201–210 of 385 posts
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The idea that all billionaires work together is hilarious. No real adult could possibly believe such nonsense.
As a class, they steer things through emergent behavior and overlapping self interest in certain areas. As individuals, they can’t afford to trust each other without leverage.
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Because then they'll move on to the next victims and in having surrendered without even a fight you've granted them momentum for no good reason whatsoever, and you'll have fewer allies left too.
Is there a reason to believe this is how things work? Rather than "within a democracy as long as 'trans rights' means something that most people disagree with, it will be harder to advance the pro- side of the issue"? Is there evidence of 'momentum' being a real thing in politics, as opposed to the 'pendulum' that I've witnessed over the last decade?
Trying to abstract history into major shifts that are attributable to inanimate objects is just very ludic fallacy.
I think we have to face the fact that we cannot unring this bell. There will be holding actions against things like Flock but in the end they will fail, and at best we will have a loosening of the laws that Flock is being used to enforce and more draconian enforcement of the laws that remain. Like many on this site I'm in violent agreement with Schneier and have been ever since "security theater" entered the lexicon.…
I don't think it inevitable that this continues.
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The red scare of the 1950s was ridiculous enough, but at least the Soviet Union was an actual threat. We are now at a point where “pro-transgender” is the new threat?
The administration doesn't like it, therefore it's a threat. Similar to negative news, which are fake, and contrary opinions, which are woke propaganda. Many symptoms of undercover fascism.
One, the move to digital lives made digital surveillance necessary. It wasn't enough to check attendance at the local mosque/far right rally. Then, the counter-move to encrypted communication meant law enforcement now had to rely on metadata.
Second: A wanton disregard of the treasure that is digital data. Most people just don't seem to care. LG is snooping on you? I bet they won't see even a 10% drop in sales next year. When the citizenry as consumer blasts their data everywhere, it's hard to argue as parliamentarian that those same people want it protected. Now people use Apple Watches and Amazon Alexa in their own bedrooms! People say they want their data safe guarded, but their actions suggest otherwise.
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And yet the lives of everyone on this board has never been this comfortable in the past.
Do we live in different worlds? I can't think of a single meaningful way my comfort has increased in the past 25 years. In fact, with the rise of the homeless and mental health crises, the encroachment of more and more people who have no business touching computers into cyberspace, the increased relevance of flash mob power on the internet, I would say my comfort has been actively degraded on a fundamental and signif…
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The idea that all billionaires work together is hilarious. No real adult could possibly believe such nonsense.
Any adult who has been paying attention has no doubt that enough of the elite do collude to call the duck a duck.
Billionaires just don't have much power. This isn't a movie.
I suspect that Mass Surveillance is here for good, and the real project is to regain control of who gains the power and benefits. There are dozens if not 100s of ways that mass surveillance can improve human life. There are also as many where it can be abused to create suffering. I think the real issue is we're trending to the latter. In order to safely continue down this path we (USA) need: 1. EU style governmental…
2. Lost pets are not being found by drone and camera surveillance. They could, but the system doesn’t give a shit about your dog. Children, maybe. I guess i’m ok with deploying a fleet of drones during a search and rescue operation. As long as there is transparency so it’s not done for other reasons, and they are grounded when they are done.
3. You just need one of those pressure sensitive wire strips across the road to do this. It’s a largely solved problem that doesn’t involve mass surveillance.
4. I am just guessing what this means, but government doesn’t do things that are wildly popular by polling, so why would they react to some ai surveillance sentiment analysis?
5. This isn’t mass surveillance. Like #2, a deployed drone to look around a corner or scan a building before entering is using technology but it’s momentary. If it became a problem where it was being over used we could deal with it as a separate issue.
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Yet there's incentive structures that push it forward. It's a classic example of us being dragged along by incentives and emergent patterns against our individual wills and better judgement. People think it's a conspiracy of the elite, but the last part of your message is true and it makes me wonder to what extent everyone is being dragged along by everyone else and nobody can stop because nobody can stop. I mean if…
Well said, I have exactly the same thoughts. However, overcoming these forces is something people did successfully in the past. I think right now we are just in a cycle of mass confusion caused by the technological revolutions, which prevents us to see clearly (as it happened in the past as well). Without alignment we just drift by natural forces of a system in place in whatever direction. When we adapt and if the wo…
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Ah, I see, it's the same as "un-American", only without being a word too onerous to use (yet) due to obvious historical implications.
> The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives created in 1938. Their goal was to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having communist ties. It was abolished in 1975. I'd heard of this but didn't realize it went on for decades.…
Dude. Dude. You've said yourself: this Congress committee went on for almost four decades. And before it, it was Yellow Peril, or anti-Irish sentiments, or manifest destiny with its "the only good Indian is a dead Indian". So, no, it's a very American thing to do, has been since the foundation of the US and arguably from even before than that.