.
He insists that ‘mirror neurons’ give rise to the aspects of self, but who’s not to say that they are a reflection/ habituation of processes ‘out there’, I don’t know, something like the (aptly named) ‘mirror stage’ of childhood? Shouldn’t a discussion of correlation vs. causation be important for his argument?
I’m not saying the mirror stage is the explanation, formative experiences more generally in childhood might be a reason you see ‘mirror neuron’ networks. A feral child can’t learn language after a certain point, and hypothetically I would imagine he would not show a ‘mirror neuron’ network (or sense of self awareness).
Either way, I think the author needs to address correlation vs. causation before assuming the latter.
We already know that we are very similar to animals. Our mind and consciousness are last things that distinguishes us. We are strongly attached to this idea. It was hard for people to accept the fact that the Earth is not the center of the universe, and despite the simple explanation of the phenomena that surround us.
Regarding consciousness there is too much philosophical discussion. Wordplays of which little is clear.
The sense of sight has exhausted such emotions. We are able to say that a simple multicellular organism having one photosensitive cell is a primitive ancestor of the eye.
What do you say if we define consciousness as the next sense, but in contrast to other senses directed to the center, that is, to our memory.
– ‘other awareness’ applied to yourself –
I find the work and ideas especially the
“attention schema theory”
of sentience, consciousness, self-awareness proposed by Michael Graziano1 most compelling in that area; they as well propose an evolutionary path towards the development of “consciousness”
And yeah sure, why should/could the mirror-neurons-“apparatus” not be involved?
Naive factorial() implementation is self-aware, I’d say. So what?
I’m going to play the buddhist card on this one and contend that it’s the enlistment of “outside” energies like food, air, water, prana…which are coming into an organism and experiencing or “re-experiencing” itself which gives rise to this effect. There are many levels to this effect though and there must be some sweet spots where an experience seems somehow new (as in worthy to be paid attention to) and yet not-altogether old either. Familiar enough to recognize and “alarming” or “surprising” enough to be worthy of giving attention towards.
Ramachandrans The Tell-Tale Brain is certainly one of my favorite books, anyone who is interested in neurobiology should read it.
This might be an extremely stupid question, but does it make sense to apply the concept of mirror neurons to ANNs?
Of course. There is a field in AI that is dedicated to imitation learning.
The reason why you don’t see so much of this type of literature is because the dominance of virtual AI: Google, Siri, etc. Hardware is expensive and learning with hardware is slow. However, the type of AI required is IMHO much more interesting. I think we really understand how our brains work if we have an AI competing at the Olympics.
Well isn’t it applied in a way, think assisted learning etc in certain applications, but I’m not a computer scientist so I don’t know really.
This could neatly explain Stockholm Syndrome, cult joining and other identity deficits.
The current understanding is that people join abusive and captive organizations/people not knowing they are such, and stay because acknowledging the abuse, coercion, and lies means admitting you’ve been fundamentally taken advantage of, which in the short term is harder than simply believing the lies you’re continually getting fed.
I mean, in some sense, mirror neurons could explain almost all social behavior, and culture/society in general.
I’d be interested in knowing exactly how the mirror neurons communicate and work with the rest of the brain.
wouldn’t monkeys have cults if this was a sufficient explanation for those?
Just another ape pretending he’s special.
Sure, monkeys don’t have self awareness.
Self Awareness is something that is uniquely human. It relies on consciousness.
Consciousness is the experience of being.
If there is an experience of what it is like to be a thing, then that thing can be said to be conscious.
Such things may be some subset of or superset containing “things with brains.” But the idea that it is uniquely human seems absurd.
Woah Woah Woah, there is a fatal flaw and assumption in just the first couple paragraphs - the bootstrapping problem. If we evolved self in order to predict what others feel … that depends on others having those feeling, but if those feelings in others don’t evolve unless others have evolved those feelings, we have a circular fallacy! Who was the first feeler to cause others to evolve, and how did that person evolve then?
If we evolved self in order to predict what others feel …
This has quite obvious evolutionary advantages. If you can predict how someone feels or what he might think you can outsmart him in competition for food. You could trick him for trade (e.g. food for tools) when he least suspects that it might not be in his favor. Essentially externalizing mirror neuron processes is much more beneficial in the short term, if you can think how the other person might think. In the long run in order to be successful you also need to internalize you mirror neurons - you need to think how to think about yourself and to start thinking what this person might think about you and what kind of self awareness they could have. You can’t just trick the other, the deal is to trick them without them noticing otherwise you end up with prisoners dilemma. Probably those processes could also had led to evolution of language and trade.
Makes a lot of common sense. The more I read about stuff like this the more ``common-sense” Nature seems. I mean, having this near- or far-future predictive ability gives a species a real advantage among others that don’t.
That assumes that a sense of self is required in order to have feelings. I don’t think that’s true. I do find the idea that a sense of self developed from an ability to model the mental states of others, but I don’t think having a mental state requires having a sense of self.
All you need is one instance where one agent mistakes that the other agent feels when that agent doesn’t — and then I think your fallacy is moot.
