I'm a PhD student in biophysics at the University of Michigan. Reading Engines of Creation and Nanosystems a couple of years ago (when I was an undergraduate in physics) inspired me to do what I am doing today. Since then I have learnt a bit about biochemistry and enzymology and exactly how we currently think things work in the protein and RNA nanomachinery that you and I are built out of. Based on what I have learnt, I don't think that Drexler's proposals are feasible. In my opinion Smalley is all the way right and Drexler is all the way wrong in this exchange. Smalley makes a very accurate explanation of why Drexler is wrong, and Drexler's second response sadly goes into my 'hot air and hand-waving' file.
Ask me again if Slashdot is still around in fifty years. By that time, perhaps we will have made some progress on the folding problem and the design problem and the aggregation problem in protein manufacture. Maybe we will have long term simulations (get to work, supercomputer aficionados!) and we will be making awesome custom proteins and doing great things evolution never thought of. Perhaps then we will be able to do some kind of positional control magic that will allow us to make Drexler's end-of-Nanosystems bootstrap from proteins, lipids, and RNA to diamondoid materials. Until that time...well, if Richard Smalley, one of the world's foremost carbon chemists, says it will never happen, and it is his word against non-Nobel-Prize-winning-carbon-chemist K. Eric Drexler's, I will go with Smalley's opinions. (Three years ago I would be appalled at myself for writing all this!)
I will always appreciate Drexler (and Ion Storm and Neal Stephenson) for getting me fired up about investigating what goes on at the nanoscale. Without those wild claims I might not be having the fun I'm having today.
In closing: cheer up, nanofans! You and every other living thing on earth are glorious nanomechanical devices, well worth detailed study and sincere appreciation. In the future we shall hopefully be able to improve upon Nature's wonderful handiwork. For the time being take comfort in the sublime fact that millions of nanomachines all must strive together to do something as seemingly effortless as attaching the period that will now close my post.
...I have trouble believing that. Mir was ridiculously antiquated by that point and a giant waste of money to boot. I mean, seriously, what were the Russians going to do with the old tub at that point?
The "Russian" contribution to the station has largely been financed by the United States. The Japanese and Europeans put together have contributed about 20% of the funding for the station. The Brazilians have contributed an insignificant amount of funding, and the Canadians have contributed about 3% of the funding for the station. This is all using old numbers, and the ISS budget is skyrocketing. Money to cover the shortfalls will come from American pockets.
I am not being insular. This is reality. The ISS would never have been built without massive American financial backing.
The Space Shuttle is a giant screaming space boondoggle whose main justification is the support of the other giant screaming space boondoggle, the Mostly American Space Station. Now that we've gone up into Earth orbit and found it's not a whole lot of fun, there's no use in continuing to put people up there for the sheer sake of putting them up there. It's doubly not worth putting them up there in reusable vehicles that look cool but end up wasting money compared to expendable vehicles unless one uses flight schedules generated by 1975 NASA engineers which expect Shuttles to launch on a manic schedule more characteristic of cocaine-addled weasels with ADD than giant experimental engineering endeavors.
The NASA manned missions office ought to toss the Space Shuttle, toss the Mostly American Space Station, toss all this Orbital Space Plane crap, get the simple capsule, and then concentrate on developing pre-colonization Martian missions. Earth orbit is for robots, and space planes suck.
Re:Why are you wrong? Give me strength. . .
on
TIA Project to End
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· Score: 1
First of all, to say that TIA is the only alternative to an arms race in order to deter global war is to accept without question that global warfare is a natural end. A lot of people have been brought up to believe that this is a basic truth. How very convenient for the arms industry.
OK, just go and convince Osama bin Ladin that he should bend over for McDonalds and E! True Hollywood Stories with rational, logical arguments and I'll accept that war is pointless in the modern age. If you're not talking about the real present which we actually find ourselves in but instead describing some wonderful time in the future when war shall pass away, you're just wanking.
Not to mention that TIA wouldn't stop the arms industry in the slightest. --Look at Cold War Soviet practices; the entire population was engaged in reporting on itself; maids reporting on their their ladies, ladies reporting on their lovers, lovers reporting on their employers, ad infinitum. (I have friends who grew up in that world.) And how did any of that shit prevent the Soviet bloc from arming itself to the teeth? It didn't. In fact, it was key in promoting it.
