Psychology – Page 7

“An update on your petition on strong encryption”

My thoughts are below:

An update on your petition on strong encryption:

Thank you again for signing the We the People petition on strong encryption and getting involved with this important debate.

We wanted to give you a quick update on the process so far:

This month, administration officials met with some of the original petition signers to listen to their priorities and concerns regarding encryption. In our last correspondence, we asked for your thoughts and questions — and you answered.

So far we’ve received over 5,000 responses from you, which we are carefully reviewing.

We want to keep hearing from you. If you haven’t already submitted your thoughts or questions, please do so now here.

In the meantime, watch what the President had to say about bringing law enforcement, intelligence, and high-tech companies together:

Thanks, and we’ll be in touch soon.

— The We the People Team

This kind of reply is why this whole government petition system is pointless in the hands of a centrist republican bank puppet President. All you’ll ever get is more evasive non-speak and 10 minute staffer written throw away replies.

The “answer” given in that video is worthless. It basically boils down to “we’ll ask your question to tech companies.”

Fortunately, on this issue we don’t have to wait for the government. But we do have to wait on coders to get over the greed.

People that want to patent the question mark when they grow up are not going to be helpful when society finds itself in need of blanket user friendly encryption solutions. They’ve already made it abundantly clear that they collectively don’t want anything like a user friendly open source windows alternative.

Not a single distro makes compatibility and familiarity core objectives. Each one is extremely petty systemically in that they disregard windows users as mentally defective and respond to desires from that crowd as flawed desires outright. Tech support answers in that context virtually always boil down to “want something else.”

We need strong encryption baked in to this kind of effort because it has to be adopted in bulk and it needs to be incidental and easy to provide real protection because at the moment, the very act of going through the monumental hassle to harden your communications very likely in itself puts you on a watch list unless you are already just a tech fetishist or are a committed privacy advocate.

We don’t need better bullet proof vests, we need bullet proof tshirts, so that when asked why you are bullet proof your answer can be “it just came with the shirt.” Until then we all know how society will react to anyone else who hardens their communication. “Well what do you have to hide? Why are you going through so much hassle to do this if there’s nothing illegal going on in your tech sphere?”

Thus what we really need is a deep privacy, deep encryption, baked in, peer to peer open source, distributed, version of windows xp. With the twin primary design goals of protecting people from assumed digital tyranny and providing a nearly seamless transition experience for the bulk of PC users. That is why it’s critical that this OS be able to install and run windows apps the exact same way they are run and installed under windows xp in terms of work flow and cosmetics, so that we have a true user-feasible, alternative to the dominant closed source ecosystems. I would also suggest a mac skin for this same base. So that all of us can move towards a shared operating system with pooled resources that serves users above all else.

It is not Obama and the NSA preventing that. So in a sense they are right to lay this sort of problem at the feet of the industry.

Arthur C Clarke

Made this real fast. There’s probably a much better version out there somewhere hehe.

Response to Bernie Sanders on Gun Control

Bernie’s campaign sent this email. And below is it an explanation of why I can’t agree or sign.

Dear Brandon –

Here is the very sad truth: it is very difficult for the American people to keep up with the mass shootings we seem to see every day in the news. Yesterday, San Bernardino. Last week, Colorado Springs. Last month, Colorado Springs again. Newtown, Aurora, Tucson, Isla Vista, Virginia Tech, Navy Yard, Roseburg, and far too many others.

The crisis of gun violence has reached epidemic levels in this country to the point that we are averaging more than one mass shooting per day. Now, I am going to tell you something that most candidates wouldn’t say: I am not sure there is a magical answer to how we end gun violence in America. But I do know that while thoughts and prayers are important, they are insufficient and it is long past time for action.

That’s why I want to talk to you today about a few concrete actions we should take as a country that will save lives.

Add your name in support of the following commonsense measures Congress can take to make our communities safer from gun violence.

1. We can expand background checks to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the dangerously mentally ill. This is an idea that over 80% of Americans agree with, even a majority of gun owners.

2. & 3. We can renew the assault weapons ban and end the sale of high capacity magazines — military-style tools created for the purpose of killing people as efficiently as possible.

4. Since 2004, over 2,000 people on the FBI’s terrorist watch list have legally purchased guns in the United States. Let’s close the “terror gap” and make sure known foreign and domestic terrorists are included on prohibited purchaser lists.

