Published on 12, July, 2020
I was talking to a young woman at work this week (she already thought I was odd because I don't have a freezer, so you can imagine the reaction when I told her I don't have a TV or a mobile phone). We were talking about conspiracies.
"What if," I said, "the government, or even just your employer, said to you that they wanted you to wear one of those electronic devices, so that they always knew where you were and what you were most likely up to? But, if you chose to - and for a small reduction in salary, or increase in taxation - you could opt out of wearing it? What would you do?"
"I'd opt out, of course. It's a gross invasion of privacy."
Yes. Good point. But...
"What if I told you that you were holding such a device in your hand right now?"
She looked at her phone. She does that a lot. She was actually looking at it whilst I was talking to her, but she's NT, so she's able to divide her attention like that.
"Not only can it tell people precisely where you are," I went on, "but it can tell them all the details of your personal contacts, your private messages, your internet usage history, the people you call and text, your banking and credit card details, your shopping habits, where you live, what you own, your hobbies, the places you like to go, what you like to eat and drink, how many pets you have, what your boyfriend's doing, and who he's seeing and contacting. They can get access to all your photographs. All your selfies. The list goes on. And not only do you accept it willingly, but you're also happy to pay for the privilege."
She looked at me in a way that confirmed for me what she thought. That finally, I'd completely lost the plot.
"But that would never happen," she said. "There are data protection and privacy laws against things like that."
"And who makes those laws? The very people who might want access to that information."
"But why would they want to do that?"
I couldn't believe I was being asked that question. It doesn't take a lot of figuring out, with the crazy state the world is in now. I tried mentioning the US government's record on surveillance, and how laws regarding warrants are now getting more... erm... flexible? That's a polite way to put it.
"And what about people who don't care about those laws, anyway? People who can side-step them? Hackers? Terrorists? Other criminals?"
"Well..." she went on, "I still have a choice, don't I. And I choose to have a phone."
Really?
Choice?
They're definitely starting to win once people are convinced that addiction and enslavement are 'choices'. That's how it all works.
Am I the only one who thinks this way? Am I the only one who thinks this whole thing has deeply insidious and dangerous implications for us all? Don't get me wrong. The internet has opened up the world for me and enabled me to connect with people I'd never otherwise have known about. It's enabled me to showcase my design work and garner an audience. But I don't need it there all the time. I'll use it in the morning before work, then in the evening for creative work and entertainment. Apart from that, I can leave it alone. It stops at my front door. I don't need to keep constantly checking my 'likes' or texts. In fact, I don't want to. I'm lucky, I guess, because I belong to a generation (fogeys?) that didn't grow up with mobile phones, so their use wasn't conditioned into me. The phone is not, and never has been, and never will be, a dominant part of my life.
These poor sods, though. And they just can't see what it's done. The drastic way it's changed society. For a good many people, it's effectively decommissioned one of their hands - because it's always there in hand: in the car, in the supermarket, on the beach, constantly being checked and updated. I went for a cycle ride in the beautiful sunshine this morning, and I hardly saw a single person who wasn't either using a device or holding one. A woman stopped jogging to check her phone. I passed her again later, after I'd covered about five miles, and she was only about half a mile further on from where I'd first seen her - stopped again to check her phone. The people at work have them on their desks all day, and look at them at every available opportunity. These devices have got us hooked and addicted and obsessed. Young people are suffering without even realising it. They can't afford to miss anything - and by so doing, they miss so much else. Phone-related accidents are increasing. 'Nomophobia' is now a clinically-recognised condition: extreme anxiety caused by the loss of the phone, or going out and forgetting it. Kids are suffering mental illnesses - both through using their phones, and then through not using them.
Yet people still think I'm strange, deranged, possibly clinically insane for harbouring thoughts about where this might all be heading, and the dire implications for all of us.
Lambs to the slaughter. That's what I think, anyway.
But then, I'm crazy.
I don't have a freezer. Or a TV.
Or a phone.
My friend was sent a message from Facebook a couple of years ago (when I was on Facebook) to suggest that she consider ceasing communication and contact with me! Who cares who’s snooping, of course the government agencies etc want to know what you’re up to so they can continue to lure you in ever more creative ways to part with your money, to get you to value and love your money, to do things you don’t even like doing to get money etc etc because when people have a (false) god, they become obedient to that god. There’s no harm in it. People are controlled because they want to be and the least they can do in return for that prestigious job (controlling them) is give them (the controllers, governments etc) the information they need to make their life easier. It sounds like a fair swap to me. Fair dinkem!
