We have control issues
2024-09-08 16:20:00 +07:00 by Mark Smith
Some interesting thoughts and discussions arising about control in some of today’s podcasts.
In the Keen On podcast, Keith Tear makes some interesting points while discussing Elon Musk and free speech. Under pressure Keith says he’s still left leaning, but he’d drop the left-right framing if it meant getting away from those that seek to control. His view is many are misguided in thinking being in control is the default state, but citizens are under no obligation to conform unless they break the law. I thought that was an interesting and strong way of looking at the situation. Also Andrew is a terrible tease. He eventually does broadly agree with Keith, but not before really giving him a hard time about it. His brand of humour has a unmistakable streak of seriousness to it!
Later a similar topic arose in the Rest is Politics US episode. Katty Kay makes a comment about someone being 'out of control' and it occurred to me how much we have veared off piste that being in control is seen as the default state. This makes even less sense in the US where such thinking is in direct contradiction with 'the land of the free' thing. To be fair to Katty Kay, I don’t think she said it in some nefarious I want to control everything rampage way, it’s just a turn of phrase people often use these days, maybe without thinking too deeply about the implications. But words do matter.
I think this control theme is something that’s going to come up a lot, and I think it’s tripping many of us up. And to many it might seem like people being overly pedantic, but to others, perhaps those that have had bad experiences in this area, see it as a very important thing. I'm often quite chill about this type of stuff, but actually given where technology is going, it might actually be a point that we should spend more time getting familiar with. The control anti-patterns can have some astonishingly bad negative consequences, especially with AGI on the horizon, we really need to be clear about this area.
I hope I haven’t misquoted what people were saying here, I don’t have time to go back and re-find and listen to the exact segments, but hopefully you get the general idea of the very valid points being made. Both podcasts are worth listening to.
The other thing that stood out was a bit from Anthony, apparently in Australia liberals are a movement that’s part of the conservatives. What's going on with that? #