Fleet of Worlds

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Chris Hibbert

Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner co-wrote Fleet of Worlds, a new novel in Niven's Known Space series. The book is a finalist for the Prometheus Award (voting is going on right now; the award will be presented at the Denver WorldCon in August.) According to Wikipedia, the book follows shortly after the events of the short story "At the Core".

The book's setting and some characters will seem familiar to people who have read most of Niven's earlier Known Space stories. The story line involves humans and Puppeteers. The focal characters are a group of humans descended from travellers on a ship captured long ago by the Puppeteers, and kept isolated from their history and the rest of humanity. Nessus (a character who appears in a few other Known Space stories) is leading a team of humans to explore the future path of the Puppeteers' fleet of worlds and ensure there are no dangers there. Thus, these captive humans end up with an unusual degree of freedom and access to historical information normally hidden from their society. They ferret out the truth about their history, and engineer a rebellion against the Puppeteers.

The libertarian appeal is obvious—rebellion against authority—but it's muted here since the rebellion seems to start and end with the focal characters. Their compatriots who have been left behind during the voyage of exploration don't learn the truth until the explorers have planned out how they will gain their release from the Puppeteers. There are barely hints of any dissatisfaction with their lives; the Puppeteers have done a good job of keeping their history hidden, and isolating them from any knowledge of the location of the rest of humanity. Once they find out, it's obvious that they want to return, and the Puppeteers quickly acquiesce, reasoning that they're better off without troublesome humans around, now that they realize that they're captives and not guests.

The story is reasonably well told, has interesting twists and surprises, and contains many likable characters. In addition, we learn a lot about the Puppeteers (procreation, home world, how General Products Hulls work, government, etc.) It's a reasonably fun story, but without much libertarian interest.

Two Books on Progress: "Farewell to Alms" and "Birth of Plenty"

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Chris Hibbert

I recently read two more books on the question of progress that had very different approaches to the subject. The two were William Bernstein's The Birth of Plenty , and Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms. (Marginal Revolution had a long discussion on the latter book. It's worth reading if you have time.)

Clark's main argument is reasonably straightforward: Before the industrial revolution, the world's economies were all caught in a malthusian trap: any increase in productivity increased population and drove living standards down. The only (short-term) changes that improved living standards were things that reduced population: war, famine, disease. There was a gradual accretion of technological improvements over time, and something switched over in the 16th or 17th century in Europe (and later elsewhere) leading to a situation in which progress was substantial enough that societies left the malthusian trap, and people gradually became richer. The key according to Clark was that in the malthusian era in England, the wealthy were out-reproducing the poor, causing a general downward mobility, which spread the social mores (and possibly the genes) for more productive behavior more widely there. It's crucial to the argument that in England commerce was the road to wealth, so the values and behavior that were spreading were those that are the foundational for commercial and entrepreneurial success.

Bernstein's story isn't as deep; he's interested in intermediate causes rather than root causes. Bernstein argues that economic growth occurs only when four institutions are all present in a society: property rights, the scientific worldview, access to capital, and high-speed communication. He provides a very engaging account of the history of these institutions, and a plausible argument that they are associated with growth, but the evidence that they are both necessary and sufficient is lacking. As history, I found the book to be very well written. Bernstein depicts several episodes in history quite colorfully: the sprint from the invention of telegraphy in the 1830s to stock tickers in 1867 was wonderful. His evidence that the US victory over Japan in the Pacific was dominated by productivity differences is also convincing. The two nations had roughly equal fleets at the beginning of the war, and the early battles caused attrition to each that were due to the vagaries of fate and individual commanders. But four years later, the Japanese had built two new carriers to shore up their losses, and the US had built sixteen. In smaller ships, the US was outproducing the Japanese at a much higher rate. At that point, fate and individual talent stop mattering

Both authors are concerned with the now omnipresent question raised by Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel: why in some places and not others; why did those particular countries come out on top, and what could the developing countries do to catch up? Bernstein says that development of the four institutions is all it takes. Of course, prescribing it is easier than implementing it, and the biggest step missing from his argument is evidence that it's possible for a country to decide to take this path and succeed. According to the evidence he marshals, it has only happened in the past when the institutional framework was nearly complete, and the missing ingredients fell into place by happenstance. This makes it sound like an experiment worth trying, if there were a country on the verge of having that set of institutions, and the political ability to make the changes. But it doesn't seem like a prescription that can (or ought to, at this point) be forced on all underdeveloped nations wholesale.

