More and more we are seeing that the enemies of the Enlightenment Experiment Are not just opposing 'western decadence' or even the Rule of Law - though RoL hampers terribly the power and whim that topmost males have always deemed their birthright.
No, the most fundamental thing that all tyrants, kings, owner-lords and priestly hierarchs have always dreaded was the possibility of accountability, applied upon them by those they rule.
Pericles spoke of this, at the onset of the age when the Athenian Democracy dazzled the world. Thomas Paine crystalized the notion, far more revolutionary than anything by Lenin or Robspierre or Mao. It is the core of every experiment in flat-fair-open-creative and free civilization.
== Is technology going to help... or end it? ==
“Massive camera hack exposes the growing reach and intimacy of American surveillance.” A breach of the camera start-up Verkada ‘should be a wake-up call to the dangers of self-surveillance,’ one expert said: ‘Our desire for some fake sense of security is its own security threat', reports The Washington Post.
I remain appalled that so many very smart people actually seem to think that each year's new tech levels - and menaces - will now freeze and stand still long enough for us to ban them. Cameras get smaller, faster, cheaper, better, more mobile and vastly more numerous far faster than Moore's Law (Brin's Corollary!)
Consider the recent case of San Francisco's City Council banning facial recognition systems, when keeping them open to public criticism is exactly how we discovered and then corrected many problems like racial and gender bias in the programs.
Anyway Facial Recognition programs won't be resident in police departments for long, where some city council can ban them, but will be cheap apps in phones and AR glasses, available from a thousand directions. Result? Cops who are banned from using versions that are open to supervision will instead surreptitiously use dark web versions, because it might save their own lives.
We need to focus not on uselessly trying to ban tech that might be abused, but on eliminating the abuses. And that can only happen with more light, aimed at those with power.
Oh, the dangers are very real! These techs will certainly empower agents and masters of despotism, if you already have a despotism. And hence the lesson and priority is to prevent despotism altogether! Because these same techs could instead empower vibrant citizenship, if we see to it they are well-shared and that no elite gets to monopolize them.
Which they will, if we try simplistically and reflexively to ban them.
It's not that the ACLU and EFF and EU are wrong to fret! They are absolutely correct to point at problems and to worry that surveillance techs could empower Big Brothers and render citizen privacy extinct. It is their prescriptions that almost always are short-sighted and foolish.
Making a tech illegal will not stop elites form having and using it.
Let me repeat that.
Making a tech illegal will not stop elites form having and using it.
What it will do is make them arrange to do it secretly, where the methods won't be appraised and criticized publicly.
As Heinlein said, "the chief effect of a privacy law is to make the bugs smaller."
Need I keep mentioning that both Martin Luther King and Gandhi credited cameras with saving their own lives, as they marched and took on entrenched power?
Meanwhile the thing propelling Black Lives Matter is the proliferation of public access to cameras, spectacularly increasing the number of bad cops being fired. Being convicted took longer and activism helped change the reflexes of juries!But none of it would have happened without the cameras. All of it, BTW, predicted in EARTH (1990) and The Transparent Society (1997.)
== Again and again… HOW to get the internet’s good and repress the bad? ==
Some of these concepts are hard, so let's go over similar concepts from a slightly different angle.
Evan Anderson of the Strategic News Service recently wrote an incisive piece on how the Internet is suffering near lethal harm from swarms of nasty users. “The Half-Percent: How A Few Awful Individuals Increasingly Threaten Our Future.”
For example “This March, in its The Disinformation Dozen, the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that in a sample of content posted 812,000 times on social media platforms, just 12 individual anti-vaxxer accounts on Facebook and Twitter were responsible for a full 65% of anti-vaccine content. The report also describes that many of these individuals are doing so simply to encourage skepticism because they have “snake oil” to sell, noting: ‘Living in full view of the public on the internet are a small group of individuals who do not have relevant medical expertise and have their own pockets to line, who are abusing social media platforms to misrepresent the threat of Covid and spread misinformation about the safety of vaccines. According to our recent report, anti-vaccine activists on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter reach more than 59 million followers, making these the largest and most important social media platforms for anti-vaxxers. Our research has also found anti-vaxxers using social media platforms to target Black Americans, exploiting higher rates of vaccine hesitancy in that community to spread conspiracies and lies about the safety of Covid vaccines.’ These 12 individuals account for 73% of vaccine misinformation on Facebook, are personally featured in 17% of anti-vaxx content on Twitter, and regularly feature sales attempts for alternative products that they claim can cure Covid-19.
Okay then. How to deal with badguys and sociopaths and predators? As far back as legends go, sages have preached we should be honest and forthright and honorable to each other. These preachings - on every continent and in every language - had positive effects, but only on those who already valued honesty and honor and decency.
The sort of folks whom the dishonorable always view as prey.
Some kings and priests sought to apply other methods. Laws, policing, punishments. These deterred bad actors to some large degree by applying accountability. In strong, efficient states, businesses could operate and families had some recourse from gangs of thugs... but only some. And there was no redress from the capricious whims of the King, or lords or priests.
A few nations tried the Periclean approach... supply citizens with the means to apply accountability upward. Always a difficult, fraught and incomplete effort, it nevertheless was the focus of Adam Smith and the U.S. Founders and each generation of Americans has done it slightly better, except this one, as a worldwide oligarchic putsch strives to end the very notion of the idea that Rule-of-Law can apply upward.
In order to weaken us, those oligarchs have subsidized and encouraged the nasty predators that this post was about. The anonymity that original Internet zealots called liberating has become a curse, as the worst men use it to evade any form of accountability, online. More and more, we hear calls to banish anonymity... while those worried about Big Brother see what's happened in China, where online anonymity is banned for purposes of state control.
Elsewhere, I've explored how we were able to harness competitive processes in five great arenas: MARKETS, DEMOCRACY, SCIENCE, COURTS and SPORTS, and in all five, strenuous, unrelenting efforts repress the human tendency to cheat, by applying very different styles of fierce regulation and accountability. In my paper I discuss a method that might let this happen on the Web.
(For a rather intense look at how "truth" is determined in science, democracy, courts and markets, see "Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict and Competition."
I go into this elsewhere, too. The crux: the key to reducing the harm done by badguys is accountability. But giving top rulers tools for applying it downward is always dangerous to freedom.
The answer - as you'd expect from me - is lateral accountability. And we can do it in a positive sum way.
== Tech as Freedom’s Friend ==
In 2013 I touted maybe the most important step in American civil liberties since the 1960s Civil Rights Bills... when the Obama Administration and the courts ruled that citizens have a right to record the police. As I predicted in The Transparent Society, (especially p.130), cameras became far more of a 'great equalizer' that the six gun, though it took time and phases and a stretch of pain that hasn't ended with the Chauvin conviction.