Last weekend at Photo London I had the chance to attend a lecture with Sebastião Salgado. Leo Johnson interviewed the 71-year old photographer about his life and work. In the Q&A that followed a young student, probably around 21 years old, asked what he would recommend a young photographer to start his career today. And Salgado answered:
“If you’re young and have the time, go and study. Study anthropology, sociology, economy, geopolitics. Study so that you’re actually able to understand what you’re photographing. What you can photograph and what you should photograph.”
I found this answer very interesting. Many photographers have an answer to that question, and I myself have asked it many times. The most common answer I got was “Just go out there and shoot” or “Study the masters of photography” or “Practice, practice, practice”. But none of these photographers talked about going to university and study economics. So what does Salgado mean by that?
Sebastião’s Salgado’s own biography sheds a light on the answer. Salgado, the only son of a farmer’s family with 7 daughters (all named Maria, but that’s another story), fought the military dictatorship in his home country Brazil, studied economics, emigrated to Paris and worked at the International Coffee Organisation there, which often let him travel to Africa.
Only when he was in his late 20s did he get a camera and start taking photos. He quit his job and began travelling the world, often staying in far-away places for 4 to 5 months to work on his reportages, thousands of miles away from his wife and young son in Paris. He dedicated his life to the stories he told through his lens. Salgado refuses to be called a documentary photographer or photojournalist. His life is photography, he says. His biography proves it.
What becomes so obvious in Salgado’s early work is that his pictures couldn’t exist without his commitment to social justice. What he photographs is defined by what he believes in. His pictures are so strong because he knows exactly what he’s doing. If he would have been just some guy who happens to be at a place where social injustice is happening, he couldn’t have captured it in the same way. He would have been an observer, a tourist, but could not have told those stories from the inside out.
In this context should his current work be understood. You could walk into an exhibition of Genesis and think “Oh, these are nice photos of nature I’m seeing here”. Or you could think that Salgado is tired of seeing the world’s pain and sorrow and retired to nature photography in his old days. But it’s the opposite. Salgado understood that the planet’s environment is probably the most pressing and universal issue of our time. That’s what Genesis is about. And if you read it this way, it might be just the start of Salgado’s most powerful, most meaningful and impactful work.
This is not big news. It’s the ultimate message of Wim Wenders and Julian Salgado’s recent film The Salt of the Earth. But I believe that’s possibly why this movie was made in the first place. Salgado wants his message to be understood.
What does it mean for aspiring photographers?
Understand what you want to shoot. Understand the impact your work could have. Study what makes the world move. Don’t just be a guy with a camera, because we all are.
One of the most touching moments in Salgado’s talk was when he mentioned was how hard it was for him to be away from his family. Away for months in the mountains of Brazil, his wife Lélia and son were in Paris. On a Sunday, Salgado climbed a mountain and burst out in tears. He couldn’t change the situation. Travelling took weeks. There was no money. He had to stay to finish his work.
This dedication is what makes a photographer to Salgado. Now that we all take pictures every day, are surrounded by images, we tend to forget that. Yes, we all are photographers today. But few of us are ready to make the sacrifice it takes to truly tell the stories that matter.
Image by Steve Jurvetson from the Wikimedia Commons. This blog post was syndicated from Severin Matusek at EyeEm. Its contents here are being used with permission.
Martin did a just brilliant job on this eye-opening article, and I want you to be able to read it (even if you’re not a KelbyOne member). His article is the cover story in the Sept. issue of Photoshop User magazine (published 10-times a year for KelbyOne members). The magazine is normally around 120 pages per issue, but I pulled out just Martin’s article for you to download in PDF format below.
SPOILERALERT: In short: Martin shows you the difference between how Capture One Pro “juices” their RAW conversion, and how you can set up Lightroom to have the same look, if you want that “juiced’ look.” I think a LOT of people will be surprised and enlightened when they read this.
Hope you find that helpful. That’s it from here in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains. Looking forward to meeting some of you in Venice on Saturday. 🙂
Ciao!
–Scott
P.S. _Thanks to everybody yesterday who shared my Worldwide Photo Walk details for this weekend. Much appreciated (you guys are cool!) — only three days to the photo walk. Whoo hoo! 🙂_
This cool video shows how to use a posterized gradient to make a set of tonal rectangles.
Add a horizontal (O°) gradient adjustment layer running from one tonality or color to another.
Add a posterize adjustment layer. It’s property panel lets you set the number of separate tones/colors in the gradient. An odd number guarantees 50% grey somewhere.
Clip the posterize layer to the gradient layer.
This is really cool.
More can be found here, including a downloadable action.
Most exploits occur over the Internet, so this is a no-brainer. When you do not need to have an Internet connection going, go to the Wireless icon and select Turn Wifi Off. (Or disconnect the Ethernet cable if you use that.)
1.2. Disable Bluetooth when not at home.
Bluetooth may be useful for connecting to an external keyboard at home, or to a fitness device, but if you don’t need it, it is prudent to switch it off since it offers a potential if rare means of attack. (This is less so today that in its early days.)
It is also useful for surveillance. Your Bluetooth device’s address can be obtained to identify and track you in public places. As a test, I tried detecting Bluetooth devices while driving down the road. The phones of people in passing cars were easily detected by my iSystem app.
1.3. Disable the Ethernet port if there is one.
Few people use the Ethernet port any longer. It is mainly useful for technology professionals in communicating with routers and servers. If you don’t need to use it, go into the Ethernet settings, select Disable for the Configure IPv4 setting. For the IPv6 setting select Local Link Only.
