Re:Calling for public input on our approach to world leaders
by aww_dang on Friday March 26, 2021 @06:31AM
(#26590501)
Advances in technology do not address the underlying philosophical or moral premises. The pushback against the Gutenberg press was argued along similar lines. Technocrats appear to be the new priestly class.
Narrowly focusing on technological minutiae deliberately misses the point.
I remember when the rallying cry of opensrc and hacker culture was: "information wants to be free". Shameless political FUD is the same parlor trick played again and again. Disappointing to see it getting so much play here.
If you're opening the door for invites to prove a negative, then perhaps you can prove that your rationale isn't misinformation? In terms of real politik, it buttresses authoritarian "fact check" narratives.
We disagree and that's not only healthy and normal, but the entire point. We should be able to disagree without characterizing arguments or subjective observations as misinformation deviating from an authority's concept of "objective truth".
In addition to the bad actors (these are the same throughout time) themselves, they now have capabilities that _are_ different:
- They can be heard at will be heard by millions to billions of people
- They can track in real time whether their messaging is working, and adjust it for maximum effect using everything we've learned about human psychology in the last century
- They can target their messaging at scale, varying it to match what will work best for a given narrowly-defined demographic
- They can do all of this with an iteration cycle of hours, instead of days or weeks
Where is the historical parallel that invalidates the premise?