[FRIAM] the arc of socioeconomics, personal and public: was VPN server

[Steven A Smith]

Glen -
> Walking back up a few branches, Vladimyr made a comment about (I 
> think) flocking, mob rules, tribalism, etc. My response was that the 
> _essentialist_ concepts he (many of us, actually) would _like_ to see 
> governing people's behavior don't really exist. What does exist is the 
> trace, the behavior, the artifacts. Do I really care why someone voted 
> for Trump? No. Do I care about the deeply held secrets that someone 
> thinks (because they believe in rationality) ultimately cause their 
> behavior? No. What I do care about is how likely you are to pay by 
> episode vs. by subscription, whether you're more likely to pirate than 
> buy, whether you're an early adopter, etc. And for that, all we need 
> is fashion. We don't need essentialist things like intellect and 
> morality, even if I'm wrong and they exist.
I always appreciate your (seemingly?) contrarian stances.   I suppose I 
might be convinced that fashion is on a spectrum with intellect and 
morality, but I guess I would claim they exist because we have a word 
for them, but perhaps only a little bit more or differently than 
claiming that fire-breathing dragons and wraiths exist because we have 
names for them?

*I* DO care why someone voted for Trump.  If that someone is someone I 
know, I am interested in how that factoid (voting for Trump) effects my 
other dealings with them.   Many anti-Trump folks will virtually 
excommunicate a friend or colleague for the act of Trump-voting.   I 
find that in perhaps 20% of my Trump-voting acquaintances that their 
specific *reasons* make it somewhere between tolerable and honorable for 
me.   It isn't always arrogance or ignorance or fear-of-crooked-hillary 
that made them vote for Trump...

I'm not clear what you mean "do I really care why?".  I suppose if the 
"I" in this sentence is a marketing profiler, then it may not matter, 
though if you realize they voted for Trump because they think he's a 
white supremicist  or homophobe or mysogynist, you can then further 
target them for products, services or memes aligned with those ideals?
>
> Walking back further, this whole section of the tree branched off of your comment that "it depends on what you want to accomplish".  I suspect 99% of the targeted ads can be avoided with a slow (yearly?, quarterly?) cycle of temporary VPNs running in the cloud (ephemeral IP addresses).  Perhaps 90% of it can be avoided just by using HTTPS-Everywhere.  But I'd like something a bit deeper, as would most people, I think, even if _only_ to avoid being pigeonholed into stereotypes.
In the arms-race (a biological metaphor would be better, but I think 
most of those are couched in the military metaphor anyway) of 
cyber-privacy it seems that "something a bit deeper" will be necessary 
*soon* if not already.   I hate that we have to go there, but it is part 
of the larger pattern that requires it I think.
>    Yes, I'm a former libertarian who's become a (much hated these days) neoliberal and who's teetering on the edge of social democrat (despite knowing democratic socialism is more coherent).
I wonder if there is a model of the evolution of individuals in 
political state-space.  Your evolution as reported here (and somewhat as 
I apprehend it from our communications) is very similar to my own.    I 
think of my contemporaries who are *still* Libertarians or NeoLiberals 
as being in a state of "Arrested Development", but suspect that may be 
some form of arrogance on my part.   I believe that Marx has claimed 
that the penultimate social order is that of pure Communism and that the 
20th century experiments in Capitalism and Socialism were at best a 
necessary step toward this final condition or at worst a wasteful 
diversion/stall to avoid it's inevitability.
>    I have a similar problem with atheism and other people labeling me that way ... even the labels and categorizations others use feels totally inadequate to me ... like Nick's unfair condemnation of post-modernism.  I want to avoid all these exogenous and fictitious categorizations entirely.  Hence, strong privacy maps directly to autotelism and self-governance.
I think this last phrase: "strong privacy maps directly to autotelism 
and self-governance" is a very astute and pivotal point. I would say 
that *all* forms of government will naturally eschew privacy because 
autotelism and self-governance are antithetical to their goals, perhaps 
their very existence.

I wonder how your self avowed move toward democratic socialism fits with 
the implied value of self-governance and autotelism?   I myself, am 
divided on this issue... I want to be an uber-individual, yet I think 
being a very good part of a much larger whole is the only sustainable 
(and moral?) modality.   Is this my Ego vs my SuperEgo?   Or is there 
some kind of duality between these two seemingly incompatible ideals 
that I'm not yet grasping (though I do reach)?

/No man is an island, but most of us are at least self-styled as 
archipelagos!/
> Hopefully that helps.  "We" are the optimizing exploiters who want to sell you things/ideas you don't need, while limiting the amount of effort required to extract the maximum amount from your wallet.  If we have to coercively brainwash you in order to do that, then that brainwashing is just a business expense, no more no less.
/Is it a conspiracy or a good business model?/
> On a personal note, I have a friend who (as part of his start-up) monitors twitter data for sentiment.  In lieu of interpersonal contact, he also uses those tools to keep track of his (distal) friends.
I find that the social media which I only oblique engage in does seem to 
support a migration of the distribution toward distality. It is so much 
easier to keep track of friends distant in time, geography or 
sociopolitical views than ever, and impersonality of facebookery and 
twitting seem to *distance* close friends.  "Why did I have to learn on 
FaceBook that you were pregnant!?" or "You never call, you never write, 
I have to keep up with you by reading your FaceBewk Posts!  WTF, I 
thouhgt we were friends!?".
>   As much as my narcissist homunculus likes the idea of being microcosmically influential in that way, and as much as my dork homunculus likes the idea of such a network monitoring ability, the whole idea kinda sickens me ... in the same way Facebook sickens me.  Is it dehumanizing to define a person based on their online ephemeris?  Or am I just a hyper-sensitive, delicate snowflake?
yes to all of the above...  My ex sensitized me nicely to noticing any 
sentence with "Just" in it.   I think you are much more than a 
hypersensitive, delicate snowflake, which is your charm in my 
estimation... the foreground AND the background of that statement!

Something very significant is evolving in our culture, as a consequence 
of this "new media" which is at it's base electronic 
communication/digital networking/hypermedia/asynchronous 
communications.   It seems trite to simply quote McLuhan's "the Medium 
is the Message" here, but I think this was a powerful early premonition 
of what was to come.   I think his followon "Medium is the Massage" is 
even more apt...   How we are conditioned sensorially by our various 
mediums of not just co-mmunication, but also engagement in relationships 
and identities.

Carry On,
  - Steve
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