HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

This is precisely what Clay Shirky was talking about back in 2012 in his talk "How the Internet Will One Day Transform Government":

https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_...

Now if we could only move our legislators' legislative processes into git...

⬐ r00fus

First we have to remove tech troglodytes from government by voting for sane replacements. Only then can we discuss rational advances to tech in government.

I see this as a distinct possibility if there is a wave election in 2020 with new voices who are open to actual non-lobbyist reform.

⬐ turk73

Yes! We must rip open the dark havens and sniff out the entrenched interests and shady operators. We need open government, not the back-room deals one we have now. Lobbying and the MIC have led us to ruin.

I don't give peaceful outcomes much hope because Americans taken as a whole are far too ignorant and ill-informed. Reform will only come from the barrel of the gun and on the end of the rope as it always has. Or we will continue in chains as we do right now.

⬐ dragonwriter

> First we have to remove tech troglodytes from government by voting for sane replacements. Only then can we discuss rational advances to tech in government.

No, first “we” have to learn to talk about things that matter to most citizens, which tech in government, as such, is not. You need to talk to the things that can be delivered, tech is just a means to deliver them.

See also Clay Shirky's thoughts on this topic[0]

> So, what happens when a medium suddenly puts a lot of new ideas into circulation? Now, this isn't just a contemporaneous question. This is something we've faced several times over the last few centuries. When the telegraph came along, it was clear that it was going to globalize the news industry. What would this lead to? Well, obviously, it would lead to world peace. The television, a medium that allowed us not just to hear but see, literally see, what was going on elsewhere in the world, what would this lead to? World peace. (Laughter) The telephone? You guessed it: world peace. Sorry for the spoiler alert, but no world peace. Not yet. Even the printing press, even the printing press was assumed to be a tool that was going to enforce Catholic intellectual hegemony across Europe. Instead, what we got was Martin Luther's 95 Theses, the Protestant Reformation, and, you know, the Thirty Years' War.

> All right, so what all of these predictions of world peace got right is that when a lot of new ideas suddenly come into circulation, it changes society. What they got exactly wrong was what happens next. The more ideas there are in circulation, the more ideas there are for any individual to disagree with. More media always means more arguing. That's what happens when the media's space expands. And yet, when we look back on the printing press in the early years, we like what happened. We are a pro-printing press society.

We'll adapt to the new medium of the internet. Hopefully without a 30 years war though.

[0] https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_...

Hmm, upon rereading I think you're right. You see, I had not noticed it was a different user from GP, which biased my interpretation of intent.

> Hard to say, though, with this internet text thingy.

Tell me about it. Poe's Law[0] is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to communication difficulties on the web, and with trolls (paid trolls even) and algorithms that favor imflammatory content for stronger virality and increased watch time it's getting worse.

Then again, that was exactly one of the main things that Adam Curtis was warning about in HyperNormalisation, and Clay Shirky in his work in general[1][2]. We're still coming to grips with this new medium of communication and haven't quite figured out adequate protective systems against abuse and exploitation yet.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation

[2] https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_...

> As I read Pinker, I sometimes imagined a book published in 1923 about the astonishing improvements in the condition of Europe’s Jews following their emancipation. Such a book might argue: look, obviously past results don’t guarantee future returns; all this progress could be wiped out by some freak future event. But for that to happen, an insane number of things would need to go wrong simultaneously: not just one European country but pretty much all of them would need to be taken over by antisemitic lunatics who were somehow also hyper-competent, and who wouldn’t just harass a few Jews here and there until the lunatics lost power, but would systematically hunt down and exterminate all of them with an efficiency the world had never before seen. Also, for some reason the Jews would need to be unable to escape to Palestine or the US or anywhere else. So the sane, sober prediction is that things will just continue to improve, of course with occasional hiccups (but problems are solvable).

> Or I thought back to just a few years ago, to the wise people who explained that, sure, for the United States to fall under the control of a racist megalomaniac like Trump would be a catastrophe beyond imagining. Were such a comic-book absurdity realized, there’d be no point even discussing “how to get democracy back on track”; it would already have suffered its extinction-level event. But the good news is that it will never happen, because the voters won’t allow it: a white nationalist authoritarian could never even get nominated, and if he did, he’d lose in a landslide. What did Pat Buchanan get, less than 1% of the vote?

But the Nazi's were defeated, anti-Semitism isn't solved but still way less than it used to be, and US citizens are actively fighting Trump & Co.

