- Niels Bohr
Through my nonfiction book The Transparent Society, I wound up playing a niche role in our crucial ongoing debates over freedom, privacy and the Information Age. It's an odd niche - speaking up for the cleansing and liberating power of light in our fragile Enlightenment Experiment - but alas, with a few exceptions, this niche was and remains almost completely unoccupied. Even the great paladins of freedom at ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation and well-meaning 'privacy commissions' in Europe prove clueless when it comes to fundamentals. Like:
Transparency is not only the one effective way to defeat cheating and despotism by elites... it is also the only ultimate way to stymie bullying and loss of privacy among 8 billion human beings.
How is this principle so hard to grasp? Reciprocal Criticism Is The Only Known Antidote to Error - the most basic underpinning of everything we know and cherish from liberty and tolerance to competitive-creative arenas like markets, democracy, science, courts and sports. In fact every 'positive sum' system that we have relies upon it! Yet, that simple fact appears to be conceptually so counter-intuituve that it is almost-impossible to explain, after 25 years.
Alas, I've learned that whining about it won't be persuasive. So, let's switch to recent examples from the news.
== Encouraging news... though it will take a lot more than this ==
First, a victory for our hope of human survival and justice: “A massive leak from one of the world’s biggest private banks, Credit Suisse, has exposed the hidden wealth of clients involved in torture, drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and other serious crimes.”
These things keep happening as I predicted in EARTH (1989) - that ever-more crimes and cheating would be revealed by whistle blowers…
…and that it will never be enough to truly shred (with light) the worldwide networks of cheaters. Indeed, that danger to them is likely one reason the cheater-mafias all seem united now, in desperate moves to quash democracy and rule-of-law. And boy are they desperate, it seems!
There here are the mega yachts. OMG the Russian oligarch mega and giga-yachts being seized almost daily amid the rucxtions of war in Ukraine. The amount of former Soviet state wealth that supposedly belonged to the Russian People, that was expropriated (stolen) by many of the commissars who had been mere managers under the USSR, who spent their formative years reciting Leninist-egalitarian-socialist catechisms five times every day...
And yes, the one thing that Joe Biden could do, to smash this worldwide mafia putsch, would be to appoint a truth commission to recommend clemency for blackmail victims who come forward!
One prominent, dour Jonah-of-Doom, Nick Bostrom, appeals for salvation-via-light in apocalyptic terms via his latest missive about existential threats:
“How vulnerable is the world? - Sooner or later a technology capable of wiping out human civilisation might be invented. How far would we go to stop it?”
His only solution, utter transparency to a degree I never recommended, via a total panopticon in which all potential extinction devices are discovered before they can be deployed! Because all is seen by all, all the time. A bit preferable over Orwell's top-down despotic surveillance. But under such a simplistic version of transparency, yes, privacy is extinct. So will be most forms of non-conformity.
(If I just sounded critical, let me add that I agree with him about most things! Except the pessimism part… oh and the incessant implication that “I invented all of these ideas!!”)
Yes, there really is only one path out of these messes - through the cleansing power of light.
And yet, I am convinced it does not have to go full-panopticon! Not if a few social trends continue, as I have described elsewhere. Still at least Bostrom points in the right general direction.
And the fact that so many elites reflexively oppose it means that they are far, far less-sapient than their hired sycophants flatter them into believing.
== NOW can Johnny code? ==
Re: my 'classic' article "Why Johnny Can't Code", here's a 10th anniversary video look back at the Raspberry Pi by its creator, who nicely describes the BASIC PC era, similarly to my essay (but British) - exactly nailing the watershed when learning to code devolved into sifting eye candy.
And now the top tech companies seem to be conspiring deliberately to keep kids lobotomized from digging in the guts of programming. Why on Earth would they perfectly act together in such a way that ruins their own seed corn supply of bright programmers?
I used to ask that question a lot in speeches at Sili Valley corporations. Their response? To solve (very cheaply) the problem?
Naw, I am just invited to speak there less.
