11 ms·

I think there are qualitative differences that arise from incremental, quantitative changes in privacy. Sure, in the 1970s the cops could follow you around any

I think there are qualitative differences that arise from incremental, quantitative changes in privacy. Sure, in the 1970s the cops could follow you around any time you were out in public. But they needed 6+ cops to provide round-the-clock surveillance, with an annual cost in the high six figures. So the average citizen's privacy was protected not by law or high-minded ideals about privacy, but by simple numbers. There weren't enough cops to follow even 0.1% of the population. But in the modern age of smartphones and license plate recognition and credit reference agencies? I think there's a strong argument to be made that we need new laws and new rights to reflect the new reality, where tracking people around the clock is several orders of magnitude cheaper.

mistrial9 2y ago
as usual, a small group of effective people with strong leadership have already acted on this -- in the opposite direction you are suggesting.. Palantir and others have built, monetized and promoted exactly the opposite, and thousands of schlubs in the ad business went along with it.. the USA has changed
infogulch 2y ago
100%. I like this way of describing the effect: A large enough change in scale manifests as a change in kind. As a topical example, SpaceX is trying to reduce launch costs by 20x with Starship, which just had its 4th test flight this morning. Some don't see the point: there's not nearly enough demand to launch thousands of tons into orbit per year. But 20x is a lot cheaper, so they're banking on induced demand expanding the kinds of projects that send things to space.
- ben_w 2y ago
  They're also planning to go to Mars, and Starship is the smallest vehicle that could enable that on the scale desired. It's certainly a gamble that there will be a million people willing to spend $200k to do this, which… well, I think it's not entirely impossible, as the idea was something I liked until Musk's own personality put me off the idea of being stuck on a planet with only his sycophants for company. Which is a bit of a shame, but still, I'd give it 50-50 odds of being a product-market fit just for that.
  - rurp 2y ago
    We are so incredibly far from being able to build a sustainable colony on Mars, especially at a realistic cost, that it makes no sense as a product goal. It is a fun thought experiment and an inspiring goal for many though, which I think is the real motivation for focusing on it so much. Elon is undoubtedly great at getting folks to commit money and talent to his companies, and talking about plausible-ish things like becoming a multiplanetary species is one way he accomplishes that.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      > We are so incredibly far from being able to build a sustainable colony on Mars, especially at a realistic cost, that it makes no sense as a product goal. "Dying on Mars, just not on impact" is Musk's final bucket list item. Almost everything else he does is to enable that vision, either directly by creating the tech, or indirectly because he knows this is expensive. He may well fail, nobody's ever done this and we don't know how many surprises there will be. But the ship working well enough for $200k tickets is plausible. (The idea that banks will give people loans for that, not so much: without multi-planetary trade, nothing that happens on Mars can repay a debt on Earth, and I don't see Mars as having any special economic benefits to make such trade worthwhile).
      - Planktonne 2y ago
        > Almost everything else he does is to enable that vision This is just marketing hype.
        ben_w 2y ago
        He uses hype as a tool to make money, yes. That money is a thing he needs for the very expensive bucket list item.
- jazzyjackson 2y ago
  "quantity has a quality of its own"
- habosa 2y ago
  Funny, because Elon has said in the past he thinks induced demand is an “irrational theory”: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1211076829395738626 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1211076829395738626
  - infogulch 2y ago
    That is funny!
  - Mathnerd314 2y ago
