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Plausible Deniability
"I think you may like it" - said Mendel to Sheiny one day as he was looking at his TV screen. He was just browsing the web in search of some interesting things to look about and found an old interview with Jacque Fresco who was talking about an idea for a language of the future. He claimed that the languages of today are to vague and allow for multiple interpretations of the same idea, which allows for things like religion to be so successful and for people like lawyers to have successful jobs. And that in the future people would develop a concrete scientific language which will not allow for misunderstandings. Which will make all people understand each other perfectly. And which will put an end to such things like Plausible Deniability.
Sheiny: This is scary!
Mendel: What? Why? You like mathematics. Aren't you?
Sheiny: Yeah, but making a general use language to be so mathematical might lead to a privacy catastrophe.
Mendel: What do you mean?
Sheiny: Well, sometimes it is in your interest to say something without the other person understanding you fully. And if the language will be constructed in a such a way as to not allow it, we have a problem.
Mendel: I don't understand.
Sheiny: Say you want to ask a girl for a date. And you and she work in the same place. So doing it straightforwardly would lead to accusations of sexual misconduct.
Mendel: What?
Sheiny: Yes.
Mendel: Are you serious?
Sheiny: Yes. Anyway... You have to be able to frame your message to her in such a way that if she does want to go on the date after-all, she would go with you. But if she doesn't want, you could deny meaning to ask her in the first place.
Mendel thought about it. He frowned. He smiled. He raised his eyebrows.
Mendel: Isn't that a problem with the rules themselves?
Sheiny: Well, yes. In this particular situation the rules are in violation of freedom of speech. And they should be abolished.
Mendel: So then, what is the problem to say thing straightly? Given that the rules are abolished.
Sheiny: We can not count on these rules being abolished forever, since rules always change. So having a mechanism to evade unjust rules should be present. And one of those mechanisms is called Plausible Deniability.
Mendel thought about it even more.
Mendel: Yeah, but it, then, allows criminals to get away with crimes.
Sheiny: Give me an example.
Mendel: Well... How about a guy trying to bribe an officer by suggesting a bribe in a way that is not straightforward?
Sheiny: Like when showing documents having a half protruding dollar bill?
Mendel: Something like that.
Sheiny: Well, yes, it is rather annoying. But I rather live in a world where this is possible than in the world where every-time I speak you know my intentions with 100% certainty.
Mendel: Yeah, but think about it. We have to argue our views just because our language is not strict. If we could have the language be exact representation of our thoughts, we could understand each other much better and therefor there will be no need to argue at all. Like, right now, you could just tell me once why you think it's important to have this plausible deniability and I would just simply understand it and shut up.
Sheiny: How about lying, or saying something without expertise? I don't think a strict language will stop you from composing a thought that you know to be untrue. Look at programming. Python is a strict language. The interpreter will interpret one string of code in the same exact manner every time you run it. But yet you can lie with python.
Mendel: I don't understand.
Sheiny: I'll show you.
She showed him python code which went the following way:
def Two_Plus_Two():
return 5
return 5
Sheiny: Here in the first line
Mendel: So then we have to provide a verification.
Sheiny: Yes, and this could be done in English.
Mendel: Wait the second. Doesn't it show that you can be vague with a strict language in a way?
Sheiny: The only vagueness you can do with python is by generating random numbers. Which are not necessarily random at all. Unless you have a random-generating chip on the machine. Even random things are calculated strictly. But they use as an input a stream of data that is always changing. For example, you can use the current time to derive from it a random number, by applying some wild math to it. But the math you apply is concrete and not vague.
Mendel: Okay, so you can't be vague but you can lie. Why you can't live with only lies?
Sheiny: Because how can you get anywhere? Imagine you are a gay rights activist in Saudi Arabia. You can say strictly that you are a gay rights activist and get executed. Or you can lie that you are not and not do any activism what so ever. You have to walk a very narrow path of plausible deniability to achieve something in that situation. You have to act and plan with people how to act. But then if one of those people is an agent of the government, you have to be able to say that you didn't really mean it. And that what you meant was something else entirely. And for this the language should allow for vagueness.
Mendel: What if we have gay rights everywhere.
Sheiny: There is other activism that could be and should be done to improve the world.
Mendel: Perhaps we fixed every problem.
Sheiny: I don't believe in utopias.
Mendel: But what if?