Clark's answer is more pessimistic (and less culturally neutral.) Some countries' citizens work more efficiently than others. Clark carefully rules out the obvious possible causes: differences in available capital or in training. He's left saying that the difference is in the workers themselves, though it "can be firmly established" that the differences "stem from the local social environment". Although Clark refuses to use the word himself, the conclusion he leads you to is that poor countries have lazy workers. It takes more workers to do the same amount of work, and no amount of training or social pressure seems to change that. Employers have tried a number of tactics, and the only approach that seems to work reliably is to expect it to take two or three people to carry out the tasks that would be done by one worker in a first-world country. Clark is unhappy with the conclusion, and doesn't proffer any explanations of root causes.

My conclusion? Progress was a complex event historically, and there are lots more details to learn. In the contemporary world, there are significant differences between those who continue to advance and those who don't, and we still haven't found a recipe for bridging the gap. We know that it's sometimes possible, but we don't know of any interventions that could even be said to be "likely" to work. There are changes that seem to lead to improvements (improving access to markets, increasing protections for property ownership, better telecommunications and transportation infrastructure) but they don't work reliably, and these aren't simple to achieve. They take time and significant effort, and can be derailed in a variety of unpredictable ways.

The only good news for those below the curve is that progress is usually much faster for those playing catch-up (once they start on the accelerating path).

Puzzle Contest June 14th

For several years, I've been entering the US Puzzle Championship annual contest. I've never placed very highly, but I enjoy the puzzles they provide. If you are into puzzles, I recommend it. I try to complete as many puzzles as I can in the 2.5 hours they provide, but you can take as long as you like. If you want to compete for time and submit your answers, you have to pre-register. Afterwards, they make the puzzles available. For instance, you can download several years' worth of past puzzle tests.

CFTC Requests Input on Regulating Prediction Markets

The CFTC asked for comments on whether they should legalize and regulate prediction markets. I haven't joined the discussion yet, because I'm seriously torn about whether it would be a good idea. But I feel compelled to quibble with something Dave Pennock said: "It's not often that an industry in its infancy cries out for more government oversight."

It's actually quite common. The term in the economics literature that includes this is regulatory capture. When there's a regulatory body specific to a particular industry, it's very common for industry to be the major source of expertise in the area, and so for the regulators to be reasonably friendly with the businesses. The businesses can work for regulation that limits entry, and cuts down on competition that reduces profits, and they can work together to ensure that public relations problems are addressed in a cohesive way. But cutting down on competition often means fewer choices for consumers by way of tighter controls on what products are offered.

In our case, the thing I worry about is a narrow ruling that only "socially valuable" questions can be asked, and an expensive process for deciding what innovative questions can be posed. It seems likely that some interests will work to ensure that sports and entertainment questions be declared off-limits. The companies that have the strongest interest in fighting that faction are mostly persona non grata in the CFTC's eyes, since they currently operate outside the law (TradeSports) or outside the country (BetFair ).

The narrower the set of approved questions, or the more expensive the process of getting approval, the less chance that markets will be commercially successful. I think the experiments within companies have indicated (though not proven) that a mix of valuable and popular claims is necessary in order to attract continuing participation.

My biggest worry about fighting for CFTC regulation at this point is that they'll approve something narrow, and this won't produce enough successes to demonstrate that loosening the restrictions over time would be beneficial. The alternative is to continue to find ways to introduce markets under the radar and demonstrate their value to the academic audience, which could lead to a friendlier hearing in a more distant future after prediction markets have demonstrated social value and little risk of harm.

Of course the other likely outcome is that the novel experiments don't happen because of the threat of litigation or regulation. But that seems unlikely given the growth in internal markets within companies. I think there's more likelihood of long-term success without regulation than with it, and we're better off waiting until the chances that the regulations will provide a broad approval are significantly higher.

