I love this article.

The first time I read it I felt like someone finally understood.

This is the tricky nature of “value”, isn’t it?

Something can be both valuable and detrimental to humanity.

We’re In Hell is a fantastic channel with excellent, well researched content. Easily in my top 3 these days, along with PlasticPills and SomeMoreNews.

Thank you!

Care to analyze any of the statements that have been called out? Or maybe copy/screenshot any of the comments discrediting them if you have the time?

I’m not trying to be an asshole, here, but everything beyond the first sentence or two in your comment is just character assassination (ad hominem). Obviously the guy’s credentials are not in law, but that doesn’t automatically invalidate his analysis since we’ve got no concept of who he’s able to consult with behind the scenes.

I don’t have a BlueSky account, so I can’t check the comments for myself, only see the root posts.

Of course it’s not a good reason, but it’s also not the main complaint. That’s a disingenuous argument.

The problem is that the locations that offer IDs become political footballs.

Imagine that you change the law to require a certain type of ID in order to vote (even though you already have a social security card, it doesn’t count for voting purposes), and that said ID cannot be acquired via mail.

Imagine, then, that the place you go to get the necessary ID is closed down, or intentionally understaffed via defunding/budget cuts. Hours reduced to 10am-4pm Monday through Friday, perhaps, when most people work. The next nearest location may be hours away. It may not be accessible via public transit. It then becomes incredibly burdensome for someone with limited time, transportation, or income to get the necessary ID. Now you’re able to control access to the IDs in lower income areas by shuttering or defunding locations.

This isn’t just a theoretical situation. This occurs.

Now, I think you’ll find that most people are onboard with requiring ID to vote, provided that the barriers to getting the ID do not have a chilling effect on low-income voters.

But that’s not the way things tend to go.

Present a plan that expands access to the ID printing services and watch the resistance to these sorts of policies disappear. Or better yet, mail one to every eligible taxpayer the first time they file a tax return. It’s not particularly difficult.

Sorry to be a bummer, but that’s the truth.

I hope you do read it! It’s not the most brilliant prose ever written, but it’s a nice bit of techno-optimism (once you get through the first half) that really impacted me, and my beliefs about what the future could be, when I first read it a couple of decades ago.

Marshall Brain’s “Manna” fits this bill, in my opinion. You can read the whole novella on his website, but I don’t know how long it’ll be available, as Marshall killed himself last November.

Rest In Peace, Marshall.

At first glance, from the thumbnail… I thought it was Christine Weston Chandler.

What a twist that would have been.

Plenty of the east coast is high CoL. Not as much as in the west, but plenty.

There’s a growing body of research from behavioral neuroscience which indicate that power and privilege have a deleterious effect on the brain. People with high-socioeconomic status often:

• Have reduced empathy and compassion.

• Have a diminished ability to see from someone else’s perspective.

• Are more impulsive.

• Have a dangerously high tolerance for risk.

  When you don’t need other people to survive, they become irrelevant to you. When you’re in charge, you can behave very badly and people will still be polite and respectful toward you. Instead of reciprocity, it’s a formalized double standard. When you have status, you’re given excessive credibility, and rarely hear the very ordinary push-back from others most of us are accustomed to, instead you receive flattery and praise and your ideas are taken seriously by default.

  Some sources:

Hubris syndrome: An acquired personality disorder? A study of US Presidents and UK Prime Ministers over the last 100 years

(Abstract) or (Full Text)

Does power corrupt? An fMRI study on the effect of power and social value orientation on inequity aversion.

(Abstract) or (PDF Full Text)

Social Class and the Motivational Relevance of Other Human Beings: Evidence From Visual Attention

(Abstract) or (PDF Full Text)

The Psychology of Entrenched Privilege: High Socioeconomic Status Individuals From Affluent Backgrounds Are Uniquely High in Entitlement

(Abstract) or (PDF Full Text)

I tend to think that information should be free, generally, so I would probably be fine with “OpenAI the non-profit” taking copyrighted data under fair-use, but I don’t extend that thinking to “OpenAI the for-profit company”.

Any word on Beepy V2? Migicovsky’s been pretty quiet on that lately.

What if the country in question decides to let them in, but without the proper documents, with the implicit goal of getting their labor for cheap? (…) In other words, the system is/was working as intended, and illegal immigration was desired.

This is such an important concept for people to understand. The system was functioning as intended, for better or worse. There are myriad benefits to keeping people in fear, from financial to behavioral. It’s part of the reason why the US is so resistant to the idea of decoupling healthcare from employment, at least until after you reach retirement age. Productivity, baby!!

Also, thank you for introducing me to the idea of POSIWID. I’m going to get a lot of mileage out of that.

Well, you’re half correct. He was charged in Maryland for attempted witness murder, but the charges were dropped once he’d been sentenced so harshly in New York. The reasons for this are not entirely clear, and there’s plenty of conspiratorial debate about them.

I strongly doubt that the prosecution would have brought the charges if they didn’t have traceable evidence (through blockchain transaction records, undercover police chat logs, and data seizure) that coins, sent to an undercover agent for the purposes of murder, originated from wallets that were owned by Ulbricht. You can read more about one of the employees Ulbricht allegedly tried to have murdered (Curtis Green, who was sentenced for his own crimes) here and here.

You’re right, though, he’s technically innocent as the charges were dismissed. Perhaps it was all a huge setup/honeypot but the truth of whether or not he sent the coins should be discoverable with enough due diligence scouring the blockchain records. Intent matters, even though it didn’t end up getting tried in this instance.

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If he didn’t wanna look bad he shouldn’t have sent a person he believed to be a hitman $300,000 to murder someone.

Woah. A gif from “The Great Outdoors”. Now there’s something you don’t see everyday!

I guess that primarily depends on whether or not you understand the definition of coercion.

What do we call it when companies coerce government into enacting policy that’s detrimental to the general welfare of the country?

Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

• Sir Karl Raimund Popper, speaking on The Paradox Of Tolerance.