Month: January 2020

Every policy needs to be subject to a cost benefit analysis. Privacy is no exception.

Inevitability

This is going to happen anyway whether you like it or not by the way. Camera resolution, storage, processing speed, latency, optics, and AI are all going to get better and better. Eventually watching everyone and processing the actions against a moral gradient is going to be economically trivial, if not incidental.

Not to mention the power of psychological and economic modeling. I can already be simulated behaviorally to an extreme degree.

Power

Privacy is security through obscurity. That’s rarely wise. It would be much better to achieve your real goals openly by other means.

Think about why body cams make policing the police easier.

The concern about power is eliminated by the fact that those in power would also lack privacy. Corruption would be impossible if we could read every government email, walk into any meeting virtually, etc.

A panopticon society would be inherently a total democracy. If that’s a bad thing, then perhaps you need to revisit your political identity. The authority would come from instant crowd reactions. Child abuse would be impossible because all children would be under observation. So to would the observers, and the observers’ observers, because web, not tree.

I think this debate needs to be had. Everyone virtue signals about how good they are with the violence fantasy vs child abusers, but how many are actually willing to give up something to save children?

I personally would give up all my privacy to mostly prevent children from being tortured/murdered. /shrugs

Shame

Why doesn’t this bother me? Because think about why you want privacy, if not to commit an evil. 99% of the argument is going to be about sex and grossness, possibly profit. You don’t want people watching you get off, or take a dump. Or stealing your ideas. Right? You don’t want to be mocked or shamed or exploited.

But this situation would quickly redefine shame. The only reason we feel justified in mocking people is because we think the behavior is rare. If everyone does something, and we can all see it if we choose to prove it, then why be ashamed of it? It’s like a bathroom, we know that room has people pissing in it. Who cares?

Everything is like that. Privacy exists in large part to bolster lies. Especially with regard to corruption and crime.

Implementation

Imagine a device with a contained AI and a lens. All it does is watch for cruelty (as defined by us all, see below about corruption.) When it sees some it flags that video/audio and uploads it to the net. Society responds accordingly.

False positives could go into an archive to improve future flagging.

Then it’s just a matter of making note of and eliminating coverage gaps, and/or watching for indirect evidence.

In the comics Thanos never had any kind of anti-hero goal in the comics and that’s important because the people in the comics as a result didn’t try to reason with him, because he was just trying to get laid. (Yes, seriously. By impressing the female personification of Death via epic sacrifice.)

Preserving that absence of argument, while changing Thanos’s motivation, turns infinity war into a disturbingly cruel argument for culling humanity by implying that movie Thanos had a point (He doesn’t. Over population is a myth.)

The implication the film makes by not having the heroes ever question his motives is that the problem is Thanos’s method, not his premise. Since we know that the good guys will obviously use reason and diplomacy whenever possible. They didn’t even try vs Thanos, no one called him out, even during banter. And this is particularly vile given the fact that his opposition is the entire MCU, thus saying that literally no one in the entire MCU could see a flaw with his logic or goals.

This happening in the same universe as civil war, where argument is core to the plot, is just more evidence of how infinity war is intentionally Malthusian death cult propaganda.

Had a spot of severe anxiety recently and used music to help me wait it out. Music for me is a complicated thing (hardly alone in that) and I’m writing this post to briefly explain specifically how it is for me because music is such a large part of human culture and I should really share for what it’s worth.

Also, to be clear, I’m speaking here of music I “like.” I’m intentionally not including music I just flat out don’t like or music that isn’t even music so much as it is a corruption and ploy. This is an essay about how music generally hits me and why as a result I tend to avoid it.

Intensity

Firstly, music hits me way harder than it should apparently like so much else does. I have emotional problems. I think everything about my feels is turned up to 11 and this has resulted in a lot of internal breakage so I’m numb to some things, and over react to most everything else, internally. As opposed to behaviorally. As a result I’m profoundly picky. Which I keep many songs, at any given moment I enjoy only a very few. Music really is like an audio drug and I very much have no tolerance. Music can reliably make me cry for example. I keep that song but I don’t ever play it. (Who seeks out feeling that way?)

Music forces an emotional state for me, and typically it’s not an entirely pleasant one. However, I’ve learned recently that less bad can equal better, and while I loath the lesser of evils argument, when it comes to feeling, I’ll take what I can get when the alternative is dangerous levels of discomfort.

