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It's the most important time in human history to protest/fight unchecked power because it's likely the last era of humanity that we are going to be able to. We

It's the most important time in human history to protest/fight unchecked power because it's likely the last era of humanity that we are going to be able to. We are getting to the point where the technology that fuels oppression, including extremely pervasive surveillance, privatized intelligence services with no oversight, scalable AI agents that do as they are told, and crowd "maiming" or other forceful dispersal techniques are growing past the ability to resist them. Wars historically happened under conditions where people died but the planet was largely left in tact, but we now have 3 countries with the ability to erase entire cities or make the world functionally uninhabitable by humans, which absolutely changes the calculus of war. If you do not have nukes your sovereignty is questionable. Likewise if the tools to put down crowds, find saboteurs, and weed out dissent is perfected, meaningful dissent can only be expressed through withdrawal and there is no final check on abuses of power where any, instead of some, of the "checkers" of power are left in tact. Anti-dissent technology has the potential for a nuclear moment that fundamentally changes the calculus of protest and I think AI is very much potentially that.

cmrdporcupine 2y ago
Was expressing this fear to my wife and kids the other day. Ubiquitous cameras everywhere (like in the UK for many years) and other surveillance technology has always been a concern but had scaling limits -- but when you combine it now with the cheap ease of machine learning technologies we have a serious problem. And then consider drones, mobile devices. And then mass disinformation and/or disruption via LLMs. As a long time advocate of old school mass action, and a believe in active protest movements as part of a healthy democracy, I have a strong feeling of unease. I've had it since about 9/11, but it's now really bad. e.g. if you know, with certainty, that heading out to a protest could lead to your instant termination from your job because a drone passed over and took a photo and identified all 100,000 people in the crowd instantly.. would you still go? Or if having been identified, some malevolent actor could just turn around and mass produce fake content from you and others in the crowd, to discredit you? Shivers.
- archagon 2y ago
  AI also has the potential to detect your every unique tic in a way that humans would be incapable of doing. You could be masked but your gait and other body movements will give you away, or at least place you in a statistically likely pool of suspects. "Walk without rhythm and it won't attract the worm."
  - wickedwiesel 2y ago
    Anti Walking recognition techniques have been under development for decades though.. https://youtu.be/iV2ViNJFZC8?feature=shared https://youtu.be/iV2ViNJFZC8?feature=shared
- anal_reactor 2y ago
  > e.g. if you know, with certainty, that heading out to a protest could lead to your instant termination from your job because a drone passed over and took a photo and identified all 100,000 people in the crowd instantly.. would you still go The funny thing is that most people see this as a feature rather than a bug. Before the 2024 election the policies of most surveillance platforms roughly matched the culture of upper-middle-class Californians, so the argument was "if abusive technology is used to shut down opinions I don't like, I don't see a problem with that". Good luck explaining why such an attitude is a problem.
  - hayst4ck 2y ago
    "If guns are used to shut down crime, I don't see a problem with that." Is kind of a cogent argument. In this philosophically exaggerated isomorphism, you seem to be implying that either criminals and crime fighters should both be equally armed or that crime is largely subjective and therefore enforcement is wrong. It seems like you're ultimately arguing for anarchy (nobody should have abusive technology -- guns), and therefore no institutions are worth protecting with force. It seems equivalent to believing that everyone will respect the commons in the tragedy of the commons without an enforcing mechanism. Regardless of how you answer, you have run headlong into the paradox of tolerance, and the problem of what to do when people violate the social contract (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract), which is at the very core of what this country was founded on. What "opinions I don't like" are you referring to? It's also worth reflecting on that you're writing on a platform where shutting down opinions you don't like is a major part of it, in order moderate extremism and promote curiosity.
PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
>it's likely the last era of humanity No. Just no. No matter what what the thing is. It just isn't. That's not a reason to NOT protest/fight unchecked power. It just isn't the reason to do it.
- jackyinger 2y ago
