Matija > Recent Status Updates

"​I do not wish to imply that conspiracies never happen. On the contrary, they are typical social phenomena. They become important, for example, whenever people who believe in the conspiracy theory get into power. And people who sincerely believe that they know how to make heaven on earth are most likely to adopt the conspiracy theory, and to get involved in a counter-conspiracy against non-existing conspirators."

"Mutations fundamentally change the nature of capitalism by shifting it in the direction of those it is supposed to serve. This sort of thinking is not nearly as sexy or exciting as the "boys and their toys" gambit would have us think, but this is what it will take to move the dial of economic history beyond the collision and toward a third modernity."

"A précis of Piketty's extensive research may be stated simply: capitalism should not be eaten raw. Capitalism, like sausage, is meant to be cooked by a democratic society and its institutions because raw capitalism is antisocial."

"The public corporation had become "unnecessary [...] and incapable of proving a reliable long-term return on investment." In this process the cult of the "entrepreneur" would rise to near-mythic prominence as the perfect union of ownership and management, replacing the rich existential possibilities of the second modernity with a single glorified template of audacity, competitive cunning, dominance, and wealth."

"The first modernity suppressed the growth and expression of self in favor of collective solutions, but by the second modernity, the self is all we have. The new sense of psychological sovereignty broke upon the world long before the internet appeared to amplify its claims. We learn through trial and error how to stitch together our lives."

"Just as industrial civilization flourished at the expense of nature and now threatens to cost us the Earth, an information civilization shaped by surveillance capitalism and its new instrumentarian power will thrive at the expense of human nature and will threaten to cost us our humanity."

"... But did the removal of Britain from the European Union give the British more power to shape the world? Did it prevent foreign money from shaping U.K. politics? Did it stop refugees from moving from the war zones of the Middle East to Britain? It did not."

"We are used to thinking of "the West" influencing the world, but nowadays the influence often runs the other way. Even if we don't believe it or don't acknowledge it, that won't make it go away."

"Perhaps, as the euro crisis diminishes and we look around at paradise, it seems inconceivable that we could go backward; but history tells us how much things can change in just a few decades, and geography tells us that if humans do not constantly strive to overcome its “rules,” its “rules” will overcome us."

"The globalization of finance, the plethora of hiding places, and the benign tolerance that democracies have shown for foreign graft now give autocrats opportunities that few could have imagined a couple of decades ago."

"By the time Putin became president, he was well acquainted with the double standards of Western democracies, which preached liberal values at home but were very happy to help build illiberal regimes everywhere else. In his first decade in office, he did the same, using the slogans of democracy, even as he built what eventually became a dictatorship."

"Facebook was under direct pressure from the Chinese government. Told explicitly there would be a quid pro quo, that the way they handled Guo would affect whether Face-book would be allowed into China. The reports were not analyzed "as we would any other." Actions were not taken solely based on Facebook's policies. China demanded action. Raised Facebook's China project. And Mark blinked. And blocked."

But the thing that gets me is where Facebook's leadership states that one of the "cons" of Facebook being the one who's accountable for content moderation is this:

"Facebook employees will be responsible for user data re-sponses that could lead to death, torture and incarceration."

"There is little doubt that the strength of the early Christians lay in their moral courage. It lay in the fact that they refused to accept Rome's claim 'that it was entitled to compel its subjects to act against their conscience'."

"Maybe inventing deities is an emergent by-product of the architecture of our social brains."

"Prenatal endocrine environment is destiny."

A billion flowers, really? Has that worked so well for India, or is it more like a billion weeds? A country still crippled by corruption? That hasn’t conquered poverty almost halfway through the twenty-first century? Has it worked so well for the Americans? Where ‘voting’ means two sides in near-permanent paralysis? Or for Europe, still trying to decide if it’s one country or thirty, or thirty countries each split...

"And these naïve pups out there, in this most dangerous moment in history, wanted to replace the sanity of a few wise, steady leaders with the anarchy of more than a billion voices shouting at one another, heaving the nation to-and-fro like a vast mob. Madness."

“It’s so sad, watching the Americans destroy themselves, rioting over an election of all things. One step away from anarchy. They could learn a lot from us, putting wise, seasoned experts in charge.”

Why hadn’t they had fire trucks on the scene? Why had it taken so long to put out the flames? Why had the façade of one of the fucking Smithsonian buildings, of all places, been allowed to burn for so long? Greg Chase’s words kept coming back to her. Something he’d told the President. “The more rope we give the protesters, the better.”

“Like the idea of serving my country,” Feng said. “As a soldier?” Sam asked. Feng shrugged. “Not serving my government. Serving the people. Not the same thing.” Sam nodded at that. “Yeah. Not the same at all.”

"There are anthropogenic state risks at the existential level as well: the longer we live in an internationally anarchic system, the greater the cumulative chance of a thermonuclear Armageddon or of a great war fought with other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, laying waste to civilization."

"The problem with talking about ethical game design is that people get hung up on the notion of P2W and think that is the only metric, or again, all monetization is equally malicious. In the next chapter, I’m going to look at games that feature extensive in-game monetization, but still fall on the ethical side. One of the reasons for this chapter is that ethical game design is not solely about avoiding P2W elements."

"The best video games out there are as compelling to experience as reading an entire book in one day, binge-watching an entire season of your favourite show, and so on. If something gives you happiness to do it, you are going to keep doing it. The problem is when a game is designed to demand your time, force you to play it, and keep playing beyond what you feel is acceptable."

"There will be a possibility of reaching a reasonable compromise and therefore of achieving the improvement by democratic methods. ('Compromise' is an ugly word, but it is important for us to learn its proper use. Institutions are inevitably the result of a compromise with circumstances, interests, etc., though as persons we should resist influ- ences of this kind.)"

"Thus Plato's philosophical education has a definite political function. It puts a mark on the rulers, and it establishes a barrier between the rulers and the ruled. (This has remained a major function of 'higher' education down to our own time.) Platonic wisdom is acquired largely for the sake of establishing a permanent political class rule. It can be described as political 'medicine', giving mystic powers..."

... It is a criticism of the tendency to burden institutions, especially educational institutions, with the impossible task of selecting the best. This should never be made their task. This tendency transforms our educational system into a race-course, and turns a course of studies into a hurdle-race.