4 ms·
People always want high trust societies. They are incredibly hard to create and incredibly easy to destroy. However, once the cameras go up, you will never eve
by pclowes 2mo ago
People always want high trust societies. They are incredibly hard to create and incredibly easy to destroy.
However, once the cameras go up, you will never ever create one there. High trust requires, well, actual trust. You can’t build real trust in a panopticon just a sickly police state facsimile of it.
Society and progress moves at the speed of trust. Without it many uniquely human and beautiful things disappear.
- moate 2mo agoSadly, many people just want to be highly trusted in society (whilst themselves fearing most of the rest of it). It's why we flirt with/fall face first into authoritarianism every few decades.
- mmooss 2mo ago> It's why we flirt with/fall face first into authoritarianism every few decades. Did the US or any advanced democracy "flirt with/fall face first into authoritarianism" a few decades ago?
- rootsudo 2mo agoyes, better dead then red scare and Mccartyism that faded during nixon-regan into more capitalistic freedom when the USSR failed and there was opportunity around the world.
- pjc50 2mo ago9/11 was an incredible shift in attitude.
- moate 2mo agoWe created an extrajudicial prison outside of our borders to house "prisoners too dangerous for the normal court system", created an entirely new surveillance police force, and expanded FISA in response to 9/11. So if that's not asking authoritarianism if they'd like to go out for drinks, we have very VERY different views on freedom. Also, I really don't care about other "advanced democracies", we're talking about America and it's not really relevant to my points.
- mmooss 2mo agoI'm not talking about now. You said "every few decades" - when has it happened before? I think "every few decades" normalizes what is a unique situation in US history. > I really don't care about other "advanced democracies", we're talking about America You probably need to specify that on HN; you could be writing from anywhere about anywhere.
- watwut 2mo agoAuthoritarian are not high trust. And people who call for authoritarian societies are not calling for high trust. They call for control and subjugation.
- SXX 2mo agoRules for thee, not for me. Whoever call for it usually thinks they are rich or influencial enough to never ever be affected. They really do believe in it right until they take a flight out of some office window.
- LtWorf 2mo agoOne fascist guy who took part on the murder of a socialist MP when fascism had just gotten in power was jewish. Ended up being killed by nazis later on. Yep people really delude themselves.
- DoneWithAllThat 2mo agoThe idea that surveillance undermines high trust societies seems insane to me. Widespread petty crime, lack of shared cultural norms and traditions, lacking of missing social reinforcement of expectations of a society - those are what prevent high trust societies from forming. I consider those things a much worse problem then Flock cameras.
- nemothekid 2mo ago>The idea that surveillance undermines high trust societies seems insane to me. Only because, I'm betting, that you view street surveillance as something that binds others, but not yourself. I doubt you would make this argument for any other kind of surveillance. If Microsoft were to record everything you did on your PC, would you consider Windows the "high trust" OS community vs Linux? Of if your employer began surveilling all your devices (including personal ones) to ensure you weren't stealing from the company, would you consider your company one of "high trust"? I don't deny that surveillance can reduce crime, but the idea that surveillance undermines high trust societies is relatively straightforward
- raxxorraxor 2mo agoNo, we had high trust societies before the shitty surveillance tech. There are quite a few effects that undermine it even and this tech is part of the reason why. It is part of the problem, not part of a solution.
- LtWorf 2mo agoI don't think surveillance prevents crime. Not having so many poor people prevents crime. Some people will always be antisocial due to tendencies and possibly mental illness, but having a society that is so rich and yet has so many poor people as the USA will of course create criminals. No amount of cameras will solve that.
- mlrtime 2mo agoThere are plenty of poor immigrants who (shock) still come to the united states and do not commit crime. Low income correlates, but not cause/effect. Giving cash to poor people in high crime areas doesn't solve crime rates.
- urams 2mo ago> However, once the cameras go up, you will never ever create one there. This is directly refuted by Singapore, Japan, arguably the UK, and others. Singapore is very interesting to visit. Externally there's somewhat of a narrative of a harsh police state but when I visited I almost never saw a single police officer and they don't have particularly many police officers on a per capita basis (170/100k vs 440/100k in NYC). Most of the policing naturally happens by aid of the surveillance system and a very strong effort to take action to bring justice for any crime. As a result, everyone believes crime will be punished and so you end up with a very safe society. This expectation of crime being taken seriously actually _creates_ trust because you can have high faith that any criminal action someone may take will have consequences and therefore be deterred.
- vasco 2mo agoWhat they were saying is they prefer people to behave because they want to be good people which are part of a good society than to be good people simply as a byproduct of fear of jail.
- derektank 2mo agoWhen did we start making good people? I thought we were still using the base model.
- vasco 2mo agoWanting to be a good person is different than being a good person. I said the former not the latter. The former is about intent behind actions and what you strive to be. The latter is about thinking people are born in boxes.