But while we rightfully laud heroes in this struggle, let's spare a nod for technology? The thing that will either empower Big Brother forever... or else ensure we'll have Big Brother NEVER.
That choice still lies in our hands.
62 comments:
Continuing from the last discussion
Gases and escape velocity - with an escape velocity of 11 km/sec and an effective temperature of 1500C in the upper atmosphere we lose a tiny amount of hydrogen
Phosphorus has an atomic mass of 30 - which is 15 times the mass of the Hydrogen molecule - any gas molecules like Phosphine will have a larger atomic mass - as a result a molecule of Phosphine or an atom of phosphorous will have a velocity about 25% of the velocity of a Hydrogen molecule
Temperature is proportional to molecular velocity so to quadruple the velocity of the Phosphine (to get the SAME leakage rates as todays Hydrogen) would require a temperature of
1500C - (1773K) times four = 7092K - 6819C
That is hotter than the surface of the sun
Which means that even if a large object hit the earth and boosted the temperature to those levels that would be a very short term temperature - not long enough to lose much if any Phosphorus
Hydrogen is a different story
But again if the impact that caused the moon removed 90% of the earth hydrogen it would still only remove a vanishingly small amount of Phosphorus
Compare that to the moon with an escape velocity of 2.4 km/sec
With that escape velocity the equivalent temperature for the earths level of hydrogen loss becomes 386K - 113C
And the temperature for the same rate of Phosphorus becomes 1544K - 1271C
The conclusion that I am coming to is that the amount of volatiles lost at the formation of a planet depends on the type of collisions
Collisions of nearly equal mass will lose a lot more volatiles than a slower formation where the starter body grows first and then is bombarded with smaller fragments
Re: surveillance
Interesting post. Additionally, not all recording is intentional. We leave many traces everywhere we go and in everything we do. Even everything we think too, although that involves the darker side of AI, which is not my bailiwick. There are many TV shows that display a dizzying array of forensic tricks. Movies going back to "Disclosure" (1994) and probably earlier warn of the dangers of unwittingly placed phone calls, and that was before they had built-in cameras. [Giuliani shudders]
Such traces might even be beyond today's detection technology. We discussed Piers Anthony's "Macroscope" and similar ideas a while ago. I had a thought once in an anthropology group. Sound waves are capable of imprinting on matter (Edison's foil rolls, vinyl records, wind-up music boxes, etc). I imagine that such imprinting always happens to the molecules in nearby walls, cement, rocks, etc. It may someday be possible to recover such imprintings to recover the original sounds. The physical locations of key conversations in history still exist (some of these conversations private and never transcribed), indeed some locations are often memorialized. Then there are amphitheaters, libraries, lecture halls, political chambers, homes, etc, etc. As Neil Armstrong said, "Rocks remember." No more outlandish an idea than Macroscope, surely.
Re: SETI
The biggest fallacy in SETI is that complex life requires stable, pleasant, 'Goldilocks' substrates. Such life doesn't develop in the absence of calamity, but rather because of it. Devastation and death on a planetary scale triggers innovations like endosymbiosis and sexual reproduction. Fierce competition leads to rock throwing and 'computational' brains. Comfort leads to extinction, the Greatest Silence.
Much SETI discussion has noted the long periods of stagnation in the history of life on Earth and how that implies great improbability/difficulty in taking the next step. Maybe that's backwards. Maybe there's stagnation not because the next step is difficult, but rather the next step is difficult because there's stagnation (apologies to Seneca). There may be something to Dr. Brin's pace of science supposition. Velocity of money also has the same ring to it. All those years of calculus might yet come in handy.
The deeper the Fermi Paradox takes root, the more it seems that terminal 'filters' and insurmountable barriers squelch almost all hope. Fanciful dreams of oases are all that's left. But be careful what you wish for. There are probably many planets out there where perennial sunshine, gentle breezes, crystal waters, and pristine beaches adorn a sterile and forever voiceless world. Perhaps we should be searching for hades, not paradise.
"I don't want my pain taken away. I need my pain."
- Kirk, Star Trek V
The second biggest fallacy is that civilizations should become more detectable as they advance, not less. If a civ can indeed move from agriculture to spaceflight in a tiny fraction of its lifetime, then might not it simply and suddenly vanish from our perception, not unlike receding galaxies that pass beyond our visibility sphere? I'm not proposing a higher plane of existence, just an as-yet undetectable level of technology.
Staying with Star Trek, TOS episode "Wink of an Eye" (Scalosians) comes to mind.
scidata recordnings in surfaces can be found in the sci fi stories of 1890s by Robert Duncan Milne... then in THE TRIAL OF TERRA by Jack Williamson and in the SLOW GLASS series of Bob Shaw. "The light of other days."
Our planet is much quieter now than in the noisy 1980s. And yes, there is likely a sweet spot between placid stagnation and too-frequent or too violent disruption.
Re: 1890s stories
Cool - and I see that Milne and I share a birthday. And Jay Gould's punctuated equilibrium is probably more thought-out than my hades vs paradise theory. I never actually read his book because I was a die-hard Dawkins follower in those days and it seemed like I had to make a choice. I've since learned that fealty to a particular scientist is unscientific. So is ignoring the old adage:
Original, profound, correct -- choose two.
In any case, secrets' half-lives do seem to be forever shortening, for better or worse.
From the blog post:
Cops who are banned from using versions that are open to supervision will instead surreptitiously use dark web versions, because it might save their own lives.
Like the military grade armor,arms and vehicle do? Or the Union membership card and qualified immunity? Access to intelligence agency-grade surveillance techniques and technology that already exist? And what will hinder them to use said versions if they consider them to be better suited if regulated version do exist?
Policing is not improved automatically by handing out shiny new tools. It is improved by improving policy in various areas: Better training and education of police officers, an rehabilitative approach in law enforcement instead of a purely punitive one,free health care and so on. A holistic policy instead of a symptomatic one.
Elsewhere, I've explored how we were able to harness competitive processes in five great arenas: MARKETS, DEMOCRACY, SCIENCE, COURTS and SPORTS...
Competitive democracies like the US and the UK have had growing problems with polarization during the last few years. Consensual democracies like Switzerland have fared well in this regard (while some, like the EU, have not).
There are even consensual approaches in the markets and courts that can work to benefit multiple parties.
scidata:
Perhaps we should be searching for hades, not paradise.
Perhaps we're almost there. :(
No, seriously, it's like the "Entropy" book I read in the 80s which asserted that social "advancements" such as the transition from hunter/gatherer to agriculture, or that from wood-burning to coal-burning were not benefits of accrued capital, but rather less-efficient necessities forced upon us by exhaustion of resources. Might spacefaring be the same sort of thing? Not something a species does out of abundance, but something a species does as a costly and painful last resort because there is no other choice?
