[HN Gopher] If the News Is Fake, Imagine History
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       If the News Is Fake, Imagine History
        
       Author : hunglee2
       Score  : 83 points
       Date   : 2022-07-11 21:53 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (thenetworkstate.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (thenetworkstate.com)
        
       | jzellis wrote:
       | I got really excited about Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong when I
       | read Snow Crash when I was fifteen too. :-D
        
       | baybal2 wrote:
        
       | crikeyjoe wrote:
        
       | spread_love wrote:
       | > _The Intrepid Reporter [TV Tropes link] is as much of a stock
       | character as the Evil Corporation. You don't hear much about the
       | evil reporter, though_
       | 
       | Er, like the Immoral Journalist?
       | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ImmoralJournalis...
       | The article _itself_ supposes the conclusion  "the news is fake."
       | 
       | > _You don't hear much about the evil communist, either._
       | 
       | Uh...the Red Scare? This one is _incredibly_ easy to refute:
       | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DirtyCommunists
       | 
       | The author's counterargument?
       | 
       | > _I'd bet the world has seen a >1000:1 ratio of scenes featuring
       | evil capitalists to scenes featuring evil communists_
       | 
       | They'd _bet_. Ok?
        
       | ge96 wrote:
       | History on a Blockchain
        
         | adhesive_wombat wrote:
         | ... Would do nothing to solve the issue as all it tells you is
         | if that information was indeed once put on the chain. It
         | doesn't ensure the information is actually correct.
        
       | eruleman wrote:
       | Title is originally from an @AmuseChimp tweet:
       | https://twitter.com/AmuseChimp/status/906147488582787073?s=2...
       | 
       | Probably one of his best.
        
       | davidgerard wrote:
        
       | taf2 wrote:
       | A lot less money to be made from history
        
       | tablespoon wrote:
       | These guys appears to be pushing a pretty radical kind of
       | political change, which doubtlessly influences whatever they're
       | writing about "the news" and "history." This is apparently what
       | they're about:
       | 
       | https://book.thenetworkstate.com/the-network-state-in-one-se...:
       | 
       | > The Network State in One Sentence
       | 
       | > In one informal sentence:
       | 
       | >> A network state is a highly aligned online community with a
       | capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around
       | the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-
       | existing states.
       | 
       | > ...
       | 
       | > Here's a more complex definition that extends that concept and
       | pre-emptively covers many edge cases:
       | 
       | >> A network state is a social network with a moral innovation, a
       | sense of national consciousness, a recognized founder, a capacity
       | for collective action, an in-person level of civility, an
       | integrated cryptocurrency, a consensual government limited by a
       | social smart contract, an archipelago of crowdfunded physical
       | territories, a virtual capital, and an on-chain census that
       | proves a large enough population, income, and real-estate
       | footprint to attain a measure of diplomatic recognition.
       | 
       | Tl;dr: another verbose anarcho-libertarian fantasy. I'm glad I
       | had JS disabled so it started me on page 1 of 3,440, instead of
       | in the middle.
        
         | dataflow wrote:
         | > and an on-chain census
         | 
         | Sounds like yet another problem that blockchain ingeniously
         | solves.
        
         | dougmwne wrote:
         | Oh dear lord, the United Microstates of Reddit Meme Subs is
         | definitely going to nuke us all the first chance it gets. This
         | wins my bad idea of the year award.
        
           | hef19898 wrote:
           | Maybe the Brits will sell them some old oil rigs or flag
           | towers in international waters... I hear those are great to
           | run pirate raduo stations from!
        
           | kgwxd wrote:
           | > Oh dear lord, the United Microstates of Reddit Meme Subs is
           | definitely going to nuke us all the first chance it gets.
           | 
           | r/BrandNewSentence
        
         | Jeff_Brown wrote:
         | > A network state [requires] ... a recognized founder ...
         | 
         | Uh-huh.
        
           | hef19898 wrote:
           | Maybe too late bow, but how fast can one set up a
           | networkstatecoin?
        
       | beebmam wrote:
       | >Put another way, what's the most powerful force on earth? In the
       | 1800s, God. In the 1900s, the US military. And by the mid-2000s,
       | encryption. Because as Assange put it, no amount of violence can
       | solve certain kinds of math problems. So it doesn't matter how
       | many nuclear weapons you have; if property or information is
       | secured by cryptography, the state can't seize it without getting
       | the solution to an equation.
       | 
       | Yeah, I stopped reading here. It's incredible how confident this
       | person tries to sound when it's clear that very few of these
       | statements are supported by evidence and also don't follow from
       | each other. Bizarre stuff.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | jcranmer wrote:
         | >> Put another way, what's the most powerful force on earth? In
         | the 1800s, God.
         | 
         | I mean... that's not merely a statement unsupported by
         | evidence, that's a statement that's _demonstrably_ wrong. If I
         | were to come up with a list of powerful forces in the Long 19th
         | Century,  "God" and "religion" wouldn't even come close to
         | making it. It's a century that opens with the Enlightenment and
         | reactions to it. The salient political features of the 19th
         | century are the unhinging of the concept of divine right to
         | rule, the social upheaval brought about by the Industrial
         | Revolution, and the mighty juggernaut of nationalism that
         | aroused passions and drove the world to several bloody
         | conflicts, even in excess of the greatest and bloodiest wars of
         | religion.
        
