I'm not certain I took that dichotomy as a premise, but regardless I agree there is a middle ground of many patches occupied by real events characterized by mixtures of intentionality and submission. That's the easy part. What I think is the harder question posed by my original parent is when is it worth wielding the state at the issue.
For example, I'm in theory opposed to the prohibition on crack cocaine, despite its strong consistent effect on personal agency, because of two things: basic moral principles (my body my choice), and the massive (hopefully unintended) side effects of prohibition. Namely, mass incarceration, black markets, decreased drug quality, gang violence, exhaustion of policing resources, the public perception of systemic racism, and tax losses. My guess is the downsides of a hypothetical ban on algorithmically optimized advertisements would be of a very different kind but similar quantity. And again, the other issue is basic moral principles. I'm not comfortable with bracketing free expression with numerous exceptions, rate-limits, inspectors, or whatever apparatchiks would be employed to enforce such a restriction.
> Are you truly curious as to how it might not be A Good Thing that those engaging in high-finance capitalistic money making programs would have access to forcefully engaging a human being's brain into activity, with or without their consent, to such an extent as to drive motivations and bias neuronal activation that leads to what they think is a choice?
I guess I just don't think this is the topic at hand. What you're proposing is mind control. That's not what's at issue. What's at issue is scientifically optimized superstimuli that can predictably activate certain brain regions. So when I read "rowhammer" I'm thinking about it in this context, the ability of a video to consistently activate a targeted section of your brain.
As you should know, and IIRC, cognition does not cleanly or consistently map geographically in the brain. To go from the ability to activate a subset of brain regions to influencing behavior is not a neglible step. The only real potential I imagine is in emotional activation, which is fairly well-localized.
So really what we're talking about is being able to evoke ideas and feelings with more consistency and precision than before. This doesn't seem new. And it can't be that intense either—I have the sense that your hypothetical mind control video would be extremely annoying or unpleasant before becoming influential. And for now we have the freedom to choose what we watch and turn the video off.
And it might be reasonable to say that you were referring to future possibilities, and that I'm focusing too much on what's currently available. But I am not just reacting to the first quoted clause of parent, but to their [vomits] policy recommendations. "This sort of thing", if not heavily controlled, etc. Maybe you see no value in this research, maybe there isn't any. Nonetheless the paranoid and the scifi-as-nonfiction readers will throw up the Bat signal for the idiots and moral panic orchestrators in power to wrap us all in comforting red tape for our own good.
I exaggerate. And I am talking about many more things than you were, as if the volume of text strengthens any rebuttal. All I'm saying is, this tech has little power over human behavior, in my opinion, and we should be cautious before bringing the hammer down before we know if we've got a bumblebee or a wasp.
To flip the question on it's head, what exactly do you see as the "evil" potential? The most prominent comments to this effect are just scifi handwaving.
Really, I don't think you need to worry. A prevailing latent attitude in the comments is that the brain is somehow super malleable and subject to external control through some incantations. Like subliminal messaging, it will at most be moral panic that fades, and then people will act like they never believed in it.
> I appreciate that this is scientific research, but there are definitely companies out there that will try to row-hammer everyone's brain if this sort of thing is not heavily controlled.
> Anything worth doing out of the kindness of our hearts is worth doing collectively without expecting individuals do disproportionately sacrifice.
What are you saying here? Like, how are you distinguishing individual charity from the thing "worth doing collectively"? Presumably you don't consider individuals voluntarily giving and thus voluntarily organizing insofar as they coordinate to be the same as collective action, so I can't help but wonder which part is different, and I worry it's the voluntary bit....
I see potential for selling driver distraction data (adjusted with forthcoming studies on real risk impacts thereof) to insurance companies. Ideally, meaningfully risky drivers (phone users, etc) get penalized with their premiums, and the safe drivers may not have to pay as much.
Not that I support mandatory driver cams, just thinking out loud...
> Property tax breaks in my locale lead to empty lots and empty buildings, which is the least efficient use of land imaginable.
Could you clarify what your locales property taxes are exactly? I'm trying to figure out whether you and Mouse are using the term the same way, in particular, tax on land or tax on buildings or both. (FWIW Wikipedia defines it as both.) It would also be very important to clarify how the tax break is defined, whether it applies to land and buildings equally, for example.
I don't like the impulse to regulate, especially as a formative measure. Regulating new technology before industry has time to experiment seems like a recipe for high prices, few choices, and low competition.
UI has some surprises... correct letters in place are shown as white, transpositions in light grey. I expected green for correct placement, so clumsily transposed my correctly chosen letters. Then refreshed the page to retry but found my one-game trial had been spent....
For example, I'm in theory opposed to the prohibition on crack cocaine, despite its strong consistent effect on personal agency, because of two things: basic moral principles (my body my choice), and the massive (hopefully unintended) side effects of prohibition. Namely, mass incarceration, black markets, decreased drug quality, gang violence, exhaustion of policing resources, the public perception of systemic racism, and tax losses. My guess is the downsides of a hypothetical ban on algorithmically optimized advertisements would be of a very different kind but similar quantity. And again, the other issue is basic moral principles. I'm not comfortable with bracketing free expression with numerous exceptions, rate-limits, inspectors, or whatever apparatchiks would be employed to enforce such a restriction.