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Some thoughts cause I'm bored: * There are a lot of parallels to Acemoglu and Robinson and their Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, which puts a s

Some thoughts cause I'm bored: * There are a lot of parallels to Acemoglu and Robinson and their Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, which puts a strong emphasis on inequality. This seems like a decent review: http://neweconomist.blogs.com/new_economist/2006/01/book_review_eco.html http://neweconomist.blogs.com/new_economist/2006/01/book_rev... * "Forming and coordinating groups is the hard problem of the human condition; the reason we have religions and corporations and criminal undergrounds and political parties." Weirdly contradictory, if forming groups is hard, why are there so many religions, corporations, etc? Forming groups seems to be exceedingly easy and it is perhaps human to want to be part of something larger even if its nonsensical or bad for us. * "Of course, the power of crypto to organise surveillance-resistant communications lines protects everyone from the coercive power of states: not just nice activist groups that want a fairer society, but also whacked-out white supremacists and Islamophobic conspiracy theorists." Kind of feels weird to take a shot at "Islamophobic conspiracy theorists" when Islamic terrorist groups are the very "insurgent groups" he's talking about and probably as effective as any other group at using this tech. Finally, just kind of disagree with the premise. If tech made the Saudis rich, if it is empowering the Zuckerbergs and the Erdogans of the world, then there's nothing inherently good about it. Technology only gets applied within a larger social context, which is why it's not the tech that matters but the civic institutions and social morality which discourages invasions of personal rights and greed which are what really matter. Robert Putnam has some really interesting stuff on this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital

clock_tower 9y ago
I also like the part where: 1. Fundamentalist Islam is a "delusional superstition". 2. "Modern insurgent groups" -- the most famous of which all follow the said "delusional superstition" -- are the good guys. 3. Even though fundamentalist Islam is a "delusional superstition," "Islamophobic conspiracy theorists" are still "whacked out". And Doctorow probably sees himself as religiously tolerant, despite all this. This is why you want to check on your beliefs from time to time, to make sure they're not contradictory. (And I forgot to mention the part where Saudi Arabia's wealth comes from technology; Doctorow's using "technology" to mean Internet technology, high-bandwidth transmission, and the like, not oil wells and internal-combustion engines.)
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  Personally, I see all religions as indulging in delusional superstitions. But I still see myself as religiously tolerant, because I don't do anything to interfere with any of it. People are free to believe whatever foolish thing they like. The Christians can still have their symbolic cannibalism ritual, and the Jews can pretend that they aren't playing up a minor holiday just so their kids don't feel bad around the solstice, and the Scientologists can train themselves to cheat lie detectors to zap the invisible parasitic spirits that make them crazy, and the Mormons can believe that Utah liquor laws are reasonable. I can believe crazy ideas, too. Religions don't automatically deserve respect just because they're old. They deserve respect because their zealots will kill you (or worse) for showing them disrespect. Anyway, the technology umbrella that protects states from stupid rebels simultaneously lulls them into a false sense of security and ensures that only smart rebels can become successful enough to supplant the old state with a new one of their own devising. One would hope that smarter rebels would be able to come up with better forms of governance. The danger is when there are so few smart people in existence that they cannot overcome the inertia from the horde of technologically-supported dummies. Then you end up with a machine-enforced idiocracy.
  - eli_gottlieb 9y ago
    >the Jews can pretend that they aren't playing up a minor holiday just so their kids don't feel bad around the solstice Who's pretending? We know that's what we're doing. The real thing going on is that in the Diaspora we play up Hanukah because we're playing down the High Holy Days, Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot -- which are actually the religiously important holidays. If you visit Israel, society basically shuts down for varying lengths of time around all of those, depending on how long the religiously prescribed holiday actually is, what restrictions it entails on observant lifestyles, and how quickly it's followed by another holiday. If we tried this in the Diaspora, we'd all be fired for taking too much time off.
    - logfromblammo 9y ago
      Okay, I was going for something immediately recognizable to non-Jews. The Jews can still pretend that running a wire loop around an area of town changes the rules inside it?

clock_tower 9y ago

I also like the part where: 1. Fundamentalist Islam is a "delusional superstition". 2. "Modern insurgent groups" -- the most famous of which all follow the said "delusional superstition" -- are the good guys. 3. Even though fundamentalist Islam is a "delusional superstition," "Islamophobic conspiracy theorists" are still "whacked out". And Doctorow probably sees himself as religiously tolerant, despite all this. This is why you want to check on your beliefs from time to time, to make sure they're not contradictory. (And I forgot to mention the part where Saudi Arabia's wealth comes from technology; Doctorow's using "technology" to mean Internet technology, high-bandwidth transmission, and the like, not oil wells and internal-combustion engines.)

logfromblammo 9y ago
Personally, I see all religions as indulging in delusional superstitions. But I still see myself as religiously tolerant, because I don't do anything to interfere with any of it. People are free to believe whatever foolish thing they like. The Christians can still have their symbolic cannibalism ritual, and the Jews can pretend that they aren't playing up a minor holiday just so their kids don't feel bad around the solstice, and the Scientologists can train themselves to cheat lie detectors to zap the invisible parasitic spirits that make them crazy, and the Mormons can believe that Utah liquor laws are reasonable. I can believe crazy ideas, too. Religions don't automatically deserve respect just because they're old. They deserve respect because their zealots will kill you (or worse) for showing them disrespect. Anyway, the technology umbrella that protects states from stupid rebels simultaneously lulls them into a false sense of security and ensures that only smart rebels can become successful enough to supplant the old state with a new one of their own devising. One would hope that smarter rebels would be able to come up with better forms of governance. The danger is when there are so few smart people in existence that they cannot overcome the inertia from the horde of technologically-supported dummies. Then you end up with a machine-enforced idiocracy.
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  >the Jews can pretend that they aren't playing up a minor holiday just so their kids don't feel bad around the solstice Who's pretending? We know that's what we're doing. The real thing going on is that in the Diaspora we play up Hanukah because we're playing down the High Holy Days, Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot -- which are actually the religiously important holidays. If you visit Israel, society basically shuts down for varying lengths of time around all of those, depending on how long the religiously prescribed holiday actually is, what restrictions it entails on observant lifestyles, and how quickly it's followed by another holiday. If we tried this in the Diaspora, we'd all be fired for taking too much time off.
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    Okay, I was going for something immediately recognizable to non-Jews. The Jews can still pretend that running a wire loop around an area of town changes the rules inside it?