Pure Intentions, Or Why I Dislike Networking

When I say "networking" as in the title of this post, I am talking primarily about the way people in the professional world make and use acquaintances as part of their jobs.

Almost every job on the planet benefits from networking - making personal connections with people who can help you out in your work. Almost every job needs at least some degree of networking to function, and it can be very difficult to get a job in the first place without knowing at least some of the right people - a resumé and a good interview are usually trumped by a personal recommendation. All of this makes very good psychological sense as well, since we are a social species who evolved in relatively small, insular communities (in comparison with the modern world, that is).

But I don't like it.
I idealistically think that the person who gets the job should be the person who can best do the job, not the person who is being recommended by someone closest to the employer. As far as I can tell most people agree with this sentiment, at least superficially.

I am not a very socially capable person. I accept that social situations are not my natural environment, and I have put significant effort into gaining what little skill I have at present. I am never going to be a politician, or a talent agent, or a sales representative.

There are many jobs for which it makes good sense to require a high degree of social skill, and there are many jobs whose content largely is networking itself. In these cases it would be ludicrous to attempt to remove networking requirements to obtaining the job.

Even in academia, my chosen direction, a certain degree of networking is sensible to have should one desire recognition or a position with administrative duties.

But networking itself, when not in a job which explicitly involves it, seems disingenuous and distasteful to me.

When making a new friend, most people won't immediately consider how the friendship could benefit their career - that's considered a form of using the person.
There is clearly a difference between making a friend so that they will be useful, and making a friend who later happens to be useful. Right?

The ways in which a person could be useful in furtherance of one's own goals are usually fairly simple and easy to see. As such, we don't even have to consciously recognize potential uses in order for them to be considered in our decision-making process. These considerations are likely to result in biases through which people make friends with people who are likely to be useful in future, without the moral penalties associated with doing this consciously.

Here's where the problem comes in: reasonable expectations of knowledge, even in retrospect, should apply to present considerations.

In more detail, when considering whether or not asking a favour of a friend "counts as using them" in an inappropriate sense, we should take into account what we would reasonably have known throughout the prior relationship, even if we don't have a particular memory of recognizing that knowledge.

For example, if I ask a friend of mine to help me with my computer, I should take into account the fact that I knew he was a software engineer when we first met, even though I didn't specifically think at the time of him helping solve my computer problems.

Seen carefully, this results in my preference for paying a stranger to do a job over having a friend do it for free.

Oddly, none of this presents any barriers to my doing things to help the careers of my friends, but this is simply another situation where I find it morally unpleasant to accept reciprocation, for the simple reason that it is morally distasteful to expect it.

Rights of the Individual vs. Rights of the Individual

It is a staple of science fiction to tell a tale in which artificial intelligences must struggle to attain equal rights with humans. It is also commonplace to recognize that, if a human being uploads their consciousness to a machine, the rights are carried with that consciousness.

People find it much easier to accept that an artificial intelligence deserves rights when that intelligence inhabits a body. This is, of course, a natural by-product of the way our brain interprets other humans as moral agents - our moral sense evolved to recognize other humans as deserving of rights.

When speculating about a consciousness being uploaded from its originating human body to a machine, we usually assume that either the body is then rendered effectively comatose (a shell or doll, so to speak) thus removing moral obligations to the body, or we assume that the consciousness is copied to the machine while also remaining in the body, creating two beings each deserving of moral consideration.

I would like to consider the former situation - suppose that a human consciousness is uploaded to a machine and the body then retains its neural ability to regulate breathing, heartbeat, and other unconscious brain functions, but does not keep memories or even acquired skills. Is the body then truly no longer deserving of moral consideration?

Shouldn't we then treat this body as a somewhat comatose individual? In this case, this "uninhabited" body may very well relearn motor skills and language as an infant would (alright, neuroplasticity in adults is much lower than in infants, so it could relearn these things as a developmentally challenged infant would), then it might proceed to develop another new personality. Should we dismiss this possibility outright and simply treat this body as a shell?

I think these ideas certainly merit consideration, but are highly unlikely to be resolved until such time as we actually develop some form of consciousness-uploading technology.

Additionally, the primary source for my thinking about these ideas is the series Dollhouse which, near the end of season 1, poses the question of whether or not the mind has an obligation to the body.

Clearly, of course, all this presupposes that mind and body are, in fact, separable in some meaningful sense, which I believe to be a reasonable idea but clearly not yet supported by evidence.

Comments on Copyright and File-Sharing

Article found here.

Here are my counterpoints.

1. Pirate Bay, one of the flagships of the anti-copyright movement, makes thousands of euros from advertising on its site, while maintaining its anti-establishment "free music" rhetoric.
   
   Proving that there is money in distribution of music without directly charging for it. Besides, who could look at an ad-covered site and think that they're not making at least some money?
   