1.4. Disable Firewire.
Most people never need Firewire. If you don’t, go into the Firewire settings, select Disable for the Configure IPv4 setting. For the IPv6 setting select Local Link Only.
Trivia: It has been discovered that a Mac that is asleep can provide access to the entirety of its RAM through the Firewire port via DMA (direct memory access). Thus it can be used to copy data. It’s a rare exploit, especially since it requires physical access to a computer when it’s asleep, but it’s another reason to disable Firewire.
1.5. Do not use online storage.
It is unwise to use iCloud or any other cloud-based online storage service such as DropBox, convenient though it may be. If you do not encrypt your files before you upload them, they can be copied and used right away or years from now e.g. by governments, by people who hacked into the cloud, and by employees of the cloud service.
The typical argument that it doesn’t matter if they’re stolen is a form of denial. Just because you don’t want to imagine the numerous outrageous ways in which for instance your photos can be used, but that doesn’t mean that others feel so inhibited.
The practice of encrypting data before storing it in the cloud is called TNO: Trust No One. Security professionals recommend a TNO approach.
1.6. Avoid free online email.
You really should not use online free email services either such as these:
Yahoo mail
Gmail
Mail.com
Inbox.com
Lycos mail
Hotmail
Aol mail
GMX mail Most corporations that run such services are all too eager to turn over your personal information to any nefarious company or government agency that’s paying. Betraying your trust is profitable and they view that betrayal as a no-brainer without consequences.
Surveillance is the killer app of the Internet.
Long before Edward Snowden, it was exposed on Cryptome.org that Yahoo charges the US government only US $60 for a year’s worth of a user’s emails.
1.7. Keep critical personal data off of your computer
Not everything has to be on your computer. Critical data such as your social security number, tax records, legal paperwork, birth certificates, passwords, ID cards, immigration documents, sexy photos and revealing private videos should be located on encrypted external media from start to finish.
1.8. Encrypt your external drives.
Any laborer or landlord who walks into your apartment and sees a USB drive sitting on the table could in theory steal it, or copy it without your knowing. It’s wise to encrypt such drives to at least protect your data.
You may think you know what’s on a drive, but in truth most people are largely ignorant of where they’ve put their numerous files.
To encrypt a USB or hard drive, format it for Mac OS (not Windows FAT) and tell Disk Utility to encrypt it.
External media that are not in use should be locked away.
1.9. Securely erase and wipe empty space
When you delete a file, use the Finder’s Secure Empty Trash [sic] feature. You should go into the Finder preferences and set secure erasure to be the default method.
But note, data deletion that is not done by the Finder, but rather is done automatically by programs like browsers, will probably not be done securely.
To make sure that no deleted data can be un-deleted, you can periodically run Disk Utility and use the Erase Empty Space feature. This will make sure important data like deleted web browser cache data and web history cannot be recovered.
1.10. Remove all personal data before taking your Mac in for repair
It was revealed on Consumerist.com that workers in Best Buy’s Geek Squad service were regularly copying customers’ photos and other content onto personal thumb drives during the course of repairing their computers. Would Apple’s geniuses not do the same? Who can say, except an insider.
1.11. Avoid low-cost domain resellers and hosting services.
Don’t be fooled by low prices. When you sign up with cheap services, they could just make up for the lack of profits by selling you out.
I discovered to my surprise that the Universal Terms of Service provided by GoDaddy and its various resellers has an enormous qualification: They claim ownership of your User Content if it is within a subcategory called User Submissions. The problem is, they never define what part of your data falls into that subcategory and what does not.
You should always take the time to read the fine print.
1.12. Practice good thumb drive isolation.
Never buy or use a USB thumb drive that cannot be attached to your keychain. A thumb drive without a keychain hook or that is not on your primary or only keychain is easily lost or stolen.
A thumb drive should always be encrypted unless it’s solely for use in
your car’s audio system in which case it should only have your current MP3s and nothing else;
your TV in which case it should only have MP4s you plan to watch soon.
Give each thumb drive a name indicating what it’s for and mark it to indicate its purpose e.g. AUDIO BOOKFORCAR.
Never use a thumb drive that you find sitting in public somewhere. Leaving a thumb drive on a ledge or table is a classic means of infecting computers at e.g. a nearby business or government organization.
2. Disable risky services
2.1. Inhibit Bonjour.
After you enable your firewall (see section 3 below) your should enable its stealth mode. This should prevent your computer from broadcasting its existence to other computers on a network.
An alternative method is to disable the Bonjour service. This tells other Macs near you what services you have to offer them, and tells you what they can offer you.
Two rules of thumb:
You should not encourage others to be trying to get access to what is on your computer.
You should not be accessing any data they have made available as it may contain malware.
In Mountain Lion, can go into Settings, Security, Firewall, and Firewall Options and select Enable Stealth Mode (for good measure), and then Block All Incoming Connections.
Another approach is to use the command line to edit the file /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist. You add to the section ProgramArguments by inserting a string entry called -NoMulticastAdvertisements. Then reboot.
2.2. Disable Bluetooth discovery.
If you must use Bluetooth, disable discovery in the Bluetooth settings. You can also do this in the Bluetooth-icon pulldown menu.
