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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   24830 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 2024

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The difference is that it's easy to people who don't have a particular psychology or culture. You're concluding that it's not easy to certain folks, which is perfectly compatible with it being objectively easy to most people. Maybe it's even tedious, or as the dictionary would recast that word, boring, to you. But hey, I think we're making progress. The reason why IoT devices have been an absolute security shitshow for years is just because a small culture of powerful technokings think that it's too boring for them to fix the obvious problems that everyone knows are obvious problems and which are objectively easy and simple to fix. We may have reached agreement!

The difference is that it's easy to people who don't have a particular psychology or culture.

So you say. But those people can't do it, because they aren't the people building the devices. The people being required to do it are the people you (gleefully) admit it is painful for.

But hey, I think we're making progress. The reason why IoT devices have been an absolute security shitshow for years is just because a small culture of powerful technokings think that it's too boring for them to fix the obvious problems that everyone knows are obvious problems and which are objectively easy and simple to fix. We may have reached agreement!

I do not agree. The reason IoT devices have been an absolute security shitshow for years is no one except you and some European regulators actually gives a shit. There are no technokings building them, and nobody's going to pay a red cent more for an internet-connected light bulb that's more secure than some other internet-connected light bulb.

But those people can't do it, because they aren't the people building the devices. The people being required to do it are the people you (gleefully) admit it is painful for.

Maybe their little subculture will change. It is a Culture War, after all.

The reason IoT devices have been an absolute security shitshow for years is no one except you and some European regulators actually gives a shit.

I mean, plenty of people care, including lots of technology and security experts. E.g.

There are no technokings building them

...wait, so those people aren't building them? Who is building them? People who aren't the artists and don't find following the regulation to be boring? Then we don't actually have any problem at all! I'm not sure what you've been complaining about this whole time.

nobody's going to pay a red cent more for an internet-connected light bulb that's more secure than some other internet-connected light bulb.

Well, now, if all the internet-connected light bulbs that are available in the store are more secure and cost one red cent more, will they still fly off the shelf? You've resisted making any tangible prediction here. I think it's because you know that they will still sell just fine for a tiny amount of additional money.

The game of insisting on some very tangible prediction for a perturbation to a complex system, and then if no such prediction is forthcoming insisting the person making less tangible claims is wrong is annoying and only works on Yudkowskiites. I'll make a less tangible claim, though: If regulation gets a foothold and continues to increase, in 20 years we'll be talking about the promise of automation of household tasks the way we talk about flying cars today.

Ok, so not a prediction about consumers' willingness-to-pay slightly more for slightly more secure products. That's fine. It would have been an easy thing to make a prediction on if your step function catastrophic model was correct, but I think we can conclude by this much longer-term, contingent prediction that your step function catastrophic model really really wasn't ever a serious attempt at a model in the first instance.

Does TheMotte have a RemindMe bot that can come back in 20 years?

Flying cars actually are pretty close to my area of expertise, so I'm betting that you probably have some misconceptions of the reality on the topic. What do you think is "the way we talk about flying cars today"? Let's see if it reflects reality.

What do you think is "the way we talk about flying cars today"?

The idea that we'll ever have them is an utter joke, and has been since before Avery Brooks made a meme of it. And that's true, it is an utter joke. But at one time people thought we would have flying cars. The ever-increasing regulation on anything airspace-related has made it so we don't have flying cars, we won't have flying cars, fewer people have their own aircraft, and even flying toy airplanes is mostly illegal.

There are of course substantial technical barriers to flying cars, but almost no one is even interested in trying to overcome them because the regulatory barriers to marketing them and getting the general public to be allowed to fly them are obviously insurmountable. No one goes into the aircraft industry unless they want to live, sleep, and breathe FAA regulations; nobody's designing better airplanes, the whole object of the business is to make more cost-effective (cheaper or more fuel-efficient) airplanes while still satisfying the myriad FAA regs. Which mostly means finding some way of claiming the new airplane is a variant of an old one, otherwise the regulatory cost of certifying the new airframe AND getting pilots certified on it is too high.

