It's entirely possible to be - or at least aim to be - free of both political and economic coercion. It's even possible to have a society which embraces both individual liberty and collective decision-making. US identification of libertarianism with right-wing politics is just another artifact of the Cold War and the current class war against the poor and middle class.
As technology takes care of your basic needs, you need to find ways to fill your time.
That's fine advice for the owning class, but what does it have to do with the post you quoted? Because, for those who used to make their living through working until technology made them redundant, technology is not only not taking care of their basic needs, but actively hindering their ability to do so themselves.
Capitalism is just a tool. I am neither religiously for it, nor religiously against it.
Capitalism is a tool for arranging society. As such, for someone living under Capitalism, it determines their day to day reality, and because it's composed by interactions between humans, inevitably takes on some level of seeming agency and purpose. The traditional term for something like that is god.
So "religious" is absolutely the correct term to use here, and is why I have very little hope for our society adapting to changes brought by technology without a disaster like the two World Wars and Red October. And even then the more likely outcome is collapse and disintegration, just like has happened many times in the past.
Think of all the paper shufflers personal computers put out to pasture 30 years ago. That had a much bigger impact than the few thousand seasonal warehouse pickers that will be impacted by this. Society will survive.
Will it? We seem to be having ever worse economic meltdowns, and "recovery" after each is simply a stock market bubble inflating for a while before popping again. Social security has kept outright bread riots from happening so far, but is running out of money, is actively opposed by a lot of people, and is apparently insufficient to provide long-term stability when more and more people find themselves in permanent basis with no hope for anything better.
For good or ill, the Age of Industrial Revolution is ending - and with it, all the structures which grew up to support it, which include our notion of employment. Time will tell what Information Revolution will bring, but in their current forms our societies can't survive.
If we have the means to give everybody what is necessary to live, then why the hell would you want people to kill themselves with shitty jobs.
Because that would make them free and your entire life revolves around "getting ahead" in the game of power?
The more desperate the poor are, the more power the rich derive from their control of resources, after all. For someone who's fondest wish is to gain power over others, there can be no worse nightmare than adequate social security, because that renders economic blackmail impotent, just like a strong state ended outright violence carried out by private armies. That leaves only religion, which explains why Religious Right came to being.
If I knew someone who was violent and fucked up, I think the best approach would be to lock them the fuck up.
Lock them up for what crime? They haven't (yet) shot anyone. Or were you thinking something like the old Soviet system of using asylums as political prisons?
If you were to ask Mother Earth what she thinks, her answer is simple. Humans are the cancer.
If we go by Gaia hypothesis then humans are simply "Mother Earth" finally developing a central nervous system, which is currently in the process of booting up. While it's chaotic and unpleasant the alternative is Earth getting scorched by the Sun as it slowly runs out of nuclear fuel. So how about knocking out this melodramatic "humans are cancer" meme and treating this era as what it is: Earth's akward teenage years?
when a crap random mutation happens in some single cell, and the normal mitigating factors to deal with the broken cell fail, the last fail safe is to kill the whole colony/organism to prevent the spread of that broken gene through the herd.
First, the broken gene isn't going anywhere unless it happens to be in your reproductive track. Second, if the reason the gene is "broken" is that it causes cancer, and the reason it causes cancer is to filter out "broken" genes, it would seem that a population without such a mechanism would have an evolutionary advantage over a group which has it, having both more healthy members and less artificial filters on the spread of potentially beneficial mutations (which still requires the mutation to be in your reproductive track).
As mean-spirited as some people will interpret this statement
Not at all. I simply think it's a manifestation of the cancer that's eating humanity. The question is, are you manifesting th lesser version, where you spread cancerous memes merely to get a thrill from the response, or have they taken actual hold over your mind and now control you, like they did the Orlando shooter, Breivik, or that assassin in Britain?
The low morality and barbaric societies plaguing the planet will be purged by nature
Maybe you should stop demonstrating those qualities, then.
I can't decide if Brennan is stupid, or if he thinks everyone else is stupid.