You’re not alone in not understanding quantum physics Tom, nobody does, that’s the point. If it could be understood, it would be simply physics and not quantum physics but it’s been around for years. Einstein spoke of it and right back to Jesus and others before him, people have been speaking about it and exploring it. It’s fascinating, if you don’t try to understand it! Lol!
Metaphysics isn’t hard to grasp. It basically states that the world is run by the law of cause and effect. There can be no effect without a cause and man can do nothing, until he has had a thought and the thoughts then produce effects, such as the arm moves or the legs move. The thoughts that actually produce the effects however, are often stored (and forgotten about) in the deeper aspect of mind, the subjective aspect, working their magic. I’ve never heard that term before ‘metaphysically realist’ or that the world is run independent of the mind. The mind is the beginning of all great projects, such as the Roman Empire or the Empire State Building. I love reading about the lives and works of some of our greatest architects and how they brought their inspirations to life.
Yes, I understand stand now what you mean by death, since you shared your understanding of what a person is. That makes perfect sense to me and if I shared your understanding of what/who a person is, I too would believe in this type of death.
There is no definitive answer on the double split experiment, this is quantum physics, there are no logical conclusions, no logical understanding. Many scientist say that the disturbance/interference doesn’t come from particles but from the atmosphere around them and observing the particles always has a definite and measurable effect.
Yeah, I was just asking who or what you are. I understand your idea of death better now that I understand your idea of what a person is. You think a person is basically the body so therefore when the body is no longer functioning it is therefore dead. Yeah, I understand that.
I’m not talking about how people ‘die’ or how death is defined, I’m talking about do ‘people’ actually die. To answer that, you have to know what or who a person is. If a person is merely this body, a slab of meat and bones, operated on by some magical power that is no part of them, then yes, I can see what you mean about people dying. However, if that is your understanding of what or who a person is, then we are not taking about the same thing. I see a person as being way more than meat and bones.
And no, I cannot honestly tell you that people don’t die, I’m not trying to tell you that, I was simply asking if you could be absolutely sure that people do die? I’m absolutely fascinated in the subject and love hearing people’s points of view on the subject, so I was simply asking, with an inquisitive mind, if you could be sure that people die.
Thank you for sharing your understanding of death with me, I honestly love this subject. I was talking to my friend at the autism group about it yesterday. Whenever I work at a new hospital, the first thing I do is go to the morgue and make myself acquainted with the people who work there and I tell them of my interest in ‘dead’ bodies. I’ve seen many, they always get them out of the freezer things for me and I was once invited to an autopsy thing but three other bodies came in on the arranged day and so they couldn’t accomodate me on that day, they would be too busy to explain things to me and I don’t think I’ve worked at a hospital since.
No of course I’m not going to tell you that your understanding of what a person is, guts, organs, flesh and bones etc, and if I too thought that that was what a person is, I would also share your understanding on death. It seems like a very logical conclusion to me.
Again, neither of us is right or wrong but it isn’t philosophical hair splitting and it will take us to the truth, the only truth. For something to be true it must be true for every living person and it can never change, because truth is absolute and unchanging.
I use a food bank and I use it out of choice and I am truly truly grateful for the provision. It means that I can take my time during my burnout phase, to attend to my needs without considering where I’m going to get food from. I’m very grateful and welcoming of the tremendously generous gifts that I so lovingly receive from people who I don’t even know. My family think I should go and ‘get a job’, yet these people who don’t even know me, have given so generously without thought of a thank you and that blesses the food I eat from the food banks more than any food I could buy in a supermarket. This food has been given in love and has been received in love and therefore, even if it isn’t food I would ordinarily choose to eat, such as meat products, I take it with gratitude and know that it can only be of good to me because it came from a good loving heart.
Simetimes I have more money than I can spend and some times I have none yet I still travel the world, regardless of what state my finances are in because I know that if I need some money to enable me to do what I want to do, it will be there. For example, a couple of years ago, I was doing my only ever social work job for the local authority. I took the one year contract because I wanted to specifically be in my hometown for that amount of time, so although it was a big pay cut, that was irrelevant, I got what I wanted. The wages I received barely met my daily living needs but towards the end of that contract, I suddenly decided I needed fresh air, I needed to be close to nature and I decided I was going to Bali. I didn’t have the money to buy flight tickets to get there or to pay for somewhere to stay etc , I didn’t even think about that, I just said I’m going. Then about a couple of weeks before the end of my contract, my son phoned me up whilst I was at work. He was all excited and he said Mum, you’re going to Bali, I’ve just got a pay out from the inland revenue and you can have some of it to go to Bali. I said thanks son (and in my mind I thought, I ‘know’ I’m going to Bali) but I’m really grateful to you for your generous gift. So I went to Bali. If I had considered I needed money to go, I would never have got there, not for a while anyway and not earning the wage that I was at the time and had I took another job to ‘pay’ for the trip, I would have probably already met my need to be in nature and my desire to go would no longer be there anyway. I don’t live by the balance on my bank sheet, I live from the heart and when you do that, everything you ever need or want is provided for you, with love.