   
2. AllOfMP3.com, the well-known Russian web site, has not been licensed by a single IFPI member, has been disowned by right holder groups worldwide and is facing criminal proceedings in Russia.
   
   This is not an argument against file-sharing or in favour of copyright holders, this is simply stating what the current law is. Everyone knows that downloading most music without paying for it is illegal.
   
   
3. Organized criminal gangs and even terrorist groups use the sale of counterfeit CDs to raise revenue and launder money.
   
   Okay, so why shouldn't music be downloaded? Criminal gangs and terrorist groups would be making money on counterfeit CDs regardless of the law and taking away peoples' ability to freely download the music illegally online will only encourage them to buy the counterfeit CDs (as they are still cheaper than the originals). Once again, this is actually an argument for making file-sharing legal.
   
   
4. Illegal file-sharers don’t care whether the copyright-infringing work they distribute is from a major or independent label.
   
   Good. So why can't I find MC Frontalot on any bittorrent site?
   
   
5. Reduced revenues for record companies mean less money available to take a risk on "underground" artists and more inclination to invest in "bankers" like American Idol stars.
   
   ... Which lets those "underground" artists take the small amount of time necessary to learn how to record and distribute their own music, put it up freely or cheaply online and make more money on donations than they ever would from royalties off of label-sponsored music.
   Record companies are obsolete. The services they provide which are not obsolete (recording studios, distribution, networking and training) can all be acquired more cheaply and more easily by individual providers none of whom will ask you to sign over your ownership of your music.
   Even without illegal file-sharing, large record companies serve no purpose anymore.
   
   
6. ISPs often advertise music as a benefit of signing up to their service, but facilitate the illegal swapping on copyright infringing music on a grand scale.
   
   ISP advertising cannot be an argument against file-sharing, but this does serve as a reason to look more closely at your ISP's business practices. Just remember that nobody, even an ISP, can stop an intelligent person from sending and receiving whatever they want without blocking all of their activity and access.
   
   
7. The anti-copyright movement does not create jobs, exports, tax revenues and economic growth–it largely consists of people pontificating on a commercial world about which they know little.
   
   Should jobs be created artificially? If the jobs are not necessary why should they exist at all?
   I would also like to point out that if you jump back in time a few hundred years and replace the word "copyright" with the word "slavery", the argument retains all the potency it has at present.
   No, I am not attempting to equate copyright with slavery, there is obviously no comparison. What I am attempting to do by making the previous point is to say that the argument as given has no weight at all.
   
   
8. Piracy is not caused by poverty. Professor Zhang of Nanjing University found the Chinese citizens who bought pirate products were mainly middle- or higher-income earners.
   
   First, let me say that I agree that piracy is not caused by poverty. I believe that part of piracy is caused by overcharging on the part of the distributor. Copyright on an artistic work is a legally enforced monopoly on that particular work, thus squelching all competition and removing the capitalist incentive for the copyright holder to provide prices which are in any way reasonable.
   Of course, a total lack of copyright means that people need not pay for artistic works at all, thus removing all benefit from such creativity (the capitalist argues). I am not going to take the route of arguing that creative works benefit society as a whole even if nobody profits from it (although I do believe there is merit in such an argument). Instead, I will say simply that distribution and replication of artistic works remain profitable industries without copyright and regain the competition they lack under copyright law. Additionally, people generally like to reward people who reward them so if art were no longer looked on as a business venture, many artists would be able to make a living on donations from people who enjoyed their work. Given a reasonable reliable attribution database, donation-supported artwork could become the norm and could even become somewhat profitable in its own time.
   
   Additionally, I would like to point out that the study mentioned deals with people who "bought pirate products", not those who obtained them for free, thus once again removing its relevance to the file-sharing side of this debate.
   
   
9. Most people know it is wrong to file-share copyright infringing material but won't stop till the law makes them, according to a recent study by the Australian anti-piracy group MIPI.
   
   I would like to make one correction here:
   Most people know it is illegal to file-share copyright infringing material...
   Immoral and illegal are not always identical. I am quite aware that unlicensed distribution of copyrighted material is illegal, but I do not consider it to be in any way immoral.
   
   
10. P2P networks are not hotbeds for discovering new music. It is popular music that is illegally file-shared most frequently.
    
    True, popular music is illegally shared most frequently. The distinction here is that if you are buying all the music you listen to, you run out of money before you get all the popular music you want and therefore have nothing left to spend on new music. With illegal file-sharing you can easily find all the popular music as well as thousands of relatively unpopular artists each being shared by a small number of people. This gives you more selection of non-popular music than you are likely to get elsewhere and leaves money available to buy something you can't find illegally shared.

In case you can't tell, I am in favour of the complete abolishment of copyright law. Please keep that bias in mind when considering my arguments, but also don't let it prevent you from that consideration.