Hackers should know the government is never on your side.

JumpCrisscross 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Hackers should know the government is never on your side

Never is naive. Hackers should understand governments are complex, dynamic and occasionally chaotic systems. Those systems can be influenced and sometimes controlled by various means. And those levers are generally available to anyone with a modicum of intelligence and motivation.

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argomo 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In addition, hackers should know government is inevitable. Even in anarchy, governments spontaneously begin to form.

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buildbot 5 hours ago | parent [-]

If I am not mistaken, the anarchist school of thought is okay with governance and even governments, but not with the concept of the state - an entity that exists to enforce governance with violence. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy,_State,_and_Utopia

I’m not 100% sure though.

edit - a (vs. the) school of thought is more accurate.

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xboxnolifes 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That may be one of them, but there isn't a singular anarchist school of thought.

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JumpCrisscross 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> there isn't a singular anarchist school of thought

Would be oxymoronic if there were one.

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mc32 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Isn’t that like saying there must be as many universes as theoretical physicists can think up? Slight maybe but it could also just be one.

	▲	JumpCrisscross an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> Isn’t that like saying there must be as many universes as theoretical physicists can think up? Schools of thought are theories. It’s saying there can be as many theoretical universes as theoretical physicists can think up. This is true for any social construct, of course. But anarchy’s nature means you get less alignment.

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cess11 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The ideal of self-governance as opposed to alienated state or institutional governance is quite common in anarchist thought. Some would probably consider it foundational for the tendency.

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gary_0 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think of anarchy as a theoretical end state, where power is perfectly distributed among each individual, but that this is less of an actually achievable condition and more of a direction to head in (and away from monarchy, where power is completely centralized).

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cholantesh 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Nozick's libertarianism is not really an anarchist school of thought.

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1970-01-01 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yep. The FBI swings from lawful good to lawful evil on a case by case basis. Trusting them is dangerous, but a world where they can be ignored is more dangerous.

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cess11 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No, the naive position is to assume that the state is on your side because you occasionally gain something from it.

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HardCodedBias 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"Hackers should understand governments are complex, dynamic and occasionally chaotic systems"

No. Hackers should understand that government is force. This is the definition of government.

And force is the antithesis of the hacker ethos.

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palata 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In a democracy, the government is its citizen. It sucks when you disagree with the majority of the voters, of course. But it's wrong to say that the government is against the majority of the voters: it was elected by them.

	▲	nrhrjrjrjtntbt 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		A government or president can definitely be against its voters interests.

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layer8 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Growth hackers aim for regulatory capture.

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NalNezumi 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A hacker should probably know that it's usually trade offs and blanket statements are very useless. Certain tools are good for certain tasks and situations, but bad for others. No free lunch and all that.

If you make that blanket statement, you're definitely not a hacker (or just a novice). But you'd make a heck of a politician or tech bro salesman

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5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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purple_turtle 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That is an absolute nonsense.

At minimum, government will be useful as defence against worse government.

I know that some anarchist had dream of a stateless world, but it is not viable.

And while I am not going to say that any government is ideal, many are better than USSR, Third Reich or Cambodia under Pol Pot.

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vkou 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Neither are the billionaires and their deputies who both own and run all the megacorps.

99% of the current AI push is entirely anti-hacker ethos. It is a race to consolidate control of the world's computing and its economic surplus to ~5 organizations.

A few people do interesting stuff on the edges of this, but the rest of the work in it is anathema to hacker values.

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arbol 5 hours ago | parent [-]

The client ai push has also enabled people to run local llama models and build products without those companies. Presumably there'll be more of this to come

	▲	vkou 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's the 1%. It's the hair on the back of the elephant. Their capabilities will fall further and further behind models that need a billion dollars to train, and a supercomputer to run. You're making a faustian bargain.