On social systems

Dec 14, 2006 10:22

This post is a conversation I had with a few people online, prompted by a blog post by Colin.

The conversation is behind a cut because it's rather lengthly. I wrote a fun little Ruby script to convert the logs into pretty html that I'll probably put up on my website soon.

Dramatis Personae:
Colin: Karnaugh, a reasonably intelligent individual, strong of both opinion and language. The one who sparked the whole affair.
johan.kohler: voyager42, a minor but insightful participant.
firxen: jerith, a fellow of singular wit and wisdom.
mithrandi: mithrandi, the final participant, and one of the most active.

Without further ado, the conversation:

** Colin ponders deleting firxens comment

everything you said was answered in the blog

and you missed the plot by the distance between pluto and the sun squared

pretty thought-provoking post

Colin:  The point is not that the points were not addressed, but that I apparently disagree with you about human nature.

rofl

Perhaps I'm cynical, but I have seen too many communities (even small ones) destroyed by trying to build utopias.

I also agree on small, light government.  But I still think we need a good police and justice system.

you don't "build" a utopia

you let go

Colin, show me one example of that working in the wild.

utopia doesn't exist in the wild, because of human nature

Look at the divorce rate.  *two* *people* can't even live together in harmony most of the time.

thats because the concept of manogamy is broken

firxen: you don't improve the situation by trying to force them to live together in harmony

the best you can do is allow people to be in harmony when they can, and protect themselves from other people who want to disrupt that harmony

after that, there's nothing more you can do

the only way you can understand any of it is to say "Religions are all wrong, society doesn't work" and forget every single value that stems from both of them

after all, do you arrest a shark because he bites your leg off?

for example, I don't agree with Colin that monogamy is broken; but there's no reason why he can't go off and be polyamourous, and I go off and be monogamous, and happily exist that way

well to insist that the human species at large is manogamous, is wrong

the problem is, there are a lot of people who feel it is their right to force everyone else to hold the same morals and values that they do (or pretend to do), even when it doesn't interfere with them

mith: sure, but your freedoms stop where mine begin.

huh?

firxen: sure, that's where the latter part of my statement comes in

"protect themselves from..."

For example, we could not live harmoniously if my idea of freedom included communal property and yours didn't.

I don't believe that your freedoms include anything that does not invasively affect you

in that sense, I don't believe in relativist morals

I don't have a problem with people practising communal property

as long as participation is voluntary

if you believe everyone should be forced into it, then I have a fundamental conflict with you

the whole problem is people thinking that they can express their own value, if one of theirs is removed

But your idea of private property and your ownership of said property fundamentally conflicts with my idea that all property should be communal.

like for instance, jane hangs her washing from her car ariel

and bob living next door complains

firxen: well, exactly

so jane says "Fine, but your dog shits on my lawn"

and on and on it goes

firxen: I won't pretend that all viewpoints are reconcilable

And that is why we need to accept some common baseline.

firxen: I believe that my ideal world makes room for a lot of people to be happy, but you can't make everyone happy

(Note "accept", not necessarily "agree on".)

I believe that my common baseline is reasonable, and I can even make arguments to support it, but most people don't care to hear them

mith: sure, but that's not what I understood Colin's post to be saying.

And your common baseline is fairly close to mine.

the primary point is this

"Common groups will always form and define their own suitable definitions of accepted behaviour, either by democracy or autocracy. The stronger of these groups will always express their disagreement with opposing views. This is the world as we already know it."

how did you fail to miss that?

I saw that.  Perhaps I misinterpreted it.

ie. if you started from scratch the outcome would be the same

as formed by anarchy itself

The rest of your post seems essentially to be arguing in favour of anarchy.

yes, because we have anarchy anyway

it's how humans work

And anarchy, like communism, fails.  Because life is a zero-sum game when it's every man for himself.

so, at the end of the day, I do my best to defend me and mine from those kinds of people

heh

firxen: it's not a zero-sum game

We don't have anarchy.

mith: look at the rest of the sentence.

If people work together, it isn't.

every man for himself is implied by zero-sum game

but that's not how life works

dude

communism is the fucking opposite of anarchy

the assumption of a zero-sum game is one of the fatal traps that capitalists tend to fall into

but coming back to anarchy

being an anarch is a personal choice

communisim is *forcing* equalisation

throwugh rules

Colin: I said that neither of them work due to human nature -- I did not say they were the same.

