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But we frequently are better off having others think for us. There are a broad spectrum of examples, from research that we don't have the time or resources to a

But we frequently are better off having others think for us. There are a broad spectrum of examples, from research that we don't have the time or resources to accomplish, to, say, getting advice from a friend, while in a crisis, that we fail to follow even though we would give that same advice.

0815test 7y ago
The end stage of "having others think for us" is indentured servitude. Should we pass a Constitutional amendment to legalize that, too? Should we go back to the deeply repugnant idea that there are "natural" masters, and "natural" serfs? This makes no sense whatsoever. Freedom is an end, not just a means to something else. We are not made better off by having our freedoms restrained in arbitrary ways.
- CyanBird 7y ago
  I think that what you are missing is that this is not an option, this is a reality, Cambridge analytica already happened and since then they have moved into manufacturing consent in many other countries elections For a long time, marketing and political propaganda have gone hand in hand Manufacture of consent is something that has been happening for a long time now https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tTBWfkE7BXU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tTBWfkE7BXU The difference now is that it can be done far cheaper, and on a bigger scale and more effectively than ever before, I would indeed recommend you to check out the planet money podcast at the least Lastly, just because you see the value of mental agency and thought liberty, it doesn't mean that other people will value it the same way you do, or as much as you do. Psychographics is also a thing, and used to great effect when it come to manipulating people this way
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't take HN threads into generic ideological flamewar. Those are always the same: boring and leading to worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
danShumway 7y ago
Voluntary delegation is different than involuntary delegation. This is a hard thing for people to get over, and I don't really understand why. As an analogy, think about Right to Repair: I can simultaneously say that I want consumers to have the ability to control their devices, install custom firmware, and crack them open to repair them if they break, without making an assertion that every single consumer is qualified to do so. With Right to Repair, I don't lose the ability to let someone qualified make decisions about my device, or to set device policies. It doesn't require a massive amount of faith in ordinary people, just an acknowledgement that a single company making those decisions for everyone is overall bad for the market. And the fact that some individuals will make bad decisions and hand their iPad to Uncle Joe to fix with his power tools is an acceptable tradeoff, given that it means we're not forced to solve the much harder problem of deciding for everyone which modifications and usage is "correct" for every device. The reason people go in so hard on individual freedom isn't because individuals are amazing -- individuals are flawed as heck. It's that it is extremely difficult to figure out when someone is fit to take over someone else's decision power, and that getting it wrong comes with massive risks. Given that we don't have an easy formula to tell when delegation is the right choice, or even to define what happiness is, or even to define whether or not happiness should be a universal goal, we (when possible) leave it up to individuals to make their own decisions or voluntarily delegate their decisions to another person. Individual freedoms allow us to practice Defense in Depth on a societal level, at the cost of making us more vulnerable to some manipulations and allowing individuals to make some bad decisions about who they delegate their thinking to. It's not perfect, but it is terribly practical, and nobody that I know of has come up with a better scheme yet.
- crdoconnor 7y ago
  >It's that it is extremely difficult to figure out when someone is fit to take over someone else's decision power "It's difficult" doesn't mean it's a task that should be completely abandoned because of some ideological notion.
  - danShumway 7y ago
    But it's not just a hard problem we can solve once, it's a wildly difficult problem that we haven't been able to solve for thousands of years. I brought up the Defense in Depth angle because I think it's kind of the same category of problem. Why do we need multiple layers of security on our devices -- why shouldn't Apple just validate the code on everything that gets submitted to the store? Why shouldn't developers just write code that's bug free? Because they just can't. It's not that everyone has stopped trying to answer questions like "what is the purpose of society?". Nobody's talking about abandoning anything. If you think the problem is solveable, you're welcome to jump into philosophical circles right now and solve it. And once you've solved it, I promise I will happily move over to a totalitarian system where a perfectly informed formula decides what my life should be. In the meantime, we need a pragmatic solution, and individual freedom is the best one I've seen proposed.

0815test 7y ago

The end stage of "having others think for us" is indentured servitude. Should we pass a Constitutional amendment to legalize that, too? Should we go back to the deeply repugnant idea that there are "natural" masters, and "natural" serfs? This makes no sense whatsoever. Freedom is an end, not just a means to something else. We are not made better off by having our freedoms restrained in arbitrary ways.

CyanBird 7y ago
I think that what you are missing is that this is not an option, this is a reality, Cambridge analytica already happened and since then they have moved into manufacturing consent in many other countries elections For a long time, marketing and political propaganda have gone hand in hand Manufacture of consent is something that has been happening for a long time now https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tTBWfkE7BXU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tTBWfkE7BXU The difference now is that it can be done far cheaper, and on a bigger scale and more effectively than ever before, I would indeed recommend you to check out the planet money podcast at the least Lastly, just because you see the value of mental agency and thought liberty, it doesn't mean that other people will value it the same way you do, or as much as you do. Psychographics is also a thing, and used to great effect when it come to manipulating people this way
dang 7y ago
Please don't take HN threads into generic ideological flamewar. Those are always the same: boring and leading to worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

danShumway 7y ago

Voluntary delegation is different than involuntary delegation. This is a hard thing for people to get over, and I don't really understand why. As an analogy, think about Right to Repair: I can simultaneously say that I want consumers to have the ability to control their devices, install custom firmware, and crack them open to repair them if they break, without making an assertion that every single consumer is qualified to do so. With Right to Repair, I don't lose the ability to let someone qualified make decisions about my device, or to set device policies. It doesn't require a massive amount of faith in ordinary people, just an acknowledgement that a single company making those decisions for everyone is overall bad for the market. And the fact that some individuals will make bad decisions and hand their iPad to Uncle Joe to fix with his power tools is an acceptable tradeoff, given that it means we're not forced to solve the much harder problem of deciding for everyone which modifications and usage is "correct" for every device. The reason people go in so hard on individual freedom isn't because individuals are amazing -- individuals are flawed as heck. It's that it is extremely difficult to figure out when someone is fit to take over someone else's decision power, and that getting it wrong comes with massive risks. Given that we don't have an easy formula to tell when delegation is the right choice, or even to define what happiness is, or even to define whether or not happiness should be a universal goal, we (when possible) leave it up to individuals to make their own decisions or voluntarily delegate their decisions to another person. Individual freedoms allow us to practice Defense in Depth on a societal level, at the cost of making us more vulnerable to some manipulations and allowing individuals to make some bad decisions about who they delegate their thinking to. It's not perfect, but it is terribly practical, and nobody that I know of has come up with a better scheme yet.

crdoconnor 7y ago
>It's that it is extremely difficult to figure out when someone is fit to take over someone else's decision power "It's difficult" doesn't mean it's a task that should be completely abandoned because of some ideological notion.
- danShumway 7y ago
  But it's not just a hard problem we can solve once, it's a wildly difficult problem that we haven't been able to solve for thousands of years. I brought up the Defense in Depth angle because I think it's kind of the same category of problem. Why do we need multiple layers of security on our devices -- why shouldn't Apple just validate the code on everything that gets submitted to the store? Why shouldn't developers just write code that's bug free? Because they just can't. It's not that everyone has stopped trying to answer questions like "what is the purpose of society?". Nobody's talking about abandoning anything. If you think the problem is solveable, you're welcome to jump into philosophical circles right now and solve it. And once you've solved it, I promise I will happily move over to a totalitarian system where a perfectly informed formula decides what my life should be. In the meantime, we need a pragmatic solution, and individual freedom is the best one I've seen proposed.