    Wikipedia splits induced demand into "latent demand" and "generated demand". I think Elon has no trouble with the idea of latent demand and that by lowering the costs of space travel more will do it. The issue is generated demand, it is a bit irrational to think that a person with no desire for space travel in the first place will say "oh look, space travel is cheap, let's make a satellite". The general story is startups find market fit or they die. You have to find the customers, it is not like you make a product and everyone changes their desires to conform.
    - diffxx 2y ago
      It's not totally irrational. There is a reason for the phrase monkey see, monkey do.
    - astrange 2y ago
      > it is a bit irrational to think that a person with no desire for space travel in the first place will say "oh look, space travel is cheap, let's make a satellite". They won't make a satellite but they will demand things which middlemen can solve with a satellite. > You have to find the customers, it is not like you make a product and everyone changes their desires to conform. Once smartphones were invented, people found within themselves the desire for a smartphone. Although there's a lot of debate about this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say's_law
  - fsckboy 2y ago
    Elon is correct. So-called "induced demand" is just a dumbing down of the more fundamental notion of supply and demand, for people who aren't comfortable thinking about math, calculus, dynamic equilibria, etc. If you read the wikipedia article on it, you'll see they constantly describe it in terms of supply and demand. The term was originally "defined" in 1999 in a paper that was not written by economists. It's not an economics term. in terms of transportation planning, a better way to think about it is, "misery distributes itself throughout the system".
Cheer2171 2y ago
The Stasi in Cold War East Germany reportedly had 1 informant for every 6.5 people, or 15% of the population informing on their neighbors. That's the kind of scale that is needed for total analogue surveillance.
- red_admiral 2y ago
  And then the CCP looked at what the CCCP did, thought "that's cute" and optimised it until they'd invented the social credit score. It turns out digital is the way to go for scale.
  - WaffleIronMaker 2y ago
    I get where you're coming from, but I think it's important to keep in mind that there is no centralized score for Chinese citizens, and that such claims are often sensationalized. [1] However, I'd agree that China is a good example of high degrees of surveillance. [1] https://merics.org/en/comment/chinas-social-credit-score-untangling-myth-reality https://merics.org/en/comment/chinas-social-credit-score-unt...
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      > I love how every American is so ready to jump on the China hate train for their social credit score thing when it's literally the same goddamned thing as a credit score in America, with like, some added shit about public shaming The “added shit about public shaming” is not a trivial issue, and also Americans aren't particularly fond of actual credit scores or the broader credit reporting system they are part of, either. Like, there is nothing hypocritical about viewing extra negatively another society that has taken a disliked element of your own and made it worse.
      - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
parpfish 2y ago
i started struggling with this years ago with the scale up of face recognition software. nobody thought there was a problem when you stuck up a wanted posted and asked a community 'do you know who this is'? but if you stick that poster into a computer and ask, all of a sudden people complain that it's a privacy issue. i really struggle to see how they're different and the only thing i've been able to some up with is that people feel the only counterweight to abuses and biases of policing is to build in random inefficiencies
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  A wanted poster might have some people watching faces more closely, but they aren't compiling a history of every face they saw and when and where they saw it, and sending that in to law enforcement where it can be combined with other histories and used to generate suspect lists based on coincidences.
  - shadowgovt 2y ago
    Right, that's just saying "we prefer built-in random inefficiencies" with extra steps. The heart of investigation is pulling coincidences into an actionable pattern (which is different from trial and conviction, which relies on far more than coincidences). Given how much crime currently goes uninvestigated because the backlog is so high, is automating some of the coincidence-sniffing a bad thing?
