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0 pointshonzabe2mo ago0 comments

No, I understood well.

In my country, there is a barrage of Russian propaganda trying to relativize our shitty experience with the communist regime. They keep flooding the zone with claims about democracy being flawed, weak, bureaucratic, meaningless, and decadent. And it is working. People appreciate democracy a lot less than ten or twenty years ago.

Sure, there is a time for the self-criticism of the flaws of the West. I just think now is not the time. Democracy and freedom are under serious threat worldwide. Now is the time to keep reminding ourselves how great it is what we have built. Now is the time to be absolutely clear that the flaws of democracies are not in the same category as the flaws of authoritarian regimes.

I still remember what it was like living in a totalitarian regime - and I was living in a soft totalitarianism nearing its collapse. I am not old enough to remember the hardcore Stalinist era. And still, it was so bad that whatever you believe is bad about capitalism is like 1% of how bad it was. Which is why it bugs me so much when people talk about the flaws of both in one breath as if they were even remotely comparable.

Look, I am a pessimist. I think there is a very real chance that the US is turning into a Russia-like state. I hope not, but if that happens, very bad things are likely to happen in Europe too. We will all live it once again. If you still don’t understand what I mean, I suggest this: let’s bookmark this discussion and get back in 5 years, if we are still alive. Then, you will tell me what you think about optimizing conversion and engagement metrics. If you still think it is a problem worth mentioning by then, I will be very happy.

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fc417fc8022mo ago

> Which is why it bugs me so much when people talk about the flaws of both in one breath as if they were even remotely comparable.

I agree. But it was not my intent to portray them as even remotely similar, hence the misunderstanding.

Reading about things like the balloon escape and what surrounded it gives a very real sense of just how bad things were. So when you see just how much better we have it, the sheer amount of opportunity available to our society in a general sense, it's more than a bit depressing to think that this is how we (collectively) chose to use it so far.

A rough analogy might be, we figure out advanced bioengineering and then the next thing you know we as a society have collectively gone to great lengths to apply it to create the Torment Nexus from the classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus. Like yeah I think the advanced bioengineering is a fantastic accomplishment. I don't think we should get rid of it. Things were definitely worse before we got that figured out. I don't miss amputations and lobotomies. But is it really necessary to so badly misappropriate the opportunity that it affords us?

Given how different your perspective is from my own I can appreciate that my original short and rather flippant comment failed to convey that particular message.

honzabeOP2mo ago

There is no doubt in my mind that your intent was good.

> A rough analogy might be, we figure out advanced bioengineering and then the next thing you know we as a society have collectively gone to great lengths to apply it to create the Torment Nexus

What connection between bioengineering and Torment Nexus do you have in mind? The advances of bioengineering that pop up in my mind are mRNA vaccines and new cancer treatments, which I consider awesome and not at all Torment Nexus-y. When you say Torment Nexus, that makes me think of Thiel’s Palantir, but this is not something we do collectively as a society - is it? To me, that is exactly the anti-democratic stuff pushed by a few specific people that we as a society need to rein in.

fc417fc8022mo ago

Nothing more than a fictional hypothetical for use as an analogy. Suppose advanced technology T requires broad societal effort to develop, for which societal mastery of advanced scientific topic S is a prerequisite. The analogy is nothing more than "first society achieves X, then it can achieve Y" where X is desirable but Y is not and both are fairly difficult.

I chose bioengineering because I was imagining something like the neural lace from the culture series except without having any "good" usecase.

The panopticon we've constructed may have individual components driven by a single personality and fabricated by a single company but a great number of such pieces is required. Even something like Flock that more or less stands on its own requires individual adoption by countless local municipalities. An awful lot of independent groups have to approve of it.

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0 pointshonzabe2mo ago0 comments

No, I understood well.

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fc417fc8022mo ago

> Which is why it bugs me so much when people talk about the flaws of both in one breath as if they were even remotely comparable.

I agree. But it was not my intent to portray them as even remotely similar, hence the misunderstanding.

Given how different your perspective is from my own I can appreciate that my original short and rather flippant comment failed to convey that particular message.

honzabeOP2mo ago

There is no doubt in my mind that your intent was good.

> A rough analogy might be, we figure out advanced bioengineering and then the next thing you know we as a society have collectively gone to great lengths to apply it to create the Torment Nexus

fc417fc8022mo ago

I chose bioengineering because I was imagining something like the neural lace from the culture series except without having any "good" usecase.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse