8 ms·

The coming decades will surely going to be interesting as we are getting better at arbitrarily manipulating matter in a cheap way. It seems to me that the power

by sawwit 11y ago

The coming decades will surely going to be interesting as we are getting better at arbitrarily manipulating matter in a cheap way. It seems to me that the power of the individual could just become too big. There is a good reason why we decentralize important decisions: Decisions of individuals are often just too prone to errors and malice. Once individuals can synthesize viruses, armed drones, atomic bombs and AIs in their cellars, there will be a myriad ways of things going terribly wrong (in addition to the myriads of things that can already go wrong).

fastball 11y ago
Can't there also be a myriad of things that can go right?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- mozumder 11y ago
  Has there ever been something that has gone right?
  - fastball 11y ago
    Literally the entire human race, averaged over the last 4000 years.
    - mozumder 11y ago
      All done under rules of law.
    - knieveltech 11y ago
      Slavery, genocide, and tyranny are a fact of life for many people in the world today. We haven't gotten it right yet.
- mpweiher 11y ago
  Everything that can go right, will go right. -- Murphy was a pessimist.
  - reitanqild 11y ago
    Eventually : )
Natanael_L 11y ago
"The cost of destroying the world falls by the day" Paraphrased, can't remember the source
- sawwit 11y ago
  Also, "the necessary IQ for destroying the world falls by the day".
- Kutta 11y ago
  https://intelligence.org/files/AIPosNegFactor.pdf https://intelligence.org/files/AIPosNegFactor.pdf Is the oldest source that I remember (from page 37).
  - Natanael_L 11y ago
    Nice; > Moore’s Law of Mad Science: Every eighteen months, the minimum IQ necessary to destroy the world drops by one point.
- 300bps 11y ago
  May be true but not applicable to this story about a rail gun that is more dangerous to the person setting it up and firing it than any potential target of it. The thing couldn't even shoot through two sides of a car door.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    True, but note that this project can be done by any random teenager (closer to 12 than 18 years old) with no access to specialized materials or equipment. Aluminium and copper is around everywhere, and you can pry HV capacitors from off-the-shelf equipment (as a kid I used to get them from spent single-roll analog cameras). Instructions you can find on-line. In contrast, making a working gun at home (and more importantly, ammo!) is much more difficult (though still doable), requiring some specific chemicals and a lathe if you want to finish it in under a decade. Though the latter is changing as well, as the lathes are more precise, cheaper and easier to get than they used to be. And this is still very low in the category of actual damage - close to the top I'd put a resourceful teenager halting a desalination plant or crashing the power grid in some country using only his laptop. Actually, I'm still a bit surprised it hasn't happened yet given the laughable state of infosec in the industries. The point of the quote is - our technological advancements tend to raise the amount of damage a single person can do by using products of the system against the system itself. And this is a big problem, because while you can hope for some level of control over countries or even corporations, with 7 billion people on this planet, some accident is bound to occur eventually, and individuals hell-bent on destroying the world pop up by pure chance.
shade23 11y ago
Or to quote Uncle Ben > "With Great power comes great responsibility" ?
- mozumder 11y ago
  lol @ the idea of a system that relies on responsibility of individual free will for general public safety. "Sure! Of course you can have firearms! Just be responsible and don't shoot anyone with it!"
  - reitanqild 11y ago
    Has worked mostly OKish here for a few generations it seems. Also remember you cannot trade liberty for security.
    - Cthulhu_ 11y ago
      Mostly okish minus tens of thousands of unnecessary and/or accidental deaths and little to no actual benefit (like idk, mass shootings or terrorist attacks prevented). IIRC the right to bear arms was intended so that the people can overthrow the government if need be; small chance of that now, with the military and police forces as advanced and militarised as they are now. /rant
      - hoorayimhelping 11y ago
        >little to no actual benefit (like idk, mass shootings or terrorist attacks prevented). How can you possibly judge that? For all you know, having 300 million guns in America is keeping the earth's magnetosphere intact through some weird quantum effect. It's highly unlikely, but you have no idea what the actual benefit of the 2nd amendment is because there is no possible way to empirically determine what the past would have been like without it.
        mozumder 11y ago
        You can compare to other countries without that right, or to just within regions in the same country that have no guns vs regions that do. That's how you would determine the benefits of the 2nd amendment with data. This is not a difficult problem.
vlehto 11y ago
"Private companies only change when they have to." I think this is true for all institutions. Change need to be first enabled and then forced. This is because institution is not a solid thing, it's a while loop. A process that needs to feed itself to exist. So it has natural inertia to stay the same. I think democracy is enabled by efficient taxation of businessmen. So you no longer need aristocracy as middlemen to collect taxes. It's enforced by necessity of defense. You can motivate peasants to defend "their country". But you have to let the vote for it to feel theirs. This worked at an age when you needed lot's of fingers to pull lots of triggers. There was proof of concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_First_Coalition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_First_Coalition Looks like weapons technology and general resentment against conscription is enabling whatever comes after democracy.
