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100 years of whatever this will be

apenwarr.ca

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Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#511

Post by Y_Y »

munificent wrote: post #388
delusional wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the argument is that transferrable. As a developer you don't really live within the legacy systems. At most you're a politician negotiating between the different component parts. Society is different. I don't like DeFi, but I get what they're feeling. It feels like society has left us behind. Like anything we could ever hope to try is already accounted for and defeated before the effort even begins. You…

I 100% sympathize with this feeling too. But the pattern I see over and over again is: 1. Society is getting worse. 2. I'm really good at writing software. 3. Therefore the solution is to write software to fix society. That chain of logic is simply the streetlight effect [1] writ large: A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys…

What you describe reminds me of the (phenomenally successful) work of Douglas Englebart. He described his motivation as something similar to what you have, but of course with a more optimistic perspective.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart#Guiding_phil...

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#512

Post by mistermann »

vorpalhex wrote: post #134
nouveaux wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There's another word for "require everyone else to agree": Tyranny." I think this is often thrown out there to push back on liberals and socialism but this is the wrong point. We as a global society _need_ to agree to be productive. We need to work together to find the best solutions for as many people as possible. Everyone needs to agree that starting a nuclear war is bad. You would likely want to stop China from s…

> I think this is often thrown out there to push back on liberals and socialism but this is the wrong point. We as a global society _need_ to agree to be productive. And when someone tells you "no", how do you respond? You have three basic options: 1. Submit (but you can't submit to everyone saying no) 2. Take your toys and go home (but then your group will forever shrink) 3. Force people to say yes The only good ans…

4. "How about we have a conversation, perhaps if we think about it we can find a compromise that works out for both of us?" Note also that such conversations can even be had that don't involve the disagreeable party (if they're that difficult), but if they are of high enough quality and visibility (such that they can get public momentum) they can change the person's mind based on them seeing which way the wind is blowing.

5. Something neither of us have thought of.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#513

Post by pjkundert »

nouveaux wrote: post #80
pjkundert wrote: post #39

This article is profoundly insightful. I have been searching for patterns and insights in this field for 25 years. What apenwarr concludes is true: All we need is to build distributed systems that work. That means decentralized bulk activity, hierarchical regulation. The problem is, everyone wants distributed systems that require everyone else to agree (global consensus), which is literally impossible (see: CAP theor…

"There's another word for "require everyone else to agree": Tyranny." I think this is often thrown out there to push back on liberals and socialism but this is the wrong point. We as a global society _need_ to agree to be productive. We need to work together to find the best solutions for as many people as possible. Everyone needs to agree that starting a nuclear war is bad. You would likely want to stop China from s…

I would argue that pretty much the opposite is true: I don't know how we can be productive without breaking consensus.

All innovation comes from individuals or small groups going against the accepted dogma, and risking their own resources and reputation to do something almost everyone else thinks is stupid.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#514

Post by lotsofpulp »

CTmystery wrote: post #411
tinco wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd ask you to check your basic assumption about science as an authority. Science is the only and ultimate final authority. It really is not a bad assumption. There literally can not be a higher authority than it by definition. > but is really bad at transmitting information about non-deterministic processes or even processes that are so complex that they appear non-deterministic e.g. human behavior. No it is not,…

> Science is the only and ultimate final authority Junk science led to the American eugenics movement that included forced sterilization of 64k Americans in the early 1900s. I love science, but calling it the only and ultimate authoritity leaves a lot of room to create a world we don't want to live in. This happens because scientists disagree themselves on almost everything. Recognizing the difference in science as a…

Utilizing data to continuous refine one's model of the world is the ultimate final authority.

Some people call it science, some call it the scientific method, etc.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#515

Post by noworriesnate »

kiliantics wrote: post #466
teucris wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there’s a nuance here in the sense that progress happens both inside the established system and outside it - grassroots campaigns, protests, local initiatives, etc. I think the key issue is that it seems like so many smart people are looking to solve things from the outside rather than involve themselves with the current system, and we need to move that pendulum back quite a bit.

This is a strategy commonly known as "Dual Power" among the left, as named by Lenin. The far left have obviously thought a lot about how to change social systems and, if you are interested in doing so, there is a lot of good theory in their literature as some have thought very deeply about it.

Interesting, that reminds me of psychohistory from the Federation series by Isaac Asimov. Where would I find that literature?

