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Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind

borjamoya.com

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Re: Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind

#41

Post by pdonis »

borjamoya wrote: post #39
pdonis wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> money was invented to keep track of debt I think you're conflating two different usages of the term "money". Wikipedia calls them "money of account" and "money of exchange". Money of account appears to be older, and was, as you say, invented to keep track of debts. But when economics textbooks talk about money being invented to solve the double coincidence of wants problem, which is the main limitation of barter, t…

That's the history of coinage, which came after debt. Debt is older though. It goes back 5,000 years--at least: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years

> That's the history of coinage

"Money of exchange" is, yes. And as I said, that is what economists are talking about when they talk about money replacing barter because it solves the double coincidence of wants problem. Money replacing barter has nothing to do with debt.

Re: Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind

#42

Post by age_bronze »

If regimes like Iran manage to stay alive despite all the sanctions and international isolation, while having the power to meddle in other countries despite having such a dire situation at home, I think the odds of real revolutions in modern age are really really low. If Iran stays alive like this, I doubt China will have any problem staying alive ad-infinity, with all their surveillance tools.

Just because democracy might be a little bit better, getting there includes civil war, violence, and other costs people aren't willing to pay if their lives aren't incredibly bad.

Re: Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind

#44

Post by nix0n »

allemagne wrote: post #36

People make the mistake of assuming that a more assertive authoritarian state means a more confident authoritarian state, when the inverse is more often the case. China's growth is slowing and its leadership will always have the specter of Soviet collapse haunting them. The actual potential for Chinese growth and innovation will always be out of reach because creative destruction is unacceptable to entrenched interes…

I've always read "this is the future" in a different way.

For those of us in the USA, seeing increasing militarization of local police, plus PRISM etc revelations, the CCP looks like it might be our future.

Re: Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind

#45

Post by borjamoya »

zachguo wrote: post #43

Two biggest weaknesses of centralized political systems are 1) incompetent leadership 2) the principal-agent problem. Better data collection and monitoring alleviate both weaknesses and prolong such system's longevity.

Probably. But we have entered into an arms race mentality--especially since 2016. The "if we don't do it they'll do it" makes this an unlikely scenario.

Re: Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind

#46

Post by api »

nix0n wrote: post #44
allemagne wrote: post #36

People make the mistake of assuming that a more assertive authoritarian state means a more confident authoritarian state, when the inverse is more often the case. China's growth is slowing and its leadership will always have the specter of Soviet collapse haunting them. The actual potential for Chinese growth and innovation will always be out of reach because creative destruction is unacceptable to entrenched interes…

I've always read "this is the future" in a different way. For those of us in the USA, seeing increasing militarization of local police, plus PRISM etc revelations, the CCP looks like it might be our future.

We have a few dinosaurs of our own.

Re: Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind

#47

Post by mistermann »

allemagne wrote: post #36

People make the mistake of assuming that a more assertive authoritarian state means a more confident authoritarian state, when the inverse is more often the case. China's growth is slowing and its leadership will always have the specter of Soviet collapse haunting them. The actual potential for Chinese growth and innovation will always be out of reach because creative destruction is unacceptable to entrenched interes…

> People make the mistake of assuming...

Are all of your fairly extraordinary predictions of the future here not also completely based on assumptions derived from an extremely small sample size of simplistic examples from history, and assuming those outcomes can be accurately projected into the future despite massive changes in the value and number of variables involved?

Re: Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind

#48

Post by mistermann »

borjamoya wrote: post #9
naringas wrote: post #7

> we have the capacities to centralize this data but we also have the technical capacities to descentralize it (federate it?) interestingly enough, it is getting more centralized. Is this due to economic incentives?

