The problem with this thinking is that the US government regularly engages in actual conspiracies, which the public only finds out about much later. COINTELPRO, MKULTRA, the Tuskegee experiments, Operation Paperclip, the list goes on [1].
So, while it's true that the overwhelming majority of conspiracy theories are dumb nonsense, it remains unwise to dismiss a theory just because it is a "conspiracy theory".
[1] This is almost certainly true of other governments as well! I'm just less informed there.
You're not crazy. The parent poster stinkbeetle is incoherently angry, he has no self respect or beliefs, there is no signal in his noise, he's being obstreperous and incomprehensible on purpose, he histrionically tries to play the victim of verbal violence when challenged on his racism, and becomes unhinged when asked to explain his own point. He's just another adolescent attention starved edgelord troll. For proof, just set showdead=true and read his comment history. Pity him, for he's having a terrible Festivus.
You've become completely unhinged, you pathetic boomer, because I mildly poked fun at your secular-religion. What are you even doing you poor simpleton? Not even your fellow adherents to the faith are impressed by your mega tantrum. Time to re-evaluate your life choices.
There's a new, professionally-published book version of "There Is No Antimemetics Division" out as well[1], if you want to support Sam's work that way. I have print copies of both the self-published V1 and the new V2. I'm very excited about the latter, though I haven't finished it yet.
One small word of caution if you read the older version first: for what I assume are copyright reasons around using SCP in a professionally-published book, the new published version has had to strip out all the SCP references and change the names of all the characters, but it is otherwise very close to the old one. There are a handful of new scenes and some other small differences, but many pages and chapters are word-for-word identical apart from the aforementioned name changes.
This could just be a me thing, but I found this incredibly distracting after being so used to the old version, and just couldn't manage to enjoy it. Fortunately I bought the old one as well.
I’ve read the older version and really liked it, strange ending and all, and I’ve gifted the new version for X-mas. My xmas wish list is for a 6 episode mini-series funded by the fruit company.
Ra was a disappointment for me. If you end up rewriting your entire world at the end of the book, it is an intellectual failing to tackle the main issues straight on. Combine it with an mc who suddenly becomes just an idiot walked around and what you end up with is some SV eschatonism. Lots of preaching and ready conclusions, but little to return to later.
When I noticed you gave up on our argument, I thought I'd see what else you were up to. It seems your only goal on this site is to defend JKR. Unfortunately, JKR's views don't actually make sense, which explains why none of your arguments in defense of her make sense either.
I was rate-limited so didn't reply. And when I went back to that thread the next day and remembered you were pretending not to know what the male sex is or human sex development works, decided not to bother wasting any more time.
DHH is clearly talking about people of color in London, and he's clearly expressing approval for Tommy Robinson. If you won't acknowledge that, you're either oblivious or racist. I hope it's the former.
>DHH is clearly talking about people of color in London
"People of color" are not native to London. If you won't acknowledge that, you're either oblivious or racist (Anglophobic/anti-White). I hope it's the former.
> Personally I don't get the impression that Framework is endorsing a particular view, nor are they directly sponsoring a specific individual or their views.
I agree. However, I do think that Framework is taking a particularly cowardly stance by refusing to acknowledge community concerns, and I think that kind of behavior is exactly how far-right groups gain power in tech spaces. When one group just wants to live in peace, and another group wants to make the first group disappear, organizations that don't distinguish between the two ultimately drive out the peaceful group.
At the same time, I think there's a somewhat valid space for the psychology of this response.
If I use Harry Potter as an example, I think Harry Potter fans fall in a handful of camps:
1. Agrees with JK Rowling on her anti-trans rhetoric
2. Grew up loving Harry Potter and detests JK Rowling's views, possibly to the point of a boycott
3. Has never heard of any of the controversy and is blissfully ignorant
4. Is aware of the controversy but never signed up for that discussion in the first place and is just here for wizard fiction, wishes the controversy never existed.
I think the CEO of Framework is essentially going for #4 here, and I am quite mixed on whether that standpoint is enabling of problematic people or not. I can understand arguments both ways. For the role of a CEO, in this day and age, taking a polarized position does have the possibility of alienating half of your customer base, essentially a no-win scenario.
#4 is also mixed with a sprinkle of "Sometimes saying too much and engaging too much in the argument is your own undoing and digging your own grave." Often CEOs that say nothing end up with better outcomes than those who take an active stance on issues.
I can totally recognize that #4 is objectively more cowardly and less principled than #2, but I also don't know that we can expect 100% of generally good people to be freedom fighters.
Yeah, that's a good breakdown. I mean, he definitely brought this on himself by leaning so hard into Omarchy in the first place, but maybe he was just ignorant of DHH's views and thought that was a "neutral" thing to do.
