> And how do you know upfront that the mass surveillance is worse than the alternative That's not a real disjunctive. In my current country, where politicians

> And how do you know upfront that the mass surveillance is worse than the alternative That's not a real disjunctive. In my current country, where politicians are accountable and mass surveillance is not (yet) a thing, the country is not run by organized crime, and children and young women are not exploited. But I have lived most of my life in a country with mass surveillance (Cuba. And no, you don't need client-side scanning, a sufficiently high number of police riding bicycles will do just fine.) The chilling effect on public speech and thought has brought untold misery. All politicians are corrupted party-folk chosen from above. Young men and women enthusiastically jump at the opportunity of being sexually exploited for a chance to escape the country. There is the bottom of the dumpster where the slippery slope of totalitarianism takes us. > Cancer is high on my list of problems that cannot be solved, we’re getting older, old age comes with decline of your body, spending money on a lost cause is a huge waste. I would recommend you visit the aforementioned Cuba. A cancer prognosis there is better than it was during the middle ages, but far worse than it is in a first-world country. So, cancer is not unsolvable, it's just that there are different levels of progress across time and places. Same goes for aging, but there we have this cultural brick you have so brightly illustrated that says even trying to do something is a "huge waste".