         | tablespoon wrote:
         | >> if property or information is secured by cryptography, the
         | state can't seize it without getting the solution to an
         | equation
         | 
         | > Bizarre stuff.
         | 
         | Yeah. No matter how much cryptography you have, a gun or bomb
         | will still kill you. This idea that that state _really_ cares
         | about whatever junk you 've encrypted sounds like the McGuffin
         | in a cliche thriller.
        
           | hef19898 wrote:
           | Also, authorities confiacate quite some crypto all the
           | time...
        
         | tsimionescu wrote:
         | > if property or information is secured by cryptography, the
         | state can't seize it without getting the solution to an
         | equation.
         | 
         | This sort of reminds me of the Eddie Izzard "Flags" bit, except
         | that someone is trying to claim the land _without_ the might of
         | the British Empire behind them. Like, imagine the police coming
         | to evict you from a house, and you confidently showing them
         | that this ledger here says that it 's actually your house.
        
       | ryanschneider wrote:
       | I find the Network State manifesto laughable for a couple
       | reasons:
       | 
       | - I don't see how existing nations will ever allow "dual
       | citizenship" with a network state.
       | 
       | - and by extension how will these Network States actually defend
       | themselves?
       | 
       | - and based on this section they seem to be forecasting a Peter
       | Zeihan style end of the current world order. If that happens
       | cryptocurrency will be the first victim, not the savior: in a
       | world where microchips are rare no one will want to waste them on
       | anything not directly related to food or energy supply.
       | 
       | Don't get me wrong: I highly recommend Zeihan's "The End of World
       | is Just the Beginning" (caveat I'm only halfway done) but see
       | it's predictions totally incompatible with the IMO wishful
       | thinking of The Network State.
        
         | dakial1 wrote:
         | > I don't see how existing nations will ever allow "dual
         | citizenship" with a network state.
         | 
         | Aren't churches sort of network states?
        
       | TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
       | I upvoted this because I think it has some interesting parts, but
       | there's also a lot of culture war and borderline conspiracy-
       | theorist stuff that would have gotten it flagged off the front
       | page if it were all the article contained.
        
         | bshepard wrote:
         | Nice motive, seriously, very prosocial -- which parts seemed
         | most culture warrish to you? The whole network state program
         | feels very unhinged to me from what an actual state is, but I
         | also don't have a nice phone.
        
       | bshepard wrote:
       | While I understand the desire to claim that bifurcation has
       | reached the point where the "America is not really a single
       | "nation state" anymore" it is, in fact, still a nation state, in
       | the same way that a family that fights a lot is still a family.
       | Only this family, uh, rules the world. And unfortunately it also
       | rules the world while pretending it doesn't rule the world.
       | Acknowledging that you rule the world would be a good first step
       | towards doing a better job at ruling it, but this acknowledgement
       | is impossible within the given parameters of discourse, so a new
       | discourse will likely emerge?
        
         | shlurpy wrote:
         | If they did, it would suddenly become that much more clear that
         | the system is deeply antidemocratic, due to people not having
         | any say in the institutions that govern them.
        
         | dllthomas wrote:
         | https://acoup.blog/2021/07/02/collections-my-country-isnt-a-...
        
       | 99_00 wrote:
       | Historians use historians from the past as secondary sources.
       | They have never assumed that those sources were bias free. They
       | don't assume the history they write is bias free. History is
       | constantly being rewritten with different perspectives. This is
       | History 101.
       | 
       | Many people have forgotten that bias is the rule not the
       | exception. Our institutions are built assuming bias exists and
       | try to remove it to get desired outcomes.
       | 
       | In our justice system: A court trial is two parties trying to
       | present their own self interested and biased version with a judge
       | enforcing predetermined rules.
       | 
       | Scientific method exists in part to combat assumptions and bias.
       | 
       | Experiments are constructed to remove bias.
       | 
       | Papers are reviewed to remove bias.
       | 
       | Why would the news or anything be bias free? In my mind, if you
       | are assuming it's bias free, that's big red flag. Maybe you are
       | just happy when your biases are confirmed and unhappy with any
       | information that goes against your biases. Almost everyone is,
       | after all. That's how human beings are wired and it's the duty of
       | people who want to be more rational to constantly combat that.
        
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       (page generated 2022-07-11 23:00 UTC)