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And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

shkspr.mobi

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Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#181

Post by madaxe_again »

Banou wrote: post #156

> Perhaps you can think of a way to design an alerting system which cannot be abused - but I can't. Isn't the obvious answer decentralization? Have persons necessary to send that message in different places across the country/outside the country needing to sign it for it to be sent. All taking the responsibility of following protocol in these cases.

I’d go further, and predefine the available messages and bake them in - $place is {under attack|on fire|underwater|beset by the whooping palsy} etc. - and then the decentralised send no longer needs distribution of a message, just an ID and enumerated metadata, like location.

Then the men with guns come and you can earnestly say “well guys, i know you want to declare the eternal republic of Basingstoke, but all I can do is send a warning about a tornado in Slough, is that close enough?”

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#182

Post by no-name-here »

femto wrote: post #130
edot wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But who decides which rules are neutral? Even this is relative and subjective. Laws are not inherently neutral. A pH of 7 is only neutral because it is bounded by 0 on the left and 14 on the right. In a different system, perhaps it would be from 10 to 30 and thus a pH of 20 would be neutral.

The closest we have to a "neutral rule" is "The Golden Rule": "Treat others as you would like them to treat you." It has a long history, both secular and religious. Pretty well everything flows from it, and if someone is doing "the wrong thing" whilst claiming to obey it then they are probably deluding themself. The rule is suited to enforcement, since if someone does something "wrong", rather than immediately attack…

I'd say expecting non-hypocrisy is also a top item. Someone says x behavior from a leader is disqualifying? OK, maybe that's their earnestly held belief and so worthy of consideration even if I disagree with their view. But if their behavior is the opposite/shows hypocrisy and suddenly isn't disqualifying? That should be a red line.

Because even the "golden rule" leaves a lot of wiggle room - for example, should marital infidelity (or x) be a dealbreaker for electing someone? Maybe, but looking at hypocrisy (and thereby actions) might provide better insight as to what those groups actually believe is the "correct" standard?

> The closest we have to a "neutral rule" is "The Golden Rule"

Mostly agreed, but a surprisingly large percentage of the population seems truly unable to feel empathy for others (and can even show glee at others being negatively impacted by something) unless it personally affects them (a prerequisite for "Would you like it if I did this to you?" to work?). They can be gung-ho about laws that negatively affect others but upset if it affects them. For example, the countless examples of "Community members vote for politician promising illegal immigrant deportation, then upset/disagree that long-time beloved community member deported", or "Voter voted for politician promising criminal-record-immigrant deportation, then upset/disagrees that partner with past criminal record deported".

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#183

Post by madaxe_again »

Muromec wrote: post #172
niemandhier wrote: post #160

The bigger threat to our society is, that large corporations start to assume they are above the law. We privatized much of the information backbone that keeps our countries running.

Most of the time there is exactly one corporation that is above the law in a given area simply as a result of them having the guns.

Yeah, but they’re allowed to use the guns and have a monopoly on their legal use, because they have the guns. Shut up, it’s not a tautology.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#184

Post by imrehg »

decimalenough wrote: post #118

> But it is easy to see why some people feel this might open the gateway to messages which, at best, are irrelevant If you're in South Korea, you can expect to get around half a dozen emergency notifications every day . Typical contents include "it's cold, so dress warmly", "roads are icy, so drive carefully", and "Mrs Kim, 79, suffers from dementia and was last seen in Seoul wearing a black coat". You can set your p…

Taiwan has emergency messages, though not _that_ high frequency. There the main topics involve:

- earthquakes: these can arrive indeed before you even feel them (a few seconds before); they filter it to areas where it's expected to be felt, there are discussions around how sensitive to make it (how wide area it should cover)

- extremely heavy rain: this was new recently, and very useful, when locally it all went cats & dogs, more than maybe I've ever seen. See an example here: https://fosstodon.org/@imrehg/117058657161401667

- military drills: the yearly "if there's an invasion drill", they had sent reminder a week before, and then at the start/end; example here: https://fosstodon.org/@imrehg/117030180601973598

- Chinese rocket launches that will fly over the island (not sure what could one do about it, and never seen anything, so maybe this is more borderline)

Interestingly (for me), the headers seems to change over time. Started with "Presidential Alert", there were "Government Alert" then, now "Emergency Alert" and just "Alert". I'm not sure if there area list of these or it evolved over time...

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#185

Post by voidUpdate »

madaxe_again wrote: post #181
Banou wrote: post #156

> Perhaps you can think of a way to design an alerting system which cannot be abused - but I can't. Isn't the obvious answer decentralization? Have persons necessary to send that message in different places across the country/outside the country needing to sign it for it to be sent. All taking the responsibility of following protocol in these cases.

I’d go further, and predefine the available messages and bake them in - $place is {under attack|on fire|underwater|beset by the whooping palsy} etc. - and then the decentralised send no longer needs distribution of a message, just an ID and enumerated metadata, like location. Then the men with guns come and you can earnestly say “well guys, i know you want to declare the eternal republic of Basingstoke, but all I can…

That works until you have a sudden and unexpected situation such as "There is an epidemic of black death, please remain indoors" which you didn't account for, and now you have to tell everyone that the country has been beset by the whooping palsy instead and hope the intent comes through

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#186

Post by BoingBoomTschak »

femto wrote: post #130
edot wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But who decides which rules are neutral? Even this is relative and subjective. Laws are not inherently neutral. A pH of 7 is only neutral because it is bounded by 0 on the left and 14 on the right. In a different system, perhaps it would be from 10 to 30 and thus a pH of 20 would be neutral.

The closest we have to a "neutral rule" is "The Golden Rule": "Treat others as you would like them to treat you." It has a long history, both secular and religious. Pretty well everything flows from it, and if someone is doing "the wrong thing" whilst claiming to obey it then they are probably deluding themself. The rule is suited to enforcement, since if someone does something "wrong", rather than immediately attack…

And lex talionis as a byproduct.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#187

Post by WalterBright »

rmunn wrote: post #166
rayiner wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Civil society only exists when there is a collective general trust that most people are trying to do the right thing The phrase "the right thing" is load-bearing, to steal a Claudeism. The Muslim Brotherhood that ran the country before El-Sisi thought they were doing "the right thing." El-Sisi also thought he was doing "the right thing." Egyptians mostly thought El-Sisi was doing “the right thing” during this time…

> In any society, you're going to have diverse views of "the right thing." Not only that, but you're also going to have people disguising their personal, selfish ambitions for power or money (or both, those two ambitions are usually found together) by pretending to other people that they want "the right thing". Most politicians operate this way. (I can't say "all" because there are some examples in history of politic…

> selfish ambitions for power or money

Free markets are designed around a selfish ambition for making money. You can only make money by pleasing your customers. And hence free markets are the greatest mechanism for prosperity.

There's nothing wrong with making money that way.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#188

Post by gib444 »

The UK SMS decision also perhaps shows a misunderstanding of the British public these days: I had never smelled so many BBQs the day after that alert was sent and I'd heard similar reports of people being rebellious, fireworks etc

Yes, they used the SMS as a prompt to increase risk. People are awful these days

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#190

Post by century19 »

Banou wrote: post #156

> Perhaps you can think of a way to design an alerting system which cannot be abused - but I can't. Isn't the obvious answer decentralization? Have persons necessary to send that message in different places across the country/outside the country needing to sign it for it to be sent. All taking the responsibility of following protocol in these cases.

I think that is right and with the way Ukraine and Iran is going, we will need smaller decentralised data centres etc too. Its coming from a sad, bad place but it may be better and more democratic, less centralised.
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