Posie Parker Interview

Nope! And it still won't be true no matter how many times you attempt to misdirect.

If Posie hadn’t have spoken to this man, there would be no discussion.

Posie and her crew do plenty of interviews that no one cares about or is annoyed or conflicted about. The issue is a moral one that revolves around the man in which she agreed to be interviewed by.

By being on his channel she gave him credibility, money and publicity which helps him to further his agenda surrounding white supremacism, anti-semitism and misogyny.

The real moral debate here is whether it’s acceptable to undermine everything you supposedly stand for and support this mans gains to fight a common ‘enemy’.

Not just Posie as an individual, those who condone it are complicit in this form of activism that places the most oppressed at the bottom of the barrel.

This thread is based around a few people wanting to shut women up. They appear to be very frustrated that it's not working.

This thread is based around a man...
Nope.

There is nothing simple about left v right in 2019.

Nothing.

I find it genuinely interesting that some people are trying to class this as a simple left V right issue.

This thread is based around a man who is an anti Semitic, misogynistic white supremacist that tried to impregnate an autistic teenage girl and advocates for marital rape and white ethnostates amongst other things. But because he’s happy to talk about how wrong the whole ‘trans’ thing is, it’s all good to use him and be used by him.

Its Fascinating - Depressing and a real reflection on what scary times we’re living in but fascinating none the less.

I don't remember anyone back then saying technology couldn't be used by the powerful to attempt to entrench their power. Merely that a lot of people who couldn't afford to buy their ink by the barrel (most of us here, for example), could communicate and publish on the internet, so a wider range of voices would be heard.Maybe we take this so much for granted now that it's really difficult to remember when the print media and TV stations were the only voices that we could read and watch?

Oh, people made the argument. And as you say, it was essentially that the decentralisation of the digital world would allow communications and perspectives that had a difficult time being heard to get out there. The Arab Spring was heralded by many people as the political realisation of what had gone on.

It wasn't, I think, that those people didn't think that there could be monetisation, but they thought it would be limited, part of a larger system that was free in a new way.

They didn't realise that in fact, it would create whole new, far more invasive ways of controlling people and their information or through their information, of making money without doing work (which is to say, stealing it from workers), and that it would actually act to make the exchange of ideas and information less effective, because it would allow the mass use of misinformation campaigns, both passive and active.

Essentially, monetised interests aren't part of a free internet, quite the opposite, non-monetised interests exist within the wholly monetised structure and so actually work for it.

I was slightly baffled, Perking

Oops, that wasn't meant to look like an answer to you, eBooks.

This last page really is a microcosm of actual conversation versus goading and who tends to do what.

This isn’t quite the right point in the thread to post this but it’s ending soon so I will throw it in anyway - I’ve been listening to various podcasts with Helen Pluckroze the last few days, i’m really enjoying them.

(She’s on the left and criticises the left)

m.youtube.com/watch?v=08RoXYz9_UU

It's certainly interesting that Robert Mercer was an IBM techy before he was a hedge fund manager.

I thought this thread was dead! But look at it! The last bit is actually, genuinely interesting...

There were definitely weird little counterculture pockets who seemed to believe that they owned the internet and always would. The people in them often came across as rather naive. There's also always been a tendency for the tech industry to view itself as more subversive than it really is, with a lot of wilful denial about the role of venture capitalists and what their goals might be.

Mm, I don't remember anyone back then saying technology couldn't be used by the powerful to attempt to entrench their power.

Merely that a lot of people who couldn't afford to buy their ink by the barrel (most of us here, for example), could communicate and publish on the internet, so a wider range of voices would be heard.

Maybe we take this so much for granted now that it's really difficult to remember when the print media and TV stations were the only voices that we could read and watch?

I would much rather know what is happening and shout about it than pretending not to see and stay quiet. The result will be the same, but it'll be a lot of weight of my conscience knowing i was never complicit.

I agree with that, which is also why I won’t keep quiet when I see some sort of credibility and acceptance freely given to those with abhorrent views and ideology’s that put a lot of women at risk.

I want a woman to be able to enter a refuge where she will not have to encounter a biological male. I would never sit back and pretend I think that it’s acceptable to achieve that by working with those who think she’s less valuable because of the shade of her skin, not entitled to accuse her husband of rape and shouldn’t have access to an abortion afterwards should she want or need one.

I agree with another poster that said a lot of people are benefiting from this type of activism and I’d say women are at the bottom of the barrel pretty regularly there too.

I remember that period too. Even then I wasn't sure why anyone thought it wouldn't eventually be monetized, with the inevitable consequences.