If so, then the trajectory of history might be pushing us in that direction even as we speak.
"I don't want my pain taken away. I need my pain."
- Kirk, Star Trek V
Well, being ensnared within the plot of Star Trek V certainly granted Kirk his wish. :)
scidata:
Sound waves are capable of imprinting on matter (Edison's foil rolls, vinyl records, wind-up music boxes, etc). I imagine that such imprinting always happens to the molecules in nearby walls, cement, rocks, etc. It may someday be possible to recover such imprintings to recover the original sounds.
Way back in the early 70s, before home video recording was a thing, I used to make audio recordings of tv shows like Batman or Saturday morning cartoons. In most cases, the shows in question were written like radio dramas, and you could mostly follow the action by sound alone. But in my daydreams, I wondered if in some future time, it might be possible to recover the visuals that were in proximity of the tape at the time of recording.
Nevertheless, in the real world, I have a hard time believing that the signal to noise ratio wouldn't confound any such effort. Even if the reflections and echoes are physically present in some form, how could one pick out a particular conversation from everything else imprinted on those same walls?
Our "public servants" want to know what we're doing. But that isn't *nearly* as important as keeping us from knowing what they're doing.
COncisely correct HB.
Der Oger you know darned well that I am not against reform and regulation of public institutions and officers. Indeed, REGULATED competition, with rules tightly enforced to prevent cheating are the secret ingredient of our five competitive arenas. MARKETS, DEMOCRACY, SCIENCE, COURTS and SPORTS...
Consenual? OMG how many times across 6000 years have tyrants used that magic phrase to justify their despotic rule? China hold's grand "peoples' Congresses" that supposedly "debate" and "refine" policies and then command the top leaders. Um, have you watched those things?
Should US democracy - competitive - feature more negotiation, compromise and consensus building? Sure, destroying all those adult traits has been job#1 for the treason-confederacy. SO it is competitive tioll death to the mutant-evil GOP. Knives out. And that's why I wrote Polemical Judo.
In contrast to
China hold's grand "peoples' Congresses" that supposedly "debate" and "refine" policies and then command the top leaders. Um, have you watched those things?
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B
An actual scientific study
"Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism."
And the data that was used was almost all from BEFORE the "Citizens United" decision !!
IMHO if the Chinese can avoid the growth of political dynasties then they will have a good long term democracy
That is a BIG IF !!
Doctor, I merely pointed out that when comparing competitive and consensual democracies, which are quite well-defined terms, the latter have fared somewhat better in the last years.
China is not an democracy, so that term does not apply. It is an autocracy with some elements of other forms of government that have become merely a facade.
IMHO if the Chinese can avoid the growth of political dynasties then they will have a good long term democracy
That is a BIG IF !!
As I said above, plus:
President Xi believes himself to be some kind of reincarnation of Stalin.Cycles of continual revolution to eradicate the corruption the previous leadership has allowed to grow. Total suppression of free speech and minorities, growing nationalistic tendencies.
It isn't what I'd call a "good long term democracy".
Duncan, one of the basic necessities for a democracy is for it to be possible for the people to vote against politicians who displease them. That's not a thing in China as it exists.
No, "Dark Money in politics" is not the same thing as a single-party slate. You don't have to vote for the candidate with the slickest ads; the fact that this happens in so many places is an indictment of the voters and their education (or lack thereof), not an indicator that the basic system of government is anything like that of China.
As heard on the Stephanie Miller radio show, the latest in nightmare scenarios...
As everyone except me acknowledges, "The Speaker of the House does not need to be an actual House member". So if the Republicans take the House in 2022, they elect Donald Trump as Speaker, putting him third in line for the presidency even before 2024.
LH do you have a link on that Stephanie Miller thing?
It's not only a blatant threat to the lives of #1 . It is also an open declaration that the GOP is about top oligarch power, not legislating for the good of the nation, because as Speaker, DT would be what everyone, even supporters admit he is.... lazy.
Dr Brin:
do you have a link on that Stephanie Miller thing?
Well, I listen to her on the radio the old fashioned way. There is a podcast, but you'd have to sign up as a member to hear past shows. And even so, it's a lot of bantering, so I don't know how you'd zero in on a particular item.
https://www.stephaniemiller.com/
To be fair, the show's personalities themselves did not mention "third in line". That was my extrapolation of the obvious. But they did (very briefly) discuss the possibility of the Republicans screwing over Kevin McCarthy and making Trump the Speaker. I didn't hear them mention where they got it from.
Then again, others are certainly discussing the Trump Speaker thing...
https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/mar/03/could-donald-trump-become-speaker-then-president-2/
"Trump can run for Congress in 2022, in FL. If he wins the seat and Republicans take over the House of Representatives, he could become the Speaker of the House. Then, his first act could be impeaching Joe (Biden) and Kamala (Harris). If it works, he finishes out the remainder of Biden’s term and can still run for President in 2024. Wouldn’t that be a hoot!"
https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2021/02/16/steve-bannon-trump-house-speaker
According to the Boston Herald, Bannon told the West Roxbury Ward 20 Republican Committee during a video speech over the weekend that his new strategy is for Trump to run for Congress in 2022, get elected, and then become House speaker — assuming that Republicans also retake majority control of the House of Representatives and then rally behind Trump over the current congressman in line for the position.
This one's behind a paywall. Below is what I can see from Google:
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-mccarthy-cheney-jordan-republican-leadership-speaker-2022-midterms-2021-5
4 days ago — Axing Cheney solves one problem for Kevin McCarthy's House-speaker aspirations but creates another if the Trump-fueled backstabbing ...
"Duncan, one of the basic necessities for a democracy is for it to be possible for the people to vote against politicians who displease them. That's not a thing in China as it exists."
Really??
You base this on the fact that nobody has voted the current leadership out
There is a "theoretical mechanism"
But it does not happen when the leadership is doing as well as it has been !!
When the leadership has massive approval from the population it does not get voted out
Which does not mean that "voting them" out is impossible
"A one party state" - simply means that you vote for the part of the party that you want
We can see that with the GOP - the Trumpers and Conservatives
As exemplified by the Three Wise Monkeys parable, the pursuit of Transparency is incompatible with the pursuit of both Harmony & Liberalism.
Simply put, there are certain things we cannot allow ourselves to perceive if we wish to live & let live, coexist with and potentially love our tremendously flawed neighbours as we love ourselves, just as we all tend to turn a blind eye upon our own flaws so we may love ourselves.
