I find it strange that people attribute “intentions” to Holochain, as if it were some kind of being with consciousness. Holochain is a new kind of technology. It doesn’t have intentions, any more than a hammer has intentions, or the Internet. You can use it as a tool to achieve your own intentions, so use it for good. If you don’t agree with WEF’s vision for the world, and you think Holochain is useful, then use it to make a better vision. It’s up to you.
2 Likes
[I request everyone’s patience with another long, off-topic post. It’s inspired by a couple of other off-topic posts which I believe deserve a response. I hope this is helpful.]
About the idea that the WEF is evil: I believe that there are very solid reasons to believe that we are living in the middle of an information war.
In 2004, a “senior George W Bush White House aide” [most likely Karl Rove] told a reporter for the New York Times that he - the reporter - was living in what they called “the reality-based community.” He said that the world doesn’t work like that anymore, saying [paraphrasing]: “We are an empire now and when we act will create our own realities. And when we act again, we will create new realities. We are society’s actors and you - all of you - will simply write down what we do. That’s how it’s going to sort out.” Well, that’s exactly how it’s sorting out. Extremely skillful lying is determining the course of human events in the United States and elsewhere.
Unless someone understands the propaganda techniques, active measures techniques, and logical fallacies being used against them, they cannot possibly tell whether the media they are consuming is shared in good faith or not (most likely, not). That said, please understand that there are two goals of an information war: to distract the people with constant emotional destabilization and personal hardship, and to sow doubt regarding democratic institutions which serve to stabilize power structures. Media which supports these goals is likely based on lies.
If you believe, for example, that the State Department is occupied by George Soros, or that the elections - or any other (previous) shared source of truth (FBI investigations, courts, science, the media, …) - are untrustworthy, or that the police are a threat to law and order, or that the WEF is evil, those ideas have almost certainly been planted in your mind so that you will not defend those institutions when they are brought into existential crisis. The goal is to bring as many people as possible into believing that their friends and protectors are their enemies and that their enemies are their friends.
When Steve Bannon’s Cambridge Analytica used Russian money - along with hate, fear, and disinformation - to actualize Putin’s decades-long dream of breaking the UK off from the European Union, it’s time to take seriously Bannon’s assertion that “Darkness is good. Dick Cheney, Darth Vader, Satan. It only helps us when they [liberals and the media, according to the journalist he said this to] get it wrong, when they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing.” He is essentially saying that he and his co-conspirators are manipulating people’s enemy images in order to get what they want. What do they want? Bannon is quoted as having said, “I’m a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state and that’s my goal, too. I want to bring the entire establishment crashing to the ground.”
I offer these couple of ideas in order to encourage you to be aware of the many reasons to believe that we are in the middle of an information war, and that that war has a purpose: the destruction of the establishment - the institutions of society. I believe that this is a perfectly predictable and extremely dangerous situation. I would argue that, unless you and the people around you own weapons of war and have been training in an armed “militia,” you are not among those who have been pre-selected to prevail in this situation and I recommend you seriously consider these ideas and take appropriate steps to protect yourself, your loved ones, and the institutions of society.
[Again, I request your patience and I hope this is helpful.]
2 Likes
“Partnerships” have intentions though, no? Every enterprise and project has intentions. It’s not soulless, autonomous robots coding Holo - it’s a human entity based in a tax haven. Humans have intentions for every decision and plan - with a balance of good and bad that arise from inherent human emotions and triggers.
2 Likes
Note that Holo the company is a bit different than Holochain, the framework. Blockchain doesn’t have intentions, but it is a structure/pattern that influences how it can be used. And, sure, the developers of Cardano are humans with intentions. In the same way, Holochain doesn’t have intentions, but it is a structure/pattern that influences how it can be used. And, sure, the developers of Holo are humans with intentions, and those intentions can manifest through partnerships.
1 Like
This conversation seems to have turned into free markets vs. perverted socialism/communism. Do we have to choose a school of thought or a party? I am not a disciple of either doctrines, only interested in the interest of the common people, in a humanist and selfish way, as these matters affect us all if we’re not part of the elite. Like 99% of us, allegedly.
My original post was questioning why the Holochain team is partnering with the world elite who are clearly at the root of the growing lack of real democracy.