    - s1gsegv 2y ago
      See my other comment in this thread, but I’d venture to say yes. Changing the efficiency of enforcement naturally will throw something else in the economy out of balance, particularly if the money spent to increase confidence-sniffing is not being well dispersed into the local economy. If in the past you’d have to hire more local policemen, they’d need more police vans made, they’d need more uniforms made, more wear on police vans means more work for the mechanics, etc etc etc, now you just pay Protector Co. once for your new surveillance software. Now you haven’t dissuaded people from crime with good plentiful local jobs (as a gross oversimplification, but hopefully you can see this would still apply to a more realistically complex economy)
brandall10 2y ago
FWIW, China's social credit system first arose from trying to replicate what we had in the US with our credit agencies. With things like Project2025 being embraced, it's horrifying what the future may hold if checks and balances aren't in place.
- hnthrowaway0328 2y ago
  [flagged]
delusional 2y ago
Looking past the cost, it also used to be a huge hassle. If I wanted to know what you were doing, I'd have to hire 6 guys sure, but I'd also need to manage them. Plan out their shifts, handle payroll, and their internal disputes. The practical reality of surveillance meant it HAD to be a conspiracy. The risk of someone talking was huge. Now it's easily hidden. Somebody can monitor you just by accessing information systems without the people collecting the data even knowing. You can now do the surveillance alone, no pesky accomplices needed.
cortesoft 2y ago
I also think the laws need to change with changing technology. Take something like speeding. We have speed limits and fines set based on the idea that cops won't catch most speeders and that cops can give leeway based on the situation (driving 10 mph over the speed limit on an empty straight highway is different than driving 10 mph over the speed limit weaving in heavy traffic). We set a relatively low max speed and a high penalty, because you are only going to be pulled over a fraction of the time. Then we roll out speed cameras which can catch people EVERY time they speed. It doesn't make sense to have the limits as low and the fines as high when every single person that goes over the limit can be fined. We have to tune the laws for perfect enforcement. This is true for a lot of laws... most are designed based on the enforcement capabilities of the time. We need to adjust for technology.
- lancesells 2y ago
  > We set a relatively low max speed and a high penalty I'm in the US and speeding is a leading cause of death. Driving deaths are increasing so I don't know if having less or no cameras is a good thing.
  - bongodongobob 2y ago
    It most certainly is not. Plus, I'd imagine this is more for accidents "in town" rather than on straight interstate highways where these cameras are normally set up. Take out alcohol and poor conditions and it's basically a non-issue. https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/motor-vehicle-safety-issues/speeding/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/motor-vehicle-safe...
  - jgeada 2y ago
    Not sure if speeding is the leading cause of death or just gets the blame. The standard of driving in the US is abysmal and getting worse. US rates of accidents and deaths are much much higher than anywhere in Europe. In my state, everyone speeds 10-15mph above the posted limits on highways. But the people that cause everyone around them to maneuver aren't the speeders, it is the people driving the posted limits and creating a bottleneck on the highway. And the number of rear end collisions caused by distracted drivers looking at screens instead of paying attention to their driving is the type of driving incident I see most often.
andai 2y ago
I call this phenomenon One Fed Per Child. Now we can have a synthetic government agent monitor every man, woman and child on the planet. If we don't have that already, we soon will...
bashinator 2y ago
Any sufficiently quantitative change becomes a qualitative change.
Almondsetat 2y ago
>There weren't enough cops to follow even 0.1% of the population. This is why every government serious on surveillance would turn its citizens into snitches