Much like the San Francisco City Council which applauds the use of advanced facial recognition systems against anti-democratic white insurrectionists but bans the very same systems as anti-democratic, despotic and "error prone, particularly when dealing with women or people with darker skin", there are none so blind as those who refuse to see and none so deaf as those who refuse to hear.
Of course, I do not expect anyone to hear my words, with covered ears, mostly because most cannot afford to hear them, not if they wish to continue to believe in logical absurdities like 'force-free enforcement', 'race-based anti-racism' and 'lawful lawlessness'.
It was many years ago in Europe that I learned this ironic truth, on a street corner in Copenhagen, as a member of the EU enlightenment condemned me in proxy for the uniquely US crimes of poverty, homelessness, income inequality & racism.
"But you have the same problems over here", I replied as I pointed to a bag lady sleeping in the gutter, another rooting through a rubbish bin & the many shopkeepers using hoses to clear last night's excrement from their door steps.
"Nonsense", replied my accuser, "those are filthy Roma beggars and they don't count".
Said the Three Wise Monkeys:
“Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety”.
You can define 'propriety' on your own.
Best
Of course, I do not expect anyone to hear my words, with covered ears, mostly because most cannot afford to hear them..."
Notwithstanding his absurd sanctimony and the hyppocrisy of ignoting how his final anecdote applies more to him than to any of us... nevertheless, Locum's missive this time was eloquently put... and my reaction ironically refutes his dig. "Of course."
LH re the loony tunes Trump as Speak bit... They're no longer even pretending this is a nation of adults engaged in negotiation and the rule of law or democracy. This is phase 8 of the civil war and they have always be explicit about that. So this -- even as a hand-rubbing giggle-meme - is no surprise.
Duncan sorry. You know I respect your crit here. But this round about one-party rule is pure bullshit. Once a decade, some delegate either to the Party Congress or to the National Assembly, stands to attempt to speak outside the choreographed proceedings. They are squelched and subsequently punished as examples.
Dr Brin:
They're no longer even pretending this is a nation of adults engaged in negotiation and the rule of law or democracy. This is phase 8 of the civil war and they have always be explicit about that.
So at what point do we get to declare war and fight in self-defense?
Once a decade, some delegate either to the Party Congress or to the National Assembly, stands to attempt to speak outside the choreographed proceedings. They are squelched and subsequently punished as examples.
A bit like the Goppers who dare to call out the Trump lies then?
Overall I tend to agree that the Chinese are not "very democratic" - I mainly disagree with the idea that they are significantly worse
Back to stone throwing apes
The scenario you mentioned would be Step Two - throwing small stones lightly would not be a good strategy for scaring off predators!
Step One would be birds
Birds are nearly invulnerable - they can fly off - so back in the day they would have given our ancestors a safe distance - just a few meters - and they would NOT all fly away if somebody threw a rock
I can see our ancestors throwing rocks - small ones and not that hard or accurately - into a flock of birds
A bird is more delicate than hyena - and it just needs to be stunned for a few seconds to be grabbed
That would be the start - and would fuel the arms race to throw harder and more accurately
Only after they had progressed to larger rocks thrown harder would they be able to chase off the hyenas - that would take generations for evolution to make that change
Without humans would a different ape have started that path? - I started off thinking it was one of the BIG steps in our history
Now I'm not so sure
"Overall I tend to agree that the C-ese are not "very democratic" - I mainly disagree with the idea that they are significantly worse ..."
In other words, I was toptally right to call bullshit. Spectacular and overwhelming BS. Not one of the institutions set up to supposedly foster debate or accountability functions as such, even very very slightly.
Magas would not be shriedking "deep state!" at all civil servants or "fake news!" at all media if we were anywhere near that point.
Throwing rocks into mobs of birds is one of Calvin's scenarios. But I also like chasing off lions with full bellies. They're in no mood to fight, only to wander off and have a snooze, especially if mysterious rocks keep pelting from the sky. Likewise jackals and vultures. Hyenas are a problem.
Evaporation of Volatiles
I set Iron to be 32% on all three - the same as the Earth under the theory that iron is not very volatile -
Elements
Element ----------Universe -------Earth ------------ Crust
Hydrogen----------21,000% ------------------------------------
Helium------------ 7,000%------------------------------------
Oxygen ------------305% --------- 30% ---------------262% -----
Carbon ------------135% ------------------------------------
Neon --------------39% ------------------------------------
Iron - ------------32% ----------32%----------------32%----
Nitrogen ----------28% ------------------------------------
Silicon -----------19% ---------- 15%---------------160%-----
Magnesium ---------17% -----------14%---------------14%----
Sulfur ------------13% ------------3% ----------------------
The earth as a whole has lost 90% of its oxygen - but the crust has only lost 15%
Or else the crust has somehow extracted a LOT of oxygen and silicon from the main planet
Interesting - no idea what it means
Larry Hart said:
Dr Brin [said]:
They're no longer even pretending this is a nation of adults engaged in negotiation and the rule of law or democracy. This is phase 8 of the civil war and they have always be explicit about that.
So at what point do we get to declare war and fight in self-defense?
That point may be sooner than you'd like. A group of 120 retired officers have just published a letter condemning the democrat slide into authoritarianism and theft of the election.
... Among some of the more notable signatories are retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Boldoc, who is expected to run for U.S. Senate in New Hampshire; retired Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a former deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, who stirred controversy for some of his anti-Muslim views; and retired Vice Adm. John Poindexter, who was the deputy national security adviser for President Ronald Reagan convicted in the Iran-Contra Affair.
“That was way worse than I was expecting,” Mary Beth Ulrich, a retired Air Force colonel who teaches civil-military relations at the Army War College and Air Force Academy, told us after reading the letter. “They are perpetuating the big lie about the election. I think it is outrageous. Some of it is very anti-democratic behavior.”
She said she plans to use the letter in her classes. “They are absolutely violating the norm to be apolitical,” she added. “They are being used for partisan purposes. They are going against their constitutional oath.” ...
Those MAGA caps really do have 'em hailing the trumpod!
Nothing to add to this except maybe #ThereAreNoGoodRepublicans
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/opinion/liz-cheney-gop.html
...
I saw close up what happens when democratically elected politicians think that they can endlessly abuse their institutions, cross redlines, weaken their judiciary and buy reporters and television stations — so that there is no truth, only versions, of every story. And they think that they can do it endlessly — cheat just one more time, break one more rule, buy one more vote — and the system will hold until they can take it over and own it for their own purposes.
Then one day — and you never see it coming — the whole system breaks down. Whatever frayed bonds of truth and trust that were holding it together completely unravel.
And then it’s gone. And there is no getting it back.