5. We can close loopholes in our laws that allow perpetrators of stalking and dating violence to buy guns. In the United States, the intended targets of a majority of our mass shootings are intimate partners or family members, and over 60% of victims are women and children. Indeed, a woman is five times more likely to die in a domestic violence incident when a gun is present.

6. We should close the loophole that allows prohibited purchasers to buy a gun without a completed background check after a three-day waiting period expires. Earlier this year, Dylann Roof shot and killed nine of our fellow Americans while they prayed in a historic church, simply because of the color of their skin. This act of terror was possible because of loopholes in our background check laws. Congress should act to ensure the standard for ALL gun purchases is a completed background check. No check — no sale.

7. It’s time to pass federal gun trafficking laws. I support Kirsten Gillibrand’s Hadiya Pendleton and Nyasia Pryear-Yard Gun Trafficking & Crime Prevention Act of 2015, which would “make gun trafficking a federal crime and provide tools to law enforcement to get illegal guns off the streets and away from criminal networks and street gangs.”

8. It’s time to strengthen penalties for straw purchasers who buy guns from licensed dealers on behalf of a prohibited purchaser.

9. We must authorize resources for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study and research the causes and effects of gun violence in the United States of America.

10. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are over 21,000 firearm suicides every year in the United States. It’s time we expand and improve our mental health capabilities in this country so that people who need care can get care when they need it, regardless of their level of income.Add your name in support of these commonsense measures Congress can take to make our communities safer from gun violence.

Earlier today, the U.S. Senate voted against non-binding legislation to expand background checks, close the “terror gap,” and improve our mental health systems. I voted for all three, although each of them came up short.

They failed for the same reason the bipartisan Manchin-Toomey legislation failed in 2013, just months after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School: because of the financial political power of a gun lobby that has bought candidates and elections for the better part of the last several decades.

In 2014 alone, the gun lobby spent over $30 million on political advertising and lobbying to influence legislators in Congress and state capitals across the country. And just last month, it was reported that the Koch brothers made a $5 million contribution to the NRA.

Americans of all political stripes agree. It’s time to address the all too common scene of our neighbors being killed. It’s time to pass a common sense package of gun safety legislation.

With your help, that’s what we’ll do when I’m president.

In solidarity,

Bernie Sanders

Sign Our Petition

I’m sorry but I can’t sign this.

I can’t add my name because of point 2. “assault” and “military style” are meaningless terms. And tough gun law in California and France obviously changed nothing. I will not be a party to creating a third unwinnable crime war.

The bottom line is this. Crime is already illegal. And shooting people is already a crime.

This entire debate is an absurd distraction from the real issues.

Guns are a containment technology. Take them away and the tools of psychosis become fire, chemicals, explosives, cars themselves.

Remember the guy that weaponized a bulldozer and stumped a whole town’s police force? They didn’t stop him. Faulty machinery stopped him.

The real issue here is a gargantuan impoverished class. We need to solve the root problems that drive people crazy and make it impossible to help them. We need to remove those social forces that allow them to feel there is no other solution but a violent death.

We need a single payer health system for starters so anyone anywhere in the country can walk into a hospital and get the help they need.

Gun control is a doomed, insane, concept. Every bit as insane as drug law and alcohol prohibition. Especially in this the era of 3d printers and CNC machines that can carve steel. Both of which a dedicated person can build from scratch.

Ban guns, and I assure you you’ll create a basement weapons cartel that will result in gun factories springing up like meth labs, everywhere.

You think gun violence is bad now? Imagine a totally disarmed legitimate populace vs a booming cottage arms trade that deals nearly exclusively in drum fed AK 47s.

The only reason gun control remotely works in Europe is because of extensive social services combined with police state style surveillance, and still, that didn’t stop the Paris attacks did it?

Gun law is not only wrong, it’s completely insane. Especially here. You start taking guns away and every survivalist hate group in the country gets the biggest I told you so in history to recruit with, and suddenly we’re drowning in domestic terrorism that could well escalate into civil war.

Fortunately, no one but ignorant commenters is honestly that stupid. You will not get your gun laws, so stop asking people. You’ll get token trivial gestures that will at best kill innocent people for want of self defense weapons.

There’s no such thing as “common sense” gun laws because gun laws are as nonsensical as prohibition.

All gun law does is make it harder for people like me to defend other innocent people.

#LeftistWithAGun

2nd Amendment and Related Links

Why not make it free?