Right. TIA doesn't stop the arms industry from existing. It does cut down on the fraction of the resources expended by American society in constructing and maintaining conventional armed forces, and on the number of Iraqs that we have to run at great cost to Iraq and the United States. As for Cold War Soviet practices, yes, that's what happens when you use the system for evil by failing to allow a wide enough margin of dissent. It's totally evil and awful. Thermonuclear blackmail is also totally evil and awful, but it got us through the Cold War while allowing us to, you know, not be utterly impoverished.
Holy shit. There is so much wrong with that statement, I'm not even sure where to begin. It's all wrong. All of it. Holy shit. Even if we were to assume that the posperity brought by the, 'Engine of the Western markets' is NOT a self-destroying myth, (the world is rapidly dying as a direct result of those engines, for goodness sake!), then the claim that TIA technologies is a panacea is by itself a stinking, rotton lie
You live in material comfort unprecedented in the whole of human history thanks to those Western markets. I'm not qualified to argue about environmental trends. I don't think you are either. If I happen to be debating a climate scientist, I shall apologize. I do not deny the numerous negative effects of Western capitalism on humanity and the environment alike - but I do believe that these effects are counteracted by a whole raft of benefits to humanity and to the environment and that, as Western society becomes more and more affluent, negative effects will continue to be eliminated simply because we will start to be able to spend money on it.
TIA surveillance is not a panacea. It is a useful and powerful weapon which should not be discarded because it sends chills up and down our spines.
The use of TIA technologies is the chief way in that our 'comfortable' lives will cease to be comfortable. People in the West are so incredibly ignorant. --You can't buy child-like innocence of that sort! It's almost pretty. I think the most arrogant part is you blanket claim that Americans really are comfortable. Approximately 1 in 4 children in the U.S. does not get enough food, for crying out loud! But I digress. ..
Your command of American English implies that you are from the West or have spent a certain amount of time there - are you calling yourself ignorant and if so what kind of paradox does that set up?:) I too digress. I don't believe your statistic - 17% of American children lived below the poverty line in 2002 - but I am not going to argue over numbers. What I am going to say is that although poverty is still a terrible problem, the advent of Western industrialized society has greatly reduced its incidence and, statistically, made human live
The surveillance in question is directed domestically.
Current definitions of 'domestic' and 'foreign' are rooted in antedated concepts of strategy where the only legitimacy a state could have was the loyalty of a geographically contiguous ethnic group. There are American citizens in the fifty states who are utter foreigners, ideologically speaking, to the United States.
Our WMD program is a deterrent for external threats.
No it's not. Suppose Osama bin Ladin were to blow up Chicago with a nuclear weapon tomorrow. Who would we retaliate against? What should we blow up?
I don't see how data mining techniques can maintain conventional forces. How does JetBlue receiving a notice that a "bad guy" is on board help a tank division in Iraq?
TIA-type efforts cut down on the number of troops we need to commit to occupation and stabilization duties. They allow us to use Special Forces instead of tank divisions. It's like the Cold War, where our nuclear arsenal allowed us to keep only enough forces in Europe to serve as a tripwire for Apocalypse and to thus keep taxes lower.
First off, your response is begging the question that TIA works.
If it doesn't work, this entire debate is wanking and neither you nor I should be posting.:)
Second, I don't understand why you posit such a strong connection between these technologies and global economic prosperity.
Western-style economic progress and social modernization drives world living standards forward. (This is a big assertion, I know. It's a reasonably sane opinion to hold, however.)
Third, and more importantly, the statement is easier to agree with if you are one who would not be targeted by such technologies. Say, for example, if you were from Egypt and went to a mosque, you may not be so blase about TIA.
Right, but I don't care about his feelings. I only care about whether he's dangerous or not. If he's not dangerous, TIA will pass him by most of the time unless he's an unfortunate soul who gets caught in the crossfire of this invisible war. (Civilian casualties happen in warfare. You can try to minimize them (US forces in Baghdad, Israelis in Palestine) or you can not give a rat's ass about them (Russian forces in Chechnya) but they still happen. We should try to minimize them, but some people will slip through the cracks and die. That's life on Earth.) If he is dangerous, TIA will help diminish the threat he poses to the economic progress and social liberalization that is Earth's hope for a better future.