There seems to be a massive wave of resignations among the general public. The lordly class is attributing it to gov't paying people to not work. Perhaps, but maybe it's something deeper. Maybe the sudden confrontation with mortality has caused their life clock to tick-tock louder. 'Woke' may soon have a much wider meaning.
It sounds like science fiction to imagine a scenario where every member of society is on a device and their aggregate emotions (rather than actions) are being recorded/harvested. Love, hate, like, dislike and what words they search for and where they go.
Captain Obvious here. And yet, why are people so freaked out about an external camera recording and knowing that it's YOU at the grocery store when an application on your any one of your various devices could have predicted and shared to various parties, eight hours earlier with x.x % accuracy what store you were going to go to, and what you were going to buy based on your browsing habits?
I've always connected Asimov's Mule character to World War II fascism but look at the Mule again. We're inundated with comedic and banal Fred Phol Space Merchant advertising mixed with aspiring baby Mules, and then secret and openly stupid Second Foundation-ish organizations using media and technology to turn the dials of raw human emotions. The current recount in Arizona and Jan 6 events come to mind.
And the opposition doesn't really know how to fight back because they act like their psychology teacher had them read Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development like it was a self help book.
Are you a stage 6? Cause I am. And I'm a hero in my own private Star Wars universe and my emotions are under control, and even if they're not, I'm either woke or proudly anti-woke and that fierce individualism makes ME immune to the analytical predictability of the masses and the abilities of forces known and unknown to sculpt my behaviors...and I only sleep with my phone two feet away from my pillow because I like the alarm.
Re: letter from retired RWNJ officers, I must quote Iago from the Disney Aladdin flick
"I think I'm gonna have a heart attack and die from not surprised."
It is a GOOD THING that the US Military has an ethos of subordination to civil authority, because if it didn't we would be ruled by President/King George (Washington) XIX, or perhaps the usurper Lord High Douglas Macarthur III.
Slim there are three regimes of transparency.
Lacking UPWARD transparency (sousveillance) a return to feudalism... or much worse... is inevitable.
If tansparency is universal, but the culture is immature and judgmental, then you don't get Big Brother. Rather you get lateral oppression by the 51% majority.
If transparency is universal AN the culture is that gossips and bullies and privacy busybodies and voyeurs and the judgemental arer among the bad people, doing bad things, then MYOP Mind Your Own Bsiness and tolerance are actually ENFORCED by transparency, since gossips and bullies and privacy busybodies and voyeurs are always caught in the act.
Yeah it sounds counter-intuitive. Yet it is exactly the baseline value system of a majority of westerners now. It's very likely YOURS! And it is the only way we'll get beyond the danger zone to something decent.
When you say lateral oppression how are you defining peers and adversaries? Are we one country of neighbors despite our political factions? Or is this a conflict with both political parties sub-divided into minority and majorities? (I would argue toward the latter as evidenced by the behaviors and consequences applied to Al Franken, and Liz Cheney.)
I remember listening to your interview https://www.npr.org/podcasts/381444877/k-c-r-w-s-to-the-point and it seemed like the ACLU rep you were discussing the issue with couldn't wrap her head around sousveillance in practical terms.
The conundrum I was trying to point out is that members of the same society that has willingly or perhaps naively embraced a social contract that gives Facebook, Alexa, Sleep #, Google et al access to its most intimate data, would freak out if you painted a picture of kids on a playground, all with body cameras on and an argument breaking out, and the yard duty settling the dispute by looking at their footage.
If you look at body cameras on police, citizens filming bad behavior...it would be interesting to see if zoom / teams used to record the workplace or classroom has contributed to a reduction in behaviors that require disciplinary actions.
So at what point do we get to declare war and fight in self-defense?
Syria lost 20% of it's population through war and displacement. For the US, that would mean 66 Million inhabitants. And that is actually a low number - Syria had (most likely) a lesser weapon-per-capita rate than the US once the civil war started, and no access to nuclear weapons to use on it's own population. So the actual rate of dead and displaced persons could be much higher than that number.
Maybe Mexico and Canada should build walls.
I'd rather recommend that some people who are actually paid for protecting your country against insurgency and sliding into feudalism consult an ophthalmologist and let him treat their blindness on the right eye. Fast.
Lacking UPWARD transparency (sousveillance) a return to feudalism... or much worse... is inevitable.
One reason why Boris Johnson and co. are getting taken on for their habit of 'Government by WhatsApp' and Signal (Government business transactions must be archived by law, but messages by these channels can be deleted.)
One idea to limit misuse of suveillance/transparency tech, don't know if it already has been discussed here or already be introduced:
Whenever an official agency buys the tech, the agency must publish it's documentation, blue prints and inner workings. The producing company loses all rights in this regard.
Of course, people will start to rip it apart, finding flaws and ways to exploit the system ... unless someone produces a better and improved system, and the cycle starts again.
Der Oger:
"So at what point do we get to declare war and fight in self-defense?"
Syria lost 20% of it's population through war and displacement. For the US, that would mean 66 Million inhabitants. And that is actually a low number
I wasn't suggesting that the good guys start a shooting war. But I'm afraid we're too far in the opposite direction. We still act as if disputes are to be settled peaceably within the constraints of Constitution and local government, and that when we can't get our way by those rules, that's just the way civilization works. And meanwhile, the other side is waging war on us, making it legal for them to prevent us from voting, change the outcome of elections they lose, and run us over with cars if we protest.
The gist of my question was, "When can we officially recognize this fact and respond accordingly?"
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2021/Pres/Maps/May13.html#item-1
Before she was kicked out, [Liz] Cheney addressed her colleagues and said: "If you want leaders who will enable and spread his destructive lies, I'm not your person, you have plenty of others to choose from. That will be their legacy." Unfortunately for her, at the moment, Republicans do want leaders who will enable and spread destructive lies. Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan are possibly looking down from on high and thinking: WTF? At the end of her speech, Cheney quoted a verse from the Bible: "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." Whoever said that the first time obviously was not a Republican
...
Still more...
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2021/Pres/Maps/May13.html#item-1
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) suddenly discovered that she loves the Cheneys (Chenies?) This does take some getting used to. Pelosi said: "Congresswoman Liz Cheney is a leader of great courage, patriotism and integrity. Today, House Republicans declared that those values are unwelcome in the Republican Party." Politics make for strange bedfellows.
On a suckier note, this doesn't make me happy, but it does seem to be reality, and it needs to be said...
