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> terribly this kind of digital-dystopia plays out Yeah, but what if it works? What if technology and the laws of our physical universe really do allow efficie
by landryraccoon 8y ago
> terribly this kind of digital-dystopia plays out
Yeah, but what if it works? What if technology and the laws of our physical universe really do allow efficient, permanent and total totalitarianism?
- maxxxxx 8y agoThat's exactly my worry.
- jMyles 8y agoThat question provokes a need for faith. Faith that whatever is emerging in this age represents a flavor of evolution with an appetite for the good, the beautiful, and the true.
- landryraccoon 8y agoI'd prefer that engineers and scientists made opinionated decisions to work on technology that sustains a free, egalitarian society than just blindly being a cog in whatever machine they work in, and allowing whatever happens to just happen.
- jMyles 8y agoYeah, I mean me too. And I do. Every day. But I also recognize that the universe is bigger than me, and I'm not so self-assured as to believe that its impact on me isn't as big or bigger than my impact on it. I think that you can decline to work on bombs and torture and machine learning unto psychological manipulation, etc. but also at the same time have faith that the emergence of the internet is something natural whose essence is good and beautiful and true.
- genidoi 8y agoThis comment is enraging. "Have faith that totalitarianism will work this time" - as if the 20th century didn't happen.
- jMyles 8y agoDid I say that? Or something that made you thought I meant that? To be clear: I view government as a temporary necessary evil whose time is coming to a close in the coming decades or centuries. I am not asking anybody to accept totalitarianism, nor to accept that repeating a failed experiment will suddenly, and for unspecified reasons, yield different results. Resistance in the face of totalitarianism is an ongoing imperative; please don't think that I am unsympathetic. Rather, I am just reporting that the way that I come to peace with the aspects of emergence of technology that are out of my control is to have faith that something incredible, natural, and evolutionary is occurring.
- Simon_says 8y agoThis is already the reality our food animals live in, so I think it's already pretty clear such a thing is possible.