Zocalo News

I've been busy with a major home remodel recently, so I haven't had a chance to crow in public about some great news for Zocalo, my open source prediction market project. I have two consulting contracts now that are paying for ongoing improvements in the software. Together they are keeping me busy full-time.

I have been working on development of Zocalo since 2004, including a period of 18 months as a Research Fellow at CommerceNet. I've been busy with personal matters for much of the last 8 months (a major home remodel), so I wasn't able to put in as much time as I'd have liked recently, but I've been working on the code again full-time for about two months.

I'm pleased to be able to say that I have two consulting contracts at this point. I'm working with a group at Chapman University and another university I'm not allowed to mention in public announcements. The Chapman team is led by Dave Porter, who I worked with while he was at George Mason University. Most of the Experimentalists from the GMU Economics department have moved (or are in the process of moving) to Chapman in Orange County, California. Dave has been using Zocalo for economics experiments since 2005, while I was at CommerceNet. He has plans (and budget) to expand Zocalo to support a variety of experiments that he'd like to do. The software continues to be used at George Mason as well.

The other group is probably familiar to most of you, though my contract says I can't use their name for publicity without approval (which they didn't give). Suffice it to say, I'm happy to be working with this group; the professor in charge has been working on market-related software systems for almost 20 years.

These consulting contracts support my continued development of Zocalo, and both groups are fully supportive of the open source approach. Having these groups actively working with the software, requesting changes, and reviewing progress will contribute substantially to the usefulness and usability of the code. The fact that one group is working with the experiment configuration and the other with the prediction markets ensures that both will continue to be enhanced and get more robust as they are being used.

This announcement is being cross-posted to midasoracle.org

C. J. Cherryh: Rider at the Gate

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Chris Hibbert

I really enjoyed C. J. Cherryh's Rider at the Gate and will be looking for the sequel. I've enjoyed all of what I've read previously by Cherryh, and so I was surprised at my reaction when I recently read her Rusalka. But now that I look at her bibliography, I see that I've only read her books that are categorized as science fiction, even when they seemed on the fantasy side to me. I would certainly have categorized Rider as fantasy, since it depends heavily on ESP; but that's the only magic that is present. And to my vague recollection Wave Without a Shore seemed like fantasy as well.

But anyway, it was the characters in Rider that had me captured, and the characters in Rusalka that never came to life for me. In a lot of Cherryh's stories, the fascinating thing is the way she juxtaposes characters of different species and makes them all more interesting by their contrasts. (And shows us different facets of being human through this lens.) In both these series, all the characters are human (discounting the psychically active horses in Rider. They have tastes and personalities, but only develop goals and plans when allied with a rider.)

Perhaps the difference is that the characters in Rider are actively trying to solve their problems, while the characters in Rusalka are reluctant heroes. Yes, that's certainly a part of it; I've never liked reluctant hero stories, going back to Donaldson's Thomas Covenant series, most of which I read in college. While I was reading Rusalka I thought my distaste was also because of the dark air of the story: I'm no fan of horror. But Rider is nearly as dark and brooding. I think the characters' gung-ho attitudes drain the power of the darkness.

Anyway, I'm pleased that I've found another series of books by Cherryh that I want to follow up on, and hopefully you'll have learned something about these books whether or not your tastes run along the same lines as mine.

James Flynn: What is Intelligence?

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Chris Hibbert

In his new book, What is Intelligence?, James Flynn tries to explain a few things. First he wants to explain what intelligence is and what its components are, second he wants to explain his new understanding of the Flynn effect, and what it implies about genes and intelligence, and thirdly, he wants to convince us that what The Bell Curve said about intelligence and race isn't supported by these new understandings. He succeeds admirably at the latter two; his success in explaining the nature of intelligence is limited.

For anyone who isn't familiar with the Flynn Effect, I'll repeat the findings briefly. More than two decades ago, Flynn noticed that IQs have been going up over time. About 3-5 points per decade, independent of culture, location, sex and race. The people who write intelligence tests have known for quite a while; they reissue their tests every decade or so, and "re-norm" the results. Since the definition of IQ is that 100 is the average score across the population (which population? That's a separate question; read the book if you want the details) they have to measure the results for a standardized group, and set the scoring so the current test will give the right results.

