4 ms·

Seems like a recurring drawback to anarchism is the inability to "provide for the common defense." Also, a nameclash of "decentralized, federated, non-hierarch

Seems like a recurring drawback to anarchism is the inability to "provide for the common defense." Also, a nameclash of "decentralized, federated, non-hierarchical" political systems with decentralized/federated digital systems. I don't see any good reasons why an anarchist ought to choose a decentralized/federated design for an arbitrary piece of software. But I get the sense that anarchists think choosing such a design is an ethical imperative, very often to the chagrin of their potential userbase.

garmaine 9y ago
Anarchists don’t trust (or don’t want to trust) the centralized party running the alternative. If you think that’s laughable, consider your relationship with Facebook or Google.
- jancsika 9y ago
  Yeah, but what would an anarchist think of the design of Signal? What would an anarchist think of Len Sassaman's idea for doing a scalable remailer that had a centralized component (if I remember correctly)? What would an anarchist say about the design of the directory servers in Tor? What would an anarchist say about using DNS to host a git repo on a website? If the answer is that an anarchist would reflexively focus mindshare on the centralization because it is a priori unethical, then anarchism as an institution is a hindrance to software development.
  - Avshalom 9y ago
    Pretty sure archists have argued about all your examples too. A lot of things hinder software development: laws and regulations; skepticism of the community; lack of resources; technical constraints of existing hardware; trade secrets and patents to maintain an edge against competitors; ethics and morals incidental to the organization of society... hell we're already in a place where people reflexively look at centralized services (and even decentralized services) and see future hierarchy. not all hindrances are equal but a) do you imagine anarchism to be a uniquely strong hindrance b) do you consider that hindering of software development to be a sufficient issue to object to anarchy.
    - Avshalom 9y ago
      Now that said I am not trying to convince you to be an anarchist, I'm just asking you to reflect on whether your questions (and their possible answers) are actually meaningful to you or if you actually want to ask some things more fundamental but can't quite figure out what.
      - garmaine 9y ago
        Yes they are meaningful questions to ask, and they are not new questions. There’s already enough hot air on the internet about them.
        Avshalom 9y ago
        There's a difference between 'meaningful' and 'meaningful to my actual thoughts/concerns', is what that follow on was trying to express. As you say plenty of ink has been spilled on them. Is it then questions from a position of never having had/seen/read this conversation or from what they've seen not being satisfactory or from not actually being what they want but they're running off the script they have seen.
        garmaine 9y ago
        What I mean is I’d rather go about creating such systems than spend minutes on a pointless back and forth.
    - jancsika 9y ago
      > a) do you imagine anarchism to be a uniquely strong hindrance The hindrance is a developer reflexively prioritizing criticism of some centralized part of a design without fully understanding the design, because "centralized" necessarily equates to "bad" or "wrong." Some of the back-and-forth with Moxie over federating Signal looked suspiciously like a case of that. I see a lot of similar discussions wrt FLOSS privacy/security software. To the extent that anarchy is responsible for the ideological bent that "centralized" is "bad,", I'd say yes, it's a problem that wastes a substantial amount of time and effort. > b) do you consider that hindering of software development to be a sufficient issue to object to anarchy. Maybe you can help me come to a conclusion. Where does the ideological bent come from that "centralization" equates to "bad" in FLOSS privacy software? For all I know, it could be that most anarchists are opportunistic and savvy in how they use computers, and it's only the anarchist software developers who have the ideological bent I described.
  - lsc 9y ago
    >Yeah, but what would an anarchist think of the design of Signal? so, uh https://www.wired.com/2016/07/meet-moxie-marlinspike-anarchist-bringing-encryption-us/ https://www.wired.com/2016/07/meet-moxie-marlinspike-anarchi...

garmaine 9y ago

Anarchists don’t trust (or don’t want to trust) the centralized party running the alternative. If you think that’s laughable, consider your relationship with Facebook or Google.

jancsika 9y ago
Yeah, but what would an anarchist think of the design of Signal? What would an anarchist think of Len Sassaman's idea for doing a scalable remailer that had a centralized component (if I remember correctly)? What would an anarchist say about the design of the directory servers in Tor? What would an anarchist say about using DNS to host a git repo on a website? If the answer is that an anarchist would reflexively focus mindshare on the centralization because it is a priori unethical, then anarchism as an institution is a hindrance to software development.
- Avshalom 9y ago
  Pretty sure archists have argued about all your examples too. A lot of things hinder software development: laws and regulations; skepticism of the community; lack of resources; technical constraints of existing hardware; trade secrets and patents to maintain an edge against competitors; ethics and morals incidental to the organization of society... hell we're already in a place where people reflexively look at centralized services (and even decentralized services) and see future hierarchy. not all hindrances are equal but a) do you imagine anarchism to be a uniquely strong hindrance b) do you consider that hindering of software development to be a sufficient issue to object to anarchy.
  - Avshalom 9y ago
    Now that said I am not trying to convince you to be an anarchist, I'm just asking you to reflect on whether your questions (and their possible answers) are actually meaningful to you or if you actually want to ask some things more fundamental but can't quite figure out what.
    - garmaine 9y ago
      Yes they are meaningful questions to ask, and they are not new questions. There’s already enough hot air on the internet about them.
      - Avshalom 9y ago
        There's a difference between 'meaningful' and 'meaningful to my actual thoughts/concerns', is what that follow on was trying to express. As you say plenty of ink has been spilled on them. Is it then questions from a position of never having had/seen/read this conversation or from what they've seen not being satisfactory or from not actually being what they want but they're running off the script they have seen.
        garmaine 9y ago
        What I mean is I’d rather go about creating such systems than spend minutes on a pointless back and forth.
  - jancsika 9y ago
    > a) do you imagine anarchism to be a uniquely strong hindrance The hindrance is a developer reflexively prioritizing criticism of some centralized part of a design without fully understanding the design, because "centralized" necessarily equates to "bad" or "wrong." Some of the back-and-forth with Moxie over federating Signal looked suspiciously like a case of that. I see a lot of similar discussions wrt FLOSS privacy/security software. To the extent that anarchy is responsible for the ideological bent that "centralized" is "bad,", I'd say yes, it's a problem that wastes a substantial amount of time and effort. > b) do you consider that hindering of software development to be a sufficient issue to object to anarchy. Maybe you can help me come to a conclusion. Where does the ideological bent come from that "centralization" equates to "bad" in FLOSS privacy software? For all I know, it could be that most anarchists are opportunistic and savvy in how they use computers, and it's only the anarchist software developers who have the ideological bent I described.
- lsc 9y ago
  >Yeah, but what would an anarchist think of the design of Signal? so, uh https://www.wired.com/2016/07/meet-moxie-marlinspike-anarchist-bringing-encryption-us/ https://www.wired.com/2016/07/meet-moxie-marlinspike-anarchi...