Zompist Bboard Again

Richard W wrote: ↑Sun May 01, 2022 10:23 pm How was Britain preventing development in Ireland during the customs union of Britain and Ireland (1811-1921, fully resumed 1972-2020)?

As it happened, I quoted Jane Jacobs' summary of the process here. In short, by the suppression of local industry. The same process was applied to India, and the Brits attempted to do the same in North America.

The point is that movement away from the control of the world by a few 'republics' was foreseeable, and in 1910 could be seen to be happening, at various speeds, in the British Empire.

Are you talking about decolonization? I don't think that was foreseeable in 1940, much less 1910. Heck, if Churchill hadn't lost in 1945, decolonization would have been even more contentious than it was.

I think it's interesting to look at the material causes behind the reactionary trends.

Myself, I see determining factors:

1. We now live in a global civilization. Communications are near-instantaneous, travel times relatively short. Integrating into the global economy is almost impossible to resist. Events anywhere on the planet have an effect on your life: terrorist attacks anywhere can be planned from Pakistan, Afghanistan, or really any place. What happens in a food market in Wuhan can shake the world for two years. War in Ukraine will affect your cost of living. CO2 emissions anywhere will effect global warming.

This raises a lot of question about sovereignty. In fact, traditional notions of national sovereignty are now pretty much indefensible: what you do in your own country can and will affect the entire planet. I think dictators and reactionaries world wide are fully aware of that, and are - futilelly - trying to resist this trend and - not so futilely - trying to carve as much global influence for themselves as they can.

Plus the incipient global civilization puts pretty much anyone under global culture shock. People have to confront global culture, and very different ideas on a daily basis. For instance, your average French agnostic, like it or not, will deal and interact with Muslims who will challenge the long-secured belief that religion is unimportant and an embarassing medieval holdover.
Not everyone reacts kindly to culture shock.

(Interestingly, reactionaries in Western country retreat to rural areas, which are precisely those areas least connected to global civilization.)

2. We haven't really figured out yet what to do with the incredible mass of information we now have access to. We're generally subject to a constant barrage of anxiety-inducing and generally fake information, presented in the nastiest way possible.
Simply put, we're all being trolled 100% of the time. (This includes social media, and also the traditional media. Yes, even your favorite newspaper trolls you, because clickbaits sells.)

Now, looking at this with a long-term perspective:

1) will probably be a non-issue by 2301. We will have some kind of global governance in place, and it will be both expected and unremarkable.
2) No idea about that one, really! But this being all relatively new technology, I think the barrage of trolling will be put under control, one way or another.

zompist wrote: ↑Sun May 01, 2022 11:20 pm

Richard W wrote: ↑Sun May 01, 2022 10:23 pm How was Britain preventing development in Ireland during the customs union of Britain and Ireland (1811-1921, fully resumed 1972-2020)?

As it happened, I quoted Jane Jacobs' summary of the process here.

She reads like a liar. Now, earlier, customs dues had destroyed some Protestant industries, but I asked about the state of affairs after the customs union. (There was a 10-year transition period, which probably delayed the economic benefits to Ireland of the union.)

Richard W wrote: ↑Mon May 02, 2022 5:22 am She reads like a liar.

And you sound like a schoolboy. Jacobs based most of her account on historian Cecil Woodham-Smith. God knows what you base your jingoism on.

If you're looking for an act in parliament called the "No Steel In Ireland" act or something, you're looking in the wrong direction.

If you have a head start on the factories, and you annex a more rural area, what happens next? Independent Irish monetary policy basically ceased after 1826, so Irish manufactures would have to compete on equal terms with British ones. Meanwhile the pound sterling had tremendous spending power, so it was easier to import things than ever before. The simple fact of uneven development and monetary union is enough to encourage primary industries over secondary ones in rural areas. If the Brits wanted Irish industry to standa a chance, they would need to allow local government to take steps to protect it, something they were not willing to do. This is much the same logic that led to Ireland being a food exporter during the famine: the cost of local barley was whatever an English wholesaler could pay for it, in pound sterling. Keeping the grain in Ireland and selling at locally determined prices would require powers no Irish government had.

On a lighter note, I wonder if in the world of sports, by 2301 concerns about CTE will have lead to soccer being replaced as the world's most popular sport by a hypothetical sport that would be very similar but wouldn't allow heading the ball (and might allow for some limited hand play to make up for that).

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri May 06, 2022 11:35 am On a lighter note, I wonder if in the world of sports, by 2301 concerns about CTE will have lead to soccer being replaced as the world's most popular sport by a hypothetical sport that would be very similar but wouldn't allow heading the ball (and might allow for some limited hand play to make up for that).

So, basketball?

I was thinking of something a lot closer to standard soccer, but yes, basketball might be a possibility.

One quick thought on robots: I'm fairly skeptical about the idea of a stereotypical "robot apocalypse". But individual robots are a different matter. Not because of AI, but because of malevolent human beings. If a robot is principally physically capable of killing humans, as many industrial robots already are, and as household robots would to no doubt be if they would exist, then the main thing keeping it from doing serious harm is its software. And its software can be changed by hackers... So, while I don't expect a robot apocalypse any time soon, I definitely expect "murder by hacked robot" to be a thing in the future (I'm not even thinking of robots explicitly designed to kill people here.) (Also, I'm assuming for the sake of argument here that technological society won't collapse.)

