Hacker News Reader

Comment by etherael | Hacker News Reader

This is why at the end of the day come what may the state must die. Technology won't stop advancing, and if it's possible the state will push it with the exact arguments you just modded correctly.

It's simply too dangerous to allow that level of control to exist in the hands of a proven malevolent actor that will use it to ensure the extension and maintenance of its power. That power must be seen for the intolerable burden it's becoming before that point and destroyed, replaced with other structures which have no right to make any such unreasonable intrusions.

View on HN

And what would make CEOs of private corporations any more likely to deal with this power responsibly?

At least government agencies are in theory bound to laws, moral obligations and a democratic process. Meanwhile, private entities don't even have to pretend to work in anyone else's interest than their own.

And "you don't have to buy it" is no excuse. If you seriosly want to abolish the state completely, then the same problems that are currently solved by public infrastructure will still exist. You'll be just as unable to opt-out of private roads are you are currently unable to opt-out of public roads.

Of course we're actually talking about chips in your brain, not roads. So good luck opting out of that.

> And what would make CEOs of private corporations any more likely to deal with this power responsibly?

The same reason none of the previous quotes apply to actors without political power. They do not have the ability to compel people to surrender to unlimited search on penalty of death. This is only reserved and pursued by holders of political authority.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Political_Aut...

Removing the duty to obey and the right to coerce is the only solution to this problem in the long term. Anything less and they will keep pushing for it loudly and outright doing it as long as they believe they can get away with it. Which, let's be honest in reference to the way rubber stamping of anything that is requested in the name of national security, is basically always, in practice.

> They do not have the ability to compel people to surrender to unlimited search on penalty of death. This is only reserved and pursued by holders of political authority.

If I run the company that controls peoples' goddamn brain implants, I can conduct unlimited searches or perform arbitrary death sentences at the click of a button.

Not "get them installed". And if the above remains true that's a button they're not going to press, period.

Oh, there are a lot of options to make people install them. The easiest being, make it desirable to have one.

If smartphones are any indication, people would either straight-up not know about the issues with control/surveillance or have them as one factor of many to trade-off against.

And there are likely lots of benefits that brain implants could offer. If we go full sci-fi, some things they could enable:

- Perfect memory (thanks to digital storage, built-in or in the cloud).

- A perfect sense of location (thanks to built-in GPS and a direct uplink to a Maps-like service).

- Automation of tedious mental tasks (thanks to a bult-in scripting engine).

- Perfect control over your emotions.

- The ability to record and replay any experience.

- Telepathic communication.

- Taking part in fully immersive virtual worlds.

- Seamless interaction with electronic devices, to a point where they bahave and feel like a literal part of your body.

- etc etc.

So if you're a rational consumer, your choice is to have all of that and more - or to throw it all away, based on the seemingly remote possibility that the company could monitor or manipulate your thoughts or make you jump out of the nearest window. And the company is giving their strongest pinkie-promise that they would never do such things.

Even if you stay strong, if enough people take up the offer, network effects will kick in and make "not installing" an increasingly difficult choice:

- Employers will take the enhanced abilities for granted, so you'll have trouble getting a job.

- Operating devices could become difficult to impossible because manual controls will be seen as an unnecessary expense by manufacturers.

- You will be socially isolated, because taking part in telepathic communication will be difficult and you plainly can't visit virtual locations.

- etc etc.

If all that's to much of a hassle to you and you just want to force people to get the implants, you can just hire a "private security contractor" (or build your own army) and force people at gunpoint. If there is no state, who is gonna stop you?

The only reason anybody would install one is if it was desirable to have one, and it's definitely true you can't save people from themselves. With political authority as it stands though, you jump right to the absolute worst case scenario at the end there, they're simply coercively installed by force and there's no possibility of an opt out, they will then be used to do whatever the holder of political authority wants them to do to you, because just as you say, who is going to stop them?

Look at the world we actually live in, this is the way it works, the only thing which actually restrains wielders of political authority is the things they can't do. Not the things they're "restricted by law" from doing.

If they're still around when this is possible, the worst case outcome is inevitable. That doesn't mean that if they're not things can still get bad, by the way. Merely that the combination of the two things taken together is a surefire recipe for dystopia.

> and it's definitely true you can't save people from themselves.

That's too easy to dismiss if we - already today - have major industries that only exist because people act against their own interests - and we have armies of marketers and advertisers that work 40 hours a week to undermine peoples' capabilities of rational descision making.

Even if they didn't, market failures are real, the "invisible hand" a lot less so. We know that if everyone acts only in their own interest, the end result can end up bad for everyone. (Or good only for a small elite)

The market needs guiding principles and I'd very much prefer those principles being enacted by a democratic, law-bound government than some oligarch who is responsible to no one but himself.

> Look at the world we actually live in, this is the way it works, the only thing which actually restrains wielders of political authority is the things they can't do. Not the things they're "restricted by law" from doing.

And yet if leaders of private companies had the same powers, they'd magically restrict themselves. Why?

By the way, that isn't even true: Take Trump: You have a political leader with openly authoritarian views at the most popular position on earth, a party ready to follow wherever he wants to go and democratic institutions weakened by regulatory capture - and he still has to frequently backpedal because people defend the laws and don't just bend to his will.

In a private company, where the only law is "the boss is right", who should do that?

> They do not have the ability to compel people to surrender to unlimited search on penalty of death. This is only reserved and pursued by holders of political authority.

You're missing the point that this power being "reserved" by holders of political authority is exactly what prevents corporations from exercising it.

It's also a theoretical/idealistic divide, assuming corporations always act within the rule of law. See e.g. the long history of Ford's various dealings with their own plotting "terrorists": union organisers.

> You're missing the point that this power being "reserved" by holders of political authority is exactly what prevents corporations from exercising it.

That which can be asserted without evidence can be discarded without evidence.

> That which can be asserted without evidence can be discarded without evidence.

The same can be said of either side of the discussion—you appear to have provided no evidence that corporations would refrain from abuse of such powers were they not so restrained. Whereas there is plenty of evidence that they do abuse such powers even in our current system where they are somewhat restrained from doing so.

>They do not have the ability to compel people to surrender to unlimited search

They dont? Says who? Who the heck do you think will have power to do whatever they want whenever they want?

You think the 1% will distribute wealth and power fairly and evenly?

Governments are in place to democratically do this. If you think the 1% wouldn't kill you in a heartbeat take a look at world history or some dictatorships today.

You really have no idea what you're even saying.

looking at how many people voluntarily give up their privacy in exchange for convenience (facebook, alexa, etc.) it seems that most won't need to be compelled to do anything..

So you prefer to go back to kings and emperors? Without the state we will all be slaves to someone.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com