4 ms·

One of the biggest problems with these nutjob movements is that they're playing off very real problems to fuel their circuses. Proprietary untrustable voting ma

One of the biggest problems with these nutjob movements is that they're playing off very real problems to fuel their circuses. Proprietary untrustable voting machines have always been a major problem. You used to be able to bring this up, and since it wasn't a partisan issue, people would at least hear you out even though they understood little about the technicals. But these days if you talk about it to most people or without including a bunch of nuanced disclaimers, you're pigeonholed as if you're part of this mentally ill cult. So reasonable opposition/criticism gets pushed into this shitty position of just having to support the status quo, despite seeing its glaring problems and injustices.

appplication 3y ago
This statement is basically a metaphor for really any political issue. Modern political discourse is about picking sides and entrenching defenses rather than developing reasonable, nuanced takes on individual issues.
- mindslight 3y ago
  100% agree. I think it's just gotten much worse recently with the rise of Facebook geniuses and the like. I used to ignore both major parties, vote third party or deliberately not vote, comfortable that they were roughly balanced and would do roughly similar magnitude damage. I can't fully rule out just getting more conservative as I get older, but these days it feels like there's basically one half-sane option where the preaching-to-the-choir issues are at least still mostly the fringes of the party. The last primary election I found myself reading candidate blurbs on dogmatic issues trying to figure out which candidates were merely paying lip service to the expected narratives and wouldn't actually focus on them as a priority.
  - michaelmrose 3y ago
    This has basically never been even slightly true. Look at Bush Jr normalizing torture and mass surveillance while starting a war based on false presences that killed a half million people and cost trillions. Basically you threw away your vote because you didn't understand any of the stakes.
    - mindslight 3y ago
      Oh golly gee, I'd never considered that before. Thanks for enlightening me. Of course we have no data about the counterfactual where Gore was president instead. Half of Bush's wars were a direct reaction to external stimulus. The "Patriot" act was a bipartisan thing. And when the team in office did change, it's not like Obama did much of anything to roll back Bush's activities - hence the equivalency of considering both parties not terribly opposed to authoritarianism, just favoring different flavors of it.
      - michaelmrose 3y ago
        Gore was for Afghanistan and against Iraq. It's hard to see him being for that war when he was against it in fact in our timeline Furthermore the outgoing regime has a plan for al-queda which Bush ignored along with all the other obvious clues. You ignored an election and a corrupt drunk became president and half a million people died.
        mindslight 3y ago
        So Gore would have just sat around twiddling his thumbs and not doing anything that Bush didn't do? That's the part you're ignoring. FWIW that particular election I voted third party. And "show support for this bad candidate if you don't want to suffer this even worse candidate" is exactly the dynamic I reject, especially when the other tribe is doing the exact same thing with the candidates reversed. Also I was in a state that consistently goes one way, so pragmatic consequentialist arguments carry even less weight.
        michaelmrose 3y ago
        There is no reason to believe that Gore who contemporaneously expressed support for a different strategy would have followed the exact same track as Bush. You can't actually reject that dynamic we are stuck with it until we fix it.
        3y ago
friend_and_foe 3y ago
Well the only choice you have is to not play that game. Opposition to valid criticism will take advantage of this and put the quacks front and center. The only choice we have is to ignore the quacks and call out anyone trying to equate us with them.
- mindslight 3y ago
  In the context of technical discussions about the insecure designs of voting systems based on machines, sure. But how does "not playing the game" work in the context of getting the larger public to care about the real issues, or even just getting election officials to? It seems like the whole dynamic increases the power of election officials to circle the wagons and insist "we're secure, trust us".
  - friend_and_foe 3y ago
    Well my point in general is that often, when bringing up contentious topics (and everything is contentious nowadays) you can't let people browbeat or shame you into shutting your mouth. That's what I mean by not playing the game. Don't let them trot out the quacks or otherwise get you to shut up about it and take their side.
    - mindslight 3y ago
      It's not about getting "browbeaten or shamed", but rather whether it makes sense to apply energy to a certain topic at the expense of other topics, and how legitimate criticism gets abused to fuel illegitimate pop culture nonsense. If I were a voting machine researcher or cryptographic voting was my hobby horse, my goal would still be to talk about voting despite the political circus. But rather I'm just a security generalist talking about these things casually. I can choose to spend effort talking about voting, or I can avoid this topic and spend my effort on topics that are more productive.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    > But how does "not playing the game" work in the context of getting the larger public to care about the real issues, or even just getting election officials to? On the plus side, there's already a large fraction of the larger public concerned about election safety. They might be worried about a lot of imaginary problems, but they can still be motivated to push back against electronic voting machines which is a win for addressing the real issues. Election officials are already highly incentivized to make elections appear fair and transparent. That too can be leveraged to push back against electronic voting machines. The trick is making sure the people who aren't conspiracy nut jobs aren't afraid to listen to and address the very real concerns with these devices for fear of being lumped in with the crazies on the other team. Insistence/persistence might help, but I think having well reasoned arguments and the support of trusted persons on the "right team" speak up about the issues might help too.