== Notes of hope? ==
New polls show that Facial Recognition is supported by a majority of Americans: “Zogby’s polling found that three-in-four residents in Massachusetts and Virginia see law enforcement use of facial recognition as appropriate and beneficial. A large majority of residents of both states supported its use for finding missing children, prosecuting sex offenders and traffickers, finding endangered adults, investigating criminal activity, apprehending and prosecuting violent offenders and drug traffickers, and identifying individuals on a terrorist watchlist at public events.”
And now, another data leak: Leakage of 1.2 Terabytes of footage taken by Dallas area police helicopters stirs privacy concerns.
Surprised? Well I reiterate. The solution is not - not! - to try - in utter futility - to ban such tech.
Seriously? Name one time when that worked? Or when elites ever let themselves be blinded?
Robert Heinlein said the chief thing accomplished by such bans is to "make the spy bugs smaller."
Think.
The flaws in facial recognition (like racial bias) that folks complained about were FOUND and criticized and incrementally corrected precisely because the systems were visible to critics, not driven into dark shadows.
Criminy, why is the obvious so counter intuitive? Within five years Facial Recognition will be a phone app that you take for granted. So why choose such a technologically doomed hill to die upon? Pick your battles!
We must fight against Orwellian dystopias in the only way that ever worked, by increasing flows of light, especially upon the mighty. Looking back at power.
Stripping the mighty naked and telling them to get used to it.
== Self-promotion or just worthwhile? ==
A Parable About Openness: Some think that the first part of this posting (an excerpt from The Transparent Society) is among my best writing. A little fable about the ongoing battle for enlightenment.
== And Finally ==
An amazing anti-jaywalking PSA that’s both entertaining and shock-effective.
Also... XKCD almost perfectly captured a fact about so-called “UFO” so-called “sightings” that I’ve been making for 40 years. There are about a MILLION-x as many active cameras on Planet Earth than there were in the 1950s. Those poor alien teaser guys have to work harder every single year to keep their ships fuzzy! https://xkcd.com/2572/
(Aside: if you believe these UAP 'tictacs' are super-duper alien 'ships,' maybe you should look at this.)
Also a really good XKCD about texts you don’t want to see: https://xkcd.com/2544/
And another good one about viruses: https://xkcd.com/2535/
And poignant, about drones: https://xkcd.com/2499/
And some perspective: https://xkcd.com/2481/
Finally... one of the best capsule summaries of the ten top logical fallacies... though like Mel Brooks I think there oughta be 15! (No provenance, alas, sorry.)
40 comments:
Re: WJCC
The stakes are not just public education, computer literacy, computational thinking, or maintenance of a 'supply of bright programmers'. They're nothing less than the fight to defang Jung's 'Collective Shadow'.
We have often talked about Star Trek's efforts (esp TOS and TNG) to explore our dark side (Jung called it the 'Personal Shadow') and the importance of incorporating/harnessing it (destroying it could be catastrophic). This can only be done by introspection and self-honesty. We must come to a 'deal' with the monster while still preserving any benefits of its monstrosity. "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular." - Carl Jung (maybe that's why Silicon Valley backed off from WJCC talks)
Learning to code, or more specifically learning how to grok computers, is a possible vehicle in this endeavour. What is a monster really but just some unfamiliar or even unknown agent? Start kids early with facing and dealing with the unfamiliar. Let them explore and play with machine minds, even just starting at the level of pixels and branches. Give them the confidence to punch through mystery instead of fearing/worshipping it. This applies to all their other studies too, BTW. If they can develop this skill, they are better prepared to recognize, confront, and even appreciate their personal shadow as the challenges grow. A generation of shadow-recognizers is a healthy garden that the collective shadow can't spread weeds in. Far more resilient and effective than hollow declarations or government apologies. Never again should mean just that, and should be a personal conviction, following from examination of a personal shadow.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
- Niels Bohr
Dealing with these personal and collective shadows is a lifelong task. I'm not sure I fully agree that it's 'disagreeable' though -- it's human. I wouldn't trade my lifetime of coding failures for all the tea in China. The greatest thing about FORTH is that, like science, you almost look forward to the walls because the really interesting stuff is on the other side.