- sawwit 11y ago
  I've tried to understand what are you saying, but I didn't get it. Would you care explaining it in simpler terms? Would you argue that our system is much more based on taxation than on decentralization of decision making? Isn't taxation a form of decentralization of decision making as you move the means to make decisions to a central pool? Also, why do you have to let people vote to feel what? What is WotFC a proof of concept for? How will weapon technology and resentment against conscription shape, what are possible scenarios you have in mind?
  - vlehto 11y ago
    I think "decentralization of decision making" is a result, not a cause. I love it. In geopolitical way of thinking, a state is always competing with other states. Not because we are bad people, but for the simple fact that states that can hold their own are likely to survive. Certain type of political "evolution". To succeed in that competition you need armed forces. For that, you need manpower, equipment and supplies. All can be bought with money. So successful taxation is essential for any nation. When traders and banks started to amass wealth at end of medieval period, any state that could tap into that flux of money had upper hand. But taxing individuals or sales actions or anything like that is more difficult than taxing nobles based on the land they hold. It helps a lot if those people have some sort of motivation to pay taxes. Concept of nation state provides such patriotic feelings. Now you are paying taxes for your people, not your feudal lord. Accounting and bureaucracy in general are also key elements. French revolution established democracy and right after that the French levee en masse could defend the country against very big and powerful nations. Despite the facts that the french were short of money, had few trained troops and only little time. It showed that you could compensate with motivated and numerous troops. Imagine if you had democracy and money? This happened in the period where rifle had become more important in the battlefield than trained cavalry. Possible scenarios? I think cryprocurrency will put traditional taxation in a binge. Governments need to tax what they can control, income and sales are going to be difficult. Taxation of energy seems easiest. Both persons and companies need energy. And it has some legitimacy with environmental concerns. Another big one is going to be information, it's difficult to lay cables without government knowing about it. National identities don't seem to be important to people anymore. Conscription seems to become unneeded as well as unpopular. Bureaucracy is not going anywhere. Political power seems to be shifting towards military-industrial big players. I don't think we will see feudalism. But maybe a modern version of powerful families of Venetian Republic. This time more with company allegiance than family ties. Was that more understandable? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev%C3%A9e_en_masse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev%C3%A9e_en_masse EDIT: I just would like to add that technological progress seems inevitable. But speed of technological development seems often biased. It's likely that current power structures pour R/D money on technologies that keep them in power. And it's completely possible that some unforeseen technology emerges and changes the picture totally. I like Swedish arms production for this reason. For example they develop new anti-tank missiles to keep infantry relevant in the battlefield. Which in a way promotes democracy.
arca_vorago 11y ago
Ladies and gentle, witness the justification of the dystopian future before you. Here is my problem, or my main problem, with this line of thinking. America is founded upon the idea that individual liberties are basis for all other liberties, and while I can understand the reasoning that the national security apparatus finds the shifting sands of power from nation states to individuals a potential security threat, they have embraced this thought process without bringing it to the people in an upfront manner as should be properly done in a constitutional representative democracy. This model of thinking, at least in the USA, is a complete rewriting of what we consider our government should be, and a rewiting that is happening with no informing the people, and one that will most certainly have more unintended consequences than anyone can yet imagine. I am certain of one thing, and that is the worst things will befall those who so eagerly trade liberty for security, at the hands of those who promise to protect.
- sawwit 11y ago
  I think it depends on whether the security apparatus is a central or decentralized one. Perhaps one would need to decentralize the decisions of individuals, but I can't think of a particular implementation of that idea.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I think stuff isn't being rewritten - people are starting to figure it out by themselves, at least those who understand the technologies we're talking about here. Honestly, it doesn't matter what "idea" America was founded upon. The whole talk of "trading liberty for security" has become a religious dogma now, when originally it was meant only as an observation about a narrow group of cases. We will have to have more centralized security and more surveillance if we want to survive our technological growth. I'd much prefer to live in such "dystopia"[0] than in a country whose people got sick and died believing in the idea that individual liberties of a random dude with access to an advanced genome sequencing machine are basis for all other liberties. [0] - personally I'm rooting for something closer to the United Federation of Planets.
  - arca_vorago 11y ago

by sawwit 11y ago

fastball 11y ago

Can't there also be a myriad of things that can go right?