One of the consequences that matters to Flynn is the implication for death penalty cases, which he has been brought into recently. The implication is that if you give someone a test that is 10 to 15 years out of date, their score will be artificially inflated, since they are being measured by the norms of an earlier period. The obvious argument among defenders of capital cases is that death row inmates should be tested by up-to-date standards so as not to inflate their scores and accidentally rate them as competent to stand trial when they are in fact borderline or below it. Flynn points out that it's common for schools in disadvantaged areas and for prisons to not replace their existing stock of test booklets when a revision is issued, so they can be significantly out-of-date, which artificially inflates the scores and negates one escape route.

Like all good scientific revolutions, Flynn starts with four paradoxes arising from the combined data about rising scores.

• Different sub-tests (e.g. vocabulary, spatial reasoning, abstract analogies, pattern matching) have shown different increases. What's different about the areas in which intelligence is growing the fastest?
• Given the size of the increase, why doesn't it seem clear in everyday interactions that each generation is significantly smarter? 20 years is almost 10 IQ points, so two generations is nearly 20.
• How did our ancestors get by if only 100 years ago, everyone was mentally retarded by current standards?
• The changes are so rapid that they can't be genetic, so they must be due to environmental changes, yet studies comparing twins raised together and apart show that environment makes little difference to adult intelligence. Why does the environment make so much difference in some cases and so little in others?

Flynn's resolution is that the environmental differences that matter are large-scale and societal. He also argues that the societal differences compound, so even though small changes are scattered throughout our schooling, entertainment, child-rearing practices, employment expectations, and hobbies, the effects can be pervasive. The area of change that Flynn pinpoints is reliance on abstraction. This turns out to be a common thread among the sub-tests with the highest increases. Our ancestors dealt with the world much more concretely, and modern child rearing, education and entertainment all exercise our growing competence at abstraction. The results from twin studies are dominated by society-wide practices, and show that which family one is raised in, or which schools one goes to don't matter nearly as much as which era, and which society. An agrarian society that doesn't expect its children to grow up and leave the farm raises them to focus on the here and now. Expectations change when horizons open up, and we should expect every society to undergo a Flynn effect as people expect the next generation to live in cities, work in information-intensive jobs, and socialize with people who aren't all doing the same work their ancestors have done since time immemorial.

Ultimately, Flynn's book provides a satisfying resolution to the problems raised by IQ differences. The implications of Murray and Herrnstein's The Bell Curve for racial differences have been neutralized. Not by ethical arguments or posturing, but by a careful analysis of the data. Murray and Herrnstein were led astray by the surface implications of the data when analyzed within generations. If they hadn't written up their analysis carefully and thoroughly, Flynn wouldn't have been impelled to revisit the data and produce a sounder conclusion. Murray and Herrnstein's conclusions weren't original with them; their contribution was their willingness to explain an unpopular idea carefully enough that its limitations would become visible when the right context became apparent.

Murray and Herrnstein's other conclusions still stand: modern societies do an extremely good job of separating out the (relatively small, we now know) within-generation differences in intelligence, and directing people to different pursuits and occupations. The consequences is a shortage of general problem solvers in areas where intelligence is less valuable, while our institutions evolved in circumstances where general problem solvers were widely distributed.

One of the big new features of Leopard, the current release of Apple's OS X is Spaces, and I was really looking forward to using it. Unfortunately, the actual details fell short of my expectations, and I have turned it off. I've used similar features before (under X Windows, for instance) and being able to organize a larger virtual desktop can make handling many simultaneous open windows easier.

I currently have 22 application windows either open on my desktop, or collapsed in the dock. It's not unusual for there to be 10-15 open browser windows, but right now I have only 8. I have a couple of terminal windows for talking to remote computers, three emacs windows (two currently collapsed), Word, ITunes, two for Numbers (Apple's spreadsheet program), one Preview pane, Idea, Thunderbird, and Shrook (blog reader). I'd expect to separate tasks by project, so I might have a Space for tracking Real Estate, one for working on Zocalo, one for reading blogs and web pages, and so on. Without Spaces, each shelved project takes up several slots in the dock, making it harder to find whatever I'm looking to do next.