Poverty is relative if you think it is.
There’s so such thing as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ and my understanding, or ‘knowg’ is shared by many a great scientist such as Einstein. This is simply truth. If somebody is unaware of the truth, they are not ‘wrong’, they are simply unaware of the truth and they instead choose to give their attention to their idea of what the truth is, which of course, is true for them. In a world that is run on the laws of cause and effect, it has to be that way, it can’t be any other way.
How do I know categorically that I speak from a position of truth ~ because truth is irrefutable, it cannot be proven otherwise, it has no opposite, it is not ‘right’ and something else ‘wrong’, it just is.
Why would you consider arguing against any position? To ‘argue’ is to suggest that you think you’re right and that you think the other person is wrong. This is a false premise on which to start any discussion, conversation or exploration. There is no right or wrong, there is simply truth, and that which isn’t true, by its very definition, doesn’t exist, only to the extent that you give it meaning. Anybody can find the absolute truth in any situation, if they choose to.
The film actually includes many of the actual details and incidents which opened Snowden's eyes and led him to his revelations. Such as hackers, employed by the CIA and NSA, using the dark web to search for strings of information in articles and social media posts. So, for instance, 'take out Trump' could be used to identify possible conspiracies and plans for a presidential assassination - though, in context, it might be something like 'I'm going to eat take-out tonight while I sit and watch Trump give his address to Congress', etc. Also, the analysis of a user's 'Friends' (and their 'Friends') to identify possible questionable contacts, and to create situations where a person might be compromised in some way, or judged to be some form of 'accessory'.
Social media is a positive mine of that kind of information. People can spill their guts about something. And who knows who might be reading it?
Who knows when the knock on the door might come?
Martian Tom said:Yet people still think I'm strange, deranged, possibly clinically insane for harbouring thoughts about where this might all be heading, and the dire implications for all of us.
...This Post is back to the original Topic, for this Thread, perhaps.
"People" as you mention, are those who have little and no idea as to how "the latest technology" actually works or what it does, and cannot imagine how it was... well "before".
I was, of course, alive in the 1980s, before Phones were Mobile and the World-Web was not quite so Wide. Around the late 1990s, it was very sudden that everything must connect to WWW, and, for inexplicable reasons, Telephones suddenly had to have a Camera...!
The U.K. is said in the Media to be the Country under most "surveilliance" after China and Russia, and so I understand what you mean in that first place. Yet many of us are in little/no position to escape it. And those who provide the technology are powered by financial incentives to make it more efficient.
I may agree, yet I do not much like to discuss all of that. I Posted this because I keep seeing this Thread appearing, and so threw in my TwoPennyWorth, so-to-speak. Good Fortune to Yourself, as I always try to say.
I've seen a couple of his 'Electric Dreams' shown on TV fairly recently, the one about the train station that did / didn't exist was WEIRD!
Your short story (and maybe 'Minority Report' too) sounds like it's coming true in that facial recognition in combination with the sorts of snooping we were discussing, are being used to monitor the friends / interests / activities / and everything else about the family and environment of anyone suspected of terrorism! Apparently people can now be arrested for suspicion of terrorist sympathies?!?! I've no idea if this is true but it sounds like an impossible thing to prove. Surely people can't be arrested for having thoughts of terrorism? Anyone could then accuse anyone else of ANYTHING. Literally, The Thought Police?
I guess so - in the sense of the rejection of abstract concepts... if one regards things like poverty and death as abstract concepts. In another sense, though, it can mean the rejection of universals.
At school the only science I found interesting was Biology but I think that says more about the school system then the subjects themselves, because since leaving school I find all areas of science fascinating! I can't handle the complicated equations but, aside from those, the science itself is quite beautiful.
As far as this thread, I think the named discussion, re. the effects of digital technology on society, is equally as fascinating and have enjoyed those parts of this thread. Thank you for posting it, it's been interesting to think about and discuss rationally.
Metaphysical nominalism is perhaps where the tangents were headed.
