61–70 of 83 posts
If that's the case, Pai's rationalization is very hand-wavy.
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For the folks who aren't about to give up so easy, here's the reddit sub where people are brainstorming ways to "make" them listen. Again. I imagine it wil be something along the lines of another blackout or whatever a "march" on the Internet would look like. https://www.reddit.com/r/MarchForNetNeutrality/
I'm not giving up, I'm stating the facts of the case. If you've actually got a concrete proposal on something that will actually shift the agenda of this agency, I'm 100% all ears. I suspect I'll be waiting a while though, since the FCC, like many of the commissions like it, were not created with the Russian coup like we're experiencing right now in mind. We can protest and gnash our teeth all we want, but very, very…
The trick is they want you to feel powerless and that nothing can be done, that it's already too late. Your original comment shows you are falling for it.
The means they are using to perform this trickery is to convince you that it is too much for any one person to make a difference. "Their minds are already made up". This kind of trickery only works on uneducated and weak people.
The blackouts worked before because they disrupted, at least a little bit, the everyday lives of important people and non-important people alike ... because a lot of people worked in concert together to be heard/noticed as one.
I'll refrain from responding to the snide remarks by rmccoy6435; suffice it to say that if there is one thing that a subreddit can do well, it's help people organize w.r.t. their constitutional right to assemble[1] in the name of free speech and thus show strength in numbers. Losing net neutrality could theoretically take that away, too.
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Ignoring what Americans want is almost the entire point of regulatory agencies like the FCC. They're a bureaucratic/technocratic check on the democratic process. (Which is why, in my opinion they're unconstitutional, but that's an argument for another day.)
isn't the constitution itself a check on the democratic process?
Comments the say the same thing just count for a single comment ... and they don't count up. This isn't a vote. The FCC is a regulator. The government calls the shots. Misusing the comment process as a sort of virtual petition could in theory influence the government but there has to be a better way to do this sort of thing.
I've worked with many regulators on industry/public reviews. Submitting opinions or copy pasta achieves nothing, no matter how voluminous. It will at best end up refered to in the final report as something like "Mupltiple unsubstantiated submissions were made supporting net neutralitity."
Things that make a difference, at least to the extent that some time and effort has to be made responding to them in the final report, include:
1. Summarising similar rulings in other jurisdictions. Ideally, including the reasoning why they made their decision, and some analysis of the impact. Comparisons of market similarities (e.g. level/structure of competition) helps to show why those decisions are relevant to the local market.
2. Arguing from local regulatory context. Working from the local competition/telecoms laws and previous decisions by the regulator, construct a structured argument why the desired outcome logically follows.
3. Arguing from first principles. Often involving some market/scenario modelling showing current market behaviour and how that would/would not change under different regulatory outcomes. Most competition/telecoms legislation is framed around benefits to consumers, so the modelling should focus on the consumer impact, not just competitor impact.
Most industry submissions will utilise a combination of the above, and draw upon global experts to strengthen their case and add credibility to their analysis.
I can't speak to the FCC and this particular ruling, but I have seen regulators change their draft recommendations on the basis of submissions received during the public review process. Even when the regulator has predetermined the outcome, having the submissions and the official responses recorded in the final report provides a reference basis for additional lobbying at a later date.
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I'm not giving up, I'm stating the facts of the case. If you've actually got a concrete proposal on something that will actually shift the agenda of this agency, I'm 100% all ears. I suspect I'll be waiting a while though, since the FCC, like many of the commissions like it, were not created with the Russian coup like we're experiencing right now in mind. We can protest and gnash our teeth all we want, but very, very…
Good luck with that, the current FCC chair was an Obama appointee. This has nothing to do with silly Russian conspiracy theories and everything to do with money.
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Cognitive dissonance is when you hold two opposing viewpoints at once. Like if you think killing animals for food is wrong but you love eating steaks and plan to continue doing so. It does not mean choosing to ignore reality or being willfully blind like you are using it here. I'm not sure how it has become popular to misuse it in that way over the last couple years, but it seems to be a thing.
I think notadoc meant to use the term "mental gymnastics". (I agree "cognitive dissonance" seems to be misused lately. That's how language evolves, unfortunately. And to add to your definition, it's the stress from with holding two opposing thoughts, hence the dissonance.)
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Sure, they tax figured out how to tax dead people, so they probably figure 'why stop there?': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_tax_in_the_United_State...
Capitalism can be thought of as a complex learning system. We, as a society, want people to contribute the most that they can to the overall goals of humanity and capitalism acts as a vehicle for that. Comparing it to another popular complex learning system, neural networks, might provide insight on failure conditions. Income taxes can be thought of as gradient regularizers. Basically limit the amount of weights accu…
For the point of view that it's not a very good vehicle at all, it's worth reading Oscar Widle's essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism, which is free to read online (of course!)
Here's a quick excerpt:
Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine critical spirit, like M. Renan; a supreme artist, like Flaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to keep himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of others, to stand ‘under the shelter of the wall,’ as Plato puts it, and so to realise the perfection of what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to the incomparable and lasting gain of the whole world. These, however, are exceptions. The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism – are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this.
If this is interesting, Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread is also a really engaging read.
It honestly doesn't matter. Nobody at the FCC is going to read these things - it's there because it has to be there, not because they intend on listening. They've set their agenda, now they're executing it. They have absolutely no plans on listening to anyone along the way. Nobody in this entire administration does.
But it does matter, because it shows malice and intent. All three data points have to be taken together (FCC Opens up comments, Comments criminally spammed, FCC decides the issue X). Given the clear and convincing evidence of malfeasance in the comment stream, the FCC's actions can be judged as reasonable or unreasonable. So what matters is that we shine light on their agenda so that it is not possible for them to cr…
Nothing.
Comments are for submitting ideas. It was never supposed to be a popular vote.
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Shine a light for who to see?
Hopefully the EFF can challenge this in court and this provides good evidence that the FCC is ignoring what Americans want.
The fact that big tech companies like Facebook support net neutrality actually makes me consider not supporting it. I just don't trust Facebook's motives - What I do trust is their ability and willingness to screw over society in order to maximise profits.
Isn't Facebook's Internet.org project a direct affront on net neutrality?