I share the feeling that at some point, we're going to see a mass genocide thanks to either CRISPR-based targeted viruses or hard-to-stop drones being much too easy to weaponise by a single nutcase. The world is always resource constrained, and technologies do enable ever more efficient ways of killing ourselves. These are real things to worry about.

But the WWII and Trump examples came about because of a different reason: mass communication. What seems to be missing from Aaronson's review at the societal level, is the insight from Clay Shirky into what enabled both of these things to happen:

> So, what happens when a medium suddenly puts a lot of new ideas into circulation? (...) When the telegraph came along, it was clear that it was going to globalize the news industry. What would this lead to? Well, obviously, it would lead to world peace. The television, a medium that allowed us not just to hear but see, literally see, what was going on elsewhere in the world, what would this lead to? World peace. (Laughter) The telephone? You guessed it: world peace. Sorry for the spoiler alert, but no world peace. Not yet.

> Even the printing press was assumed to be a tool that was going to enforce Catholic intellectual hegemony across Europe. Instead, what we got was Martin Luther's 95 Theses, the Protestant Reformation, and, you know, the Thirty Years' War. All right, so what all of these predictions of world peace got right is that when a lot of new ideas suddenly come into circulation, it changes society. What they got exactly wrong was what happens next.

Shirky then continues to discuss that he believes that the reason we stil think of these technologies as good is because it effectively forced us to become better at arguing. His example is that it enabled things like the scientific revolution[0].

I have yet to read Pinker's newest book, or Better Angels for that matter, so perhaps he addresses these aspect too. I expect him to since he discusses one aspect of this in his earlier language-oriented work: mutual knowledge. Better communication means an improvement in mutual knowledge. And if there is a lot of trauma, resentment and injustice in society, an increase in mutual knowledge brings instability[1]. For example, Shirky's does not explicitly mention what the flaw in the reasoning of the Catholic Church was: it was oblivious or ignorant to the huge injustices in their system. The current craziness is coming about because the existing structures turn out not to be working out so well, and need to be changed. But that will be hard and messy process.

[0] https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-son3EJTrU&t=7m40s

(Warning: halfway through writing the thing below it accidentally morphed into a "big picture" rant, sorry about that)

This is probably one of the best examples of how the internet can amplify human kindness that I have ever seen.

Reading your message fills me with joy, and I think that goes for most of us. The same is true for your linked post. While it was sad to read you felt like that at the time, but I'm happy that you recognised that suicidal thoughts are something to worry about, and that you reached out for help, and that it all worked out in the end!

And good that you sought out therapy. The sooner we get rid of the stigma for mental illnesses, the better. We don't judge people for getting a broken bone fixed either. This probably sounds way too familiar to many of us, and it really is a clear sign it is time to seek help:

> I feel trapped. Forgotten. Not part of society. (...) I feel like, i can never "start a life", because i studied so long and no one wants a quitter

It can be so hard to explain this feeling to those who have not experienced it. Pessimism can objectively be inappropriate, yet subjectively a perfectly logical conclusion. When I felt like this, I remember that friends would list objective reasons why everything should work out fine (and there were many). It only made me feel worse: I already knew those facts, they gave no emotional comfort. All they did was make me think "if I manage to fail despite all of that, I must be even worse a person than I though".

If anyone reading this recognises any of these anxieties: it's not you. Modern society is almost guaranteed cause these thoughts in many of us. Most interactions with other humans have been abstracted away into complex systems, and some of that complexity is probably necessary for it to function. The problem is that these systems rarely acknowledge that we evolved as a social species. That our mutual dependence for survival has resulted in brains that are hardwired to seek nurturing, supportive connections, and have an excessive fear of rejection and "missing out". The systems we have set up are often a terrible mismatch with that.

Our new modes of communication have far-reaching consequences for the way we get things done[1], since (mis)communication is one of the most important factors in building trust, which is the foundation of collaboration[2]. We will need to figure out how to cope with these changes, both individually and as a society. This is why initiatives like Buurtzorg[3][4] are so successful: they are a "recalibration" (and rediscovery) of organisational structures into something that is a better fit for the way humans naturally collaborate and build trust together. It is going to be really interesting to see how initiatives like this will evolve, and the counter-responses from the people and institutes with a vested interest in maintaining the old structures.

