It could be a collective defense mechanism. The idea of animal intelligence being a threat to what many people perceive as the necessary status quo of being able to endlessly consume the resources of nature without consequence.
In the wake of an unprecedented attack on the core institutions of a democracy; forums and websites that were being used to plot violence against lawmakers are discovering that all available sources of pressure on them to change their behavior are being exercised?
The Parler dudes are just lucky that they haven't been arrested for material support of terrorism yet.
There is also the viewpoint that bitcoin was a crime from beginning to end. That the goals of it's creation were to provide an unpreventable vector for money laundering. That it's current function of undermining the dollar order is also an intended result.
And let us not; in this age of ecological collapse, forget the emissions impact of cryptocurrencies.
These energy/CO2 costs existed before crypto. The carbon footprint of something like Bank of America or VISA are not zero, it's just that we are more comfortable accepting these as "productive" because they're way less direct. For example, the CO2 cost of heating the Bank of America tower in Manhattan during the winter or cooling it in the summer feels different than the energy consumed by various mining rigs.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if crypto was actually way more efficient energy-wise than the centralized institutions that are needed to support the current system.
I googled some orders of magnitudes. Bank of America total scope 1 and scope 2 emissions (all buildings + travel + other stuff) were about 1 million tons co2 per year [1].
A lower bound on Bitcoin mining emissions was 20 million tons in 2018. [2]
Of course there are more than one bank, banks perform a lot of functions that crypto doesn't, etc.
Government departments dedicated to planning are often required to publish their guidance/research publicly making it difficult to get away with cherry-picking metrics.
Having a team of professionals who understand the basics of our economic system tackle the problem seems to have a higher probability of success as compared with business leaders who often lack formal training in statistical methods.
There are more arguments but this should be enough to prove this false equivalency.
I see a few problems with this framing: First, professionals in government can and do often get into turf wars about their research. I think anyone who has ever worked in government knows this is the case. If you doubt me, ask government researchers to publish their hypotheses ahead of time before running a study, and see how many government researchers are willing to do this. (I'd be surprised if you got an email or even a tweet back.)
Second, decision making is always inherently political; it cannot be assumed away by throwing "professionals" at the problem. This is a consequence of "value" being entirely subjective. When economics was "political economy" (or even a field within "moral philosophy"), the field understood this. But that arrangement didn't give the professionals and academics enough status or prestige, so American economists in the late 19th century who had studied in Bismarck-era Germany rebranded themselves as "economists" who were practicing a form of science not too different from, say, physics.
Third, business leaders have to make a profit and maintain positive cash flows in order to sustain themselves. If they don't, the business dies. This is an extremely hard constraint that disciplines any business leader regardless of statistical literacy. States, on the other hand, can always subsist on the use of force to extract revenue. Central planners can publish metrics till they're blue in the face, but what constraints are they under to make the metrics any good?
Is it the phone people are addicted to, or the media available through it?
Especially Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and Twitter. All of which seem designed to cultivate obsessive compulsive behavior in their users with social proof, intermittent rewards and a builtin hedonic treadmill.
Watching TV stations was the only purpose of TV set, while social network apps are just one of many purposes of mobile phones. Many people do not use such apps, but still use mobile phones.
We didn't have these issues back in the early 2000s. Cause of price and the average person didn't use a computer as often as they do now. That's because there was barely anything to soon them then.
I myself spent a lot of time on the computer back then, mostly playing computer games. And I remember how everyone talked about how addictive and bad computer games were.
I remember skipping college classes to play World of Warcraft. Then my graphics card crapped out. So I skipped classes reading psychology books I got from the library. Turns out, my problems were depression and social anxiety, not video games.
I'm lucky that I didn't have issues like that. For me, it was just entertainment, nothing too detrimental. But maybe if I had a computer in my pocket, it would have been different.
Hi there, millennial here. I spend hours and hours on live journal, flash game sites, and various web comics in the mid-2000s. I think I spent basically the same number of hours per day on the internet I do now. Just now some of it is work instead of teenage entertainment/dithering, and a lot of it is on a phone.