In any case, I think it's important for consumers to confront companies when they pull stunts like this. Also, I'm not certain that #4-type CEOs actually have better outcomes - maybe in the short term, but when the creeping technofascism becomes more obvious, that causes real problems (see e.g. NixOS, Tesla)
It’s a fun one, though, because JKR’s whole life and works involve strong themes surrounding eugenics.
So it’s really not that far of a stretch to make this association in her case.
In her books the wizards fight against wizard Hitler and his eugenic holocaust. In real life, she engages in her own form of eugenic crusade where she believes the sex organs you are born with define your personality, identity, and your criminal tendencies.
JKR has never advocated violence, never denied anyone's humanity, and never called for any group to be eradicated. Hitler did all of those things on an industrial scale.
What on earth compelled you to equate the most evil mass-murderer of the 20th century with a children's author and feminist who says sex is real and matters for women's rights and safety?
Being less explicit about hate doesn’t make it not hate.
JKR doesn’t believe trans women deserve rights that normal people have, and believes that they are inherently threatening to women just by existing.
She wrote a book series about how your bloodline doesn’t define who you are as a person, and then turned around and decided that the sex organs you’re born with determine your propensity for criminality.
For some reason she scapegoats a group of people representing less than 1% of the population for crime against women and it doesn’t make any statistical or logical sense to those of us who haven’t been living in a moldy flat sleeping on a bed of cash.
JKR isn't advocating for anyone's human rights to be taken away, and she's never said anything of the sort. Her core point is that women and girls need single-sex spaces, services and other provisions because because male dominance in society, backed by violence and reproductive control, puts those who are female at a structural disadvantage, and that no matter how someone identifies, this material imbalance between the sexes hasn't gone away.
She's simply arguing that women shouldn't have to surrender the few hard-fought protections that were carved out to help level this unequal scenario in the first place.
Yes she is. She wants it to be impossible for trans people to use the bathroom in public.
She literally wants it to be an impossible paradox.
Trans women can’t use the ladies room because they’re a “danger” to women. Trans women can’t use the men’s room because they look like women.
For people like JKR who hate trans women, trans men don’t exist, intersex people don’t exist, and non-binary people don’t exist. Trans women are just easy to hate for various psychological and political reasons.
She just wants them to be punished. That’s it. All of these other excuses that have to do with violence and crime are no different than when my MAGA relatives justify the ICE Gestapo’s illegal kidnappings by the supposed criminality of immigrants. We don’t need due process when they’re “illegals” who are “more likely to be criminals and are in gangs.” They “don’t have rights” for various stupid-ass reasons.
Again, it is a statistical and logical fallacy to consider a population so small to be a threat to women.
JKR has not proposed taking away any rights from men, only trans women.
Women aren’t surrendering anything. The list of things they’re surrendering has a length of 0.
I do wonder, have you read anything she's written on this topic? I'm intrigued as to how you've managed to misunderstand her argument so comprehensively.
Yes, I read her whole “sorry not sorry” letter where she weaves a literary spiderweb trying to justify her position and making it all about her victimhood.
It was certainly a better excuse for creative writing than Cho Chang or Seamus Finnigan but she did a very poor job of convincing me that her main focus isn’t dehumanizing trans women.
Eh, that's not really the part of her arguments I have a problem with. I think she doesn't have a sensible answer to the bathrooms question (that doesn't just punish trans people) but I'm not sure what the right answer is either. I do have a problem with her doing stuff like this:
She's made a pattern of this behavior, and I think it clearly reveals her transphobia. (I also am not sure what the right solution is for trans people in competitive sports! I think that's a very tricky subject. But attacking cis women for looking too masculine is certainly not part of the answer.)
Also, her twitter rants about trans people are pretty shocking.
Barbra Banda failed a sex verification check issued by Zambia's Football Association, who then preemptively withdrew Banda and others from competing in WAFCON on this basis.
One would have thought the BBC could have picked a better candidate for Women's Footballer of the Year than a player who had been withdrawn from competition for not being female. You think JKR shouldn't comment on this?
What you mean is, they decided she had too much testosterone (although apparently even the details of the test are unclear?). Lots of women have high testosterone, it's bizarre to unilaterally declare her to not be a woman on that basis alone. Sex, like gender, is a spectrum.
But sure, I guess we can consider that hormone requirement as just an extremely crude approximation. JKR's comments are still repugnant.
You're conveniently designating Banda and Semenya as male for having male-typical testosterone levels, ignoring their sex characteristics, chromosomes, other hormones, etc. You specifically refer to them as "males". So, they should use only male bathrooms, right? That's JKR's whole thing, and earlier you said:
> women and girls need single-sex spaces
It follows that you should designate a person with female-typical testosterone and estrogen levels as female, whether or not they have XY or similar chromosomes, a penis, etc. Those people should then use female bathrooms, right? Including trans women taking hormonal treatment? And those trans women should be able to compete in women's sports, since they pass your hormone test?
