431 karma · joined April 29, 2018
I really wish they'd just make some kind of system or authority to keep VOIP from spoofing numbers. It's ridiculous. There's gotta be a way for them to secure that shit. I guess they're just inept.
I feel like once again you're using different standards for evidence for the two systems. We see the awful effects of communism each and every time and we correctly attribute it to communism. But suddenly there's a need for negative proof with capitalism. We can't be sure because we haven't seen every single permutation where it might be possible. But this systemic corruption exist in each real instance so far. But we don't know if it's strictly "inevitable." Do you see how that is bad reasoning? Do you see how that isn't falsifiable?
It also stands to reason that this is inherent in capitalism. If you have complete freedom to purchase anything in the market, can you not see a situation where, without outside control, a successful party will have the opportunity to use capital to seize the system itself and change it to suit their needs above others? It stops being lassis-faire at that point. What about capitalism is meant to prevent that from happening? There's no inherent safeguard to keep it from developing that problem.
If you want a good system, you have to look at it honestly. You can't be in denial and keep giving it a benefit of a doubt just to protect the system instead of the people living within it. The system exists for a purpose, not of its own merit. It needs modification in the same way that all systems need modification. Any creation of humankind can be improved, and one of the advantages of our kind is that we have reason and agency to continually improve. The danger lies in ossifying and exalting a system as flawless the way we do with capitalism.
It's a herd thing. We have difficulty choosing to do anything drastically differently from the rest of society, and raising children involves another being who doesn't necessarily have freedom to consent so society gets even more involved if what you are doing is deviant. But the drift of society has caused the norm to be something that decades ago would have been considered highly deviant. If you were a hovering parent like is common today in the 60s or 70s, you'd be an absolute freak and considered abusive. But today the opposite is true.
I'm glad you mentioned that the kids are sometimes the ones who make the choice themselves. I guess we're putting so much fear around them that it's making them decide the wisest course of action is to do what is normal and practiced by all their peers, be in constant sight of their parents. Really a shame.
Even ignoring that, let's say you're right. Where do you think would be a good balance of that? Surely kids would have even fewer early deaths if we just kept them in a single room except for going out in the backyard for mandatory exercise. Like a dog. And why stop at 18? Surely unnecessary adult deaths could be prevented too by not allowing movement or decision-making for anyone. But who would even want to be alive?
Obviously that's absurd. So the answer isn't only to minimize risk of death and injury. The answer is to find a balance between control and chaos, where safety and freedom are acceptable. I'm of the opinion that we have strayed too far towards control.
You're also falling for that risk management problem I mentioned earlier. Humans have an internal algorithm to manage risk. But like most algorithms, it tends to break down when you feed it values of infinity or zero. When we give anything an infinite value, any finite amount of risk is unacceptable. We'll take zero risk and as a result there can be no good outcome, because life without risk has no potential reward.
An example of that is the stunted emotional development that kids have these days. We responded to obvious risks of early death and discounted less-obvious risks of failure to thrive later in life. It becomes easy to blame individuals for their own shortcomings at that point, even if it was perfectly possible for them to develop normally if we hadn't squelched them.
And I think there is evidence of current and future generations having less opportunities, less wealth, a worse climate, even less sexual encounters than previous generations. I think that's sad. We dream of always giving a better life to our children, and now we're greedily taking that life from them. They will know when they grow up and look around them. They will understand what happened.
It just needs to be limited. You can't have lassis-faire capitalism forever because the people who are most successful will change the initial conditions and it will no longer be lassis-faire. So you need some kind of control outside the free market. The free market alone is not corruption-proof in any way.
Do we claim that capitalism cannot produce hyper-greedy sociopaths? Because I would argue that it distills those people better than most systems. We need some form of modified capitalism which has some checks and balances. We did have that system for a long while, but the controlling agencies got captured by private interests and we can all plainly see the risk involved there.
But it's pure capitalism. People who say pure capitalism would have an even playing field discount the possibility that the winners on that level playing field would change the playing field to benefit them forever. What is keeping the playing field level? Not the market. The market doesn't limit systemic drift.
I swear, an-caps just don't consider the actual consequences of their ideology. Just once I wish y'all would think something through all the way to the end and consider the possibility of non-ideal situations.
Is freedom a threat to democracy? Yes, it can be. Freedom to go around killing your political rivals and their supporters is definitely a threat to democracy. Absolute freedom is anarchy, and it's horrible for anyone who is not the most powerful. It's great for them, though.
That's a hyperbolic example. But the freedom of corporations to completely capture political parties and wrest the nation's tiller away from the people and hog it all to themselves is definitely an existential threat for democracy and our well-being. To allow their absolute freedom is a threat to our basic freedoms.
When we see that communist regimes have famines and vast imprisonments and corrupt party leaders stealing from the people, we correctly identify that as one of the realities of communism which stems from the impossibility of making communism work within the confines of human nature.
When it's the inevitable effects of capitalism, we deny it. We say, "Oh no, that's not pure capitalism, they aren't practicing real capitalism, they're corrupt." It IS an effect of capitalism in every case. Where else is this coming from? Powerful entities in capitalist societies capture regulatory bodies and political figures and force them to enact policies which are harmful to common people yet benefit their bottom line.
It's intellectually dishonest to say that all of a sudden it isn't capitalism so capitalist ideology isn't at fault. We have been driven by capitalist ideology every step of the way up to this, but the instant something bad happens then the definitions suddenly change and capitalism is insulated from harm.
