4 years ago in Quotes
Ads are art to the same degree that cannibalism is gastronomy.
 4 years ago in Quotes
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
 4 years ago in Quotes
For the masses, the feeling that technology develops along an inevitable path reflects their lack of agency — the fact that the crucial decisions about the technological conditions of society will be made by a largely self-regulating confraternity of elites. For engineers and scientists, technological development appears to be driven by a combination of what they can imagine, what is technically feasible, and what governments or markets demand. Even those whose particular genius produces the breakthroughs feel this as an inevitability, as if they are possessed by some inner logic that is the real force ushering in this new world.
 4 years ago in Quotes
Order is the tide of creation, but yours is a species that worships the one over the many. You glorify your intelligence because it allows you to believe anything. That you have a destiny. That you have a right. That you have a cause. That you are special. That you are great. But in truth... you are born insane.
"Starship Troopers 2"
 4 years ago in Quotes
No greater mistake can be made than to imagine that what has been written latest is always the more correct; that what is written later on is an improvement on what was written previously; and that every change means progress. Men who think and have correct judgment, and people who treat their subject earnestly, are all exceptions only. Vermin is the rule everywhere in the world: it is always at hand and busily engaged in trying to improve in its own way upon the mature deliberations of the thinkers. So that if a man wishes to improve himself in any subject he must guard against immediately seizing the newest books written upon it, in the assumption that science is always advancing and that the older books have been made use of in the compiling of the new. They have, it is true, been used; but how? The writer often does not thoroughly understand the old books; he will, at the same time, not use their exact words, so that the result is he spoils and bungles what has been said in a much better and clearer way by the old writers; since they wrote from their own lively knowledge of the subject. He often leaves out the best things they have written, their most striking elucidations of the matter, their happiest remarks, because he does not recognise their value or feel how pregnant they are. It is only what is stupid and shallow that appeals to him. An old and excellent book is frequently shelved for new and bad ones; which, written for the sake of money, wear a pretentious air and are much eulogised by the authors’ friends. In science, a man who wishes to distinguish himself brings something new to market; this frequently consists in his denouncing some principle that has been previously held as correct, so that he may establish a wrong one of his own. Sometimes his attempt is successful for a short time, when a return is made to the old and correct doctrine. These innovators are serious about nothing else in the world than their own priceless person, and it is this that they wish to make its mark.
 4 years ago in Quotes
The neoliberal era of the last generation is dedicated, in principle, to destroying the only means we have to defend ourselves from destruction. It's not called that, what it's called is shifting decision-making from public institutions, which at least in principle are under public influence, to private institutions which are immune from public control, in principle. That's called "shifting to the market", it's under the rhetoric of freedom, but it just means servitude. It means servitude to unaccountable private institutions.
 4 years ago in Quotes
Personally I would far rather we find a way to live within nature, co-existing within the limits of the natural world. Not because we can't yet recreate it as some Natureland theme park but because it is the right - and sane - thing to do. It doesn't mean accepting a primitive or non-technological life.
 4 years ago in Quotes
There is, simply, no way, to ignore privacy. Because a citizenry’s freedoms are interdependent, to surrender your own privacy is really to surrender everyone’s. You might choose to give it up out of convenience, or under the popular pretext that privacy is only required by those who have something to hide. But saying that you don’t need or want privacy because you have nothing to hide is to assume that no one should have, or could have to hide anything – including their immigration status, unemployment history, financial history, and health records. You’re assuming that no one, including yourself, might object to revealing to anyone information about their religious beliefs, political affiliations and sexual activities, as casually as some choose to reveal their movie and music tastes and reading preferences.

Ultimately, saying that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different from saying you don’t care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say. Or that you don’t care about freedom of the press because you don’t like to read. Or that you don’t care about freedom of religion because you don’t believe in God. Or that you don’t care about the freedom to peaceably assemble because you’re a lazy, antisocial agoraphobe. Just because this or that freedom might not have meaning to you today doesn’t mean that that it doesn’t or won’t have meaning tomorrow, to you, or to your neighbor – or to the crowds of principled dissidents I was following on my phone who were protesting halfway across the planet, hoping to gain just a fraction of the freedom that my country was busily dismantling.
"Permanent Record"
 4 years ago in Quotes
I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.
 4 years ago in Quotes
The problem with all current "AI"-driven systems be it facial recognition, voice recognition, translating, fraud detection, navigation, whatever, is that they are not 100% right, and when they're wrong, they're hilariously devastatingly super-wrong in a way that humans are not wrong.

