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> We're going to have to address the coming, and/or present, highly-contaminated epistemic environment with the population and skills we have, not those we'd pr

> We're going to have to address the coming, and/or present, highly-contaminated epistemic environment with the population and skills we have, not those we'd prefer, to borrow from another sentiment. For the last decade or so I've become increasingly worried that the open Internet and broad-franchise democracy may simply be, inevitably, incompatible, no matter what we might wish were the case, and that we're guaranteed to lose one or the other (or, potentially, both).

dredmorbius 4y ago
That'd be two of us, friend.
s1artibartfast 4y ago
This is one of the strongest arguments for limiting the scope and responsibility of government. There's one thing for people to harm themselves due to their mistakes, and another thing entirely for them to harm others because of their mistakes. Moreover, people don't learn from their mistakes if someone else is the one that suffers the consequences
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  People are hardly restricted to governments to enact this sort of harm. Power seeks power, and power exerts power. It does so through markets, through criminal organisations, through militaries (nationally-affiliated, mercenary, or any of a continuum of hybrid forms), and more. Liberal democratic governments are at least in name and theory accountable to the governed, and even many less democratic forms still reflect the collective will of diverse groups within their societies. The Max Weber dictum that's so often misquoted and mis-construed doesn't hold that government has a monopoly on force, but that it has the monopoly to the legitimate claim on same. Weber, Max (1978). Roth, Guenther; Wittich, Claus (eds.). Economy and Society. Berkeley: U. California Press. p. 54. <https://archive.org/details/economysociety00webe/page/54/mode/1up?view=theater https://archive.org/details/economysociety00webe/page/54/mod...> Yes, limit government, and ensure that it is lawful and legitimate (as opposed to capricious and corrupt). But don't eliminate it, as then all that remains is violence used without legitimacy or restraint.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    I never said that government is the only source of harm or that it should be eliminated. I'm not sure why you jump to that conclusion. It seems like you agree that there should be limits to the scope of government as well. We might differ on where those limits lie, but maybe not. My primary point is that these limits are what mitigate the damage misguided individuals can do to others.
    - dredmorbius 4y ago
      Fair enough. It's a frequently-enough expressed trope that I tend to anticipate it and act preemptively. Generalising the problem, what I see is the need to moderate power, and to balance power, in the sense of John Kenneth Galbraith's counterveiling power. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countervailing_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countervailing_power> In the context of generative AI, the problem is of an unbalanced new power, that of generating text or speech that appears semantically meaningful, but whose purpose and intent are unclear, perhaps even to the parties operating the AI itself. More generally, however, within any communications channel in which social, political, economic, or other significant potential exists, you can be quite well assured that some entity, agent, or power, human, machine, or hybrid, will emerge to attempt to exploit that opportunity. I first saw this realised by my friend Woozle, after whom I've termed this "Woozle's Epistemic Paradox", first expressed on Google+, though now preserved in a Reddit post of mine: 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...>
      - s1artibartfast 4y ago
GolfPopper 4y ago
The way a friend of mine phrased it was that in a few generations (if both humanity and something like the internet are still around) people will look back on modern virtually unfiltered internet access and think of it the way we look back at virtually unlimited access to opium in 19th century England. (To clarify, she's thinking along the lines of personally controlled, managed filters, like those from the near-future parts of Neal Stephenson's Fall, not some sort of centralized control.)
kridsdale1 4y ago
This made me wonder if the progressive breadth of enfranchisement over the last 200 years or so is related to increases in literacy. Essentially, nobody with power trusted the mob with a vote until they could write convincingly. Apply that to each minority as they gained the right.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  There's probably some relationship there, yes. The history of the Long 19th Century (1789--1914) strongly suggests this, and it's a theme I'd noted in other histories of the period, e.g., John R. Gillis, The Development of European Society, 1770-1870. Notably chapter 10, "Europe's Cultural Revolution", concerning literacy, freedom of the press, schooling, changing roles of intellectuals, and so on. I've noted in earlier HN comments that the 19th century saw a tremendous increase in the productivity of the press and a corresponding fall in the cost of printed materials. Hand-operated wooden "wine press" printing might reach 120 impressions or so per hour. An electrically-powered rotary web offset-lithographic press could reach 1 million impressions per hour --- that's a four-order-of-magnitude increase. See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21679745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21679745> If you look at the history of Britain, there's a near-continuous devolution of power to an ever-growing and expansive set of the population. Initially singular monarchs, then a nobility (Magna Carta), then a growing bourgeois class (~15th -- 18th centuries or so), then the working class (19th century) and women, arguably jews (Disraeli). In the past fifty years, a growing, if not monotonic, inclusion of former colonial subjects and people, to the point that London's mayor and in fact some nobility are no longer exclusively white. There are multiple factors at play, though literacy all but certainly plays some role.

