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We can talk about everything that can go wrong, but as it is a cop can kill you if he decides to. It comes down to whether or not the forces that be decide to.

We can talk about everything that can go wrong, but as it is a cop can kill you if he decides to. It comes down to whether or not the forces that be decide to. Possibly police will be less likely to use lethal force if they avoid taking what they may perceive to be a lethal risk by using drones.

throwaway290 3y ago
First give police the right to kill with impunity, then introduce pervasive surveillance as a feature that makes them kill less. Nothing can go wrong
- ben_w 3y ago
  I have no good answers. I'd like a world with as much freedom and as few restrictions as possible; yet I also know that it's increasingly easy for someone working alone to cause enormous damage and loss of life. I want a legal system simple enough that at least half the population know all their rights and responsibilities without any danger of unwittingly violating the law, because "ignorance of the law must not be a legitimate excuse" but it clearly is an excuse in a world where lawyers laugh in your face if you ask them if anyone knows all the laws. I want punishments that have no vengeance, punishments which only serve to be deterrence for the sane, and where the insane are humanely kept out of harm's way; for these to be effective, I suspect (but don't know for sure) that the best way is to have near 100% accurate fines almost immediately upon detection, which in turn have to be small — framing example: you drop litter, 30 seconds later a notification of a fine for $1.00 appears on your phone, which you can also make go away by picking up what you dropped. I don't know how to prevent that from becoming a totalitarian nightmare thanks to the apparent popularity of ever-escalating punishments for all offences. I don't know how to watch the watchers. "State secrets" may be an excuse for the powerful to hide behind, but it's also, not only. I don't know how to square that with the embarrassment that people have over so many aspects of themselves, that makes the right to privacy an absolute necessity. And this kind of privacy issue is "easy mode" compared to what happens if we get mind uploads.
  - throwaway290 3y ago
    > you drop litter, 30 seconds later a notification of a fine for $1.00 appears on your phone, which you can also make go away by picking up what you dropped Instead of educating and healing people psych so that they are intrinsically motivated to not do shitty things, you watch them all the time and punish disobedience. Definitely not like any totalitarian state. (Also there are many people for whom $1 is not worth a second's thought, and many people who have zero or negative amount of $ and will never pay it. If you really make it about that $1 instead of values, streets will drown in garbage.)
    - ben_w 3y ago
      > Definitely not like any totalitarian state. Oh it might be totalitarian, but to the extent that it is, it's anarcho-totalitarian, despite that sounding like a tautological impossibly at first glance. Going from the opening paragraph on Wikipedia: > Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and regulation over public and private life. It is regarded as the most extreme and complete form of authoritarianism. It's absolutely the "complete degree of control and regulation over public and private life" — at least, for whatever matters, which I want be the smallest possible set of things (see point about law simple enough most actually know what it is); I don't know if that can be done without devolving into also the "prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state", but preventing that is also my position. That's why I listed conjugate pairs of contrasting positions. > Also there are many people for whom $1 is not worth a second's thought, and many people who have zero or negative amount of $ and will never pay it Indeed, that's why I prefaced it with "framing example": I'm not going to go into the weeds with an entire novel social system for the sake of a comment.

throwaway290 3y ago

First give police the right to kill with impunity, then introduce pervasive surveillance as a feature that makes them kill less. Nothing can go wrong

ben_w 3y ago
I have no good answers. I'd like a world with as much freedom and as few restrictions as possible; yet I also know that it's increasingly easy for someone working alone to cause enormous damage and loss of life. I want a legal system simple enough that at least half the population know all their rights and responsibilities without any danger of unwittingly violating the law, because "ignorance of the law must not be a legitimate excuse" but it clearly is an excuse in a world where lawyers laugh in your face if you ask them if anyone knows all the laws. I want punishments that have no vengeance, punishments which only serve to be deterrence for the sane, and where the insane are humanely kept out of harm's way; for these to be effective, I suspect (but don't know for sure) that the best way is to have near 100% accurate fines almost immediately upon detection, which in turn have to be small — framing example: you drop litter, 30 seconds later a notification of a fine for $1.00 appears on your phone, which you can also make go away by picking up what you dropped. I don't know how to prevent that from becoming a totalitarian nightmare thanks to the apparent popularity of ever-escalating punishments for all offences. I don't know how to watch the watchers. "State secrets" may be an excuse for the powerful to hide behind, but it's also, not only. I don't know how to square that with the embarrassment that people have over so many aspects of themselves, that makes the right to privacy an absolute necessity. And this kind of privacy issue is "easy mode" compared to what happens if we get mind uploads.
- throwaway290 3y ago
  > you drop litter, 30 seconds later a notification of a fine for $1.00 appears on your phone, which you can also make go away by picking up what you dropped Instead of educating and healing people psych so that they are intrinsically motivated to not do shitty things, you watch them all the time and punish disobedience. Definitely not like any totalitarian state. (Also there are many people for whom $1 is not worth a second's thought, and many people who have zero or negative amount of $ and will never pay it. If you really make it about that $1 instead of values, streets will drown in garbage.)
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > Definitely not like any totalitarian state. Oh it might be totalitarian, but to the extent that it is, it's anarcho-totalitarian, despite that sounding like a tautological impossibly at first glance. Going from the opening paragraph on Wikipedia: > Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and regulation over public and private life. It is regarded as the most extreme and complete form of authoritarianism. It's absolutely the "complete degree of control and regulation over public and private life" — at least, for whatever matters, which I want be the smallest possible set of things (see point about law simple enough most actually know what it is); I don't know if that can be done without devolving into also the "prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state", but preventing that is also my position. That's why I listed conjugate pairs of contrasting positions. > Also there are many people for whom $1 is not worth a second's thought, and many people who have zero or negative amount of $ and will never pay it Indeed, that's why I prefaced it with "framing example": I'm not going to go into the weeds with an entire novel social system for the sake of a comment.