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The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

matduggan.com

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Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#191

Post by JKCalhoun »

Also old enough to have been pre-internet:

> Paper maps were absolutely horrible…

No, and still not horrible. I jeep a trucker's atlas in my van for road trips. Siri and Google Maps (Gigi, we call her) don't seem to realize I want to stay on interstates making distance. Wandering some two-lane country road diagonally through Kansas might save me 10 minutes but having oncoming traffic and the possibility of a rock into the windshield (or worse)—not worth it.

I plan my routes with the paper map.

> In practice it was mostly an annoying game of attempting to guess where people were. You'd call their job, they had left. You'd call their house…

That does not ring a bell at all with me. Sure, I'd call and someone wasn't home, but that was the end of it. If someone else answered, it was "Hey, have them give me a call…" And of course answering machines became a thing…

You know, there was just generally less of an urgency to get a hold of someone then.

And you know what sucks now? Someone able to get a hold of you whenever, wherever. (Unless I go out of my way to shut off my device.)

I used to laugh at a family member and spouse. They were early mobile phone adopters and I watched them call one another constantly with, "When are you going to be home?" I finally commented, "You know what would have happened if you had not called? They would have just shown up in 10 minutes or whatever."

Urgency, expectations… too high these days.

> Cassettes are the worst way to listen to music ever invented.

Except for creating portable playlists, sure.

Anyway.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#192

Post by pdonis »

bluegatty wrote: post #189
iamnothere wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said it better than I would have. GP has a misunderstanding of libertarianism and perhaps of the concept of liberty. Libertarians (small-l libertarians, colloquially) don’t break norms “just because”, they do it only in specific circumstances based on a calculus. Everyone’s calculus is different, but the usual reasoning would focus on possible infringement of others’ rights when breaking the norm and the seeming…

"don’t break norms “just because”, they do it only in specific circumstances based on a calculus." No - I didn't suggest 'just because', and Libertarians reject norms not 'on a specific basis' - they reject the nature of the limiting impetus on their expression. Norms are by by default bad and can only be justified in a narrow sense. Critically, there is no moral impetus but the expression of one self. There is no 'g…

> they reject the nature of the limiting impetus on their expression.

Says who? The non-aggression principle is a limit on "expression"--you can't "express" something that violates someone else's rights.

I think the correct word to describe what you're actually thinking of is "libertine", not "libertarian".

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#193

Post by pdonis »

bluegatty wrote: post #189
iamnothere wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said it better than I would have. GP has a misunderstanding of libertarianism and perhaps of the concept of liberty. Libertarians (small-l libertarians, colloquially) don’t break norms “just because”, they do it only in specific circumstances based on a calculus. Everyone’s calculus is different, but the usual reasoning would focus on possible infringement of others’ rights when breaking the norm and the seeming…

"don’t break norms “just because”, they do it only in specific circumstances based on a calculus." No - I didn't suggest 'just because', and Libertarians reject norms not 'on a specific basis' - they reject the nature of the limiting impetus on their expression. Norms are by by default bad and can only be justified in a narrow sense. Critically, there is no moral impetus but the expression of one self. There is no 'g…

> Ayn Rand

Is hardly an example of what you're describing. She explicitly supported property rights and the non-aggression principle.

It's interesting, though, that she refused to identify herself as a libertarian because she saw those who did as anarchists. So she apparently had the same kind of misconception about libertarianism that you do.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#194

Post by JKCalhoun »

> Radical individualism

I grew up in the U.S. and was programmed apparently to think of this as a virtue. (Rugged individualism was an early variant.)

As I have become older, visited other countries, I see how selfish that is. I put community above individualism now.

> Free-market absolutism

Yeah, never been on board with that one.

I don't think I've ever been a Libertarian of any stripe. And probably even less so as I get older.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#195

Post by pocksuppet »

schoen wrote: post #127
mrexcess wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The revelations that Epstein had interest and involvement in the development of 4chan really makes me wonder what we would find behind the curtain at next iterations like KiwiFarms, etc if we looked hard enough. Not to sound an overly conspiratorial note, but sewing division within a foreign culture is one of those things that intelligence communities excel at, might match some patterns we’ve seen, and would serve to…

There is a theory that some skeptics of tech optimism have advanced for a while, that governments like Internet freedom and widespread availability of ICTs in rival nations because it either (1) makes people there hate and fear each other, or (2) makes them easier to propagandize. In this account the U.S. State Department's Internet Freedom Agenda (which many of my friends and colleagues have been directly funded by)…

ICTs?

("Information and Communication Technology" does not make sense here)

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#196

Post by washingupliquid »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #191

Also old enough to have been pre-internet: > Paper maps were absolutely horrible… No, and still not horrible. I jeep a trucker's atlas in my van for road trips. Siri and Google Maps (Gigi, we call her) don't seem to realize I want to stay on interstates making distance. Wandering some two-lane country road diagonally through Kansas might save me 10 minutes but having oncoming traffic and the possibility of a rock int…

I've stopped submitting quality reports to Apple Maps because they're all met with "while we couldn't make the change you suggested, we hope you continue to waste your time reporting these".

