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January 03, 2006
Questions on a Tuesday
I'm back, and ready to begin the 2006 blogging campaign. We'll catch up with other things later. For now, I have some questions.
First Question.
What ever happened to distributed peer-based digital signatures and public keys using webs of trust? I am reading The Code Book, and today at lunch hit the chapter on the development of public-key crypto and the saga of Phil Zimmerman. I remember quite a fuss in the mid-90s about cypherpunks bootstrapping a decentralized trusted-key infrastructure. It seems quite relevant and do-able today. Has that project met demise and failed to get off?
Next question.
Has anybody done thinking on the epistemological criteria of encryption systems? Is there a formulation for knowledge wandering around which includes encryption? The history of crypto has seen a succession of knowledge-claims about the unbreakability of systems, and a matching set of persuasive counter-examples. Is there work in this area of philosophy? Additionally, what is the status of encrypted information? Is it knowledge, and what affect does the encryption state have on status?
Last question.
In day-to-day practice, I've supplanted my previous criteria for precise knowledge (being able to ask a good enough question that I can get a useful answer from someone knowledgeable) with the criteria "be able to formulate a Google search query which returns the desired information." Is that wrong? What is the qualitative difference between the two?
Please answer below, or in trackbacks. I exist to be enlightened by someone other than myself.
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Posted by Noel at 05:36 PM
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Comments
I'll not venture an answer to thie first.
To the second, a minor comment: It seems that encrypted data counts as knowledge only to an agent who could also be that data's decryptor, or can receive on good authority from another decryptor (externalist caveat) the contents of the encrypted data.
The third: I think the difference between formulating a question to a knowledgable friend and formulating a sufficiently specific search query are only the same if on a meta-level the trust which you put into the two sources is the same (and also, to a degree, how important the query is). Do you trust Google more than Bill Davis? About what? Google probably knows a bit more than Davis about how to properly prepare a ham, for example, but probably can't deliver with the same authority on questions of philosophy.
Also, there's a necessarily interactive element of inquiry and knowledge - inquiry spawns inquiry multiple times, only later actually acheiving answers. Asking a knowledgable friend allows you to get to the end result. Googling probably won't illuminate the important, necessary questions that are the bridge between question P and answer Q.
Posted by: ryan at January 4, 2006 04:26 PM
Thanks for your response, Ryan.
#2, here is one example of what I was asking: Crytographer Bob says "O jsbr sm imntrslsn;r vo[rt@" as an epistemological claim. Cryptoanalyst Alice says "I have an unbreakable cypher!", which is a Turing-style counterexample to that claim.
Also, on the other question you actually answered, I have knowledge of the encrypted text of Linear B, but don't know what it stands for. It seems I'm closer to a knowledge claim than before, when I didn't even know what the Linear B tablet said, but I'm not fully warranted in saying that I have knowledge. Hmmm. Many Bothans died to bring the message, so the message must have value, but it still had to be decrypted.
More later.
Posted by: Noel at January 5, 2006 05:32 PM
Alright, in regards to your response to my third question, my faith in Google is built upon the belief that of the > 1,000,000,000 internet users out there, at least one will know at least as much as Davis about philosophy.
Additionally, the value of using a network like the internet increases by n^2 (in this case, according to my interpretation of Metcalf's Law), which seems to me to make using google potentially more useful than Davis, all knowledge being equal. Which indeed would help me to find those bridge questions between P and Q.
Finally, part of the point of my question was where I was placing faith. I trust Google about as much as Davis. The trick is, I trust them both even more if I come up with a precise question for them, one that I know will cut through their biases and untruthful tendencies (not to impute bad ethics on anyone). I figure that since I spend more time with Google than Davis, I can cut through the crap with Google easier than with Davis (again, not to impute crap on anyone here).
Posted by: Noel at January 6, 2006 02:19 PM