  That is a pretty disingenuous quotation, you cut it mid sentence destroying the context: > It's the most important time in human history to protest/fight unchecked power because it's likely the last era of humanity that we are going to be able to.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    I cut the context because the context doesn't matter. Anyone making the claim that this likely the last era of humanity that anything is just wrong. The future (even just the future of humanity) is longer and weirder and wilder and more filled with unknowns than anyone alive now can imagine. This is not the last era of humanity that anything. We should still be protesting/fighting unchecked power.
    - immibis 2y ago
      There have been many last eras of humanity of things. The last era of gas lighting (lighting powered by gas, not the manipulation tactic). The last era of information being passed down orally. The last era of monarchs. The last era of human computers. I understand that you are saying there are no last eras of anything so this can't be the last era of something, and that's incorrect.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
        The post I was replying to was not worded as "the last era of X". It was worded as "the last era of humanity". Certainly things, practices, places, peoples, beliefs come and go. Humanity likely will end at some point, but that's not about to happen in any predictable way in the currently foreseeable future.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> it's likely the last era of humanity that we are going to be able to Athenians were saying this in respect of writing.
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  I don't think they were?
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > don't think they were? Yes [1]. [1] https://fs.blog/an-old-argument-against-writing/ https://fs.blog/an-old-argument-against-writing/
    - mitthrowaway2 2y ago
      I'm very familiar with that argument, it's almost a trope at this point; however it is completely logically unrelated to the OP's take. Unless you think hayst4ck was lamenting the plight of the dictators who have it too easy these days and won't learn to properly internalize the fine essence of clearing peaceful protests the old-fashioned way, when it needed riot shields and teargas?
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > it is completely logically unrelated to the OP's take The point is people have been arguing that their era is the last for freedom because after the invention of writing or phalanxes or cannons or blue-water navies or industrial warfare or nuclear weapons or AI and drones the powerful will have all the chips. It's not true, and you'll almost always find a balancing meme around how those same technologies are going to empower anarchists. Drones, AI and all of the aforementioned technologies make projecting power easier. That says nothing about who holds that power. The same surveillance tools that make identifying protesters easier also make e.g. determining where particular riot police live possible.
AtlasBarfed 2y ago
And the fact that authoritarianism is on the rise everywhere means the ruling oligarchs KNOW it. The silicon valley elite are practically going insane over the prospect of total authoritarian control of the "lessers" ... of course couched in pure libertarian nonsense about unrestained freedom of the ultrarich to do as they please to them.
knowaveragejoe 2y ago
> but we now have 3 countries with the ability to erase entire cities or make the world functionally uninhabitable by humans Only 3?
Nursie 2y ago
> we now have 3 countries with the ability to erase entire cities or make the world functionally uninhabitable by humans If we're talking the Russia, the US and China then they certainly have the largest arsenals, but there's an order of magnitude difference between the stockpiles of the first two and the third. China doesn't have that many more nukes than France, and only has about double the number of warheads of the UK (though it is questionable how independent from the US the UK's capability is). And then there's Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea. (https://www.icanw.org/nuclear_arsenals https://www.icanw.org/nuclear_arsenals)
- bpodgursky 2y ago
  China is growing their arsenal quickly. And frankly, more of their warheads may actually work than Russia's.
  - Nursie 2y ago
    Are they? I'm not especially up on this stuff, but I haven't seen much about their nuclear arsenal lately. It's not that I doubt you - it would be entirely consistent with their general move to throwing their weight around, sending their warships provocatively near to other nations etc etc. Even so, when we have a distribution that's roughly - 5k, 5k, 400, 300, 200, 200, 150, 90, 30 - it seems a little odd to draw the line of who could make the planet uninhabitable after the 400!
- defrost 2y ago
