Monday, January 31, 2011

Essays by Julian Assange- His logic and reasoning.

CRYPTOME -10 July 2010

These essays on conspiracies by Julian Assange (me@iq.org) were retrieved website iq.org. The first from
Novermber 10, 2006, and the second at archive.org, dated December 3, 2006.
http://iq.org/conspiracies.pdf
http://web.archive.org/web/20070110200827/http://iq.org/conspiracies.pdf

Julian Assange: http://web.archive.org/web/20071020051936/http://iq.org/

Sun 31 Dec 2006 : The non linear effects of leaks on unjust systems of governance




You may want to read The Road to Hanoi or Conspiracy as Governance [second
essay following]; an obscure motivational document, almost useless in light of its
decontextualization and perhaps even then. But if you read this latter document
while thinking about how different structures of power are differentially affected
by leaks (the defection of the inner to the outer) its motivations may become clearer.

The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and
paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption.

Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who  seek to replace them with more open forms of governance.

Only revealed injustice can be answered; for man to do anything intelligent he has to know what's actually going on.

More: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://iq.org


State and Terrorist Conspiracies

me @ iq.org

November 10, 2006

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul this unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of statesmanship.
(President Theodore Roosevelt)

While you here do snoring lie,Open-eyed conspiracy His time doth take.
(The Tempest; Ariel at II, i)

Introduction

To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly for if wehave lea rned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed. We must think beyond those who have gone before us, and discover technological changes that embolden us with ways to act in which our forebears could not.
Firstly we must understand what aspect of government or neocorporatist behavior we wish to change or remove. Secondly we must develop a way of thinking about this behavior that is strong enough carry us through the mire of politically distorted language, and into a position of clarity. Finally must use these insights to inspire within us and others a course of ennobling, and effective action.

Authoritarian power is maintained by conspiracy Conspiracy, Conspire: make secret plans jointly to commit a harmful act; working together to bring about a particular result, typically to someone’s detriment. ORIGIN late Middle English : from Old French conspirer, from Latin conspirare agree, plot, from con- together with spirare breathe.

The best party is but a kind of conspiracy against the rest of the nation. (Lord Halifax)

1Where details are known as to the inner workings of authoritarian regimes,

we see conspiratorial interactions among the political elite not merely for preferment

or favor within the regime but as the primary planning methodology behind

maintaining or strengthening authoritarian power.

Authoritarian regimes give rise to forces which oppose them by pushing

against the individual and collective will to freedom, truth and self realization.

Plans which assist authoritarian rule, once discovered, induce resistance. Hence

these plans are concealed by successful authoritarian powers. This is enough to

define their behavior as conspiratorial.

Thus it happens in matters of state; for knowing afar off (which

it is only given a prudent man to do) the evils that are brewing,

they are easily cured. But when, for want of such knowledge, they

are allowed to grow until everyone can recognize them, there is no

longer any remedy to be found.

(The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli [1469-1527])

Terrorist conspiracies as connected graphs

Pre and post 9/11 the Maryland Procurement Office (National Security Agency

light cover for academic funding, google for grant code “MDA904”) and others

have funded mathematicians to look at terrorist conspiracies as connected graphs

(no mathematical background is needed to follow this article).

We extend this understanding of terrorist organizations and turn it on the

likes of its creators where it becomes a knife to dissect the power conspiracies

used to maintain authoritarian government.

We will use connected graphs as way to harness the spatial reasoning ability

of the brain to think in a new way about political relationships. These graphs are

easy to visualize. First take some nails (“conspirators”) and hammer them into

a board at random. Then take twine (“communication”) and loop it from nail

to nail without breaking. Call the twine connecting two nails a link. Unbroken

twine means it is possible to travel from any nail to any other nail via twine and

intermediary nails. Mathematicians say the this type of graph is connected.

Information flows from conspirator to conspirator. Not every conspirator

trusts or knows every other conspirator even though all are connected. Some

are on the fringe of the conspiracy, others are central and communicate with

many conspirators and others still may know only two conspirators but be a

bridge between important sections or groupings of the conspiracy.

Separating a conspiracy

If all links between conspirators are cut then there is no conspiracy. This is

usually hard to do, so we ask our first question: What is the minimum number

of links that must be cut to separate the conspiracy into two groups of equal

number? (divide and conquer). The answer depends on the structure of the

2conspiracy. Sometimes there are no alternative paths for conspiratorial information

to flow between conspirators, othertimes there are many. This is a useful

and interesting characteristic of a conspiracy. For instance, by assassinating one

“bridge” conspirator, it may be possible to split the conspiracy. But we want

to say something about all conspiracies.