appplication 3y ago

This statement is basically a metaphor for really any political issue. Modern political discourse is about picking sides and entrenching defenses rather than developing reasonable, nuanced takes on individual issues.

mindslight 3y ago
100% agree. I think it's just gotten much worse recently with the rise of Facebook geniuses and the like. I used to ignore both major parties, vote third party or deliberately not vote, comfortable that they were roughly balanced and would do roughly similar magnitude damage. I can't fully rule out just getting more conservative as I get older, but these days it feels like there's basically one half-sane option where the preaching-to-the-choir issues are at least still mostly the fringes of the party. The last primary election I found myself reading candidate blurbs on dogmatic issues trying to figure out which candidates were merely paying lip service to the expected narratives and wouldn't actually focus on them as a priority.
- michaelmrose 3y ago
  This has basically never been even slightly true. Look at Bush Jr normalizing torture and mass surveillance while starting a war based on false presences that killed a half million people and cost trillions. Basically you threw away your vote because you didn't understand any of the stakes.
  - mindslight 3y ago
    Oh golly gee, I'd never considered that before. Thanks for enlightening me. Of course we have no data about the counterfactual where Gore was president instead. Half of Bush's wars were a direct reaction to external stimulus. The "Patriot" act was a bipartisan thing. And when the team in office did change, it's not like Obama did much of anything to roll back Bush's activities - hence the equivalency of considering both parties not terribly opposed to authoritarianism, just favoring different flavors of it.
    - michaelmrose 3y ago
      Gore was for Afghanistan and against Iraq. It's hard to see him being for that war when he was against it in fact in our timeline Furthermore the outgoing regime has a plan for al-queda which Bush ignored along with all the other obvious clues. You ignored an election and a corrupt drunk became president and half a million people died.
      - mindslight 3y ago
        So Gore would have just sat around twiddling his thumbs and not doing anything that Bush didn't do? That's the part you're ignoring. FWIW that particular election I voted third party. And "show support for this bad candidate if you don't want to suffer this even worse candidate" is exactly the dynamic I reject, especially when the other tribe is doing the exact same thing with the candidates reversed. Also I was in a state that consistently goes one way, so pragmatic consequentialist arguments carry even less weight.
        michaelmrose 3y ago
        There is no reason to believe that Gore who contemporaneously expressed support for a different strategy would have followed the exact same track as Bush. You can't actually reject that dynamic we are stuck with it until we fix it.
        3y ago

friend_and_foe 3y ago

Well the only choice you have is to not play that game. Opposition to valid criticism will take advantage of this and put the quacks front and center. The only choice we have is to ignore the quacks and call out anyone trying to equate us with them.

mindslight 3y ago
In the context of technical discussions about the insecure designs of voting systems based on machines, sure. But how does "not playing the game" work in the context of getting the larger public to care about the real issues, or even just getting election officials to? It seems like the whole dynamic increases the power of election officials to circle the wagons and insist "we're secure, trust us".
- friend_and_foe 3y ago
  Well my point in general is that often, when bringing up contentious topics (and everything is contentious nowadays) you can't let people browbeat or shame you into shutting your mouth. That's what I mean by not playing the game. Don't let them trot out the quacks or otherwise get you to shut up about it and take their side.
  - mindslight 3y ago
    It's not about getting "browbeaten or shamed", but rather whether it makes sense to apply energy to a certain topic at the expense of other topics, and how legitimate criticism gets abused to fuel illegitimate pop culture nonsense. If I were a voting machine researcher or cryptographic voting was my hobby horse, my goal would still be to talk about voting despite the political circus. But rather I'm just a security generalist talking about these things casually. I can choose to spend effort talking about voting, or I can avoid this topic and spend my effort on topics that are more productive.
- autoexec 3y ago
  > But how does "not playing the game" work in the context of getting the larger public to care about the real issues, or even just getting election officials to? On the plus side, there's already a large fraction of the larger public concerned about election safety. They might be worried about a lot of imaginary problems, but they can still be motivated to push back against electronic voting machines which is a win for addressing the real issues. Election officials are already highly incentivized to make elections appear fair and transparent. That too can be leveraged to push back against electronic voting machines. The trick is making sure the people who aren't conspiracy nut jobs aren't afraid to listen to and address the very real concerns with these devices for fear of being lumped in with the crazies on the other team. Insistence/persistence might help, but I think having well reasoned arguments and the support of trusted persons on the "right team" speak up about the issues might help too.