Seriously? (emphasis mine)
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/business/remote-work-office-life.html
When over 700 people responded to The Times’s recent questions about returning to their offices, as well as in interviews with more than two dozen of them, there were myriad reasons people listed for preferring work from home, on top of concerns about Covid safety. They mentioned sunlight, sweatpants, quality time with kids, quality time with cats, more hours to read and run, space to hide the angst of a crummy day or year.
The one reason I wouldn't mind returning to the office would be to get some time away from the darned cats.
We could use some radical transparency here:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/14/elon-musk-buy-twitter-share
Elon Musk wants to buy twitter and take it private.
Remember earlier this week when it was revealed that Musk could not pass the SEC background check to simply join the Twitter Board of Directors.
So, now he tries to buy it instead?
Or a pump and dump scheme to make back his $2.9B plus some change.
I repeat that there are no "Good Billionaires."
Anyone that manages to accumulate a billion dollars has made ethical choices (like securities fraud) that makes them unsuitable for the power that comes with money.
And the "Blackmail Forgiveness Commission" would be equally effective in Silicon Valley as in the GOP.
"could not pass"?
Where'd you get that?
The Twitter board was likely trying to figure out how to stop him from buying it all. As a director, there was a limit to his percentage that prevented control.
Considering what he wants to try, I never saw the point for him joining the Board. He wants control and intends to fire the lot of them.
These things happen with publicly traded companies.
Apparently one of Twitter's other major stockholders, a Saudi billionaire, objected to the deal, effectively stopping it.
Never thought I'd be grateful to a Saudi billionaire, but these are strange days indeed. Most peculiar, momma.
Anyone who idolizes Musk should watch Thunderfoot on YouTube.
Feh. "By his fruits you shall know him."
If I must put up with driven eccentricity - as his employees must, while they stay working for him, then I will too, in order to get:
-- Self-landing rockets that plummeted the cost of a kg to orbit, after 50 years of promises...
-- Getting electic vehicles at least a decade earlier than would have happened without him and forcing every auto company to join the rush...
-- The most convenient and effective and safe e-payments system for medium sized transactions...
-- Offering end runs around some of the dumb-traps in solar energy...
-- A non-lidar self driving system that was pushed prematurely in dumb ways, but still pushed the whole notion forward many notches...
... and I could go on. All that and more leaves me more thwn willing to shrug off antics fueled by ego + aspergers + fame and money and eccentricity. Oh and he likes scifi almost as much as Stephen Colbert does.
-- Getting electic vehicles at least a decade earlier than would have happened without him and forcing every auto company to join the rush..
I reckon two decades!!
I only disagree with Commandment #1:
ad hominem is sometimes necessary, as long as it is not unfair. Trump deserved and still does to have his personality attacked; for instance his demanding loyalty but not reciprocating. He’s not even loyal to his wives—he’s loyal to his offspring, as they eventually take over the dynasty.
Glancing back a half-century, Nixon deserved ad hominem attacks after he announced he wasn’t a crook.
But people are chary of attacking Putin’s personality because they don’t want, like, a flavor enhancer in their sushi that is much stronger than MSG. You’ve noticed that Zelenskyy never says he hates Putin? Zelenskyy doesn’t wish to be a personal enemy of a tsar.
The only dog I have in the Twitter battles is that Musk not inflict Donald Trump back on the country. If he does that, he is helping destroy the very civilization that enables all those other wonderful accomplishments. If he doesn't do that, then I couldn't care less what else he does to Twitter.
ad hominem is an often misunderstood pleading. It is perfectly legit to do a couple of related things:
1- Attack opponent's credibility. If they can be proved to have been liars, or gullible fools in the past, then one can raise higher the bar of initial proof that their assertion is worth your valuable time.
2- Post-argument public or private denunciation. "Having shown that this assertion of yours was false in ways that you (or anyone conscientious) would have known... and given the likelihood that you spread it for bad reasons (malicious or treasoous or bigoted) ... I am liberated to denounce you as a person. In fact behooved to do so, in order to warn others and ensure you have low credibility.
