dr_analog
razorboy
No bio...
User ID: 583
Aside: I would post this in the main CW thread but it's Sunday and don't want it to get lost when the thread rolls over. So I'll just do a lower effort slightly trashier post here.
HAS LIBERALISM PEAKED IN OREGON?(!)
In 2020, the state of Oregon passed a referendum, ballot Measure 110, which decriminalized all drugs(!) with a vote of 58% in favor.
Voters in Oregon (such as myself) believed this was the path to enlightened drug policy, being informed by the revered Portugal model. Tacked onto the referendum was a bit of social justice theory as well: the police would be required to document in detail the race of anyone they stopped from now on for any reason. To ensure the police weren't disproportionately harassing the, say, 5 black people who live in Oregon. (okay okay they're 2.3% of the population)
The ensuing data was an almost perfect A/B test, the kind you'd run with no shame over which kind of font improved e-commerce site checkout conversions. By 2023, Oregon's drug overdose rate was well outpacing the rest of the country, so much so that the police officers regularly Narcan with them and revive people splayed out in public parks. Sometimes the same person from week to week. It's true this coincides with the fentanyl epidemic, which could confound the data and have bumped up overdoses everywhere but that wouldn't explain alone why deaths have especially increased in Oregon. The timing fits M110.
Anyway! At some point someone decided to compare notes with Portugal's system. Some stark differences!
https://gooddrugpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/PortugalvOregon1.pdf
Briefly, Portugal uses a carrot and stick model with a lot of negative incentive, whereas Oregon just kinda writes a $100 ticket and suggests calling a hotline for your raging drug problem maybe lol.
In the first 15 months after Measure 110 took effect, state auditors found, only 119 people called the state’s 24-hour hotline. That meant the cost of operating the hotline amounted to roughly $7,000 per call. The total number of callers as of early December of last year had only amounted to 943.
The absence of stick appears to not be very effective in encouraging users to seek treatment.
Are the kids having fun at least? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/31/health/portland-oregon-drugs.html (paywall bypass: https://archive.ph/fHxWk)
“Portland [not Portugal, just to be clear --ed] is a homeless drug addict’s slice of paradise,” said Noah Nethers, who was living with his girlfriend in a bright orange tent on the sidewalk against a fence of a church, where they shoot and smoke both fentanyl and meth.
Yes. At least, that's the brightest part of the article. The rest is pretty depressing and sad and sickening and worrisome.
After a few years of this, the Oregon legislature yesterday finished voting to re-criminalize drugs.
The NYT again: https://archive.ph/3zksH
Critics are out in force, arguing that the legislature overrode the will of voters (remember it was passed by referendum) and that the state sabotaged the program by not efficiently distributing treatment resources to addicts. This poster believes the low uptake and missing negative incentives prove that drug harm reduction is not primarily about access to treatment, but about incentive not to use.
The governor has indicated that she would sign.
tbh I'm surprised Oregon repealed this so quickly. Has liberalism peaked in Oregon?
As someone who voted for the referendum back in 2020, I'm a little sad that some of the overdose deaths are on my hands. Kind of. Like 1 millionth of the overdose deaths perhaps. It's good to run experiments though, right? This was a pretty good experiment. We at least have an upper bound on how liberal a drug policy we should pursue.
dr_analog
razorboy
2mo ago
Well, she (he?) ends up not enjoying it. It's actually written on that same page.
showed them images of Gender Queer, and the page where the kid is giving another kid a blowjob,
In fairness, I just looked it up, and it's a strap-on.
Anyway, to your point.
I would find this pretty outrageous, but my default state is to be generally annoyed or outraged when our teenager tells us what he's learning about in public school. Be it economics, math or sex stuff.
Not mentioned, but more evidence for Finney.
- The first Bitcoin white paper PDF had metadata suggesting the Western US time zone was set on the PC that produced it. Probably a US native: the British spellings of words that Satoshi used (inconsistently) appear to be an attempt to obscure.
- Satoshi's commit history suggests he was working during US waking hours
- Satoshi wrote the first release in C++ with Visual Studio on Windows. Finney would certainly have experience with this platform as the ghost writer of PGP
Re
He was involved in early bitcoin transactions and the community
This includes committing code to it. Probably someone inclined could look at Finney's commits to see if they were a stylistic match for Satoshi's.
Ideally one could also see if he has other published work in C++ to compare to.
dr_analog
razorboy
3mo ago
Let me present you an alternate vision of dystopia.
https://www.themotte.org/post/479/calling-all-lurkers-share-your-dreams/94878?context=8#context
We've been pretty fortunate that everyone that has built darknet markets (DNMs) so far are not competent or visionary enough to produce something high quality. The potential black market has not come anywhere close to being fully actualized.
