One of Apple's many marketing schemes is a claim that "it just works." The claim centers around the public perception that computers are difficult to use, as well as the claim of Apple fanciers that their interface is "more intuitive." I wrote about this claim before ("Object Oriented Programming, Apple Computers and Justice", though in context of Object Oriented Programming), and have pointed out that what is intuitive to someone may not be to another. And I am afraid the same is true of Apple's equally specious claim.

I could point out the many problems I have with their Mac desktop, the difficulty I have renaming files, or figuring out how to move things, or where things are hidden in their file system*, but let me instead give an even more basic example. My wife used to use an iPod** shuffle when exercising. She then bought a new iPod and decided to give her old iPod to our son, to listen to songs. Since you must use their annoying iTunes interface to load songs, we got used to that (though how unintuitive that "intuitive interface can be should not be minimized).

The fun began when she decided to "sync" her old iPod to put my son's songs on it. Instead of creating a new play list, it just automatically loaded her old play list from the other iPod. Apparently, Apple can only conceive of an individual having a single play list, or imagines we need a single computer per user, so it does not make it easy to have multiple iPods with differing play lists using the same computer and iTunes installation.

So much for "just working". I imagine there is a way to work around it (we did it by syncing his iPod to my computer, as I own no iPod), but for something that "just works" this seems remarkably unfriendly behavior.

Now, why do I mention all this? Am I just an Apple basher abusing his political blog to beat up on Apple? Well, yes and no. I am critical of Apple, of their "individualism through buying the same product as everyone else" advertising, their pretension and their overpriced, over-programmed hardware and software. But that is not why I am writing this. There is a point, and even a political one.

The problem is that too many people believe there is a "right way" to do things, a "best answer" or something that "just makes sense". Just as Apple claims it "just works" and is "intuitive", yet fails to work or make sense to many people, those "right answers" are often right only for some people, not for all.

And that is a very important political realization.

I first mentioned this truth in "Reforming Education", when discussing education. In that post I argued parents should be allowed to choose what their children learn, as that is part of the responsibility of parents. Imagining the arguments raised against it, I knew some would ask "what about parents who don't teach their children right?" To which I would respond, "what is a proper education?" While our culture imagines there is a single, correct path to education, the truth is any education contains assumptions about many things, what is true, what is important, and so on. And so there is nothing close to a single "right" education. However, the assumption that there is a "right" education is at the heart of state control of education, state power to approve or disapprove of private education or home schooling, and all other manner of authoritarian control of education.

In fact, the assumption that there is a "right" answer, a "proper" value, a solution which "makes sense" is at the heart of all government control of all kinds. As I said many times ("Those Other People", "Our View of Our Fellow Citizens", "Seeing People As Stupid", "Appealing to Arrogance", "The Citizen Dichotomy", "In A Nutshell", "Cognitive Dissonance Part 2", "Changing Incentives", "Three Types of Supporters of Big Government" and "Bad Economics Part 9"), the authoritarian model rests upon the belief that most people are wrong in their decisions, but that implies a second proposition, that there is a "right" answer, and that it is both knowable and known by some. Only if there is an available right answer, ignored by most, does authoritarianism make sense***.

The problem is the one I pointed out in  "The Limits of "Scientific" Management", "Absolute Values" and elsewhere, there simply is no absolute economic value. All valuations are individual and ordinal, neither objective nor cardinal. There is no way to calculate prices objectively, nor is there any sensible way to establish a "best answer" true for all people when it comes to individual preference. And, outside of strictly technical questions, all is individual preference. Even technical questions often contain enough subjectivity to have no single "right" answer.

Let us make a simple example. How do you build a bridge? A technical analysis would tell you what materials will support what weight, how long they will last, and so on. But how do you decide which to use? Do you use the strongest and longest lasting? But if you do, that material is unavailable for other uses, which may be more urgent. How do you know? What is the right answer?

And the answer is, there is no "right" answer. The price system will tell you what value all other members of society place on those materials, but it is then up to you to decide if the bridge is worth that price, or a lesser material should be used. In other words, even once you have all the external data of what value society places on materials (itself subjectively established), the final say is still your own subjective choice.

And that should demonstrate precisely why "right" answers are dangerous. As I said in "The Inherent Disappointment of Authoritarianism", everyone who supports authoritarian solutions does so because they believe their prejudices and beliefs are "self evident" and "right" and so will be followed by any future dictator or committee. They cannot imagine that their prejudices are as biased and subjective as everyone else's. But once they learn that, once they realize there are no "self evident" right answers they may not be quite so eager to turn over absolute control to someone who could think they were just as wrong as they believe everyone else to be.

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* It is bizarre. I am a big BSD fancier, having rewritten big parts of FreeBSD for my own use, yet when OSX came out, ostensibly based on a BSD model, I found it no easier to use than OS9, even using the terminal interface. Yes, it looked a lot like Unix, but I think that made it worse. Since it looked like BSD, I expected it to behave like BSD, but instead it behaved a little like BSD, a little like some SVR4 system (maybe Solaris-ish), a little like Linux, a little like HURD, and a little like something else entirely. It would have been easier had it looked nothing like BSD, then I would not have had misleading expectations. Had they claimed it was based on BeOS or OS2 or Unicos or even DOS, then it wouldn't have been half as puzzling. (It didn't help that there was no easy way to circumvent the GUI desktop, and that, like many monolithic Unix window managers, it starts tons of "helper" programs to manage each application, making it a nightmare to just try to kill off an errant process. The OSX GUI makes Nautilus, Gnome and KDE look like slim, minimalist interfaces by comparison.)