Alan Brooks:
I only disagree with Commandment #1:
ad hominem is sometimes necessary, as long as it is not unfair. Trump deserved and still does to have his personality attacked; for instance his demanding loyalty but not reciprocating.
The problem with ad-hominem attacks is when you dismiss an otherwise-sound argument that an individual is making based upon unrelated characteristics of that individual rather than on the points of debate themselves.
When the argument is about his characteristics, that's a different thing (in fact, the opposite thing).
There are two types of above-the-law rich. The first type is totally in the bag for the Powers that Be, due to bribery, bloodline, or blackmail, painfully compensating for some secret inadequacy, and 100% predictable (eg. the orange menace). The second type is strange, quixotic, and unpredictable (eg. Musk). Both are nauseatingly egotistical. Here's their tells: the 1st type frantically shouts "FREEDOM!!", while the 2nd type stubbornly asserts "civilization". Both are huge threats, the former to enlightenment, the latter to stability.
There are just two things I'd add to OGH's list of Musk 'fruits'. First, his musings and even development in AI (not all of which I agree with BTW). Second, the raw audacity of trying crazy stuff. Everyone can learn a lesson from this. Failure is at least as important as success is. Here's a bit of my own cheeky audacity (right up there with airships and WJCC):
After many years of rumination about computational psychohistory, I've finally started work on my own CPU architecture because anything COTS is way too ungainly and power hungry. Right now it's mainly emulation and one hardware 'chip'. The goal is to make it just powerful enough to run a separate FORTH instance on each core (agent), but simple enough (low transistor count) to put 1+ million cores on a physical chip (probably silicon). That would allow 1 billion agents (a realistic minimum for a tiny psychohistorical model) in a modest machine about the size of the old DEC VAX. That may sound impressive, but all cores will share a single, relatively small, quite slow, memory 'heap', vastly simplifying things. Why not just emulate the whole thing on a GPU-based supercomputer? I have my reasons. (Hint: Syntonicity). My working name for both the project and the CPU is the SELDON I (I don't care about trademarks because it is not now and might never be commercialized). Obviously, CB is not the place to discuss it, and a github team would be counterproductive. In fact, there won't be much public discussion or publishing. I think I can do it all myself, with just a few helpers I've known for years (mainly Europe & Taiwan). Happily, genius is not required, just an odd hodgepodge of skills gathered along the road not taken by 'successful' IT types. As I said, not a commercial project (I want to keep the few hairs I have left). I'd just license the architecture if it ever gets to the production stage (like ARM does). They could pay me in chips.
-- Getting electic vehicles at least a decade earlier than would have happened without him and forcing every auto company to join the rush...
I'll take issue with this comment. I've been driving electric cars since 2000 (and it's not like they didn't exist over a hundred years ago). Tesla definitely helped the market along, but Musk certainly can't be given full credit for progress in electric cars. Bush can be given more credit for slowing progress, as when he got elected he got the federal government involved in undermining the rules that California had put in place to encourage the market.
People also forget how Nissan was the first major car manufacturer to actually mass produce electric vehicles at prices that were meant for the general market (conveniently enough these hit the US market only a bit after Bush was finally out of office).
My mom has a Tesla and she loves it, but personally I'd never buy one as I think they make rather questionable design decisions with their cars. Where I live (in the city where they make Tesla cars) there is a large variety of electric vehicles I see daily. I'm happy that the market has progressed so much, but I am not sorry to see Musk move away as he was more than happy to try to manipulate my city into removing pandemic precautions very early, and quite frankly I've heard some rather horrible stories about the things that go on over at Tesla.
With regards to self-driving vehicles, I have been looking forward to the technology for a long time, and yet I feel like if anything, Tesla is doing a great job of slowing the point at which we might actually be able to get it widespread, because their willingness to push the envelope with software that isn't ready for the general populace is creating a backlash against future trust in the technology.
I'm a fan of moving technology forward, but I've lost what respect I had for Musk as a person long ago and I'll not ignore the variety of ways in which his behavior has been deplorable.
Cari, until the Tesla Roadster came out, it still seemed plausible the big automakers were squelching - WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? Elon cleverly chose a sports car as his test vehicle since the motors were ready and within a year the put-put image of ECs was simply dead. There were some ECs before that but it transformed everyone's perceptions.