dredmorbius 4y ago

That'd be two of us, friend.

s1artibartfast 4y ago

This is one of the strongest arguments for limiting the scope and responsibility of government. There's one thing for people to harm themselves due to their mistakes, and another thing entirely for them to harm others because of their mistakes. Moreover, people don't learn from their mistakes if someone else is the one that suffers the consequences

dredmorbius 4y ago
People are hardly restricted to governments to enact this sort of harm. Power seeks power, and power exerts power. It does so through markets, through criminal organisations, through militaries (nationally-affiliated, mercenary, or any of a continuum of hybrid forms), and more. Liberal democratic governments are at least in name and theory accountable to the governed, and even many less democratic forms still reflect the collective will of diverse groups within their societies. The Max Weber dictum that's so often misquoted and mis-construed doesn't hold that government has a monopoly on force, but that it has the monopoly to the legitimate claim on same. Weber, Max (1978). Roth, Guenther; Wittich, Claus (eds.). Economy and Society. Berkeley: U. California Press. p. 54. <https://archive.org/details/economysociety00webe/page/54/mode/1up?view=theater https://archive.org/details/economysociety00webe/page/54/mod...> Yes, limit government, and ensure that it is lawful and legitimate (as opposed to capricious and corrupt). But don't eliminate it, as then all that remains is violence used without legitimacy or restraint.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  I never said that government is the only source of harm or that it should be eliminated. I'm not sure why you jump to that conclusion. It seems like you agree that there should be limits to the scope of government as well. We might differ on where those limits lie, but maybe not. My primary point is that these limits are what mitigate the damage misguided individuals can do to others.
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    Fair enough. It's a frequently-enough expressed trope that I tend to anticipate it and act preemptively. Generalising the problem, what I see is the need to moderate power, and to balance power, in the sense of John Kenneth Galbraith's counterveiling power. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countervailing_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countervailing_power> In the context of generative AI, the problem is of an unbalanced new power, that of generating text or speech that appears semantically meaningful, but whose purpose and intent are unclear, perhaps even to the parties operating the AI itself. More generally, however, within any communications channel in which social, political, economic, or other significant potential exists, you can be quite well assured that some entity, agent, or power, human, machine, or hybrid, will emerge to attempt to exploit that opportunity. I first saw this realised by my friend Woozle, after whom I've termed this "Woozle's Epistemic Paradox", first expressed on Google+, though now preserved in a Reddit post of mine: 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...>
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago

GolfPopper 4y ago

The way a friend of mine phrased it was that in a few generations (if both humanity and something like the internet are still around) people will look back on modern virtually unfiltered internet access and think of it the way we look back at virtually unlimited access to opium in 19th century England. (To clarify, she's thinking along the lines of personally controlled, managed filters, like those from the near-future parts of Neal Stephenson's Fall, not some sort of centralized control.)

kridsdale1 4y ago

This made me wonder if the progressive breadth of enfranchisement over the last 200 years or so is related to increases in literacy. Essentially, nobody with power trusted the mob with a vote until they could write convincingly. Apply that to each minority as they gained the right.

dredmorbius 4y ago
There's probably some relationship there, yes. The history of the Long 19th Century (1789--1914) strongly suggests this, and it's a theme I'd noted in other histories of the period, e.g., John R. Gillis, The Development of European Society, 1770-1870. Notably chapter 10, "Europe's Cultural Revolution", concerning literacy, freedom of the press, schooling, changing roles of intellectuals, and so on. I've noted in earlier HN comments that the 19th century saw a tremendous increase in the productivity of the press and a corresponding fall in the cost of printed materials. Hand-operated wooden "wine press" printing might reach 120 impressions or so per hour. An electrically-powered rotary web offset-lithographic press could reach 1 million impressions per hour --- that's a four-order-of-magnitude increase. See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21679745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21679745> If you look at the history of Britain, there's a near-continuous devolution of power to an ever-growing and expansive set of the population. Initially singular monarchs, then a nobility (Magna Carta), then a growing bourgeois class (~15th -- 18th centuries or so), then the working class (19th century) and women, arguably jews (Disraeli). In the past fifty years, a growing, if not monotonic, inclusion of former colonial subjects and people, to the point that London's mayor and in fact some nobility are no longer exclusively white. There are multiple factors at play, though literacy all but certainly plays some role.