But since the success modes are good and human-like, we assume that the failures are going to be human-like as well, but the failure-modes of these system are usually bizarre and alien.
 4 years ago in Quotes
Utilitarianism aspires to be a benign philosophy but its proponents tend to overestimate their capacity for foresight and moral reasoning and end up creating deeply inhumane systems which are arguably worse than the problems they set out to solve.
 4 years ago in Contrast

the moral superiority of being harmless

If you stand on the side of the road with your signs, I may read your signs, and I might even be sympathetic to your cause. If you block the road with your signs, I definitely won't read your signs, and I definitely won't be sympathetic to your cause.
Zivilisten hier, Leute, die nachts in Betten liegen, Leute mit Küssen und Beerdigungen. Friedliche Gesichter, an der richtigen Stelle, korrekt über dem Hemdkragen sitzend. Die deutsche Nation wird bald geschlagen sein, ihre Menschen bleiben fett. Sie können uns nicht ansehen. Es ist wirklich schon genug, fliehen, in Viehwaggons steigen zu müssen; die Feinde, die Bomben, das ist alles grausam, doch man weiß, was das bedeutet, das läßt rotes Blut fließen, man schreibt in den Zeitungen darüber; der Krieg ist eine Institution. Aber die, die da liegen, die hätte man besser nicht gesehen, außerdem war der Waggon geschlossen. In der Regel sind sie versteckt, aber natürlich kann man in solchen Augenblicken auf sie stoßen.
"Das Menschengeschlecht"
Seite 374
 4 years ago in Contrast

humans vs/as machines, sheer numbers vs quality

Everything is calculation! Thinking is calculation. [..] Humans only think that they think, but all they do is compute, using algorithms programmed into them by biological evolution, and learned by social evolution. But just like machines surpassed humans in physical activity, like running and jumping, they are already starting to surpass humans in so-called intellectual activities.
Es ist typisch für die entmutigende Oberflächlichkeit des heutigen Denkens, daß das Wort "Größe", das eine Quantität und nicht eine Qualität bezeichnet, als ein Ausdruck der Anerkennung, wie zum Beispiel "Schönheit", "Güte", "Weisheit" verwendet wird. Was heute groß ist, wird also fast automatisch als schön und gut angesehen.
"Germany: Jekyll & Hyde (1939 - Deutschland von innen betrachtet)" (1940), S. 20
The danger of computers becoming like humans is not as great as the danger of humans becoming like computers.
The greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons.
"On Evil"
Humans, in so far as they are more than a completion of functions able to react, whose lowest and therefore most central are the purely animal like reactions, are simply superfluous for totalitarian systems. Their goal is not to erect a despotic regime over humans, but a system by which humans are made superfluous. Total power can only be achieved and guaranteed when nothing else matters except the absolutely controllable willingness to react, marionettes robbed of all spontaneity. Humans, precisely because they are so powerful, can only be completely controlled when they have become examples of the animal like species human.
"Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft" p. 667
We don't know a perfected totalitarian power structure, because it would require the control of the whole planet. But we know enough about the the still preliminary experiments of total organization to realize that the very well possible perfection of this apparatus would get rid of human agency in the sense as we know it. To act would turn out to be superfluous for people living together, when all people have become an example of their species, when all doing has become an acceleration of the movement mechanism of history or nature following a set pattern, and all deeds have become the execution of death sentences which history and nature have given anyway.
"Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft" p. 683
These definitions coincide with the terms which, since Greek antiquity, have been used to define the forms of government as the rule of man over man—of one or the few in monarchy and oligarchy, of the best or the many in aristocracy and democracy, to which today we ought to add the latest and perhaps most formidable form of such dominion, bureaucracy, or the rule by an intricate system of bureaux in which no men, neither one nor the best, neither the few nor the many, can be held responsible, and which could be properly called the rule by Nobody. Indeed, if we identify tyranny as the government that is not held to give account of itself, rule by Nobody is clearly the most tyrannical of all, since there is no one left who could even be asked to answer for what is being done. It is this state of affairs which is among the most potent causes for the current world-wide rebellious unrest.
"On Violence"
 4 years ago in Quotes
Not to speak is to speak.
Not to act is to act.
 4 years ago in Quotes
Do you use a search engine? Social media? Any modern online game? A connected smart home? A smart phone without its privacy settings altered? A modern flat screen tv? A modern car? All of them do behavioral extraction in one form of another. Often under the guise of entertainment.