> It's never going to happen, but I felt we solved all of this with forums and IRC back in the day. I wish we gravitated towards that kind of internet again.
IME young people use Discord, and those servers often require permission to even join. Nearly all my fandom communications happen on a few Discord servers, most of which you cannot join without an invitation, and if you're kicked (bad actors will be kicked), you cannot re-join (without permission).
I feel like you people are intentionally misconstruing what "Luddite" means. It doesn't mean "avoids specific new tech." It means "avoiding ALL new tech because new things are bad."
A luddite would refuse the covid vaccine. They'd refuse improved trains. They'd refuse EVs. etc. This is because ludditism is the blanket opposition to technological improvements.
> I feel like you people are intentionally misconstruing what "Luddite" means.
That’s a very unfair accusation to throw at someone off the cuff. Anyway, what you wrote is not what a Luddite is at all, especially not the anti-vaccine accusation. I don’t think you’re being deliberately deceptive here, I think you just don’t know what a Luddite is (was).
For starters: They were not anti-science/medicine/all technology. They did not have “blanket opposition to all technological improvement.” You’re expressing a common and simplistic misunderstanding of the movement and likely conflating it with (an also flawed understanding of) the Amish.
They were, at their core, a response against industrialization that didn’t account for the human cost. This was at the start of the 19th century. They wanted better working conditions and more thoughtful consideration as industrialization took place. They were not anti-technology and certainly not anti-vaccine.
The technology they were talking about was mostly related to automation in factories which, coupled with anti-collective bargaining initiatives, led to further dehumanization of the workforce as well as all sorts novel and horrific workplace accidents for adults and children alike. Their call for “common sense laws” and “guardrails” are echoed today with how many of us talk about AI/LLM’s.
> Its odd to me to still use "luddite" disparagingly while implying that avoiding certain tech would actually have some high impact benefits
They didn't say to avoid certain tech. They said to avoid takes and news headlines.
Your conflation of those two is like someone saying "injecting bleach into your skin is bad" and you responding with "oh, so you oppose cleaning bathrooms [with bleach]?"
This reminds me of the old scheme where if you just bet against ND football you'd make money because ND fans were so rabid that the "ND is good" positions became overpriced.
Yes, in the study they pinpointed this beautifully:
“A fan betting on their team to win the championship is not calculating expected value; they are purchasing hope.”
No it doesn't. Nothing about what you're responding to indicates they're ignoring these things exist. Unless your argument is "lobbyists exist, so we should ban all regulations and go back to the wild west," then the sentence where the person referred to regulation as "imperfect" encompasses lobbying.
It doesn't seem like you're trying to have a good faith discussion when your final sentence reads like a willful conflation of an academic and Alex Jones's comments, which were that atrazine is being intentionally put into the water supply by the government as a form of chemical warfare in order to reduce the population by making people gay.
Curious what you're doing that "kilograms per hour" might get used by normal people in everyday conversation. Fast food restaurant or a weight loss clinic?
Agreed but we do have to interact with them. I once tried to sell a car with 140 Mm and got nowhere. I then changed the add to 140_000 km and got a lot more interest.
There is something by that name, but it doesn't mean much. On the international level, it's all voluntary. States can choose to be part of the international courts. The US (and many other high profile countries) famously are not participating, which is why they can effectively just commit war crimes left and right.
In contrast, if you go rob a grocery store, you can't just opt out of punishment. "I'm not a member of this court system" does not work as a viable defense strategy, even if some souvreign citizen types sometimes try (and always fail).
International treaties are really just statements of intent and can be withdrawn at any point. Worst that happens is that next time you try to make a treaty, your counterpart may not trust that you uphold your side of the deal. There is no higher authority to effecticely appeal to, in contrast to the grocery store case.
Why stop at international law? It's no different than a lot of civil, financial, criminal law. You just get big enough and now there's nothing the system can do about you. It's become increasingly apparent that having the right friends and enough money is the only 'law' that matters at any level of society, and people will be too disengaged or selfish to do anything about it besides reap the rewards if they're in the right place. Laws only work on the disempowered, and in that sense international law is exactly as powerful as the law of the land in whatever country you live in.
>Why stop at international law? It's no different than a lot of civil, financial, criminal law. You just get big enough and now there's nothing the system can do about you.
It stops at international law because thats the only level without a governance system over it.
There is no governance system over the USA, UK, etc.
There is a governance system over Ohio, New Mexico, etc.
You are only right if you get big enough that you are a peer of the USA, UK, etc. AKA sovereign.
Some international law is "voluntary", some is not. You cannot for example commit a genocide by opting out of the law.
And yes, of course, it can sometimes be hard to enforce international law, just like it can be very hard to enforce national laws. It is illegal to murder people in most countries, yet people murder each other and some people get away with it.
Not in any real sense because states are sovereign.
There are things like the UN which some states, not all, agree to uphold the policies of. But they are also free not to agree to uphold the policies of the UN.
So ultimately it's a bunch of peers in an an anarchic system that do the best for themselves to persist. Cooperation, war, etc.
Yes. More specifically I would say international law is law in name only. It's not really law at all. It's akin to a child asserting rules on a playground with their peers. There is no enforcement mechanism. In reality what we call international law is more like a mutually agreed upon policy, which can also just not be agreed upon at any moment. In fact many countries do not agree to them. There is no government agency or enforcement mechanism over states - that is what makes them states by definition.
I am always shocked by how controversial this take can be.
It’s complicated. While it’s true that there is no direct enforcement, systems of sanctions and embargos have been used to indirectly enforce these agreements. Whether this is ultimately effective is not obvious, but I think “international law does not exist” is a simplistic take, with all due respect for your opinion (which I understand and partially share)
I would disagree, but I admit I am ignorant on the matter, so maybe you can explain to me how that's wrong.
My opinion, with all the caveats that come with an opinion, is that states do organise into over-arching organisations in the context of international laws, such as EU, UN, etc.
Such over-arching organisations do not have the same degree of power that a state has over its citizens, sure, but I think it still qualifies. You can theoretically also "disregard" state law, regional law, etc. The problem with that is that the power disparity is such that you can't hope to get away with it (in a perfect world and in a vacuum, that is, as many people do disregard national law and get away with it :D But thats beside the point, I think you'd agree?)
IME young people use Discord, and those servers often require permission to even join. Nearly all my fandom communications happen on a few Discord servers, most of which you cannot join without an invitation, and if you're kicked (bad actors will be kicked), you cannot re-join (without permission).
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