| I should have said “attempt to reform”, it’s one of the many follies of youth that habits change in a day. It’s actually pretty recently that I’ve really started to recognize the gravity of this forum, how much scope there is for causing harm or precipitating healthy change: HN is in a sense a sort of “swing state” in the conversation. It’s a small community in numbers on a national or global scale, but is overrepresented in influential posts in technology, the sciences, and the generally “logic motivated” posts in society. I really am sorry that it’s been such an uneven outcome for so many of the intervening 15 years since I wrote that. I should have started forming a coherent worldview, analyzing its ethical implications, and attempting to master my own worst instincts in the sense of translating that into a compelling argument and actionable “policy platform” in terms of how I write on the Internet. And in a sense I really owe a debt of gratitude in a perverse way to a set of people and institutions that represent such a clear and present danger to the legacy of the Enlightenment to galvanize me into beginning to get organized around what I believe in and expressing that effectively. I’m still an awfully small fish to merit a 16-year post history in a kind of tinker-toy opposition research commensurate with my tinker-toy influence. That’s a lot of effort even with modern automation for a guy who is basically a nobody with an opinion. Absent automation it wouldn’t be worth anyone’s time, and in either case, I’m really curious to know what induced you to spend yours on that? |