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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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Unless you're subscribing to some ineffable human spirit outside material constraints brainwashing is just a matter of using the right inputs to get the right outputs

It does not follow. A human can be perfectly computable and still not vulnerable to brainwashing in the strong sense; computability does not imply programmability through any input channel, although that was a neat plot line in Snowcrash. Think about this for a second, can you change an old videocamera's firmware through showing it QR codes? Yet it can «see» them.

If we invent machines capable of parsing an entire lifetime of user data, tracking micro changes in pupillary dilation, eye movement, skin-surface temp changes and so on

Ah yes, an advertiser's wet dream.

You should seriously reflect on how you're being mind-hacked by generic FUD into assuming risible speculations about future methods of subjugation.