Probably neither. We're witnessing the equivalent of climate change "scepticism": he has a position based on ideology which happens to disagree with reality, yet has to convince other people it's nonetheless true, so he'll simply say any excuse he can think of in hopes one of them sticks.
Conservatives want to see equality of opportunity - everyone starts the race at the same line. Liberalism seeks equality of results - we all cross the finish line at the same time.
Then there's socialists like me who think treating life as a race where only the best deserve tolerable existence is insane and, frankly, evil. Nobody should have to live in the streets just because they suck at running. Economy exists to serve human needs, not the other way around. I want to see a world where the whips are not just lighter and softer but gone altogether, even at the cost that people might not spend every waking moment increasing shareholder value.
But hey, those at the top making a few bucks more is well worth someone else's misery, amirite?
As it happens, the financial system which lets you have any money at all requires maintenance, at the very least to prevent counterfeiting, and that maintenance is paid from my taxes. So are you okay getting yourself tested too, or is this really just another power game again to the poor?
It wouldn't be difficult at all to require that any valid algorithm must be provably correct.
The problem is, "correct" here means "what the user intended", so your validator would need to read thoughts - and if it cold do that, there'd be no need to write contracts by hand in the first place.
But why make your contract language Turing complete in the first place? It would seem that propositional logic would be both perfectly sufficient and easier to write and understand. Do you really need your payment processor to be potentially sapient?
Then why are there high profile global treaties to deal with global warming and not global treaties to deal with overpopulation or regular pollution from the developing world?
Because the developing world does not have the resources to industrialize and deal with pollution at the same time, and population growth is already leveling off as living standards continue to rise.
Where is the dealing with the greater problems?
To put it bluntly, world's "greater problem" is Conservatism which in practice means a mixture of malevolence, selfishness and nostalgia combined with authoritarianism. So how would you want yourself dealt with?
And power is power. It corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It doesn't matter what your intentions were for creating the machinery of censorship, once it's operational it can be used by Joe Nazi just as easily to filter out any messages which disagree with his worldview or propaganda.
But even if they aren't an outright Nazi, whoever controls the flow of information has some kind of political leaning and agenda, because everyone does. You're giving that person or group the power to project their bias to everything the public hears, which in turn allows them to control public's opinions and undermines its ability to exert control over their country. You cannot have both democracy and censorship, they are mutually exclusive options. Thus far one of these has had a near-miraculous track record of transforming violent hellholes into peaceful, prosperous societies, while the other has ever been the servant - and creator - of tyrants.
Right now we have people dead and following tensions which leads to more radicalization. This already lead to rise of nationalism in Europe and last time it ended with tens of millions dead. So... tell me again how censorship is the worst.
Censorship means whoever decides what gets censored controls public opinion by basically controlling perceive reality beyond people's immediate sensory range. That, in turn, basically lets them control public opinion and thus nullify any resemblance to democracy, and at the same time gets them caught in their own echo chamber, slowly but surely driving them insane if they weren't so already. So if you don't want to see yet another era of genocidal maniacs in control of industrial nations, oppose censorship.
Also, the tensions in Europe - and specifically EU - aren't due to there being enough maniacs in a population of 500 million to kill 130 people, they're due to the suffering caused by ideology-based economic policies, specifically austerity. Various nefarious actors are simply attempting to seize the malcontent and redirect it to their own ends, just like they did during the previous major crisis of capitalism. Time will tell whether EU splinters and leaves Europe to descend into fascism once more, or stops sacrificing the livelihoods of ordinary citizens for its doomed attempt to make Euro into another gold standard in time; but either way, the disconnect from reality which censorship causes is unlikely to make things any better.
That happened a few years ago. Most computing hardware sold today comes with two cameras and no keyboard hardware, only a fake virtual on-screen keyboard.
No. Smartphones and tablets don't have physical keyboards because there's no room for them. As you yourself note, they come with whatever means to enter text the constraints of the form factor permits built-in. That they happen to have cameras is irrelevant.