Or maybe, just maybe, sex is more complicated than that.
I also wonder how women with minor hormone irregularities feel when people like you dismiss them as men in denial.
Semenya took a case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and lost. The published ruling revealed that Semenya has a disorder of sex development that only affects males. Semenya later acknowledged in an interview of being "born without a uterus" and with "internal testicles". At this point, it is indisputable that Semenya is male.
Banda was withdrawn by FAZ from WAFCON because CAF had started testing athletes in the female category for male-typical levels of testosterone. Barring serious illness or doping, a failed test implies presence of testes which implies male.
Some male athletes who want to compete in the female category have suppressed their testosterone, either through pharmaceutical means or surgical excision of their testes. This doesn't mean they aren't male, nor does it remove the physical advantages conferred during male sex development. Which is, fundamentally, what the female category in sport exists to exclude.
So there is no contradiction as it all leads back to this principle.
Women with minor hormone irregularities, like PCOS for example, aren't affected by the above.
You are now jumping between at least three different definitions of "male" when convenient for your argument. This is silly.
And yes, women can have high testosterone without testes. Again, it's bizarre that you're clinging to a testosterone standard that would declare a decent percentage of healthy, normal women to actually be men. I'm sorry, but sex is more complicated than that. You're not doing anyone any favors by trying to impose neat definitions on a messy reality.
I'm not jumping between definitions, I'm using the single definition that is relevant for women's sport: anyone who went through male puberty retains an irreversible performance advantage and therefore should be excluded from the female category.
Women with PCOS or similar are highly unlikely to exceed the testosterone limits that some sporting bodies implement as proxy for detecting male advantage, and indeed are explicitly exempted in such policies and have never been barred under any DSD regulation.
The true edge cases aren't athletes like Semenya and Banda, but the very rare individuals with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS), who don't respond to testosterone at any point in their development. Most sporting bodies carve out an exemption to exclusion for them.
Again, I don't care about women's sport regulations. That's a complicated issue, I get it! Barring women with high testosterone from competing seems like a very crude solution to me, but whatever.
What I do care about is your insistence that a single hormone test lets you exclude someone from being a woman, and JKR's dismissal of Banda. That's just so messed up, and ironically feels very misogynistic.
No this is about barring males with the physical advantage of male development from competing in the female category.
JKR was commenting on the BBC giving their Women's Footballer of the Year award to a player who had been withdrawn from competition for not being female, and how disrespectful this is to the many female footballers who would be deserving of this accolade. This is the opposite of misogynistic.
No, it really is misogynistic, because Banda is (to the best of our knowledge) a woman. Maybe you want her banned from women's sports for having advantageous hormones, fine, but she is a woman. You don't get to unilaterally decide who's a woman and who isn't based on a single hormone test. And it's extra messed up for JKR to sic her followers on a woman in the name of feminism.
But if you insist on this standard, I suggest you get your all your friends and family tested. You can't tell by appearance alone! And then, if your loved ones have that hormone imbalance, you should call them men, use he/him pronouns, interfere when they try to use women's spaces, etc. See how misogynistic it feels then. Otherwise, you're clearly only targeting Banda because she looks masculine.
And lastly, for the record, you were swapping between three different definitions of male. Having elevated testosterone, having testes, and having gone through male puberty are three very different things. You say you've settled on "having gone through male puberty" as your final definition. Great! So men that haven't gone through male puberty should be permitted in women's sports and women's bathrooms? Or will you introduce a fourth definition?
Having testes leads to male-typical levels of testosterone which, barring androgen insensitivity, leads to male puberty. These are three integrated steps in the male developmental pathway, not three different definitions.
We can agree to disagree on whether Banda is in the same category as Semenya, Khelif, etc. But consider that when news articles report a purportedly female athlete embroiled in controversy over competition eligibility as having "naturally high levels of testosterone" or similar, what this actually means is the athlete is male with a DSD. There has been a considerable amount of obfuscation on this topic and those who lose out are actual female athletes.
Unfairly elevating males like Semenya to the heights of female competition excludes women who would otherwise have had the opportunity to showcase their athletic excellence. This is the real misogyny.
Your comment kinda proves the article's point, don't you think? I mean, obviously your comment doesn't constitute a threat or harassment, but it does demonstrate the weird double standard and unbalanced scrutiny that the article describes.
On one hand, I think that people should check before publication and not publish shit. That goes for posting on the internet, and also about publishing books.
Separately and orthogonally, I think that someone who doesn't check before publication and publishes shit should refrain from complaining about other people's shit, even though other people's shit really is shit.
