Well, sure.
At the moment someone with a gun might stop me from going to have a cup of tea with my mother.
I learned long ago to ignore such things in order to maintain my sanity.
6,997 karma · joined October 14, 2018
At the moment someone with a gun might stop me from going to have a cup of tea with my mother.
I learned long ago to ignore such things in order to maintain my sanity.
Yes, I buy things with bitcoin, and no, you can't find it on the blockchain.
(Or do I? :))
That's it.
If you don't want that, you don't want that. Some of us do.
You don't need to :)
Despite this, virtually no companies I know of are encouraging this real, physical, safe interaction that has a huge potential for building team bonds.
It's been a year so far, and we could well be doing this for years.
I think that outdoor team events are a reasonable way forward.
It's probably both that and how financially secure they are in general, whether that be via grunt work, inheritance, safety net, whatever.
I spent the first 5 years of my career spending the equivalent of minimum wage or less. Now I don't need to give a fuck. Realistically, on a starter dev salary, you can save >50% if that's your target.
As a result, it's a manual process for me to empathise with people who actually _need_ their job.
Don't get me wrong - I understand their predicament - it's just not an automatic impulse, because for me, work is like a side quest I do to keep myself ticking over in the long term, a bit like regular exercise or a good diet, it's never present constantly in my mind like I imagine it must be for a wage slave.
"I mean, you could just sack me if it goes wrong" is a personal go-to.
Built an emergency fund at age 20 and stopped giving a fuck, it's just business.
Obligatory "I'm not American, we don't die on the street if we break our leg whilst unemployed here" I guess.
I find dark humour amusing in general because it's just like, yeah, you actually could wake up tomorrow with a brick in the back of your head. Live as if it matters today. Important now more than ever.
It's seeking to explain away decisions based on personality as if a personality based decision is any less prone to being temporary, erroneous, or that it's somehow a decision of the human (and so can just be discounted).
In reality, the human brain is not a perfect machine. We have a sense of what is 'neurotypical', sort of, but realistically everyone exhibits symptoms of some disorder at some point whether they're diagnosed or not.
A disorder also implies some sort of inability to function. Way below that are variations in mental state that still allow people to get by in a world formed for 'neurotypicals' (read: set up for less than 50% of the population, so realistically the 'typical' word there is kind of misleading).
We don't all see the world in the same way. We might see the same colours or the same patterns or whatever, but the extents of our emotions and our reactions to them (trained over decades) differ a lot.
"Also as a newish (1 year old) father I found talks by Gabor Maté resonated a lot with me."
I assume your child (and partner) haven't been 200 miles away for 3 months, inaccessible because taking a train is pseudo-illegal or frowned upon by society at the moment.
I assume you've been cuddling them without thinking that every journey, every interaction point, is some 'vector' bullshit.
If I'm making the wrong assumptions here, and you're actually watching your child's formative years through a video link, I feel for you, but I can't believe that's the case because there's no way that a normal human would claim that were a superior state of affairs.
Come on, man. Please think before posting.
They're already likely to arbitrarily die - if in 2017 I could reduce that probability by half (coronavirus roughly doubles mortality across all age groups) by having everyone stay inside or perform the various rituals like standing far apart, wearing masks etc I wouldn't do it.
If instead of decreasing life expectancy by less than a year it were something like 10 (and so we went full hazmat, disallowing things like even entering a supermarket in favour of MRE deliveries) then the calculus would be different.
The main inescapable issue, which exists lockdown or not, is visiting elderly or immunocompromised relatives, not because of the absolute risk, but because of the impact that being able to say "my visit probably killed Grandma" would have.
It also puts into context the fact that other individuals have _different_ extents.
We are social animals. Literally just existing is stressful at the moment for most of us, because there's a constant urge that is not being satisfied.
Not only for socialisation but simply the low-level stress of constantly having to 'check yourself' when you realise literally everything you'd normally be doing is either disabled or handicapped in some way.
To me, lockdowns feel like some sort of irrational loss aversion strategy. If you gave me the option in, say, 2017, of halving my mortality rate for a year, but the cost was that I had to endure relatively strong anxiety for that year, there's no way I'd take that bet regardless of my age.
