What needs to be explained is why throwing technology at power generation problems, economic problems, healthcare problems, or warfare problems is seemingly ok, but social problems are a no-go zone.
Social problems are just very hard to solve, and they're rarely made simpler by automation or algorithms. They often require trust in another person's intent.
This describes every competition ever; person A wants the winner to be A, but person B wants the winner to be B. Should we stop doing doping tests at Olympic games, as it's an application of (non-free) technology to a social problem?
That dynamic is exactly why so many people oppose electronic voting, electronic court "guidence" and other similar things.
People are super messy, complicated and the strength of automation coupled with the allure of doing less work is the root cause for an awful lot of unnecessary grief, despite let's say for discussion, the best of intent.
What we can do put process in the mix.
The available solution coupled with time tested, production proven ways and means is about as good as we can get. And that is not very good, but it is livable and people value that a whole lot more than is given credit for.
Bad things are gonna happen no matter what, right?
Humans doing the messy human works are important. It ain't cheap. Never was, and for sure isn't now. But when we do that work, people do get options and overall harm is reduced, but more importantly, consent, acceptance, compliance all go up.
Furthermore, this restraint tends to impact people unevenly. As ineffective as the government may or may not be, at least the goal is for all people to be considered equal in the eyes of the law. With technology the power lives with those who own and create the technology, who have even less oversight and accountability than those who make the laws.
Right now, our tech is not capable of understanding meaning a mere child does easily. This makes it very poorly aligned with the problem domain in that applying it will create at least as many and probably more problems than it will solve.
Other problem domains have seen better tech alignment and have also seen greater success, though one could argue we also poorly understand the new problems created in some cases. (Global warming makes burning fuels a much worse deal than initially believed)
The side effects inherent with such blunt instruments as appear to be required to apply tech to social, human problems warrant consideration well beyond, "just because we can."
In the future, when our tech is much better, perhaps it can address human, social problems with far fewer costs to those subjected to the solutions.
Just how much control over your life and expression do you feel is necessary?
Right now it is well beyond anything I feel good about and it has just gotten started!
Otherwise, I had been denied boarding in the Covid era because the software had had a bug, so I tend to generally agree with your sentiment that the technology has too much control over my life already.
One area where technology is not a good idea is civics. Our votes the law things like that. At the present time, humans are best at managing human Affairs. That includes things like cheating crime who will be the leader oh, what's socially acceptable downtown, all that kind of stuff.
With voting in particular, we are in a position of forced trust with technology. It is going to be cheated, exploited, and has multiple times, and we really don't have options. We need people to physically vote and deal with the votes, or we're going to be under the thumb of the people that own the machines. That's pretty clear.
I am open to the idea of cheating not being in that collection of stuff that humans are best at dealing with. I also think we should have more options like we used to, setting up her own servers and what not like what used to be possible. And frankly still is possible. From time to time I like to play a little Q3A, and I just set up a server and run with friends. I don't think that game will ever die for us.
I want a lot of us, myself included, oppose is the very blunt instrument currently being used to manage cheating. It affects us in ways that really hurt the open Libre software causes. We can't know what's running on our machines, we can't run what we want on our machines, and so forth.
I did this on voice fall in the car, so please forgive typos, but perhaps this puts the chat in a better place. We shall see.
I think this is a good conversation personally.
Now, are you unconvinced that the act of cheating itself is a social problem?
I did use course terminology, it could be a moral failing as well. I lump a lot of those under social. And that's to my detriment obviously. But let's sort that out.
And then there's the part I'm convinced that I understand you on, and that is I believe our current state of technology is not a good fit for social problems, and you believe that it is. Or maybe more accurately, the solutions work and you're happy with that I'm concerned about costs and risks associated with said solutions.
I think once we understand one another there let's have a short chat.
I was coarse. Reading through, I was able to see it
Life, people, come with a bazillion, edge, corner, intersection cases, right? I am moved by the likes of Lessig, RMS, others in that we are super complex! And computer tech right now is missing a couple big things!
Meaning and reasoning basically.
Context is hard.
In the "we just want to play on a fair field" context, of course! I get it. Tech can help with cheaters for sure, though I do think it is a temporary help at best. The really brilliant people with resolve get through and may well be as great of a gamer as they are cheater. The challenge, "real game" is what really gets them going.
One could say the same of a cartel leader, thief, and others who play this game of life in that way.
And we struggle with tech and law constantly!
There are parallels.
Poor law causes a lot of grief, wasted time, people enduring punishment that should not, and we have a process for that.
And it is a shitty process!
I would feel a lot better with a similar dynamic applied where we do reach for tech tools.
Another parallel: mandatory sentencing. We put people, many of whom are elected, others selected, who we believe worthy of judgement (And I know how debatable that all is, just roll with it for sake of discussion please!), into a position of real power, and we accept that because our lives are generally better for having done it.
Mandatory Sentencing is a mess. Now we basically take this complex human capable of judgement and boil it down to a more rule based thing not so unlike what computers would do. I am not sure that ever made sense. Whether it does is an interesting discussion, but what I really want to say here is more about where tech falls short and put some meat behind "social", as I should have done.
We are perhaps not so far apart on this. Seems my lazy comment got me a robust discussion I find far more worthy than the comment was!
Nice when that happens.
Circling back then, if I am to say anything, it is process which bothers me the most.
When we are really impacting people, ruining lives or changing them seriously, or improving them frankly, there are no do overs. Our time here is our time and taking that very, very seriously seems like it should matter a whole lot more than it often does with tech and social / society.
We are trending toward more bad fits than good in my view.
RMS, character that he is, absolutely does take it hard to an extreme. He should not have ruling power, but we need that voice, just as we need ours.
In that context, your push back was solid and for me useful and productive! I am better for having worked at this a bit. And these matters are important. Increasingly so.
I hope my attempt to clarify and back away from the worst of my thoughts here is similar for you.
We both are likely to come away from this tuned up a bit and better at the topic at the very least. (True for me)
Cheers and game on!