And with all of that in the back of my head, it makes perfect sense to me that that police visit was what you needed. An anonymous stranger cares enough about your well-being to think of looking up your IP and sends it to the police, and the police then followed through on that to check in on you. And that part is important: it does not end with intangible messages on a screen, but with a physical interaction with human beings. Direct, tangible emotional proof that you are a part society, and not forgotten.

[0] https://www.additudemag.com/rejection-sensitive-dysphoria-ho...

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_...

[2] http://ncase.me/trust/

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSoWtXvqsgg

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buurtzorg_Nederland

I agree with your description of populism, but it does not argue against decentralisation.

I guess you think of the single leader as the "centralised" focal point of a populist movement. I agree, but it's not what the word centralised refer sto. Instead, it refers to the media being centralised or not.

Any leader needs a platform to broadcast their message from. Centralised media have (some) selective power over the narrative, and therefore the role of gatekeepers or enablers (like when controversial figures get disproportionate attention because it causes more clicks - see also [0][1]).

The decentralisation aspect of the internet undermines that, which in itself is value-neutral. This is not something that never happened before; the printing press allowed Luther to bypass the gatekeeping powers of the Catholic Church[2]. As I mentioned elsewhere, this lead to massive social upheaval ending in the Thirty Year's War, so it's not all positive (worth noting is that Luther's biggest issue was with the so-called "indulgences", which allowed people to buy off their sins[3][4]. How is that for unfair wealth inequality?)

The point is that the printing press meant that a lot more voices could be heard by a lot more people. The Internet takes that to the next level. A lot more of those "single charismatic leaders" suddenly have a potential audience (this might explain why I feel disdain for most YouTubers: a lot of them want an audience for the sake of having an audience, without having a story to tell).

The Internet decentralises populism because it decentralises all communication. Clay Shirky (from whom I stole the printing press example) has written a lot on this[5].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34LGPIXvU5M

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-five_Theses

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence

[5] https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_...

This is actually a great idea, but not a new one. See this TED talk from 2012 [1]. I hope this kind of thing is integrated into more products and services

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_...

I saw a TED Talk [0] a while back about how Git could transform the legislative process and help bring transparency to how our laws are formed.

I've known about the TPP for a while. I tried to discuss it with people and no one had even heard of it.

What if we had a Github-esque site where all of our legislation (and all revisions) are readily available with annotations. Would society be more interested in participating in the creation of our laws? I know I would be.

[0] http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_o...

⬐ PeterWhittaker

A Github-esque site is insufficient, and may be unnecessary.

What would be necessary is some form of compiler or preprocessor to sort through legislation - and regulation, unless one has a civil code, e.g., Louisiana or Québec, one need consider regulation, and precedent - and pump out warnings and errors re contradictions, inconsistencies, edge cases, etc.

Yes, there is a degree of "all bugs are shallow" if the legs and regs, etc., are in a system with full histories, diffs, etc., and some form of PR support, but that would be insufficient, given the sheer bulk of the body of law.

This is a major reason why budget bills, e.g., take so long to enact: A simple mandate might be easily stated in a clear, clean, crisp English-language sentence, but now that statement needs to parsed and assessed in the context of hundreds of interrelated legs and regs.

Humans do that now and it is long, dreary labour for well-trained professionals who know how the body of law works and know, to a degree, what can be ignored, left unstated, or need be stated very clearly indeed.

Now we want to add thousands of untrained folk like you and I? Hmm, we'll need a really good compiler, and we'll need a Linus or a Theo or two, semi-benevolent highly-opinionated gatekeepers to manage our promotion from the equivalent of low hanging fruit utilities (minor changes to clearly-defined administrative regulations, e.g.) through to the equivalent of kernel space (major social programs, drug legalization, etc., etc.).

⬐ mike_hearn

A more formal way to write laws and statically analyse them is a common dream of programmers, me included. But it's unclear how you'd even start to do that. It seems like an AI-hard problem.

The Bitcoin community is starting to explore the idea of formalised software contracts, but they're all very basic and it's all very early days.

⬐ pizza234

Well, it depends on which problem one wants to attack. In this case the problem is transparency; in a world where git would be the primary legislative tool, TTIP and TPP would be stored in private git repositories.

On a related note, I remember somebody qualified in the field, who wrote here on HN how a version control tool would not be an appropriate tool to develop laws (since they are not developed like software), but unfortunately I can't find the thread.