Sure, fine. I'm just highlighting that you chose to call out Karen Hao for her mistake (which she admitted and corrected), but not Will MacAskill or any of the other big EA names that have made egregious and dishonest claims. If it's not a double standard, Will also ought to be silent on this subject, right?
IMNSHO she didn't admit and correct the mistake — yet. She admitted one mistake and has corrected none, and the one she admitted was IMNSHO not the severe one.
She made several mistakes, of which I'll describe two. One (modestly serious) was to confuse units and compute the wrong number. The second (against my religion) was to publish without sanity-checking. You and I both know she didn't check, because her estimate for the average water use of one building was 20% of the water use of the continent. Any sort of check would uncover that mistake.
We in the rational camp are supposed to behave differently from Alex Jones, and part of that is to check before we publish.
She's "making arrangements with her editor to rectify the situation". If she fixes every reported error, not just one of them, I'll have a lot of respect for her.
I find this really frustrating because I like the idea of "make a lot of money, then give most of it away to make the world better for everyone". But it seems like most of the people who proudly call themselves "effective altruists" are just heartless tech bros that toss their money into useless AGI cults.
Well, that doesn't really align with my interests, education, personality, or skills[1]. I do appreciate that criticism, but I'm looking for ways to give back that don't require abandoning my chosen career. I think there's a middle ground, basically.
[1]: What I mean is, I don't want to build my own company, and if I did, it would be in a very niche area that wouldn't directly benefit the people that most need help.
> Well, that doesn't really align with my interests, education, personality, or skills
Ah, well for you, we have "regular altruism." Just pick a charity and send them money or donate your time to volunteer efforts in your community.
> What I mean is
Completely understandable. I was responding to the idea that being a cut throat capitalist that treads on your customers and workers to make a bunch of money that you then export some fraction of into "effective altruism" is probably missing the point of altruism entirely. I think it creates more suffering than it solves.
Why the workers and not the customers, let's say? Workers have little risk, they get paid a salary regardless of the company's fortunes (unless the company is so awful it goes out of business). The customers who believed in the company enough to give them money, that seems more worthy of future compensation (via profit-sharing, as per your example).
> Why the workers and not the customers, let's say?
Workers represent more of an investment in time and training. Therefore they represent long term value. Customers are fickle, as they should be, but if I get beat on prices today they're gone tomorrow.
> customers who believed in the company enough to give them money
You seem to be describing a donor or possibly a member of a co-op. A customer simply receives an object of value in exchange of the money. As long as they're getting a good value on a quality product then their belief in the company is not material.
> Workers represent more of an investment in time and training
Not really, post a job opening and you'll likely get plenty of applicants, many of whom are indeed qualified. You taking the time to vet them and choose one is a benefit of having too many options. Getting customers is harder, you have to advertise and market your product, "acquisition cost" is a real thing.
> As long as they're getting a good value on a quality product
But especially early on, how do new customers know the product is quality? Someone has to be the first to eat at a restaurant or to hire you to paint their house, whatever. Even established companies - ordering clothes online when you can't actually feel the material, picking a dentist when you dont actually know how he/she will treat you, letting Uber decide who will drive you to the airport, how a pair of skis will perform from looking at them on a carpeted floor - most customer purchases and decisions are made with far-from-perfect information and they just have to put faith in the seller or service provider - and that's what I'm suggesting is worth future compensation.
> if I get beat on prices today they're gone tomorrow
If this is the case you really havent built much of a business, you're just selling commodities, and your employees have failed in differentiating your company from your competitors.
This is a time-tested winning strategy that too few corporate owners embrace.
When you look at some of the most well-known industrial companies, their founders basically did this.
Difficulty: give away too much of the company trying to raise capital and most investors won't let you do this. Of course, you aren't really the owner then anymore, are you?
I think that's the allure of effective altruism. You founded a company or were early enough in a company to have enough shares to sell to investors. Those investors want big returns. The company is now at their mercy, but hey, they gave you a pile of cash so you can spend it on feeling good.
> That frustration was on wide display in Tommy Robinson's march yesterday. British and English flags flying high and proud, like they would in Copenhagen on the day of a national soccer match. Which was both odd to see but also heartwarming. You can sometimes be forgiven for thinking that all of Britain is lost in self-loathing, shame, and suicidal empathy. But of course it's not.
Whether him saying that in that fashion rises to the level of "supports" is for you to decide.
I asked for evidence that Framework supports this. If you check the post it's a thread about Framework. This is line noise not even worth thinking about unless you have something showing Framework supports this.
If you have nothing actually relevant to Framework (as it seems) maybe you should think about the four wise monkeys.
Oh I misread your comment. I don't have anything. No tweets from Framework, nothing in their forum, nothing on this very thread where Framework employees are active to denounce DHH or Mr. Robinson.
Why do you think you are entitled to an answer to a loaded question?