Powerful surveillance technologies in the hands of Western security organizations are the thermonuclear deterrent of the present day. They are expensive, unpopular, and capable of being used for any number of great evils - but they are the only alternative to the maintenance of enormous conventional forces designed to fight brutal and exhausting wars of occupation.
It's not that TIA has died - it's that it has been moved into the secret realm and given to people who have the stomach to run it. Use of technologies like TIA is the best option we have available to defend the comfortable lives we lead and to provide hope for improving the lives of people around the world through economic prosperity driven by the engine of Western markets. Could it be used for terrible evil? Yes. Will it be? That's a question of good government - government by individuals who can handle the seriousness of the moral issues involved without panicking and fleeing in terror.
Damn, Infinite Jest and Gravity's Rainbow are my two favorite fiction books. Excellent choices!
Stephenson
on
Quicksilver
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Stephenson is a really excellent author. Although I'm usually left a bit unsatisfied by his books' endings - particularly Diamond Age - this may only be because at the end of his books I wish there were still five hundred pages to go! He is particularly good at populating his worlds with characters who are, for lack of a better phrase, really exceptionally cool. I can't think of any other author whose characters reach a comparable level of out-and-out badassitude - Gibson doesn't even come close.
I also think that he pressents some interesting and worthwhile takes on politics and modern society, particularly in his portrayal of the faithful. Traditional religion and social conservatism often end up dismissed and/or mocked in scientific and technical communities, but Stephenson manages to present them in a new light and to depict a world where faith and appreciation of traditional values does not necessarily mean intolerance or being terminally lame.:) He is able to present versions of morality and faith that are at once true to their roots and capable of thriving in the modern world. Examples that spring to mind are his descriptions of Juanita's efforts to reinvigorate Catholicism in Snow Crash, his depiction of Avi in Cryptonomicon, and the long homage to Victorianism and Midwestern America that is Diamond Age.
Cool answer: NASA has FTL communications.
Real answer: NASA isn't actually seeing it plunge or losing radio comms, but they know when it's going to hit 'cause they did the math.:)
Good point - sorry about that! Of course oxidative combustion has nothing to do with turning into a sun. I should have been more clear in saying that the detonation would neither set Jupiter on fire nor kick-start nuclear fusion.
Hi, no offense, but this is the most laughable thing I have ever heard.
a) The main fissionable form of plutonium is Pu-239, not Pu-238.
b) Even if this was Pu-239 on board, forty pounds thereof is a borderline critical mass. You would need tampers to make it a good bomb.
c) Even if this was Pu-239 on board and there was enough of it for a critical mass, it is not arranged in a critical geometry that will produce good fission under a Jovian pressure crush.
d) Even if this was Pu-239 in a critical mass in a critical geometry, Galileo lacks the tritium primer required to kickstart a fusion reaction from a fission reaction.
e) Even if Galileo had a working thermonuclear weapon on board, a thermonuclear detonation on Jupiter would not blow up Jupiter, because there isn't enough of an oxygen fraction in the Jovian atmosphere to set the hydrogen afire. Think about it. Jupiter has collided with large asteroids and comets before now. These collisions give off heat considerably in excess of any nuclear detonation. The huge pressures at Jupiter's interior produce heat considerably in excess of any nuclear detonation. If Jupiter could have turned into a star (it cannot) it would have done so by now.
Hi - although I have an enormous amount of respect for Mr. Torvalds I don't think that he is entirely correct in his observation that
And don't EVER make the mistake that you can design something better than what you get from ruthless massively parallel trial-and-error with a feedback cycle. That's giving your intelligence _much_ too much credit.
In my opinion, massively parallel trial-and-error is limited by the competency of the individuals performing the trials (this limits the speed of optimization) and by the design parameters within which the trials are conducted (this limits the utility of optimization).