I would be nice to make everything free, but some things are defined by their resistance to distribution.

Why I Oppose the “Venus Project”

Still, that being said we can acquire a high degree of ubiquitous material wealth if we do three things:

1. Reform IPL to make all code free as in speech and beer. Privacy could still easily be respected. In fact copyright enforcement and privacy of correspondence are mutually exclusive. (To program the robots.)

2. Deploy nuclear reactors quickly to provide the bottom of an anthropocentric materials economy food chain. (To power the robots.)

3. Develop an open source humanoid robot, recharged by the reactors, and instructed by ever evolving shared open code above, to automate any labor task we need done yet are unwilling to do personally. (To have the robots.)

With those things accomplished, essentially everything would be free. Certainly anything that could qualify as a basic human need.

In the mean time we absolutely could deploy a UBI and give everyone a piece of their human inheritance.

One Possible Solution

Women and ISIS

The fact that some women seem to be actually interested in being property in ISIS is incomprehensible to some, but it’s not completely devoid of logic if you look at a bit of the bigger picture.

We in the west live in a very ideologically individualist society and we seem to equate submission with weakness. Yet paradoxically we laud anyone who submits to the many collective positions on which society depends. Example: A submissive man is pathetic, yet a solider is heroic despite service being the very basis of being in the military. It couldn’t function without at least the majority of the time obeying orders without question and without hesitation.

But the thing is there are advantages both psychological and practical to being inclined to submit. After all, that’s why it’s a common survival strategy. Some people just aren’t assertive by genetic inclination. And a structured social order, even if that order places one in a subordinate role, can be a pleasant thing for some people.

I think the fact that western society both refuses to admit that and depends on it utterly, drives a lot of people underground and makes them bitter about the hypocrisy of the mainstream.

We are still a young culture, and there are a lot of elements of human nature that we have not created niches for. Drug use and various paraphilias for example. We seem to wish to stamp them out, but realistically that’s never going to happen. We’re still not even done solidifying our response to homosexuals.

One draw of systems from the 7th century is that they have had time to incorporate everything. Even if that incorporation is oppressive or an effort to annihilate it, at least they have a clear answer, and that is fundamentally appealing to the human mind. We like answers, even if they are wrong and toxic. (Just ask anyone who thinks nuclear power is a bad idea.)

Authority is difficult even if it’s over only yourself. Self reliance is inherently difficult. The pressure of making choices can be quite high contrasted with the comfort of having imposed structure, especially in a culture like ours that imposes all manner of discipline externally thus corroding self discipline.

Also in our society most people realize what a raw deal the vast majority of authoritative roles actually are. Much of our culture is suffering from the curse of middle management, in which you have just enough power to get in trouble when things go wrong but not enough power to ensure things go right.

As a result, a lot of people just coast as much as they can. If you look at things and realize you’re going to end up property anyway, you might start looking at the situation the way a person did in earlier eras prior to selling themselves into slavery. (Which believe it or not occurred a lot.)

Also we tend to dismiss the owner types in ISIS as cartoonish monsters, but in reality they are more likely to be something like soldiers or cult members for the most part. Yes they by definition must be violent and the like to seek to join a violent death cult, but then again, it’s pretty obvious that many women are quite attracted to violent assertive men. (Just look at jail house serial killer marriages.)

Indeed we glorify and cultivate this attraction when it’s about the “correct” classes of violent assertive men, such as our soldiers and police officers. So, given all that, is it really so shocking that some women would arrive at a mindset that genuinely finds life in a 7th century Islamic culture appealing, even before you get into the seductive power of religion itself and the draw of a charismatic conman recruiter?

Not to me. Not so much.

Still, it must be said that for the good of the species those that wish to join ISIS should not be given the freedom to do so because that action directly leads to the harm of others. I’m a big fan of freedom as any of my readers should know, but when you find local girls or boys wanting to fly off to join ISIS, it’s time to seize their passports.

Islam, Xenophobia, and France

It has been suggested a lot recently that there’s a big difference between Islam as a faith and the violence of some of it’s practitioners. I used to lean in that direction as well, but now I don’t know. I’m starting to lean with Sam Harris on this one. It really seems that to whatever degree Islam is a religion of peace is directly proportional to it’s adherents deviation from the original text.

That’s partly why so much Islamic violence is aimed at other Muslims. It’s because the “fundamentalists” also believe that a peaceful version of Islam isn’t an accurate interpretation of Islam if you measure accuracy by behavioral parity with the source text. With us against us mentality.