Text is never going anywhere because with text, if I want to convey the idea of eleventy billion universes exploding and turning into butterflies I just did, whereas with any other medium how would you even begin?
"Massive ego, detecting an accomplishment that did not originate from itself, quickly moved into action to diminish it, causing the fabric of noosphere to ripple in a disgusted reaction."
Consider the social and ecological implications of either most people suddenly living much longer (~+50% global population growth rate),
Population growth rate in every country in a position to apply cutting-edge medical procedures is negative. Do you have any reason to believe people living much longer would suddenly make them want to have lots of babies?
or the wealthy elite not dying off anymore to give younger generations a chance to flourish.
What do I care if it's the Monopoly Man. or Monopoly Man Jr. who gives me the pink slip because my job got automated? I'm not part of the 1%, so neither will my descendants be, thus whether they "flourish" is independent of whether the rich live forever.
But even if that was not true, would you rather be rich for a few decades and then die than be poor but alive? Especially since the only reason we even have poverty anymore is our failures as a society, not lack of resources or production, so it'll likely be remedied at some point.
Here, climate change is an evil hippy illuminati conspiracy. It's all about taking your money away, or something.
No, it's just that pretending climate change doesn't exist has been succesfully made part of conservative identity, just like being anti-abortion and anti-gay is part of evangelical identity. Some believers rationalize the dogma through conspiracy theories, some by re-interpreting the data, but the real reason is that enough lobbyists told them that people like them believe climate change doesn't exist.
It's actually a pretty fascinating view into the human psyche.
Oh please, American jails are bad because they're bad, not because some guy like me fantasizes about Spamford Wallace getting his ass kicked.
America is a democracy, it's jails are exactly how its citizens want them to be. And any political aide going through Slashdot to sum up focus group attitudes now knows how to get your vote.
Universal suffrage means "some guy like me" wears a crown on his head, a small crown but a crown nonetheless. Stop pretending you aren't at fault for your servants the politicians trying their level best to fulfil your publicly expressed fantasies. You have power, and you wield it every time you open your mouth.
If you aren't legally permitted to use a computer or phone with an internet connection, you are fucked in terms of finding a job.
Isn't that the real point of all these lists? To heap on punishment after punishment to satisfy bloodlust while paying lip service to that "cruel and unusual" thing?
You and me, we aren't players because we have no cards. Drug lords aren't players because they break the rules openly and flaunt it. Wallace, on the other hand, is a sleazy businessman, so the courts give him the "bad dog!" treatment. The system takes care of its own, and screw everyone else.
Once more proving that Libertarianism is nothing more than an attempt to sell Aristocracy to the gullible.
But not those dumb enough to believe the lie. No, like Nigerian letters Libertarianism goes after those with an overblown ego, those who think they are going to be the Aristocrats. But unfortunately, the result for the rest of us is worse than just spam.
That's why I think we should all support the Free State Project. Having them all huddle in their Gulch means the rest of us can start rebuilding our society free from interference.
Slashdot Mirror
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism
It's entirely possible to be - or at least aim to be - free of both political and economic coercion. It's even possible to have a society which embraces both individual liberty and collective decision-making. US identification of libertarianism with right-wing politics is just another artifact of the Cold War and the current class war against the poor and middle class.
Government by the temporary embarrassed millionaires for the actual millionaires.
That's fine advice for the owning class, but what does it have to do with the post you quoted? Because, for those who used to make their living through working until technology made them redundant, technology is not only not taking care of their basic needs, but actively hindering their ability to do so themselves.
Capitalism is a tool for arranging society. As such, for someone living under Capitalism, it determines their day to day reality, and because it's composed by interactions between humans, inevitably takes on some level of seeming agency and purpose. The traditional term for something like that is god.
So "religious" is absolutely the correct term to use here, and is why I have very little hope for our society adapting to changes brought by technology without a disaster like the two World Wars and Red October. And even then the more likely outcome is collapse and disintegration, just like has happened many times in the past.