2.3. Disable any Sharing services.
It is almost always a bad idea to leave sharing services on. If you must use a sharing service, do so only temporarily when you need it, then switch it off again. Go into Sharing settings and uncheck everything.
2.4. Remove Google spyware that comes with Mail
I recently discovered that a Google mail plugin was periodically running and checking to see what drives I have mounted on my system, e.g. whether I have a USB drive plugged in. This is very odd because:
I was not running Mail at the time.
I do not have a Gmail account.
I was not logged into my Google account. To prevent this kind of activity, whatever its actual purpose may have be, one can remove the offending plugin. But… warning! If you do this then you won’t be able to use a Gmail account from within Mail. From Terminal, do this:
2.5. Disable Location Services and the IR receiver.
Very few people need these. For good measure, go into Settings, Security, Privacy and disable both Location Services and the IR receiver.
Location services is mainly useful for the Map program.
2.6. Remove CIJScannerRegister
If you don’t have any older Canon printers on your network, you don’t need CIJScannerRegister. This program sends out UDP packets looking for these printers. If you have many Macs on a network this can add to the congestion, but even if you only have one, the fact that CIJScannerRegister is sending out these packets could leave you open to attacks, because
It advertises your existence.
The CIJScannerRegister program itself may have vulnerabilities that a malicious computer could exploit.
To remove CIJScannerRegister, use this Terminal command:
Note, CIJScannerRegister appears to have been removed from OS/X Mavericks.
3. Block outsiders
3.1. Enable the basic Firewall.
You should always have your Mac behind a physical firewall such as the one in your Wifi router, but you will also need to enable Apple’s built-in Firewall capability, especially if you will use your Mac on an unencrypted public Wifi.
Go into Settings, Security, and Firewall to find it and start it.
3.2. Enable FileVault to encrypt your hard drive
Encrypt your entire drive using FileVault. The first time you enable it, it will require up to an hour to encrypt your drive.
If you also have Windows installed on your computer via BootCamp, FileVault will prevent Windows programs from reading your Mac files, and that’s generally good especially if your Windows setup get infected with malware.
3.3. Add a firmware (boot) password
The firmware password is not your normal login password, but rather the password that lets the Mac boot from a disk other than your hard drive. Adding it is done using the OS/X installation disk, if you have one. By enabling a firmware password, you prevent other people from booting up your computer from an CD-R or DVD-R disc or from a USB flash drive.
This can be very important, because if you fail to add a firmware password and you fail to encrypt your hard drive, this means crooks and ne’erdowells can potentially walk up to your unattended Mac, boot from a thumb drive and steal all of your data.
3.4. Turn off your home Wifi router at night and when you are not at home.
At night, or whenever you are not at home, there is no need for your router to be powered up. Having it on means that someone can theoretically hack into the router itself from anywhere on the planet.
If you think such a thing is unlikely, just google port 32764 backdoor. There are several ways to break into a Wifi router and port 32764 is perhaps the latest one to be discovered. Check it by clicking here.
Set the adminsitration password on your Wifi router (not just the encryption password) to something very hard to guess, and make sure you disable remote log-in. Also disable logging into the router via Wifi: require a connection with a cable.
3.5. Shut off the port forwarding.
If you must set up your Wifi router for port forwarding, make sure you turn off that feature immediately after you’re done with it. Otherwise you’re just providing a means for outsiders to bypass the firewall.
An example of an activity that often leads to port forwarding being left on is when gamers use it to play video games with other people from around the world. Since Macs are less commonly used for gaming than are Windows PCs and gaming consoles, this may not apply to you.
An example of a situation in which port forwarding is useful but potentially dangerous is when you set it up to permit you into into your Mac from afar using ssh (secure shell). Remote login is a standard feature of OS/X that is enabled in Settings, the Sharing section, by clicking Remote Login. For such an activity you’d be enabling port 22 on your Wifi router to let outsiders (hopefully only you!) who are utilizing ssh or sftp to enter your machine.
If, in the worst case, you leave Remote Login enabled on your Mac and port forwarding enabled on your Wifi router and leave your router itself powered up e.g. at night, this could be very bad.
3.6. Shut off the router’s uPnP service
Most Wifi routers support universal plug-and-play, which can reveal information about what’s on your network to people who are far away. You should always make sure that uPnP is switched off. However you should also be aware that some routers, even if you tell them to switch off uPnP, leave it partially on anyway.
3.7. Set the Wifi encryption password
This is a no brainer. If people are able to get onto your Wifi network, they can read most of the data that is passing across the network. This means they can analyze it and record it. Even though much of your data will be useless to them, some of it could be quite useful. For instance, some email services even today fail to encrypt emails when your mail reader downloads them.
So enable the Wifi password, and use WPA2 encryption.
Note that WEP encryption is not secure and should not be used. It was not actually designed by security professionals.
3.8. Set up your Wifi router to not broadcast the name of your router i.e. the SSID.
If you know your router’s name, you don’t need to tell the world about it. Letting everyone in the neighborhood know the name (the SSID) is dangerous because it means they can then commence with trying to break into your Wifi network.
3.9. Check your file permissions.
If more than one person will use your computer, each with his own account, make sure that users cannot access one another’s files.