I personally am skeptical about the capabilities of robots themselves in the near future, so I have few worries about a robot apocalypse (just like we haven't seen a cow apocalypse, despite cows being more intelligent than the most powerful AI's in existence today), I personally am very concerned about what both corporations and criminals (aka "hackers") will be able to do with them. We can already see countless "IoT" devices being either abandoned by their makers, so as to either become useless or not receive necessary security updates so as to become easy targets for criminals, or being used for surveillance by their makers themselves. Personally, the only "IoT" device in my home is a printer, and it will probably stay that way.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun May 15, 2022 12:46 pm (just like we haven't seen a cow apocalypse, despite cows being more intelligent than the most powerful AI's in existence today),

What, have you missed how they constantly try to finish us off (spreading mad cow desease, belching methane to kill the climate)? These fiends are devious little schemers behind their innocent eyes and mock-stupid moos, I tell you!

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri May 06, 2022 11:48 am I was thinking of something a lot closer to standard soccer, but yes, basketball might be a possibility.

Why not rugby? Heading is pretty rare in rugby, and it's still a boring sport that allows ties so the Europeans will love it.

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Mon May 16, 2022 8:02 am

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri May 06, 2022 11:48 am I was thinking of something a lot closer to standard soccer, but yes, basketball might be a possibility.

Why not rugby? Heading is pretty rare in rugby,

Umh, I was talking about a scenario where soccer loses ground because of concerns over CTE. I don't see how any of the oval ball sports would gain ground under those circumstances.

Raphael wrote: ↑Mon May 16, 2022 8:57 am

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Mon May 16, 2022 8:02 am

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri May 06, 2022 11:48 am I was thinking of something a lot closer to standard soccer, but yes, basketball might be a possibility.

Why not rugby? Heading is pretty rare in rugby,

Umh, I was talking about a scenario where soccer loses ground because of concerns over CTE. I don't see how any of the oval ball sports would gain ground under those circumstances.

Oh, you mean all similar sports would be tainted, even if they result in no cases of CTE? That makes sense. I was foolishly attributing intelligence to soccer fans. I should have known anyone who watches a sport based on running around randomly until the other side's random running around creates a random opening to kick a ball through and hoping that the goalie randomly chooses to dive in the wrong direction wouldn't be terribly descriminating.

On robots: going one step further, I'll suggest in the long run we'll move away from the trend of networking everything.
(But 'murder by hacked robots' would make for a good short story!)

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Mon May 16, 2022 6:39 pm Oh, you mean all similar sports would be tainted, even if they result in no cases of CTE?

That's kind of a weird take. There are cases of CTE in professional rugby. Rugby doesn't quite reach the violence levels of American football, but it's seriously physical anyway.

All in all it seems to me most sports are detrimental to the player's health at the pro level; professional teams seem to have a complete disregard of health issues.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Tue May 17, 2022 3:00 am All in all it seems to me most sports are detrimental to the player's health at the pro level; professional teams seem to have a complete disregard of health issues.

Sure, but I think Raphael's point is that standards change. American football hasn't been done away with, but CTE is a big issue these days. Boxing has gone way down in popularity, to say nothing of Roman gladiatorial sports.

On the other hand, "sports become safer" is not much of an sf story. More popular in sf is the opposite: games get gorier or even murderous.

(Larry Niven actually got one good story out of the "things get safer" idea: "Safe at any speed", which is about a vehicle crash in a remote area in the far future, and how entirely non-dangerous it is. But that's the kind of idea you can only really use once.)

So far all preliminary steps toward the robot apocalypse have been purely economic.

Take, for example, the internet of things. Have you ever, in your entire time on this planet, met someone who wanted their refrigerator to know their milk preferences? Have you ever met someone who relishes the idea of a "smart lock" standing between them and a burgler? No. You haven't. No one has. No one is asking for this. Nobody wants to take a perfectly good kettle and make it so that it's inoperable anytime the wifi is out. We get these things because businesses want us to have them. That smart fridge tracks your behavior and sends you advertizements. That smart lamp needs periodic software updates. These products make you more pliable to large corporations.

This means two things: first, that if the human race is ever annihilated by robots, it will have nothing to do with the hubris or laziness of the consumer. And more importantly, it means that when we do finally get around to stomping Capitalism down the shower drain to live with the other rats and cockroaches, we cancel robot apocalypse as a bonus.

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Tue May 17, 2022 7:19 am Take, for example, the internet of things. Have you ever, in your entire time on this planet, met someone who wanted their refrigerator to know their milk preferences? Have you ever met someone who relishes the idea of a "smart lock" standing between them and a burgler?

Alas, yes I have.

So have I. Then again they're the kind of people who buy crypto, so probably it all goes to prove Moose's point.

An interesting assumption is that we'll get rid of capitalism at some point. It could happen... But I'm less optimistic than you are.

(Honestly people seem a lot more comfortable with plutocracy than I'd have thought.)

Ares Land wrote: ↑Tue May 17, 2022 8:28 am So have I. Then again they're the kind of people who buy crypto, so probably it all goes to prove Moose's point.

Oddly enough, the one I know hates crypto.