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#516

Post by htek »

generalizations wrote: post #240
nouveaux wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There's another word for "require everyone else to agree": Tyranny." I think this is often thrown out there to push back on liberals and socialism but this is the wrong point. We as a global society _need_ to agree to be productive. We need to work together to find the best solutions for as many people as possible. Everyone needs to agree that starting a nuclear war is bad. You would likely want to stop China from s…

> Everyone needs to agree that starting a nuclear war is bad. You would likely want to stop China from shooting nuclear missiles at San Francisco. Yet I doubt that when you insist on this narrative, you would think of yourself as being tyrannical. Extreme examples work, because you can actually count on the people reading your comment to agree with you. But you can't extrapolate towards less universally held examples…

>That's a cool observation that I'll keep in mind. However, in my experience, it's not been the primary reason. Rather, it has seemed to me that rural folks live closer to nature than urban folks, and have often had firsthand experience that mother nature tends to be nasty and brutish (or just check out r/natureismetal). That's an experience which tends to create what they would consider (IMHO) a much more pragmatic idea of what it takes to survive in the world.

My experience, having come from Appalachian stock and escaping to New York City, is that urbanites are more open to new experiences and ideas, they see different people and slices of their culture all the time. They are more likely to go to college, further increasing their experience of new ideas.

Rural folk are insulated from the world outside the area they live in. They're mired in conservatism and the past. They suffer from brain drain because most people, once they've been exposed to fresh ideas and people via college, tend to become more "worldly" and don't necessarily want to return to their one stop sign town with its extremely limited social life, culture, and job prospects. They often never master their fear of the other, because they see everyone who is not them AS the other.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#517

Post by varelse »

notpachet wrote: post #49

All of the current histrionics that we hear from DeFi advocates regarding escaping the evil centralized Banks and Regulators and what not -- you know what they remind me of? They remind me of what I hear from junior developers when they're tasked with fixing an antiquated, broken software system. These developers typically lack the experience and the patience necessary to fix the system incrementally from within, so…

I find one exception to what you're saying. If you had a large role in building that legacy code base you are carrying around all the tech debt and repairs in your head. And if you're mindful of that, you can rebuild guided by what you have learned from the ground up and it will work. See John CarMmack's increasingly awesome series of 3D engines he wrote over the years.

But that's not how it usually works in the tech industry where you inherit someone else's code who also inherited it from someone else as it was written by somebody they never met. And on that front you are dead-on

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#518

Post by cblconfederate »

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #410
moffkalast wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you keep complaining about the lack of water though a pipeline will eventually be built.

No, if you collect money to pay for it it will be built. Or if the inventors themselves want the water and build it for themselves.

If you don't recognize the problem i doubt you ll collect any money for it

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#519

Post by pjkundert »

davidw wrote: post #254
beambot wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But we do need rules like if I give you money for something and then you tell me to get lost... That would be "larceny", and there are lots of rules prohibiting it & court systems to recoup damages. Credit card companies (for example) are just a more-rapid arbitration mechanism.

That's part of the point of the article. Those rules are not some kind of distributed system. They are centralized.

Larceny (small- or industrial-scale) can only exist if counterparties are kept ignorant of previous larceny on the part of the bad actor.

It takes centralized systems to keep people ignorant.

In good, decentralized systems which demand long-term public track records of agent behaviour, with decentralized memory of these records, malevolent behaviour by an agent would rapidly make that agent incapable of future larceny.

Much of the disappointment with government and their three-letter agencies, is the growing belief (and mounting evidence) of long-term, wide-spread larceny, mischief and even evil on the part of government agents -- with the knowledge, support and protection of the government.

It is critical to use systems that make bad behaviour impossible to hide.

This requires centralized RULES (ie. widely agreed-upon standards of behaviour), but decentralized KNOWLEDGE (large numbers of random actors, confirming that behaviours meet the standards).

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#520

Post by pjkundert »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #485
_yid9 wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a genuine answer. Is force not linearly related to the gravity / undesirability of the mandate? Are increasingly draconian mandates not rebuffed by more and more people? Are there not plentiful examples of "Socialist" societies attempting to enforce more and harsher mandates, against anyone not willing to "give their fair share"? If people are allowed to leave such systems for ones more to their liking, do the…

>Are there not plentiful examples of "Socialist" societies attempting to enforce more and harsher mandates, against anyone not willing to "give their fair share"? You mean like if you don't pay taxes you go to jail? or if you don't work you live on the street? There are certainly harsher places to be, but the US is not friendly to people who do not "give their fair share." It's already mandatory.

And, most people are fine with it, and those that aren't are completely free to leave and pursue their lives somewhere with "better" rules.

I think we're agreeing; perhaps I'm mistaken?

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