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
mozumder 11y ago
Has there ever been something that has gone right?
- fastball 11y ago
  Literally the entire human race, averaged over the last 4000 years.
  - mozumder 11y ago
    All done under rules of law.
  - knieveltech 11y ago
    Slavery, genocide, and tyranny are a fact of life for many people in the world today. We haven't gotten it right yet.
mpweiher 11y ago
Everything that can go right, will go right. -- Murphy was a pessimist.
- reitanqild 11y ago
  Eventually : )

Natanael_L 11y ago

"The cost of destroying the world falls by the day" Paraphrased, can't remember the source

sawwit 11y ago
Also, "the necessary IQ for destroying the world falls by the day".
Kutta 11y ago
https://intelligence.org/files/AIPosNegFactor.pdf https://intelligence.org/files/AIPosNegFactor.pdf Is the oldest source that I remember (from page 37).
- Natanael_L 11y ago
  Nice; > Moore’s Law of Mad Science: Every eighteen months, the minimum IQ necessary to destroy the world drops by one point.
300bps 11y ago
May be true but not applicable to this story about a rail gun that is more dangerous to the person setting it up and firing it than any potential target of it. The thing couldn't even shoot through two sides of a car door.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  True, but note that this project can be done by any random teenager (closer to 12 than 18 years old) with no access to specialized materials or equipment. Aluminium and copper is around everywhere, and you can pry HV capacitors from off-the-shelf equipment (as a kid I used to get them from spent single-roll analog cameras). Instructions you can find on-line. In contrast, making a working gun at home (and more importantly, ammo!) is much more difficult (though still doable), requiring some specific chemicals and a lathe if you want to finish it in under a decade. Though the latter is changing as well, as the lathes are more precise, cheaper and easier to get than they used to be. And this is still very low in the category of actual damage - close to the top I'd put a resourceful teenager halting a desalination plant or crashing the power grid in some country using only his laptop. Actually, I'm still a bit surprised it hasn't happened yet given the laughable state of infosec in the industries. The point of the quote is - our technological advancements tend to raise the amount of damage a single person can do by using products of the system against the system itself. And this is a big problem, because while you can hope for some level of control over countries or even corporations, with 7 billion people on this planet, some accident is bound to occur eventually, and individuals hell-bent on destroying the world pop up by pure chance.

shade23 11y ago

Or to quote Uncle Ben > "With Great power comes great responsibility" ?

mozumder 11y ago
lol @ the idea of a system that relies on responsibility of individual free will for general public safety. "Sure! Of course you can have firearms! Just be responsible and don't shoot anyone with it!"
- reitanqild 11y ago
  Has worked mostly OKish here for a few generations it seems. Also remember you cannot trade liberty for security.
  - Cthulhu_ 11y ago
    Mostly okish minus tens of thousands of unnecessary and/or accidental deaths and little to no actual benefit (like idk, mass shootings or terrorist attacks prevented). IIRC the right to bear arms was intended so that the people can overthrow the government if need be; small chance of that now, with the military and police forces as advanced and militarised as they are now. /rant
    - hoorayimhelping 11y ago
      >little to no actual benefit (like idk, mass shootings or terrorist attacks prevented). How can you possibly judge that? For all you know, having 300 million guns in America is keeping the earth's magnetosphere intact through some weird quantum effect. It's highly unlikely, but you have no idea what the actual benefit of the 2nd amendment is because there is no possible way to empirically determine what the past would have been like without it.
      - mozumder 11y ago
        You can compare to other countries without that right, or to just within regions in the same country that have no guns vs regions that do. That's how you would determine the benefits of the 2nd amendment with data. This is not a difficult problem.

vlehto 11y ago

"Private companies only change when they have to." I think this is true for all institutions. Change need to be first enabled and then forced. This is because institution is not a solid thing, it's a while loop. A process that needs to feed itself to exist. So it has natural inertia to stay the same. I think democracy is enabled by efficient taxation of businessmen. So you no longer need aristocracy as middlemen to collect taxes. It's enforced by necessity of defense. You can motivate peasants to defend "their country". But you have to let the vote for it to feel theirs. This worked at an age when you needed lot's of fingers to pull lots of triggers. There was proof of concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_First_Coalition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_First_Coalition Looks like weapons technology and general resentment against conscription is enabling whatever comes after democracy.

