One of my other projects, something that I doubt you will ever see here, is the “Global Conquest Howto.” This project is my version of C.S. Lewis’ “Screwtape letters.” Effectively, I am applying computer security analysis to global security. It is not really my goal to conquer the entire world, nor do I intend to train evil emperors to take over the planet.
Logically, if you challenge a bad idea on its own merits, you get a well tuned defense that knows how to shift the focus of the inquiry. My system involves patting people on the back for having bad ideas and then showing how brilliant they are at weakening their own defenses. This requires an intelligent counter. If nothing else, I aim to raise the caliber of the discussion.
As a result of this, I spend more than a healthy amount of time contemplating evil. Just the shift in tactics that I have already profiled took a great deal of thought. It is possible to defend a horrific idea just by berating the stated alternative. This puts the offense on the defense and, even in philosophy, there is no winning a defensive war. Never underestimate Satan.
Satan’s greatest power comes from our denial. If you do not believe that he’s out there, then you do not account for his actions. He is good enough that his tactics have not changed in the age of the Earth. We cannot take him on our own. Ideologically, it is necessary to prod his unwitting followers into a defensive position just to break even in the short run.
So, what have we learned in the age of the world? Our first lesson was to consider the cost when you make a choice. Adam and Eve were so blinded by the promise of power that they never considered the reality of the cost. To this day, we are still vulnerable to this attack. Online, attackers take advantage of this perceptual error with Trojans.
Well, why can we not just kill off all the evil in the world? Why not ask Noah that question? Evil is not in the world around us but it is a part of the world within us. You take evil wherever you go. This is the drive that gets computer virus code written. There is no valid reason to write a computer virus.
Now, we speak often of the ‘rule of law.’ Within 40 days of hearing God’s voice, the children of Israel had constructed the golden calf. God gave Israel law and established the only theocracy in history. The people of Israel wanted a king and got one. Laws, like locks, are only made for honest people. Once Man makes himself into the maker of law, he considers law to be his slave and puts himself above it. That didn’t work.
If your code is not designed to take human frailty into account, then you will leave holes in it. The best example of this is the buffer overflow. You cannot assume that the input that a program gets will always follow the rules. Always check your input for sanity.
Lastly, I come to the hardest of these lessons. “All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” If it really took two to tango, peace would be easy to achieve. Should you elect not to select, then you get the least of the choices by default. This is the kind of blind faith that makes phishing profitable.
To make a better world, you have to improve Man. Controlling bodies will never be enough. Might only makes fight. What you need is to change hearts and minds. And, with that, I have reached my point.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 12th, 2006 at 9:39 am and is filed under Comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.