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What if they didn't exist, would Japanese society be better? It looks like all the good points they have could be replaced by local community initiatives and c

by brador 11y ago

What if they didn't exist, would Japanese society be better? It looks like all the good points they have could be replaced by local community initiatives and collective planning. Imagine a society free of aggressive and predatory crime. It's possible with the technology we have today. What are we waiting for?

kbutler 11y ago
> Imagine a society free of aggressive and predatory crime. It's possible with the technology we have today. What are we waiting for? The concern is generally what else you give up in order to remove the crime. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  We've been trained by the works of fiction to immediately pattern-match high-tech crime prevention with dystopia, but I think it might be good to stop for a minute and consider if the belief isn't seriously biased. It's incredibly hard to make an utopia that's not immediately boring - to be enjoyable, narratives require conflict. Even Star Trek, arguably the last popular sci-fi with positive outlook on the future, just took the conflict out of the utopian Earth and moved it somewhere else. So the reason crime-solving technology leads to dystopia is not a feature of the tech, it's just because an utopia would be boring.
  - kbutler 11y ago
    No, we've been trained by centuries of experience that the concentration of power invites abuse. Before we give the government the tools to monitor and control the populace, we need to make sure the populace has the tools to monitor and control the government. (I originally wrote "any organization", but any organization with such compulsory power becomes the de facto government...) A recent sci-fi with a positive view of hyper-tech civilization is "The Culture" (Iain Banks). However, the interesting stories there all occur on the borders, with the interaction of the Culture with non-Culture civilizations. "Player of Games" is a good starting point.
    - brador 11y ago
      > No, we've been trained by centuries of experience that the concentration of power invites abuse. And this is what tech can solve. We could be "ruled" by adaptive algorithms we collectively vote on. If a better algo is discovered it can be voted up and eventually replace another. Many refer to society as a machine, what would happen if we really treated it like one?
    - caskance 11y ago
      We've also been trained by millenia of experience that concentration of power invites efficiency and prosperity. Compare modern geopolitics to anything in the past. With a few rare but spectacular exceptions, groups merge and consolidate, and everyone is better off.
lpsz 11y ago
I'm disappointed that this poster was downvoted instead of constructive discussion, especially with the reply about "the freedoms we have to give up."
caskance 11y ago
How do you get "local community initiatives and collective planning" to happen? Especially when someone else is already doing it for free?
- brador 11y ago
  Like minded people get together and decide to make them happen, just like any multi-user change. Do we really need or want central planning like we have now? With tech we could solve many of our problems, instead we sit here calling them "pain points".
  - caskance 11y ago
    People already did that.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
> It looks like all the good points they have could be replaced by local community initiatives and collective planning. The problem is, they're already there, and local community initiatives are not. The hard thing is the road from here to there. You can't just suddenly remove them and hope things will go all right. As for collective planning, it's getting harder to sell these days; it's expected of every country to be some kind of democracy.

by brador 11y ago

kbutler 11y ago

> Imagine a society free of aggressive and predatory crime. It's possible with the technology we have today. What are we waiting for? The concern is generally what else you give up in order to remove the crime. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia

TeMPOraL 11y ago
We've been trained by the works of fiction to immediately pattern-match high-tech crime prevention with dystopia, but I think it might be good to stop for a minute and consider if the belief isn't seriously biased. It's incredibly hard to make an utopia that's not immediately boring - to be enjoyable, narratives require conflict. Even Star Trek, arguably the last popular sci-fi with positive outlook on the future, just took the conflict out of the utopian Earth and moved it somewhere else. So the reason crime-solving technology leads to dystopia is not a feature of the tech, it's just because an utopia would be boring.
- kbutler 11y ago
  No, we've been trained by centuries of experience that the concentration of power invites abuse. Before we give the government the tools to monitor and control the populace, we need to make sure the populace has the tools to monitor and control the government. (I originally wrote "any organization", but any organization with such compulsory power becomes the de facto government...) A recent sci-fi with a positive view of hyper-tech civilization is "The Culture" (Iain Banks). However, the interesting stories there all occur on the borders, with the interaction of the Culture with non-Culture civilizations. "Player of Games" is a good starting point.
  - brador 11y ago
    > No, we've been trained by centuries of experience that the concentration of power invites abuse. And this is what tech can solve. We could be "ruled" by adaptive algorithms we collectively vote on. If a better algo is discovered it can be voted up and eventually replace another. Many refer to society as a machine, what would happen if we really treated it like one?
  - caskance 11y ago
    We've also been trained by millenia of experience that concentration of power invites efficiency and prosperity. Compare modern geopolitics to anything in the past. With a few rare but spectacular exceptions, groups merge and consolidate, and everyone is better off.

lpsz 11y ago

I'm disappointed that this poster was downvoted instead of constructive discussion, especially with the reply about "the freedoms we have to give up."

caskance 11y ago

How do you get "local community initiatives and collective planning" to happen? Especially when someone else is already doing it for free?

brador 11y ago
Like minded people get together and decide to make them happen, just like any multi-user change. Do we really need or want central planning like we have now? With tech we could solve many of our problems, instead we sit here calling them "pain points".
- caskance 11y ago
  People already did that.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

> It looks like all the good points they have could be replaced by local community initiatives and collective planning. The problem is, they're already there, and local community initiatives are not. The hard thing is the road from here to there. You can't just suddenly remove them and hope things will go all right. As for collective planning, it's getting harder to sell these days; it's expected of every country to be some kind of democracy.