Defcon is hosted in a desert. This is exclusionary to people from cold regions, who cannot handle the heat.
Defcon is in Las Vegas. This is exclusionary to people who have gambling problems.
Defcon provides attendees with open bars. This is exclusionary to people who don’t drink.
We hear it every day: the future is here. If you didn’t think so last month — if you somehow thought we had more time before the Wired became real — take a look outside. Somewhere between 10 and 50 million humans have casually submerged themselves in augmented reality. We blinked and missed it. The individual pieces of tech had only just emerged when suddenly, they fused in a blinding instant. It has happened before. It will happen again. It is only a matter of time before the next Big Shift blurs the boundary of the real even further. Meatspace and bitspace are converging, but you don’t need me to tell you that.
You need me to tell you that you have been deceived.
“Enemies can pick up dropped weapons.”
Lambdaconf‘s got me thinking a lot about what the purpose of a conference is. I think people have a variety of reasons for attending. Some go to network, find jobs or employees. Some go to socialize; conferences are good Schelling points for meeting other nerds. Lots of people go to learn. At least, that’s what they tell their manager when filing the expense report. More than a fair share go just to have an excuse to travel. And, as I’ve recently discovered, some go to parasitize (symbiotically, of course) and run their own conference-in-the-conference.
How big is your filter bubble? 
What’s in it? What’s outside it?
Okay, next question: how can you tell?
In 2011, Eli Pariser defined a filter bubble as “that personal ecosystem of information that’s been catered by algorithms.” Unfortunately, he never defined a measure on filter bubbles. Like its name implies, a measure is a way to tell how big something is. Without one, we can talk qualitatively about filter bubbles, but if we want to get quantitative, we’re going to need to do some more work. We’ll start with a literature search.
There was a time when I was lucky enough to take a ride in a hot air balloon. Standing above the world, you see things in a different light. Things that seemed random, chaotic, and mysterious display an ordering not obvious from the ground. Unique landmarks become ordinary and predictable. The rivers that seem unique become predictable contour lines across a very visible geography. The rational planning behind cities shows its hand. Everything takes on a deeper meaning.
Update: Pieter chose euthanasia around 1pm Belgian time, October 4th, 2016.
Everything else in this post is still accurate.
Pieter Hintjens will most likely be dead before terribly much longer. Cancer, bile duct, metastatic. He is not exactly shy about any of it. Pretty much the exact opposite, in fact.
The process of dying and the moment of death are topics Western culture doesn’t like to talk about. We hide them behind walls, in rooms filled with adjustable beds, beeping machines, and uncomfortable visitor furniture. We ask doctors to make the important decisions, to do everything they can. We speak in hushed tones as relatives and friends troop in and back out, gripping kleenexes and determined to be strong. It would be disrespectful to pry, we tell ourselves. Whether that’s true or not, our beliefs about what’s appropriate constrain our responses. And thus we end up treating death, the very last thing that all of us will ever do, as if it, and the process of arriving at it, were something inherently shameful.
In the midst of all this controversy over Mr. Yarvin, something has come up that I feel the need to talk about.
One of the main points of the critics of Yarvin, of Lambdaconf, and of Status451’s actions is the idea that his attendance will create an emotionally unsafe environment, which will in turn prevent people who want to attend from attending. Because Mr. Yarvin is believed to have publicly supported the US institution of slavery, his presense will be alarming to people whos’ families were impacted by this dark history.
Twitter’s tech hives were abuzz once again with the telltale sound of moral indignation. For many it’s just too tempting to pile on, but here at the ol’ 451 we prefer to put our money where our mouth is instead, and help re-platform those who are the subject of a vindictive scorched earth policy.
Besides, dear reader, if all that drama still elicits more than mild disinterest from you at this point, you haven’t been paying attention. All of this has happened before, and for the foreseeable future, it will happen again. The vast majority knows this and prefers to stay out. Continue reading
Welcome coastal elites! As the Trump campaign continues to shred its way through the Republican primaries, many of you seem confused and frightened at your sudden realization that another 80% of the United States exists. Don’t worry! The cultural landscape of Middle America may be perplexing at first, but with a little education and effort, you, too, can wrap your head around it.
Rich white people often assume that poor white people are all alike. This couldn’t be further from the truth, and the really rich white people are the ones whose ancestors recognized this early. The assumption that elites like to set poor whites against poor people of color in order to keep both sides down is closer to the truth, but erases the much, much longer history of elites setting poor whites against each other. These days, these cultural conflicts flare up on a smaller scale than they used to — you don’t really see the Italians and the Irish gang-warring it up in Manhattan anymore — but like most downtrodden groups, poor whites often cluster in ethnicity groupings, if for no other reason than that when you don’t have money, it’s hard to move away.
Sometimes it seems like the cold war never ended.
The western world is ostensibly a free-market democracy, and yet you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Corporations are universally reviled, sometimes with hilarious results. The socialist running for US president is widely beloved, while the business owner is a public joke. Academia and the more elite publications will, behind closed doors, admit they thought the former СССР had some good ideas. Despite what it says in our history books, this memetic conflict is still ongoing.
I don’t care so much about what name we give to Moloch. I’m much more interested in the things people say, the ways they behave when engaging in this cosmic struggle. It’s quite curious.
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Status 451 