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Aaron Swartz seemed to not know how the world actually worked. It isn't a bunch of rational actors that love tech and information. Quite the opposite. One can't

Aaron Swartz seemed to not know how the world actually worked. It isn't a bunch of rational actors that love tech and information. Quite the opposite. One can't save the world without first diving deep into how it works. One then realizes there's stuff they can and can't change on top of lots of biases and trends in responses. Then, one builds on those elements of human nature to focus on the things they can change. He didn't do that. Instead, he focused on what can't be changed by committing an illegal act with hope it would be meaningful to society or courts. The result was that he killed himself after that failed catastrophically. We might learn a great deal from Aaron Swarts but not how to change the world. He's the least qualified to tell us about that because it appears he never understood it to begin with. Instead, we can just learn from and remember the good things he did that his mind was uniquely capable of doing. He has quite a resume of that. This approach is honest and gives him due credit.

RodericDay 10y ago
Funny, under the excuse that they're "[d]iving deep into how it works", tons of people do absolutely nothing other than become wealthy and give their kids as many breaks as possible, while giving excuses to not acting in any way. I hear it often called "being a realist". I consider it a pretty evil self-reassuring meme of our times. We're ready to believe we can go to Mars and live forever, but anyone fighting "Human Nature" (read: our current economical and political arrangement) is a fool. "Don't be naive, we've figured human nature out. It wants malls and 60 hour work-weeks!"
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Re become wealthy. I was thinking of Andrew Carnegie when trying for an example of young man who understood the world, got people, and changed it. For himself as you said. That's incidental, though, as s the methods are neutral to the end goal. Re being realist. It means you need to understand the context you operate in before you can change it. All the successful people did. Most failures that werent just bad luck didnt. The very example you gave about work weeks was improved by realists in various businesses who wanted it and could execute it within a sustainable model.
  - RodericDay 10y ago
    We have very different views of progress I guess. When I think of people who changed the world, my mind doesn't automatically jump to Elon Musk or Andrew Carnegie. I think of hard-won victories like Canada instituting Universal Health Care (starting in the less-known province of Saskatchewan), or people marching for Civil Rights and Labor Rights, all the while experts told them those things were unattainable and unrealistic. I think many people in those movements understood the system, just not in the way that the system approved of being understood. Martin Luther King Jr. has a great line about this: > First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. I think the equivalent to that "white moderate" today is the person who thinks that anyone rocking the boat and making demands today, like Swartz, is "naive". They wisely and patiently wait for a benevolent billionaire to save the day instead. The fact that they, too, benefit from the status quo and find the current situation very tolerable is a mere coincidence. I hope, since you freely imply that the absent Swartz was naive, that you have no problem with me calling you naive as well. -- edit: I too enjoy discussing things, but as soon as the conversation branches out it gets a bit messy. I just want to say that it's a deliberate mistake to judge past movements from their white-washed idealized educational versions. It disconnects them from the messy reality of activism, and from their current-day representatives. Replies below are saying basically "The Civil Rights leaders acted decisively and with wisdom, compared with this haphazard unorganized random act today". At the time, this is how this was portrayed by detractors: https://storage.synaptic.att.com/rest/objects/4a08bf2ea31f2e1704f5012314b18004f5ff1c88d017?uid=7be5f8cb9eb14188b0e40ae93aca2099%2FkingcenterATpalantirDOTnet&expires=1590984000&signature=epQQlbck7oWu9lum4AiRa9Yepk8%3D https://storage.synaptic.att.com/rest/objects/4a08bf2ea31f2e... You are welcome to look through MLK Jr.'s correspondence too: http://www.thekingcenter.org/genre/correspondence http://www.thekingcenter.org/genre/correspondence People calling his movement all over the place, erratic, etc. It's fascinating. Many, many people telling him and his ilk they were unrealistic and jumping the gun with ineffective direct action. A complete erasure of the dynamics MLK had with Malcolm X (good cop, bad cop). The FBI also conspired to try to get him to commit suicide, by blackmailing him (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_lette...). If the future Swartz was aiming for ever becomes reality, he will be remembered as a pioneer.

RodericDay 10y ago

Funny, under the excuse that they're "[d]iving deep into how it works", tons of people do absolutely nothing other than become wealthy and give their kids as many breaks as possible, while giving excuses to not acting in any way. I hear it often called "being a realist". I consider it a pretty evil self-reassuring meme of our times. We're ready to believe we can go to Mars and live forever, but anyone fighting "Human Nature" (read: our current economical and political arrangement) is a fool. "Don't be naive, we've figured human nature out. It wants malls and 60 hour work-weeks!"

nickpsecurity 10y ago
Re become wealthy. I was thinking of Andrew Carnegie when trying for an example of young man who understood the world, got people, and changed it. For himself as you said. That's incidental, though, as s the methods are neutral to the end goal. Re being realist. It means you need to understand the context you operate in before you can change it. All the successful people did. Most failures that werent just bad luck didnt. The very example you gave about work weeks was improved by realists in various businesses who wanted it and could execute it within a sustainable model.
- RodericDay 10y ago
  We have very different views of progress I guess. When I think of people who changed the world, my mind doesn't automatically jump to Elon Musk or Andrew Carnegie. I think of hard-won victories like Canada instituting Universal Health Care (starting in the less-known province of Saskatchewan), or people marching for Civil Rights and Labor Rights, all the while experts told them those things were unattainable and unrealistic. I think many people in those movements understood the system, just not in the way that the system approved of being understood. Martin Luther King Jr. has a great line about this: > First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. I think the equivalent to that "white moderate" today is the person who thinks that anyone rocking the boat and making demands today, like Swartz, is "naive". They wisely and patiently wait for a benevolent billionaire to save the day instead. The fact that they, too, benefit from the status quo and find the current situation very tolerable is a mere coincidence. I hope, since you freely imply that the absent Swartz was naive, that you have no problem with me calling you naive as well. -- edit: I too enjoy discussing things, but as soon as the conversation branches out it gets a bit messy. I just want to say that it's a deliberate mistake to judge past movements from their white-washed idealized educational versions. It disconnects them from the messy reality of activism, and from their current-day representatives. Replies below are saying basically "The Civil Rights leaders acted decisively and with wisdom, compared with this haphazard unorganized random act today". At the time, this is how this was portrayed by detractors: https://storage.synaptic.att.com/rest/objects/4a08bf2ea31f2e1704f5012314b18004f5ff1c88d017?uid=7be5f8cb9eb14188b0e40ae93aca2099%2FkingcenterATpalantirDOTnet&expires=1590984000&signature=epQQlbck7oWu9lum4AiRa9Yepk8%3D https://storage.synaptic.att.com/rest/objects/4a08bf2ea31f2e... You are welcome to look through MLK Jr.'s correspondence too: http://www.thekingcenter.org/genre/correspondence http://www.thekingcenter.org/genre/correspondence People calling his movement all over the place, erratic, etc. It's fascinating. Many, many people telling him and his ilk they were unrealistic and jumping the gun with ineffective direct action. A complete erasure of the dynamics MLK had with Malcolm X (good cop, bad cop). The FBI also conspired to try to get him to commit suicide, by blackmailing him (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_lette...). If the future Swartz was aiming for ever becomes reality, he will be remembered as a pioneer.