If the regulators get their way, we'll have the same thing in household automation. We'll still be doing the dishes the same way (only with less and less effective dishwashers, since it's an obsession of the US government to do dishes without water), laundry (same thing about effectiveness) and cooking too. Nothing that could be automated will be (except toys like the Roomba)

There are of course substantial technical barriers to flying cars, but almost no one is even interested in trying to overcome them because the regulatory barriers to marketing them and getting the general public to be allowed to fly them are obviously insurmountable.

Here is where we get to the BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT part. Every couple years, I see another flying car concept from some start-up. Every couple years, it's technologically fucking absurd, because "there are of course substantial technical barriers to flying cars".

You have zero reason for anyone to believe that the core reason why we don't have flying cars is regulatory and not technological/cultural/practical, especially when I can see with my own two eyes that every proposal that comes up is obscenely whack from a technological/cultural/practical standpoint. Don't get me wrong, I'm no FAA-lover, and they would almost certainly get in the way, but they're the reason we don't have flying cars in the same way that Space Force is the reason we don't have aliens invading earth.

You have zero reason for anyone to believe that the core reason why we don't have flying cars is regulatory and not technological/cultural/practical, especially when I can see with my own two eyes that every proposal that comes up is obscenely whack from a technological/cultural/practical standpoint.

Of course they're "obscenely whack". The only people foolish enough to propose them are those who know nothing about the industry and thus the fact that the regulatory barriers are insurmountable.

If you want to fly you have to learn a bevy of arcane radio procedures, log every trip you take, follow various checklists every time you fly, get your aircraft maintained only by FAA-certified mechanics, have regular medical examinations, and more. And you still only can fly in good weather, which makes every trip a risk of being stranded. There's no market for a flying car, even if technical barriers were overcome, given those requirements.

Those were pretty much real-world constraints until automation developed enough to be a reasonable approach. This is very very very much directly in my domain of expertise. The good news is that the FAA has opened up to these sorts of "alternative navigation and control schemes". As an expert in the field, this reads to me very much as you just wishing that we lived in a different world, where this sort of technology was feasible a few decades ago, when it definitely definitely wasn't, regardless of what regulations existed/didn't exist.

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Maybe their little subculture will change. It is a Culture War, after all.

You won't change it without breaking it such that it can't produce the new stuff any more.

...wait, so those people aren't building them? Who is building them? People who aren't the artists and don't find following the regulation to be boring? Then we don't actually have any problem at all! I'm not sure what you've been complaining about this whole time.

"Technokings" is not a reasonable description of the people building them. The people building them exist, and are not people with the regulated-industry mindset, where there are a ton of boxes to be checked and rechecked every time something is built or a change is made.

But you know all this; you're unable or unwilling to truly conceal your glee at keeping the people (such as myself) that you hold in such disdain being stomped on by the English jackboot.

You won't change it without breaking it such that it can't produce the new stuff any more.

This is just hyperbolic catastrophism. Hilarious, really. I mean, honestly. You can't possibly have a real argument for this. Did you really think that this was an actual argument? Or do you have some weird twisted argument that literally any epsilon>0 of regulation instantly grinds innovation to a halt? I hate to break it to you, but no one else believes this, because it's just not true. Not even remotely true. Tons of industries that are infinitely more regulated than tech still have plenty of innovation. There may be a tradeoff on some margins, yes, but your step function model is not remotely serious.

"Technokings" is not a reasonable description of the people building them. The people building them exist, and are not people with the regulated-industry mindset, where there are a ton of boxes to be checked and rechecked every time something is built or a change is made.

What shall we call them, then? "Bored Pandas", the culture of folks too bored by things like making sure there's no default password on their devices?

Or do you have some weird twisted argument that literally any epsilon>0 of regulation instantly grinds innovation to a halt?

It never stays epsilon.

Architecture, for instance. Do you know what architects do nowadays? It isn't really to design buildings. It's to figure out a way for any given space to satisfy fire regs and ADA regs at the same time, while still being usable. If there's anything left over for creativity, it's taken by energy efficiency rules.

Aircraft I mentioned in another post. No flying cars, no supersonic jets, and the big aircraft manufacturers aren't even planning new designs, just variants on old ones.

Ok, so California required default passwords four years ago. Your nightmare world has already arrived. We've already crossed over the epsilon threshold. The boot has already eternally stomped the artist, and you should have already exited the terminally ill tech sector. I don't know why you're complaining now.

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