zlacker

>>obilgi+(OP)
A friend lives in Seattle and texted me today about his visit last night:

> I was there last night and it's such a cool pseudo utopian place

> The media coverage of it is WILD

> People on the internet are convinced it's protected by armed guards and people are dying of hunger and instead its...like a music festival campground

> There are speakers, musicians, art walls. I took a group pic for a bunch of black guys last night and they were so proud of what was built because they felt like they fought for it, which in a sense, they did.

>>conroy+fz1
> The media coverage of it is WILD

I live 7 blocks away from "the zone" and can confirm, I have never in my life seen anything alike in this regard. The scale of the misinformation being spread in social networks and news media reached a level I couldn't believe possible before. Seriously, it's beyond absurd.

If anyone is interested, I have been taking some pictures of the ongoing protests (including a few of the zone): https://www.flickr.com/photos/peramides

>>pera+gF1
I'm also about that far away and walked through there last night. It felt more like a summer street fair festival. I also took a few pictures. https://photos.app.goo.gl/UN8RpwWS5TYAY5Nn7

>>gabesk+WW1
But then there's also this:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaQyClgU4AEJnWf?format=jpg&name=...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaQyCmMUEAEn_1o?format=jpg&name=...

I've not before seen a summer street festival where armed militias wearing bulletproof vests patrol the streets.

>>thu211+Rq2
I truly don't understand the problem here. Can you tell me what it is that makes these people dangerous and scary, but the similarly armed protestors who showed up at government buildings a month ago — or, frankly, the police — fine?

>>jakela+TT2
What makes these people dangerous and scary is that they're carrying dangerous and scary weapons. The flak jackets and face masks aren't making it any less scary either.

Personally, I'm not afraid of the police, of protesters, of armed militias, etc. I'm afraid of people with guns. Why does anyone carry a gun, unless they intend to use it, once some set of conditions obtain? I don't want to be around people like that, and I really don't want to live in places where they go around on public streets like this.

>>YeGobl+Za3
I think of it like nuclear weapons: it'd be great if they didn't exist at all, but if they do exist and are stockpiled by people who want to hurt us, then the only responsible action is to arm ourselves in self-defense.

In other words:

> An unarmed people are slaves or are subject to slavery at any given moment.

> -- Huey P Newton

>>Christ+JG3
That's MAD, right? Mutually Assured Destruction. Well, that is the logic of a species that has gone kookoo bonkers bannanas bongos mad and thinks that "let's all threaten each other with total anihilation" is "rational". Why is it so hard to agree to not destroy each other needlessly instead?

>>YeGobl+hb4
Game theory. The instant someone doesn't agree not to destroy, they have a massive upper hand.

>>kortex+bM4
this seems to be a common attitude in America. It’s game theory, but you should look more to the nash equilibrium than the prisoners dilemma. Unfortunately it must all start with trust, which seems like the fundamental scarcity in the US

>>lucass+F35
The problem is we have basically 2 "phenotypes" (gross oversimplification) with radically different risk tolerances, one "tribe" is okay with abstracting away their security/defense, the other wants granular control over it.

So there's 3 agents:

1. Government. Trustworthy, until it isnt.

2. "Union" - Trusts govt. Ok with "gun grabbing" because civians with guns make them feel safe.

3. "Rebels". doesn't trust government. Ok with guns - armed society is polite society.

So it's a very unstable dynamic. It's stable at the extreme ends - everybody has guns, or only government has guns - but the transitions are high activation energy states.