Some conspirators dance closer than others

Conspirators are discerning, some trust and depend each other, others say little.

Important information flows frequently through some links, trivial information

through others. So we expand our simple connected graph model to include not

only links, but their “importance”.

Return to our board-and-nails analogy. Imagine a thick heavy cord between

some nails and fine light thread between others. Call the importance, thickness

or heaviness of a link its weight. Between conspirators that never communicate

the weight is zero. The “importance” of communication passing through a

link difficult to evaluate apriori, since it its true value depends on the outcome

of the conspiracy. We simply say that the “importance” of communication

contributes to the weight of a link in the most obvious way; the weight of a

link is proportional to the amount of important communication flowing across

it. Questions about conspiracies in general won’t require us to know the weight

of any link, since that changes from conspiracy to conspiracy.

Conspiracies are cognitive devices. They are able to out

think the same group of individuals acting alone

Conspiracies take information about the world in which they operate (the conspiratorial

environment), pass it around the conspirators and then act on the

result. We can see conspiracies as a type of device that has inputs (information

about the environment) and outputs (actions intending to change or maintain

the environment).

What does a conspiracy compute? It computes the next

action of the conspiracy

Now I we ask the question: how effective is this device? Can we compare it to

itself at different times? Is the conspiracy growing stronger or weakening? This

is a question that asks us to compare two values.

Can we find a value that describes the power of a conspiracy?

We could count the number of conspirators, but that would not capture the

difference between a conspiracy and the individuals which comprise it. How do

they differ? Individuals in a conspiracy conspire. Isolated individuals do not.

We can capture that difference by adding up all the important communication

3

power.

Total conspiratorial power

This number is an abstraction. The pattern of connections in a conspiracy

is unusually unique. But by looking at this value which in indepndent of the

arrangement of conspiratorial connections we can make some generalisations.

If total conspiratorial power is zero, there is no conspiracy

If total conspiratorial power is zero, there is no information flow between the

conspirators and hence no conspiracy.

A substantial increase or decrease in total conspiratorial power almost always

means what we expect it to mean; an increase or decrease in the ability of the

conspiracy to think, act and adapt.

Separating weighted conspiracies

I now return to our earlier idea about cleaving a conspiracy into halves. Then

we looked at dividing a conspiracy into two groups of equal numbers by cutting

the links between conspirators. Now we see that a more interesting idea is to

split the total conspiratorial power in half. Since any isolated half can be viewed

as a conspiracy in its own right we can continue splitting indefinitely.

How can we reduce the ability of a conspiracy to act?

We can marginalise a conspiracy’s ability to act by decreasing total conspiratorial

power until it is no longer able to understand, and hence respond effectively

to, its environment.

We can split the conspiracy, reduce or eliminating important communication

between a few high weight links or many low weight links.

Traditional attacks on conspiratorial power groupings, such as assassination,

have cut high weight links by killing, kidnapping, blackmailing or otherwise

marginalizing or isolating some of the conspirators they were connected to.

An authoritarian conspiracy that can not think efficiently,

can not act to preserve itself against the opponents it induces

When we look at a conspiracy as an organic whole, we can see a system of

interacting organs, a body with arteries and veins whos blood may be thickened

and slowed till it falls, unable to sufficiently comprehend and control the forces

in its environment.

4

Conspiracy as Governance

me @ iq.org

December 3, 2006

Conspiracy, Conspire: make secret plans jointly to commit

a harmful act; working together to bring about a particular

result, typically to someone’s detriment. ORIGIN

late Middle English : from Old French conspirer, from

Latin conspirare agree, plot, from con- together with spirare

breathe. (OED)

The best party is but a kind of conspiracy against the rest

of the nation. (Lord Halifax)

Security gives way to conspiracy.

(Julius Caesar, act 2, sc. 3. The

soothsayer’s message, but Caesar is too busy to look at it)

Introduction

To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly for if we

have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed. We must

think beyond those who have gone before us and discover technological changes

that embolden us with ways to act in which our forebears could not.

We must understand the key generative structure of bad governance1

We must develop a way of thinking about this structure that is strong enough

to carry us through the mire of competing political moralities and into a position

of clarity.