The self-driving thing is different. Elon made himself the lightning rod for every kind of controversy and pushed a totally different technology. He could afford to do both while the mainstream of SDCars proceeded cautiously in parallel. I don't see SDC being slowed an iota. All streams will converge - along with flying cars - in 2024, exactly the year I predicted, a decade ago!
Does he do bizarre antics? Sure I have yet to see a fingernail clipping's worth of harm compared to the practical good he's done.
Posted on FB just now (and I need just 5 more followers to reach 25,000!)
This is the ultimate reason why democracy is better. NOT because rule-by-51% is holy... Republicans have shattered that principle in all but one national US election since 1994. And other cultures have different values of 'rights.' (BTW I do hope our take on Rights wins!) No. The fundamental advantage of democracy is that it exposes leader delusion, the smug, masturbatory incantation fantasies that propelled rulers and ruling castes across that dismal stretch of hallucination-driven tragedy called 'history.'
When critics may safely speak truth to power, SOME errors get revealed and corrected. We're still not very good at it... too many of our fellow citizens suckle from polemical teats like Fox/QAnon/Kremlin agitprop... and - yes - our own worst woke-ist PC police are fewer but just as illogical. Still, we're getting better! And it just might lead to our descendants inheriting a galaxy.
In this case, Vlad turns with fury upon anyone who would speak truth to his power. Classic. He convinced himself Ukrainians were cowards and rages at every sign of the opposite. Now he screeches that the RF will 'retaliate' for Ukraine firing missiles at a ship that was firing missiles at civilians, by bombarding more civilians.
History shows that citizens of a bombarded city will bear down and work and fight harder, especially when filled with righteous anger.
Now CIA director Burns says this unstable maniac - beloved of Republicans who call him a chess-playing genius - seems on the verge of using tactical nukes.
It's time to trot out again one of my earlier proposals:
"After this war is over, we intend to use forensic and police methods to investigate the worst war crimes. Not those in which civilians were caught in the crossfire of battle - humanity has not yet crossed that line, though we are getting there. But in cases of clear violation of the laws of war, like bombarding civilian population centers that have no war-related strategic or tactical value nearby, we intend to do attribution analysis and name names, down to the artilleryman who pulled the lanyard. Wholly aside from criminal prosecution, we will give those names to the victims' attorneys, for prosecution of civil damages.
"The same goes - a thousand-fold - for any use of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. From Putin down to any sergeant who proves complicit in such a heinous act, know that at minimum you will be sued for damages and your families will pay the families of your victims for a human lifespan." *
*Note that Germans paid extra taxes for WWII reparations for 70 years.
Dr Brin:
Now he [Putin] screeches that the RF will 'retaliate' for Ukraine firing missiles at a ship that was firing missiles at civilians, by bombarding more civilians.
Putin's ranting sounds a lot like locumranch with his reverse-logical version of "Turnabout is fair play." Meaning that if you fight back against an attack, that justifies the initial attack as payback for the resistance.
*Note that Germans paid extra taxes for WWII reparations for 70 years.
Tom Lehrer had a stanza about that:
Some have harsh words for this man of renown,
But some say our attitude should be one of gratitude,
Like the widows and cripples in old London town
Who owe their large pensions to Wernher Von Braun.
Cari, until the Tesla Roadster came out, it still seemed plausible the big automakers were squelching - WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? Elon cleverly chose a sports car as his test vehicle since the motors were ready and within a year the put-put image of ECs was simply dead. There were some ECs before that but it transformed everyone's perceptions.
I won't disagree that the Roadster helped bring people's attention back to EVs (although I'm not sure what you mean by put-put image, range issues were the primary thing people had concerns with, not speed). However you're missing a lot of context if you think that was the only thing going on at the time. I put a lot of blame on Bush for the slowdown in EV tech- if not for his actions, we'd have made progress a lot sooner. The EV market dried up in the early 2000s after it looked like it was making a promising start (and yes I'm pretty sure my EV1 was among those crushed). Some of that was auto manufacturers doing their best to avoid making progress, but some of that was interference at the federal level undermining the reasons for them to make that progress in the first place.
