And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by Nursie » Wed, Aug 19, 2026, 7:15 AM UTC

sellmesoap wrote: post #139

9x39 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throwing something out to look at in the US at least-- Interpersonal trust might be decreasing: https://www.pewresearch.org/2025/05/08/americans-trust-in-on... But dwarfed by the trust decrease in institutions: https://www.pew.org/en/trend/archive/fall-2024/americans-dee... But maybe it's overstated, because trust seems sort of stable according to this group: https://www.edelman.com/trust/25years >We no longer are ca…

Much like people being arrested for online statements in the UK, while violent crime is swept under the rug or otherwise downplayed.

Violent crime in the UK is in long-term decline and despite what you may have heard, London is now safer than any US state.

Violent crime in most western countries seems to me to be the opposite of downplayed - it’s up-played to whip up fear and support for populists, using emotive language and pointing to the worst examples rather than overall figures.

The figures generally show we’re all so much safer from violent crime than we were in previous decades in western nations. We’re also just more exposed to stories about it.

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

#192

Post by vkou » Wed, Aug 19, 2026, 7:16 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #187

rmunn wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

How well do free markets resolve basic problems of resource distribution?

Like, say, the tragedy of the commons?

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

#193

Post by WalterBright » Wed, Aug 19, 2026, 7:19 AM UTC

vkou wrote: post #192

WalterBright wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

How well do free markets resolve basic problems of resource distribution? Like, say, the tragedy of the commons?

Free markets do not resolve the tragedy of the commons. The fix is to not have commons.

For example, we are running out of fish in the ocean from overfishing. But there's no shortage of cows and chickens, despite massive consumption of them. The former is the commons, the latter is private property.

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

#194

Post by blitzar » Wed, Aug 19, 2026, 7:20 AM UTC

gib444 wrote: post #188

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

They will then blame the government for their house burning down after they let off a bunch of fireworks inside.

The dailymail will join their campaign to seek justice for the victims.

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

#195

Post by modo_mario » Wed, Aug 19, 2026, 7:22 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #117

jameskilton wrote: post #3

A good article, but missing one very important word: trust. Civil society only exists when there is a collective general trust that most people are trying to do the right thing. Said society also finds it incredibly important to remove or nullify those who aren't trustworthy because "a rotten apple spoils the whole bunch ". Trust is hard to earn, and easy to lose, and it only takes one person exploiting the trustwort…

> 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…

I think the right thing in this context relates more to every day matters that affects people and how they interact with the world. Corruption, unsafety, tax avoidance, vandalism, not paying the bus/tram ticket, littering.

As for el sisi. I remember an egyptian friend who fled the country after he did some protesting and journalism critical of the new regime. He said he was amazed by what good they had done for the country and was happy to see the change...despite his past opinion and current exile. Not that he would go back permanently. He married a german gal and later moved to the US.

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

#196

Post by red_admiral » Wed, Aug 19, 2026, 7:35 AM UTC

Relevant here: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/dictator-book-club-chavez

> Hugo Chavez realized that there’s no technical limit on how often you can invoke the emergency broadcast system. You can do it every day! The “emergency” can be that you had a cool new thought about the true meaning of socialism. Or that you’re opening a new hospital and it makes a good photo op. Or that opposition media is saying something mean about you, and you’d like to prevent anyone from watching that particular channel (which is conveniently bound by law to air emergency broadcasts whenever they occur).

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

#197

Post by solatic » Wed, Aug 19, 2026, 7:38 AM UTC

> Perhaps you can think of a way to design an alerting system which cannot be abused - but I can't.

This is the wrong prism through which to confront the problem. Technology is neither good nor evil nor neutral - it is a tool lacking agency, to be manipulated by people.

You might as well ask if it's possible to design a gun that can only be used in self-defense, or a knife that can only be used for cutting vegetables and cannot hurt people, or a car that will solve all traffic fatalities. That's impossible. There are certainly designs which improve outcomes, but not designs that definitively solve those problems (i.e. addressing author's use of the word "cannot").

So take your pick: the easier problem of settling for improving outcomes, or the harder problem of building an inclusive and equitable society, where people have a position they can take pride in, a community that they support and which supports them, and where violence (of both physical and other kinds, like aggressive alerting) is a last resort. The solutions for the hard problem aren't found in technology, but in the humanities.

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

#198

Post by red_admiral » Wed, Aug 19, 2026, 7:40 AM UTC

The UK system has "severe alerts", which is what the wildfire alert was, and "extreme alerts" which is a higher category. Both trigger the siren sound, but sending this in the second-highest category seems ok to me.

Both levels can be deactivated on Android (no idea about iOS but I presume it's the same), there's no unblockable presidential alert level.

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

#199

Post by internet_points » Wed, Aug 19, 2026, 7:46 AM UTC

bad_haircut72 wrote: post #111

cjs_ac wrote: post #17

Technology cannot solve social problems. Societies can solve social problems using technology, just as they can without using technology, but ultimately it is the society that solves the problem.

If tech can cause social problems (there are multiple books on this) then it can solve them too - the only modern tech industry we've ever known has been dominated by players attempting forms of lockin to capture rents and amass enormous fortunes, of course the technology of this society isnt generally helpful to the society at large.

> If tech can cause social problems (there are multiple books on this) then it can solve them too

You haven't actually argued why it can solve them too. When you're about to make a general argument about tech, try to exchange "tech" with "cocaine" to see if the argument still holds (If cocaine can cause social problems, then it can solve them too)

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

#200

Post by zahlman » Wed, Aug 19, 2026, 7:48 AM UTC

blooalien wrote: post #108

roenxi wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a "good person" exactly? There are many wildly different definitions. People do generally want to be good people but it is a fairly basic don't-upset-the-neighbours form of good. You can't rely on them to consider any specific act as being good or bad.

> What's a "good person" exactly? I was taught that a "good person" tries to actually care about their fellow humans and other lifeforms on this planet enough to try to live a life that contributes toward a positive future that we'll all benefit from, while choosing not to support the hatred, greed, and ignorance of those people who would work toward the opposite of that. Problem with that sorta fantasy is that it do…

Chances are, people are just expressing disagreement with you about what "positive" really means. And/or "benefit", "hatred", "ignorance" etc. Like, not what the dictionary says, but what in practice counts or doesn't count as an example.