Hacker News

https://www.cypherpunkbooks.com/book/definition-of-democrati...

The book in question. What was the intent or purpose of coming at this sideways?

They call themselves "PKK Terrorist Organization"?

Did you read it?

What is this very mild cyberpunk motif doing in my cyberpunk library website?

Even worse than a redundant/useless landing page, is a page with an invalid certificate. Nothing nopes me out harder than having to tell my IT-governed browser to ignore the site operators faulty administration of their domain ..

The idea is it wouldn’t work on trust, each element would be bounded by forces other than a single structure; getting to the state in which self-regulation is possible is the difficult, or maybe impossible, part. When in the regulated state, power grabs wouldn’t work.

We have a bunch of temporarily embarrassed tribal warlords among us.

There was this really good short story illustrating this: (edited to add: "Cloak of Anarchy", Larry Niven, thx to below).

A park where anything goes ... because sentry robots keep the peace. When the robots break, things get scary quickly.

I've become convinced that a well-governed society is the perfect foundation for a limited anarchist commune set up on property legally purchased. Libertarian, essentially. Or Amish.

> This is the thing I don't understand about (a superficial interpretation of) anarchists

I think most superficial interpretations of anarchists are based on edgy LARPers rather than real political ideology.

Fun fact: Anarchy means "without rulers", not "without laws" or "without social order". There's a wide diversity of political thought under this umbrella, but the key underlying common denominator is (on some level, at least) a rejection of hierarchy (and often a rejection of capital).

Though it's fun to imagine what the philosophical and political beliefs that underpin a colloquial understanding of the word might look like, the answer is usually simply: Teenagers.

I get the impression that even the definition of "anarchy" itself is subject to anarchy, with lots of disagreements and infighting. The more even-keeled anarchists that I've seen stress that they're not against hierarchies, only involuntary hierarchies, with the idea being that individuals should be welcome to organize themselves into hierarchies into which they delegate power, as long as that power can be revoked at any time, which sounds like a reasonable proposition. And then there's crypto-anarchism, which is just right-libertarianism in a Scooby Doo monster mask.

Its not a rational position, rather a kneejerk emotional one. Various other extreme positions share the same setup (nazism, communism etc).

Try talking to some anarchists and its pretty obvious their ideas don't go deep nor can stand well some questioning. Once you are in fairy land, anything may seem like a good idea to tackle ie some injustice.

It's the anti-establishment impulse taken to extremes. Anarchism is one of the niche destinations of that mindset. Another, ironically, is full blown communism.

What's sort of funny, is how all these seemingly polar-opposite anti-establishment flavors are actually far closer to each other than they are to mainstream political left or right.

The anti-establishment part ends up overriding everything else

That's how you end up with Bernie/Trump crossover voters

Both are valuable and present in a well rounded life. The Diary of Anne Frank and Those Who Leave Omelas cause you to question life in different ways.

Perhaps unrelated, but that reminds me of the inevitable avalanche of identical replies to every submission on aphantasia, all proclaiming that, no, they do indeed find it odd that there are people who can visualise internally.

Do you enjoy watching movies or series, reading comics? Going to the theatre (as in - not movies, but actual theatre)?

Edit: Do note that I wrote enjoy - I've certainly read my fair share of non-fiction. A classic Agatha Christy murder-mystery, while set in the real world, is anything but realistic.

I have no understanding of your viewpoint. I wish I did, it sounds interesting. I do like a Crafting Interpreters or Mythical Man Month...

But I don't understand how those could not only be held to the same level as The Hobbit, but that you seem incapable of even reading Animal Farm.

Do you enjoy any fictional media? TV, movies, plays, interactive murder mystery dinners, tabletop games (d&d, etc)?

>Contrarily, non-fiction tells it how it happened within the very reality I myself live in, subject to the same laws of nature and real psychology, and therefore, and only therefore, able to teach me something about real life on this earth.

This is me trying to pick up most bullshit written from humanities or arts; a 99% of it it's carefully crafted nonsense for ahem mainly emotionaly driven women and artsy people with very subjective opinions instead of accepting the reality as is.

Elaborated jokes OTOH can be trully clever and a good source of laughs and fun.

Also, Discworld from Pratchett, as they have obvious magical analogies to real life devices and scientific procedures.

  "non-fiction tells it how it happened"

do you have any recommendations?

It sounds almost as if you're saying learning is only possible by reading, which, I would argue, most of the history of humanity proves false.

Stupid take, one can learn from fiction too.

Making a throwaway account to "just ask a question" is a weird thing to do.

What difference does it make?

Why would that be sarcasm on a site that calls itself “hacker”news?

We aren’t exactly law abiding citizens, more anarchists really.

That comes with certain mindset about the copyright. I can’t remember the last day I didn’t violate some kind of law of a corporate state. It’s spiritual almost, highlight of the day.

You can be sure that whatever you posted online that had any value, have already been on my hard drive two times over. Sometimes even modified and passed along.

What are you going to do about it?