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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

#341

Post by dogleash »

laughing_man wrote: post #69

It's really difficult to see what technologies will be enablers of state power. IMO, the techs ushering in 1984-levels of control are wifi, cheap cameras, and LLMs. The three technologies on their own are beneficial, but taken together they're going to make Big Brother seem impotent.

Hard disagree. Plenty of new technologies have readily apparent straight-forward application for government use.

You're arguing your point by naming a technology that speculative fiction regularly foresees advancements in, and loves using in stories as the enabler of more intrusive state power.

More surveillance records, better processing and recall of those records are like THE THING when it comes to more law enforcement and passive coercion by the state.

There is honest to goodness disruptive tech that takes time for society to adapt to and reveal where state power wants to go. But those are the vast minority. I think it's a pasttime of industry to play ignorant to how their products will interplay with the government's obvious motivations.

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

#342

Post by nerdsniper »

CatMustard wrote: post #289
nerdsniper wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have thought so too, but it turns out that the USA seems to have the exact same problem! Millions of Texans were woken up at 4AM to an "EXTREME" level alert because one police officer was shot when he went to serve an arrest warrant to a suspected burglar at his apartment at 11pm earlier the same night. The officer recovered and was back on duty 5 weeks later. This shooting happened in one of the most remote…

Completely unrelated to the actual content of your post, but: > megameter Completely valid SI way to represent distance, but I have never seen anyone use this in my entire life! Out of curiosity, do you live in some location or work in some industry where this is used? If so, where?

I did some intercontinental work and found it easier to say (mostly in my own head) that I was “eleven megameters” from home, rather than “seven thousand miles”. I blame my nerdiness and willingness to be slightly weird.

But I do enjoy the unit very much now and I think its time might be coming!

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

#343

Post by atx2bos »

colinsane wrote: post #339

i've watched Seattle's lightrail add more announcements over the speakers at the station and the train cars starting with "assaulting a train operator is a federal crime", and then that same message translated into 5 other languages, progressing to "as Seattle gears up to host the world's biggest stage [the world cup], remember our city's values and treat everyone with love and kindness ...". i don't leave my home wi…

denham's dentifrice...denham's dentifrice...denham's dentifrice

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

#344

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#345

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

3abiton wrote: post #66
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…

> trust One interesting aspect ij academic literature about trust, it is highly reverse correlated with diversity. No matter the grouping and size, the more diverse, the less trust within the group.

Nit: it's not objective diversity that matters, but the perception of diversity. The distinction is important because I've been in many rooms that my father would have considered diverse, but I am not even remotely phased by it. Our definition of "diversity" looks nothing like the definition of "diversity" for a tribe of 20 hunter gatherers who never left the 600 verdant acres that they called home.

You can alter your own reality by convincing yourself that someone is or is not like yourself ("diverse"), especially by consuming specific types of media - perhaps media that is produced with intention of you distrusting certain people.

Again, it's an important distinction to draw, lest you be drawn in to certain misanthropic theories based on flimsy "proof".

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

#346

Post by michigander93 »

fyredge wrote: post #232

Paraphrasing from Plato's The Republic, when the rulers and their auxillaries raise children with proper balance in the body and soul, there will be no need to deliberate on what is the right legislation, for the legislators themselves will be just in their duties. In the end of the day, we need proper education, not only in technical excellence, but also societal awareness, what it means to be good and how to uphold…

What standard do we use to teach "what it means to be good"?

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

#347

Post by jeffrallen »

calgoo wrote: post #320

Here in spain they have been abusing the system when heavy rain is expected. The issue here in spain is that they put it at the highest level of extreme and the phones dont let you disable the alerts.

So broken. Sorry for you.

MeteoSwiss has an app, which sends geo-specific weather alerts, using the normal handheld notification system. You opt-in by installing it. Simple. No nonsense.

I'm so lucky to have competent bureaucrats.

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

#348

Post by sixothree »

soco wrote: post #220
boomlinde wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a video about a fatal oil drilling accident where the resulting investigation found that an operator had ignored the alarm which indicated the underlying issue because there were other alarms sounding for things he'd been told to ignore because they were benign. This is apparently common enough cause of problems that there is a term for it (other than "crying wolf"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue…

And because of this, no browser of mine is allowed to send notifications, and also no app by default - they have to prove themselves useful first. Sorry fellow developers working on notifications, your work goes to the drain (mostly).

> no browser of mine is allowed to send notifications

I do this for different reasons. I just don't want every site knowing when I'm logged in and using my computer, which computer that is, and whatever else information they're grabbing all day.

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

#349

Post by sigbottle »

michigander93 wrote: post #346
fyredge wrote: post #232

Paraphrasing from Plato's The Republic, when the rulers and their auxillaries raise children with proper balance in the body and soul, there will be no need to deliberate on what is the right legislation, for the legislators themselves will be just in their duties. In the end of the day, we need proper education, not only in technical excellence, but also societal awareness, what it means to be good and how to uphold…

What standard do we use to teach "what it means to be good"?

More generally, in a system of agents, you could impose deep structure by construction on all the agents, or figure out from a set of black box agents, necessary convergence principles. Or you could treat them as black boxes, but instead of arguing intrinsically, impose external controls on the system to bound the error.

Probably a lot of ways to think about it, but when you phrase it this way, it becomes quickly pretty hard!

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

#350

Post by bluefirebrand »

aprentic wrote: post #312
bluefirebrand wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For the curious, a subscription means free delivery It sounds like a subscription means ad-funded delivery to me though

That's clearly how it turned out but going in, I would have expected the a subscription to be a discount in exchange for a commitment of repeat business.

Yeah I would expect a subscription to remove ads

Personally I would absolutely refuse to pay for services that still continue to serve me ads even though I'm paying

I loathe advertising. I don't understand why most people seem so apathetic about it

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