This pertains to the files in your home directory. Most users don’t need to worry about this since they don’t put files in their home directory.
Make sure that files and subdirectories in your home directory are accessible only by you, and not by people in your group or by everyone. Directories should have permissions 0700 and files should be 0600.
The only directory that should be 0777 is ~/Public, which is the sharing directory.
A pitfall: Files copied from a Windows thumb drive, which typically has a FAT32 file system, will often be automatically set to 0644, and directories to 0755, which lets any other user on your Mac access them if those files are in your home directory.
4. Browse the Web wisely
4.1. Disable third-party cookies
Third-party cookies are a means by which people are tracked when they use the Internet.
Safari disables them by default.
In Firefox it is possible to disable third-party cookies but it requires the extra effort of going into the browser preferences in the Privacy section and History subsection to enable blocking. You can run the following cookie forensics test to see whether you are at risk: Cookie forensics.
4.2. Do not use unofficial Firefox plugins.
If you begin to check who writes plugins, it quickly becomes apparent that many authors go by pseudonyms and never give their actual names. They also conceal their whereabouts in many cases, or they are located in faraway countries. This might not matter except for two key facts:
Plugins run Javascript which is a major conduit for malware exploits.
More nefarious plug-ins that you add manually are allowed to include object code.
Food for thought:
When I asked a famous security researcher why more research is not being done into the risks posed by browser plugins, he answered that it’s just not cool enough.
Don’t assume that experts are working to keep you safe in every possible way. They may care more about getting their kicks or winning security competition prize money than about protecting you.
4.3. Avoid PDFs except from reputable sources.
In 2010, the Chinese hacked into hundreds of American corporations, including Google. One means by which this was done was using malware-infected PDF files, sent to GMail accounts. Thus, you should not assume that PDFs are generally safe.
In 2011, a Mac-specific trojan OSX/Revir-B was found that hides inside PDFs. Sophos article.
4.4. Disable Java in each browser
99.9% of the time, you do not need Java, but if it’s enabled, it is a huge security risk and the hackers in far-flung places like Mauritius and Khazakstan know this.
Granted, some employers still require use of Java by their employees. Some Scandinavian banks allegedly require its use for online banking. On your personal computer however you generally do not need it.
It’s very risky to leave Flash enabled or even installed. Flash may seem useful for watching videos on Youtube or Vimeo, outside of the limited context it is a pretty pathetic technology.
Websites containing Flash can contain exploits.
PDFs containing Flash can contain exploits.
Ads containing Flash can contain exploits.
Give a listen to how it is being used for nefarious purposes, such as recording your keystokes:
In short, Adobe has done a horrific job of making Flash safe.
YouTube now supports HTML5 for watching many videos. Use that instead of Flash.
If you must use Flash, use it from within Chrome only and only go to specific websites, like YouTube, Xfinity, Vimeo and Hulu. Chrome is the wiser browser for Flash use because Google has their own variant of Flash that is based on Adobe’s code but is more secure. Verge article.
4.6. Remove Flash if possible.
The copies of Flash that Safari or Firefox would use should be deleted.
In the directory /Library/Internet Plug-Ins, there is a part of the flash plugin for Safari. Use this command to remove it:
4.7. Do not surf the Web in public places unless a password is required.
For technical reasons, it turns out that places like coffeehouses and restaurants that offer free Wifi are the least secure environments in which to do Web surfing.
An important point: It is in public Wifi locations that so-called zero day exploits are most likely to be deployed. A zero-day is simply one that security researchers have not yet become aware of, but the spooks and criminal gangs do know about.
The main way to make public Wifi secure is if encryption is enabled on their Wifi router, and they have to use WPA encryption. That protects you from other customers as well as people outside the building.
Without WPA encryption enabled, other people can potentially intercept your Internet traffic and even hijack your online account(s) using man in the middle attacks. If you must use non-encrypted public Wifi like at Starbucks, don’t access personal online accounts such as email.
Actually, some have asserted that even having WPA enabled is not enough, since miscreants can still snoop the key-exchange that is done when WPA is starting up, which is done in the clear.
One way to make public Wifi secure for you only is to use a VPN connection. Companies often require this for their employees’ computers.
4.8. Log out of website A before you log into website B.
A common type of exploit termed Cross Site Scripting or XSS involves a user clicking on a link, such as in an email, that hijacks a current session that you have open at a website like Facebook and Gmail. This type of exploit cannot succeed if you are logged out. Therefore always log out of your accounts when you are not using them.
4.9. Skip the media-related websites
The great masses of illicit video, music and photo content that are available on the web appear to be made available as-is. There is not much evidence that anyone checks them for malware. Let’s say 1 in 1000 files has malware that stealthily takes over your computer. If you view such materials on a regular basis, it is inevitable that you will get an infection sooner or later.
Rule 1: If you want illicit movies or TV shows, buy the DVDs and play them on your TV. Or rent them from your local library, which may be quite cheap or free.
Rule 2: If you want to look at interesting photos of bikini-clad women or accidents or whatever, consider doing it from within a virtual machine e.g. using VMWare or Parallels.
Rule 3: If you want to listen to music before buying it, go to the video-upload websites like YouTube rather than to download sites. This is where the artists expect and want you to go.
