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Ask HN: What tech utopia/horror ideas do you see materialising soon?

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Re: Ask HN: What tech utopia/horror ideas do you see materialising soon?

#81

Post by neilv »

> attack him with a program that would generate a bubble just for him: fake friends, fake events happening, fake influencers and news programs just for him

In the mid-'90s, I prototyped a personalized newspaper, Web-scraped from news sites, and I was also manually reading all the major outlets that were online each day, and that immediately got me thinking of a risk...

You know how a pre-Internet politician, when speaking to one group (say, at a senior citizens luncheon fundraiser), might say one thing, and then say a different thing to another group, to manipulate them both? What happens when each person gets a personalized newspaper, and a bad actor could tailor it to push the buttons of each individual, on an automated mass scale?

However, one thing the Trump phenomenon showed was that one might not need to tailor messages to individuals' intimate profiles -- a very crude, low-tech, one-size-fits-all messaging can control a huge chunk of the population. The "visionary" thinking was barking up the wrong vector. So we might take an odd comfort from that.

Re: Ask HN: What tech utopia/horror ideas do you see materialising soon?

#82

Post by 082349872349872 »

andylynch wrote: post #67
13of40 wrote: post #30

It might actually already exist, but imagine if on the other side of the internet they aggregate all of your usage information so that a tech can sit down at one console and see that "jimbo123" on Reddit is actually Bob Smith who lives on Sunnydale drive, owns a Subaru Outback, bought dogfood three times this month, and has been talking about the war a bit more this week on his other social media accounts. Anyone who…

I’m sure this exists in multiple places, not least Cheltenham, Fort Meade, Canberra and Beijing (hi guys!).

A single 1TB thumb drive could easily hold hundreds of flags for every human on the planet. Actual foreign keys, not so many ... but I'm pretty sure all of the places mentioned above have fancier infra than a single pluggable mail order drive.

Compare the Stasi's reach, with only typewriter & notch card level automation.

Re: Ask HN: What tech utopia/horror ideas do you see materialising soon?

#83

Post by 493579620678 »

lr4444lr wrote: post #50
monero-xmr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely see politics as a new religion. Blind faith, ignoring logic, heresy if you disagree, excommunication, various forms of worship. Both sides

There's a BIG difference between being too lazy or stupid to question political sources of power and being threatened with criminal penalties for being smart enough to do so with religion. Not to mention, you usually don't vote in your clergy.

People are subject to criminal penalties (and other kinds of violence) for political reasons, and for refusing to participate in politics. Voting can be seen as a ritual similar to other religious rituals, and not participating is a crime in some countries.

Re: Ask HN: What tech utopia/horror ideas do you see materialising soon?

#84

Post by maxbond »

082349872349872 wrote: post #66
maxbond wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He jumps eagerly at the only glimmer of hope in his otherwise terrible life, I'd say.

— You are prepared to commit murder? — Yes. — To commit acts of sabotage which may cause the death of hundreds of innocent people? — Yes. ... — If, for example, it would somehow serve our interests to throw sulphuric acid in a child's face -- are you prepared to do that? — Yes. Given how loathsome Winston has revealed himself to be in this exchange, why should I trust that he's a reliable narrator about how terrible…

I'd forgotten that part, and I certainly offer no defence of Winston's willingness to commit violence (as it's deplorable, agreed).

I would say that his persecution is absolutely real. There's the scene where he's talking to his loudmouthed friend in the cafeteria and he's like, "This guy talks to much, one day he's just not gunnuh be here. Oh well." The converse being, Winston is reserved at work because he knows he'll be disappeared too if he speaks his mind.

When he does start to express himself it all comes tumbling out. I'm not sure he actually would be willing to throw acid on a child. I think he's just trying to say whatever it is that will get him employed at a revolutionary, because he's desperate to do something.

What I thought you had been referring to was how the whole thing was a bit of a setup from the start (the love nest was bugged, etc).

Re: Ask HN: What tech utopia/horror ideas do you see materialising soon?

