5 ms·

Everyone here is commenting on Covid, vaccines, social policy and whatnot. I can't help but see a different, bigger and human story here. It's about how the s

Everyone here is commenting on Covid, vaccines, social policy and whatnot. I can't help but see a different, bigger and human story here. It's about how the systems people erect around themselves turn against them. Gated communities whose guards become jailers. Convenient fast food delivery systems that become tools of rationing and siege. News and communications systems turned to propaganda and social control. Meanwhile the only good vibe in here is the person-to-person charity and sharing that occurs amongst the "prisoners". We should look at this and learn a very important lesson as technologists.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> It's about how the systems people erect around themselves turn against them. Gated communities whose guards become jailers. Historically this is backwards. 小区 existed in the Tang dynasty much as they do today, but the gate was not operated at the direction of the residents - there was a curfew, and if you lived in a 小区 you had to obey it. If you lived in a house that opened directly onto the street, you were exempt from the curfew.
- nonrandomstring 5y ago
  That is interesting. But surely you're talking of things that happened thousands of years ago. Are you saying that modern Chinese people are generally comfortable living in conditions approximate to imprisonment? Is the Great Wall really like the Iron Curtain, there to keep its citizens inside?
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    I'm saying this doesn't represent systems being set up for one purpose and then developing into a different, more nefarious purpose. The men at the gate were jailors before they were guards. > surely you're talking of things that happened thousands of years ago. Well, sort of. The Tang dynasty was from roughly 600-900 AD. > Is the Great Wall really like the Iron Curtain, there to keep its citizens inside? I realize this is just rhetoric, but as far as I understand it, the Great Wall's primary purpose is indeed to keep people in. Just not to keep citizens in. You can't stop barbarians from getting over the wall, because it's too long to defend it all. But when they do come in, you can respond by sending an army to fight them. And when they retreat, they'll have a hell of a time getting over the wall before you can catch up to them. (The steppe nomads to the north of China are highly mobile but low in population. China is the reverse. So in practical terms, the nomads always want to retreat, and to the extent a battle happens at all, that's a victory for China.)
- bamboozled 5y ago
  What is 小区?
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    A 小区 is a walled complex containing several residential buildings. 区 is the simplified form of the character 區, which is more or less just a depiction of the concept. This is the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdistrict#China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdistrict#China (Though it's pretty bare-bones and traces the idea back no farther than the Soviet Union.)
laurent92 5y ago
Let’s take time to discuss this, as it’s easier to discuss when it happens to another country with an entirely different social system. I was surprised, last year, that techniques we were condescending about, and saying it only happens in China, were applied in Europe and USA. As if it was an emergent property of a human group facing a new disease.
- rtpg 5y ago
  Talks about how magic money doesn’t exist but then printing out checks for everyone and it materially helping loads of people was definitely an Overton window shifter as well. There are principles and a status quo, and it always stays the same… until it changes.
  - 6thaccount 5y ago
  - makomk 5y ago
    There was no magic money tree. It took a while for the effects to spread to the whole of the economy - perhaps because people were in lockdown and limited in their ability to spend money - but throughout the western world people's incomes have been dropping in real inflation-adjusted terms. There's no way that they couldn't; a large chunk of the economy was shut down and producing nothing, so there's just plain less stuff to buy which means people can't possibly be able to continue consuming the same amount. Printing and handing out checks just redistributed where in society the economic pain was felt for a while.
    - xtian 5y ago
      It was definitely the $2000 checks and not the $4.5 trillion bank bailout in 2019.
      - mensetmanusman 5y ago
        The initial bailouts were something like over $10,000 per every American.
jsemrau 5y ago
>Gated communities whose guards become jailers. Left Singapore after 10 years because of this. If you go into a shopping mall you need to "check in" fully authenticated with picture ID, "ambassadors" photograph any perceived violations, work from home is the standard. With the never-changing weather that was hard on the mental health. Surely, the rules have relaxed now, but that wasn't a fun experience.
- philliphaydon 5y ago
  There was no picture ID “ambassadors”. You either checked in using TraceTogether app, or your TraceTogether token. Before the app and token was mandatory you had to use your ID card. The reason my wife and I left after 10 years is security due to being rejected for PR and the company I work for laying off everyone to close the office. So we moved to Taiwan.
  - jsemrau 5y ago
    Please re-read the sentence. The TraceTogether app can be used or the picture id. But the information in TraceTogether is the same as in your NRIC/FIN. So you are authenticating with two strong keys phone number and NRIC / FIN wherever you go. The "ambassadors" walked around taking pictures. I think you combined two parts of the sentence into one.
    - philliphaydon 5y ago
      Picture id was only used before trace together was mandatory. If you signed up for trace together early you didn’t need photo Id. Ambassadors were never walking around taking random photos.
  - refurb 5y ago
    Even better was the government statement “TraceTogether is used for infection control and isolation only”. Then a year later they used it to solve a crime. When called out on the prior statement said “oh, well, we’d only use it for serious crimes”. They then pass a bill legalizing using it for criminal investigations.
chasd00 5y ago
...self-driving cars that can be turned off enmasse by the "authorities"..