4.10. Disable Java in email client Thunderbird.
It turns out that Mozilla decided to allow add-ons in Thunderbird, and in the version I downloaded, Java is enabled by default. So if you use Thunderbird you will need to go into the Tools menu, select Add-Ons and disable all of them for your safety.
4.11. Add sites to your /etc/hosts as loopback.
Specific domains that cause excessive or unknown traffic can often be blocked using a simple method: Add them to your /etc/hosts file, specifying their IP address as 127.0.0.1. This is also a good way to block ads, if you know the domains they’re using. Example:
—– |
sudo vi /etc/hosts
Adding lines such as:
127.0.0.1 akamaiedge.net
127.0.0.1 trafficjunky.net
127.0.0.1 akamaitechnologies.com
127.0.0.1 a23-62-228-16.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com
127.0.0.1 syndication.exoclick.com
127.0.0.1 exoclick.com
127.0.0.1 1e100.net
127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 nuq04s19-in-f7.1e100.net # etc.
127.0.0.1 nuq05s02-in-f15.1e100.net
|
4.12. When possible use a text browser e.g. Links
For visiting risky websites, don’t use a mainstream graphical browser. Use a text-based browser in Terminal. Links is a good one. It does not come preinstalled but you can download from here, build it and install it.
4.13. Install an ad blocker if available.
Firefox does not have an ad-blocker built in. Most people use Ad Block Plus, which is a Firefox extension.
4.14. If you must go to a risky website, run a site checker on it first
There are now websites that can run a series of tests on another website that you specify. You can thereby assess whether the specified sit will try to attack your computer. Malicious sites typically do this by exploiting vulnerabilities in web browsers.
4.15. Tell your browser to not install software automatically.
Safari supports automatic software installation without your approval, and exploiters have used this feature to install malware. You can disable it ostensibly by going into preferences and disabling automatic opening of safe downloads.
4.16. Tell your mail program to not load remote images.
Emails that contain images may seem like a safe convenience, but in fact there are risks to do with displaying them.
Images can somewhat rarely contain malware.
If you view a phishing email, loading the images can tell the attacker what your IP address is.
4.17. Tell your browser to not open safe files automatically.
Some browsers such as Safari have a setting that gives it your permission (set to Yes by default) to automatically open some files that it deems to be safe. The issue here is, it is not worth trusting the browser to make that decision for you.
4.18. Using public wifi: Change your MAC address.
When you log in to the free Wifi at a business such as a coffeehouse, you often see a pop-up window appear saying “Click to accept our terms of service”. This is where your privacy gets violated. When you press Accept, the Javascript that is running in that popup puts your current MAC address into the URL that it sends to a server.
Why this is done only they know. My guess is that they are trying to make money by selling information about your doings and whereabouts using your MAC as the tracking identifier. If your MAC can be linked to your identity, for instance by examining your Web traffic, it can become even more valuable.
Furthermore if an alliance of retail companies were to share this information among themselves, they could track your movements throughout the day based on what businesses you go near. You don’t even have to enter a business: The Wifi signal travels outside the store. You could drive past a business and still be identified.
If any of that makes you uncomfortable or creeps you out, you can change your Mac’s Wifi MAC address like so:
—– |
ifconfig en0 ether NEW_MAC_ADDR
sudo arp -a -d
|
5. Avoid risky software
5.1. Avoid products from Microsoft.
Even today, Microsoft’s Office for Mac is an overpriced, low-quality variant of their Office product for Windows. But worse than that, in-document scripting is still enabled by default, which unnecessarily leaves open a conduit for malware exploits to be launched. It is a vulnerability that has been exploited extensively by hackers in the past.
5.2. Skip the precompiled free software.
The best rule of thumb is, if you did not compile a free program yourself from the source code, assume that it has malware in it, and don’t use it. In order to compile it you obviously need the source code, and if the source code is not available (i.e. it is closed source) then you should wonder what they are hiding.
Unfortunately some of the bigger apps are not made easy to build by users. Firefox, for example. Indeed it is the apps that are most critical to most people’s workflows that are most difficult to build.
5.3 Use virtual machines with caution
Virtual machines like VMWare, Parallels and VirtualBox all present a potential risk of spying on your activities by the companies that make them. Think out it. These machines know every network connection your virtualized software is making, every keystroke that you type, every mouse click. If any of the companies that make these programs has a contract with an oppressive, spying-prone government or corporate espionage company, they could provide a record of everything that you do in a virtual machine to said malefactor company.
In addition, some virtual machines have vulnerabilities themselves. and bad people have written malware There are known to exist breakout exploits in which malware that is running within a VM can use vulnerabilities in the VM software to find a way out of the running VM and into your main OS.
6. Check for malware
6.1. Stop risky services from launching
When you log in, some programs automatically launch. Some programs that do so can be found and removed if you run Settings, click on Users and Groups, select the tab Login Items.
From the command line, you may also find launch data in ~/Library/LaunchItems. You can stop them from launching after login by removing their launch plist files.
6.2. Look for keyloggers
A keylogger is a program that records every keystroke that you type and periodically sends those keystrokes to a server run by criminals or spooks.
A common Mac keylogger is ABK. Look for it using Spotlight or use the find command to search in these directories:
You can also check your non-Apple KEXT files related to keyloggers. For example Blazing Tools Perfect Keylogger shows up as com.BT.kext.bpkkext in the output of this command:
Having a commercial antivirus running can be a security risk in its own right.