  Chinese nuclear weapons, 2025 from: Nuclear Notebook, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ~ Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, Mackenzie Knight | March 12, 2025 The modernization of China’s nuclear arsenal has both accelerated and expanded in recent years. In this issue of the Nuclear Notebook, we estimate that China now possesses approximately 600 nuclear warheads, with more in production to arm future delivery systems. China is believed to have the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal among the nine nuclear-armed states; it is the only Party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons that is significantly increasing its nuclear arsenal. * https://thebulletin.org/premium/2025-03/chinese-nuclear-weapons-2025/ https://thebulletin.org/premium/2025-03/chinese-nuclear-weap... Also, the threshold laid out above was "erase an entire city" OR "make planet unihabitable". Any nation or group with a first gen atomic weapon can erase a city .. exercising that ability can potentially lead to a greater nuclear exchange between others, particularly if it's unclear what happened and what might be about to happen.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> we now have 3 countries with the ability to erase entire cities or make the world functionally uninhabitable by humans Nuclear war is horrible enough without requiring hyperbole. Each of the U.S., Russia and China have the ability to functionally end industrial civlisation as we know it. None has the power to make the Earth uninhabitable by humans (outside hypothetical asteroid redirect capabilities).
- hayst4ck 2y ago
  Admiral Rickover, the father of the American nuclear navy, testified to congress that he thought we would probably destroy ourselves and hardly anyone is more expert than he was. Senator PROXMIRE. What do you think is the prospect, then, of nuclear war? Admiral RICKOVER. I think we will probably destroy ourselves. So what difference will it make? Some new species will arise eventually; it might be wiser than we are. https://www.jec.senate.gov/reports/97th%20Congress/Economics%20of%20Defense%20Policy%20-%20Adm.%20H.%20G.%20Rickover%20Part%20I%20(1110).pdf https://www.jec.senate.gov/reports/97th%20Congress/Economics...
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    Rickover said that in 1982, four years before our global nuclear stockpile peaked at 70,000 warheads [1]. Today, that number is closer to 12,000 [2]. If we'd continued accumulating nukes at the rate we were in 1982, yes, we might today have the power to render the Earth uninhabitable to human life. [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2968/062004017 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2968/062004017 [2] https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-weapons https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-weapons
cnotv 2y ago
I think this is the last chance for the people in power to stop messing around before US, the people with knowledge, get pissed off and take them down with force, using the technology WE make for THEM.
- hayst4ck 2y ago
  They already know words are meaningless and don't count for anything. Democrats have been trying to use words to get their way or even compromise and republicans fully understand they don't have to pay attention to them at all. Threats are laughable. If democrats had any power they would have used it. Their inaction is proof of their impotence. Words don't matter, only actions matter. "upvotes don't count." A street presence can barely be mustered. Also if you start learning about history, you'll learn that "intellectuals" are the first people totalitarians crack down in precisely because of this threat you just made. So by the time you realize you need to make good on your threat, chances are it will be too late. Don't read about the Khmer Rouge killing fields or the Indonesian "communist" purge if you want to have a good day. American exceptionalism is fueling a "can't happen here" attitude that's fueling people's denial about our many potential futures. Inaction means that we aren't influencing what that future is. We are at someone else's whims. History doesn't tell you what will happen, but it tells you what can happen. You're saying right now you're speaking softly, but carrying a big stick, so they better listen. I don't think you're carrying one, and the republicans purging the old guard and replacing them with loyalists don't think you are either. You're just speaking softly. We all seem to be.
  - red-iron-pine 2y ago
    to paraphrase another person: if you're posting it online on a public social media channel, it doesn't matter. the stuff that's going to change the government, for the better or worse, is going to get the FBI and Secret Service on you, and you're not saying on that on the front page of reddit. every twitter meme that makes the rounds, every sneering HN post is a sign of impotence. if there was real opposition DOGE would be afraid to go to offices. the best the US Dems can do is spray painting a few Tesla offices (save for one in Oregon that had some bullet holes, done well after closing). The Jan 6th rioters were fascist rubes, but at least they had the balls to go.

