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I absolutely agree with you, but here's a hypothesis worth considering: What if we're building a society that is so complicated that it just isn't feasible for

I absolutely agree with you, but here's a hypothesis worth considering: What if we're building a society that is so complicated that it just isn't feasible for individuals to make informed decisions about important matters any more? Societies have long accepted that things like medical treatments have to be prescribed by an expert, and some societies have even decided that healthy people can be forced to have medical treatments even against their will (i.e. vaccines). My hope is that we are just in a temporary phase, where society has learnt how to transmit information freely but not how to reliably transmit trust. If the reputations of software developers and medical practitioners could be established without corporate or government monopolies, then society might get past this local minimum and into a more stable state.

MichaelCollins 4y ago
> What if we're building a society that is so complicated that it just isn't feasible for individuals to make informed decisions about important matters any more? Then we should apply the regulator brakes immediately, as hard as possible. If the threat new technology poses to society is so great as that, then we should regulate those technologies, possibly to the point of strangulation. Ancient Roman urban legend: An inventor came to the Emperor to show off a new material, unbreakable glass. He showed the Emperor a glass chalice and threw it to the floor. Instead of shattering it merely bent, and the inventor bent it back into shape with a hammer. The emperor was very impressed, then ordered for the inventor to be killed. Unshatterable glass was very nice, but it wasn't worth the social and economic disruption it might cause. I am not that Roman emperor. What I support is the regulation of business practices, not technology itself. But if you (and Ted Kaczynski, for he has argued the same) are right and the threat to society comes from the technology, then we can regulate the technology as well.
- hkpack 4y ago
  It is obviously that we cannot do that because of the global competition. Regulation of technology to reduce risk to society will just make competing part of society you have no influence on to dominate. And you lose on both fronts - technology domination, and ability to control it in the future.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    Regulating Apple specifically, or the role of smartphones in society generally, imperils national security? Sorry, but I'm not buying it. The relevant business behavior and technology to squash is the technology that intersects with the lives of common people in an intimate way, not military R&D. I'm talking about regulating the way online banking and ecommerce work, not the etching of silicon or production of rocket motors. The cited threat is phones getting pwnd by scammers who drain your grandpas bank account. If that threat is indeed so severe that digital freedoms for everybody need to be curtailed, it would be better to ban online banking entirely than to put the entire population under the paternalistic control of a handful of corporations. You'll have to dig deep into nth order effects to justify such regulation imperiling national defense, essentially tea leaf reading.
bloppe 4y ago
I won't argue with the hypothesis at large (even though I hope it's unfounded), but as it applies to this particular situation, you're ignoring a crucial factor: the gargantuan incentive for monopolists to convince you that their monopolies actually protect you. It's incredible how successful Apple has been in convincing their users that freedom is bad, and I'm absolutely positive it's not because Apple is genuinely concerned about society; they're concerned about their multi-billion-dollar revenue streams. If we reach a point as a society that we decide we have too much freedom, we should absolutely never let it be regulated by corps with such a perverse incentive.
nathanyz 4y ago
And on top of this increase in complexity, is a decrease in legal consequences for bad actors taking advantage of this complexity. That is what is going on currently due to how the Internet crosses international borders which makes policing much more difficult for society. It is a difficult conundrum as freedom is definitely something I value, but I think freedom may not be the best solution in a world without legal consequences for those abusing that freedom to take advantage of others. Freedom with no guidelines to prevent use of that freedom to abuse others is not real freedom
bena 4y ago
We're not building that society. We're living in that society. I don't understand how people didn't realize this over the last couple of years. We are not qualified to have opinions on a lot of things we do have opinions on.
- carapace 4y ago
  Many years ago I had a roommate who was an actual Marxist (this was in Berkeley CA) and who had a kind of a job or volunteer position with a local radical politician trying to influence local politics. They would do things like go to city council meetings and march around the room singing songs. Dumb shit like that. One day I'm reading in my room and the lights flicker and I hear a yalp from the living room. I go out to investigate and I can smell the magic smoke (not weed, electrical) and the roomie is standing there with a screwdriver and a spooked look on her face. It transpires that she wanted to move a certain bookshelf to a certain spot and have it flush against the wall, but it was blocked by a little external electrical outlet. It was an old house, you see, (old for the West Coast that is) and when it was electrified they didn't both to run the wires through the walls. Instead they ran little conduits along the baseboards and mounted external socket blocks so we could plug in lamps, etc. One of these external electric sockets boxes was in the way of the bookshelf. You can see where this is going? She got a screwdriver and tried to remove the electric socket box without turning off the circuit. The flickering lights were when she shorted the circuit with the screwdriver and made the magic smoke come out. Fortunately she wasn't hurt, just startled. Now this person was in her fifties! How the hell to you get to be fifty years old and not know how electricity works!? And yet she felt confident that she knew how cities and countries should be run. I think there are at least two points here: 1.) We have already made the world more complicated than the average person can understand. Computers are like pouring fuel on that fire, but it's been burning for a while now. 2.) People can be really stupid and ignorant and yet feel like they know what's going on and what to do about it. I think the obvious though perhaps unpleasant conclusion is that we should look to radical simplification in all areas, and treat complexity as something that should be budgeted, treated as an expense and necessary evil.
  - unity1001 4y ago
erichocean 4y ago
> What if we're building a society that is so complicated that it just isn't feasible for individuals to make informed decisions about important matters any more? RIP Democracy.
unity1001 4y ago
> What if we're building a society that is so complicated that it just isn't feasible for individuals to make informed decisions about important matters any more? That doesn't happen. WordPress have an open development ecosystem through themes and plugins. It runs up to 50% of all web sites on the planet right now, including many gigantic ones. (various CNN, Reuters services included). That did not lead to such an environment as you speak. Instead, there materialized many independent theme and plugin developer outfits, rising into prominence just for providing good software and having good reputation. And they have been half of the reason why WordPress now constitutes 50% of all web sites. Open Source has been similar in general too - various high-reputation outfits dominate each field without curbing choice.