Some malware is now written to attack and take over the antivirus programs.
Some antivirus programs have a default setting to automatically upload your private files to their cloud servers without your consent in order to protect them. This means that some antivirus programs are effectively trojan horse spyware.
If any antivirus company has been required by a nefarious government agency to provide them with a means to get into their customers1 computers, they will never tell you.
There is a free and open-source antivirus scanner called ClamAV that, if you are a technically savvy person, you can download, build, install, and run from the command-line. ClamAV link.
6.4. Periodically reinstall OS/X.
Infections are inevitable. Antivirus does not fully undo an infection. The best solution for security is to reinstall the OS from time to time, e.g. once per month, after reformatting the hard drive. Like brushing one’s teeth or tying one’s shoelaces, this is not difficult once it becomes routine.
6.5. Mainly use a non-administrator account.
The first account that you create is a given administrator rights. That’s dangerous, because if you inadvertently run a malware-infected program, it can do more damage to your system that if you ran it from a regular user account.
Therefore, when you install OS/X, call your first account admin, and then create a separate non-admin account that you will use 98% of the time.
But you ask: Why? Isn’t this just paranoia? No. An example:
Taiwanese security researchers found, and reported at the Black Hat Europe 2014 conference, that Apple foolishly allows any user with admin privileges to install kernel drivers. They found this ability was still present in Yosemite when that it was released.
6.6 If you have the technical skill, create your own firewall rules.
It can be important to block risky outgoing connections. You cannot be 100% sure that some random program you’ve downloaded is not a trojan horse than will upload your data to a server.
A simple script like the following, run using sudo, can stymie some spying efforts.
sudo launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com.(apple|openssh|vix)|edu.mit|org.(amavis|apache|cups|isc|ntp|postfix|x)/{print $3}'
launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com.apple|edu.mit|org.(x|openbsd)/{print $3}'
ls -1A /e*/mach* {,/}L*/{Ad,Compon,Ex,Fram,In,Keyb,La,Mail/Bu,P*P,Priv,Qu,Scripti,Servi,Spo,Sta}* L*/Fonts 2> /dev/null
osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to get name of every login item' 2> /dev/null
|
7. Detect outsiders
It might help to get an idea of what computers are close enough to attack your computer.
Let’s say for instance that you want to access your bank account online (bad idea) but you have roommates that you don’t know very well. In this case it might be wise to wait until other people are not using your network. But how do you know if they are? You have to detect their presence.
7.1 Find out who else is on your network
If you’re using a Wifi connection, especially in a public place, there may be many computers, phones, and tablets that are on the Wifi and able snoop on your activity or to attack your computer.
Even if the owner of a device is benign, there may be malware on his or her device that is programmed to automatically seek out vulnerable devices or look for interesting data.
Using Terminal, run this command:
This lists any devices that your computer has knowledge of now, which may include devices that were previously on the network but recently disconnected. It is usually an incomplete list.
A more proactive way to see whether there is anyone else on your network is to use the command ping -i 5 -c 1 255.255.255.255 but this should only be done rarely as it makes your computer look suspicious.
8. Summary
There are a lot of things that you can do to secure your Mac, many of which do not require technical ability. They do require that you think though, and use common sense.
Complete hyperbolic garbage. Data, given a big enough set, is just a reflection of reality. You might as well claim we have a religion of our eyes and ears.
Given huge sets, much like reality, almost anything can be “proven” at some sort of local scale. It’s not a religion or a cult or a new god. It’s just observation.
Second, data is a recording of past events, and has surprisingly limited ability to predict future outcomes. There is a narrow window for the most instinctual tasks where it works well and there is a Tom of value there — but it comes no where close enough to be meta-cognitions ability to give you free will.
‘Given huge sets, much like reality, almost anything can be “proven” at some sort of local scale.’
I don’t think you’re right, I think that some things aren’t tractable to this kind of analysis. Obv. Godel type things, but if you believe in freedom of will and an open universe then a lot of other things. For example, the path of true love, the next line of a poem, the summer after next’s hot fashion trend.
More importantly (less) international events, earthquakes, solar flares.
Fractals, chaos and incompletness.
You can prove it retrospectively but you can’t predict it in the moment was what I was trying to say.
Given enough data, while you can’t predict exact actions, you can predict general trends with good accuracy. For example, given your complete post history and metadata about those posts and your views of HN, someone could fairly easily predict what subjects you will upvote, what subjects you’ll comment on (and a good idea of the tone of your comment), and so forth.
We’re creatures of habit, and once you have enough information to identify those habits, you can do a pretty good job at predicting what we will do. Heck, with the little data I have access to, I can be pretty sure which articles I will see comments from big posters like jacquesm and tptacek, and what their comments will contain. I can’t predict every story they will comment upon, nor the exact details of the comments, but at a higher level it is definitely predictable.
Valid points, but they won’t stop the average less self-analytical person from trusting Big Data, just as many are susceptible to altering their behavior because of some “study” they read about in the paper. Due to our (the masses) inability to follow the gnothi seauton aphorism, we are more likely to allow someone or something to make choices for us. See concluding paragraph of the essay.
