Comment by nonrandomstring | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nonrandomstring | Hacker News Reader

nonrandomstring

> Bergstrom likens scientists to soothsayers, carrying the burden of being able to see the future, "It plays a heavy toll on your psyche. It's hard to take because we know what's coming down the track."

Cassandra complex is a real and horrible state of mind. It affects anyone who has to compartmentalise, or chooses to for whatever reason. I've seen it eat up more than a few people, and it definitely affects me too.

My father was in the airforce and went to the South Pacific on nuke tests. He often had the thousand yard stare and "didn't want to talk" about there "being no future". Another member of our family is a climate scientist who did some particularly disturbing research. He has the same look sometimes. He says there's no point telling people - "just live your lives".

For me being in cybersecurity is watching a "slow motion suicide by apathy". The unfolding, preventable catastrophe haunts me.

But deep down we do want to tell people because even if you can't "change the world" it's hard to live and interact with people you love every day, knowing what you know.

Most of the time the Casandra problem is that either nobody believes you, or nobody cares. Bergstrom's problem is that others want to actively prevent her from speaking, which I imagine is worse.

Those with power really worry that we "scare the children". I even find myself saying it to fellow hackers when we are giving talks, because the effect of telling the plain truth is not action, but hopelessness, and I don't want to put that on people.

> For me being in cybersecurity is watching a "slow motion suicide by apathy". The unfolding, preventable catastrophe haunts me.

Wait, "catastrophe" singular? That sounds way worse than what I’m envisioning (increasing rates of hacks, data breaches, and perhaps a couple catastrophic events that contributes to, but not single handedly causes, an economic crisis). Your wording suggest something like our computers or network becoming so untrustworthy we can’t even use them.

Do you have an executive summary of what you’re hinting at?

For one, state sponsored cyber warfare could end up causing lots of preventable damage. Think infrastructure, like the electric grid, being brought down: that would have real consequences, including deaths.

> Cassandra complex is a real and horrible state of mind.

Not only does it destroy you mentally you're almost certainly wrong too, so you suffered for nothing.

Pharisees going to pharisee.

But was the world burned by nuclear holocaust, or did the Y2K melt down the nuclear powerplants causing a global Chernobyl disaster? Did the ozone layer disappear and did the acid rains kill all forests? Extrapolating from a short period to a distant catastrophe can poison your life, while usually when a problem gets bad enough, then widespread consensus forms against it and appropriate resources are allocated. *

Regarding IT security: I surely wouldn't be sleepless over IT security, given my money is reasonably safe and insured. Hackers won't destroy the water supply or nuclear reactors, even if they might be able to, or at most cause some incidents before steps are taken. Terrorists have vast possibilities already, we shouldn't be so arrogant to think that IT is so special that it is especially susceptible to causing some global catastrophe. One can already buy a hacksaw and tear down power lines, no need to hack a powerplant. One can poison water reservoirs, etc. No need for Hollywood drama, where special single points of failure are protected by (lone) heroes, protecting us from the lone maniacs. Our society is vulnerable and fragile, since at least 50 years ago, and it is not being attacked because nobody really wants to attack it.

I'm more concerned about the gradual decline of privacy caused by the fear-mongering situations like outlined above. (If you meant this than I misunderstood you, sry.)

* - Or we die. We die someday anyway.

> I'm more concerned about the gradual decline of privacy caused by the fear-mongering situations like outlined above. (If you meant this than I misunderstood you, sry.)

Yeah I kinda did actually. :) Though I wouldn't use the term "fear mongering" about anyone's legitimate concern from their perspective.

The anxiety comes from seeing that poor digital security is just (perhaps a deliberate) part of a complex situation forming. It's one that threatens to usher in precisely the fascism we fought world wars to eliminate - but via the back door "for the children".

BTW I agree with your pragmatic, "well let's see about that" attitude. It's what gets me through the day too.

I was into prepping for a while, but let go of the stuff, seeing the "Cassandras" being disappointed for the catastrophe taking the lives of millions does not happen. I see pessimist/alarmist people a bit more skeptically now, the more grandiose the threat they envision the more skeptical I am, as now I'm always assuming a bit of narcissism in the background.

Problems exist, and we need to talk about them, to realize and eventually solve them, or be able to informedly ignore them. But the constant impending doom as portrayed by the media since ever (probably Goebbels is at fault, and his counterparts in rival empires) makes me apathetic, as a form of self-defence.

fear mongering: I did not mean to tell you were fear mongering, rather I thought you might be a victim of it with your perception magnified by subjective experience. I just outlined some fear-mongering scenarios about which we are always told to be afraid of the ITSec threats. (and which are overblown in my opinion, not because of the lack of feasibility, but the lack of utility carrying them out, as the possibilities were mostly there already without IT.)

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