- PunchyHamster 2mo agoThose societies were created way before the level of survelliance modern AI pushes
- vuurmot 2mo agoIn Singapore, policing does not have the dystopian surveillance thing attached to it, because a large number of police are civilian conscripts. It takes the edge off, when you know that your neighbor's 18 year old kid is working in the police force, rather than some mercenary force On top of that, the majority of the military consists of civilian conscripts, which arguably holds more power if the system ever goes bad enough to degenerate into martial law
- tchalla 2mo agoOh yes you can … for “national interest”, for “against China” etc etc
- daymanstep 2mo agoMy counter argument is that you only need 1% of the population to be bad apples in order to destroy a high trust society. Hell, even a single serial killer on the loose will make a lot of people too afraid to walk alone at night. One or two burglars can be responsible for 50% of the burglaries in a town. And so in and so forth. The other problem you have is that a lot of crime tends to be financially rewarding, so if left unchecked it will tend to grow over time as the criminals get richer and expand their operations. For all those reasons, you need surveillance to catch criminals and restore trust even if 99% of the population are good people.
- wewtyflakes 2mo agoOn-point surveillance by people would be a good start; I do not see why it needs to start with endless surveillance by machines run by a private company.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 2mo agoThe thing is I think if you give people the choice between a 0.001% chance of getting murdered on the street or a 100% chance of being surveilled 24/7 you will find that people will take their chances with the murderers
- fodkodrasz 2mo agoReality shows otherwise. Take a look at Google and free-for-ads-and-surveillance everything. People are willing to make compromises on privacy for less important things than the change of them or their loved ones getting murdered, as mentioned as an example. But back to Flock: public cameras are not 24/7 surveillance, as those don't surveil people at home. ps: I'm not for a panopticon, enforcement needs to come with surveillance also, otherwise it will just be an anarcho-tyranny. So common in the developed world. And enforcement of law must also apply to companies, even (and especially) to vendors of the law-enforcement.
- SXX 2mo ago> But back to Flock: public cameras are not 24/7 surveillance, as those don't surveil people at home. Fortunatelly for that they can have Amazon partnership. It only got backlash because they been stupid enough to advertise it as superbowl ad. And backlash its got is the real proof that people not protest against it only because they are not really aware of how bad it is.
- CurtMonash 2mo agoWhy do you think David Brin's Transparent Society proposals can't work?
- pclowes 2mo agoBecause it is naive to think that the people with the power of absolute surveillance would ever permit “sousveillance”. People already survey atrocities committed by regimes and reporting them does less and less every year. Camera towers may benefit the populace in the short term, but eventually they will be used as a choke collar. Think of every story, historical or fiction, where a rebellion or resistance struggled against entrenched power. Now imagine that with constant surveillance everywhere. The story gets really short: “then they were all rounded up”.
- anal_reactor 2mo ago>People always want high trust societies. Disagree. High-trust can only exist in the absence of class disparity. You're not going to steal from your neighbor if your neighbor has exactly the same things as you do. You will if he's substantially richer. At the same time, you want to be as rich yourself as possible. Can't have both though. Countries like Japan or Singapore aren't high-trust societies, they're high-enforcement societies. That's different. In my eyes, high-trust society is a society where law enforcement isn't needed because people self-police because they value the collective, not because of fear of punishment. A friend of mine never locks his car because he trusts that nobody will steal it even though he knows that once the car is stolen, the chance of recovery is zero because the police simply ignore such reports. This is high-trust society.
- 47282847 2mo agoThis discussion reminds me of a valuable and yet rarely discussed book by Bruce Schneier, Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liars_and_Outliers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liars_and_Outliers
- pclowes 2mo agoThis looks very interesting, thank you for the recommendation.
- pandaman 2mo agoI am fine without a "high trust" society (which, apparently, cannot exist with people seeing each other in public), the society where people don't commit crime without any fear of the repercussions would be a great start.
- pclowes 2mo agoThere are high trust communities all over America. Fewer every year.
- pandaman 2mo agoFigures. If observation destroys this "high trust" of yours then it is only a matter of time till it's all gone. Someone forgot to turn off the action camera on the bike and rode with it in the car rack home - no high trust between the trail and his home. A spy satellite is repositioned and swipes over your town - no high trust there. Can't even imagine how many high trust communities fell to the Chinese spy balloon in 2023...
- m463 2mo agoI always wonder how japan does it. I think one part of it is conformity, but they still seem to be very creative. Maybe not get-rid-of-turn-signal-stalks creative, or disrupt taxicabs creative.
- Ferret7446 2mo agoThat's like saying you can't have a high trust society if you have locks on the doors. In other words it's preposterously wrong. You can both have a high trust society and have public cameras for when something happens. The locks and the cameras keep honest people honest.