The maximally dystopian horror example case is: onlyfans for live streamed child rape / snuff films with tens of thousands of men watching from behind Guy Fawkes masks beating off and tipping tens of thousands of dollars an hour. Everyone involved, the viewers and performers, completely anonymous and untraceable.
Yes, I am very familiar with the usual cypherpunk arguments for why crypto is an important tool for protecting people's security/privacy from criminals, and that also you can't trust police to protect backdoors in crypto systems and to also not abuse them. I'm not convinced the endgame world of maximally "useful" DNMs that could be produced wouldn't be a net worse world overall.
Seems like cryptocurrency is waning a bit so this future may be delayed for now.
Perhaps my view on this is informed by being very close to the production of the tools that could create this dystopia, but the creation of a completely lawless criminal state that law enforcement is permanently locked out of meeting technocapitalist incentives is a possibility that is too casually dismissed.
There's still a lot of room for an underworld Jeff Bezos to pick up a trillion dollars.
dr_analog
razorboy
3mo ago
Where I live I already don't have freedom of speech or association, and the government recently froze the bank accounts of protesters whom the state-run news agency had already demonized.
Do you believe Canada is on the slippery slope towards gas chambers?
Again, how do you think anyone ends up in a gas chamber?
I've read about a couple of these situations and the best answer I can take away is: they live in a place that has gone insane.
I don't think @dr_analog thinks that's a problem.
To be clear, I think police abuses are bad. I consider that a problem. I don't think it's unsolvable or that it is destruction of security. At least not moreso than any other rights. I don't think someone would say the security around your property rights don't exist or are destructed because a police officer can theoretically steal your property and tell you to suck it.
By "We just got through a period where enormous sums were invested in web 3.0 crypto-systems with outlandish ultra complicated architectures for everything from micropayments to whole network states (etc) and it was all pursued with doe eyed zeal" I mean that it's absolutely possible to construct a system where law enforcement has keys to unlock crypto with some semblance of due process. The problem previously is that it's been done so secretively (since the community response is so outraged) that nothing with a sound design has been produced.
I cant stress this enough; the cypherpunk community warned us at length of how impossible it would be to prevent abuses if you give law enforcement a backdoor and then during web 3.0 cheerfully advanced pitch decks for protocol research labs for moving all social media to blockchain, tracking and enforcing all property rights either through blockchain or DAOs, doing anonymous voting, insurance, exchanges and a hundred other libertarian fantasy replacements for the state that balajis could generate.
Take their hysteria about police backdoors with a grain of salt.
dr_analog
razorboy
3mo ago
Touched on here: https://www.themotte.org/post/851/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/183560?context=8#context
I'm not denying it doesn't happen, it obviously does sometimes. So, that said, what's the argument in response? Because parallel construction could happen (and sometimes does), that means the government therefore should not have access to these tools without a court order ahead of time and if it wrecks their ability to counter terrorist plots or organized crime or handle fast-moving cases, so be it?
dr_analog
razorboy
3mo ago
Do you think those murdered by their governments in the 20th century had "time to prepare", but simply chose to not to? Do you remember the borders being closed with no warning during covid?
So, what's the ground truth here? When you unbox a smartphone do you decline to log into a Google/Apple account so you can sync because you're worried that if you say yes there's a 1% chance that's how you end up in a gas chamber some day? If this isn't you, are you saying you sympathize with that view?
To me it looks like you'd mock anyone fighting government overreach right up until it's too late.
From my view everyone who raged teary-eyed against government "overreach" like the PATRIOT act or FISA has been proven wrong to date. This stuff did not at all alter life in the US except for giving the government slightly more power to investigate crime.
I'll be really embarrassed if this all paved the way for a USA Patriot Points social credit system but I just don't see that taking off in the US. The notion sounds really far-fetched.
dr_analog
razorboy
3mo ago
I was not holding it up as a loss in particular, just pointing out it's the only visible scar from all of that self-flagellation.
authorities believe this crime was committed and would like to view all of their encrypted data.
And how do you propose authorities do that if the device is turned off and the data has been securely encrypted at rest? Put back doors into every computing device to prevent this scenario from arising?
- Torture warrants
- Require device and crypto backdoors
I'm aware 95% of security researchers think #2 is a nightmare and makes security worse, but I believe they are simply revealing their libertarian-anarchist ideology. We just got through a period where enormous sums were invested in web 3.0 crypto-systems with outlandish ultra complicated architectures for everything from micropayments to whole network states (etc) and it was all pursued with doe eyed zeal. It is absurd to claim a system where law enforcers have a backdoor is not a solvable problem.