"Does XYZ respond to loaded questions?" is nowhere near any rubric I use for evaluating anything. Only those with guilty conscience engage in this bullshit. The innocent are wise enough to ignore it.
And now fragmede would you mind telling us when you stopped curbstomping the unhomed?
It’s not about a loaded question. It’s about accountability. Framework is actively in this thread, and has made no attempt to distance itself from DHH’s statements. That’s a data point whether you like it or not. Silence isn’t proof, but it is signal when a company’s brand is directly implicated.
I think your devices should have government-mandated backdoors if and only if you are a public servant. I don't understand why private citizens are held to higher standards of conduct than politicians and cops.
I've been saying this for years: the more power you have the higher standard you should be held in. In most societies on the planet it's the other way around.
Everyone agrees with this obviously but it's like saying that we should be able to levitate or live in utopia. It's almost a law of nature that the types that become powerful are not your most savory individuals and will use the power to reinforce their positions.
It's a law of nature that they will _try_.[0] That's why people should always have ways of defending themselves, whether it's with courts or guns.
[0]: This is not a figure of speech - many anti-social traits which result in NPD, ASPD and their subclinical versions[1] are genetic. There is literal evolutionary pressure to exploit others.
[1]: Meaning the trait is sufficiently pronounced to be harmful to others but not enough to be harmful to the person having it so it's not diagnosed as a disorder.
We have tons of different systems for accumulating power all over the world. Corporate structures, democracy vs autocracy, etc. In each of those societies, we see different types of leaders on a sliding scale of savoriness.
My point is that clearly there are some forms of governance which result in more savory people and so you can argue that it's the systems that define the outcomes rather than any "law of nature".
I've been saying this too but lately I think the fundamental notion of power is wrong. There's 2 perspectives which are 2 sides of the same coin:
---
All social relationships should be consensual.
This means based on _fully-informed_ consent which can be revoked at any time.
This already marks employment as exploitative because one side of the negotiation has more information and therefore more bargaining power. Not to mention having more money gives them more power in a myriad of other ways (can spend more on vetting you, can spend more on advertising the position than you can on advertising your skills). Just imagine if people actually had more power than corporations - you'd put up an ad listing your skills, companies would contact you with offers and you'd interview them.
Citizenship is also exploitative because you didn't willingly sign a contract exchanging money (taxes) for services (protection, healthcare, roads, ...), in most countries you can't even choose which services you want to pay for. And if you stop paying, they'll send people with guns to attack you. This sounds overdramatic (because it's so normalized) until you realize from first principles that is exactly what it is.
_If democracy is supposed to mean people rule themselves, than politicians should be servants which can be fired at any time._ In fact, in a real democracy, people would vote on important laws directly and only outsource the voting to their servants about laws which don't affect them much, or they'd simply abstain.
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Power should come from the majority.
This should naturally be true because all real-world power comes from violence and more people can apply more violence (or threaten it, when violence is sufficiently probable to be effective, it usually does not need to be applied, the other side surrenders).
But people who are driven to power have been very good at putting together hierarchical power structures where at each level the power differential is sufficiently small that the lower side does not need to revolt against the upper side. But when you look at the ends, the power differential is huge.
Not just dictators, "presidents" or presidents but "owners" and "executives" too.
You don't truly own something you can't physically defend. When you as a worker finish a product, you literally have it in your hands. You could hand it over to a salesman and you'd both agree on how to split the money from selling it. But instead, you hand it over to the company (by proxy its owner) which sells it and gives you your monthly wage irrespective of how much the product made. The company being free to fire you or stop making the product obviously makes more money then you - it's an exploitative relationship.
But why do you hand it over? Because if you don't, they'll tell the state and it'll send people with guns to attack you.
---
Bottom line is if people had equal bargaining power ("equality"), then if they chose to temporarily give "power" to someone in one area, they'd obviously take away their "power" is some other area. Why? Because they'd know if they didn't, the more powerful person would use this power differential to get even more power, and so on, starting the runaway loop we have here now.
If someone claims to be "representing" me (whatever the fuck that means)...
...even more so if they are "representing" me alongside millions of others, i.e. in a very abstract sense (what do a million people have in common? everything and nothing)...
...and especially if the "representation" is concluded in "winning" a ritual bureaucratic gauntlet which gives you the right to send organized murderers after exactly the people whom you fail to "represent"...
...then it sure sounds like we all deserve instant access to a real-time sub-second, molecular-level feed of your entire present existence before it's anywhere near a fair bargain and not a totalizing coercive arrangement.
Granted, this sounds a little unfeasible from a technical or security perspective.
Although if the global media capacity was redirected to doing primarily this, instead of inventing ever fancier narratives to distract people from paying attention to the circumstances of their own lives, it just might be able to handle the full surveillance of a few thousand global volunteers: the real exemplary humans who set the real standards in real dialog with the entirety of sovereign society. Governance by inverse big brother. Sure gonna be cheaper than all the effort that goes into convincing every subsequent generation that "democracy" is what's going on...