Performance

When listening to music in the presence of others I feel anxiety related to how I appear. Do I look like I’m enjoying it properly? Am I hurting someone’s feelings by not liking this music? When sharing music have I chosen badly? See next point.

Understanding

Do I have this music in the correct context mentally? Can I understand the lyrics? Is this musician a good person irl? Is the song propaganda in some harmful way? Consuming music is like consuming any other product. There is an inherent moral gradient.

Copyright

This could be a whole series of books by itself. Suffice to say the situation is insane, literally. As we move forward, music has to be ever more absurd and random simply to remain legal as all possible harmonious and ordered configurations of notes enter copyright.

Placebo

I wanna talk a bit about the concert thing. The idea that you can fight the system with a song is a sad lie promoted by the system to keep people from actually fighting the system.

So concerts kind of disgust me because of the lie. By which I mean the crowd will gather, feel strongly, roar, …and then go home separately like nothing happened. Music doesn’t unite or inspire. It just gets people drunk on sound for a time. That puts a disgusted look on my face as I type it. Like a shaking your head “wtf is with that stupid shit” look. That’s how it makes me feel when I think of it.

I’m reminded of the 90s antichrist tour where it really looked like Manson was trying Very hard to get his crowd to break out of that pattern and DO something. Anything. Some like to wax poetic about the impact of music and protest songs and the like but I cry bullshit and assert that this idea is promoted not just by delusional larping fans keen to pretend they were part of something bigger than them, but by the agents of the status quo who love the idea of musical protest as a placebo for revolt and reform.

Because lets be real, what did all that music actually accomplish? Look around. The answer is not much beyond opportunity cost. Bill and Ted is a glorious movie but it’s not a documentary. No matter how moving or powerful the music is, it doesn’t translate into anything more than a temporary high. And that’s hurtful when your flavor of choice speaks of reform. Not even anthems and hymns, laden with hyper successful memes of world spanning religions and superpower nation states can accomplish much.

Impurity

Also music is inherently mixed, so the feelings are often conflicted. Especially when you take into account real context. What professionals sing about and what is real and what they actually believe are all different things. Music is often layers and layers of lies. Like any art. And that can be incredibly painful to a truth seeker seeking truth and comfort. But on a side note, what truth is really pleasing to hear about? Arguably everything beautiful is to some degree fictional and that is a whole a separate topic.

But this can end up feeling a bit like finding a nail in your soup.

Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a feature and a bug as well. Music transports you backwards, and that can be uncomfortable to put it gently. Sometimes you wish it didn’t because you still like the song regardless. Some things you wish you could unremember. Even pleasing nostalgia comes with a heavy come down when it goes away and you look around and realize all that is never to return. Fantasy is closely related here. Some music is like a staggering good role playing game. And when it’s over reality itself becomes painful. Much like a hangover.

Conscription

Another thing about music is the social scolding. It’s like team sports. There’s a low key war over music constantly going. To enjoy music is to join a camp. And for non-joiners that is yet another problem. To think of your peers and your new enemies. I don’t like feeling mocked by millions of hypothetical people for what happens to bring me pleasure.

Solipisism

Music when deplyed through personal devices is inherently a solitary thing also and in a sense shameful in exactly the same way getting drunk alone or masturbating is. (Or isn’t depending on your views.)

For my own part I can’t enjoy music alone without feeling a little pathetic. There is an exceptionally harsh music critic in my head mocking me when I listen. Regardless of what should or shouldn’t be, this simply is for me.

Complexity

I have a couple thousand mp3s, paltry by some collection standards I know but still far too large for me to effectively organize. Even with dozens of playlists and tagging.

DJ-ing is a true art form because of how incredibly difficult it is to select from a large library of music songs that apply to a given situation. I truly hope AI will rise to help here, but current it’s all behind paywalls so I wouldn’t know.

Criminality

I’m a criminal musically. I own and listen to “pirated” music. Occasionally I remember that when listening and it makes me feel disgust and rage.

Emptiness

So often the lyrics are just jibberish chosen for phonetic value, and I just can’t stand that. Especially if it’s catching. Who wants literal nonsense lodged in their mind looping over and over? Rises to the level of bioweapon imo.

And when I stopped the player this felt like a pointless posting. But that’s on topic isn’t it.