markjgsmith

2023/11/19 #

• The end of police and thieves - I recently wrote briefly about crime and tech, and how I've wondered for ages how, as we get further into a world without privacy, and bots everywhere and super intelligent AI everythings everywhere, how is that going to affect crime?

  I think one thing that might happen is that crime just gets too difficult to do. At the singularity, crime just won't be possible any longer. The problem is that transitioning to that future is going to get really weird, especially because it's kind of a taboo subject. How do you even talk about it without risking incriminating yourself? There won't be an easy way for everything to re-organize.

  As folks that rely on crime get pushed further and further to the edges at some point it won't be worth it any longer, but by then it will be too late. Remember this is a multi-generational thing happening. There might be some really strange outcomes.

  One possibility is that the world becomes divided into 2 groups. The non-criminals and the people pretending to be criminals. Since pretending to be a criminal isn't a crime, isn't that the last likely outcome, however odd it sounds? That will be the last option available. The pretenders won't want the non-criminals to know, because they will be forced to make their living off of them in some way.

  And it's not just criminals that would be in for a tough time. For instance, what happens to lawyers? Their game would essentially be up. Such a world would also be very confusing to grow up in. And what would happen if we all got caught in this bizare future? A sort of purgatory for everyone. Indeed how do we know we aren't already in such a future? #

• Localism vs centralism vs globalism - I hear a lot of people these days complain about government. They say things like, "it's all decided centrally, far away from where we are", and "they don't know what's right for us". On the surface this seems like a valid criticism. The reality is that the people that say this, are themselves doing the very thing they complain about to others at the local level.

  An example was on a recent What Bitcoin Did Podcast interview with Robert Breedlove. Much of the podcast is great, lots of interesting ideas, but the localism-is-better-than-everything position is just assumed to be correct. There isn't even a second thought about why it might not be.

  Not everyone is accepted into the local community. Just think how many shops there are on the high street, it's a tiny number compared to the total local population. The reality of "doing things local" is that it works fantastic for a few, but for many it's actually preferable to have things, or a significant number of things determined centrally. If you aren't accepted locally, the only other option is centrally, and of course the end of that path is globalism.

  Deciding things locally sounds great, but it invariably ends up creating a toxic soup of in-fighting, office politicsism, fiefdoms, mafias and family feuds that turn everything into a hellscape. Arguably people are more free when things are decided centrally, or at least at a somewhat higher level than the highstreet where everyone lives.

  Perhaps it's a balance. But the reason some want 100% local and others 100% central is because of acceptance. #

• Zero-based budgeting oppression - Another thing I hear people talk about all the time these days is zero-based budgeting. Again on the surface it seems like a fantastic idea. Who wouldn't want to not waste money? No one is saying that saving money is bad, and yes there are areas where large amounts of money get wasted, and we should work towards making that better. Remember though we are in different age now, the age of AI, where your ability to do anything will be determined by how well you can compute it.

  However it seems rather obvious to me that taking the very extreme position of zero-based budgeting puts all the power into the hands of the current elites, and invariably they will use zero-based budgeting not as a way to save money, but as a way to shut people out, to ensure people always have not quite enough. With zero-based budgeting, and especially if it's taken to extremes, there is by definition literally no margin for error. Without an error margin, only the most affluent will have the capacity to determine exactly what they need ahead of time. Everyone else will be left in the gutter. #

Today’s links:

• Police and thieves - Classic reggae track from Junior Murvin. m.youtube.com #