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2021/Pres/Maps/May13.html#item-2
History is littered with examples of times when pundits (especially on the left) thought the Republican Party was about to implode. It never does. After Barry Goldwater was crushed like a bug in 1964, an awful lot of pundits wrote the GOP's obituary. In 1968, Richard Nixon arose from the ashes and won the next two presidential elections. In 1980, the GOP put a total ban on abortion in the platform. Pundits said that no women would vote for the Party. But somehow, Reagan won 44 states. When Trump first came down that escalator in 2015, pundits said that a crude, bullying liar would get nowhere. When he got somewhere in the early primaries, they said he would tear the Party apart. When four of the five previous GOP presidential nominees refused to endorse Trump in 2016, the pundits were sure civil war was nigh. But somehow Trump got 88% of the Republican vote and unified the party like never before.
The Republicans have many structural advantages now that are not going away, no matter who occupies the #3 slot in the House. They can gerrymander Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, and other states to their hearts' content. They are overrepresented in the Senate and the Electoral College. They are likely to control the House going into 2024 and maybe even the Senate. This is not a party on its last legs.
How to reconcile...
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2021/Pres/Maps/May13.html#item-1
The Republicans are completely unified behind a key principle: Joe Biden didn't win the election, so we are justified in blocking everything he wants
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/12/us/politics/trump-republicans-cheney.html
Later Wednesday, Mr. McCarthy complicated matters, and confounded Republicans, by walking out of his first White House meeting with President Biden and pronouncing, “I don’t think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election” — a statement starkly at odds with remarks made by numerous G.O.P. House lawmakers.
Translating Republican into English, my interpretation is that McCarthy is saying that it is impolite to point out that Republicans are questioning the legitimacy of the election. That they should be allowed to do so all they wish and not be called on it. It's the same "reasoning" that says that there is something gauche about pointing out actual historical and current instances of institutionalized American racism, because it is impolite to call America a "racist country."
Slim Moldie,
Yard Duty wouldn’t need footage from the kids. They’d have their own.
Video from a distance and multiple microphone audio.
Sure. It can be used to resolve issues between kids. It would be sold as a security measure against various other crimes like kidnap by divorced parents, gang detection, and sexual harassment .
By questioning the term 'lateral oppression,' Slim_M begins to understand the disingenuous & incredibly partisan nature of this discussion:
Accountability is what we call it when Good_People attempt to call Bad_People to account; and Oppression is what we call it when Bad_People attempt to call Good_People to account.
Both terms describe identical action, the only difference being a subjective value judgment about the relative 'good-ness' or 'bad-ness' of the purported actors.
Larry_H makes the same arbitrary distinction when he condemns 'punching down' as bad_acting, bullying, oppressive & offensive, while he applauds 'punching up' as good_acting, brave, righteous & defensive, despite the fact that 'punching' in any form is an act of violence.
We see this same pattern over & over again in every type of media coverage, the omnipresent political narrative of Good_People versus Bad_People and (as always) in the interminable Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
What we are left with is this functional definition of Transparency:
Transparency is what we call it when the gossips, bullies, busybodies & the judgmental (who someone dares designate as Good_People) expose, reveal and revel in the cheats, foibles, shortcomings & failures of Bad_People, and Tyranny is what we call it when the gossips, bullies, busybodies, voyeurs & the judgmental (who someone dares designate as Bad_People) expose, reveal and revel in the cheats, foibles, shortcoming & failures of Good_People.
By another name, this is also what we call Progress, when we reject, replace, dismiss and discard the ancient, outworn, puritanic traditions of Good and Bad & Right and Wrong.
Then sweetly she mocked his scruples, and softly she him beguiled:
“You, who are verily man among men, speak with the tongue of a child.
We have outlived the old standards; we have burst, like an over-tight thong,
The ancient, outworn, puritanic traditions of Right and Wrong.”
And deep in his hell sang the Devil, and this was the strain of his song:
“The ancient, outworn, puritanic traditions of Right and Wrong.”
Best
Der Oger there are plenty of sins to lay at the feet of the empire of primitive brutes called Pax Americana. Who were nonetheless vastly vastly LESS brutish than any previous nation that was tempted by great power. Find me a counter-example that had such a high ratio of good to bad deeds... or who ever, ever, ever promulgated (via Hollywood) a mythic system that encouraged criticism of the empire, especially among the empire's OWN CHILDREN. A reflex that you learned exactly that way and that you express... and that may save us all.
See VIVID TOMORROWS: Science Fiction and Hollywood - http://www.davidbrin.com/vividtomorrows.html
Locumranch, on vitamins, clearly, is expressing his disagreement very well! In fact, I agree that under most conditions, lateral transparency would lead to oppression of smaller groups for their differences, by larger majorities. It is a flaw to the project. Though note:
1- he ignores the fact that these problems arise because at least transparency prevented top-down domination by Big Brother.
2- he ignores the fact that laterally OR vertically enforced homogeneity is despised by all of us, as much as he claims to. (In fact, of course, his cult would do both, the instant they got a chance. But for now let's pretend he is sincere.)
3- he ignores the power of the option I discussed earlier... that CULTURALLY there are other lessons than SoA spread by Hollywood memes. Like eccentricity as a good thing, individuality, tolerance, diversity, and a dislike of all forms of bullying. If those hold, worldwide, then transparency exposes bullies and they back off. It may seem idealistic, but it happens all the time. And there are no other paths to a soft landing.
Dr. Brin It may seem idealistic, but it happens all the time.
A million years of natural selection for negativity bias has led us to confuse idealism with fantasy. Hopefully we escape this trap before extinguishing ourselves.
Alfred, totally agree, of course the yard duty might not be pointing in the right direction and get written up for missing the conflict.
Locum defines Transparency... "is what we call it when the gossips, bullies, busybodies & the judgmental (who someone dares designate as Good_People) expose, reveal and revel in the cheats, foibles, shortcomings & failures of Bad_People, and Tyranny is what we call it when the gossips, bullies, busybodies, voyeurs & the judgmental (who someone dares designate as Bad_People) expose, reveal and revel in the cheats, foibles, shortcoming & failures of Good_People."
Sure. But back to my argument. The Ds and Rs and Independents have different standards of accountability within their own sub-groups. Al Franken is arguably still defined as a "good person" by the majority of his sub-group, however his sub group has agreed to normative behaviors to which he has agreed to be held accountable to. (I'd hope most parents can relate to this.) The R-sub group, however does not hold its members accountable to the same social contract, thus if Al Franken were member of the R sub-group he would have suffered no political repercussions. (Obviously, if both Al and his accuser were filming the encounter the issue might have resolved differently.)
Contrast to the R-sub group, where Liz Cheney is arguably denounced publicly as a "bad person" and stripped of her leadership by the majority of her sub-group for stating objectively probable facts that countermand the sworn oath fealty all members of the R-sub group must swear to a guy who plays life like it's a deadly-sins bingo game.
And what if a culture chooses to redefine objective reality so facts don't matter?