Mucking around with your mental health is not wise. Add on top of that all of the economic effects, the political effects of dividing populations, domestic abuse, "non-essential" healthcare like dentistry, and so on and so forth, and honestly I reckon it's been a net negative.
It's a bit like 'reduce, reuse, recycle'.
Not having a car (possibly renting one occasionally, the inconvenience meaning that you use it less) is the best option.
After that is probably a family using an EV (e.g. with >2 occupancy).
After that is a single person using an EV to do loads of daft journeys (e.g. what sounds from over the pond like a typical 50+ mile daily round trip for work).
I had an EV for a while and sold it because I realised that it's ultimately just an excuse, like smoking "light" cigarettes. It still relies on a piss-take infrastructure of sprawl everywhere.
But we should definitely encourage them over ICE's.
Via anger, sadness, depression - whatever?
If an AGI starts inventing new and wonderful ways in which we can destroy ourselves, and we are taken in by it, we will have to restrict that, it's non optional.
You can make the argument that, say, current hard drugs should be legal - but I don't think there's a way to defend the position that any possible future 'thing' should always be legal/permitted regardless of negative effect.
That's wishful thinking which you have no evidence for. But let's assume that you're correct - eventually they will have a way to analyse it en masse.
There are, then, two things we need to bear in mind:
- is the time horizon likely to be close enough that data currently collected will be relevant then - if we allow the collection now, will it be easy to roll back that collection later when the threat is on the horizon
The answer to both of those questions is yes. Similarly, we use high strength encryption now, even if we think 128-bit is fine, because in time it won't be.
The above is theoretical. The next bit isn't - they will _always_ be able to decide that agent A should look at video B from N years ago.
They can't do that for a letter on the hypothetical table, or a message stored with strong encryption that stands the test of time - it won't exist in N years.
The distinction is between targeted and untargeted surveillance.
Digital communication is so easy to monitor, particularly by a state-level actor, that if it's unencrypted, it's pretty much all being hoovered up by someone by definition.
That's not the case for physical security, even if everyone leaves their doors unlocked, their windows open, and their notes on the kitchen table; everyone is not automatically a suspect, so most people aren't being put under the microscope.
The government likely has the ability to know, instantly, within milliseconds, everything I've ever done on the Internet that's unencrypted.
By contrast, they will likely never see the contents of the love note on my kitchen table. Well, if that pinhole camera isn't there, anyway. ;)
All of the approaches applicable to physical communications apply to digital communications too.
It's just that the _additional_ level, which in the physical world would be equivalent to knowing the contents of all of the conversations/interactions that people are having in person, is something that people wish to fight against and prevent from becoming normalised.
I would have thought that this depends a lot on the nature of said "message".
It needs to be a personal decision based on evidence you make available to the individual.
For example - if you were to send a message like - here is a photo of you on a bus, this person sitting next to you has tested positive, you sat next to them for 25 minutes - then sure, people will likely take action based on that.
The Government sending a message saying "you need to stay indoors for 2 weeks now because computer said so" is just not compatible with most people's world view, of course that's going to be completely ignored, it's arbitrary house arrest.
It also doesn't help that the UK Government are acting like circus clowns, people are going to say things like "Boris told me to stay indoors, but I needed to test my eyesight[1]".
[1] https://metro.co.uk/2020/05/25/people-warned-not-test-eyesig...
Sometimes the distinction between physical and digital security is brought up in these discussions, the idea that physical security is imperfect (you can always break a lock) but that digital security may truly be impenetrable. This is a false dichotomy.
If people have a conversation in a pub or on a park bench, then law enforcement can surveil them individually or bug the venues in a targeted manner.
But the same methods can also be applied to digital communication. This is opsec 101 right - if one happens to be a high value target, one would totally expect their house/apartment to be surveilled - no amount of digital privacy can make up for a pinhole camera installed on the wall behind one's monitor, LE doesn't even need the keys, they see the content directly.
