Yes but now you've ruled out 95% of websites regularly used today

Yeah, there’s definitely good design principles, but as others have pointed out, it’s extremely difficult to build technologies that are not trivially dual-use.

And, to be clear, I’m not saying “politics” as in “did you hear what Trump said?” I’m saying politics as in “what is your city council doing, how are your neighbors doing, and what are the consequences of your work and economic choices and who’s paying them.” Most of the news is a circus; that stuff is not.

Seems like most popular mainstream platforms violate many of those heuristics. Google, Facebook, maybe even hacker news probably, does things with your data you likely never consented to. Do we decide who gets whatever date we generate on those platforms?

I like some platforms do give us choice over our data but rarely do they not have our data be a component of the product. OpenAI, and anthropic for example use our data for "analytic purposes" which is broad enough that we compromise our agency over our data.

So what do you do when the majority of the systems you use on a daily basis to function in a normal life, require you (or atleast the majority of the populace) to compromise on morals? Do you know its expensive rise-wise, cost-wise, socially etc to check in with you morals in that kind of environment. I'm just curious your thoughts on this or if I'm misreading it. edit: And I'm not all doom gloom, I have hope and desire and trust in a future where morals aren't compromised in this way - I just see it as coming with a higher up-front cost and being aware that the most common environments around you systematically actively oppose you.

There are a lot of answers to this, but since we're likely coders in here, there's a software design answer worth pointing out.

Watch how police states behave. What tools do they use? Typically, it's roots of trust. They take down sites by tampering with their domain name. They MITM web traffic by compelling certificate authorities to do unstrustworthy things. They spy on cell phones by mimicking external authorities that the phones are wired to trust explicitly and without input from the user. They insert devices into ISP infrastructure which users tend to assume is neutral.

So if we want to prevent this: Don't tolerate roots of trust that the user cannot configure. Use a threat model that includes nation states. Don't design with the assumption that trusted third parties will remain trustworthy. Think about how to protect your users privacy. Prefer peer-to-peer where possible, because your server may at one point become compromised and harm the users. Think about how they can protect themselves if that happens. Give them control over whether to install updates. Publish your API so users can make unauthorized clients if they don't trust yours. Prefer repeatable builds, and check hashes to spot malware. Review contributions and be wary of binary blobs that may have hidden use cases.

Mostly this is just sound engineering. It means doing your job well, which is not always the same as doing the job the shareholders asked for. They invested so they could have leverage, so ask yourself ahead of time if those are the same kinds of levers that police states want to pull. Shoot them down in the design phase if possible, sabotage them after the fact if necessary.

By being durably involved in your community and by being aware of and not ignoring the consequences of your actions, of the policies you advocate for, the actions of the politicians you endorse, etc. By not just voting once and moving on.

Wow, this is pretty telling.

> Of course you can avoid politics. Just be a good person. Vote for who you think is the best candidate at the time. And move on with your life.

This has got to be one of the most naive takes I have ever seen on this subject.

Has it never occurred to you that often times being a good person means engaging in “politics”?

The people most involved in politics are mentally ill? Got it...

> Vote for who you think is the best candidate at the time

That is definitionally not avoiding politics.

I think you misunderstand what politics is, at a fundamental level.

> Block traffic? Tweet? Cut off ties with friends and family that don't share your political beliefs?

All of the above. Get involved with political organisations, NGOs, volunteering groups, go to protests and network with people there. So that when the government starts doing something that approaches a police state, you, your group, and many other groups of people will be out there ready to make their will known. Block roads, burn tires, occupy squares, remove cameras, etc. Is is easy? Not at all. Can you do it alone? No. Is it worth doing to avoid living in a police state? Yes.

Take a look at Russia if you want an example of what widespread political apathy leads to.

> An conscientious objection is definitely a right you have as a professional, but it's a neutral action, you refuse to do something, and you let someone else do it.

Yes, but it’s still the case that you didn’t do it. You cannot directly control the actions of others, just your own. Do that, at least.

Getting other people to also not do it is the rest of the political act. It’ll never be the case that nobody’s willing to perform an act, but if all the people who are doing so under duress stop, at the very least it helps one identify the proper size and shape of one’s political coalition and the power therein.

And, yes, people have bills. That’s what we mean by politics. We’re 50 years behind the curve on building the capacity for people to act in their own interest or on their own beliefs; that’s no reason not to start now.

>An objection of conscience is definitely a right you have as a professional, but it's a neutral action, you refuse to do something, and you let someone else do it.

Correct, and the lessons in the CIA's very own Simple Sabotage Field Manual are still as helpful as when they were written.

Except for sex, which is about power

Not everything is dual use. Some information technology grossly favors centralization or decentralization of power based on the type of information problem it solves.

Cryptocurrency is clearly a counterexample to your main point. The fact that some people use cryptocurrency tech to implement centrally managed private currencies is largely irrelevant. To the extent that cryptocurrencies are used to implement private currencies, it largely just hampers them technolgicially if it has any effect at all. These projects just like to use the term cryptocurrency to imply some level of legitimate decentralization or security that doesn't really exist.

It's like saying that because you can use a screwdriver as a weapon, it's inherently a destructive technology (or some mixture of destructive and constructive). On closer inspection it's clear that the screwdriver doesn't sit on the pareto front for weapons, but it does sit on the pareto front for manufacturing tools. So a screwdriver is clearly a technology whose existence favors construction over destruction. Similarly I would argue that technology like bittorrent or bitcoin favor decentralization over centralization.

As another example, surveilance technology favors centralization. None of what we are seeing now with flock would be possible without cheap mass produced digital cameras. The balance of technology favors cheap cameras (and counter-surveilance is often impossible or expensive) and it favors centralization because you need a lot of data to create inferences based on this spurrious data.

If we could have predicted these effects, perhaps we could have delayed the development of cheap cameras, but it just goes to show how complicated this game is. We could just as easily have said that more cameras would lead to unprecedented public transparency (e.g. bodycams on cops, dash cams). Unintended consequences.

I mean you kind of can. The whole premise of AI is basically that we'll make white collar administrative compliance work dirt cheap in the long run and we'll all be richer for it and we'll sidestep the whole "fight with all those industries" step because the sheer economics of it will make it happen and as those industries become cheaper/poorer there will be even less reason to not kick them to the curb. Kind of like how once certain state shed a lot of their manufacturing or agriculture, adopting policy that's bad for the rest became easier. Or how now that solar is cheap we mostly DGAF about coal.