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Is it rediscovering them or pointing out the weaknesses of such laws? And if I might say so, for a tech forum, there seems to be a remarkable number of luddite

Is it rediscovering them or pointing out the weaknesses of such laws? And if I might say so, for a tech forum, there seems to be a remarkable number of luddites who sit mighty high on their horses as they sing the praises of Chesterton's fence while simultaneously baying over the stagnation of housing, transportation, and their flavor-of-the-week, dead-on-arrival revolution, etc. Should we never have used GPS because a good map won't lead you into a desert? Should we stop using phones because a one-to-one conversation may end up as dead an art as Latin is a language? Not everything that was done before was done for the right reason. Not now or even then. They were done mainly because there was no other given choice or someone on a high chair said so and signed his name on a piece of paper declaring it as law. I'd say it's beneficial that those regulations have been circumvented even if I don't necessarily cheer on the particular actors who do the circumventing or what they do afterwards. Innovation is about finding novel ways to get from A to B as speedily, efficiently, and effectively as possible. And if regulations create a roadblock to it, all the more reason to invent around them. After all, there wouldn't a modern desktop if it wasn't for Compaq engineers reverse-engineering and reimplementing IBM's BIOS.

dumbfoundded 5y ago
You make a great point and I think it's hard to generalize. Nukes have made large scale devastating wars irrelevant but could potentially end civilization or be used to terrorists to evaporate a city. The single largest improvement in quality of life for humanity came from burning fossil fuels but now we face imminent and dire consequences from climate change and have already made humanity one of a handful of mass extinctions on Earth. Radio broadcasts brought music and news into every household but also brought propaganda and contributed significantly to the rise of Nazism (1). Our similar advances in communication technology seem to strike a similar chord. Even GPS, the internet, encryption, and TOR were only developed as military technologies later coopted for civilian use. The theme appears to be that innovation brings many benefits and great risks. I would advise appreciation of nuance and thoughtfulness. As we become a Kardashev Type I civilization, we could carefully consider the way we organize our society and the existential risks we create for ourselves. For the first time in our history, we have the ability to pretty much completely annihilate ourselves and we're only creating more ways to do it. Maybe some caution is due. (1) https://daily.jstor.org/an-affordable-radio-brought-nazi-propaganda-home/#:~:text=In%20the%201930s%2C%20Nazi%20Propaganda,1933%20example%20of%20the%20Volksempf%C3%A4nger https://daily.jstor.org/an-affordable-radio-brought-nazi-pro....
jshen 5y ago
What you are advocating for is undemocratic lawlessness. Which, ultimately, is what many arguments for crypto boil down to.
- heckerhut 5y ago
  > undemocratic lawlessness What is that supposed to be? It’s not a known concept. If you think it means something you should define it. As a lawyer, it’s perfectly legal to circumvent a law by designing around it. Crypto does that perfectly. So does everybody else. Heck, the whole open source movement does it.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jshen 5y ago
    If you willfully ignore regulations you don’t like, ones that were established through democratic processes, and advocate for others doing the same … that’s undemocratic lawlessness. If instead you are saying that it’s good to find loopholes in laws that violate the spirit of the law, but not the letter of the law … well, you just explained why smart contracts are stupid and will never work. Edit: by your definition, this “hack” was just innovation designed around the “law” of the smart contracts ;)
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
As for the "luddites" part, you miss an important distinction. Technology itself, such as GPS, is ethically neutral. However, there are many greedy people who will abuse it for their own advantage not caring at all about the consequences. It is especially clear once you have built a large company with a large influence on people's lives, attitudes, economy, and mental health. When you listen to people like Zuckerberg, it is clear they want to push away the responsibility in order to have all the benefits without any costs. When you see Uber develop Greyball it's clear that what their motives are. Investors flock to another "disruption" startup but if it turns out successful after some time people realize the very regulations that were attacked did have their purpose. We are not luddites, we are just reasonable people - humans first, then techies.

dumbfoundded 5y ago

You make a great point and I think it's hard to generalize. Nukes have made large scale devastating wars irrelevant but could potentially end civilization or be used to terrorists to evaporate a city. The single largest improvement in quality of life for humanity came from burning fossil fuels but now we face imminent and dire consequences from climate change and have already made humanity one of a handful of mass extinctions on Earth. Radio broadcasts brought music and news into every household but also brought propaganda and contributed significantly to the rise of Nazism (1). Our similar advances in communication technology seem to strike a similar chord. Even GPS, the internet, encryption, and TOR were only developed as military technologies later coopted for civilian use. The theme appears to be that innovation brings many benefits and great risks. I would advise appreciation of nuance and thoughtfulness. As we become a Kardashev Type I civilization, we could carefully consider the way we organize our society and the existential risks we create for ourselves. For the first time in our history, we have the ability to pretty much completely annihilate ourselves and we're only creating more ways to do it. Maybe some caution is due. (1) https://daily.jstor.org/an-affordable-radio-brought-nazi-propaganda-home/#:~:text=In%20the%201930s%2C%20Nazi%20Propaganda,1933%20example%20of%20the%20Volksempf%C3%A4nger https://daily.jstor.org/an-affordable-radio-brought-nazi-pro....

jshen 5y ago

What you are advocating for is undemocratic lawlessness. Which, ultimately, is what many arguments for crypto boil down to.

heckerhut 5y ago
> undemocratic lawlessness What is that supposed to be? It’s not a known concept. If you think it means something you should define it. As a lawyer, it’s perfectly legal to circumvent a law by designing around it. Crypto does that perfectly. So does everybody else. Heck, the whole open source movement does it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jshen 5y ago
  If you willfully ignore regulations you don’t like, ones that were established through democratic processes, and advocate for others doing the same … that’s undemocratic lawlessness. If instead you are saying that it’s good to find loopholes in laws that violate the spirit of the law, but not the letter of the law … well, you just explained why smart contracts are stupid and will never work. Edit: by your definition, this “hack” was just innovation designed around the “law” of the smart contracts ;)

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

As for the "luddites" part, you miss an important distinction. Technology itself, such as GPS, is ethically neutral. However, there are many greedy people who will abuse it for their own advantage not caring at all about the consequences. It is especially clear once you have built a large company with a large influence on people's lives, attitudes, economy, and mental health. When you listen to people like Zuckerberg, it is clear they want to push away the responsibility in order to have all the benefits without any costs. When you see Uber develop Greyball it's clear that what their motives are. Investors flock to another "disruption" startup but if it turns out successful after some time people realize the very regulations that were attacked did have their purpose. We are not luddites, we are just reasonable people - humans first, then techies.