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> It's about how the systems people erect around themselves turn against them. Gated communities whose guards become jailers. Historically this is backwards. 小区 existed in the Tang dynasty much as they do today, but the gate was not operated at the direction of the residents - there was a curfew, and if you lived in a 小区 you had to obey it. If you lived in a house that opened directly onto the street, you were exempt from the curfew.

nonrandomstring 5y ago
That is interesting. But surely you're talking of things that happened thousands of years ago. Are you saying that modern Chinese people are generally comfortable living in conditions approximate to imprisonment? Is the Great Wall really like the Iron Curtain, there to keep its citizens inside?
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  I'm saying this doesn't represent systems being set up for one purpose and then developing into a different, more nefarious purpose. The men at the gate were jailors before they were guards. > surely you're talking of things that happened thousands of years ago. Well, sort of. The Tang dynasty was from roughly 600-900 AD. > Is the Great Wall really like the Iron Curtain, there to keep its citizens inside? I realize this is just rhetoric, but as far as I understand it, the Great Wall's primary purpose is indeed to keep people in. Just not to keep citizens in. You can't stop barbarians from getting over the wall, because it's too long to defend it all. But when they do come in, you can respond by sending an army to fight them. And when they retreat, they'll have a hell of a time getting over the wall before you can catch up to them. (The steppe nomads to the north of China are highly mobile but low in population. China is the reverse. So in practical terms, the nomads always want to retreat, and to the extent a battle happens at all, that's a victory for China.)
bamboozled 5y ago
What is 小区?
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  A 小区 is a walled complex containing several residential buildings. 区 is the simplified form of the character 區, which is more or less just a depiction of the concept. This is the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdistrict#China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdistrict#China (Though it's pretty bare-bones and traces the idea back no farther than the Soviet Union.)

laurent92 5y ago

Let’s take time to discuss this, as it’s easier to discuss when it happens to another country with an entirely different social system. I was surprised, last year, that techniques we were condescending about, and saying it only happens in China, were applied in Europe and USA. As if it was an emergent property of a human group facing a new disease.

rtpg 5y ago
Talks about how magic money doesn’t exist but then printing out checks for everyone and it materially helping loads of people was definitely an Overton window shifter as well. There are principles and a status quo, and it always stays the same… until it changes.
- 6thaccount 5y ago
- makomk 5y ago
  There was no magic money tree. It took a while for the effects to spread to the whole of the economy - perhaps because people were in lockdown and limited in their ability to spend money - but throughout the western world people's incomes have been dropping in real inflation-adjusted terms. There's no way that they couldn't; a large chunk of the economy was shut down and producing nothing, so there's just plain less stuff to buy which means people can't possibly be able to continue consuming the same amount. Printing and handing out checks just redistributed where in society the economic pain was felt for a while.
  - xtian 5y ago
    It was definitely the $2000 checks and not the $4.5 trillion bank bailout in 2019.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      The initial bailouts were something like over $10,000 per every American.

jsemrau 5y ago

>Gated communities whose guards become jailers. Left Singapore after 10 years because of this. If you go into a shopping mall you need to "check in" fully authenticated with picture ID, "ambassadors" photograph any perceived violations, work from home is the standard. With the never-changing weather that was hard on the mental health. Surely, the rules have relaxed now, but that wasn't a fun experience.

philliphaydon 5y ago
There was no picture ID “ambassadors”. You either checked in using TraceTogether app, or your TraceTogether token. Before the app and token was mandatory you had to use your ID card. The reason my wife and I left after 10 years is security due to being rejected for PR and the company I work for laying off everyone to close the office. So we moved to Taiwan.
- jsemrau 5y ago
  Please re-read the sentence. The TraceTogether app can be used or the picture id. But the information in TraceTogether is the same as in your NRIC/FIN. So you are authenticating with two strong keys phone number and NRIC / FIN wherever you go. The "ambassadors" walked around taking pictures. I think you combined two parts of the sentence into one.
  - philliphaydon 5y ago
    Picture id was only used before trace together was mandatory. If you signed up for trace together early you didn’t need photo Id. Ambassadors were never walking around taking random photos.
- refurb 5y ago
  Even better was the government statement “TraceTogether is used for infection control and isolation only”. Then a year later they used it to solve a crime. When called out on the prior statement said “oh, well, we’d only use it for serious crimes”. They then pass a bill legalizing using it for criminal investigations.

chasd00 5y ago

...self-driving cars that can be turned off enmasse by the "authorities"..