Alternatively, that entire exercise can be sidestepped by Dunbar-compliant representation, i.e. let's introduce a pervasive social norm that dictates the following: (1) nobody has the right to represent more than their 100 closest people in the world (2) representation doesn't stack to form multi-tiered institutions - representatives only connect horizontally in a territory-spanning mesh. so if N * 100 people vibe with your idea you'll have to either split your personality N-wise (doesn't go very far with current theories of mind) or give N-1 people the right to their own interpretation of your idea to communicate with 100 others.
I think they tried that about 100 years ago and it worked well enough for organized metasubversive parasites to core it and wear its husk for the better part of a century. Maybe if it was started less overtly in the first place it would've worked better. But cosplaying German Idealistm to your pet serfs cosplaying worker's council doesn't really leave space for a whole lot of subtlety. If you're interested in the workings of power this is commendable, there is much to learn from just the last 150years (which are relatively well documented). They're such a cause-and-effect pinball; but like and subscribing to any of those ideologies just lets the ghost of the ball drag you along. Kinda sad that they're one of the things the Net died into, no?
I like the application of Dunbar's number, though I am torn on (2). The largest countries currently have over 1 billion citizens, that's still 10 million representatives. That's as much as some countries.
One solution is to say that no country should be so large anyway. And I'd like that, creating such huge power structures (hierarchical or not) is dangerous. But realistically, sometimes they are needed for defense. A lot of power structures are shaped by the necessity of organized defense (and can then be used for organized attack).
I imagine on the level of any individual's participation in society, culture, economy, whatever you want to call it - it's always started out more or less like "here, you have these 100-150 places in your memory which nature gave you to know other apes; turns out you can also use them to store abstract concepts, which take 7-8x less neural bandwidth before compression; here are some: ..."
And it's due to some general agglomerating drive of systems - perhaps the same principle that made multicellular life preferable - that it ended up working out like "half of who you consider yourself to be is determined by the metanarrative undertow of the first language you were taught, and the rest by the last movie you watched."
Even then the backdoor should be on their government device and not the personal devices.
Note that having their personal device when doing government work should be prohibited (that is you can't have it in your pocket when working). As is using your personal device for anything government (other than a formula check your government device call/text - employees should be regularly tested that they report any government communication that doesn't follow the formula)
> devices should have government-mandated backdoors if and only if you are a public servant
This would be an intelligence bonanza.
Better: mandatory, encrypted logging. Officials maintain the keys. When they leave office or are subpoenaed, they have the means to grant access. (If they can send and read their messages, they have the keys.)
And ideally an illustration to those in power why backdoors are never a good thing. They won't care if it's not happening to them. But if their devices are suddenly incredibly insecure due to their backdoors, they might just rethink the concept entirely.
We do have things like the Freedom of Information Act in the US, and I think a lot of European countries have similar laws. Yes it isn’t perfect and could be enforced more evenly.
But obviously, if you work for the military there is information that needs to be kept secure…
Backdoors exist for everyone or they exist for no one, this technology isn't one that has room for a gray area to debate. If it can be deployed to public servant devices, it can be deployed to your device.
Only if they're using the same devices everyone else uses. If they're required to use a certain kind of hardware, or they're required to submit their device for hardware modification, this stops being an issue, doesn't it?
That is totally not true. They can be forced to install an app on their device that creates the backdoors. Companies do that all the time. An OS doesn't need to have backdoors built into it for backdoors to be added to it. Kinda the point of an OS is that it is general purpose.
Politicians are routinely ordered to surrender their communication to justice to audit what they do. Missing texts from Von Der Leyen is at the heart of Pfizer-gate after all.
I don’t really know what to think about this to be honest. I don’t think it’s entirely black and white and I find it surprisingly easy to play devil advocate.
Remember that the US government has an insane level of access to private communications via all the post 9/11 laws, how cosy it is with the main tech companies and we know they do a lot of these spying unofficially and with little oversight since Snowden.
Meanwhile, France is struggling with an unprecedented level of organised crime activity with the amount of violent crimes reaching worrying level. We are talking murders involving automatic weapons in broad daylight in the middle of the streets of France second largest city. Two weeks ago, the young brother of a famous anti-drug activist was murdered by a hitman while shopping.
There has been a huge increase in the quantity of cocaine being smuggled from South America triggering intense gang competition for the control of deal points and the mean in place to tackle the issue increasingly look vastly undersized. Limiting the discussion to it being authoritarian measure is refusing to acknowledge the very real challenge police currently face.
The only problem with that train of thought is that you are advocating a lower standard. Backdoors are not a superior option in any circumstance whatsoever.
