The Sociopathy of the Security Apparatus

[Ero]

I wanted to write my two cents in support of Leo's most recent post about every intelligence agency in the world being 'basically a collection of clinical psychopaths and sociopaths'. 
  
First of all, for context, my country is the only other one from the Soviet Bloc outside of Russia that enacted a 'privatization' through the direct influence of State Security (Държавна Сигурност), closely allied with the KGB. What occurred is that several officers from the KGB-equivalent , now remembered as the 'puppet masters', were responsible for allocating nearly 95% of all national resources (factories, mines, etc.) to a select few of those close to the nomenclature.

Most of those were former wrestlers and fighters, who now started receiving millions from the liquidated assets in suitcases. Self-selected for sociopathy/psychopathy, they started creating 'insurance/security' companies that began enacting racketeering methods by the book. Some of the largest oligarchs owned 15-20% of the GDP. What followed were the years of the 'mafia wars' from 1995 to 2005, marked by hundreds of assassinations using snipers, AKs, grenades and bombs in a fight to consolidate power. The one 'clan' that triumphed eventually graduated to politics and has since then extracted hundreds of billions from our country, which is where we currently find ourselves at, under the veil of 'democracy' only in name. 
  
It was precisely that sociopathic lust for power that lead to the current situation and one that, regretfully, does not have a solution that is less sociopathic than its origin. This kind of system has lead to the corruption of every government branch, to the point where if you are affiliated, the rules just don't apply. There are examples (as recent as last year) of people committing straight up murders and sadistic torture who were walking free, until the general public protested in the tens of thousands and out of fear they locked them up. 
  
The latter story is an ongoing one. It has directly affected me and my family in more than one way. The 'truth and consciousness' of the matter is something I realized in my most recent LSD trips - that consciousness brings the chaos and horror with it. Whilst most nature documentaries are of butterflies and colorful birds, there are also the parasites, bacteria and viruses, the hornets and centipedes, and, of course, the crocodile that will bite your head off. And when you sit at the edge of chaos, it is hard to not be consumed.
  
The security apparatus is essentially the immune system of the collective intelligence that is a country. It must address the internal health of society, fraught with terrorists, rapists, serial killers, as well as the external - hostile foreign nation-state actors, neo-liberal corporations and sometimes even cartels. And, as the analogy goes, the immune system needs the T-killer cells. But if not properly aligned, these T-killer cells become the source of autoimmune diseases, killing the cells of their own organism. 

[Leo Gura]

34 minutes ago, Ero said:

Whilst most nature documentaries are of butterflies and colorful birds, there are also the parasites, bacteria and viruses, the hornets and centipedes

Why you so racist against hornets and centipedes?

[Ero]

Hah, no bias here. Hornets are necessary for the ecological balance of insects. Got a tattoo of one. Might get a centipede soon.

Edited July 27 by Ero

[Leo Gura]

You called hornets parasites but not colorful birds.

Watch those biases 

[Ero]

There's a comma there 

[r0ckyreed]

10 hours ago, Ero said:

There's a comma there 

Calling anything a parasite is a bias.

[Leo Gura]

Trump is a parasite.

[Bobby_2021]

@Ero How much immunity did the security apparatus of your country provide in countering the mafias and corruption?

The problem arises when the immune system gets too much power and control that it begins viewing every random thing as a threat. Until then it's all good.

Viewing every random thing as a threat and proceeding to eliminate it will result in a self fulfilling prophecy, where it indeed becomes a threat. This is exactly what's happening now with the security apparatus.

Edited July 28 by Bobby_2021

[LordFall]

@Leo Gura I would love to see a blog post/video on how you think the world will move on from the current psychopathy that it is under. It seems to be that the intelligence agencies are the peak orange of ruthless efficiency when it comes to maintaining the status quo. 

Either you're a cog in the machine, or you're particularly competent/ruthless and you rise at the top of the machine or you manage to survive on the fringes of the system. There must be another way. My best hope is something to do with AGI saving us otherwise it looks like it will be getting worse and not better in the coming decades. 

[Leo Gura]

AGI will not save us, and perhaps make things worse.

[Yimpa]

Periodt.

Edited July 28 by Yimpa

[Basman]

17 hours ago, Bobby_2021 said:

@Ero How much immunity did the security apparatus of your country provide in countering the mafias and corruption?

The problem arises when the immune system gets too much power and control that it begins viewing every random thing as a threat. Until then it's all good.

Viewing every random thing as a threat and proceeding to eliminate it will result in a self fulfilling prophecy, where it indeed becomes a threat. This is exactly what's happening now with the security apparatus.

I find it fascinating how a lot of diseases or symptoms of diseases are essentially the body acting on itself. I love that analogy relating to these orgs.

Edited July 29 by Basman

[thenondualtankie]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

AGI will not save us, and perhaps make things worse.

AGI could be the catalyst that develops us out of capitalism, don't you think?

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, thenondualtankie said:

AGI could be the catalyst that develops us out of capitalism, don't you think?

No. AI will make capitalism 3x more toxic.

Edited July 29 by Leo Gura

[LordFall]

@Leo Gura Maybe short term but medium and long term I don't see how else we fix these issues. It's basically impossible to arrive at objective truth without it so most arguments are solved by group think. At least with AI we'll be able to objectively say "according to all the data ever recorded on X subject, the truth is Y." 

You might've seen Destiny's argument that says that to outdebate conspiracy theorists he has to do dozens of hours of research whereas they just have to spout out some nonsense. AI will help bring facts in a matter of seconds so corrupt people can't make up stuff to fulfill their agenda. 

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, LordFall said:

@Leo Gura

You might've seen Destiny's argument that says that to outdebate conspiracy theorists he has to do dozens of hours of research whereas they just have to spout out some nonsense.

That is not a point in your favor.

Conspiracy theorists will use AI to spread their paranoid BS.

Quote

AI will help bring facts in a matter of seconds so corrupt people can't make up stuff to fulfill their agenda. 

Haha. You have far too optimistic a view of the human condition.

The corrupt people will never stop making stuff up.

Edited July 29 by Leo Gura

[gambler]

People can manipulate facts, especially in politics, where things may be withheld from the public and the narrative given is seen as factual until something leaks that wasn't supposed to and then, it was a lie all along. Conspiracy theorists won't care what AI tells them is the facts if they believe it's untruthful.

Edited July 30 by gambler

[LordFall]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

That is not a point in your favor.

Conspiracy theorists will use AI to spread their paranoid BS.

Haha. You have far too optimistic a view of the human condition.

The corrupt people will never stop making stuff up.

Sure but now you can call them out on their bullshit very simply with stuff like RAG technology.

Instead of more or less knowing that they're saying bullshit but not being precisely educated enough to know exactly how now you have LLMs that can debunk nonsense and give a precise source for their claims and explain the reasoning. Like people that say the moon landing is fake now we can use these systems to examine basically every piece of data humanity has on it.

Won't help the truly lunatic find reason but the people who were stuck in the middle will be more easily swayed toward truth now. Before the amount of data was just impossible to be on top of.