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Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

kirkcenter.org

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Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#181

Post by Retric »

philwelch wrote: post #174
r00fus wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opposite of the authors viewpoint isn’t Utopianism (which is as extreme in the opposite direction) but pragmatism and realism. The fact that, flawed as we might seem, we are living in a reality that may not be possible to be more perfect.

Which isn’t far from an even more secular version of my point. Utopian ideologies often rely upon a superior “master race” or “new Soviet man” who has overcome the perceived imperfections and limitations of nature and who can assume a role in the world to come. In that sense, utopia itself is highly reminiscent of religious ideas, except with the addition of crucial missteps. The substantive value of the idea that hu…

Utopia is not about arbitrary metrics. Maximizing choice is more critical than having trains show up on time, to the nanosecond.

"A Utopia (/juːˈtoʊpiə/ yoo-TOH-pee-ə) is an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia

Suggesting all metrics must be at 100% is thus clearly a straw man. The end to starvation is very much a realistic and Utopian goal out of reach for our ancestors.

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#182

Post by anigbrowl »

int_19h wrote: post #131
anigbrowl wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a story in the news today about a Coast Guard lieutenant with extreme political views who was planning to go on an Anders Breivik style murder spree. Your model doesn't seem to include people who have zero interest in dialogue or persuasion and are willing to simply eliminate people they find disagreeable. Regrettably, it's not hard to find people who subscribe to eliminationist ideologies, and having found t…

> At what point do you consider the listening process sufficient for conclusions to be drawn, or any other action to be taken At the point where you have sufficient evidence to charge them with "conspiracy to commit X", where X is a non-speech crime.

A conspiracy requires 2 or more people. I am guessing you were using the term loosely but the problem is many cases fall into a gray area. This coast guard guy I mentioned was arrested on drug abuse charges as a legal convenience, but on currently available information, seems to have operated alone in the furtherance of his criminal plan.

Prosecutors like conspiracy charges because it provides evidence of intent. Otherwise any amount of preparation for commission of a crime could be spun in court as harmless curiosity. A common example of this is where people get caught with child pronography and claim they were just trying to research the topic. I know of a person in an extremist political group who was found by police to have a pile of explosives in the garage and was able to explain it away by claiming it was for model rocketry.

The bottom line is that that some people have intentions to do harm at scale, but intentions are tricky to prove, and surveillance sufficiently good to interrupt harmful acts is expensive to deploy. That's why law enforcement uses entrapment strategies so often, although these are problematic int heir own way because they can tilt into encouraging criminal behavior rather than merely detecting it.

This is challenging because few criminals say 'I, John Doe, intend to commit [crime] at [time and place] and I'm 100% serious' in unambiguous fashion. Many obvious-seeming criminal threats are little more than nasty trolling, and although that is a crime it doesn't make it any easier to identify non-confessor criminals. On the other hand someone can legally acquire significant destructive capacity and widely broadcast opinions that correlate with but do not constitute intent, like longitudinal hostility to some individual or group, but you may not be able to formally demonstrate the existence of intent until the crime is actually committed even when there's a preponderance of evidence to suggest it ahead of time.

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#183

Post by leepowers »

kerbalspacepro wrote: post #81
leepowers wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a mistake to process these ideas on the basis of trust. True, the religious angle is shoehorned at the end. But the author cites secular books and ideas throughout; these ideas and the relationships between them are worth considering.

Imagine that a person was trying to explain to you how we knew that galaxies and so on were a certain distance away. They show that we know how to figure out Standard Candles and luminosity etc etc etc. They also claim, at the very end, to say that the earth is flat. They don't mean the universe is flat. They mean the earth is flat. Now, imagine you haven't read the article, somebody comments, "This guy said the eart…

It's possible to be right about the universe and the galaxy but wrong about the earth. The 90% that is accurate is still accurate even if another 10% is wrong.

More pointedly - we are all in the same position as the flat-earther you posit. None of us have 100% accurate knowledge - meaning some percentage of what we believe is either false or one day will be proven false. We all have blind spots. Flat earthers have a particularly egregious blind spot. So we can be skeptical of other claims they make. But we should still engage with the stuff that makes sense and coheres. The answer to bad science is more science; the answer to bad speech is more speech.

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#184

Post by stcredzero »

anigbrowl wrote: post #179
stcredzero wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who will do violence in support of their political beliefs are in the wrong. People who support people who do violence should be questioned, regardless of where on the political spectrum they lie, or whether they are an "your side" or the "other." The people who are going around in masks, with clubs and guns committing assaults and other violent crimes need to be recognized as the terrorists and proto-terroris…

The people who are going around in masks, with clubs and guns committing assaults and other violent crimes need to be recognized as the terrorists and proto-terrorists they are. And my question to you is what you do about people like that. The remedy for violent extremist tendencies is to let people talk. It's when people feel like they can't talk, that they seek more extreme means. [Citation needed] There are lots o…

You whole theory seems to be that people just need an opportunity to vent their feels and that will cause aggressive or atrocious feelings to subside.

No. However, not letting people speak will make it more likely that they will feel there are no other options for them. That's just common sense. If you take away an option, people feel they have one less option.

This may work great in therapeutic contexts but I'm not willing to accept that it holds true in the world at large.

You're conflating the therapeutic context with the societal context. Sure, therapy is probabilistic, with no guarantees for any given individual. Effectively, you have been straw-manning by conflating the two. In the US, we can vote. We have freedom of speech. This is a big reason why we can resolve differences and exchange power without violence. If you make people feel they only "technically" have freedom of speech, but not really, then they resort to violence. This is just history.