When I attempted to navigate between applications using the keyboard, Spaces would throw me around somewhat arbitrarily, breaking whatever train of thought I had going. If I used keyboard commands to switch applications, I expect the system to choose a window for that application that is already open in the current space, or if there are none, to allow me to use Command-N or Command-O to open a new one. Instead, it would arbitrarily choose an open window for that application and switch me to whatever space contained it.

In the end, I decided that I'm better off with a cluttered dock, and a single desktop than with their implementation of Spaces. Maybe the next version will do better.

Harry Turtledove: The Gladiator

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Chris Hibbert

Harry Turtledove's The Gladiator, provides a much better entrypoint to libertarian science fiction for young people than The Walton Street Tycoons, which was nominated for the Prometheus award last year. The Gladiator is part of Turtledove's Crosstime Traffic series (aimed at young adults), which I hadn't noticed before.

The main characters of this volume are high school students in an alternate Italy in which the Soviet Union won the cold war and most of the world is communist. These youngsters have all been brought up to believe that capitalism is a far worse system than communism, which they can see leaves a lot to be desired. Since they never get a glimpse of capitalism, they have no concept that there could be advantages to it. Into this milieu some visitors arrive from an alternate reality (presumably ours). They come in the guise of a chain of game stores offering simple face-to-face fantasy games of building and running railroads, managing sports teams, or battling dragons. Their plan is to gently undermine the world-wide commuist regime by teaching a few people at a time that capitalism has its good points, too. This is probably the most fantastic aspect of the novel. No, I take it back; there are certainly people who would believe that that strategy might work.

Anyway, the Italian anti-subversion squads figure out what is going on and stage a series of raids to capture the stores' operators and shutter the stores. One of the visitors from the alternate timeline is away from his store at the time of the raid, and has to figure out how to get back, leading a few sympathetic and helpful youngsters further astray.

The device of having the viewpoint characters believe wholeheartedly in communism works well. Turtledove shows us how easy it is to get people to follow a unanimous crowd. Everyone doubts that the system works well, but everyone also knows that there are spies and informers everywhere, so no one voices their doubts. The official line is that Communism is the only system that works, and since no one speaks up for Capitalism, everyone assumes that if there's a better system than the one they see around them, it must be in some other direction, since the failings of Capitalism are so widely repeated.

The characters are believable high school students, worried about popularity, grades, and other students jockeying for power in student politics. (Though in this world, student politics can lead to real-world power.) They learn lessons from plausible circumstances, sometimes not seeing the whole picture immediately, and other times reaching a conclusion that other events have prepared them for. Quite convincing, and very well written. It's not grand space opera, but you can cover big topics in a small scope, as Terry Pratchett has shown with his Discworld novels. Turtledove does at least as well, and paints a convincing picture of young people living under oppression and yearning for freedom.

The Guardener's Tale, Bruce Boston

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Chris Hibbert

Bruce Boston's The Guardener's Tale is up for the Prometheus award for this year, but I'm not particularly impressed with it. The first part recapitulates Ira Levin's This Perfect Day, but a lot more woodenly.

There is a clever section in the middle that feels more like Total Recall, except that the protagonist is struggling to break out of the dream vacation. This portion actually lives up to the blurb's billing; it's reminiscent of the best of Philip K. Dick. The protagonist wants to convince his wife that they should break up, so he wants to ruin their "dream vacation". He soon discovers that the dream is heavily scripted and his wife's part is played by a zombie. He concludes that they are in separate simulations, and that he can't do anything to affect her experience.

When they return from the vacation, the dreary story-telling resumes. From this point, the plot is mostly predictable. Eventually most of the characters are mind-wiped or pacified and returned to their proper place in society. A few have happier outcomes, but Boston doesn't make them very plausible.