⬐ leesalminen

Interesting point. There are a multitude of issues with our current system of governing a society.

If the government were properly incentivized to bring transparency to our legislative process, why would this be stored in a private repo?

Even if it were, every revision to every line would be stored and traced back to an individual author.

In this case, the contents of TPP will be made public 4 years after executing the agreement. At that time, anyone would be able to scrutinize who wrote what when. This could be the proper incentive to House/Senate members to work in favor of their constituents. Politics is a career today - they don't want to screw that gravy train up.

⬐ pgeorgi

That "make public" part would probably be a copy out of the private repo and "git add" to the canonical one. No history except "first version".

⬐ ilurk

Maybe you'll find this relevant

http://democracyos.org/

https://www.change.org/

http://liquidfeedback.org/

⬐ whoopdedo

> What if we had a Github-esque site where all of our legislation (and all revisions) are readily available with annotations.

It would be attacked with a DDOS from China and ordinary citizens shut out of the legislative process anyway.

⬐ vezzy-fnord

First of all, how is Git itself instrumental to this scheme?

The idea is a very simple one that has been echoed by many due to how straightforward it is. Laws under a collaborative software hosting site.

The most likely outcome is that it'll end up a purely symbolic manifestation of "open government" much like whitehouse.gov is. It'll be flooded with queries and discussion that are red herrings.

The fast pace at which laws end up being revised will prove difficult for parties to catch up with. Yet if the pace is too slow and the focus too selective or narrow, then it will be deemed inefficient. Besides, the sheer complexity of the legal codex will mean most people will be unable to participate to begin with.

⬐ rayiner

I think it's unappreciated the extent to which Congress has been doing version control long before programming existed. Public laws (i.e. commits) are written as amendments (i.e. diffs) to the United States Code. When a bill is voted into law, they are accompanied by reports in the Congressional Record (i.e. commit messages) explaining the rationale of the changes. And it's all documented with decades of CSPAN footage.

The biggest missing piece is the United States Code Annotated. It has notes showing for each provision the public laws that changed it (like svn log). Unfortunately, this information is collected and maintained by West and Lexis in proprietary databases. But everything else is out there and web-accessible.

⬐ prawn

Is there anything stopping someone (including the government) from making this all appropriately public and in a reasonable format? e.g., contracts with West and Lexis?

⬐ leesalminen

I think there is a lot more work to do before calling this web-accessible.

As the classic goes, if my mother can't find it and use it without assistance it's not ready.

⬐ None

None

⬐ TazeTSchnitzel

It's not even a Congressional thing! Other legislatures have long done the same (for example, the Parliament of England, later the Parliament of the UK).

A modern example:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/30/contents

⬐ beagle3

The rationale might be explained in the commit message, but it seems courts never refer to it, preferring instead to reverse engineer the meaning from the compiled code(law).

The rationale for the PATRIOT act was to fight terrorism. The rationale for copyright extension was ... well, there was some gooblydock. But the courts never seem to reference that when they actually apply these laws.

⬐ rhino369

Courts use legislative history all the time to determine the meaning of the law when it isn't clear. But just because the rationale for the Patriot Act was terrorism, it was never limited to only terrorism.

⬐ beagle3

Can you point to a place where they have looked at the C-SPAN discussions leading to the law? I was not familiar with the fact that they ever do.

They do look at the history of legislation, yes. But the rationale ("commit message") does not appear there.

⬐ hawkice

The metaphor works better when you imagine the courts as part of the runtime (or similar). The comments are available for us to use, as citizens, but when the system is executing, it only cares what's in the code.

⬐ beagle3

> The comments are available for us to use, as citizens, but when the system is executing, it only cares what's in the code.

In that case, the comments are entertainment.

We are not the users of this system. We are its input/output.

Loved that talk! It was Clay Shirky "How the Internet will (one day) transform government" http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_o...

⬐ None

None

Reminds me of a TED talk[1] were he ends up discussion the use of git or similar tools in the government.

[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_o...

I think this is related: http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_o...

⬐ briangonzalez

I love how Clay thinks society should implement git-like concepts into how we interact. Could it actually work?

⬐ rmason

I think that it stands a better chance to get started on a local level. Not just with Git, can you imagine a MINT style presentation of city or township budgets? Only a handful of people provide input on budgets because of the difficulty of getting their minds around it. People complain how the money is spent or not spent after the fact. Radical transparency is the key.