Philip K D i c k was most definitely in the league of Huxley and Orwell. I once wrote a short story, inspired by PKD, which posited a future in which DNA fingerprinting was mandatory - and the security services were using the information to profile possible future offenders based on the circumstances of their upbringing and environment. The heredity/environment interplay. I'm sure this isn't too fantastical an idea now.
I was always a dunce at school - but most especially a science dunce. I've tried very hard to comprehend the very basics of quantum physics - but my head won't handle it! I think some of the views put forward in this thread can be broadly termed 'metaphysically realist': that the world is, in some sense, 'mind-independent'. That goes far beyond what I'm able to comprehend, so maybe I have no place in the discussion, really.
I much prefer "The good thing about Science is that it's true whether you believe in it or not!".
I've heard of the film, I'd quite like to see it! (It sounds equally scary and interesting.) I've read a bit about him, Wikileaks, Assange, and a few instances where we've later learned (some of) the extent of government or giant corporation snooping and cover-ups. It makes you wonder what will come out fifty years from now!? It's always been a feature of the human experience but it's just so much easier now that we're all so 'out there' on the web, much more accessible than before.
Nowadays we look back at fiction like '1984' and think how spookily accurate it was but also that it didn't actually go far enough! I wonder which present day Sci-Fi is most accurately portraying the future, and not going far enough? Minority Report? Creepy!
I can most definitely say that people die and I've held many of their hands while they did it. They are no more. They no longer exist. They are gone.
If I'm not a photon, what am I? I can only answer that literally, is that what you mean? Literally, I'm just an organic collection of cells, atoms, and molecules but I don't know if that's what you meant (?).
The double slit experiment still works without a human or digital observer. It's interference that has an effect on it and that interference can come from another particle, not necessarily a collection of them arranged to make a person or a camera etc.
Can you honestly tell me that it’s true, that people die?
Can you honestly tell me that it's true that they don't? I've witnessed people die... depending on how you want to define 'die', or how some linguistic philosopher might want to define it. Let's say, for the sake of argument, I've seen them stop physically living: heart and breathing stop, physical motion cease, sensory input cease (although that's an assumption). Cessation of all the vital functions of an organism. That's a pretty good definition of death for me. Good enough, anyway. If you can point out where it's wrong, then please go ahead. How do you know they don't die? Put that way, either of us could either be right or wrong. But that's simply philosophical hair-splitting.... which doesn't bring anyone anywhere close to a 'truth' - relative or otherwise.
Incidentally, I used the example 'because they have no money to buy food' exactly as that: an example. Not a generalisation. Sure, if they have 50p, they have some money - but it isn't going to get them very far. Some people queue who have some money, because it isn't enough to provide adequate nutrition for themselves and their family if they were to shop at a supermarket... unless you want to go into how much it's possible to survive on if you're really astute about it. People use food banks for all sorts of reasons, and in all sorts of circumstances. I can't believe, for the majority of users, it's out of choice, though.
It's relative, of course. People seem astonished when I tell them I can get by on less than £12k net income per year. 'How do you survive?' Because a lifetime on low incomes makes you a survivor. I eat well. I don't buy junk. I don't have any treats by other people's standards, maybe. I can't afford to go out to eat. I live frugally, and in a way that many people wouldn't want to live. But it suits me. I don't feel impoverished in any way. But poverty, like many other things, is relative.
Four people. I last had a TV in 2003. I used to watch 'catch-ups' sometimes on BBCi, if there was a good film or documentary. But since they made it so that you need a TV licence for that, too, I haven't bothered.
I at no point tried to tell anybody what they think or feel.
Well, at risk of distracting further from the real issue, I have to take issue a little with you on that. Earlier, you said this...
Poverty and ill health don’t exist. There’s nothing to agree or disagree about, they just don’t exist, only in appearance. Ill health and poverty are simply the effect of, let’s say, faulty thinking.
If you'll forgive me for saying so, BlueRay, that's a very dogmatic and absolutist assertion to make. Basically...'They don't exist, so there's no point in arguing about it. If you believe they do, then your thinking is faulty.'
In other words... you are right (ipse dixit) and anyone who disagrees is wrong. You said that you aren't disagreeing with anybody, but simply speaking from a position of the truth. That, too, is an incredibly bold thing to say. How do you know, categorically, that you speak from a position of the truth?
This comes across to me in the same way as if someone who believes in God, and who knows that I don't, says to me 'Well, even if you choose not to believe in him, he still exists anyway - and He loves you.'
How can you argue against that position?