The issues are egregious too, like blatantly incorrect lane guidance that would send you in the wrong direction, or diverting me off a highway onto an unmarked, narrow country road that no one with any knowledge of the local roads would take ever.

Though I'm confident whatever BPO slaves they have processing reports 5000 miles away have a better understanding of the roads than I, as they are wholly incapable of even using Google Street View to confirm details (probably by policy) so they always demand I provide a photo or video a month after the fact. Because when you're lost in the middle of nowhere your first thought should be "Let's backtrack so I can grab some pictures for Apple".

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#197

Post by nhecker »

spinningslate wrote: post #86
pibaker wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think DVDs were manufactured in mom and pop workshops untainted by corporate influence? Quite the opposite actually. Every DVD and DVD drive legally sold had to pay licensing fees! So is blueray! https://www.cnet.com/culture/blu-ray-victory-means-royalties... https://blu-raydisc.info/flla-faq.php > Instead of what - vast data centres full of electronics, consuming huge quantities of electricity, controlled by…

Yes, I would like to see a full cost comparison. Transferring one time digitally will no doubt cost (a lot) less than physical manufacture and distribution. But it’s not one time transfer: it’s streaming on demand, every time each person listens to each track, because the economic model is rental not purchase. I use streaming services. I like the flexibility and ubiquity of access. But my favourite music I still buy…

"Transferring one time digitally" DRM-free audio files is possible and above-board (i.e., you pay and the artist gets paid) through services like bandcamp.com and their ilk. Of course your artist needs to have their music there first.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#198

Post by mystraline »

fragmede wrote: post #130
nephihaha wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is technofeudalism even a thing? Yanis Varoufakis goes on about it (despite being a keen WEF collaborator)... But it seems to me that in mediaeval feudalism that the lords needed the peasants downstream to produce food and military units. In the technocratic system we are heading towards, the lower classes (us) will be needed for labour and military purposes even less, thanks to automation etc. They will have less an…

Not for military purposes, but if you're an employee of eg Google, life is pretty good. Free food, spacious offices, great health insurance; all sorts of perks. All at the behest of Lord Sundar.

Employees of Google etm are basically the landed barony of feudalism. Of course theyre going to have it cushy.

The serfs are the general public who MUST interact with either Google or Apple as regular account users. Each feudal lord has their own laws that they technocratically enforce. And if you break them or otherwise offend their people or systems, you are severed from the feudal system with no grievance.

And with 2 phone dealers and no legal requirement for accounts, this creates a powerful situation both feudal systems can enforce without any other ways out.

Apple has been locked down on their phones, and moving sttongly that way on their non-phones.

Google has announced they are locking down 3rd party app stores and sideloading, because they can.

And we've heard the horror stories of person locked out of google, and that hellscape.

And Microsoft was able to shut down multiple European courts by simply turning off their accounts. Again, lost everything.

This is what I mean by technofedualism - its the recreation of a fedual government enforced not by state violence, but by technology.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#199

Post by pocksuppet »

artyom wrote: post #176

Look, I agree with a good part of this article. I also agree that the whole "unregulated internet" is terrible for humankind in general. Crypto is a scam. Meta should be, plain and simple, shut down. Twitter is a madhouse. The list is endless. However, every single time I feel like stricter regulation should be in place, a congressman speaks about "servers"... and yeah, maybe not.

The EU seems to have a different take. As I understand it, regulations are much more malleable in Europe. When problems arise, regulations are put in place. When regulations are problems... it takes a lot longer to remove them, but can still happen eventually. Nothing like the USian deadlock system.

And when they do write them, it's always about general principles. The GDPR doesn't speak of cookie consent banners, instead it speaks of personal data and data controllers and data processors and the reasons you may control or process personal data, one of which is consent, so of course the industry made it as obnoxious as possible.

There are probably places that are doing even better than Europe.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#200

Post by pocksuppet »

Tade0 wrote: post #17
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #4

Dunno man, those things you say were “horrible” before the advent of mobile phones, media players and gps (not even the internet; usable incarnations of those inventions were entirely independent from the internet) - I was also there and it was _fine_.

I recall my tapes sounding ever so slightly worse after each playback. I also once left one too close to my CRT monitor, which erased all the high frequencies from the sound. Also over time friction would build up in the medium, causing the tape to occasionally resist being pulled so strongly that some sections would stretch and introduce a hard to ignore "wah" effect. Overall not my favourite means of storing inform…

How did you feel about the ephemerality of knowing your tapes wouldn't last forever and you'd get new ones? I think computers have spoiled us for archiving. Back in the day, people didn't try to make things last forever. Right?
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