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> Unfortunately, we live in an era where everything that can connect to the Internet will abuse its intended use at some point. This is not an era-problem, thi

> Unfortunately, we live in an era where everything that can connect to the Internet will abuse its intended use at some point. This is not an era-problem, this is a culture-problem. Likely an economic-incentives-problem. The culture in both business and consumers. There always seem to be The Assholes who corrupt it all for everyone. It's easy to point at businesses, but few talk about incidents of malfeasance from the other parties to the transactions. The guy who buys a circular saw from a big box store, uses it for a weekend project, then returns it. The woman who buys a dress, hides the price tag, wears it to a wedding, then returns it. Building high-trust, high-ethics organizations at scale and identifying individuals for those organizations is hard, and I wish there was more written about it. It's not a new problem, so I'd like to see the evolution of thought about it as well.

dredmorbius 6y ago
Cultures define eras.
- yourapostasy 6y ago
  Love your writing and musings. Long-time listener, first-time caller. Were this only an era problem. Then it would just be a passing fad, even if "passing" was longer than a human generation. I could handle that. However, there are in this (and other eras) non-dominant cultures of high-trust where the incidence of rough equivalent types of malfeasance or even the expectations of them occurring are noticeably lower. Many rural cultures, for example. So I was trying to concisely express the era doesn't define everyone in every culture. Now if I could understand why such non-dominant cultures do not scale and dominate, I think it could be the beginning of a beautiful civilization, to cop a line from Rick.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Fair points. My friend Woozle noted a few years ago an epistemic paradox: > Our present epistemic systems are undergoing kind of the same shock that the online community underwent when transitioning from BBSs and Usenet to the commercial web to social media. > We were used to a very high content-to-BS ratio because it took a certain amount of intelligence and intense domain-interest for people to be there in the first place -- and we've now transitioned to a situation where many people are there more or less accidentally and (the worst part), because of a high percentage of the population being present, there is now substantial power to be had by influencing the discussions that take place. https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5wg0hp/when_epistemic_systems_gain_social_and_political/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5wg0hp/when_ep... Shoshana Zuboff put this more succinctly, in the 1980s, in her Thid Law: > Every digital application that can be used for surveillance and control will be used for surveillance and control. And you can find far earlier examples, say, Sun Tzu's "On the Use of Spies" (book 13), and of course "All warfare is based on deception." So yes, the practive is not merely modern, and not a passing fad. "Build it and they will come" turns out to be a curse. Non-dominant cultures may advance by out-surviving adversaries. The Angles were subordinate to the Romans, the Song Dynasty and Poland to the Mongolian Empire, Egypt and Persia to Macedonia. Direct combat is expensive and risky. But an utter failure at self-preservation (or in securing suitable patronage) tends to end badly. To invoke another mid-century classic, Huxley's Island. "Here and now, boys!"

dredmorbius 6y ago

Cultures define eras.

yourapostasy 6y ago
Love your writing and musings. Long-time listener, first-time caller. Were this only an era problem. Then it would just be a passing fad, even if "passing" was longer than a human generation. I could handle that. However, there are in this (and other eras) non-dominant cultures of high-trust where the incidence of rough equivalent types of malfeasance or even the expectations of them occurring are noticeably lower. Many rural cultures, for example. So I was trying to concisely express the era doesn't define everyone in every culture. Now if I could understand why such non-dominant cultures do not scale and dominate, I think it could be the beginning of a beautiful civilization, to cop a line from Rick.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Fair points. My friend Woozle noted a few years ago an epistemic paradox: > Our present epistemic systems are undergoing kind of the same shock that the online community underwent when transitioning from BBSs and Usenet to the commercial web to social media. > We were used to a very high content-to-BS ratio because it took a certain amount of intelligence and intense domain-interest for people to be there in the first place -- and we've now transitioned to a situation where many people are there more or less accidentally and (the worst part), because of a high percentage of the population being present, there is now substantial power to be had by influencing the discussions that take place. https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5wg0hp/when_epistemic_systems_gain_social_and_political/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5wg0hp/when_ep... Shoshana Zuboff put this more succinctly, in the 1980s, in her Thid Law: > Every digital application that can be used for surveillance and control will be used for surveillance and control. And you can find far earlier examples, say, Sun Tzu's "On the Use of Spies" (book 13), and of course "All warfare is based on deception." So yes, the practive is not merely modern, and not a passing fad. "Build it and they will come" turns out to be a curse. Non-dominant cultures may advance by out-surviving adversaries. The Angles were subordinate to the Romans, the Song Dynasty and Poland to the Mongolian Empire, Egypt and Persia to Macedonia. Direct combat is expensive and risky. But an utter failure at self-preservation (or in securing suitable patronage) tends to end badly. To invoke another mid-century classic, Huxley's Island. "Here and now, boys!"