Cory Doctorow

No, I don't think it's too late.

I think the first thing to understand is that if you think that the reason that the method by which you will prevent and shitification is your own kind of moral core.

which is important, but not sufficient, then you're quite dangerous, right?

Then you are gonna end up getting, because no one woke up in the morning and said, how can I make things worse, right?

They rationalized their way into it.

They made all kinds of stepwise decisions where they then judged their next decision based on where they were now and not where they started.

So they're like, well, I've already done 10 bad things

Doing the 11th is just a small change from where I am now, but they don't say, well, it's 11 in total, right?

And so if you want to prevent yourself from compromising, you have to make compromise harder for yourself in the future.

So in behavioral economics, we have this idea called the Ulysses Pact.

So if you're familiar with the story of Ulysses, right, he wants to hear the song of the sirens and

And anyone who hears the song jumps in the sea and is drowned by them.

And his sailors have a protocol.

They fill their ears with wax.

But he's like, no, I want to hear the song.

He's a hacker, right?

He wants to eat his cake and have it too.

So he wants to hear the songs.

What he does is he ties himself to the mast so he can hear the song but not act on its compulsion.

And a Ulysses pact is anytime you take some course of action off the table now, while you're strong, in anticipation of your future weakness.