Hi, I'm the author of the book. I believe decentralization in theory could work. But our current situation is so chaotic that there's no clear solution. However, the key here is to understand the full picture. In the book I argue that there's a big shift going on--not only an economical shift, but also geopolitical and social. And this is going to be a surprise for a lot of people, but this shift is coming from socia…

> In the book I argue that there's a big shift going on--not only an economical shift, but also geopolitical and social. And this is going to be a surprise for a lot of people, but this shift is coming from social credit systems and the establishment of a new economic model based on social behavior.

I'm glad to see you chimed in here with this additional detail, because after reading the overview:

> There’s currently a geopolitical arms race taking place to merge biotech and infotech to hack humankind. Technological disruption is creating an unprecedented realm of opportunities for authoritarian regimes to flourish.

...I got the impression that you thought the main issue with mass data collection was somehow to provide an advantage in biological engineering, when the most obvious advantage seems to me to be analysis of human behavior such that it can understood (to the best of our current but ever improving capabilities) and shaped in various ways. Some of the shaping techniques may be considered (by Westerners) to be nefarious I imagine, but I see no reason why such shaping has to be nefarious, but rather if done properly, may very well be in a way that can be overwhelmingly aggregate net positive to those being shaped.

I've been thinking about how in the long term an authoritarian China with a fully modern technological surveillance state coupled with wise leadership and a (correspondingly) supportive citizenship might have a massive advantage over traditional democracies. The typical thinking on the matter seems to be roughly: because all historic authoritarian states eventually collapsed while democracies tended to flourish, then therefore a completely risk-free assumption can be made that this pattern will persist into the future, always and everywhere, without exception, and therefore there is absolutely no need to consider the possibility that this historic pattern may not materialize. To me, this seems like very dangerous thinking based on extremely poor logic.

I'm curious what your thoughts are on the matter, and whether this is a theme you touch upon in your book.

Re: Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind

#49

Post by o09rdk »

naringas wrote: post #7

> we have the capacities to centralize this data but we also have the technical capacities to descentralize it (federate it?) interestingly enough, it is getting more centralized. Is this due to economic incentives?

My personal impression is decentralized tech — at least with regard to established equivalent functionality — is still in a kind of emergent state. I think there's a lot of options, and there's some coalescing around some standards, but the landscape is a little chaotic in terms of standards and options. My guess is that will take a little while for people to adopt certain standards, and it will require more niche communities to do so first, followed by the broader population. I'm not even quite sure that the current offerings, in their current forms, are necessarily what will get adopted.

Also too, I think the software-as-a-service and cloud model has created a certain expectation among society, that everything is handed off to someone else. Decentralized tech requires a bit more involvement, that might be more familiar to older experienced users but not newer ones, or might require native users who gravitate it as their first choice for various reasons.

Finally, there are limitations with decentralized tech; I suspect that any eventual equilibrium will always be in flux and will include some centralized, decentralized, and federated technology in various proportions depending on societal circumstances.

Everything can be cast in terms of economic incentives perhaps?

Re: Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind

#50

Post by borjamoya »

mistermann wrote: post #48
borjamoya wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I'm the author of the book. I believe decentralization in theory could work. But our current situation is so chaotic that there's no clear solution. However, the key here is to understand the full picture. In the book I argue that there's a big shift going on--not only an economical shift, but also geopolitical and social. And this is going to be a surprise for a lot of people, but this shift is coming from socia…

> In the book I argue that there's a big shift going on--not only an economical shift, but also geopolitical and social. And this is going to be a surprise for a lot of people, but this shift is coming from social credit systems and the establishment of a new economic model based on social behavior . I'm glad to see you chimed in here with this additional detail, because after reading the overview: > There’s currentl…

The thing is that you can't make a point in two paragraphs. You can state something, but it leaves room for all sorts of interpretations.

I cover all these points in the book. But just to be clear this isn't just about China as the bad guy--the US is in the same direction.

I agree on your point about that in the past democracies ended up winning. But today we're seeing that the technological disruption is killing the very essence that makes democratic society democratic. The fact is that liberal democracies have to evolve or Data Dictatorships are going to take over.

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