An (the only) interesting concept that Gov Abbott (R) explores in his book is about the US States' collective right (under our Constitution) to call for a national convention for ANY REASON, initiated by a super-majority of states in mutual agreement on topic only, in order to propose Amendments (all prior were done by the Federal Congressional route).
This seems like the most-reasonable solution to introduce some sort of technology bill of rights (e.g. privacy; AI governance; data collection practices; right to cancel; opt-ins) — to address limitations to our geriatric Congress' inability to get with the goddamn modern times. We still operate on telecommunications laws from the friggin' eighties!!!
We might as well overhaul all of healthcare, too... and this really isn't too far fetched (I don't have the book in front of me... but there have been prior attempts to call such state conventions, decades ago).
...perhaps end Citizens' United? It's certainly time for some citizen initiative (via our State Congresses).
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If Sir Glubb's Fate of Empires taught me anything, most societial governances don't last too much longer than 250 years (¡happy birthday USA!). I think ours can, with massive but only with massive overhaul.
Giving advice to Gov Abbott: you're doing a great job for your state as Governor; stay there (don't run for president, again — you'll just waste time better-spent preparing Texas for what's next?); perhaps you should lift the boot up off your citizens' impoverished throats just. a. little. bit. ...but otherwise, Keep Texas Beautiful. [and say `hi` to James for me — it's been too long].
jondwillis•1h ago
An “a scanner darkly” approach could be kind of effective to pollute online information about yourself.
If there are 1000 “me” profiles all saying different stuff, it’d be somewhat hard to pin down what I think and persecute me. This doesn’t work as well or maybe at all for sufficiently doxxed people who are producing content for a living, public political organizers, etc.
drdaeman•1h ago
Noise-drowning only works against profiling that's set up with intent to measure you, rather than punish you.
I'm afraid, in autocracies and dictatorships, it takes one "me" profile (that could be not even mine) that said something out of current goodthink to be persecuted. Just look at what's going on in Russia.
The key point of those "we'll be using AI to monitor everything you publish" announcements is not in even it its directly stated goal. It's in the chilling effects this creates, making people avoid expressing their opinions except for unquestionably safe ones.