Will it? We seem to be having ever worse economic meltdowns, and "recovery" after each is simply a stock market bubble inflating for a while before popping again. Social security has kept outright bread riots from happening so far, but is running out of money, is actively opposed by a lot of people, and is apparently insufficient to provide long-term stability when more and more people find themselves in permanent basis with no hope for anything better.
For good or ill, the Age of Industrial Revolution is ending - and with it, all the structures which grew up to support it, which include our notion of employment. Time will tell what Information Revolution will bring, but in their current forms our societies can't survive.
Because that would make them free and your entire life revolves around "getting ahead" in the game of power?
The more desperate the poor are, the more power the rich derive from their control of resources, after all. For someone who's fondest wish is to gain power over others, there can be no worse nightmare than adequate social security, because that renders economic blackmail impotent, just like a strong state ended outright violence carried out by private armies. That leaves only religion, which explains why Religious Right came to being.
Lock them up for what crime? They haven't (yet) shot anyone. Or were you thinking something like the old Soviet system of using asylums as political prisons?
If we go by Gaia hypothesis then humans are simply "Mother Earth" finally developing a central nervous system, which is currently in the process of booting up. While it's chaotic and unpleasant the alternative is Earth getting scorched by the Sun as it slowly runs out of nuclear fuel. So how about knocking out this melodramatic "humans are cancer" meme and treating this era as what it is: Earth's akward teenage years?
First, the broken gene isn't going anywhere unless it happens to be in your reproductive track. Second, if the reason the gene is "broken" is that it causes cancer, and the reason it causes cancer is to filter out "broken" genes, it would seem that a population without such a mechanism would have an evolutionary advantage over a group which has it, having both more healthy members and less artificial filters on the spread of potentially beneficial mutations (which still requires the mutation to be in your reproductive track).
Not at all. I simply think it's a manifestation of the cancer that's eating humanity. The question is, are you manifesting th lesser version, where you spread cancerous memes merely to get a thrill from the response, or have they taken actual hold over your mind and now control you, like they did the Orlando shooter, Breivik, or that assassin in Britain?
Maybe you should stop demonstrating those qualities, then.
Probably neither. We're witnessing the equivalent of climate change "scepticism": he has a position based on ideology which happens to disagree with reality, yet has to convince other people it's nonetheless true, so he'll simply say any excuse he can think of in hopes one of them sticks.
Then there's socialists like me who think treating life as a race where only the best deserve tolerable existence is insane and, frankly, evil. Nobody should have to live in the streets just because they suck at running. Economy exists to serve human needs, not the other way around. I want to see a world where the whips are not just lighter and softer but gone altogether, even at the cost that people might not spend every waking moment increasing shareholder value.
But hey, those at the top making a few bucks more is well worth someone else's misery, amirite?
As it happens, the financial system which lets you have any money at all requires maintenance, at the very least to prevent counterfeiting, and that maintenance is paid from my taxes. So are you okay getting yourself tested too, or is this really just another power game again to the poor?
The problem is, "correct" here means "what the user intended", so your validator would need to read thoughts - and if it cold do that, there'd be no need to write contracts by hand in the first place.
But why make your contract language Turing complete in the first place? It would seem that propositional logic would be both perfectly sufficient and easier to write and understand. Do you really need your payment processor to be potentially sapient?
Because the developing world does not have the resources to industrialize and deal with pollution at the same time, and population growth is already leveling off as living standards continue to rise.
To put it bluntly, world's "greater problem" is Conservatism which in practice means a mixture of malevolence, selfishness and nostalgia combined with authoritarianism. So how would you want yourself dealt with?
And power is power. It corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It doesn't matter what your intentions were for creating the machinery of censorship, once it's operational it can be used by Joe Nazi just as easily to filter out any messages which disagree with his worldview or propaganda.
But even if they aren't an outright Nazi, whoever controls the flow of information has some kind of political leaning and agenda, because everyone does. You're giving that person or group the power to project their bias to everything the public hears, which in turn allows them to control public's opinions and undermines its ability to exert control over their country. You cannot have both democracy and censorship, they are mutually exclusive options. Thus far one of these has had a near-miraculous track record of transforming violent hellholes into peaceful, prosperous societies, while the other has ever been the servant - and creator - of tyrants.