...
I'm not disagreeing with Dr. B about the need for reciprocal accountability by any means. I am worried about a failure to agree on a definition of reality...
What if--even with cameras everywhere, because of the latter agreed reality definition failure issue, we get a scene like this passage I'm quoting out of a Harry Crews novel, All We Need of Hell?
"The trouble was confusion. Duffy's. He was used to every witness telling a different story. Sometimes stories so radically different that they could not possibly have to do with the same phenomenon. That was just courtroom reality. But you always knew that something had happened though, because you always had a dead body or a burned building or a certifiably forged signature or, as in this case, a lady who could not turn her head. But as this case proceeded--and it lasted nearly nine full trial days--Duffy, for the first time in his experience as a lawyer, became convinced that nothing did happen. There was no wreck. As the witnesses paraded to the stand and told their stories, their versions, things begin to disappear. The street corner where it was supposed to have happened, a corner Duffy had walked and measured himself, disappeared under the weight of cross examination of the lawyers and under the weight of the crossed versions of witnesses. The car, with its crushed rear end, was next to go as mechanics and police experts and insurance adjusters converged at the stand to say how it must have happened, whether the car was in motion or at rest when struck, how hard it was struck, if perhaps the dented and banged-up rear end was not the evidence of an old wreck and not in fact struck this time at all. Next the doctors came and they were the worst of the lot. They had probed with their fingers. But they all had different fingers and their different fingers felt something different. They had taken X-rays, but my God, the vague smudges they found significant were incomprehensible to everybody else in the courtroom because each doctor found them significant for a variety of reasons, none of them the same, and all directed toward a different medical conclusion. So the lady's neck disappeared next. She obviously did not have a neck. It scared the hell out of Duffy. He spent all the recesses doing push-ups..."
ic quote, Slim/
I meant Nice quote.
Slim Moldie,
Heh. I'm pretty sure Yard Duty would use fixed cameras and microphones on school grounds. Feeding multiple audio sources with accurate timestamps into software that can fold the feeds together supports removal of many static sources and movement of the audience 'ear' through digital means. Back that with video from a few vantage points and facial recognition and they'd be able to reconstruct exactly who said what, when, and to whom.
No one would have to wear any devices, but they probably would the same way second amendment fans want concealed carry rights respected.
I don't know how to transition between this world and that one through legal means, but I wouldn't mind living in the future version. There are risks like you describe, but I suspect we'd figure out how not to screw each other after awhile. 8)
Slim Moldie quoting:
But as this case proceeded--and it lasted nearly nine full trial days--Duffy, for the first time in his experience as a lawyer, became convinced that nothing did happen. There was no wreck. As the witnesses paraded to the stand and told their stories, their versions, things begin to disappear. The street corner where it was supposed to have happened, a corner Duffy had walked and measured himself, disappeared under the weight of cross examination of the lawyers and under the weight of the crossed versions of witnesses.
...
Aren't we already there with the Capitol insurrection? I mean, we all saw it on tv. We know many of the participants from their own posts on FaceBook and Twitter. And yet, Republicans in Congress and in local governments throughout the country are morphing the event into something other. "The protestors were the only victims." "Antifa did the violence pretending to be Trump supporters." "They were just patriotic Americans who never broke the law."
And then, there's this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/13/opinion/cheney-2024-election.html
With enough procedural mischief, politicians representing a minority of the country could hand the presidency to a candidate who got a minority of both the popular and Electoral College votes. If this has never been an evident danger in the past, it’s because both parties were at least outwardly committed to liberal democracy, and probably thought their voters were, too.
That is no longer true. The Republican electorate, believing that Democratic victories are by their nature illegitimate, demands that everything possible be done to subvert them. For rejecting the anti-democratic turn in her party, Cheney — a right-wing extremist in many other regards — has been cast out. Republicans are showing us exactly what they expect of their officials. They’ve made it clear that while American democracy was given a reprieve in 2020, the work of repairing it has barely begun.
Something I posted here years ago that I just happened to stumble across. I thought it was worth repeating in these trying times.
I think that in my more coherent moments, this is what I aspire to, although I readily admit to often failing to live up to the ideal...
* * *
Kurt Vonnegut's secular definition of a saint (which, IMHO, the author himself exemplified) :
"Someone who acts decently in an indecent society."
Is it time for a re-imagining of Dr. Seuss's "The Sneetches", substituting face masks or vaccine passports for "stars upon thars"?
...
Then, of course, those with stars got frightfully mad.
To be wearing a star now was frightfully bad.
Then, of course, old Sylvester McMonkey McBean
Invited them into his Star-Off Machine.
Then, of course from THEN on, as you probably guess,
Things really got into a horrible mess.
All the rest of that day, on those wild screaming beaches,
The Fix-it-Up Chappie kept fixing up Sneetches.
Off again! On again!
In again! Out again!
Through the machines they raced round and about again,
Changing their stars every minute or two.
They kept paying money. They kept running through
Until neither the Plain nor the Star-Bellies knew
Whether this one was that one... or that one was this one
Or which one was what one... of what one was who.
Jeff Bezos is dissing SpaceX, saying that Everest would be a much nicer place to live than Mars (stressing over Blue Origin much?). That completely misses the point of course. Escaping an Earthly ELE (EELE?) is the goal.
Re: Decency
Two good Lincoln Project shorts are "Decency" and "Civility".
This ties in with negativity bias and syntonicity. A rustling in the savannah grass and a diabolical conspiracy theory are two very different potentialities. They shouldn't be processed using the same mind machinery. I've been thinking about 'syntonicity' a lot lately, trying to come up with synonyms and antonyms (dictionaries haven't embraced it yet). One antonym I've come up with is: puppetry. Demagogues are experts at pulling our psychological strings.
There was a 1960s TV show called "The New Adventures of Pinocchio". The opening title sequence showed Pinocchio's strings being cut with scissors. One of the best Enlightenment memes ever. It effortlessly reveals the 'both sides are just the same' lie. I greatly admired that unseen cutter.
There seems to be a bizarre concordance between Scidata's assertion that Pinocchio's New Adventure opening title sequence equals "One of the best Enlightenment memes ever" and the assertion that the proliferation of sanctimonious hyper-partisan gossips, bullies, busybodies & meddlers somehow equals an increase in cultural cohesion, social harmony, heterogeneity, individuality, tolerance, diversity, and a dislike of all forms of bullying as both of these assertions are absurd fictions & fairy stories.
I mean, honestly ...
How many of you here would happily accept cruel hurtful constructive criticisms from someone that you hate, distrust, fear & label 'traitor', who is neither close friend nor family member?