Sheiny: There are stories of emperors of ancient times that had slave young boys near them as a kind of sexual trophy. It was homosexuality. And it was totally okay back in the day. But the times changed since then. And 70 years ago in UK being a mere gay was totally illegal. Now it's back to legality. How long would it be till it will be illegal again?
Mendel: So we always will need activists?
Sheiny: Exactly.
Mendel: But wait a second! If it will be illegal again, it means that it was legal and some activists made it illegal. Maybe we can stop all activism just at the right moment by introducing a stricter language?
Sheiny: And it will be illegal to speak English?
Mendel: Ah... Well... Yes...
Sheiny: So there is already a problem we need activists to solve, then. There should be freedom to use any language. Be it English, Spanish, Hebrew, ancient Greek, Python. If you can't, by law use one, somebody has to fix it immediately.
Mendel: I see. So why the hell is he talking about that so passionately?
Sheiny: I think he dislikes people that disagree with him. And he thinks that with more strictness his thoughts would be the right ones. But people do not work this way. What he proposes sounds an awful lot like the Newspeak language from 1984. A language that doesn't allow unorthodox thought. It is not a way to achieve truth, but a way to evade criticism.
Mendel: Yeah, but this guy sounds like an engineer. He is smart and everything.
Sheiny: Am I smart?
Mendel: Yes you are.
Sheiny: Can I be mistaken?
Mendel: Ah... Maybe...
Sheiny: I read about a research that looked into people's political biases.
Mendel: Okay...
Sheiny: They made up some numbers about statistics of a particular highly-debated political topic. I think it was gun control. They flipped the participants 50% / 50%. Half were shown statistics that say gun control helps reduce gun violence. And the other half that it doesn't. Are you following me?
Mendel: They made up two different statistics? That prove opposite points of view?
Sheiny: Yes. But they went smart about it. Say we took the statistics from one side. If you would be smart about it and adjust the data of violence by the amount of people living in each city you would have a flipped view. Are you following me?
Mendel: No, I lost you.
Sheiny: Ah... Imagine two cities. One has one hundred people and the other has one thousand people. One has gun control the other doesn't. The one that has gun control has only 1 case of gun violence a year. The one that doesn't have gun control has 10 cases of gun violence a year. The trick is that the one that has only one hundred people is the one that has only 1 case. So the other city not only has 10 times more gun violence, but also 10 times more people. Nullifying the whole premise to begin with.
Mendel: So does gun control help or not?
Sheiny: It's not about gun control. The statistics are made up. It's a test of people's biases.
Mendel: Oh... I see. They made people answer what they think the data suggest. And if you are smart it would suggest something else?
Sheiny: Yes. And they made sets of opposing data for different types of participants.
Mendel: Fascinating. Go on.
Sheiny: Also, separately they tested the same people on a similar kind of data, but about not a political topic. Something about birds or flowers. They did the same exact trick there too. And they also checked ahead of the time participants political views and how good they are at math problems such as this.
Mendel: And what did they find?
Sheiny: They found that people that are not so good at math just didn't catch the problem to begin with.
Mendel: Aha...
Sheiny: But people good at math, caught the trick selectively.
Mendel: Like how?
Sheiny: If the data would support their own political views. They would go with it, not noticing the trick. Though they would notice the trick in the control test about flowers. But if the data disagrees with their views and noticing the trick would help them argue for their views, they would notice the trick.
Mendel: Aha! And so what does is tell about humans?
Sheiny: That people do not want truth if it's against their beliefs. But we have many people with different believes. And allowing them to debate each other might actually produce truths. Everything people who disagree don't disagree upon is rather truth-like. Unless somebody will find the courage to disagree with that too. Some people might disagree with gravity, or existence of planets. Flat-earthers... Perhaps we can call them ignorant or outright stupid. But who are we to take their right to disagree with us? And as you probably already know, everything stupid is easily debunk-able. But for this goodness we need freedom of speech. And it's not always available. We have some sort of free speech in many countries. And even in those police sometimes designs crimes for people they disagree with. Julian Assange... So other means of Free Speech should exist. Privacy. Good one. If they don't know who you are, they can't put you to prison. Plausible Deniability! That a good one too. You can show your face and speak freely if you have that. But if push comes to shove you can just deny that you have meant to say what you said.
Happy Hacking!!!
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