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Another thought: Maybe liberal democracy is not the final outcome of human civilization. You like it and I like it (presumably we were both raised to believe t

Another thought: Maybe liberal democracy is not the final outcome of human civilization. You like it and I like it (presumably we were both raised to believe this way) but perhaps it's not really true. Just to question a base assumption here. It seems to me, if all the things that are claimed to threaten liberal democracy actually do, liberal democracy might be much less robust and long lived then previously believed.

corrral 4y ago
Oh, absolutely. I've even come around to thinking that's likely. But one can hope. [EDIT] One thing I no longer think has any realistic future is the open, semi-anonymous Internet. We're either losing it because despots take over and definitely won't permit that threat to remain unfettered, or we're losing it (in perhaps a gentler-touch way) because we have to to prevent authoritarian take-over and vast civil strife. I don't think we're getting to keep that no matter what happens.
- mythrwy 4y ago
  Yep I think you might be right. It's ultimately too much of a risk to all sorts of powers to have open unfettered real time communication and mass dissemination. Even the "good guys" will call emergency that will never end. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted. An intellectual Cambrian explosion. And all that porn!
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    > And all that porn! On that note: I can't wait for the resulting proliferation of photorealistic tentacle hentai. Imagine the possibilities!
    - mysterydip 4y ago
      Take it a step further: Can you be arrested for having porn that would be illegal in your country if it was real, but instead it's a thousand generated images/videos? How blurred will those lines get?
      - yellowapple 4y ago
        I guess my first question would be how the creators of such porn put together the training set.
        smaudet 4y ago
        Eh you're asking the wrong question - training sets are not made of gold, it might be hard to make good ones, but faking a training set with a program like this, resource intensive but possible.

corrral 4y ago

Oh, absolutely. I've even come around to thinking that's likely. But one can hope. [EDIT] One thing I no longer think has any realistic future is the open, semi-anonymous Internet. We're either losing it because despots take over and definitely won't permit that threat to remain unfettered, or we're losing it (in perhaps a gentler-touch way) because we have to to prevent authoritarian take-over and vast civil strife. I don't think we're getting to keep that no matter what happens.

mythrwy 4y ago
Yep I think you might be right. It's ultimately too much of a risk to all sorts of powers to have open unfettered real time communication and mass dissemination. Even the "good guys" will call emergency that will never end. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted. An intellectual Cambrian explosion. And all that porn!
- yellowapple 4y ago
  > And all that porn! On that note: I can't wait for the resulting proliferation of photorealistic tentacle hentai. Imagine the possibilities!
  - mysterydip 4y ago
    Take it a step further: Can you be arrested for having porn that would be illegal in your country if it was real, but instead it's a thousand generated images/videos? How blurred will those lines get?
    - yellowapple 4y ago
      I guess my first question would be how the creators of such porn put together the training set.
      - smaudet 4y ago
        Eh you're asking the wrong question - training sets are not made of gold, it might be hard to make good ones, but faking a training set with a program like this, resource intensive but possible.