acobster

> It's a team not a family.

Yeah, calling people losers is a famously effective way to get performance out of your team.

> He was given no middle name but later invented one, Hewes, when he joined a union that already had a member named Patrick Stewart.

I never knew that. I wonder if, in the "I, Borg" episode, they chose the name "Hugh" as a reference to this when coming up with a name for the newly individuated Borg. It's a stretch, but I'd like to think so.

RIP Mr. Stewart.

I feel you. The "stories" feature especially felt like "throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks." Given that they're a nonprofit founded by an anarchist, I assume their goals are just different from the typical product-focused company? Which I'm fine with, the app does what it's supposed to do. It would be lovely to have an SDK though.

When paper was invented, it was expensive to make, and very few people had access to it. It was basically confined to a small priesthood and most people were illiterate. Paper remained quite expensive for centuries.

So it would've been pretty rich for someone to say, "talking to these illiterate peasants to their faces is on its way out. Don't they know that writing is the new medium?"

I'm not arguing against using the models per se. It's just that this is a social problem, to which there's no good technical solution. The hard road of social change is the only real alternative.

> having seperately models tuned to different factors.

Sure. Separate but equal, presumably.

Specialization in what though? Do you really think VCs are going to drive innovation on equitable outcomes? Where is the money in that? I have a hunch that oppression will continue to be profitable.

Perhaps the coolest way I've ever seen someone say "I'd love to see you try."

That still doesn't mean he shot first.

> but they have produced no evidence for the claim

The only anarchistic definition of The State I've ever heard is some kind of body with a legal monopoly on violence. If you're going off that definition, you'd have a hard time justifying it to anyone, as it's pretty much fundamentally counter to self-determination. It's true that the state (and capitalism in general) are fundamentally technological, so successful anti-state victories (say, making it harder for the state to manufacture consent and bypassing the propaganda filter) would be significant. But that's only "certain forms," as you put it. At the end of the day, the state will at some point resort to its go-to tactic of violence. If crypto tools restrict or redirect state action, that doesn't mean the state is suddenly okay, it just means anarchists are winning.

You're right. I wasn't really trying to give a broad definition - I was making a narrower argument - and I agree that Chomsky's is a better definition. I guess my "whole premise" phrasing was a bit overly broad.

More visible to whom? To the well-functioning state? I don't follow. The whole premise of anarchism is that a truly free society is one without a state. The presumed benefit of the kind of visibility you're talking about also rests on the assumption that the state is aligned with the interests of the wider population, whereas anarchism proposes that the state is fundamentally misaligned with collective and personal freedom.

Maybe your point is that because crypto-anarchism appears to rest on this state-friendly assumption, it isn't "real" anarchism. I don't know too much about crypto-anarchism and haven't formed an opinion either way, but if it's as cozy with anarcho-capitalism as the quotes at the end make it out to be, I'd probably agree with you.

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"We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings."

- Ursula K. Le Guin