Rule 34

Here, at least, there’s fresh paint on the walls, and the thin carpet isn’t worn through. And there is a receptionist at a desk in an open area of corridor, her head bent over a pad. Fading print-outs pinned to corkboards on the walls and the gawky-looking student staring blankly at them tell you that you are, in fact, stuck in a time warp from the noughties, or maybe on the set of a documentary video about the rise and fall of higher education.

MacDonald pushes open a beige door and ushers you into a cramped office. There’s a huge, old-fashioned- looking monitor on his desk, and a glass-fronted bookcase holding a small, dog-eared collection of journals and books. Judging from the dust and the yellowing corners, they haven’t been read in a while. Trophy copies of his papers, you assume. He flops down into a cheap swivel chair, and gestures at the two fabric-padded bucket seats in front of his desk. “Make yourselves at home. I’m sorry I can’t offer you any hospitality—our coffee machine’s broken again, and the corporate hospitality budget is somewhat lacking this decade.”

“Thanks,” you manage. The sense of deja vu resolves itself: You have seen him before. In a pub, somewhere in town? Brain cells grind into action, and you recite a memorized script. “We’re here to gather information which may be of use to us in an ongoing investigation into a crime. I’m required to tell you that you are not under suspicion of any criminal wrong-doing—we’re here to consult you as an expert witness—but we have to record this interview for use in our ongoing investigation, and if you incriminate yourself, the resulting transcript may be used in evidence.” You tap the right arm of your specs, then clear your throat. “Are you alright with that? Any questions?”

“I shall remember not to confess to any murders I didn’t commit.” MacDonald seems to find your caution inappropriately amusing. You’re about to repeat and rephrase when he adds, “I understand you’re in need of domain-specific knowledge.” He leans forward, smirk vanishing. “Why me?”

“Your name came out of the hat.” You decide to press on. Probably he got the message: In any case, having an inappropriate sense of humour isn’t an arrestable offense. “We’re investigating a crime involving some rather strange coincidences that appear to involve some kind of social network.” The half smile vanishes from Dr. MacDonald’s face instantly. “You’re a permanent lecturer in informatics with a research interest in automated social engineering and, ah, something called ATHENA. Our colleagues recommended you on the basis of a review of the available literature on, uh, morality prosthetics and network agents.”

Kemal, sitting beside you with crossed arms, nods very seriously. MacDonald looks nonplussed.

“Really? Coincidences?” He pauses. “Coincidences. A social network. Can you tell me what kinds of coincidences we’re talking about here?”

“Fatal ones,” says Kemal.

Damn. MacDonald’s expression is frozen. You spare Kemal a warning glance, then say: “We’re here for a backgrounder, nothing more—to see if your research area can give us any insights into what’s going on. I’m afraid I’ve got to admit that I’m not up on your field—tell me, Professor, what is automated social engineering?”

You sit back, mimic his posture, and smile at him. It’s all basic body-language bullshit, but if it puts him more at ease . . . yes. MacDonald visibly relaxes.

“How much do you know about choice architecture?”

He’s got you. You glance sidelong at Kemal, who shrugs minutely. “Not a lot.” The phrase rings a very vague bell, but no more than that. “Suppose you tell me?”

“If only my students were so honest . . . let’s review some basic concepts. In a nutshell: When you or I are confronted with some choice—say, whether to buy a season bus pass or to pay daily—we make our decision about what to do by using a frame, a bunch of anecdotes and experiences that help us evaluate the choice. You can control how people make their choices, even to the point of making them choose differently, if you can modify the frame. There’s a whole body of research on this field in cognitive psychology. Anyway: Choice architecture is the science of designing situations to nudge people towards a desired preference. You might want to do this because you’re marketing products to the public—or for public policy purposes: There’s a whole political discourse around this area called libertarian paternalism, how to steer people towards choosing to do the right thing of their own free will.”