Let's not be in denial and say that yes, capitalism per-se is to blame. There comes a point when capitalism is bad for free society and democracy. Does that mean that we have to enact the exact opposite? No. Let's not have a false dichotomy. We need to realize that pure capitalist ideology doesn't work due to human nature in exactly the same way that pure communist ideology doesn't work. We need a strong and effective system to suppress certain parts of the capitalist ideology or we will perish.
Around 2010 I think it had declined to about 200 yards max. It's really extremely sad. I wouldn't want to be a kid now. I wouldn't want to have those memories of childhood. It's part of several reasons I don't think it would be ethical for me to reproduce at this time.
People's fear is a sliding scale, and a child's safety is one of those things that the human psyche gives infinite value. That really screws up your ability to manage risk. People are even more afraid now, even though the causes of early death are the lowest they've ever been and we've marched ourselves into a joyless panopticon where nobody really decides their own destiny from an early age.
These kids are going to absolutely hate us.
I do think that individual developers and designers have good human hearts and altruism, but the corporate structure is devised to keep that under control and serve shareholder value above everything.
There was a talk at the latest CCC which likened corporations to very slow, analog AI which responded to stimuli and attempted to increase share value by any means necessary over years and generations. And that this slow, silicon-free AI has already taken over our governments and captured almost all regulation. It was an interesting idea.
People have this idea that information technology is so innocent and only improves, never harms. I feel like this field is about to get a reckoning, but it's not going to be something we can undo. I don't think it's crazy to be skeptical and careful about it. I don't think it's a good idea to just assume it's fine and normal.
Here's the thing about these little conveniences and timesavers they're building. I think it's a sliding scale. Now we think it's inconvenient to call and put in a reservation or write an email to somebody. They'll fix that. Then we'll think the next most onerous thing is inconvenient. The truth is, we have extremely cush lives right now as it is. We're not going to use this to save time and do better things, become better people. We're going to use it to lazily shrink from society and become even more obsessed with electronic trivialities. Just like me writing this bitter comment right now. It's the continuation of an obvious trend.
We're not using technology to do fantastic things. We're largely using it to enable fantastic laziness and entertain the habitually bored. I wonder what trivial little convenience would actually spur us to draw the line and say "Enough. Get out of my life." I'm envisioning a device which would access all your most secret sexual urges, but it would allow you to fart while sitting down without lifting one ass cheek. I bet we'd leap at that.
I'm extremely disappointed in us.
I'm not afraid of the machines going all singularity or skynet or whatever, becoming sentient and taking over the world as some kind of robo-Hitler. That's moronic. But what does worry me is the normalization of having a machine do everything for you, plan your whole life, access every little detail of every bit of your personal data and lifestyle.
Of course we've already had that for a while with the way phones work. But this is another step towards getting public consensus for using it in new ways. Once people are used to this, we'll have more and more systems with conversational software that manages your life for you. Speaks on your behalf. Interfaces with the world for you because doing it yourself is far too stressful and inconvenient.
And of course it'll be a free, advertising-supported model so all that data will have to be shared with, among many things, shady political organizations to try to gain every little advantage possible to manipulate public opinion and steer themselves into enormous power.
Think of where the cell phone started off: just a phone in your pocket. It's so much more now. Remember that when thinking about these AI assistants and what they will develop into. I'm not afraid of the classical AI apocalypse. I'm afraid that these systems will do exactly what they're designed to do. That people are underestimating just how much power lies in these little inconveniences in life, once they're all added up and analyzed and tallied.
No. Fuck no. Are these guys kidding me? They're obsessed with scooping your data and serving ads to you that are so seamless with your experience that you mistake them for your own decisions. Like google actually wants to help you personally, just out of the goodness of their heart. Who the fuck believes that? These things don't exist for the common good, they exist to increase value for their shareholders. They're like paperclip maximizers in that respect. And you aren't the client. They are not out to make your day happier and healthier and more human or whatever.
Never trust a service that is so integral to your life you can't abstain from it, yet you don't pay for it.
This is about the future. Social media moguls will arguably have immense power to choose which candidates can win or even compete in elections by selectively limiting or pushing coverage and managing incredibly insular social circles of people online. Forget superPACs or whatever. People who control a system this powerful don't need to campaign through the old-timey official political advertising system, they just push their agenda on their own network with no rules whatsoever.
And it's not national. It's global. Tons of actors are seeing just how effective it can be, and you better believe that people will be grinding that axe like mad in elections from here on. It's going to be very difficult to even quantify how broad an effect it has. As these algorithms get even more effective than they already are, we're going to essentially see the end of legitimate elections. PAC advertising has absolutely nothing on this new tactic.
I especially hate services that intentionally break their mobile site and disallow forcing the desktop site to make you to install their greasy, slimy mobile app. Like Facebook and Reddit. So scummy.
If you send that message to random people's inbox as if it's personally addressing them, you're going to get mostly noise in return. Really dumb. And they've seen how it works thus far yet they don't change it.
Just make people research what they're buying elsewhere--which will probably also get swamped with fraud--or just let customers roll the dice without the false sense of security. They're already doing it, but with a bunch of fake 5-stars instead of a bunch of unreviewed items.
A democratic system in today's world honestly just hands the keys of state to whoever controls these marketing nukes. Of course it's not nearly as bad now as it'll get later. We're about to be treated to a front-row viewing of just how easy it is to mess up every future election.