Most importantly, we must use these insights to inspire within us and others

a course of ennobling and effective action to replace the structures that lead to

bad governance with something better.

1Everytime we witness an act that we feel to be unjust and do not act we become a party

to injustice. Those who are repeatedly passive in the face of injustice soon find their character

corroded into servility. Most witnessed acts of injustice are associated with bad governance,

since when governance is good, unanswered injustice is rare. By the progressive diminution

of a people’s character, the impact of reported, but unanswered injustice is far greater than

it may initially seem. Modern communications states through their scale, homogeneity and

excesses provide their populace with an unprecidented deluge of witnessed, but seemingly

unanswerable injustices.

Conspiracy as governance in authoritarian regimes

Where details are known as to the inner workings of authoritarian regimes, we

see conspiratorial interactions among the political elite, not merely for preferment

or favor within the regime, but as the primary planning methodology

behind maintaining or strengthening authoritarian power.

Authoritarian regimes create forces which oppose them by pushing against a

people’s will to truth, love and self-realization. Plans which assist authoritarian

rule, once discovered, induce further resistance. Hence such schemes are concealed

by successful authoritarian powers until resistance is futile or outweighed

by the efficiencies of naked power. This collaborative secrecy, working to the

detriment of a population, is enough to define their behavior as conspiratorial.

Thus it happens in matters of state; for knowing afar off (which

it is only given a prudent man to do) the evils that are brewing,

they are easily cured. But when, for want of such knowledge, they

are allowed to grow until everyone can recognize them, there is no

longer any remedy to be found.

(The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli [1469-1527])

Terrorist conspiracies as connected graphs

Pre and post 9/11 the Maryland Procurement Office2 and others have funded

mathematicians to look at terrorist conspiracies as connected graphs (no mathematical

background is needed to follow this article).

We extend this understanding of terrorist organizations and turn it on the

likes of its paymasters; transforming it into a knife to dissect the conspiracies

used to maintain authoritarian power structures.

We will use connected graphs as a way to apply our spatial reasoning abilities

to political relationships. These graphs are very easy to visualize. First take

some nails (“conspirators”) and hammer them into a board at random. Then

take twine (“communication”) and loop it from nail to nail without breaking.

Call the twine connecting two nails a link. Unbroken twine means it is possible

to travel from any nail to any other nail via twine and intermediary nails.

Mathematicians say that this type of graph is connected.

Information flows from conspirator to conspirator. Not every conspirator

trusts or knows every other conspirator even though all are connected. Some

are on the fringe of the conspiracy, others are central and communicate with

many conspirators and others still may know only two conspirators but be a

bridge between important sections or groupings of the conspiracy.

Separating a conspiracy

If all conspirators are assassinated or all the links between them are destroyed,

then a conspiracy no longer exists. This is usually requires more resources than

2National Security Agency light cover for academic funding, google for grant code

“MDA904”

2

we can deploy, so we ask our first question: What is the minimum number

of links that must be cut to separate the conspiracy into two groups of equal

number? (divide and conquer). The answer depends on the structure of the

conspiracy. Sometimes there are no alternative paths for conspiratorial information

to flow between conspirators, othertimes there are many. This is a useful

and interesting characteristic of a conspiracy. For instance, by assassinating one

“bridge” conspirator, it may be possible to split a conspiracy. But we want to

say something about all conspiracies.

Some conspirators dance closer than others

Conspirators are often discerning, for some trust and depend each other, while

others say little. Important information flows frequently through some links,

trivial information through others. So we expand our simple connected graph

model to include not only links, but their “importance”.

Return to our board-and-nails analogy. Imagine a thick heavy cord between

some nails and fine light thread between others. Call the importance, thickness

or heaviness of a link its weight. Between conspirators that never communicate

the weight is zero. The “importance” of communication passing through a

link is difficult to evaluate apriori, since its true value depends on the outcome

of the conspiracy. We simply say that the “importance” of communication

contributes to the weight of a link in the most obvious way; the weight of a

link is proportional to the amount of important communication flowing across

it. Questions about conspiracies in general won’t require us to know the weight

of any link, since that changes from conspiracy to conspiracy.