Is it different today from 50 or 100 years ago? Doesn’t seem so different to me.
The article keeps confounding free will with authority over society, and morality itself. But these are all different (see footnote * ).
Harari complains that “Dataism” (and email) makes us “… tiny chips inside a giant system that nobody really understands”. But individuals always were just small parts of a great ecosystem that nobody understands.
But even with SMTP, we are still big enough to live our lives well for ourselves and loved ones. We can also try to improve society — but the results will be small and unpredictable.
He shows the same confusion of indivdual freedom with social control when he says:
in a humanist society, ethical and political debates are conducted in the name of conflicting human feelings,
Well that’s a pity, because in a liberal society, they should be debates about human rights. Your feelings about gay pride or religion should not give you authority to control others, but your rights might set some bounds.
As far as I can tell, Harari has learned that modern biology is starting to see life and the mind as an information system. He accepts this science, but doesn’t like it. So he tries to build some confused link to the Big Data giants.
Now there a good reasons, well known at HN, to disaprove of those guys. But Harari’s reasoning is not even wrong.
*: e.g. The RC church emphasises individual free will, claims its own temporal authority, and teaches that God is the ultimate moral authority.
I’m not certain where the haters are coming from. I thought it was well written and extremely interesting.
Sure - there are current limitations, and being able to predict what hasn’t happened yet is certainly difficult.
What was interesting to me though, is many of our most important choices in life have happened 1000s of times before. Should I buy this? Should I marry this person? What school should I go to or what career should I pursue? These are all questions that can, on average, be better answered with available data than potentially just following your gut. This is the position of the article, and I tend to agree.
While the mystical nature of the totality of the machine we are cogs in seems hyperbolic or unnerving, at a practical level it makes sense to model your interactions with the world that way. Taking that stance, the comparison to religion and humanism should be easy to follow, and reflect on. When are you “dataist”? When are you “humanist?” You’ll learn a lot about yourself simply asking that question.
Which makes for a great ending to the article - do you know yourself? Better than algorithm? Maybe not in all cases, and the data shows thats not necessarily a bad thing.
Please tell me exactly which algorithm, hyperparameters, processing chain and data sources are able to make better decisions than humans in ethical matters - reliably, consistently and with no regard to who is running the algorithm. What kind of questions do you want to answer and what kind of structure do you expect the answer to have?
You can’t answer, because the candidate algorithms are trade secrets, “under active development” or can only be run when babysit by trained specialists? Then it’s just a giant “Computer says no” where the implicit assumptions and biases of a relatively small group of humans sold as “objecive” or even “superhuman” by putting some layers of indirection between them and the public.
The big metaphor for life, mind, the universe, god, keeps changing. It was animals/spirits, then it was clockwork/machines, then it was information/data, and this article is a reflection of that. We keep thinking we are on the cusp of ultimate understanding, until our metaphor maxes out and we realize we’re not.
I believe the next metaphor will be ecology. The notion that an information processing agent can be understood in isolation from the ecology in which it operates (both in terms of energy/mechanics and information) is getting harder and harder to sustain. And the ecologies we humans rely on are dying quickly. We’ll need to turn that around sooner or later, by insight or by force.
The notion that an information processing agent can be understood in isolation from the ecology in which it operates (both in terms of energy/mechanics and information) is getting harder and harder to sustain
That is my main objection to the Chinese Room mental experiment. A room is not embodied, so it can’t learn like us. But an AI agent could be embodied and develop intelligent behavior.
The article is hyperbolic in the extreme and doesn’t really reflect the reality of these systems.
However. It is an important read, in my opinion.
Because this is well rendered and well formatted summation of the rhetoric people use to argue against scaled analytics and the collection of data. Understanding the counter arguments and motivation behind this article is a good step to interfacing with people uncomfortable with these ideas.
I think it’s important because it flags that there is a school of thought (that the author doesn’t side with or against) that denies humanism and theism and instead owns that observations and calculations are a better way of understanding our place in the universe than empathy with the human spirit or the purpose of a divine spirit.
This is an inversion of science’s place in ontology and epistemology (I hope I’ve got the spelling that indicates theory of knowledge, not vaginal surgery), previously science has not spoken about our inner lives and destiny, now people believe that it can say everything.
This is a shift that has happened twice before so it’s quite something.
For the past few centuries humanism has seen the human heart as the supreme source of authority not merely in politics but in every other field of activity. From infancy we are bombarded with a barrage of humanist slogans counselling us: “Listen to yourself, be true to yourself, trust yourself, follow your heart, do what feels good.”
I’m just reading a book by Norbert Elias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Elias), who, when writing about his theory of the “civilizing process”, stated exactly the contrary. More exactly, he’s saying that we only listened to our hearts/true self/passions back when we were “un-civilized”, like in the Middle Ages, but after the State monopolized the use of force and the collecting of taxes and after the “société de cour” formed people had to suppress their passions/heart and had to “rationalize” their external actions.
typical article of someone really smart and educated that want to talk about something he doesn’t really understand, but he doesn’t know that.
We’ve had free will debates here on HN before, and the submitted story is usually quickly debunked as pompous and arrogant pseudo-intellectuallism. A flavour of jaded post college nihilism. Fatalistic points of view can jump off a cliff if they find their circumstances so constrained, and without option.