The story is framed as the report of one of the guards (the Guardener of the title), but the viewpoint isn't maintained consistently. (Sometimes unusual features of the society are explained from a modern viewpoint, and other times as if by someone who grew up with them.) The guard's change of heart isn't motivated enough to be convincing, so the framing falls flat in the one place it might have changed the way we felt about the teller of the tale.

Overall, this was a disappointing book. The story is definitely a dystopia, but it wasn't very inventive, and it didn't hold my attention very tightly. I don't think there were any new insights about how tyrannies arise, how they persevere or fail, or why some people suffer quietly and others don't.

Adam Roberts: Gradisil

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Chris Hibbert

In Adam Roberts's Gradisil the pioneers who settle near space around the Earth fight for their political freedom, yet somehow the viewpoint characters are unsympathetic enough that it's hard to root for them. The story follows several generations of the family that leads the fight; their cause is worthy, but they're so dysfunctional and spend so much of their time pushing at cross purposes to the higher goal that I was willing to give up on them several times.

The SF is solid; the idea is that the magnetic fields around the planet are real and coherent enough that engines can be built cheaply to exploit them and climb into space. This puts near Earth orbits within the grasp of individuals. It's a new frontier, away from the control of any particular government, so the people who move there are loners, escapists, and fringe cases of many kinds. There aren't many commercial opportunities to exploit at first, and it's hard to track the ships and stations, so the society that emerges is extremely loose-knit for a long time. There is some sense of community and neighborliness, but people who want to be left alone are left alone.

Eventually the governments figure out that having so many misfits flying overhead in uncontrolled space is a concern, and they decide to pacify and take over. The uplanders resist in a passive way that exploits their strengths, or at least relies on their smallest weaknesses. I loved the depiction of a war that is controlled by the lawyers: all the generals understand that winning on the battlefield but losing in the courtroom is not winning at all, so strategy and tactics have to be approved by the lawyers before any warlike actions can be taken.

The actual battle scenes, when they finally occur are plausible. A new environment and new technology lead to new tactics. The invaders aren't as familiar with the technology or the environment, so their expectations can be exploited by the native defenders.

The bottom line is that the Science Fiction is plausible and provides setting rather than being the focal point, the good guys are fighting for something important, but the viewpoint characters, even as they mature and are replaced by their progeny, are hard to sympathize with. The action is interesting, but it's a long struggle to get through the whole thing.

As a nominee for the Prometheus award, it lacks any explicit or implicit invocation of themes of freedom. This is a glaring weakness, since the opportunities were rampant. The SF was reasonably well developed, and that has to count in the book's favor, but I didn't enjoy the character development. I don't see Gradisil as a strong contender.

Ken MacLeod: The Execution Channel

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Chris Hibbert

Ken MacLeod's The Execution Channel is a near-future story from a recently diverged history. The science fiction is minimal, but sufficient to keep the book off the main-stream shelves. It's an adrenaline-pumping adventure/chase story that takes a distinct political stance against the recent growth of the security state.

The story follows government operatives and members of the counterculture in the aftermath of a series of apparent terror incidents in Britain. The first incident might be a nuclear explosion at a military base, but one of the main characters (participating in a peacenik stakeout at the base) saw and photographed delivery of a strange device before the explosion. She has a brother in the military who blogs about daily life, and her father works in intelligence. We follow them as various international government agencies track and connect them, and then decide what actions to take to contain them.

This novel has an unusual feel for MacLeod, since it is mostly conventional fiction in a near present setting. The divergent history is only present to argue that national politics doesn't make as big a difference to how events unfold as people think. I thought he pulled this part off well, making a surprising argument with only tiny effects on the story. The other SF aspect of the story is the effect behind the explosions; since a handful of the characters spend their waking hours spreading disinformation, the hints about the resolution are easy to discount on first reading.

Mostly MacLeod has found a good readable adventure story to wrap around a commentary on ubiquitous surveillance, government malfeasance, torture, and current events. The story is quite readable, and the themes will resonate for libertarians and other anti-authoritarians and privacy zealots. I think it's a good candidate to win the Prometheus award this year.

Peter McCluskey had a different reaction to the book.