sawwit 11y ago
I've tried to understand what are you saying, but I didn't get it. Would you care explaining it in simpler terms? Would you argue that our system is much more based on taxation than on decentralization of decision making? Isn't taxation a form of decentralization of decision making as you move the means to make decisions to a central pool? Also, why do you have to let people vote to feel what? What is WotFC a proof of concept for? How will weapon technology and resentment against conscription shape, what are possible scenarios you have in mind?
- vlehto 11y ago
  I think "decentralization of decision making" is a result, not a cause. I love it. In geopolitical way of thinking, a state is always competing with other states. Not because we are bad people, but for the simple fact that states that can hold their own are likely to survive. Certain type of political "evolution". To succeed in that competition you need armed forces. For that, you need manpower, equipment and supplies. All can be bought with money. So successful taxation is essential for any nation. When traders and banks started to amass wealth at end of medieval period, any state that could tap into that flux of money had upper hand. But taxing individuals or sales actions or anything like that is more difficult than taxing nobles based on the land they hold. It helps a lot if those people have some sort of motivation to pay taxes. Concept of nation state provides such patriotic feelings. Now you are paying taxes for your people, not your feudal lord. Accounting and bureaucracy in general are also key elements. French revolution established democracy and right after that the French levee en masse could defend the country against very big and powerful nations. Despite the facts that the french were short of money, had few trained troops and only little time. It showed that you could compensate with motivated and numerous troops. Imagine if you had democracy and money? This happened in the period where rifle had become more important in the battlefield than trained cavalry. Possible scenarios? I think cryprocurrency will put traditional taxation in a binge. Governments need to tax what they can control, income and sales are going to be difficult. Taxation of energy seems easiest. Both persons and companies need energy. And it has some legitimacy with environmental concerns. Another big one is going to be information, it's difficult to lay cables without government knowing about it. National identities don't seem to be important to people anymore. Conscription seems to become unneeded as well as unpopular. Bureaucracy is not going anywhere. Political power seems to be shifting towards military-industrial big players. I don't think we will see feudalism. But maybe a modern version of powerful families of Venetian Republic. This time more with company allegiance than family ties. Was that more understandable? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev%C3%A9e_en_masse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev%C3%A9e_en_masse EDIT: I just would like to add that technological progress seems inevitable. But speed of technological development seems often biased. It's likely that current power structures pour R/D money on technologies that keep them in power. And it's completely possible that some unforeseen technology emerges and changes the picture totally. I like Swedish arms production for this reason. For example they develop new anti-tank missiles to keep infantry relevant in the battlefield. Which in a way promotes democracy.

arca_vorago 11y ago

Ladies and gentle, witness the justification of the dystopian future before you. Here is my problem, or my main problem, with this line of thinking. America is founded upon the idea that individual liberties are basis for all other liberties, and while I can understand the reasoning that the national security apparatus finds the shifting sands of power from nation states to individuals a potential security threat, they have embraced this thought process without bringing it to the people in an upfront manner as should be properly done in a constitutional representative democracy. This model of thinking, at least in the USA, is a complete rewriting of what we consider our government should be, and a rewiting that is happening with no informing the people, and one that will most certainly have more unintended consequences than anyone can yet imagine. I am certain of one thing, and that is the worst things will befall those who so eagerly trade liberty for security, at the hands of those who promise to protect.

sawwit 11y ago
I think it depends on whether the security apparatus is a central or decentralized one. Perhaps one would need to decentralize the decisions of individuals, but I can't think of a particular implementation of that idea.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
I think stuff isn't being rewritten - people are starting to figure it out by themselves, at least those who understand the technologies we're talking about here. Honestly, it doesn't matter what "idea" America was founded upon. The whole talk of "trading liberty for security" has become a religious dogma now, when originally it was meant only as an observation about a narrow group of cases. We will have to have more centralized security and more surveillance if we want to survive our technological growth. I'd much prefer to live in such "dystopia"[0] than in a country whose people got sick and died believing in the idea that individual liberties of a random dude with access to an advanced genome sequencing machine are basis for all other liberties. [0] - personally I'm rooting for something closer to the United Federation of Planets.
- arca_vorago 11y ago