The stuff about people thinking that somehow the digital world would empower the counterculture I find so interesting. I remember people talking that way, even up to the Arab Spring which was well after the 90s.

At the same time there were thinkers and writers even in the 90s trying to say that things were not going that way, that digital and other technologies would ultimately empower those who control the infrastructure, just like every other kind of infrastructure.

Yeah you've lost me a bit there. You just defended these classes as natural and impossible to stop so what do you mean by "deal with"? It's an interesting choice of words by the way.

Yeah, I'd appreciate it if you don't do the "interesting choice of words" business. I'm not insinuating anything.

If it's the case that hierarchies become evident in any society, that's not an immoral thing to observe. As long as you have a society with leaders, or some people who have different kinds of roles, some people who are stronger or more charismatic etc. as long as you have institutions that can leverage power, you can end up with some people able to wield power or influence.

The leftist position tends to say, we can in some way eradicate these kinds of differences and keep them from emerging if we do certain things. The right position says, no we can't do that in anything like a complete way, so we have to manage them by creating institutions that minimise exploitative hierarchies while encouraging positive ones - what that looks like depends a lot on what their politics looks like.

The difference isn't that the evil right somehow thinks that hierarchies are so amazing while the enlightened leftists don't. The real question is whether or not it is correct to think the emergence of social hierarchy can be prevented at all. If it can, then the right POV is potentially standing in the way of getting rid of them. But if it can't, the left POV is likely to propose solutions that cause more problems than they solve and also be a waste of time and energy.

There's often a lot of practical overlap between many of those kinds of right approaches and class based leftist approaches because so far, no left government has actually succeeded in abolishing class or other hierarchies, so often they are working within the same kind of social landscape.

The more natural opposite to both of these types of thinking IMO is the kind of radical individualism that you see in neoliberal economics or social progressivism that doesn't admit to things like social groupings or class at all.

Bloody hell, Lang, that article does not make cheerful reading on a Saturday evening.

The post apocalypse planned by silicon valley biollionaires doesn't sound a barrel of laughs. I think I'll be going down with the masses, rather than either wearing, or having guards wear "disciplinary collars" or uploading my consciousness into the digital world (very Black Mirror!)

f you genuinely think it's too late what is your goal in being here? Just to go down fighting?

Yes,
I would much rather know what is happening and shout about it than pretending not to see and stay quiet. The result will be the same, but it'll be a lot of weight of my conscience knowing i was never complicit.

sighs...

No strength left...pub calling...

Goodbye cruel thread..........

Lang I'm quite surprised. You're usually one of the most vocal posters crying "de rail" and insisting on the thread returning to the op and posting breakfast recipes if it doesn't happen.

Strange.

Question for CaptainKirk, and I mean this as a question not an attack - if you genuinely think it's too late what is your goal in being here? Just to go down fighting?

I tend to be of the "it's never too late" bent, though that inherent belief in the possibility of turning things around has hit a bit of a wall with climate change.

LangCleg, that article's fascinating! I was there at that "brief moment in the early 1990s", and I'm also interested in the history of technology. Some of this article echoes the concept of the "human equation" developed by C19th natural philosophers, who were grappling with measurable mechanical and heat inputs to manufacturing and wanted to measure the human input as well.

It's also very plus ça change...

Last year, I got invited to a super-deluxe private resort to deliver a keynote speech [...] I just sat there at a plain round table as my audience was brought to me: five super-wealthy guys – yes, all men – from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world
[...]
There was a brief moment, in the early 1990s, when the digital future felt open-ended and up for our invention. Technology was becoming a playground for the counterculture, who saw in it the opportunity to create a more inclusive, distributed, and pro-human future. But established business interests only saw new potentials for the same old extraction, and too many technologists were seduced by unicorn IPOs. Digital futures became understood more like stock futures or cotton futures – something to predict and make bets on.[...] The future became less a thing we create through our present-day choices or hopes for humankind than a predestined scenario we bet on with our venture capital but arrive at passively. [...] This freed everyone from the moral implications of their activities.
[...]
So instead of considering the practical ethics of impoverishing and exploiting the many in the name of the few, most academics, journalists, and science fiction writers instead considered much more abstract and fanciful conundrums: is it fair for a stock trader to use smart drugs? Should children get implants for foreign languages?
[...]
Asking these sorts of questions, while philosophically entertaining, is a poor substitute for wrestling with the real moral quandaries associated with unbridled technological development in the name of corporate capitalism. Digital platforms have turned an already exploitative and extractive marketplace (think Walmart) into an even more dehumanizing successor (think Amazon).