If a moderator could ask the team to provide some details on this partnership it would be helpful.
2 Likes
You should be.
That’s what both of them say they offer.
Democracy was a doomed system from the start! Like, from the very get-go (some thousands of years ago).
Well, just in case you didn’t know, the so-called world-elite have been pushing for more regulations, more price controls, and more bailouts. This is as socialist as it can get!
If you pass Minimum Wage Laws, only Walmart and Amazon (the labor monopsonies) are gonna survive! No new entry; no competition. Perfect monopoly! You see, every monopoly is state-funded in one way or the other. Monopolies don’t exist in a Laissez Faire market.
Plus because a select few powerful companies employ so many employees does not mean that the government should make sure they do no fail! Companies should fail; they ought to fail; that’s the free-market. But current markets are anything but free; prices aren’t speaking to the public (see service taxes; subsidies, especially those being given to the EV industry these days…), the political representatives are! What could get worse!
RIP the Sherman act; I’m not at all against the predatory-pricing mechanisms Amazon, for instance, has been engaging in (by funding its profitless retail sector with AWS’s income). Quite the opposite.
What I’m opposing is the myriad of regulations that these companies are so willing to get passed by the state (and already successfully have, over all these years). Such actions only mean that a select few companies produce all the goods we consume, with no place for newcomers whatsoever! And now they have another great excuse: Artificial Intelligence and the 4th IndusRev.
That’s the world economic forum summed-up.
Simple answer: babe is where the money is! Haha! Just kidding. Holochain is great! Don’t let these moves change your opinion of it. After all, it’s our baby… :–)
Another of those elites.
By the way, what partnership are we talking about? Might you share some links regarding the same?
[At first, I thought it might have been an early institutional investor, but even that seems unlikely now when I think about it…]
Because if it’s WEF’s mention at holo.host that you’re talking about, then let me clarify that it just states that the World Economic Forum, on one of their posts, talked about Holochain as a possible alternative to Blockchain, nothing more. There is no partnership there! The homepage just lists the prominent places where it (Holochain) got mentioned. Just that.
1 Like
The WEF logo on holochain homepage under the header press&media and this tweet from 2018:
Not an actual partnership apparently
So project awareness is gradually increasing and Holo is getting talked about in the halls of power.
concordis - I followed your link and watched your video
I am in the UK and watching what happens stateside from a distance. It’s my opinion that Trump was beaten by the virus. No virus no president Biden. The virus came out of nowhere and like a good old googly bowled Trump clean out - stumps and bails flying all over the wicket.
The natural world fights back.
Politics? Communism is my prefered system - but I am both a capitalist and solialist in practice. I did try anarchy but in the end it was like trying to live without money (I tried that too) just not workable. Unfortunately so far the same thing can be said of Communism.
As to AI making our lives better or worse I guess it will do both.
Free education for all - except when it come to beekeeping - then you can pay me!
Facebook Uuum Myspace I understand failed because of it’s poor tech as much as anything else. Is there better tech than Facebook on the horizon?
Hi Pathecat,
Thank you for taking the time to address my post. However, I’m not experiencing any connection between your words and the topic of the video - if we’re talking about the same one.
The video - again, if we’re talking about the same one - talks about whether the decades-long, ever-escalating polarization and destabilization of the United States is intentional (my hypothesis) or is simply happening on its own, without any individual or group driving it forward (the generally accepted, default narrative).
The video presents - in my estimation - compelling reasons to believe that it’s happening intentionally.
Again, I’m not reading anything you’ve written here as addressing the main point I was trying to make, or any of the points I made in support of my hypothesis.
To any others who might be reading this response, I encourage you to watch the two videos from Yuri Bezmenov, read his pamphlet, and read a manifesto from “the father of modern conservatism.” Without understanding this information, I believe that you are completely - and unnecessarily - in the dark about what is really going on in the human community, and where we are very likely heading. These documents are all linked from the https://activemeasurespod.com homepage.
I’d love to hear feedback from anyone - especially feedback which addresses the material.
Thank you and wishing you all the very best,
James
Thanks for the link.
I will watch them
Yes it is intentional - but by many players not all with exactly the same agenda.
