I'm saddened that ordinary people still don't care enough about their digital privacy.
Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations
241–250 of 395 posts
Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
Democracy via elected representatives is a lie. "Extreme outliers" may even be too much. Is there even a handful of examples?
It's not even a lie. It's just not democracy. The whole point of democracy as it got invented was that the people can directly vote on any government issues. No direct voting on every day do day policy, no democracy. Simple as that. "It would not be possible in practice" is the actual lie. We have since many years the tech to make it possible to vote on everything by everybody. I'm not saying that everything would be…
Pure democracy as you describe it, even if technically feasible, would still result in tyrannies and terrible outcomes. The biggest problem isn't lack of influence on the laws, it's lack of knowledge, reason, understanding and empathy. And that problem exists whether it's x number of people influencing the outcome, or 1,000,000x. Every negative influence that politicians are open to, the masses are also open to (though scale may vary e.g. wrt corruption). The overwhelming evidence across the globe is that people are easily fooled, easily misled, easily manipulated, prone to illogic, prone to responding emotively, prone to selfishness, and can be corruptible, destructive and suicidal. They routinely will sacrifice advances to their own cause in order to exclude, punish and exorcise others.
No, technically direct democracy would lead to no better outcome, though I'm sure at some point in our history we'll try it.
Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations
#243In the last ten years technology has increased substantially. In the last five years AI has advanced significantly. That is worth really letting sink in. I try my best to avoid every kind of online discussion on these topics that I reasonably can avoid. Some might even see it as paranoia. But I assume that every single thing I post online (or say on the phone, send in text, or write in emails) is traceable back to me…
Just an example, if you're into the Google ecosystem (which kids are, right from the school days) - it knows almost everything about you, more than your ex-friends and spouse - and combined with Bard or AI, very well... you can now imagine.
Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's important to remember that they invaded Ukraine for no reason This is not true. Real people have motives, „being evil“ is a child's explanation for things it doesn’t understand.
His motive is that he wants to reestablish the Russian Empire and he views the Euromaidan as the US taking Ukraine from him
> Mr. Putin framed his decision to invade Ukraine as a last-ditch effort to halt the West’s hostile expansion ever closer to Russia’s borders.
~ https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/world/europe/putin-ukrain...
> It is a fact that over the past 30 years we have been patiently trying to come to an agreement with the leading NATO countries regarding the principles of equal and indivisible security in Europe. In response to our proposals, we invariably faced either cynical deception and lies or attempts at pressure and blackmail, while the North Atlantic alliance continued to expand despite our protests and concerns.
~ Vladimir Putin
Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
Law is a weapon of the ruling class. That's why I laugh at whoever suggests about unions. Downvote me as you wish, but it won't fix the problem for ya.
In the USA the law about unions have neutered them enough that what you say is true, but in Europe where they have sector level unions and sympathy strikes, unions give people material power over their conditions
>unions give people material power over their conditions
How's that working out for people's retirement age huh? Seems somehow it's still increasing.
Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A decade later, participation in elite circles like media, academia, and politics is based on how convincingly one can be seen to parrot obvious untruths, not because anyone believes them at all, but because it signals status to be able to lie to the faces of people who know you are doing it, and still say nothing. I don’t understand this. Can you elaborate on what untruths you mean? Who’s parroting these lies?
Random examples that I can think of: Trump has/had (strong) ties with Russia, needed those Russian ties to win the election and used them to win the elections. People still believe this to this day. Globally.
[deleted]
Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Democracy via elected representatives is a lie. "Extreme outliers" may even be too much. Is there even a handful of examples?
It's not even a lie. It's just not democracy. The whole point of democracy as it got invented was that the people can directly vote on any government issues. No direct voting on every day do day policy, no democracy. Simple as that. "It would not be possible in practice" is the actual lie. We have since many years the tech to make it possible to vote on everything by everybody. I'm not saying that everything would be…
"We have since many years the tech to make it possible to vote on everything by everybody."
Electronic voting machines and vote counting machines are hackable. Technology is the disease here, not the cure.
I wouldn't trust anything other than hand-counted paper ballots.
Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
Russia commits countless war crimes on a daily basis (there is tons of documentation) and China has concentration camps. America is not perfect but they are legitimately much worse
This is the exact narrative that I’m talking about. It’s a hand wavy pseudo intellectual narrative that goes, Russia commits war crimes and kills civilians, China is Nazi Germany 2.0 and is trying to exterminate Muslims like the Nazis tried to do with the Jews and America is bad, you know with even more casualties in the Middle East but it’s not as bad as these cartoonishly evil regimes. I mean no offence to you by c…
>My understanding, after a lot of research and incredulity is that it’s essentially China’s version of Guantanamo Bay
Guantanamo Bay isn’t for US citizens though. You can’t be arrested in the US for being Muslim and be sent to Guantanamo bay.
They aren’t in any way similar because it’s not used against citizens, which is strictly what China’s concentration camps are for.
The military has claimed they could keep a citizen there indefinitely, but they haven’t yet and if they did it would get challenged in court pretty quickly.
Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations
#249[flagged]
Greenwald also has became a russian media parrot.
Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not even a lie. It's just not democracy. The whole point of democracy as it got invented was that the people can directly vote on any government issues. No direct voting on every day do day policy, no democracy. Simple as that. "It would not be possible in practice" is the actual lie. We have since many years the tech to make it possible to vote on everything by everybody. I'm not saying that everything would be…
Pure democracy as you describe it, even if technically feasible, would still result in tyrannies and terrible outcomes. The biggest problem isn't lack of influence on the laws, it's lack of knowledge, reason, understanding and empathy. And that problem exists whether it's x number of people influencing the outcome, or 1,000,000x. Every negative influence that politicians are open to, the masses are also open to (thou…
You've just made an anti-argument to your own claim.
As people are people, real democracy would not be worse than the status quo as we're already ruled by people with lack of knowledge, reason, understanding and empathy.
But you can't for example corrupt the majority of all people. So real democracy would be at least in this point better.
By no means worse, but better in some regards is a clear win imho!
> lack of knowledge, reason, understanding and empathy.