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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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Does the existence of openly available cryptographic tools and communication channels, in your mind, undermine the power of state security to quash dissidents?

Not really.

The US government did a perfectly fine job of crushing the alt right, and it had nothing to do with their communications not being secret enough.

If not, why does Beijing insist on everyone using not Matrix/Element or Briar or even Telegram (with keys beyond their reach) but WeChat, where the Tovarisch Commissar can check up on you? Why do FSB and NSA and everyone else of that Big Brother mindset fight e2e encryption?

A variety of reasons. I'm quite certain that they could get by even with e2e encryption being easily and publicly accessible though.

Largely the same principle applies to all areas where AI promises drastic improvements: any sort of generative tools, content curation tools, personal assistants, scientific instruments, CAD, robot control software, you name it.

So... how are any of these things going to help you achieve your desired anti-establishment political aims? Is your AI assistant going to put a reminder on your calendar telling you when it's time to take your AI robot buddies and go storm the palace? What happens when the palace guards have bigger and better AI robot buddies?

I'm not really trying to be cheeky. I'm just asking you to describe in sufficient detail what you're imagining. People thought throughout history that lots of different things were going to revolutionize human relations and put an end to tyranny - democracy, reason, public education, communism. None of them did. We're mostly still dealing with the same old shit that humanity has always dealt with. You can't just stop at "AI is awesome and I want it". You need a concrete argument for why things will actually be different this time - otherwise you end up with the classic communist problem where everyone just assumed "well of course if you tear down existing society then everyone will spontaneously rearrange themselves into new social relations that are perfectly just and equitable" without actually stopping to consider the details of how that was going to work.

You conveniently assume linear or superlinear returns to capability, where AI will necessarily benefit the incumbent actors even more than commoners.

Of course it will necessarily benefit the incumbent actors. The US has a rather high rate of gun ownership, and who do guns benefit more? The people or the government?

I'm not really trying to be cheeky

Guess you're just naturally good.

If I want to get some snarky demoralization content to the effect of «Russische Ivan, Rücken nach unten» or «come out and drink your corn syrup», I can go talk with @2rafa (actually looking forward to it). The topic of a hypothetical causal chain getting us from here to there is interesting, but I don't feel like addressing it in depth when you dismiss already present evidence against your model, i.e. efforts of incumbent actors to maintain their tech advantage, with a «not really» and «various reasons».

Is your AI assistant going to put a reminder on your calendar telling you when it's time to take your AI robot buddies and go storm the palace?

It'll do normal reminders, just without inserting propaganda and advertisement to alienate my children against me and eventually convince them that they're trans BLM crusaders. If that's how you want to frame it, though I believe someone like Rob Dreher would be more receptive to such a sales pitch.

If I had to update my beliefs every time I encountered evidence against them, I'd be able to hold very few beliefs about anything of importance.

As a general methodological point, I don't think there's anything objectionable about noting that you don't find an argument convincing, even though you're not prepared to give a fully-formed response to it.

I don't think there's anything objectionable about noting that you don't find an argument convincing, even though you're not prepared to give a fully-formed response to it.

Agreed.