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Western society today, but it didn't start this way. The nanny state is really only a couple decades old. Government has realized it can take significant powe

by bhawks 2y ago

Western society today, but it didn't start this way. The nanny state is really only a couple decades old. Government has realized it can take significant powers if it can convince a subset of the populace that it is the only way to protect them from some type of harm.

Eisenstein 2y ago
It is possible that the 'nanny state' is both good in some ways and bad in others. You and I benefit in uncountable ways every day from the protections granted by such a system, without realizing it. Nuance is tough. It is easier to find a simple thing to blame and advocate against it. But nothing is simple -- governments are composed of people and those people have inside them conflicting motivations, each person's different than the other -- and most of them are not malicious. The same with business, and with the public. Let's look at issues on their own and not try to categorize everything as part of a black and white choice.
- scarab92 2y ago
  Society benefits from allowing new inventions then banning those that turn out to be harmful, once the harm is clear. The result is that you keep the good inventions and discard the harmful ones. What people are proposing here is to preemptively ban new inventions even when there’s no evidence of harm. It’s not a good idea because while it will stop the bad inventions, it will also stop the good ones.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Eisenstein 2y ago
    There is a concept of 'risk'. Making any choice, yea or nay, comes with risks, and they should be evaluated and acted up as per the risk tolerance of people at the time. You are saying that we should disregard any rational evaluation of potential risks on one side and only choose one option all the time. Is that a logical position to hold?
    - scarab92 2y ago
      No, I’m saying we shouldn’t be so quick to jump to banning things without a clear reason. This thread is full of people suggesting Facebook be banned from behaving this way based on little more than gut-feel. They aren’t even capable of giving a hypothesis for harm this could be harmful.
      - lancesells 2y ago
        And to think if Facebook just let people opt-in we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Harmful or not, did Facebook, who is bringing in billions in profit every three months, really have to do it this way?
left-struck 2y ago
So I live in a nanny state, and I hate the fact that my freedom is restricted. Gun ownership of any kind is all but prohibited, for example. However I really wish the discourse around this stuff would shift a little bit. I want my government to protect me from huge tech companies and the massive infringement on our privacy, community and culture. Like the government should serve the people, both by not restricting the freedoms of individuals too zealously, but also by protecting people from genuine threats that they can’t or won’t protect themselves from, such as social media companies exploiting network effects that make it basically impossible for users to make alternative choices. If you think otherwise please explain it to me because I really, genuinely want to understand.
- scarab92 2y ago
  Most new inventions have good outcomes and bad outcomes. The benefit of letting them play out for a while is that you can see how things ultimately turn out, and cherry pick the aspects that are worth keeping, decide what aspects are worth keeping with changes, and outlaw aspects that are harmful. It’s a natural experiment where you keep the wins, cancel the loses, then repeat the process, making societies iteratively better. If you just pre-emptively ban everything before any significant real world harm is apparent, then you lose the ability to be selective and keep the wins. This is Europe’s big mistake. They’re too eager to ban on gut feel, which means they ban too much, which places their industries at a disadvantage relative to other countries where iterative innovation can continue.
  - left-struck 2y ago
    I dont disagree with what you’re saying in principle. However the Facebook experiment has been going on for decades, with multiple examples of unethical behaviour and a clear lack of any respect for privacy. Same can be said about basically any large tech company
- fallingknife 2y ago
  I just can't get my head around how anyone can think that posting pictures to social media in the first place reflects a desire for privacy or how using my photos as training data is a worse invasion of privacy than allowing millions of people to see them.

by bhawks 2y ago

Eisenstein 2y ago

It is possible that the 'nanny state' is both good in some ways and bad in others. You and I benefit in uncountable ways every day from the protections granted by such a system, without realizing it. Nuance is tough. It is easier to find a simple thing to blame and advocate against it. But nothing is simple -- governments are composed of people and those people have inside them conflicting motivations, each person's different than the other -- and most of them are not malicious. The same with business, and with the public. Let's look at issues on their own and not try to categorize everything as part of a black and white choice.

scarab92 2y ago
Society benefits from allowing new inventions then banning those that turn out to be harmful, once the harm is clear. The result is that you keep the good inventions and discard the harmful ones. What people are proposing here is to preemptively ban new inventions even when there’s no evidence of harm. It’s not a good idea because while it will stop the bad inventions, it will also stop the good ones.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Eisenstein 2y ago
  There is a concept of 'risk'. Making any choice, yea or nay, comes with risks, and they should be evaluated and acted up as per the risk tolerance of people at the time. You are saying that we should disregard any rational evaluation of potential risks on one side and only choose one option all the time. Is that a logical position to hold?
  - scarab92 2y ago
    No, I’m saying we shouldn’t be so quick to jump to banning things without a clear reason. This thread is full of people suggesting Facebook be banned from behaving this way based on little more than gut-feel. They aren’t even capable of giving a hypothesis for harm this could be harmful.
    - lancesells 2y ago
      And to think if Facebook just let people opt-in we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Harmful or not, did Facebook, who is bringing in billions in profit every three months, really have to do it this way?

left-struck 2y ago

So I live in a nanny state, and I hate the fact that my freedom is restricted. Gun ownership of any kind is all but prohibited, for example. However I really wish the discourse around this stuff would shift a little bit. I want my government to protect me from huge tech companies and the massive infringement on our privacy, community and culture. Like the government should serve the people, both by not restricting the freedoms of individuals too zealously, but also by protecting people from genuine threats that they can’t or won’t protect themselves from, such as social media companies exploiting network effects that make it basically impossible for users to make alternative choices. If you think otherwise please explain it to me because I really, genuinely want to understand.

scarab92 2y ago
Most new inventions have good outcomes and bad outcomes. The benefit of letting them play out for a while is that you can see how things ultimately turn out, and cherry pick the aspects that are worth keeping, decide what aspects are worth keeping with changes, and outlaw aspects that are harmful. It’s a natural experiment where you keep the wins, cancel the loses, then repeat the process, making societies iteratively better. If you just pre-emptively ban everything before any significant real world harm is apparent, then you lose the ability to be selective and keep the wins. This is Europe’s big mistake. They’re too eager to ban on gut feel, which means they ban too much, which places their industries at a disadvantage relative to other countries where iterative innovation can continue.
- left-struck 2y ago
  I dont disagree with what you’re saying in principle. However the Facebook experiment has been going on for decades, with multiple examples of unethical behaviour and a clear lack of any respect for privacy. Same can be said about basically any large tech company
fallingknife 2y ago
I just can't get my head around how anyone can think that posting pictures to social media in the first place reflects a desire for privacy or how using my photos as training data is a worse invasion of privacy than allowing millions of people to see them.