By the time the Roadster had come out, Bush was out of office, and the EV market was already starting to rebound. Another reason a sports car was picked was because it was a far less price sensitive market- he could sell it to people with more money than sense and not have to worry so much about the limitations of what could be done at a price point people could afford. Meanwhile at the same time Nissan was selling a lower range vehicle to the mass market (at least in CA) that was in the price range of people who would never be able to consider a Roadster. It took many years (and longer than Musk claimed it would) for them to finally get around to selling their car priced for the general public (the one my mom was waiting for), and I can tell you that when I upgraded to my second Leaf a year ago (my 4th EV), a Tesla was still significantly more expensive.
Another big factor in EV progress in the post-Bush years is that it was motivated a lot more by the international market which subsidizes gas a lot less and takes the environment more seriously. So a lot more car manufacturers were taking the market more seriously than before.
We'll see what happens with SDC. I don't think I'm the only person who was enthusiastic about SDC and has actually become more concerned about the technology as a result of his antics. For SDC to be successful, it has to be held to a reasonable standard of quality, and not rely on internal car manufacturer promises of safety. The legal standards required need to be sorted out for safety and the kind of cowboy behaviors Tesla has been exhibiting are likely to harm the process.
Personally I'm a bit concerned about the long term effects of the "move fast and break things" approach to major technologies that could potentially kill a lot of people if not managed properly.
Does he do bizarre antics? Sure I have yet to see a fingernail clipping's worth of harm compared to the practical good he's done.
I'm sure some folks think the same thing about Trump.
"I'm sure some folks think the same thing about Trump."
Not one of whom would dare offer wager stakes on comparitive measurable and factual positive/negative outcomes.
Cari Burstein:
For SDC to be successful, it has to be held to a reasonable standard of quality, and not rely on internal car manufacturer promises of safety. The legal standards required need to be sorted out for safety and the kind of cowboy behaviors Tesla has been exhibiting are likely to harm the process.
I think this might have backed off, but for a while there, it seemed as if there was such a rush to get self-driving cars on the road that safety issues were not simply being ignored, but written off as nobody's responsibility. I realize that human-driven cars also cause accidents and even kill people, but in those cases, someone is responsible and accountable, and therefore has incentive to try not to do damage. With self-driving cars, too many in authority seemed ready to write off accidents as acts of God.
"Does he do bizarre antics? Sure I have yet to see a fingernail clipping's worth of harm compared to the practical good he's done."
I'm sure some folks think the same thing about Trump.
To the folks who would say that about Trump, the harm is the "good he's done."
I like Space X and Tesla. I certainly acknowledge both companies have done good in the world.
However, that does not excuse Musk's pump and dump shenanigans. The SEC will decide whether he should be charged or fined, but I am certain he deserves both fines and prison time. He made an extra $156 million by ignoring filing his papers when be bought the Twitter position a week ago. He cannot pass the SEC background check to serve on the Twitter BoD because of his previous Twitter postings about Tesla stock price. He was in trouble with the SEC before this and is in bigger trouble now.
He has a long history of unlawful actions at Tesla and Space X from labor violations to health and safety ones.
He has a history of targeting his critics, like the guy who had his Tesla order cancelled after he wrote a blog critical of Musk.
Musk has shown repeatedly that he is no friend to transparency or free speech.
Dr. Brin, you excusing unlawful behavior because you like some of the things he has done, also known as the Great Man logical fallacy. It is a mistake.
I trust our institutuions will hold him accountable re stock market gyrations about which I know almost nothing. I have seen nothing else that qualifies as illegal or heinous. certainly not compared to the darker ends of the Hollywood glitterati he so eagerly emulates.
Cari - I'm an electric car fan - I built the electric roadster on my icon
You are wrong wrong wrong
The car industry has known that "sex sells cars" for 100 years but every electric car maker or wanna be EV maker before Tesla was trying to sell cars to eco freaks
The leaf is a prime example - it was designed as a hair shirt car for people who did not want a car - but needed to have one
AC Propulsion designed the TZero
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_Propulsion_tzero
But they wanted to make a horrible box thing (ebox)
Musk was the one that saw the obvious and started making the Roadster then the Model S
Doing what every new consumer idea has done - starting at the TOP
Its a completely obvious idea - but NOBODY else was doing it!!
