[HN Gopher] If the News Is Fake, Imagine History ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-11 23:00 UTC)