Censorship means whoever decides what gets censored controls public opinion by basically controlling perceive reality beyond people's immediate sensory range. That, in turn, basically lets them control public opinion and thus nullify any resemblance to democracy, and at the same time gets them caught in their own echo chamber, slowly but surely driving them insane if they weren't so already. So if you don't want to see yet another era of genocidal maniacs in control of industrial nations, oppose censorship.
Also, the tensions in Europe - and specifically EU - aren't due to there being enough maniacs in a population of 500 million to kill 130 people, they're due to the suffering caused by ideology-based economic policies, specifically austerity. Various nefarious actors are simply attempting to seize the malcontent and redirect it to their own ends, just like they did during the previous major crisis of capitalism. Time will tell whether EU splinters and leaves Europe to descend into fascism once more, or stops sacrificing the livelihoods of ordinary citizens for its doomed attempt to make Euro into another gold standard in time; but either way, the disconnect from reality which censorship causes is unlikely to make things any better.
No. Smartphones and tablets don't have physical keyboards because there's no room for them. As you yourself note, they come with whatever means to enter text the constraints of the form factor permits built-in. That they happen to have cameras is irrelevant.
Text is never going anywhere because with text, if I want to convey the idea of eleventy billion universes exploding and turning into butterflies I just did, whereas with any other medium how would you even begin?
"Massive ego, detecting an accomplishment that did not originate from itself, quickly moved into action to diminish it, causing the fabric of noosphere to ripple in a disgusted reaction."
Population growth rate in every country in a position to apply cutting-edge medical procedures is negative. Do you have any reason to believe people living much longer would suddenly make them want to have lots of babies?
What do I care if it's the Monopoly Man. or Monopoly Man Jr. who gives me the pink slip because my job got automated? I'm not part of the 1%, so neither will my descendants be, thus whether they "flourish" is independent of whether the rich live forever.
But even if that was not true, would you rather be rich for a few decades and then die than be poor but alive? Especially since the only reason we even have poverty anymore is our failures as a society, not lack of resources or production, so it'll likely be remedied at some point.
No, it's just that pretending climate change doesn't exist has been succesfully made part of conservative identity, just like being anti-abortion and anti-gay is part of evangelical identity. Some believers rationalize the dogma through conspiracy theories, some by re-interpreting the data, but the real reason is that enough lobbyists told them that people like them believe climate change doesn't exist.
It's actually a pretty fascinating view into the human psyche.
America is a democracy, it's jails are exactly how its citizens want them to be. And any political aide going through Slashdot to sum up focus group attitudes now knows how to get your vote.
Universal suffrage means "some guy like me" wears a crown on his head, a small crown but a crown nonetheless. Stop pretending you aren't at fault for your servants the politicians trying their level best to fulfil your publicly expressed fantasies. You have power, and you wield it every time you open your mouth.
Isn't that the real point of all these lists? To heap on punishment after punishment to satisfy bloodlust while paying lip service to that "cruel and unusual" thing?
Lord Shojo says it best: "As long as the people at the table see a fellow player across from them, they'll tolerate you. A crooked player is a pain in the ass, but someone who refuses to play at all makes them start questioning their own lives and people HATE to think. They'd rather lose to a cheater than dwell too long on why they're playing in the first place."
You and me, we aren't players because we have no cards. Drug lords aren't players because they break the rules openly and flaunt it. Wallace, on the other hand, is a sleazy businessman, so the courts give him the "bad dog!" treatment. The system takes care of its own, and screw everyone else.
But not those dumb enough to believe the lie. No, like Nigerian letters Libertarianism goes after those with an overblown ego, those who think they are going to be the Aristocrats. But unfortunately, the result for the rest of us is worse than just spam.
That's why I think we should all support the Free State Project. Having them all huddle in their Gulch means the rest of us can start rebuilding our society free from interference.