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ptero • yesterday at 11:06 AM • 1 reply • view on HN

Different people care about different things (beyond near term well being). We have no ability to be deeply involved in million different topics, but most of us care about several. And random couple of people may have no intersection and could symmetrically see each other as a "useless normie".

That's, uhm, normal and why groups form by interests, from cooking to hiking to reading to hackerspaces to rocketry. I see it as neither bad nor sad. My 2c.


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matheusmoreira • yesterday at 12:30 PM

I understand that, I just don't like it.

Computers are world changing technology, magical runes we can bend to our will. I wanted people to care, to fully harness the power of these machines. But virtually nobody cares.

That wouldn't be a problem if this just came down to individual choice, but it doesn't. The fact they don't care has enormous impact on us who do care.

Because they don't care, we are a minority and therefore have no economic leverage. One day the big corporations will make computers that only they control. They will lock us all out. Nobody really cares, people will keep buying the locked down computers and will even defend it as a security feature as though the lockdown was for their own benefit. They could have been lords of their own digital domain, but it turns out they enjoy living as serfs in the digital fiefdoms of trillion dollar corporations.

We also can't have privacy and anonymity because of this. For anonymity to work, we need a massive anonymity set. We need lots of people using things like Tor, ideally most people if not all people. This is so that people can't tell us apart, but also so that they can't just blanket ban Tor traffic without serious economic consequences. But nobody cares, people are just fine with being spied on, so they don't use it and it weakens privacy for us who do care as well.

It's so sad, and I'm starting to actually blame these people for the sad state of things. I look at the trillionaire technocrats building this dystopian world and taking advantage of them, and I start to wonder if they were right to do so. People could have stopped this, if only they cared. They didn't... And therefore they deserve it.

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