jnxx

Also: Eroding the checks and balances and state monopoly and legitimation on use of violence.

Especially since all the above is designed as additive tech which uses a lot of brain hacks: Infinite scrolling, dopamine maximization, "check for new messages!" and so on.

How do you reduce your consumption of addictive stuff, in the easiest way? You quit, full stop.

It is the same as if you want to quit smoking, or as if you realize that you are drinking four cans of beer each summer evening and realize this is not good for you. It is far easier to quit, and decide what to do instead, than to "reduce".

> The UK's proposal makes the "digital ID" a pointer to an entry in a centralized database.

Very similar to the "EU settlement scheme" which would gave EU citizens which had work and settled in the UK pre-Brexit after a very lengthy and non-deterministic application process the right to stay without any paper document to prove that they actually got that right. Just a database entry on a government computer. Too bad if an extreme right-wing goverment came to power and something happened to that database.

There is another technical reason:

A digital ID requires essentially a digital signature running on a secure device (for example, a smart card).

Thus it implements public key cryptocraphy. Which makes confidentiality and integrity of computing two inseparable sides of the same medal.

You simply cannot break confidentiality of communication without practically breaking integrity of digital signatures at the same time. (Otherwise, a user, for example could generate a fresh random public key, sign it with their digital id, and send it to any communications partner).

Breaking this in turn means that the government can sign on behalf of you, without your knowledge.

Human communication is based on symbols and whatever the means are to transport these symbols, cannot work without trust.

> I’m sure it’s not even deliberately dismantling privacy. They’re doing it blindly.

That is often a variant of Hanlor's razor brought up on questions like this. How do certain actors turn reliably to a course of action that is so damaging - but to any expert or even rational mind seems stupid! That can't be what they want?!

I do not think that this reasoning holds.

Hannah Arendt, when writing about totalitarism, came to the conclusion that there is a kind of complicity between evil and thoughtlessness. (I am still trying to find her exact words on this.)

> would this scale?

Consider how much space you do need ahead for safe travel as a pedestrian, on a bicycle, on an interstate highway in a car, or on a plane taking off at an airport, and you have the answer.

Cars already require a ridiculous amount of space for safety. I live in Germany and there are cities with 200,000 inhabitants that are smaller in area than a single highway intersection.

The argument is like it is unethical to lock my front door because this also stops people which genuinely only want to enter to have a look at my living room.

That's not how boundaries work.

The foundation of quantum physics being developed with plenty of hikes and walks outside is almost a science meme. These researchers took a lot of very productive breaks.

So what needs to happen to ban smartphone use while driving? I mean not "formally forbidden" but "thoroughly enforced".

Personally, I avoid phone use even as a pedestrian in busy city spaces - I think the time it takes to fully switch attention to be fully aware of things like a reckless driver running a red light is too long to not affect safety.

Too bad that the language we use is also a demonstration of social status. If I think about it, it could have a somewhat corrosive effect on that glue that keeps society in shape.

We already treat spam and unsolicited commercial email that way.

Trust is also essential for any form of symbolic information exchange.

Humans communicate using symbols. That could be patterns of sound waves, gestures, or written characters.

If we can't trust that the communicated symbols match their agreed meaning, what is the use of them? Communication breaks down quickly, and being social individuals which inter-depend on others, we can't live without communication. Nobody likes a liar, and the reason is, the words they give us do not match what they mean. (Perhaps not only humans. I read that dolphins readily come and rescue individuals which are drowning - including humans - but they punish individuals which fake drowning.)

And that goes from every stratum of social interaction, from big treaties to selling a bagel. Would you sell a bagel for a fake dollar bill? The number on it is a symbol as well, it has a meaning.

So it is right down one of the very bases of human cooperation.

What are the main differences between OcamML and a statically typed Lisp?