cmrdporcupine 2y ago

Was expressing this fear to my wife and kids the other day. Ubiquitous cameras everywhere (like in the UK for many years) and other surveillance technology has always been a concern but had scaling limits -- but when you combine it now with the cheap ease of machine learning technologies we have a serious problem. And then consider drones, mobile devices. And then mass disinformation and/or disruption via LLMs. As a long time advocate of old school mass action, and a believe in active protest movements as part of a healthy democracy, I have a strong feeling of unease. I've had it since about 9/11, but it's now really bad. e.g. if you know, with certainty, that heading out to a protest could lead to your instant termination from your job because a drone passed over and took a photo and identified all 100,000 people in the crowd instantly.. would you still go? Or if having been identified, some malevolent actor could just turn around and mass produce fake content from you and others in the crowd, to discredit you? Shivers.

archagon 2y ago
AI also has the potential to detect your every unique tic in a way that humans would be incapable of doing. You could be masked but your gait and other body movements will give you away, or at least place you in a statistically likely pool of suspects. "Walk without rhythm and it won't attract the worm."
- wickedwiesel 2y ago
  Anti Walking recognition techniques have been under development for decades though.. https://youtu.be/iV2ViNJFZC8?feature=shared https://youtu.be/iV2ViNJFZC8?feature=shared
anal_reactor 2y ago
> e.g. if you know, with certainty, that heading out to a protest could lead to your instant termination from your job because a drone passed over and took a photo and identified all 100,000 people in the crowd instantly.. would you still go The funny thing is that most people see this as a feature rather than a bug. Before the 2024 election the policies of most surveillance platforms roughly matched the culture of upper-middle-class Californians, so the argument was "if abusive technology is used to shut down opinions I don't like, I don't see a problem with that". Good luck explaining why such an attitude is a problem.
- hayst4ck 2y ago
  "If guns are used to shut down crime, I don't see a problem with that." Is kind of a cogent argument. In this philosophically exaggerated isomorphism, you seem to be implying that either criminals and crime fighters should both be equally armed or that crime is largely subjective and therefore enforcement is wrong. It seems like you're ultimately arguing for anarchy (nobody should have abusive technology -- guns), and therefore no institutions are worth protecting with force. It seems equivalent to believing that everyone will respect the commons in the tragedy of the commons without an enforcing mechanism. Regardless of how you answer, you have run headlong into the paradox of tolerance, and the problem of what to do when people violate the social contract (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract), which is at the very core of what this country was founded on. What "opinions I don't like" are you referring to? It's also worth reflecting on that you're writing on a platform where shutting down opinions you don't like is a major part of it, in order moderate extremism and promote curiosity.

PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago

>it's likely the last era of humanity No. Just no. No matter what what the thing is. It just isn't. That's not a reason to NOT protest/fight unchecked power. It just isn't the reason to do it.

jackyinger 2y ago
That is a pretty disingenuous quotation, you cut it mid sentence destroying the context: > It's the most important time in human history to protest/fight unchecked power because it's likely the last era of humanity that we are going to be able to.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  I cut the context because the context doesn't matter. Anyone making the claim that this likely the last era of humanity that anything is just wrong. The future (even just the future of humanity) is longer and weirder and wilder and more filled with unknowns than anyone alive now can imagine. This is not the last era of humanity that anything. We should still be protesting/fighting unchecked power.
  - immibis 2y ago
    There have been many last eras of humanity of things. The last era of gas lighting (lighting powered by gas, not the manipulation tactic). The last era of information being passed down orally. The last era of monarchs. The last era of human computers. I understand that you are saying there are no last eras of anything so this can't be the last era of something, and that's incorrect.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
      The post I was replying to was not worded as "the last era of X". It was worded as "the last era of humanity". Certainly things, practices, places, peoples, beliefs come and go. Humanity likely will end at some point, but that's not about to happen in any predictable way in the currently foreseeable future.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> it's likely the last era of humanity that we are going to be able to Athenians were saying this in respect of writing.

mitthrowaway2 2y ago
I don't think they were?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > don't think they were? Yes [1]. [1] https://fs.blog/an-old-argument-against-writing/ https://fs.blog/an-old-argument-against-writing/
  - mitthrowaway2 2y ago
    I'm very familiar with that argument, it's almost a trope at this point; however it is completely logically unrelated to the OP's take. Unless you think hayst4ck was lamenting the plight of the dictators who have it too easy these days and won't learn to properly internalize the fine essence of clearing peaceful protests the old-fashioned way, when it needed riot shields and teargas?
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > it is completely logically unrelated to the OP's take The point is people have been arguing that their era is the last for freedom because after the invention of writing or phalanxes or cannons or blue-water navies or industrial warfare or nuclear weapons or AI and drones the powerful will have all the chips. It's not true, and you'll almost always find a balancing meme around how those same technologies are going to empower anarchists. Drones, AI and all of the aforementioned technologies make projecting power easier. That says nothing about who holds that power. The same surveillance tools that make identifying protesters easier also make e.g. determining where particular riot police live possible.

AtlasBarfed 2y ago

And the fact that authoritarianism is on the rise everywhere means the ruling oligarchs KNOW it. The silicon valley elite are practically going insane over the prospect of total authoritarian control of the "lessers" ... of course couched in pure libertarian nonsense about unrestained freedom of the ultrarich to do as they please to them.

knowaveragejoe 2y ago

> but we now have 3 countries with the ability to erase entire cities or make the world functionally uninhabitable by humans Only 3?

Nursie 2y ago

> we now have 3 countries with the ability to erase entire cities or make the world functionally uninhabitable by humans If we're talking the Russia, the US and China then they certainly have the largest arsenals, but there's an order of magnitude difference between the stockpiles of the first two and the third. China doesn't have that many more nukes than France, and only has about double the number of warheads of the UK (though it is questionable how independent from the US the UK's capability is). And then there's Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea. (https://www.icanw.org/nuclear_arsenals https://www.icanw.org/nuclear_arsenals)