But what we as humans, in so many cases, believe is that we are in control of ourselves and can ‘control’ our situation and control others. We can’t.
The system we live in is such a massive and complex one that we are mere recipients of it’s power. But unfortunately our collective actions do have massive effects on the global ecosystem; these are ‘unintentional’ effects and largely outside of our control.
So now nothing ‘political’ can be viewed without taking into account climate change and it’s effects.
Take for instance Trump he didn’t take the power of Climate Change into account and simply wasn’t mentally prepared for it’s effects when it hit him. His look after number one “make America white again” agenda was simply going to ignore or actively undo any political moves to deal with the problem.
So yes I’m sure that you are right there is a growing divisiveness in American society and much ‘fake news’ (but I notice you don’t use that term). There are many paid professionals spreading misinformation and death - look at the farming chemicals industry for an example.
But culturally America leads the world - still - and that is an issue.
James, can I ask why you are putting your energy in this direction? What brought you to this point?
1 Like
This is 2minutes past nine - for James - and anyone interested in the rise of the extreme right in the USA.
Hi The-A-Man,
Your post didn’t last long. I was just about to re-read it and reply to you.
Hey Ho there ya go.
Oh, sorry! I though why to reignite the old debate. Anyway, here you go:
@Pathecat: That’s not what I was emphasizing; I was emphasizing the fact that a partial reason for the monopolistic success of companies like Facebook (i.e., social media companies & news outlets) is because a great many people (or might I say, foolish, misinformed, irrational and unrealistic people) believe that misinformation is a thing, and that the state must do something about it! That’s the equivalent of hitting yourself with a stick; sadly, most proponents of state-intervention don’t realize that that’s what it is…
Better tech – certainly! [A p2p HoloFaceBook should be able to do everything that Facebook does, except for suggestions (i.e., recommendations; but even that is doable in a p2p setting (once read a paper on it, though I guess implementing a p2p recommendations engine on Holochain would certainly be a bit hectic), advertisements (who wants to do that anyway!), and human-verification (i.e., verifying that you are a human). There exist solutions for them all, but they are all pretty boring hacks, rather than proper solutions. As for human-verification, I prefer “invite a friend” style vouchering for new-users… Let’s see how the future unfolds…
Anyway,
I doubt. Yeah certainly Facebook was a bit better tech than MySpace, but that hardly counts in this space. I think for social apps network-effect is all that counts… And Facebook was deployed very strategically (beginning from universities and schools all the way to the whole world), and it thus had an edge over the populace from the very get-go. The same was done with Instagram (starting from bars all the way to people’s bedrooms; haha!). Now that there’s only Facebook left in the market (thanks to its strategic and timely acquisitions), I highly doubt a HoloFaceBook would have any chance at displacing it… At best, crypto-maniacs and privacy-paranoids like us might use it, but beyond that, there seems no hope… Sure, by the next decade one can expect all social-apps to be p2p, and even that’s a pretty conservative prediction. But hoping for an overnight replacement of Facebook (and all the services it operates) with p2p apps is a pipe-dream at best, sadly… But that’s the world we live in…
Still, there’re better things to be built with Holochain! So don’t lose hope!
By the way, I’ve never advocated for violence… I believe in peaceful tax-evasion to drive the state bankrupt!
1 Like
Yes I too believed in tax-evasion at one stage of my life and lived outside the system.
For years I didn’t earn a wage to be taxed or buy things that involved paying tax. And I certainly never advocated violence either. That is one way of not paying tax - being so poor (and free) that everyday you start out with nothing in your pockets. So long as you don’t need much that can work well.
Now I pay tax, as like Siddhartha, I haved moved through that stage of my life (and several other stages too) Life now is more conventional.
I hope there are still ways of living outside of the mainstream and that not everybody has to conform to the norm.
3 Likes
Looks like we have a lot in common!
Even off-grid living isn’t so easy these days… All the land is already owned either by the private sector or by the state… There’s nowhere to go if one’s a libertarian extremist unless one has the financial means to do so… But things are changing… 3D food-printing, shipping-containers-cum-vertical-farms, solar and wind energy, etc, can finally make our anarchist dreams come true, can’t they?
See, almost all of them are achievable in the near future, thanks to the emerging technologies…