181–190 of 347 posts
> Sheriff Bud York suggested, according to the Post-Star, the local newspaper, that “in an era of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and mass killings in schools, police agencies need to be ready for whatever comes their way... And in reality, they're just preparing for social unrest that seem more likely by the day.
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Speaking of control, I think an interesting way to conceptualize what's happening here is a cybernetic/organicist model (a tradition that goes at least as far back as Hobbes). The nation-state can be thought of as a superorganism, and this requires complex systems of feedback and control. We have resource inputs, which are processed via the churn of economic activity (this is analogous to cellular respiration). This…
You might enjoy "Protocol: how control exists after decentralization" by Galloway. A lot of it is very similar to this, building on top of Deleuze's "Postscript."
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quote more Foucault's Discipline & Punishment Foucault's style is (possibly deliberately) obtuse, and his knowledge of history dubious at best, per Keith Windschuttle's book The Killing of History : http://www.amazon.com/The-Killing-History-Theorists-Murderin... . It's the question of why we all let this happen without any resistance Because it's easy, because most of the time it doesn't affect us, and because it's h…
Interesting. In The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies - does Caplan do a good job of proving the inverse as an attainable goal? For example: a) that fully rational voters instating representative politicians into power will result in good policies (that benefit voters)? b) that it's possible for voters to become less ignorant and more rational on average, within the current system, in or…
But, there is a machine dedicated to disinformation. In the aftermath of Citizens United, we are seeing the rise of dark money to the point where billion dollar campaigns are imminent. Combine that with the consolidation of media, the fall of investigative journalism, and a 24 hour news cycle which has devolved news into infotainment, and it is little wonder that the populace is woefully ignorant. Actually, ignorant is too generous. They are actively misinformed, in that they think they know.
So, I would say no, the current system makes it all but impossible for voters to make rational choices, or even to identify what the real choices are.
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Well, I speak Russian fluently (and therefore can follow the Russian media/Internet) and I have visited the country 3 times. In addition I have visited another ex-Soviet country, Ukraine, over a dozen times. You really have to go to these places to understand them, and preferably have some level of competence in the language so that you can speak to a variety of people, not just some egotistic activist that gets his…
I have spoken to Ukrainians and Russians, students and programmers, and they would be offended at your assessment of the situation. The most telling part of my conversations with them was when I suggested that things are getting at least a little better. They were adamant that things were not getting better. Anyway they were glad to be in the states.
Being offended at someone's assessment of a situation is a political statement. We should not be surprised to hear people making political statements about a political situation. None of this makes one person more right or another one more wrong.
Politics is very hard to figure out, and we should all be careful of making oversimplified statements. It's not as simple as Ukraine signs an agreement with the EU and then everything is rosy. Neither is it as simple Putin twisting Yanukovitch's arm. This is a bloody complex geopolitical problem and Ukraine is getting no support in solving it from anyone outside Ukraine. They have to work through it, accept the hard knocks, and ultimately reap whatever benefits that their decision brings. Cheerleaders on the sidelines have no skin in the game.
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It's not a critique - it's an answer to the question "why don't more people quote Foucault's _Discipline and Punish._" They don't quote it because it's not quotable. If someone were to write and (crucially) popularize a version that reads the way people explain Foucault, things would be different.
> If someone were to write and (crucially) popularize a version that reads the way people explain Foucault, things would be different. Foucault was French. French (and Europeans that are non British in general) do not write theory and history the way anglosaxons do. At least most of them doesn't. If you want to learn from them, you have to study their idioms. You cannot just point at it and say it's unquotable or ali…
I think the key difference here is that code actually has to compile, so no matter how clever your lispy magic gets it's still grounded by that reality. Foucault (and Barthes, Saussure et al) are unencumbered by the constraint of their prose actually having to be parseable by anyone. Their prose is better thought of as an artistic performance than a functional machine.
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The idea that there is a small cabal of powerful people who brought the economy to its knees while enriching themselves through their knowing and active malfeasance is a fairy tale. To ethically prosecute people you have to competently and in good faith believe they have broken specific laws. And you need to know the actions, and how specifically they violated the law. An unfortunate outcome is not sufficient.
I made no claim that there is a small cabal of powerful people controlling everything brought down the system. There are, however, Goldman Sachs people that lied to their own customers in order to make money, for example. That is the kind of behaviour that can be persecuted, mostly along the conflict of interest or fraud lines. Those are specific laws. Oh, by the way, heard of the Libor scandal? Not specifically rela…
I have no problem with Fabulous Fab going to jail, although I don't thick it's quite as cut-and-dried as you imagine.
I'm familiar with the Libor scandal.
But in both those cases particular people did specific things which were actionable.
When I read something like this, I always think back to when I would see some tinfoil-hat type ranting on Usenet 20 years ago about the growing surveillance/police state in America. It was generally eye-rolling or unintentionally hilarious stuff. What's depressing is that it's starting to look like they were right.
I think, "wow, this person is literally dupable without limit."
This is probably more of "If we scare people by throwing around the terrorist word then we get to spend money, have cool new toys, and look badass". It's pathetic, but it seems to work.