Now it clicks, where you’ve heard this stuff before: There was a fad for it about ten years ago, trials on reducing binge drinking by giving pub-goers incentives to switch off the hard stuff after a couple of pints, free soft drinks and so on. (Which failed to accomplish anything much, because the real problem drinkers weren’t in the pubs in the first place, much less drinking to socialize, but the Pimm’s-quaffing policy wonks didn’t get that.)

You nod, suppressing disappointment: Is that all? But MacDonald reads your gesture as a cue to continue in lecture mode.

“It’s another approach to social engineering. Take policing, for example.” He nods at you. “There’s the law, which we’re all expected to be cognizant of and to obey, and there’s the big stick to convince us that it’s a lot cheaper to play along than to go against it—yourselves, and the courts and prison and probation services and all the rest of the panoply of justice. However, it should be obvious that the existence of law enforcement doesn’t prevent crime. In fact, no offense to your good selves, it can’t.

“For starters, in modern societies, the law is incredibly complex: There are at least eight thousand offenses on the books in England and about the same in this country, enough that you people have to use decision-support software to figure out what to charge people with, and perhaps an order of magnitude more regulations for which violations can be prosecuted—ignorance may not be a defense in law, but it’s a fact on the ground. To make matters worse, while some offenses are strict-liability—possession of child porn or firearms being an absolute offense, regardless of context—others hinge on the state of mind of the accused. Is it murder or manslaughter? Well, it depends on whether you meant to kill the victim, doesn’t it?”

He pauses. “Are you following this?”

“Just a sec.” You flick your fingers at the virtual controls, roll your specs back in time a minute to follow MacDonald, who is on a professorial roll. “Yes, I’m logging you loud and clear. If you’ll pardon me for asking, though, I asked about automated social engineering? Not for a lecture on the impossibility of policing.” Perhaps you let a little too much irritation into your voice, as he shuffles defensively.

“I was getting there. There’s a lot of background . . .” MacDonald shakes his head. “I’m not having a go at you, honestly, I’m just trying to explain the background to our research group’s activity.”

Kemal leans forward. “In your own time, Doctor.” He doesn’t look at you, doesn’t make eye contact, but he’s clearly decided to nominate you for the bad-cop role. Which is irritating, because you’d pegged him for that niche.

“Alright. Well, moving swiftly sideways into cognitive neuroscience . . . in the past twenty years we’ve made huge strides, using imaging tools, direct brain interfaces, and software simulations. We’ve pretty much disproved the existence of free will, at least as philosophers thought they understood it. A lot of our decision-making mechanics are subconscious; we only become aware of our choices once we’ve begun to act on them. And a whole lot of other things that were once thought to correlate with free will turn out also to be mechanical. If we use transcranial magnetic stimulation to disrupt the right temporoparietal junction, we can suppress subjects’ ability to make moral judgements; we can induce mystical religious experiences: We can suppress voluntary movements, and the patients will report that they didn’t move because they didn’t want to move. The TMPJ finding is deeply significant in the philosophy of law, by the way: It strongly supports the theory that we are not actually free moral agents who make decisions—such as whether or not to break the law—of our own free will.

“In a nutshell, then, what I’m getting at is that the project of law, ever since the Code of Hammurabi—the entire idea that we can maintain social order by obtaining voluntary adherence to a code of permissible behaviour, under threat of retribution—is fundamentally misguided.” His eyes are alight; you can see him in the Cartesian lecture-theatre of your mind, pacing door-to-door as he addresses his audience. “If people don’t have free will or criminal intent in any meaningful sense, then how can they be held responsible for their actions? And if the requirements of managing a complex society mean the number of laws have exploded until nobody can keep track of them without an expert system, how can people be expected to comply with them?

“Which is where we come to the ATHENA research group—actually, it’s a joint European initiative funded by the European Research Council—currently piloting studies in social-network-augmented choice architecture for Prosthetic Morality Enforcement.”