mistrial9 2y ago

as usual, a small group of effective people with strong leadership have already acted on this -- in the opposite direction you are suggesting.. Palantir and others have built, monetized and promoted exactly the opposite, and thousands of schlubs in the ad business went along with it.. the USA has changed

infogulch 2y ago

100%. I like this way of describing the effect: A large enough change in scale manifests as a change in kind. As a topical example, SpaceX is trying to reduce launch costs by 20x with Starship, which just had its 4th test flight this morning. Some don't see the point: there's not nearly enough demand to launch thousands of tons into orbit per year. But 20x is a lot cheaper, so they're banking on induced demand expanding the kinds of projects that send things to space.

ben_w 2y ago
They're also planning to go to Mars, and Starship is the smallest vehicle that could enable that on the scale desired. It's certainly a gamble that there will be a million people willing to spend $200k to do this, which… well, I think it's not entirely impossible, as the idea was something I liked until Musk's own personality put me off the idea of being stuck on a planet with only his sycophants for company. Which is a bit of a shame, but still, I'd give it 50-50 odds of being a product-market fit just for that.
- rurp 2y ago
  We are so incredibly far from being able to build a sustainable colony on Mars, especially at a realistic cost, that it makes no sense as a product goal. It is a fun thought experiment and an inspiring goal for many though, which I think is the real motivation for focusing on it so much. Elon is undoubtedly great at getting folks to commit money and talent to his companies, and talking about plausible-ish things like becoming a multiplanetary species is one way he accomplishes that.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    > We are so incredibly far from being able to build a sustainable colony on Mars, especially at a realistic cost, that it makes no sense as a product goal. "Dying on Mars, just not on impact" is Musk's final bucket list item. Almost everything else he does is to enable that vision, either directly by creating the tech, or indirectly because he knows this is expensive. He may well fail, nobody's ever done this and we don't know how many surprises there will be. But the ship working well enough for $200k tickets is plausible. (The idea that banks will give people loans for that, not so much: without multi-planetary trade, nothing that happens on Mars can repay a debt on Earth, and I don't see Mars as having any special economic benefits to make such trade worthwhile).
    - Planktonne 2y ago
      > Almost everything else he does is to enable that vision This is just marketing hype.
      - ben_w 2y ago
        He uses hype as a tool to make money, yes. That money is a thing he needs for the very expensive bucket list item.
jazzyjackson 2y ago
"quantity has a quality of its own"
habosa 2y ago
Funny, because Elon has said in the past he thinks induced demand is an “irrational theory”: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1211076829395738626 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1211076829395738626
- infogulch 2y ago
  That is funny!
- Mathnerd314 2y ago
  Wikipedia splits induced demand into "latent demand" and "generated demand". I think Elon has no trouble with the idea of latent demand and that by lowering the costs of space travel more will do it. The issue is generated demand, it is a bit irrational to think that a person with no desire for space travel in the first place will say "oh look, space travel is cheap, let's make a satellite". The general story is startups find market fit or they die. You have to find the customers, it is not like you make a product and everyone changes their desires to conform.
  - diffxx 2y ago
    It's not totally irrational. There is a reason for the phrase monkey see, monkey do.
  - astrange 2y ago
    > it is a bit irrational to think that a person with no desire for space travel in the first place will say "oh look, space travel is cheap, let's make a satellite". They won't make a satellite but they will demand things which middlemen can solve with a satellite. > You have to find the customers, it is not like you make a product and everyone changes their desires to conform. Once smartphones were invented, people found within themselves the desire for a smartphone. Although there's a lot of debate about this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say's_law
- fsckboy 2y ago
  Elon is correct. So-called "induced demand" is just a dumbing down of the more fundamental notion of supply and demand, for people who aren't comfortable thinking about math, calculus, dynamic equilibria, etc. If you read the wikipedia article on it, you'll see they constantly describe it in terms of supply and demand. The term was originally "defined" in 1999 in a paper that was not written by economists. It's not an economics term. in terms of transportation planning, a better way to think about it is, "misery distributes itself throughout the system".

Cheer2171 2y ago

The Stasi in Cold War East Germany reportedly had 1 informant for every 6.5 people, or 15% of the population informing on their neighbors. That's the kind of scale that is needed for total analogue surveillance.

red_admiral 2y ago
And then the CCP looked at what the CCCP did, thought "that's cute" and optimised it until they'd invented the social credit score. It turns out digital is the way to go for scale.
- WaffleIronMaker 2y ago
  I get where you're coming from, but I think it's important to keep in mind that there is no centralized score for Chinese citizens, and that such claims are often sensationalized. [1] However, I'd agree that China is a good example of high degrees of surveillance. [1] https://merics.org/en/comment/chinas-social-credit-score-untangling-myth-reality https://merics.org/en/comment/chinas-social-credit-score-unt...
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    > I love how every American is so ready to jump on the China hate train for their social credit score thing when it's literally the same goddamned thing as a credit score in America, with like, some added shit about public shaming The “added shit about public shaming” is not a trivial issue, and also Americans aren't particularly fond of actual credit scores or the broader credit reporting system they are part of, either. Like, there is nothing hypocritical about viewing extra negatively another society that has taken a disliked element of your own and made it worse.
    - ToucanLoucan 2y ago

parpfish 2y ago

i started struggling with this years ago with the scale up of face recognition software. nobody thought there was a problem when you stuck up a wanted posted and asked a community 'do you know who this is'? but if you stick that poster into a computer and ask, all of a sudden people complain that it's a privacy issue. i really struggle to see how they're different and the only thing i've been able to some up with is that people feel the only counterweight to abuses and biases of policing is to build in random inefficiencies

