If anyone is curious, like me, what Cypherpunk means:
"A cypherpunk is one who advocates the widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies as a means of effecting social and political change."[0]
Side note: I love literature, but I can not for the life of me understand how anyone can consider non-fiction enjoyable to read. Informative, perhaps interesting, yes, but enjoyable? Heck no. Take me as far away from reality as possible.
Interesting– Conversely, that is exactly how I feel about reading fiction.
To me, how can you possibly enjoy reading something some other person simply ... made up? Like an elaborate lie?
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.
I've peeked into that one. I've expected those people to be radical to some degree, but I didn't expect they write it down so clearly.
This writing wants to see the collapse of governments and democracy. I find it painful to read such radical statements. So I didn't get very deep.
But I am riddled how those people think a collapse of that scale will work out in their favor. They are deeply reliant on technology and the first thing to happen on collapse, is that many lights turn off.
This is the thing I don't understand about (a superficial interpretation of) anarchists; while governments are often not ideal, a lack of one wouldn't be better. And trusting people to self-organize is idealistic, but in practice it'd mean we go back to tribalism and "might makes right".
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.
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.
I've been a bit out of the loop with Austrian Economics (last re-read of Human Action was ~15 years ago). I'm very well read in it and enjoy the aesthetics of the theories and the history of thought books but got very tired of the online flame-wars and the political side in general (both the pro- and anti-Austrians). So Praxeology of Privacy sounds like an interesting read, I'll give it a go this year.
if it wasnt for needless landing pages where would we ever get a chance to use all the cool animation features browsers have accreted over the last 20 years.
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 ..
Everything on the Internet is public domain, up for grabs
In the past you could argue about legal stuff but now the LLM training companies have proven that beyond all doubt, it is not only possible but even legal to use any Internet material as you see fit.
If anyone is curious, like me, what Cypherpunk means:
"A cypherpunk is one who advocates the widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies as a means of effecting social and political change."[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk
Funnily, this small library features works outside of it's domain, including a manifesto from PKK terrorist organization leader..
Side note: I love literature, but I can not for the life of me understand how anyone can consider non-fiction enjoyable to read. Informative, perhaps interesting, yes, but enjoyable? Heck no. Take me as far away from reality as possible.
Though, of course, to each their own.
Interesting– Conversely, that is exactly how I feel about reading fiction.
To me, how can you possibly enjoy reading something some other person simply ... made up? Like an elaborate lie?
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.
Please do not take this question any particular way, I'm just curious:
Do you happen to be female?
What difference does it make?
You have to make your own stories as you go along. Plug that fresh knowledge into hypothetical scenarios from stuff you've learned before.
If you don't enjoy learning you may be in a minority here.
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.
And not everything's about learning. It is allowed to do things strictly because you enjoy doing them, with no ulterior motive.
> THE CYPHERNOMICON
I've peeked into that one. I've expected those people to be radical to some degree, but I didn't expect they write it down so clearly.
This writing wants to see the collapse of governments and democracy. I find it painful to read such radical statements. So I didn't get very deep.
But I am riddled how those people think a collapse of that scale will work out in their favor. They are deeply reliant on technology and the first thing to happen on collapse, is that many lights turn off.
This is the thing I don't understand about (a superficial interpretation of) anarchists; while governments are often not ideal, a lack of one wouldn't be better. And trusting people to self-organize is idealistic, but in practice it'd mean we go back to tribalism and "might makes right".
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.
Cloak of Anarchy, Larry Niven.
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.
I've been a bit out of the loop with Austrian Economics (last re-read of Human Action was ~15 years ago). I'm very well read in it and enjoy the aesthetics of the theories and the history of thought books but got very tired of the online flame-wars and the political side in general (both the pro- and anti-Austrians). So Praxeology of Privacy sounds like an interesting read, I'll give it a go this year.
Privacy for the citizens and transparency for the government. Sadly, all democracies are right in the middle of establishing the polar opposite.
nice work, interesting page
I don't think you need a pretty landing page and the content of https://www.cypherpunkbooks.com/collection
could directly live under
https://www.cypherpunkbooks.com/
it's a website with information and I really want to see the collection and information insteda of just a single headline with an animation
if it wasnt for needless landing pages where would we ever get a chance to use all the cool animation features browsers have accreted over the last 20 years.
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 ..
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the hover animation on the books in `/` slows down my Firefox
Cool project nonetheless! Enjoyed browsing through the options
If a site like this isn’t using your browser to mine bitcoin I’d be incredibly disappointed.
Nice - can't wait to see how it grows!
Looks really nice, but 10 fps in Firefox.
Buttery smooth for me in Firefox (mac)
Everything on the Internet is public domain, up for grabs
In the past you could argue about legal stuff but now the LLM training companies have proven that beyond all doubt, it is not only possible but even legal to use any Internet material as you see fit.
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