A Surveillance Treaty in Disguise: Canada Signs UN Cybercrime Convention
michaelgeist.ca211 points by iamnothere 6 hours ago
211 points by iamnothere 6 hours ago
It feels like there’s this weird layer to domestic and international politics where you do a lot of signalling to one audience while simultaneously winking at other audiences that you’re not actually serious. (I can never tell who is getting winked at…)
I feel like WYSIWYG politics is what most of us want, but probably doesn’t actually work. The Ned Stark character that is righteous and right and quickly meets the headman’s axe of the game theory and brinksmanship of everyone else.
While I agree this is the case, I think this is a consequence of low education for the general public and low quality of the public discourse. If the quality of those two goes up, then WYSIWYG politics will emerge as a preferred choice.
I only wish I knew of possible ways for us to get there :(
>> I feel like WYSIWYG politics is what most of us want, but probably doesn’t actually work.
> then WYSIWYG politics will emerge as a preferred choice.
I think the problem that Waterluvian's is getting at is precisely that WYSIWYG politics is taken as the preferred choice without understanding the implications that make it not actually work. For example, continuing to accept anything that remotely passes as protect-the-children politics without understanding that the consequences are worse than the benefits, even for the children themselves.
> If the quality of those two goes up, then WYSIWYG politics will emerge as a preferred choice.
If the quality of those two goes up, hopefully people start employing second-order thinking and beyond and realize that WYSIWYG politics may not be what it seems to be at the surface level.
I think you're talking past each other:
> For example, continuing to accept anything that remotely passes as protect-the-children politics without understanding that the consequences are worse than the benefits, even for the children themselves.
Passing a censorship/surveillance bill using the pretext of protecting children is the opposite of WYSIWYG. The true motive is building an apparatus to use to enforce other authoritarian policies and protecting children is the Trojan horse.
If people were better informed about second order effects then that wouldn't work because they would see through the consequences when a pretext is being presented for a bad idea, and then the politicians who attempt it would be more often punished than rewarded. The tactic of lying to people would happen less often because it would be selected against when the number of people who see through you is enough to boot you out of office.
Unfortunately, both low education for the general public and low quality of the public discourse exist by design.
The only possible way to remedy this is to maximize your own ability to exert power, possibly by becoming massively rich, and then hope it doesn't corrupt you enough along the way such that you can still enact good in the end.
> Unfortunately, both low education for the general public and low quality of the public discourse exist by design.
Absolutely. Bread and circuses isn't a new idea.
>The only possible way to remedy this is to maximize your own ability to exert power, possibly by becoming massively rich, and then hope it doesn't corrupt you enough along the way such that you can still enact good in the end.
Points for the doing good in the end. But it's a rule in hell/serve in heaven issue, if you first need to create hell with your quest for power you have failed the objective of doing good in the end.
If you have a binary view, Good will always lose.
Evil can act Good, but Good cannot act Evil. Evil has that advantage over Good that cannot be matched.
This continuously plays out in our political systems. Good actors cannot fight the deluge of evil of their opponents, who are free to lie cheat and steal.
Good binds its own hands. For good to win, it must act with even greater evil. At which point, it becomes the very thing that it tried to defeat.
> Evil can act Good, but Good cannot act Evil. Evil has that advantage over Good that cannot be matched.
The assumption here is that being Evil is advantageous. It's obviously advantageous to personal gain, but the relevant thing is whether it's advantageous to staying in power, and then the system you want to design is the one where it isn't.
Notice also that it isn't binary. You can make it harder to be Evil and then have less of it even if you never have none.
This is assuming a short game. Defection over cooperation dominates short games, but evil can't trust evil in longer play. And I would hope that the default desire is a long game..
Tangent: I think this illuminates why I enjoy the “evil” route in many RPGs. My evil party doesn’t have to be moustache twirling. They can pick and choose their evil moments. But a good party feels more constrained.
Rarely a great RPG forces my good party to make difficult decisions.
Funny enough Mass Effect: Andromeda, which I never finished for obvious reasons, actually had a few few moments with pretty thick gray areas where I had to really sit down and think about my decisions. It’s interesting looking back and recalling that mess as one of the only strong examples.
My favorite was one of the KOTOR games where helping an NPC got you dark side points for taking the opportunity for the NPC to help themselves.
You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain. But there's a third option, too: to die a nobody.
The more I learn, and the more versed I become with society, the harder and harder it becomes to see what is "good" and what is "bad".
The most confident I ever was that I was "obviously correct" was when I was 20.
Be careful. Some actors are deliberately muddying the waters of good and bad. For example, vaccines are pretty good, but some groups want you to be unsure if they're good or bad.
Precisely. Bad actors desire complexity because it leads to indifference. The “good” side therefore needs to fight that complexity with simplicity and empathy.
“Unions can be corrupt” or “You don’t need unions to get your voice heard” is the kind of rhetoric that leads to disinterest in unions over the years.
It can go both ways. Bad actors can simplify because it leads to indifference, by way of generalizations. "black" = "bad", "illegal immigrant" = "gang member". It's how racism works.
> The “good” side therefore needs to fight that complexity with simplicity and empathy.
Empathy, yes. Simplicity doesn't normally lead to empathy; complexity does.
I read that left-wing people are consistently found to be much more able to process conflicting ideas than right-wing people are.
40 years of experience has taught me that absolutely no one is less able to process conflicting ideas than left wing people are, and it's not close.