SoftTalker 2y ago
A wanted poster might have some people watching faces more closely, but they aren't compiling a history of every face they saw and when and where they saw it, and sending that in to law enforcement where it can be combined with other histories and used to generate suspect lists based on coincidences.
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  Right, that's just saying "we prefer built-in random inefficiencies" with extra steps. The heart of investigation is pulling coincidences into an actionable pattern (which is different from trial and conviction, which relies on far more than coincidences). Given how much crime currently goes uninvestigated because the backlog is so high, is automating some of the coincidence-sniffing a bad thing?
  - s1gsegv 2y ago
    See my other comment in this thread, but I’d venture to say yes. Changing the efficiency of enforcement naturally will throw something else in the economy out of balance, particularly if the money spent to increase confidence-sniffing is not being well dispersed into the local economy. If in the past you’d have to hire more local policemen, they’d need more police vans made, they’d need more uniforms made, more wear on police vans means more work for the mechanics, etc etc etc, now you just pay Protector Co. once for your new surveillance software. Now you haven’t dissuaded people from crime with good plentiful local jobs (as a gross oversimplification, but hopefully you can see this would still apply to a more realistically complex economy)

brandall10 2y ago

FWIW, China's social credit system first arose from trying to replicate what we had in the US with our credit agencies. With things like Project2025 being embraced, it's horrifying what the future may hold if checks and balances aren't in place.

hnthrowaway0328 2y ago
[flagged]

delusional 2y ago

Looking past the cost, it also used to be a huge hassle. If I wanted to know what you were doing, I'd have to hire 6 guys sure, but I'd also need to manage them. Plan out their shifts, handle payroll, and their internal disputes. The practical reality of surveillance meant it HAD to be a conspiracy. The risk of someone talking was huge. Now it's easily hidden. Somebody can monitor you just by accessing information systems without the people collecting the data even knowing. You can now do the surveillance alone, no pesky accomplices needed.

cortesoft 2y ago

I also think the laws need to change with changing technology. Take something like speeding. We have speed limits and fines set based on the idea that cops won't catch most speeders and that cops can give leeway based on the situation (driving 10 mph over the speed limit on an empty straight highway is different than driving 10 mph over the speed limit weaving in heavy traffic). We set a relatively low max speed and a high penalty, because you are only going to be pulled over a fraction of the time. Then we roll out speed cameras which can catch people EVERY time they speed. It doesn't make sense to have the limits as low and the fines as high when every single person that goes over the limit can be fined. We have to tune the laws for perfect enforcement. This is true for a lot of laws... most are designed based on the enforcement capabilities of the time. We need to adjust for technology.

lancesells 2y ago
> We set a relatively low max speed and a high penalty I'm in the US and speeding is a leading cause of death. Driving deaths are increasing so I don't know if having less or no cameras is a good thing.
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  It most certainly is not. Plus, I'd imagine this is more for accidents "in town" rather than on straight interstate highways where these cameras are normally set up. Take out alcohol and poor conditions and it's basically a non-issue. https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/motor-vehicle-safety-issues/speeding/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/motor-vehicle-safe...
- jgeada 2y ago
  Not sure if speeding is the leading cause of death or just gets the blame. The standard of driving in the US is abysmal and getting worse. US rates of accidents and deaths are much much higher than anywhere in Europe. In my state, everyone speeds 10-15mph above the posted limits on highways. But the people that cause everyone around them to maneuver aren't the speeders, it is the people driving the posted limits and creating a bottleneck on the highway. And the number of rear end collisions caused by distracted drivers looking at screens instead of paying attention to their driving is the type of driving incident I see most often.

andai 2y ago

I call this phenomenon One Fed Per Child. Now we can have a synthetic government agent monitor every man, woman and child on the planet. If we don't have that already, we soon will...

bashinator 2y ago

Any sufficiently quantitative change becomes a qualitative change.

Almondsetat 2y ago

>There weren't enough cops to follow even 0.1% of the population. This is why every government serious on surveillance would turn its citizens into snitches