Your conflating the therapeutic context feeds into a narrative your'e pushing about certain people being irredeemable. Certainly, certain individuals in a therapeutic context aren't going to be easily redeemable, if at all. That doesn't mean that entire groups or swathes of the political spectrum or cohorts of political populations should be treated as irredeemable. That way lies madness. The endpoint of that is either violence or camps. However, it is convenient to do such conflating, if one wants to tar a particular subgroup for political reasons.

I don't speak up for extremists. I speak against extremists. There is a widespread manipulation across society and the media where mainstream/fairly centrist people are being tarred as extremists. This too is being prosecuted by extremists.

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#185

Post by stcredzero »

freshhawk wrote: post #175
stcredzero wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not much has changed materially, you are just exposed to more personal conversations in public spaces than we used to be. It is weird. It is less public conversation, and more "shut up and submit!" What you are actually seeing happen: politically engaged people are ignoring you or just brushing you aside or even telling you to shut or get lost because you don't matter to them politically. This is the authoritaria…

You are confusing "there is no debate taking place" with "I am not involved in the debate". It is happening, it is just happening among people with a different worldview, using different language than you prefer.

You are confusing "there is no debate taking place" with "I am not involved in the debate".

Sounds like you are trying to disenfranchise, or declare people disenfranchised. Sounds like you're just wishing entire swathes of the mainstream/center to disappear, or keep quiet and put up.

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#186

Post by stcredzero »

freshhawk wrote: post #180
stcredzero wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically a strongman is summoned as an excuse to end mob rule (real or imagined) resulting in an authoritarian government. Napoleon, Franco Mussolini are some examples. One also sees people jumping up with a banner in the front of the mob. Lenin and Kim-il Sung, for example. Of course the issues are real and need to be discussed and criticized. But fortunately stories like Evergreen State College are rare But the…

And the cards are on the table! Pro-Patriot Prayer and Proud Boys eh? Boy, I can't imagine why people are just ignoring you and insulting you instead of engaging with your obviously bad faith prompts to discuss Nazi rights. Bit insulting to the intelligence of HN in general to think this reddit-level BS would fly isn't it?

And the cards are on the table! Pro-Patriot Prayer and Proud Boys eh?

Typical projection. I'm anti-violence, and to the extent people in those groups committed violence, they should be prosecuted. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6RDQ02AzLw

Boy, I can't imagine why people are just ignoring you and insulting you

Apparently, a lot of people like what I write here.

instead of engaging with your obviously bad faith prompts to discuss Nazi rights.

Hmm, I think you're the one laying cards on the table this moment. I've had my cards on the table the whole time. Pray tell, what Nazi rights have I been advocating for? Can you provide quotes?

Bit insulting to the intelligence of HN in general to think this reddit-level BS would fly isn't it?

Thanks for showing your true colors and resorting to name calling. I guess I touched a nerve. Thanks as well for letting your authoritarianism leak out. It seems like you can't help it, and it helps my case perhaps more than anything I can write.

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#187

Post by int_19h »

anigbrowl wrote: post #182
int_19h wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At what point do you consider the listening process sufficient for conclusions to be drawn, or any other action to be taken At the point where you have sufficient evidence to charge them with "conspiracy to commit X", where X is a non-speech crime.

A conspiracy requires 2 or more people. I am guessing you were using the term loosely but the problem is many cases fall into a gray area. This coast guard guy I mentioned was arrested on drug abuse charges as a legal convenience, but on currently available information, seems to have operated alone in the furtherance of his criminal plan. Prosecutors like conspiracy charges because it provides evidence of intent. Oth…

Let's rephrase it as "when they act in furtherance to committing a crime", then (i.e. the definition of conspiracy sans requiring multiple people).

And yes, it does mean that you won't catch all such people, only most. It's the case of diminishing returns - you have to radically increase surveillance and police state intrusiveness to go after fewer and fewer people, while also affecting more and more people who aren't actually violent.

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#188

Post by tomp »

stcredzero wrote: post #171
tomp wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, thanks for your comments in this thread. We need more people to speak up against coercion and authoritarianism, especially when committed in the name of the good (looking at you, Left)! I wish I could do more than just upvote and favourite your comments...

I wish I could do more than just upvote and favourite your comments... Yes you can do more. Speak the truth. Pick your battles wisely, but be forthright and speak up!

Ah I definitely do. Although not as eloquently as you :)

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#189

Post by anigbrowl »

int_19h wrote: post #187
anigbrowl wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A conspiracy requires 2 or more people. I am guessing you were using the term loosely but the problem is many cases fall into a gray area. This coast guard guy I mentioned was arrested on drug abuse charges as a legal convenience, but on currently available information, seems to have operated alone in the furtherance of his criminal plan. Prosecutors like conspiracy charges because it provides evidence of intent. Oth…

Let's rephrase it as "when they act in furtherance to committing a crime", then (i.e. the definition of conspiracy sans requiring multiple people). And yes, it does mean that you won't catch all such people, only most. It's the case of diminishing returns - you have to radically increase surveillance and police state intrusiveness to go after fewer and fewer people, while also affecting more and more people who aren'…

That's all true, but only considers state-criminal relations. I urge reconsidering this from the point of view of political conflict rather than simple criminology.

Re: Dystopia Is What Results from the Attempt to Create Utopia

#190

Post by stcredzero »

tomp wrote: post #188
stcredzero wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could do more than just upvote and favourite your comments... Yes you can do more. Speak the truth. Pick your battles wisely, but be forthright and speak up!

Ah I definitely do. Although not as eloquently as you :)

Just be honest and forthright. Then edit for the active voice and brevity. And again, pick your battles.
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