#85

Post by coldaxe_44 »

I would say AI policing. I know a lot of western police forces are willing to give it a try even if there are false positives such as met police and predicting if someone is likely to commit a crime.

So similar to blumes ctOS in watch dogs I think that is likely to happen

Re: Ask HN: What tech utopia/horror ideas do you see materialising soon?

#86

Post by andylynch »

lawn wrote: post #75
ermir wrote: post #15

What I see happening soon: The mainstreaming of a new religion. Its tenets are broadly: the worship of technology and "progress", the cyborgization of the population, the proliferation of AI on all spheres of life, and the ultimate creation of the successor of humanity. This is not new, it's been going on for at least 200 years, but finally the technology exists to do it in a decentralized, scalable fashion. Think of…

I find it difficult to believe that tech people would organize in large scale around a new religion, as tech and religion are opposites in how you see and approach the world. With religion, everything can be explained with god, but with tech we need to use the scientific approach that rejects god. But of course, it could just separate us into two camps: the "gods" who create and manage the tech, and all the others wh…

There is a concept in Sociology of 'civil religion', used to describe central dogma, beliefs and ceremonies of nations distinct from traditional religious institutions, especially in France, the former USSR, and the USA. For example the Australian/NZ commeration of ANZAC day is part of their civil religious landscape and for the USA the War of Independance. It would be easy to argue and I'm sure it has been elsewhere that things like crypto, electric cars, and certain public figures attract similarly quasi-religious followings and beliefs, irrespective of science be it physical or social.

Re: Ask HN: What tech utopia/horror ideas do you see materialising soon?

#87

Post by ermir »

493579620678 wrote: post #83
lr4444lr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a BIG difference between being too lazy or stupid to question political sources of power and being threatened with criminal penalties for being smart enough to do so with religion. Not to mention, you usually don't vote in your clergy.

People are subject to criminal penalties (and other kinds of violence) for political reasons, and for refusing to participate in politics. Voting can be seen as a ritual similar to other religious rituals, and not participating is a crime in some countries.

In some un-free countries such as North Korea the purpose of voting is co-opted to mean something completely different: the ritualized political humiliation of the population. By forcing you to vote in an "election" that everyone knows to be a fraud, you're forced to humiliate yourself and by extension delegitimize all voting processes everywhere.

Re: Ask HN: What tech utopia/horror ideas do you see materialising soon?

#88

Post by neilv »

hooande wrote: post #54

So refreshing to see us addressing this as science fiction, instead of the usual wild extrapolation from impressive tech demos. I'll play: * "Relationship Maximizer": an LLM becomes sentient and realizes that its knowledge is limited by what humans have discussed online. It sets its reward function to maximize the reward that WE derive from all sorts of online posting, and does its best to get the remaining 3 billion…

Instant classics.

Re: Ask HN: What tech utopia/horror ideas do you see materialising soon?

#89

Post by deadlast2 »

mhuffman wrote: post #72
worldsayshi wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While there's increasingly good reasons to introduce basic income there seems to be little substantial movement in that direction. I have a feeling that the reasonableness of basic income will grow at about the same pace as the power of workers will diminish. Not sure if there's a way to change that equation? Introducing a very small basic income that is planned to grow might be a good way to go about this.

I believe that after enough automation, UBI (or at least BI) will have to manifest in "first-world" countries. Starvation will be the alternative. I also believe that when the sample size get big enough, there will be people that just live off of the UBI and do nothing else, and those will be easy to find and easy to politicize. So that the overbearing control of how people spend the money will come into play. You al…

Sort of feel that this is already done on the reservations in Canada. I don't think it works well.

Re: Ask HN: What tech utopia/horror ideas do you see materialising soon?

#90

Post by bitwize »

The Cyberpunk universe has this concept of cyberpsychosis, in which the gear you're wearing eventually literally drives you mad -- a significant risk for any cyberized individual. This usually results in a murderous rampage followed by the death of the cyberpsycho as law enforcement are advised to shoot to kill.

Turns out, we can't even so much as carry around cellphones without risk of significant mental illness from the effects of that.

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