bpodgursky 2y ago
China is growing their arsenal quickly. And frankly, more of their warheads may actually work than Russia's.
- Nursie 2y ago
  Are they? I'm not especially up on this stuff, but I haven't seen much about their nuclear arsenal lately. It's not that I doubt you - it would be entirely consistent with their general move to throwing their weight around, sending their warships provocatively near to other nations etc etc. Even so, when we have a distribution that's roughly - 5k, 5k, 400, 300, 200, 200, 150, 90, 30 - it seems a little odd to draw the line of who could make the planet uninhabitable after the 400!
defrost 2y ago
Chinese nuclear weapons, 2025 from: Nuclear Notebook, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ~ Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, Mackenzie Knight | March 12, 2025 The modernization of China’s nuclear arsenal has both accelerated and expanded in recent years. In this issue of the Nuclear Notebook, we estimate that China now possesses approximately 600 nuclear warheads, with more in production to arm future delivery systems. China is believed to have the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal among the nine nuclear-armed states; it is the only Party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons that is significantly increasing its nuclear arsenal. * https://thebulletin.org/premium/2025-03/chinese-nuclear-weapons-2025/ https://thebulletin.org/premium/2025-03/chinese-nuclear-weap... Also, the threshold laid out above was "erase an entire city" OR "make planet unihabitable". Any nation or group with a first gen atomic weapon can erase a city .. exercising that ability can potentially lead to a greater nuclear exchange between others, particularly if it's unclear what happened and what might be about to happen.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> we now have 3 countries with the ability to erase entire cities or make the world functionally uninhabitable by humans Nuclear war is horrible enough without requiring hyperbole. Each of the U.S., Russia and China have the ability to functionally end industrial civlisation as we know it. None has the power to make the Earth uninhabitable by humans (outside hypothetical asteroid redirect capabilities).

hayst4ck 2y ago
Admiral Rickover, the father of the American nuclear navy, testified to congress that he thought we would probably destroy ourselves and hardly anyone is more expert than he was. Senator PROXMIRE. What do you think is the prospect, then, of nuclear war? Admiral RICKOVER. I think we will probably destroy ourselves. So what difference will it make? Some new species will arise eventually; it might be wiser than we are. https://www.jec.senate.gov/reports/97th%20Congress/Economics%20of%20Defense%20Policy%20-%20Adm.%20H.%20G.%20Rickover%20Part%20I%20(1110).pdf https://www.jec.senate.gov/reports/97th%20Congress/Economics...
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  Rickover said that in 1982, four years before our global nuclear stockpile peaked at 70,000 warheads [1]. Today, that number is closer to 12,000 [2]. If we'd continued accumulating nukes at the rate we were in 1982, yes, we might today have the power to render the Earth uninhabitable to human life. [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2968/062004017 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2968/062004017 [2] https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-weapons https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-weapons

cnotv 2y ago

I think this is the last chance for the people in power to stop messing around before US, the people with knowledge, get pissed off and take them down with force, using the technology WE make for THEM.

hayst4ck 2y ago
They already know words are meaningless and don't count for anything. Democrats have been trying to use words to get their way or even compromise and republicans fully understand they don't have to pay attention to them at all. Threats are laughable. If democrats had any power they would have used it. Their inaction is proof of their impotence. Words don't matter, only actions matter. "upvotes don't count." A street presence can barely be mustered. Also if you start learning about history, you'll learn that "intellectuals" are the first people totalitarians crack down in precisely because of this threat you just made. So by the time you realize you need to make good on your threat, chances are it will be too late. Don't read about the Khmer Rouge killing fields or the Indonesian "communist" purge if you want to have a good day. American exceptionalism is fueling a "can't happen here" attitude that's fueling people's denial about our many potential futures. Inaction means that we aren't influencing what that future is. We are at someone else's whims. History doesn't tell you what will happen, but it tells you what can happen. You're saying right now you're speaking softly, but carrying a big stick, so they better listen. I don't think you're carrying one, and the republicans purging the old guard and replacing them with loyalists don't think you are either. You're just speaking softly. We all seem to be.
- red-iron-pine 2y ago
  to paraphrase another person: if you're posting it online on a public social media channel, it doesn't matter. the stuff that's going to change the government, for the better or worse, is going to get the FBI and Secret Service on you, and you're not saying on that on the front page of reddit. every twitter meme that makes the rounds, every sneering HN post is a sign of impotence. if there was real opposition DOGE would be afraid to go to offices. the best the US Dems can do is spray painting a few Tesla offices (save for one in Oregon that had some bullet holes, done well after closing). The Jan 6th rioters were fascist rubes, but at least they had the balls to go.