Comment by advael
10 hours ago
There is no form of surveillance that does more good than harm in the long run. The endless debates about the value of "catching bad guys" or "keeping people on their best behavior" should be rightly seen as opposed to the fundamental notion that human beings are capable of cooperation and altruism at scale. No amount of mass surveillance is justifiable, and there is no version of the future in which we allow it but do not create dystopia
> There is no form of surveillance that does more good than harm in the long run.
...how far do you take this maxim? Should we have any police on the street to enforce speed limits, since they're surveilling the speed of drivers?
Often, there are many solutions to a problem, with different externalities and implementation requirements. Speed limit enforcement for sure has some benefits, but also some downsides. Any absolute has edge cases that don't work, but I don't in fact think creating the large networks of people empowered to surveil citizens to enforce speed limits is the only viable means of reducing traffic deaths, a goal which is often better served by creating more viable transportation alternatives to cars. I don't think carceral approaches to problems are always wrong, but they are often an attempt to individuate a problem that's better addressed on the level of infrastructure
Yup, trees, narrower streets, round abouts, speed bumps, (no one would agree to it) one way road spikes... All sorts of proven tricks.
We don't imprison people for speeding per se in the UK.
GP probably meant mass surveillance. I don't think anyone's arguing that a cop with a radar gun watching one piece of road is harmful. It's harmful when it scales to hundreds of data points across different areas, is automated, and has almost no oversight or accountability baked into the system.
Then GP should have said mass surveillance. In this era of all-or-nothing swing-for-the-bleachers with-me-or-against-me hot takes, it matters.
I thought the "automated" part was a clear implication of the statement personally.
What "automated" part, I see no "automated" in the OP, but perhaps it was meant. So far we have:
1. "opposed to the fundamental notion that human beings are capable of cooperation and altruism at scale" - a complicated statement, I think it means that keeping people under control stops them from being naturally good.
2. The scale, or as another comment said, "It's harmful when it scales to hundreds of data points across different areas", but why?
3. That comment continues "is automated, and has almost no oversight or accountability baked into the system." It's not clear why anything would be better when inefficient, but here we have an appeal to common sense and some sort of appeals process.
This is rather messy. I get the impression of an argument for case-by-case human decisions.
It reminds me of the data gathering done by businesses, which doesn't even technically harm me or lead to decisions about me personally, but still pisses me off. I'm happy for a store manager to contemplatively watch me shopping while incubating business decisions, but I don't want to be distilled into statistics, it's just offensive - I suppose because it's impersonal. "How do these humans behave mechanically?" is the question implied by the data-gathering.
I'm okay with the idea of some asymmetry. You need to pay to look up my stuff, but once you do, I get access to yours for free.
I disagree, I want all of my decision-making government employees monitored and logged 24/7 complete with a peeping tom AI to sort the recordings by suspiciousness and performance with accurate potentially large bonuses on large time delays.
And you're willing to subject yourself to such monitoring as well, right?
Irrelevant. Public servants are to be held to a higher standard.
2 replies →
If he has any power over other people than may be this might be required?
Of course!
I don't know how hard you work but assuming you enjoy accomplishing something, did you ever have a job where a substantial % of the employees are trying to cut all corners?
In my current job, for two months, two employees have been to lazy to drive 2 hours to bring tools. People working there will simply not do the work. They won't report it to higher ups because the first question will be: Why didn't you report this two months ago? I grind them every day but wont report them either as there is nothing to gain for me.
This is exactly how governments works.
I wrote a web app, I put some screenshots into an LLM and instantly know who isn't working, for how long or at what point they cant continue and how long ago they should have known. It paints a preposterous picture but it is currently only useful for job security.
Elected and unelected government workers impact not just us but the world given the interconnected nature of modern logistics.
They can accept the obligation or stay home.
It's not supposed to be career for personal gain like being an actor. Every LARP has been socialized as a "destiny" or "calling".
Except for the average person who lives at the whims of "the market".
The downside for the majority of insulating 600k elected officials and the 1.3 million lawyers and public employees is just more of the same middle age's stratified society crap
I say we roll out america.gov decision models trained in public, deployed in public, built around a legal philosophy of immutable rights to shelter and healthcare and the related technology development and have it bubble initiatives for public vote that don't violate the core legal rights
And if some dealership owner doesn't like it remind them they're one meat of billions and we don't really need them
This whole Mr Rogers touchy feely kid gloves for the professional managerial class, all told fewer people than died during covid, not a truly important cabal then, is no different than anointing kings and barons and regional lords financially... their economic condition is sacrosanct and everyone elses is optional
Changed the semantics, kept the ridiculous ground truth
Desicions are not made by government employees, they simply obey and execute, not without personal gains, of course.
You want to monitor and log someone else. Start with top oligarchs, IMF, World Bank, WEF, Blackrock, Vanguard and so on, then track further behind the curtains.