> Where does the line go?

a) Uncensored and simple technology for all humans; that's our birthright and what makes us special and interesting creatures. It's dangerous and requires a vibrant society of ongoing ethical discussion.

b) No governments at all in the internet age. Nobody has any particular authority to initiate violence.

That's where the line goes. We're still probably a few centuries away, but all the more reason to hone in our course now.

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Eisenstein 4 hours ago | parent [-]

That you think technology is going to save society from social issues is telling. Technology enables humans to do things they want to do, it does not make anything better by itself. Humans are not going to become more ethical because they have access to it. We will be exactly the same, but with more people having more capability to what they want.

	▲	jMyles 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> but with more people having more capability to what they want. Well, yeah I think that's a very reasonable worldview: when a very tiny number of people have the capability to "do what they want", or I might phrase it as, "effect change on the world", then we get the easy-to-observe absolute corruption that comes with absolute power. As a different human species emerges such that many people (and even intelligences that we can't easily understand as discrete persons) have this capability, our better angels will prevail. I'm a firm believer that nobody _wants_ to drop explosives from airplanes onto children halfway around the world, or rape and torture them on a remote island; these things stem from profoundly perverse incentive structures. I believe that governments were an extremely important feature of our evolution, but are no longer necessary and are causing these incentives. We've been aboard a lifeboat for the past few millennia, crossing the choppy seas from agriculture to information. But now that we're on the other shore, it no longer makes sense to enforce the rules that were needed to maintain order on the lifeboat.