*through

"anarchy" is more or less when the majority of people have chosen to be anarchs

as to whether it "fails", well, who decides what the goals were? :P

how can you say sylogicaly that neither of them work just because one of them doesn't work

they are two different things

In an anarchy, people are free to take what they like and subjugate whoever they can.

no!

firxen: no system of government can change that

And that is what happens in the vast majority of cases..

anarchy is not "I can piss on your wall and kill whoever I want"

it's a broader sense of "I can do what i like"

it isn't intended to imply harm alone

firxen: but at least anarchy doesn't assume that some people DESERVE to take what they like and subjugate whoever they can

thats your bullshit school education talking

firxen: whereas communism, democracy, etc. all start with that as a premise

at the end of the day, the only thing stopping someone from taking your property and subjugating your will, is action on the part of you and others to defend yourselves

Colin, you're talking about the definition of an anarchy, I'm talking about the results.

well it's not like there is any proof of these results

you're making assumptions of an outcome that has no proven test

and has no outcome goals

Either the strong will "piss on your wall and kill whoever I want" or the weak will form communities to defend themselves and will hence no longer be anarchic.

firxen: why do you assume communities are incompatible with anarchy?

firxen: anarchy doesn't imply a complete lack of structure and organization

no anarchic society could be stable with a complete lack of structure

Then it is not a pure anarchy.

why not?

the key is *voluntary* cooperation

democracy is not about you choosing to cooperate with other people

it's about big men with guns threatening you if you don't fit in

(the same with communism, or fascism, or whatever else)

** firxen ponders.

ultimately force is required

perhaps you're talking about a difference between ideal and practical anarchy?

in an ideal world, it wouldn't be

everyone would just be nice to each other

The thing is, if there's a chance of getting something for free, a large minority of people will take it.

but even if everyone *tried* to be nice to each other

they'd still fail miserably

anarchy recognizes that fact

That's why communism fails so badly.

well

communism fails badly because it has practically no room for checks and balances

That's why socialism is leading to a population with an unreasonable sense of entitlement.

it creates a power structure that is almost trivial to subvert

democracy isn't quite so bad, because it leaves room for power struggles

whereas in communism, those only arrive once things have degenerated beyond any semblence of reason

*semblance

er, no

I had it right

anyhow, democracy, communism, etc. are all about abdicating personal responsibility and choice to someone else

and the reason why I believe they're flawed is that we're all only human

as soon as you create a nexus of power, you create room for trouble

Let's define an axiom of human interaction here.  "Some people will take if free ride if one is available.  The number of people to do so will increase in proportion to the number of people already doing so."

Does that sound reasonable?

even if it doesn't start out that way, the system will converge on someone maliciously exploiting people through that nexus of power, or unintentially harming people due to their own lack of capacity

firxen: indeed

firxen: trying to reduce the effects of that phenomenon is part of why I support anarchy

Now, apply that to $social_system_of_choice.

I believe anarchy is as close as you can get to a level playing field

The thing is, if there's a chance of getting something for free, a large minority of people will take it.

thats your assumption based on current status

where the large minority take it because they NEED it

what happens if anarchy goes wrong?

Colin:  Several thousand years of history show this to be a basic fact of human nature.

[1211 12h50.52] That's why socialism is leading to a population with an unreasonable sense of entitlement.

and anarchy says they have no right to anything

several thousand years of poorly documented, mostly forged, history

But the effects of that history are visible everywhere.

And I object to "mostly forged".

Some of it is forged.  All of it is coloured by the people writing it.

Most of the last few hundred years is reasonably accurate in broad terms if not in the actual details.

except for south africa's history

how do you explain the functionality of the internet then?

and other places of confict...

And the mere fact that we do not currently have a working anarchy anywhere (above a negligible scale, at least) shows that this is the case.

Colin:  The internet is a luxury.  As such, it plays by different rules.

There is no police force looking after the internet

it doesn't play by different ruels at all

There are several that are trying.

Of course it does.

the majority of people hae etiqutes which they accept

they are enforced only in the channels where those people exist

Even so, look at the amount of spam being pumped out every second.

anyone else can still use it and create their own rules

so ?

You cannot compare the internet with non-internet.  for one thing, education ratios would be completely different... this may not be significant, however...

Look at botnets.  DDoS attacks.

Something-for-nothing.

you're comparing minor incidents to something that functions perfectly as a whole

"non-internet" is *exactly* the same

Show me whose basic survival depends on the net.

*grammar.

thats not the point

it's a virtual comparison

Show me how you can oppress someone on the net.

you can opress someone just as easily as you can someone irl

How?

by the methods you just mentioned

hacking, spamming

etc

but no single group or person can damange the whole

*damage

In real life you can shove a gun in my face and rape my kids.  How do you do anything even approaching that on the internet?

firxen: at the moment, with difficulty

*sigh*

firxen: but I can still think of quite a few ways to blackmail/coerce someone electronically

are you trying to understand the comparison, or are you trying to argue around it?

even if it's not as extreme

On the internet you can stop me using the internet by DoSing me.  You can use my hardware without my permission if I don't run a secure system.