It’s almost like asserting the possibility of an inclusive tolerant version of the KKK. You can’t really do that without making it into something other than the KKK. Sure, some skinheads aren’t violent, but that’s just because they ignore the logical conclusions of the core idea. If you really believe X you must at least be in favor of Y.

Religions are like nations in that they place their own existence at the apex of importance. Again like the KKK they are intrinsically supremacist. Well above ethical considerations when you get right down to it. (I’m quick to add that nationalism itself is essentially/behaviorally/psychologically/etc a religion.)

Islam in particular seems intrinsically violent on balance expressly because it seems remarkably self aware of its nature and true objective. I think it is this very honestly and consistency that grants it lasting appeal actually.

Contrast Saudi Arabia with the Vatican. Not exactly apples to apples I realize but still, you see my point. It seems like the mental flexibility required to twist Islam into a murder/torture justification isn’t very demanding in relation to the other major religions.

Because really, we need to admit that some religions are more violent than others. (Maybe develop an objective way to measure it. Perhaps by counting the separate instances of justification for murder?)

This is obvious when you think about it. I mean just look at the Aztecs. You have to admit that wherever Islam is politically ascendant, relatively more overt religious barbarity follows, and this isn’t the case with all other faiths.

The solution is to undermine what makes a violent faith practical. People aren’t stupid actually, nor are they robots. As hard as that is to believe at times. It is not upbringing and training that sustains this madness. It’s more basic than that. It’s about food and water and shelter and communications. Secularity triumphs mostly in areas of prosperity.

I’m quick to add that prosperity doesn’t just mean money. It means physical and cultural wealth.

Terrorism is contextually emergent. It springs up like puddles in rain. To fix it you need to change the underlying context. You need gutters and storm drains if you don’t want to see puddles. Bombing a puddle just means a deeper puddle next time it rains.

The refugees in this context are going to teach us an important lesson. How to include people. If we master that. If we get our shit together to the point that we can ethically and practically recruit better than our enemies, we will win. This entire political sphere depends on the existence of poverty and the dismissal of suffering.

That’s why the problem seems so intractable. Because the only solution is a root solution, one which we don’t even apply to ourselves yet. Essentially we have to kill poverty at home and then invite others into that home. The 1% and their minions aren’t having that.

Their solution is variations on a gated community which is just a passive spineless version of concentration camps. We need to be honest about that as well.

Paris is going to get it’s own patriot act before long. :/ But it’s understandable. ISIS is not like the other terrorist threats. It’s real and different. It’s more like actual legitimate war. 🙁

Also looking at the French attacks you can see the uniqueness of ISIS in living memory.

ISIS is something atrociously special. I can’t think of anything like it in modern history. It’s going to make for a decade of great action movies. Like the chinese curse, may you live in interesting times. And a little bit of be careful what you wish for.

I feel that much of our terrorism thing has been manufactured and exaggerated. Allowed to happen. Intentionally cultivated. Baited even. So let’s just hope this doesn’t turn into the boy who cried wolf.

We haven’t had such a legitimate enemy since the Nazis. These people aren’t like typical terrorists with legitimate grievances. They are a nation state death cult that has openly declared war that they intend to fight forever.

They actually expect to lose it by our standards. (See link below.) They’ve made it clear how to crush them militarily, and are begging for it. Literally begging their god for it.

So I’m curious how France will look in 10 years. I think this is their 911. I think they’ll never be the same. But it’s not like ours. They didn’t need it like the 1% needed 911. None of the cultivation I mentioned on our part applies to them. I think the official story is essentially accurate.

France is an extremely reasonable country in my view. I don’t expect them to go hysterical like we did and surrender to fear and baseless irrational war mongering. And unlike some of the shittier elements of popular culture, I have zero illusions about their lethality.

ISIS is completely foolish (from my perspective) for attacking France. But like I said: Death cult. Thinking about their desire to be crushed, it was actually really wise. Indeed more wise than attacking us.

We can’t really bring them the epic stomping they want. That’s what we get for crying wolf twice and putting said wars on the credit card. No one would rally behind us, or Russia for that matter. But France? Yeah.

That was the wrong (or right as I said) move. They are going to discover that picking a fight with France, a real fight, is a bit like trying to invade Switzerland. Just about the dumbest plan ever. I think we’re going to see some true social Darwinism in action in the coming years.