I don't mean to condemn people who are doing it for fun. Or securitymaxxing as art. As a cybersec person I 100% appreciate the beauty of a blog tech stack that's pure OCaml all of the way down to the (virtual) metal and have fantasies that one day we will go further and synthesize bespoke hardware from the type graphs and there's nothing black-box between your code and the net. Holy shit, so good.
I'm specifically trying to grab and shake the person who, when setting up their new phone, sees the [x] use cloud backups/sharing for safety and convenience? option and unchecks it because they believe they're so subversive or outrageous that the state (or big corporations) are looking for them and they can't afford the risk of centralizing their photos and documents. And then they go further and get to work on their GrapheneOS game and turn off push notifications because of side channel attacks and really want to live in a world where they don't get your message until they take their phone out of a faraday sleeve, get on WiFi, open Signal and have it pull messages.
This is a type of person and they're afflicted with something and I'm surrounded by them and I don't fully understand what's going on. I understand liberals and conservatives and libertarians. I can change the sliders on my values and see how my thinking can have me end up in one tribe or another. But the amount of paranoia that I'd have to add to end up in privacymaxx zone seems untenable. Surely something else is going on.
dr_analog
razorboy
3mo ago
Yes, this completely. Smaller platforms, including things you'd use for self-hosting, are very easy to fool with (e.g.) completely forged subpoenas.
dr_analog
razorboy
3mo ago
Let me see if I understand this
1: we must increase diversity of ATCs
2: let’s impose AA style quotas
1: no that would cause backlash
2: what about a final exam that’s actually a biographical questionnaire?
1: what, and only hire people with black-sounding upbringings? too blatant
2: but what if the right answers to the questionnaire are random but we separately and secretly tell the people we want to hire how to answer?
1: let’s do it!
Is that really it? Tell me I’m misunderstanding this!
dr_analog
razorboy
3mo ago
You're talking about how all these silly paranoid privacy people have concerns that could never be realistic, and all the while we can just go look at one of the largest nations on Earth and see what happens when you get your way.
I did not say lets also become an authoritarian dictatorship at the same time. I am specifically criticizing privacy warriors in the US.
See also the bottom of this other comment: https://www.themotte.org/post/851/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/183628?context=8#context
dr_analog
razorboy
3mo ago
I did not say lets also become an authoritarian dictatorship at the same time. I am specifically criticizing privacy warriors in the US.
See also the bottom of this other comment: https://www.themotte.org/post/851/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/183628?context=8#context
In no other domain do we accept a claim like "this dungeon in my house is off limits even to detectives with a court order because it is my private property"
We have at least 2; attorney-client, and religious priest-confessor.
Sure fine whatever. But even these are not absolute, and can be pierced if justified.
this digital cache of self-produced child pornography is something we can take to our graves regardless of any legitimate pursuit of justice.
We throw, and threaten to throw, teenagers in jail all the time over this. It is probably good that they take steps to defend themselves if they're going to engage in this activity to avoid the current environment of societal overreaction; the entire point of "rights" is to limit the damage society can do when (not if) it overreacts (the flip side of the coin being "ticking time bomb plots", but I'm willing to trade the lives lost in those for the ones saved due to them not committing suicide any more over this).
By "self-produced child pornography" I did not mean teenagers recording themselves over Snapshot. I meant something more like an adult recording a child that they have prisoner in their closet that they raped periodically before murdering and disappearing them. The child is now gone without a trace but authorities believe this crime was committed and would like to view all of their encrypted data.
The overwhelming majority of murders worldwide in the 20th century were perpetrated in an organized fashion by governments targeting their own citizens (organized mobs using simple demographic criteria make up most of the rest); the impulse to make one a harder target against those is only natural. Proponents of this approach can point to things like census records being burned to stop an angry invading force from determining which people were going to the concentration camps and which were not. The Germans are well-acquainted with this; being that they have committed the overwhelming majority of murder on the European continent in the last 100 years probably has something to do with that.
These atrocities were committed by dictatorships, yes?
When I say people with these worries are Qanon-adjacent. this is what I mean. Invocation of living in fascist Germany or the Khmer Rouge to describe the need to rigorously defend your privacy living in the United States in 2024. Yes, if you live in a totalitarian dictatorship, or one that's rapidly becoming one, sure fine privacy seems pretty important! To these privacy warriors in the US, I'm sure we seem a quick slide of the slippery slope away from being targeted for our Chud/Woke beliefs with no time to prepare before it's too late. IMO this is a persecution fear very distantly tethered to Earth.