Conspiracies are cognitive devices. They are able to outthink

the same group of individuals acting alone

Conspiracies take information about the world in which they operate (the conspiratorial

environment), pass through the conspirators and then act on the

result. We can see conspiracies as a type of device that has inputs (information

about the environment), a computational network (the conspirators and their

links to each other) and outputs (actions intending to change or maintain the

environment).

Deceiving conspiracies

Since a conspiracy is a type of cognitive device that acts on information acquired

from its environment, distorting or restricting these inputs means acts based on

them are likely to be misplaced. Programmers call this effect garbage in, garbage

out.

Usually the effect runs the other way; it is conspiracy that is the agent of

deception and information restriction. In the US, the programmer’s aphorism

is sometimes called “the Fox News effect”.

3

What does a conspiracy compute? It computes the next

action of the conspiracy

Now we ask the question: how effective is this device? Can we compare it to

itself at different times? Is the conspiracy growing stronger or is it weakening?

This question asks us to compare two values over time.

Can we find a value that describes the power of a conspiracy?

We could count the number of conspirators, but that would not capture the key

difference between a conspiracy and the individuals which comprise it. How do

they differ? In a conspiracy, individuals conspire, while when isolated they do

not. We can show most of this difference by adding up all the important communication

(weights) between all the conspirators. Call this total conspiratorial

power.

Total conspiratorial power

This number is an abstraction. The pattern of connections in a conspiracy is

usually unique. But by looking at a value that is independent of the arrangement

of connections between conspirators we can say something about conspiracies

in general.

If total conspiratorial power is zero, there is no conspiracy

If total conspiratorial power is zero, then clearly there is no information flow

between the conspirators and hence no conspiracy.

A substantial increase or decrease in total conspiratorial power almost always

means what we expect it to mean; an increase or decrease in the ability of the

conspiracy to think, act and adapt.

Separating weighted conspiracies

We now return to our earlier idea about cleaving a conspiracy into halves. Then

we looked at dividing a conspiracy into two groups of equal numbers by cutting

the links between conspirators. Now we see that a more interesting idea is to

split the total conspiratorial power in half. Since any isolated half can be viewed

as a conspiracy in its own right we can continue separating indefinitely.

Throttling weighted conspiracies

Instead of cutting links between conspirators so as to separate a weighted conspiracy

we can achieve a similar effect by throttling the conspiracy — constricting

(reducing the weight of) those high weight links which bridge regions of

equal total conspiratorial power.

4

Attacks on conspiratorial cognitive ability

A man in chains knows he should have acted sooner for his ability to influence

the actions of the state is near its end. To deal with powerful conspiratorial

actions we must think ahead and attack the process that leads to them since

the actions themselves can not be dealt with.

We can deceive or blind a conspiracy by distorting or restricting the information

available to it.

We can reduce total conspiratorial power via unstructured attacks on links

or through throttling and separating.

A conspiracy sufficiently engaged in this manner is no longer able to comprehend

its environment and plan robust action.

Traditional vs. modern conspiracies

Traditional attacks on conspiratorial power groupings, such as assassination,

cut many high weight links. The act of assassination — the targeting of visible

individuals, is the result of mental inclinations honed for the pre-literate societies

in which our species evolved.

Literacy and the communications revolution have empowered conspirators

with new means to conspire, increasing the speed of accuracy of the their interactions

and thereby the maximum size a conspiracy may achieve before it

breaks down.

Conspirators who have this technology are able to out conspire conspirators

without it. For the same costs they are able to achieve a higher total conspiratorial

power. That is why they adopt it.

For example, remembering Lord Halifax’s words, let us consider two closely

balanced and broadly conspiratorial power groupings, the US Democratic and

Republican parties.

Consider what would happen if one of these parties gave up their mobile

phones, fax and email correspondence — let alone the computer systems which

manage their subscribes, donors, budgets, polling, call centres and direct mail

campaigns?

They would immediately fall into an organizational stupor and lose to the

other.

An authoritarian conspiracy that cannot think is powerless

to preserve itself against the opponents it induces

When we look at an authoritarian conspiracy as a whole, we see a system of

interacting organs, a beast with arteries and veins whose blood may be thickened

and slowed until it falls, stupefied; unable to sufficiently comprehend and control

the forces in its environment.

Later we will see how new technology and insights into the psychological

motivations of conspirators can give us practical methods for preventing or

reducing important communication between authoritarian conspirators, foment strong resistance to authoritarian planning and create powerful incentives for more humane forms of governance.



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