** That twee habit of prefixing lower case I to everything annoys me terribly, just as the previous marketron habits of adding "e-" to all company names, changing "-tech" to "-teq" and working an "X" (inevitably capitalized, even in the middle of the word) into any product name annoyed me. Though it did give rise to the amusing quip "iCEO Steve Jobs".

*** Well, to be completely accurate, it can be justified as a single individual's selfish desire to have his will forced on others, but barring open, honest tyranny, authoritarianism requires this justification.

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POSTSCRIPT

Actually, there is a second political point here. Much as I dislike Apple, and find it difficult to use, there are those who love the OS and find it very intuitive. Similarly, though many bash Windows, obviously a lot people find it suits their needs. Likewise, the hundreds of Unix and Linux systems, as well as many other niche OSes fit needs felt by users.

Imagine if it were decided we would be forced to standardize on one "right" system. How happy would users be then? And that is my objection to governments trying to make people do "the right thing". Often the "right" choice is right for only a slim majority, if that, leading to much disappointment. But, even if it upsets only one, why should we upset that one individual? What is the harm in letting each choose what is "right" for him? Provided it violates no one's rights, what is the point in making others do the "right thing"?

Unfortunately, as clear as it is to many when you put it in terms of making everyone use a specific computer, drive a specific car, or eat a specific food, once you turn to political matters, people suddenly fail to see the similarities. Turning form computers to the war on drugs, decriminalizing prostitution or ending all state regulation of the content of education, people forget all they learned and fall back on tropes such as "but isn't that admitting we lost?" Or, "but isn't that just telling kids drugs/prostitution is/are OK?"  Or "but what if parents don't teach them anything at all?"

POSTSCRIPT II

Some additional information on related topics can be found in "The Limits of Econometrics", "The Limits of Technocracy" and "Technocrats". My most recent writing can be found in "Bad Economics Part 9", "Thank You, Dr. Sowell!" and (less seriously) "The Nightmare of a Subjective Value Theorist". (Older posts can be found by following the links those contain.) Obviously, the implications stretch to many topics, from social conservatives who would impose their values on others ("The State and Morality", "A Bit More Explanation") to the war on drugs ("Drug Legalization", "Required Waste"), the tendency to push for others to follow the "right" path inevitably leads to nothing but more government and less freedom. Finally, as I mentioned education (primary, secondary and university) several times, I would like to mention that my previous writing on the topic can be found in "Reforming Education", "Why Private Schools Win", "A Contradiction", "Skeptics? Really? I Beg to Differ", "The State Versus Universities", "When Help Hurts", "Professional Education", "The Failure of Peer Review", "Publish Or Perish", "You Don't Drown in a Glass of Water - Vouchers Revisited", "Why Vouchers are not the Answer", "Never Ascribe To Evil, A Discussion of Education" and "Government Funding and the Free Market".

POSTSCRIPT III

For those unfamiliar with my neologism "marketron", I use it to describe mindless, soulless marketing staff in the technology sector, who pick up buzz words from computer magazines and thoughtlessly insist every product fit those phrases, whether it makes sense or not. Back in the late 1990's, I used to come up with multiple line descriptions that I jokingly claimed every project had to match. Something along the lines of "XML-configured, Java-driven, object oriented, UML conforming, three-tiered, scalable, interactive, distributed, clustered, fully-configurable, rapidly deployable, CMM5 certified, ISO9001 compliant, with full internationalization, wide character support and an ergonomic web-ready graphical user interface which can be deployed out of the box and is walk-away safe while supporting rapid application development models." I think I had a few more buzz phrases as well, but that seems pretty close. In any case, a marketron is the sort of marketing person who could read that line and not see any problems with it. Worse, one who would ask me if he could use that line in a brochure.

POSTSCRIPT IV

As this is one of my geekiest posts in a while, I figure I should probably link to my other tech-geek political posts. "Copyright as Politics" uses the GPL license as a political analogy. "Some Libertarian Analogies" uses the differences between BSD and Linux for the same purpose. And  "The Power of Myth on the Internet", "Roman Legions, Hopscotch, Killer Gays, "Got AIDS Yet", WMDs and a "Damn Piece of Paper"", "Wikipedia Absurdities" and "Life is Strange" link to a number of articles in which I take apart the entire concept and practice of Wikipedia. I think that covers my most geeky posts. Though, for balance, I should mention "An Interesting Analogy" and "No, Sorry, THIS is Asking For It"  in which I make some rather negative comparisons between geeks, orthodox libertarians and FairTax supporters, and "Tired and Annoying Theme", "IMDB Makes My Case", "A Thought On the Watchmen" and "Graphic Novels, Comic Books and Cultural Barometers" in which I prove I am not a total geek by bashing not just "graphic novels" (that is, comic books) in general, but the most sacred geek comic, "The Watchmen", in particular.  I am also critical of the new Dr. Who ("Musings About A Television Series", "Off Topic Post - A Question of Scope") and Avatar ("The Dishonesty of Avatar"), so perhaps I am not a complete geek after all. (Though my praise of Mario Bava -- "Off Topic Comment on Science Fiction" -- may balance that out.)