The world is of course one big arena for massively parallel trial-and-error and in this Linus is dead on, but without the conscious virtuosity of design displayed by revolutionary individuals in open-source development and every other field of human endeavor, this massively parallel process would simply produce a wide morass of undifferentiated crap. Take Don Bluth movies for instance.;)
Obligatory on-topic note:
Someone mentioned that Mr. McNealy comes off as a dick, and I agree. But dicks can be surprisingly good at making money and leading people. I think that snotty asshats can be used for either good or evil.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a PhD student in biophysics at the University of Michigan. Reading Engines of Creation and Nanosystems a couple of years ago (when I was an undergraduate in physics) inspired me to do what I am doing today. Since then I have learnt a bit about biochemistry and enzymology and exactly how we currently think things work in the protein and RNA nanomachinery that you and I are built out of. Based on what I have learnt, I don't think that Drexler's proposals are feasible. In my opinion Smalley is all the way right and Drexler is all the way wrong in this exchange. Smalley makes a very accurate explanation of why Drexler is wrong, and Drexler's second response sadly goes into my 'hot air and hand-waving' file.
Ask me again if Slashdot is still around in fifty years. By that time, perhaps we will have made some progress on the folding problem and the design problem and the aggregation problem in protein manufacture. Maybe we will have long term simulations (get to work, supercomputer aficionados!) and we will be making awesome custom proteins and doing great things evolution never thought of. Perhaps then we will be able to do some kind of positional control magic that will allow us to make Drexler's end-of-Nanosystems bootstrap from proteins, lipids, and RNA to diamondoid materials. Until that time...well, if Richard Smalley, one of the world's foremost carbon chemists, says it will never happen, and it is his word against non-Nobel-Prize-winning-carbon-chemist K. Eric Drexler's, I will go with Smalley's opinions. (Three years ago I would be appalled at myself for writing all this!)
I will always appreciate Drexler (and Ion Storm and Neal Stephenson) for getting me fired up about investigating what goes on at the nanoscale. Without those wild claims I might not be having the fun I'm having today.
In closing: cheer up, nanofans! You and every other living thing on earth are glorious nanomechanical devices, well worth detailed study and sincere appreciation. In the future we shall hopefully be able to improve upon Nature's wonderful handiwork. For the time being take comfort in the sublime fact that millions of nanomachines all must strive together to do something as seemingly effortless as attaching the period that will now close my post.
...I have trouble believing that. Mir was ridiculously antiquated by that point and a giant waste of money to boot. I mean, seriously, what were the Russians going to do with the old tub at that point?
The "Russian" contribution to the station has largely been financed by the United States. The Japanese and Europeans put together have contributed about 20% of the funding for the station. The Brazilians have contributed an insignificant amount of funding, and the Canadians have contributed about 3% of the funding for the station. This is all using old numbers, and the ISS budget is skyrocketing. Money to cover the shortfalls will come from American pockets.
I am not being insular. This is reality. The ISS would never have been built without massive American financial backing.
The Space Shuttle is a giant screaming space boondoggle whose main justification is the support of the other giant screaming space boondoggle, the Mostly American Space Station. Now that we've gone up into Earth orbit and found it's not a whole lot of fun, there's no use in continuing to put people up there for the sheer sake of putting them up there. It's doubly not worth putting them up there in reusable vehicles that look cool but end up wasting money compared to expendable vehicles unless one uses flight schedules generated by 1975 NASA engineers which expect Shuttles to launch on a manic schedule more characteristic of cocaine-addled weasels with ADD than giant experimental engineering endeavors.
The NASA manned missions office ought to toss the Space Shuttle, toss the Mostly American Space Station, toss all this Orbital Space Plane crap, get the simple capsule, and then concentrate on developing pre-colonization Martian missions. Earth orbit is for robots, and space planes suck.
First of all, to say that TIA is the only alternative to an arms race in order to deter global war is to accept without question that global warfare is a natural end. A lot of people have been brought up to believe that this is a basic truth. How very convenient for the arms industry.
.
:) I too digress. I don't believe your statistic - 17% of American children lived below the poverty line in 2002 - but I am not going to argue over numbers. What I am going to say is that although poverty is still a terrible problem, the advent of Western industrialized society has greatly reduced its incidence and, statistically, made human live
OK, just go and convince Osama bin Ladin that he should bend over for McDonalds and E! True Hollywood Stories with rational, logical arguments and I'll accept that war is pointless in the modern age. If you're not talking about the real present which we actually find ourselves in but instead describing some wonderful time in the future when war shall pass away, you're just wanking.
Not to mention that TIA wouldn't stop the arms industry in the slightest. --Look at Cold War Soviet practices; the entire population was engaged in reporting on itself; maids reporting on their their ladies, ladies reporting on their lovers, lovers reporting on their employers, ad infinitum. (I have friends who grew up in that world.) And how did any of that shit prevent the Soviet bloc from arming itself to the teeth? It didn't. In fact, it was key in promoting it.
