People programming

I am of a mind that people and computers share the particular characteristic of being programmable. It’s obvious really and, you might think, accepting this is just another way of accepting that humans can be educated. But that’s not what I mean.

I mean because people are programmable there are a whole bunch of other people out there willing and eager to do the programming. Some of these are professional educators, some of these are family, some of these are artists, musicians and writers of fact or philosophy or even fiction. And some of these are the media, mainstream or not. Not all the programming is intended to be what we would call classically educational. I would suggest that most people programming is performed in the pursuit of the self-interest of the programmers or the people who hire the programmers (which amounts to the same thing really).

It’s a nightmare.

People programmers are trying to program people day in, day out, at breakfast, lunch and dinner. When you are at work, when you are at home. On your way to work and on your way back. When you are on holiday. All the time.

Knowing this (or rather accepting this as an odd but valid way of looking at things) raises one specific question. How does one protect ones self from malicious programmers?

I’m thinking that a belief system based in hard fact is the best defence but employing such a system is not as easy as you might think. For instance what actual hard evidence do you have that your best friend actually works where he says he works? Or another issue, you choose.

I could go off and read a whole bunch of philosophy and, perhaps, stumble upon a suitable defence but honestly, many of those writers are/were extremely clever. If I were convinced by the wrong philosophy, say, one created by a super hacker of humans then I would be worse off than I am now.

I mean, what about Ayn Rand and her philosophy of objectivism? The box looks good but will I regret installing it? I’m too scared to find out.