MichaelCollins 4y ago

> What if we're building a society that is so complicated that it just isn't feasible for individuals to make informed decisions about important matters any more? Then we should apply the regulator brakes immediately, as hard as possible. If the threat new technology poses to society is so great as that, then we should regulate those technologies, possibly to the point of strangulation. Ancient Roman urban legend: An inventor came to the Emperor to show off a new material, unbreakable glass. He showed the Emperor a glass chalice and threw it to the floor. Instead of shattering it merely bent, and the inventor bent it back into shape with a hammer. The emperor was very impressed, then ordered for the inventor to be killed. Unshatterable glass was very nice, but it wasn't worth the social and economic disruption it might cause. I am not that Roman emperor. What I support is the regulation of business practices, not technology itself. But if you (and Ted Kaczynski, for he has argued the same) are right and the threat to society comes from the technology, then we can regulate the technology as well.

hkpack 4y ago
It is obviously that we cannot do that because of the global competition. Regulation of technology to reduce risk to society will just make competing part of society you have no influence on to dominate. And you lose on both fronts - technology domination, and ability to control it in the future.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  Regulating Apple specifically, or the role of smartphones in society generally, imperils national security? Sorry, but I'm not buying it. The relevant business behavior and technology to squash is the technology that intersects with the lives of common people in an intimate way, not military R&D. I'm talking about regulating the way online banking and ecommerce work, not the etching of silicon or production of rocket motors. The cited threat is phones getting pwnd by scammers who drain your grandpas bank account. If that threat is indeed so severe that digital freedoms for everybody need to be curtailed, it would be better to ban online banking entirely than to put the entire population under the paternalistic control of a handful of corporations. You'll have to dig deep into nth order effects to justify such regulation imperiling national defense, essentially tea leaf reading.

bloppe 4y ago

I won't argue with the hypothesis at large (even though I hope it's unfounded), but as it applies to this particular situation, you're ignoring a crucial factor: the gargantuan incentive for monopolists to convince you that their monopolies actually protect you. It's incredible how successful Apple has been in convincing their users that freedom is bad, and I'm absolutely positive it's not because Apple is genuinely concerned about society; they're concerned about their multi-billion-dollar revenue streams. If we reach a point as a society that we decide we have too much freedom, we should absolutely never let it be regulated by corps with such a perverse incentive.

nathanyz 4y ago

And on top of this increase in complexity, is a decrease in legal consequences for bad actors taking advantage of this complexity. That is what is going on currently due to how the Internet crosses international borders which makes policing much more difficult for society. It is a difficult conundrum as freedom is definitely something I value, but I think freedom may not be the best solution in a world without legal consequences for those abusing that freedom to take advantage of others. Freedom with no guidelines to prevent use of that freedom to abuse others is not real freedom

bena 4y ago

We're not building that society. We're living in that society. I don't understand how people didn't realize this over the last couple of years. We are not qualified to have opinions on a lot of things we do have opinions on.

carapace 4y ago
Many years ago I had a roommate who was an actual Marxist (this was in Berkeley CA) and who had a kind of a job or volunteer position with a local radical politician trying to influence local politics. They would do things like go to city council meetings and march around the room singing songs. Dumb shit like that. One day I'm reading in my room and the lights flicker and I hear a yalp from the living room. I go out to investigate and I can smell the magic smoke (not weed, electrical) and the roomie is standing there with a screwdriver and a spooked look on her face. It transpires that she wanted to move a certain bookshelf to a certain spot and have it flush against the wall, but it was blocked by a little external electrical outlet. It was an old house, you see, (old for the West Coast that is) and when it was electrified they didn't both to run the wires through the walls. Instead they ran little conduits along the baseboards and mounted external socket blocks so we could plug in lamps, etc. One of these external electric sockets boxes was in the way of the bookshelf. You can see where this is going? She got a screwdriver and tried to remove the electric socket box without turning off the circuit. The flickering lights were when she shorted the circuit with the screwdriver and made the magic smoke come out. Fortunately she wasn't hurt, just startled. Now this person was in her fifties! How the hell to you get to be fifty years old and not know how electricity works!? And yet she felt confident that she knew how cities and countries should be run. I think there are at least two points here: 1.) We have already made the world more complicated than the average person can understand. Computers are like pouring fuel on that fire, but it's been burning for a while now. 2.) People can be really stupid and ignorant and yet feel like they know what's going on and what to do about it. I think the obvious though perhaps unpleasant conclusion is that we should look to radical simplification in all areas, and treat complexity as something that should be budgeted, treated as an expense and necessary evil.
- unity1001 4y ago

erichocean 4y ago

> What if we're building a society that is so complicated that it just isn't feasible for individuals to make informed decisions about important matters any more? RIP Democracy.

unity1001 4y ago

> What if we're building a society that is so complicated that it just isn't feasible for individuals to make informed decisions about important matters any more? That doesn't happen. WordPress have an open development ecosystem through themes and plugins. It runs up to 50% of all web sites on the planet right now, including many gigantic ones. (various CNN, Reuters services included). That did not lead to such an environment as you speak. Instead, there materialized many independent theme and plugin developer outfits, rising into prominence just for providing good software and having good reputation. And they have been half of the reason why WordPress now constitutes 50% of all web sites. Open Source has been similar in general too - various high-reputation outfits dominate each field without curbing choice.