The standard of conduct we need (and are failing) to hold politicians and cops to is actual security and responsibility. Some of the most powerful politicians in the world are leaking private conversations, and no one is holding them accountable. Police are paying private corporations (notably Flock) to build giant monolithic datasets from stalking private citizens, yet neither party is held to any standard whatsoever.
Logistically, when you combine private citizenship with government you get corruption problems because incentives are so misaligned.
In fact private citizenship combined with government is the origin of corruption. Think about it, as a government official your incentive should be to preserve order, fairness and honor. As a private citizen your goal is to optimize the amount of money you make via business or employment through whatever means possible. That means exploiting loopholes and possibly when no one is looking, breaking the law.
The incentives are orthoganol and it does make sense to have a different set of rights and rules for government officials and private citizens. The minute you take the attitudes of private business/citizens into the world of government you get people creating rules that are corrupt.
> As a private citizen your goal is to optimize the amount of money you make
Ok.
I'm interested in why you think this is the goal of citizens (but not of government).
To be clear: I don't believe this should be the goal of government. I don't really understand why this should be the goal of citizens. I've emphasised the term "should" here, which is a somewhat odd moral term in general, but if we're applying a "should" to government to differentiate them from private citizens, there needs to be a symmetrical. Optimizing individual wealth is certainly an emergent goal of specific individuals, but I can't think of a reason to broadly apply a moral "should" to this goal. If we're optimising for positive outcomes at a system/global/community level (which is generally the intent of wanting a functional government), then encouraging citizens to hoard wealth has not tended to be (positively) contributory to such outcomes.
This is the definition of capitalism. The system is set up this way. Of course as a human you're not completely embodied by the system and you clearly have beliefs and philosophies different from the "system".
But you cannot deny that you as an individual are HEAVILY influenced by the system can culture you live in. Status is equated to those who have the most money. Regardless of yourself as an individual, in aggregate this is how people behave and a good basic universal model that predicts behavior. But additionally outside of culture, the logistical reality of the society we live in is that money is the basis of survival. All of our morals and philosophies are thrown out the window the minute when we are poor or if we have no money and we do need money to buy food to eat. So money and business is not only a status thing but it forms the basis of survival as well.
This is not about your beliefs or morality. This is about the practical reality. In addition to this, capitalism so far is the the only known effective system to create modern economies of scale. We tried to make things fair, ideal and utopian with communism, but, practically speaking, we haven't seen it work.
All fair, but we're not talking about the system we live in (whether it works or not), we're talking about ideals & how things hypothetically should be.
You can make all the same arguments you've just made about government officials:
> as a government official your incentive should be to preserve order, fairness and honor.
Within capitalism, this isn't what government officials are incentivised to do.
If you're arguing that private citizens should optimise for individual wealth because capitalism, you can't argue that government officials shouldn't optimise for the same within the same system. By virtue of arguing that government officials should preserve order, fairness & honour, you're inherently arguing for system change (it needn't be toward communism, just toward something other than the status quo) & if you're already making that argument, the circular logic of citizens preserving capitalism no longer holds.
> additionally outside of culture, the logistical reality of the society we live in is that money is the basis of survival
This is a fair point & one to keep in mind: private citizens should (in my view) optimise for sufficient individual wealth to "live" (I say "live" here, as "survive" is commensurate to "subsisting" which is somewhat suboptimal). However, I believe that limiting qualifier is extremely important & wasn't present in your original statement.
>Within capitalism, this isn't what government officials are incentivised to do.
I am saying this is the problem. This is the origin of corruption because they aren’t incentivized for this. We are all aware that a good government official is one that follows these moral precepts.
However we know that government officials follow the moral precepts of ordinary private citizens. I’m saying that there are two sets of moral ideals. One for citizens to form thriving capitalism and one for government officials to form systems of management and guardianship.
When you combine these two moral ideas you get hybrid systems and that is the origin of corruption. That is why I’m advocating separation. Government officials making tax laws to favor themselves is an example of a hybrid system. A rich person lobbying a government official is another example.
> All fair, but we're not talking about the system we live in (whether it works or not), we're talking about ideals & how things hypothetically should be.
That’s your personal ideal and how you feel things should be. Which is fine but I’m not talking about your personal ideal or my personal ideal.
> However, I believe that limiting qualifier is extremely important & wasn't present in your original statement.
It wasn’t in yours either. That’s why I brought it up in my second statement because likely you weren’t thinking of it.
Basically most humans don’t follow your moral precepts. They give it lip service they may lie to themselves and think they follow it but the majority of the human race does not follow it.
What humans do is they optimize for survival first. Once that is fulfilled they optimize for status. It’s biological because status is associated with more mating opportunities. It’s a measurable social phenomenon that women sexually select mates based off of status and men need to earn more status. The more status they have the more mates these men tend to have.