I submit that privacy warriors are just another shade of culture warrior, and it's a kind of warfare with bipartisan appeal.
dr_analog
razorboy
3mo ago
I think it's probably worth a penny, at most?
Anyway, my research suggests these goodrx.com coupons are actually drug manufacturer rebates to the pharmacy off of their wholesale purchase. The manufacturer is effectively using this channel to quote much lower prices to uninsured poor people who would otherwise be forced to go without.
dr_analog
razorboy
3mo ago
Fair enough. Eliot Spitzer got brought down because his bank transfers to a brothel were red flagged, they investigated, and they just happened to nail the governor of NY. Obviously what really happened is they brought up all of Eliot Spitzer's records, went over it with a magnifying glass, pieced together the brothel thing, and also noticed it had been red flagged (like a billion other transactions that are never looked at), and worked backwards from there to construct a story where they had cause.
So that's an extreme case. How often does this happen in practice though? Also, even in my extreme case, it doesn't seem actually wrong for this information to have come out about Eliot Spitzer?
dr_analog
razorboy
3mo ago
Not all privacy desires have their foundations in criminality and kiddy porn. Villainizing E2E encryption and truly private spaces as exclusively the domains of ne'er do wells is the exact same tactic people use against guns to win the culture war. Carrying a pistol doesn't make you a paranoid asshole; it means you're vastly more prepared for a rare occurrence than someone who doesn't.
Just to be clear, as I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not villainizing people for using E2E encryption. Just pointing out that E2E encryption is an absolute gift to villains while everyone else using it LARPs as an enemy of the state.
As someone who has guns himself, my view is
- it would be best if society had no guns in it
- but our society has guns
- criminals exist and are incentivized to crime
- police cannot stop them from doing crime fast enough
- therefore, I should have guns myself
Perhaps if police response time in my town was 90 seconds and not 20 minutes the economics of crime would change, but it's not so I need a gun.
Anyway, I agree given the circumstances handgun ownership makes sense. Is the claim for E2E messaging even this solid?
I want to be able to talk about the government without them listening. I want to be able to talk about psychotic leftists without them getting me fired, and I want to watch exotic pornography without pyschotic rightists getting me fired. I don't trust any convenient megacorp to safeguard me from any of these actors or themselves.
I don't quite follow. You want to be able to do this stuff under your real name without every adversary finding you? Or... you want to be able to do this via an anon handle without being easy to doxx?
Just FWIW as someone engaged on academic work on these issues, I broadly agree with your take. That said, two quick points of disagreement -
Wow, okay, good timing. I was just about reserved to believe I was debating with 100 swords pointed at me until this falls below the fold (thanks everyone for engaging!)
What's the line of your academic work?
(1) Even supposedly friendly personalisation can be dangerous. Really effective personalised advertised can boost consumption, but if you're anything like me, you should probably be consuming less. You're like a dieter walking through a buffet restaurant filled with dishes perfectly targeted to your palate. By controlling the data held on you by third parties, you can limit how appealing the menu they offer you is. Now, of course, sometimes it will be your cheat day and you can eat to your heart's content, and having an amazing menu offered to you is positively desirable. But most of the time, having this personalised menu is going to be bad for your ability to achieve your reflectively-endorsed goals. Data privacy is one way to protect yourself from having your own most voracious instincts exploited.
Well, right from a healthy living perspective, ads that are very targeted and appealing might be a problem. But isn't it said (advocated) that "good ads" are in fact, "content"? If that premise holds, don't we already widely suffer from this problem?
(2) Privacy concerns don't seem to me to be male-coded. If anything, more of my female students are very worried about it. More than anything else, I'd say it skews continental European; Germans above anyone else seem obsessed with it. Brits are radically unconcerned about it.
I agree it makes more natural sense that women have higher privacy concerns because there's a lot pervs trying to get inside of their digital devices to exfiltrate nudes (and be otherwise generally creepy). But the level of inconvenience and fringe-ness men take on in pursuit of privacy is more extreme than what women do, in my read.
dr_analog
razorboy
3mo ago
If anything, working at Google actually made me a lot more confident about their PII protections. They take it extremely seriously and I'm actually surprised so many people were able to abuse it, though it's to be expected at their scale: Google has 175,000 employees and maintains billions of accounts.
To me, this is the exception that proves the rule: you're safer with Google.
Yes that's the irony of it. The Portugal model is still not a shining example.
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