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>Voluntary delegation is different than involuntary delegation I mean, this is 100% correct, yet that's not quite the problem, and stating it that way leads to

>Voluntary delegation is different than involuntary delegation I mean, this is 100% correct, yet that's not quite the problem, and stating it that way leads to overall confusion, the issue is that policy makers, companies and other profit motivated groups found ways to get inside the root unconscious mental proceses which lead to concious decision making, this just means that said groups can hijack the agency of thousands of people at the same time with the same set of tools. That is what's happening right now, it had been the case that groups were using mass media to manufacture consent, but this new machinery is far more efficient and less expensive than previous systems The defense in depth analogy is indeed very good, yet the agency of a critical amount of people has been compromised by this new machinery, and this machinery preys on people's unconscious instincts, fears and epigenetic predispositions. Those are things which simply can't really be postdoc taught to hundreds of millions of people at a whim

danShumway 7y ago
> this just means that said groups can hijack the agency of thousands of people at the same time with the same set of tools. Yeah, very good point. What we're trying to get at is this idea that some of the voluntary decisions people make aren't really voluntary. What's (sometimes) proposed though is that this somehow invalidates the idea that people should be able to make their own decisions at all -- that they're incapable of it. To go back to the idea of people controlling their devices, a hacker might trick me into giving device permissions for something I don't want -- because I misunderstand the permissions, or because they have some kind of leverage over me, or because they convince me that the permissions are no big deal. I'm all for efforts to address 'Limbic Capitalism' that involve educating consumers and trying to plug those kinds of holes and giving people ways to interact with brands where brands can't sidestep informed decision-making processes. I disagree with someone who looks at those holes and says, "well clearly freedom isn't working", for the same reasons I disagree with someone who looks at Android's horrible permissions system and says, "well, clearly users shouldn't be able to decide whether or not an app gets location privileges, clearly only the smart people at Google should." On the software side of things, we've learned that things like upfront permission prompts on app installation circumvent user agency, and we've started to move more towards forcing apps to only ask for permissions at the moment they need them. We've also given users tools like the ability to grant a permission temporarily rather than permanently. Those kinds of solutions help defend against exploitative behavior without robbing users of agency.
- CyanBird 7y ago
  One of the guys below posted a beautiful analogy comparing us people to cracked poorlywwritten legacy software/hardware https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20069693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20069693 I think that the only hope remains in the newer generations, and try to taught them as good as possible of the dangers this newly opened Pandora box released... I studied international relations and this kind of thing keeps me up at night, I know that the Cia and other intelligence agencies are and have been exploiting this for a long, long, long time, and that there is no true defense against this problem other than "making it illegal" because sure as heck that didn't stop them from doing anything ever.. Anyhow, thank you for being around and help bounce ideas around!

danShumway 7y ago

> this just means that said groups can hijack the agency of thousands of people at the same time with the same set of tools. Yeah, very good point. What we're trying to get at is this idea that some of the voluntary decisions people make aren't really voluntary. What's (sometimes) proposed though is that this somehow invalidates the idea that people should be able to make their own decisions at all -- that they're incapable of it. To go back to the idea of people controlling their devices, a hacker might trick me into giving device permissions for something I don't want -- because I misunderstand the permissions, or because they have some kind of leverage over me, or because they convince me that the permissions are no big deal. I'm all for efforts to address 'Limbic Capitalism' that involve educating consumers and trying to plug those kinds of holes and giving people ways to interact with brands where brands can't sidestep informed decision-making processes. I disagree with someone who looks at those holes and says, "well clearly freedom isn't working", for the same reasons I disagree with someone who looks at Android's horrible permissions system and says, "well, clearly users shouldn't be able to decide whether or not an app gets location privileges, clearly only the smart people at Google should." On the software side of things, we've learned that things like upfront permission prompts on app installation circumvent user agency, and we've started to move more towards forcing apps to only ask for permissions at the moment they need them. We've also given users tools like the ability to grant a permission temporarily rather than permanently. Those kinds of solutions help defend against exploitative behavior without robbing users of agency.

CyanBird 7y ago
One of the guys below posted a beautiful analogy comparing us people to cracked poorlywwritten legacy software/hardware https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20069693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20069693 I think that the only hope remains in the newer generations, and try to taught them as good as possible of the dangers this newly opened Pandora box released... I studied international relations and this kind of thing keeps me up at night, I know that the Cia and other intelligence agencies are and have been exploiting this for a long, long, long time, and that there is no true defense against this problem other than "making it illegal" because sure as heck that didn't stop them from doing anything ever.. Anyhow, thank you for being around and help bounce ideas around!