And from your comments about Tesla cars I suspect that you STILL do not get it!!
Dr Brin
Looking from the outside I am coming to the conclusion that Musk's Name for the SEC -
Shortseller Enrichment Commission
Is actually very accurate
The SEC is going after Musk for tweeting and saying things and ignoring things like actual "news articles" that spread disinformation in order to drop stock prices
And completely ignoring all of the insider trading going on
From 2017:
Guardian article about labor complaints at Tesla
From 2021:
Electrek followup to above complaints
Another angle, from Business Insider:
Business Insider
Apparently they're not great for the environment, either.
There's a place called Violation Tracker that has some interesting information about SpaceX. Some of them may be related to these incidents.
Yeah, there's some pretty doggone big nail clippings there, IMHO.
Jon S
An article from FIVE YEARS AGO about things that happened when he was opening a brand new factory
An article about complaints from union organizers - I'm in favor of unions - they are nessesary to keep management under control
However SENSIBLE management operates so that the workers are happy - then there is no need for a union - which appears to be the way that Tesla works - they have opened the way to a vote
Given that the bonkers American Unions do not permit the workers to be awarded shares that is only going to go one way
Violation tracker - an eco nutter group - no way to do anything without some plonker complaining
Nail clippings yes - and compared to say Swedish companies quite big
But compared to AMERICAN companies Tesla is a paragon
LH:
“The problem with ad hominem is when you dismiss an otherwise-sound argument...”
Tangents throw me way off. Say a debate with Putin, if he attempted to defend his actions by insisting that he’s defending Russia from external interference. That would for me segue directly to his, shall we term it, Caesar complex—which in turn would lead to mention of his personality disorder/insecurity. I don’t know where something ends and something else begins.
—-
Btw just yesterday Russia announced our continuing to supply advanced weaponry to Ukraine could result in Big Trouble. Biden could reply with a direct question: “does such specifically mean chemical, biological, nuclear weapons?”
These days remind me of the opening segments of ‘The Day After’ and ‘Threads’.
China is apparently destined to become Example 1 of the Orwellian surveillance state, with ubiquitous public cameras and their social credit system. Hard to imagine that not going wrong given what's happening to the Uighurs right now.
But Western countries have also put up a lot of public surveillance; doesn't London have a huge concentration?
We've all absorbed the Orwell warnings well enough to be concerned about a police state misusing that information. But there are some real benefits too. It could eliminate street crime. It might even inspire legal reforms deleting victimless crimes from the penal code.
The benefits of eliminating street crime go beyond the obvious. It could also create increased public trust between citizens, which could have a host of knock-on benefits. High-trust societies aren't just nicer places to live, they just work better.
One could argue with some justification that street crime is a much smaller problem than white collar financial crimes and corrupt smokey room deals, and there aren't any cameras where such crimes take place. We could change the laws right now to wipe out most opportunities for such behavior, but one of the reasons we don't is because we're a low trust culture. There's the wide spread notion that everybody is corrupt - everybody except thee and me that is - and sometimes I wonder about thee. But we have to bring the light of transparency somewhere to start, and once the roaches stop scurrying where we can see them then we might be ready to flood those dark corners.
The list of Musk's screwups is also quite long (millions spent on a very bad subway?). The problem is that it is a very bad idea to give effectively unlimited power to individuals. People who are skilled at getting wealth and power think they are also good at everything else (Musk wrecking his Maclaren). The advances he helped make possible would have happened anyway. I will happily put up with a slightly slower rate of advancement if we can avoid a hyperwealthly predator class.
DG you know I despise a "hyperwealthy predator caste" and demand many ways to limit its power. But there is something to be said for a civilization haveing a variety of paths for deciding how to invest surplus capital. Corporations taken over by myopic CEO caste MBA graduates have proved almost the very worst, reducing corporate ROI horizons from 7 years down to 3 months or less.