I suspect that transparency has a limited in-group (and/or familial) utility, as in the case of the Middle East where Israelis & Palestinians (who practically live in each other's pockets & know each other all too well) are just over-flowing with a preponderance of cultural cohesion, social harmony, heterogeneity, unity, individuality, tolerance, diversity & a dislike of all forms of bullying because familiarity breeds contempt.
Familiarity breeds contempt, the old adage goes and, if we assume that this adage is true, then we must also assume that our increasingly transparent (as in 'overly familiar') society is well on its way towards mutual contempt, civil conflict and social schism.
Best
Locum your (well-expressed) whine is based on a deceitful premise, that YOUR mad confederate cult is somehow the victim side in all this. But we are at war for the survival of an enlightenment experiment that you and your fellow neo-feudalist are eager to destroy, using lies, hatred, violence and every trick imaginable or provided by your foreign masters.
Including the trick of attempting to guilt trip us into not treating it as the war that you have blatantly made it.
Are there cancel-culture, social justice warrior types on our side who can fairly be called bullies. Sure, and they think zero sum, a lot like you and your mad rightist cult. In fact, many of them hate their moderate allies, who so far control the reformist-modernist movement, far more than they hate you. Read Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, to see how dangerous those folks could become... though right now they are mere irritants! While moderate-reformistpositive sum types are generally in charge of the Democratic Party etc.
If your mad swirl of oligarch/commissar worshippers gets your way, the moderates will fail and today's skyrocketing wealth disparities - now at French Revolution levels - will trigger the real thing. I suppose you'll be much happier then, as your mad, paranoid fantasies come true. Whichever side wins... as we all lose... at least it will be something you can understand.
Dr Brin:
But we are at war for the survival of an enlightenment experiment that you and your fellow neo-feudalist are eager to destroy, using lies, hatred, violence and every trick imaginable or provided by your foreign masters.
Including the trick of attempting to guilt trip us into not treating it as the war that you have blatantly made it.
That's what I was getting at with Der Oger a while ago. "They've openly declared war on us, and are actively prosecuting that war. Pretending we're still in peacetime is not an option."
Crushing Hitler worked much better than appeasing Hitler did at achieving peace with Germany. Or as Toby Ziegler (in The West Wing) put it, "They'll like us when we win."
Larry,
Pretending we're still in peacetime is not an option.
Which fort have they openly shelled and taken?
It's not cowardice to avoid responding in kind when someone declares war on us. We CAN reasonably argue that they aren't worth it as long as we have a process we think can cope with their actions while respecting the rule of law. Easier to do with an internal threat with little military power.
I'd argue that our refusal to counter declare infuriates them.
Hah! Tough bull cookies for them.
CB is at the high end of my cognitive ability, especially during a trough in my stroke-brain cycle (described before, not worth repeating). I try to be succinct out of respect for others' time. I can't respond to every little provocation; suffice it to say that I know a lie, strawman, grift, or troll when I see one. Although my contributions to enlightenment (citizen science efforts) are meagre, they're not zero or even worse, negative. I serve no foreign masters and posterity is my only investment.
Most of my circle are clannish folk, certainly not 'busybodies & meddlers'.
I take it personally when fascists:
peddle conspiracy theories/myths to them
offer them malarkey instead of policy
grift them out of next month's rent money
tell them to mock the 'other', the disabled, science, and education
transpose their allies and enemies (or rewrite history in general)
steal their children's future
hide and deny the beauty of the world
Alfred Differ:
It's not cowardice to avoid responding in kind when someone declares war on us.
I wasn't charging cowardice. I was warning of a losing strategy. We're in danger of being the Indians that George Carlin alluded to in his now-politically-incorrect bit about Indian Sergeants. "Just because they started in Manhattan and wound up defending Santa Monica doesn't mean they were bad."
We CAN reasonably argue that they aren't worth it as long as we have a process we think can cope with their actions while respecting the rule of law.
And what we saw--barely--in the 2020 election makes your point. But what I'm seeing happen since then--purging of "rule of law" Republicans in favor of Trumpists, states passing hundreds of voter-suppression laws, state legislatures taking back the power to assign electors--concerns me greatly. I'm afraid that the rule of law itself will become one more tool for maintaining Republican rule.
In that scenario, your argument is like the judge (I forget whether state or federal) in the Wisconsin gerrymandering case who asserted with a straight face that if the voters of Wisconsin don't favor gerrymandering, the remedy is at the ballot box.
onward
onward
Re - Declaring War
It sounds like a good idea to declare war back on them
But look at the "War on Terror" -
IMHO treating the attacks as a police matter NOT NOT NOT a "War" would have worked a whole lot better!
And the same for the "War on Drugs" -
The "War on Drugs" was had the effect of converting the US Police into something more like an army of occupation
I'm with Alfred on this - not so much "easier" as "more effective"
Isn't accrued capital a *consequence* of agriculture? It's a lot easier to store grains and some other plant products than to store meat.
"I am a thorough man, and when I throw rocks at birds I leave no tern unstoned." -- Ogden Nash.
You know, both Martin Luther King and Gandhi credited cameras with saving their own lives, as they marched and took on entrenched power nvm they're dead. And also, nvm.
There is lots here. I'm tempted by the notion that feudalism is not only a bad thing, but quite obviously to blame for most all other bad things in the history of human life. First, I think you're defining this term rather vaguely -- such that it doesn't simply refer to the dominant social system in medieval Europe. Of course, in this sense, it's a historiographical term. Even in that context, I might add 'broadly defined' to a discussion about it, and of course whatever this describes was also not conceived of as a formal political system by the people who lived during the Middle Ages. If there is such a thing as the classic definition, then it seems almost entirely irrelevant to your usage, which strikes me rather like lots of people use the word 'capitalism' -- it's to blame for everything, unhappiness, death, the ugliness of some buildings downtown, etc. Sure, a broader definition of feudalism is possible. By that, though, I would mean that we could get into the nobility, the clergy, and the peasantry, all of whom were bound by a system and so forth. There is what is sometimes referred to as a "feudal society". And yet, there has been ongoing inconclusive discussion among medieval historians as to whether feudalism is a useful construct for understanding medieval society. The notion of tossing the word around like we have the panacea for it strikes me as being not any smarter than any old political rant, or, as being about crackpotish enough to sound like a science fiction writer, which okay, I should have expected.. I digress.
'Elite intellectual families like the Huxleys show what happens when brilliant people marry brilliant people. All too often, mental and neurological instabilities are rife as offspring dance along a razor's edge.'
Biographers have sometimes noted the occurrence of mental illness in the Huxley family. Given that several of its members have excelled in science, medicine, arts and literature, I think there might be simply nothing to your speculation here that one thing is correlated with the other.
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