I think the argument that digital security is 'too perfect' falls apart if you take into account the reality that physical security is a component of that. "If you control the physical hardware" and all that.
TL;DR Digital security is just a subset of physical security. You can always just drill through the side of the safe.
Now?
As the police are moving in to cities across the US military-style?
Probably all three - travel, self study, read, etc. That's what I'd do. Then again, I'm thinking UK.
The lockdowns here aren't such that you literally can't go outside, and the minimum cost of living (due to our safety nets) really isn't that high for a youngster willing to live on beans.
Education is great. I'll be learning until my brain gives out on me.
But if you want to tell me that my first year of university just became sitting in front of a screen and I'll be paying for it - yeah, sod that, I'll take the tent and the backpack and see you all when people have regained sanity.
In the outside world (including University) people do things like obtaining life long friendships, meeting partners, generally just sniffing the flowers of life.
If I had the pressure of my course and I was stuck in a box I'd go mental before week 3. No comraderie, no friends, nothing, it's all pixels mate. лол.
If I'd already paid and you refused to refund me, I'd use that gap year to travel to campus, administrators' homes, the lot, and let everyone know that you've stolen enormous amounts of money from hundreds of thousands.
Teenage me has a hell of a lot of energy, health, and time on their hands.
It's so ridiculous an idea as to be absurd. Do you want social breakdown? This is how you get mass riots.
Reading what's facing the US at the moment (I'm British) I honestly worry about whether there will be some sort of military standoff if the government doesn't step up _now_ and put together a coherent plan for the nation.
There are tens of millions unemployed, graduates are entering an economy that's essentially been deleted, and new students are having the knife twisted in them before they've even started.
People need _hope_. I'm angry on behalf of you guys.
To be honest I figure it's going to just be obvious as time goes on. When the pubs re-open in the UK I'm just going to assume that anyone there doesn't care about this nonsense, otherwise they'd barricade themselves inside.
Well, this is within your choice.
The real problem is dealing with the weird consent issue people are having.
I'm happy to shake hands, cuddle, etc, it has a hell of a lot better risk reward ratio than say, eating fast food.
I hope that half of the population aren't worrywarts forever - we already have enough division in society.
I'll just end this by saying that some people are like you, some people are like me.
We're not going to stay in fear forever. You might. I hope whatever happens that you manage to find peace with it. Godspeed.
It already seems to be happening - there's a massive ideological split between the group that wants to minimise risk at all cost, and the group that is willing to die to live a normal life.
From our perspective, that's you seizing control of the narrative and handing out minor concessions. The entire country is currently shut down, unless you change a _lot_, it'll still be mostly like that.
Stuff like 'ok, we'll do 2 meter rule in the pub, that's basically the same, right' feels like a complete joke. It's dreamed up by someone who like, doesn't go there anyway, so what do they care? It pretty much defeats the entire point of even going, and beyond that it's obviously not economically viable anyway.
But that's not all - not only are the suggested steps seemingly absurd (e.g. "soon", we can open restaurants, but can't meet family in their homes) - there's not even a real timetable, it's all conditional on Boris' mood! Months in, and we're still talking about "ooh err, maybe well, maybe this, I guess perhaps, but that, but this other thing".
Basically, it feels like not being taken seriously. It gets people's backs up. I apologise if in conversation I've seemed aggressive, but I hope the above explains why.
The virus exists regardless, but how we choose to respond to it is something that I'm not sure democracy is even capable of handling. I guess you could call it a power struggle?
At the moment the only possible method of contesting is to just ignore the rules, but you're not even taking that seriously, you're pretending it away as if people are irresponsible and just want to see death and destruction.
Re the whole old/young split: I think that the pensioner form of esotericn would be on board with my current views. I know that when I'm older I'm going to be more frail; I imagine spending time inside reading, studying, etc (depending on my eyesight), possibly spending time with my partner, perhaps we have pets, etc.
Sure - the theatre, galleries etc are things I'd like to do, but realistically, I wouldn't take the elevated risks of death in order to do them. If no-one does them though, they collapse, and I'm left with shit like Netflix in my old age regardless.