I am trying to do two things:  (a) show you that, while it functions as a whole, it is far from all roses; (b) show you that it only functions as it does because it is fundamentally different from real life.

People are *trying* to subvert the system.  The reason they are, on the whole, losing has more to do with the basic nature of the medium than with the system.

firxen: so you're saying that once the internet is more comprehensive, people will be more successful at subverting the system?

frankly, I agree to an extent

I do not believe that the kind of anarchy I envisage could have come about 100 years ago

the industrial age brought about a situation where the group was disproportionately empowered compared to the individual

but the advancement of technology has reversed that situation

we have the technology to start giving people the tools to defend themselves

the internet is part of that

mith:  Conversely, we give people better tools to oppress other people.

I don't think it's symmetric

or, let me put it differently

technology now empowers the individual more than the group

sure, it's a double-edged sword

The ability to defend has higher acceleration than the ability to oppress?

but the reverse edge of human nature kicks in

firxen: basically, the defender has the advantage

it's asymmetric warfare across the board

obviously there is a point beyond which you can't defend yourself

but you will be more successful defending yourself individually, or in voluntary cooperation with others, than in a situation of coercement and abdication of responsibility

unfortunately, responsibility is where my hopes of a better future go down the drain

because as repugnant as the concept is to me, the majority of people (for various reasons) want nothing more than to completely abdicate their responsibilities to someone else, *ANYONE* else

and as long as masses of people are willing to do that, there will always be vast power nexuses (nexi? wtf is the plural of that) to be abused

There are certain responsibilities I *want* to abdicate.

But they're small ones.

I pay someone to be responsible for keeping my car in working order.  I retain the responsibility to make sure they get it when there's a problem.

oh sure

but that's kind of different

I mean, when I take my car for a service somewhere

I pay someone to make sure I have a somewhat comfortable living environment.

I don't stick my fingers in my ears and go "LALALALALALAAL SOMEONE FIX IT"

I make an informed decision about exactly what I'm abdicating, and to whom

and I do it in as limited a fashion as possible

but most people do stuff like

"I want to be safe. this other guy says that as long as I let him decide everything for me, he'll make sure I can carry on pretending I'm safe. COOL! Let's do it!"

that's how desperate they are to preserve their fantasy world

I can understand it, to an extent

I couldn't handle the blatant unreality of the situation

but I can understand the appeal of pretending that life is a bed of roses

This from mister "don't show me that ID crap lalalalalala that kind of person doesn't exist in my reality"... :-P

Today's Pearls Before Swine is awesome!

firxen: haha

*that* is why the internet appears perfect to you - there is, from a practical side, far fewer people running everying than people using it.  And theoretically everyone can do the same, but not everyone chooses to do so.  Therefore your reasonable anarchists have more control.

sorry this refers to: (15:15:49) TC: because as repugnant

Johan:  I think a lot of it is also because most of the bad stuff is far less visible.

hah, I never said the internet was perfect, that was Colin ;)

but really, there's a lot less abuse on the internet at the moment

in general, that's because the potential for abuse is not yet very great

but in specific cases, it's because the system is inherently more robust

J Random Luser doesn't care that his Windows box is in three botnets perpetrating click fraud, spam and phishing attacks as long as he can get his porn and print his chain letters.

heh

that's pretty minor compared to the ways J Random Luser enables abuse IRL, though

(at least, in most cases)

Sure, but that doesn't matter because on the internet, nobody gets hurt all that seriously.

yet

and, well, that's not necessarily true

What's the worst that could happen?  You're stupid with your credit card and someone scams you for a few grand.

there's a bunch of identity theft and fraud that happens over the internet

sci fi often portrays a future world where the net is pervasive and most interaction between people happen online.  Perhaps then we will experience the kind of anarchy colin and mithrandi yearns for.  the downside is that the real world will still be there

let me make it clear, I don't view "cyberspace" as a replacement reality

it's merely a projection and extension of the "real world"

the internet is an important technology, but at the end of the day, it's about people

Like mithrandi says, though, as it becomes more closely linked with reality, the opportunities for serious abuse will only increase.

an online-only anarchy like we have at the moment can never survive, because it can't break free of the real world

what I mean is that somewhere people will be oppressed so that you can buy your NIke's or your ramen, or your next wall screen.

heh

Think of the oppression opportunities if you could control people's car autopilots from your botnet.

unfortunately, I don't have the time to debate that side issue

I've enjoyed this discussion ;-)

internet, chat

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