For whatever reason I never got into games. I learned to program and found that to be fun and rewarding. Started in the mid 1980s. Back then, there were games for home computers and home gaming systems, but they were pretty lame. Arcades were still a big thing then for gaming. Kids would spend a lot of money in arcades, one quarter at a time. I never saw the appeal.
given that most phones are designed in such a way that running anything other than curated apps on it is fairly difficult the distinction is quite blurry.
The phones and the operating software they run are built to discourage anything that isn't media consumption or passive app use.
So if you are wondering why Clearview is so bad specifically for black people; it might help to know that the company has extensive ties to Right-wing white supremacists. And that many of those relatioinships were formed in Peter Thiel's orbit.
As I read it, it is essentially "I don't see how a close association with white supremacists/racists is relevant to the fact that it mis-identifies black people as criminals", which I doubt is what you mean.
What we're seeing is a "stochastic insurgency" where loosely affiliated groups and individuals conceive, plan and execute infrastructure attacks and targeted assassinations. Relatively little operational coordination; but lots of online showing support and post-crime support.
I hope all congressional representatives and local government officials are reviewing their safety plans.
I hope all congressional representatives and local government officials are reviewing their safety plans
I know I likely don't have to tell this to the experts out there, but it might first be advisable to have your counter terrorism guys review "all congressional representatives and local government officials". No one minds fighting a war, at the same time, no one wants to charge out of a foxhole and be shot in the back.
Recently there was the attempt to kidnap the Michigan's governor and the cell that was planning an attack on a power plant.
Both stopped by intelligence services, but that doesn't stop them being data points for people being extremists.
Not saying there is a guarantee this was people with the same objectives, but it seems like a plausible theory. I wouldn't make strong assertions as though it was fact, but I also wouldn't act like there hasn't been a trend recently.
I wonder what other crimes have stochastic forms... could violent video games be stochastic murder, if among the thousands of players there is one disturbed person who might be inspired by depictions of violence to act violently? Could songs glorifying violent lifestyles also be called stochastic crime? Folk songs glorifying cartels come to mind. If an unrealistic war movie inspires teenagers to join the army, might the producers of that movie have some share of the blame for the actions undertaken by that army?
Where is the line drawn between stochastic crimes and free speech?
Can you elaborate on what you mean by "stochastic forms"? The meaning and usage of the word that I am familiar with don't seem to fit here, so I don't think I'm getting your meaning. Thanks
> A derivation of Dr Woo's stochastic terrorism model was proffered by an anonymous blogger posting on Daily Kos in 2011 to describe public speech that can be expected to incite terrorism without a direct organizational link between the inciter and the perpetrator.[31][32] The term "stochastic" is used in this instance to describe the random, probabilistic nature of its effect: whether or not an attack actually takes place. And, although the actual perpetrator of a planned attack and its timing is not under the control of the stochastic terrorist, their actions nevertheless serve to increase the probability that a terrorist attack will occur.[33] The stochastic terrorist in this context does not direct the actions of any particular individual or members of a group. Rather, the stochastic terrorist gives voice to a specific ideology via mass media with the aim of optimizing its dissemination.[33]
So if 'stochastic terrorism' is speech that will probabilistically inspire acts of violence when it reaches a large number of people, why can't this be generalized to crimes other than terrorism? If the (now banned) subreddit r/shoplifting publishes messages glorifying shoplifting to a large number of people, it will likely inspire some portion of those exposed to commit these crimes themselves. Does that make the subreddit a form of 'stochastic theft'?
This is an idea that should be explored more fully. The downside is that it will make information technology a much less freewheeling and innovative field.
It's a massive innovation killer downside. How about we restrict this to "all internet companies selling security software to governments", at the very widest?
Construction companies seem to do fine even though building codes exist.
It's not uncommon for a mature industry to face a reckoning around damaging practices that were common when they were nascent industries.
Would you like to live below a dam that was built under a loose and permissive regulatory regime? How about storing sensitive personal data in a datacenter whose owner specifically disclaims liability for it's exposure?
>Construction companies seem to do fine even though building codes exist.
They're not the one's paying for it. The people wanting the building built are. And there's a lot of corruption in that. On top of that, there's a pretty clear housing crisis in big cities.