That’s the biological reality. This is separate from moral instinct which you’re likely operating out of. You formulate a set of moral ideals from logic and many people like you apply that moral instinct to justify your current situation. Are they rich? Then likely their moral philosophy will center around the justification of that. Are they just moderately normal in terms of wealth? Then likely their moral justification is caused by that situation. A case where it’s not like that is not if a rich person gives up all his wealth to become moderate in terms of wealth deliberately because of moral philosophy. You may be a man who does that but this type of behavior where someone like Warren, Elon, Jeff or mark gives up their wealth to live as moderates in the name of some moral principle basically never happens. Likely these people have developed moral philosophies that justify their wealth and situation. But evidence for this lies in action and you rarely see rich people give up wealth in the name of moral precepts against wealth. Thus it can be said humans do not behave or truly embody your ideals.
Remember: Status is culturally defined; there are many cultures (in human anthropology) where status is not defined by money. My main point is this: modern culture is defined by capitalism and this capitalism defines their behavior more than their moral philosophies (which more often then not end up being justifications for their situations rather then an actual moral ideal).
The culture of capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with government because incentives for government is fundamentally diametric to the incentives of capitalism. That is the origin of corruption, that was my point for this thread.
I'd argue the incentives of elected government and private citizens are even more misaligned than "private" ones.
Elected government official doesn't own or have perpetual interest. All he can do is plunder as fast as he can in his unowned fiefdom before it passes on to the next guy. Fully private government would have incentive at least to preserve the value of the "Kingdom" if nothing else for his own children and because he sees the Kingdom as his own and destroying it for short term gain would be irrational.
But then you have the tragedy of the commons. As a central dictator, yes you want to preserve your government, and you act in ways that do this because you are the direct owner.
But in a democracy where you are one government official among many many other officials, one small corruption change that benefits yourself individually hardly effects the overall government. It is rational for you to do small damage to the overall government and gain a reward that benefits you disproportionally. It is the MOST logical action.
But then every government official acting rationally in aggregate causes the overall government to become extremely corrupt and that is the tragedy of the commons. Rational action in aggregate becomes irrational. Government needs to be separate from private business.
I guess it's because it's so culturally ingrained that it's hard to separate. The chase for money and business is entirely cultural. Money is paper and it's all fantasy stuff and the reason why we value it is solely because of culture. Government ideally needs to be seperate from this culture and have a more militaristic based honor structure where the incentive is to guard the citizenry. Government needs it's own cultural values. Easier said than done, practically every government official IS a private citizen and they all face the same misaligned incentives.
I suppose that was irony to highlight they're usually exempt.
Also, they are paid by the people to work for the people, so during the exercise of their functions they could in theory be contractually obliged to use a company phone
> You cant understand why the people with a monopoly on violence and force have higher scrutiny? -- @retr0rocket
Replying here to this seemingly flagged/dead comment (not sure why it was flagged - a very reasonable question).
I fully support higher scrutiny of public officials & cops, but this frankly isn't that. First & foremost, the problems you're describing are systemic, not individual. Monitoring a cop's phone isn't going to reduce police violence if the system isn't accountable - this is essentially the "bad apple" argument. The entire system needs drastic reform: backdoors won't solve any real problems here.
Secondly, independently of the levels of reform needed, at an individual level we're talking workplace conduct, reporting, protocols & transparency -vs- dystopian privacy invasion. There's a very broad spectrum here long before we reach the need for extremes.
Lastly, you need to look at the systems doing the monitoring of politicians' & cops' phones in this hypothetical scenario: if those systems contain the same systemic corruptions (which they inevitably do), the entire argument for oversight is moot.
Who says they would? The point is the people would vote to have them held to this higher standard. They represent the people's will. They shouldnt get to choose other than their personal vote, the people choose. If they don't agree with what the people choose then they can leave politics.
As much as I want to agree with you, no, backdoors for them mean backdoors for everyone else. It's all or nothing. Now, they should be held to a higher standard, and face stiffer penalty than the regular prole because they should be the example-setters.
Do better policing (and that doesn't include trying to backdoor devices), but backdoors aren't the answer.
There's a top tier DEFCON talk by the Lavabit email guy. He explains where the line is for access to phones and other encrypted information. I'll try to summarize -
1 - Law enforcement have actual information about the probable contents of your phone (like an incriminating filename will do). They can reasonably expect to get a warrant and access to your stuff.
2 - They don't know what's there at all, and have no probable indication of the contents, and in this case they cannot expect access because they would just be going fishing.
So, while it's true that the overwhelming majority of conspiracy theories are dumb nonsense, it remains unwise to dismiss a theory just because it is a "conspiracy theory".
[1] This is almost certainly true of other governments as well! I'm just less informed there.