Right. TIA doesn't stop the arms industry from existing. It does cut down on the fraction of the resources expended by American society in constructing and maintaining conventional armed forces, and on the number of Iraqs that we have to run at great cost to Iraq and the United States. As for Cold War Soviet practices, yes, that's what happens when you use the system for evil by failing to allow a wide enough margin of dissent. It's totally evil and awful. Thermonuclear blackmail is also totally evil and awful, but it got us through the Cold War while allowing us to, you know, not be utterly impoverished.
Holy shit. There is so much wrong with that statement, I'm not even sure where to begin. It's all wrong. All of it. Holy shit. Even if we were to assume that the posperity brought by the, 'Engine of the Western markets' is NOT a self-destroying myth, (the world is rapidly dying as a direct result of those engines, for goodness sake!), then the claim that TIA technologies is a panacea is by itself a stinking, rotton lie
You live in material comfort unprecedented in the whole of human history thanks to those Western markets. I'm not qualified to argue about environmental trends. I don't think you are either. If I happen to be debating a climate scientist, I shall apologize. I do not deny the numerous negative effects of Western capitalism on humanity and the environment alike - but I do believe that these effects are counteracted by a whole raft of benefits to humanity and to the environment and that, as Western society becomes more and more affluent, negative effects will continue to be eliminated simply because we will start to be able to spend money on it.
TIA surveillance is not a panacea. It is a useful and powerful weapon which should not be discarded because it sends chills up and down our spines.
The use of TIA technologies is the chief way in that our 'comfortable' lives will cease to be comfortable. People in the West are so incredibly ignorant. --You can't buy child-like innocence of that sort! It's almost pretty. I think the most arrogant part is you blanket claim that Americans really are comfortable. Approximately 1 in 4 children in the U.S. does not get enough food, for crying out loud! But I digress. .
Your command of American English implies that you are from the West or have spent a certain amount of time there - are you calling yourself ignorant and if so what kind of paradox does that set up?
The surveillance in question is directed domestically.
:)
Current definitions of 'domestic' and 'foreign' are rooted in antedated concepts of strategy where the only legitimacy a state could have was the loyalty of a geographically contiguous ethnic group. There are American citizens in the fifty states who are utter foreigners, ideologically speaking, to the United States.
Our WMD program is a deterrent for external threats.
No it's not. Suppose Osama bin Ladin were to blow up Chicago with a nuclear weapon tomorrow. Who would we retaliate against? What should we blow up?
I don't see how data mining techniques can maintain conventional forces. How does JetBlue receiving a notice that a "bad guy" is on board help a tank division in Iraq?
TIA-type efforts cut down on the number of troops we need to commit to occupation and stabilization duties. They allow us to use Special Forces instead of tank divisions. It's like the Cold War, where our nuclear arsenal allowed us to keep only enough forces in Europe to serve as a tripwire for Apocalypse and to thus keep taxes lower.
First off, your response is begging the question that TIA works.
If it doesn't work, this entire debate is wanking and neither you nor I should be posting.
Second, I don't understand why you posit such a strong connection between these technologies and global economic prosperity.
Western-style economic progress and social modernization drives world living standards forward. (This is a big assertion, I know. It's a reasonably sane opinion to hold, however.)
Third, and more importantly, the statement is easier to agree with if you are one who would not be targeted by such technologies. Say, for example, if you were from Egypt and went to a mosque, you may not be so blase about TIA.
Right, but I don't care about his feelings. I only care about whether he's dangerous or not. If he's not dangerous, TIA will pass him by most of the time unless he's an unfortunate soul who gets caught in the crossfire of this invisible war. (Civilian casualties happen in warfare. You can try to minimize them (US forces in Baghdad, Israelis in Palestine) or you can not give a rat's ass about them (Russian forces in Chechnya) but they still happen. We should try to minimize them, but some people will slip through the cracks and die. That's life on Earth.) If he is dangerous, TIA will help diminish the threat he poses to the economic progress and social liberalization that is Earth's hope for a better future.
Clever...but why am I wrong?
