The Coming Authoritarianism.

[luka]

You sound like a cop.

 

[version]

The systems approach to morality isn't enough when you can make individual choices within the system. Everyone needs money, but there are lots of ways of acquiring it.

 

[luka]

Life is very simple. There's goodies and baddies. You want to join the baddies because you think they are going to win and you will get to smoke a cigar in the spa pool with Russian prostitutes.

 

[luka]

It's not a respectable position.

 

[luka]

Do you want to be a teenage mutant ninja turtle or do you want to be on Shredder's payroll. Those are the only options.

 

[luka]

I want to be a hero in a half-shell personally

 

[sus]

Ok still waiting on that better world bud

Look at history, periods of transition are always unstable, it comes with the territory. A lot of people die the first decades of automobiles; then they draw up laws around seatbelts, and speeding limits, and driver's ed gets better, they start requiring licenses.

 

[luka]

You have to be willing to live in the sewers. And eat takeaway pizza. There's no way to win ethically. There's no way out of the sewer which doesn't mean becoming ethically bankrupt.

 

[sus]

The industrial revolution is like 100 years of chaos, revolt, and atrocity. It takes a long time to adapt when society gets technologically restructured. It doesn't happen overnight.

 

[luka]

You live in the sewer and you master your weapon, be it numchucks, the staff, the katana or the rai.

 

[version]

I'm not paranoid about technology. I'm paranoid about people. The technology's neutral.

 

[linebaugh]

Look at history, periods of transition are always unstable, it comes with the territory. A lot of people die the first decades of automobiles; then they draw up laws around seatbelts, and speeding limits, and driver's ed gets better, they start requiring licenses.

No transition period has ever addressed the problems we are talking about. If we want to allude to the trends of history than the only argument is that data tech will be new means for the same old bad. I think its very silly to argue that data will be used a weapon against corruption.

 

[sus]

What do you do if you think all technology will only eventually be co-opted "for the same old bad"? Put a ban on innovation?

 

[sus]

That's a rough stance. It's sorta like believing artistic innovation is bad because it'll eventually go through the same cycle of popularization and pastiche. Man, what a bleak view. Historically it doesn't seem to have panned out, given that everyone here would rather be alive in the present than in historical eras

 

[sus]

Unless someone here wants to bite a bullet and go live in the Dark Ages, or ancient Sparta as a peasant-slave or some shit. Are there really Rousseaueans on this forum? Cmon guys, I expected better

 

[linebaugh]

What do you do if you think all technology will only eventually be co-opted "for the same old bad"? Put a ban on innovation?

That's a rough stance. It's sorta like believing artistic innovation is bad because it'll eventually go through the same cycle of popularization and pastiche. Man, what a bleak view. Historically it doesn't seem to have panned out, given that everyone here would rather be alive in the present than in historical eras

You need to stop making people defend stances they never took. It makes it impossible to have a coherent conversation.

 

[sus]

That's every conversation on this forum! No one knows what anyone is talking about ever!

 

[version]

I don't think you can compare this stuff to the car or art becoming pastiche. You're talking about technology with the power to monitor and influence every aspect of people's lives. It's unprecedented.

 

[sus]

I never said data couldn't be used as a weapon, I just said tech bros aren't evil, there are lots of good people in the field, and unfortunately consumers prefer free shit over anything else

 

[sus]

@version That could be, but we also had the same freakout two or three decades ago with security cams. This was a big thing in the UK, right?