Governments CAN invest long term, as in space tech and telescopes and pure research and vast infrastructure. But they must meticulously justify.
A Musk or Bezos can act on the old timey thing that build pyramids and wonders of the world. Personal whim. Since they already earned cred as fellows who put capital to good use, I see no reason to be purist about denying them further power to invest surplus capital they they themselves created.
But the rich must be taxed. And along highly progressive scales. And inherited wealth has been a bane upon humanity for 6000 years. The brats did nothing to deserve it. In fact, slyly, Ayn Rand agrees!
Alan Brooks:
Tangents throw me way off. Say a debate with Putin, if he attempted to defend his actions by insisting that he’s defending Russia from external interference. That would for me segue directly to his, shall we term it, Caesar complex—which in turn would lead to mention of his personality disorder/insecurity. I don’t know where something ends and something else begins.
For me, the distinction is clear. If, for example, Hitler says, "The sky is blue," you can't argue that the statement is false just because Hitler was the one who said it. The allegation isn't dependent upon anything having to do with the character of the speaker.
When someone makes an assertion which depends on some version of, "Trust me"--that is, when the evidence provided is sparse enough that the argument depends on the reputation of the one making the assertion--then attacks on that speaker's character are quite relevant.
Dr Brin:
The brats did nothing to deserve it. In fact, slyly, Ayn Rand agrees!
Ayn Rand seems to agree with your General Macklin character's notion that even his own sons must earn their place in Holnist society. The problem is that she seems to hand-wave that away, as of of course her completely rational heroes would think that way. As you are wont to say, the burden of proof is on her to explain why her supermen would treat their offspring differently from the way all chiefs have done for 6000 years.
There is one way I could see it working in Ayn Rand-world, but it's a draconian one. Rand heroes might not preference their kids over others because they are so effing selfish that they sincerely don't care about anyone who is not their own self, not even their spouses and descendants.
We can't get rid of aristocracies, but fortunately they do tend to circulate. Short-term conservatives - who are really pseudoconservative - try to stop the circulation of aristocracies at themselves, but that's impossible to achieve and unethical to try. Long-run conservatives, the real thing, just want the Wheel to rotate smoothly.
Leslie Fish sings of the Wheel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_HPflWziNI
LH... it's simple. The children of Randian lords must be taken away and thrown into a pool of hundreds that are then randomly fostered.
Dr. Brin,
Plato called and wants his republic back.
Decamp added that to one of his novels involving egg-laying humanoids - all the Mikardando eggs were mixed up - still didn't work.
Pappenheimer
Mmm. Pump-and-Dump is one of those things that is easily charged and hard to distinguish from 'separating fools from their money'.
Seriously. He has a mouth. That is a given. What you believe when you hear come out is another matter. We KNOW he's (ahem) optimistic about schedules and capabilities. If you don't know that, don't invest in anything he controls.
As for SEC background checks, I'm not aware there are any from except for FINRA positions... and even then they aren't required. It's more of a system for pre-certifying your team when the SEC decides they have to take a look at you or consumers worry that they might. Twitter isn't in the FINRA space.
Shareholders decide who is on a board... and take their risks accordingly.
woo hoo! I get to agree with Duncan on something. 8)
The advances he helped make possible would have happened anyway.
I used to be a lot more inclined to believe that. Nowadays I ask myself if those things are like death, taxes, or mold growing in wet places. If not, I'm more skeptical.
Consider taking a moment to listen to the last words spoken by Cernan from the Moon and do the subtraction. How long do we wait?
Same with the Tharks on Barsoom, randomized eggs.
onward
onward
Well, Duncan, thanks for helping me prove that there's no point in arguing with Musk fans, because any data you provide will be dismissed or explained away. I'm particularly fond of the bit where unions are dismissed because in a perfect world, they wouldn't be necessary - ignoring the fact that they came to be because the world isn't perfect, and quite often the bosses don't give a rat's ass how the workers feel as long as they keep generating profit.
Oh, the part where facts available from a government database didn't count because of who presented them was nice too.
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