Powerful surveillance technologies in the hands of Western security organizations are the thermonuclear deterrent of the present day. They are expensive, unpopular, and capable of being used for any number of great evils - but they are the only alternative to the maintenance of enormous conventional forces designed to fight brutal and exhausting wars of occupation.
It's not that TIA has died - it's that it has been moved into the secret realm and given to people who have the stomach to run it. Use of technologies like TIA is the best option we have available to defend the comfortable lives we lead and to provide hope for improving the lives of people around the world through economic prosperity driven by the engine of Western markets. Could it be used for terrible evil? Yes. Will it be? That's a question of good government - government by individuals who can handle the seriousness of the moral issues involved without panicking and fleeing in terror.
Damn, Infinite Jest and Gravity's Rainbow are my two favorite fiction books. Excellent choices!
Stephenson is a really excellent author. Although I'm usually left a bit unsatisfied by his books' endings - particularly Diamond Age - this may only be because at the end of his books I wish there were still five hundred pages to go! He is particularly good at populating his worlds with characters who are, for lack of a better phrase, really exceptionally cool. I can't think of any other author whose characters reach a comparable level of out-and-out badassitude - Gibson doesn't even come close.
:) He is able to present versions of morality and faith that are at once true to their roots and capable of thriving in the modern world. Examples that spring to mind are his descriptions of Juanita's efforts to reinvigorate Catholicism in Snow Crash, his depiction of Avi in Cryptonomicon, and the long homage to Victorianism and Midwestern America that is Diamond Age.
I also think that he pressents some interesting and worthwhile takes on politics and modern society, particularly in his portrayal of the faithful. Traditional religion and social conservatism often end up dismissed and/or mocked in scientific and technical communities, but Stephenson manages to present them in a new light and to depict a world where faith and appreciation of traditional values does not necessarily mean intolerance or being terminally lame.
Cool answer: NASA has FTL communications. Real answer: NASA isn't actually seeing it plunge or losing radio comms, but they know when it's going to hit 'cause they did the math. :)
Good point - sorry about that! Of course oxidative combustion has nothing to do with turning into a sun. I should have been more clear in saying that the detonation would neither set Jupiter on fire nor kick-start nuclear fusion.
Hi, no offense, but this is the most laughable thing I have ever heard.
a) The main fissionable form of plutonium is Pu-239, not Pu-238.
b) Even if this was Pu-239 on board, forty pounds thereof is a borderline critical mass. You would need tampers to make it a good bomb.
c) Even if this was Pu-239 on board and there was enough of it for a critical mass, it is not arranged in a critical geometry that will produce good fission under a Jovian pressure crush.
d) Even if this was Pu-239 in a critical mass in a critical geometry, Galileo lacks the tritium primer required to kickstart a fusion reaction from a fission reaction.
e) Even if Galileo had a working thermonuclear weapon on board, a thermonuclear detonation on Jupiter would not blow up Jupiter, because there isn't enough of an oxygen fraction in the Jovian atmosphere to set the hydrogen afire. Think about it. Jupiter has collided with large asteroids and comets before now. These collisions give off heat considerably in excess of any nuclear detonation. The huge pressures at Jupiter's interior produce heat considerably in excess of any nuclear detonation. If Jupiter could have turned into a star (it cannot) it would have done so by now.
f) Learn more about physics.
I've been looking forward to Galileo's collision with Jupiter for weeks. I can't wait to see which one wins!
Hi - although I have an enormous amount of respect for Mr. Torvalds I don't think that he is entirely correct in his observation that And don't EVER make the mistake that you can design something better than what you get from ruthless massively parallel trial-and-error with a feedback cycle. That's giving your intelligence _much_ too much credit. In my opinion, massively parallel trial-and-error is limited by the competency of the individuals performing the trials (this limits the speed of optimization) and by the design parameters within which the trials are conducted (this limits the utility of optimization). The world is of course one big arena for massively parallel trial-and-error and in this Linus is dead on, but without the conscious virtuosity of design displayed by revolutionary individuals in open-source development and every other field of human endeavor, this massively parallel process would simply produce a wide morass of undifferentiated crap. Take Don Bluth movies for instance. ;)
Obligatory on-topic note:
Someone mentioned that Mr. McNealy comes off as a dick, and I agree. But dicks can be surprisingly good at making money and leading people. I think that snotty asshats can be used for either good or evil.