Slashdot Mirror
Reconciling Information Privacy and Liberty?
thetan asks: "F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that 'The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.' However, for many outsiders, it's hard to understand how cliques reconcile seemingly contrarian views.
For example, many US Republicans are against abortion but in favour of the death penalty (no doubt they have their reasons). Amongst the Slashdot commentariat, one often hears that information wants to be free, almost as a catchcry of the open source, copyfight and related info-libertarian movements. OTOH, these same Slashdot readers stridently guard their privacy, so presumably information about their shopping preferences or websurfing does not 'want to be free'. How does the intelligent and functional Slashdot crowd reconcile the liberty of other people's information with the privacy of their own?"
...the intelligent and functional Slashdot crowd...
Bwah ha ha ha...are you enjoying your stay in our dimension? When are you due back in BizzaroWorld? ^_^
Seriously, though, I don't think any intellectually honest Slashdotter out there would assert that the vaunted 'information wants to be free' catch phrase should be interpreted as 'free as in beer'. Information is most certainly not free...if it was, many of us would be out of a job. This being the Information Age, information is the prime economic mover, and therefore, most slashdotters are understandably upset when their own personal information is mined by corporations and passed around as currency. This leads to a very real devaluation of our personal worth, as the intrusiveness of companies serves to reduce our quality of life.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
As seen in Wikipedia:Slashdot, circa 2010:
The fateful event took place on August 4th, 2005, when veteran Slashdot editor "Cliff" unknowingly set off the greatest flamewar of all time.
A discussion of Abortion, the Death Penalty, freedom of information, privacy rights, Republicans/Democrats, the sitting president, and an earlier article on Evolution and Intelligent Design proved too much for the website. Comments surged into the thousands within minutes, Slashdot's webserver farm burst into flames, and the resulting conflagration took out 23% of the global Internet (source: Netcraft) before WWW Firefighters could put it out. Hundreds of brave posters and cowardly AC's alike were consumed in the initial blast.
--picture insert: CowboyNeal rushing back into the burning building to save the polls--
You will be missed, Slashdot. Truly, you were an American icon.
Not all information is created equal. The information that "wants to be free" is information that adds meaningfully to the sum of human knowledge. Whether that's an algorithm to quickly sort large amounts of information, a law of physics, or a new economic model.. these types of information want to be free.
Information that "doesn't want to be free" is the kind that doesn't give anything meaningful to humanity at large or the kind that bring me to some harm if released. If the information in question doesn't pass this test then it's okay to keep it secret. What porn I bought yesterday is not really of interest to anybody except me and therefore, under my model, this information is best kept secret. Other secret information, like passwords, credit-card numbers and social security number are outright danger to me if they are released to the public.
We have to be careful what line we tread. In the US, companies like choicepoint are collecting huge amounts of data and yet even though the data is about us, it does not belong to us. This causes huge problems for us because Choicepoint doesn't really care if this data gets out. What skin is it off Choicepoints back? Will it lose sales? These data collection companies need to CARE about keeping our data SAFE. The only way to do that is make them liable for incredible sums of money if that data ends up in the wrong hands.
Privacy is under attack and we need to defend it. A 150 years ago, I could walk out in to a field and have a private conversation and be sure it was private. These days, there could be lazer microphones and bugs. A 150 years ago, I could disappear on a horse for a couple of months and nobody would know where I am. These days they can find you with your mobile phone and CCTV. A 150 years ago you could build a house and not care about somebody using spy-satelites to check for building code violations.
Privacy and Liberty are not at odds, they are one in the same. Being free is about people not knowing everything about you. People often retort by saying "I have nothing to hide, so I don't care if they collect the data". Yes, I'm sure the Jews had nothing to hide from the government in 1920s. Only ten years later, their census data was being used to round them up and murder them. Privacy is important not for the reasons we can readily think of but for all the reasons we can't think of.
Simon.
I've noticed if one posts anything on Slashdot going "against the grain" of popularity (differing views on War in Iraq, Linux or Apple for example) The mods immediately presume your post is either a "Troll" or "Flamebait". People often have a hard time setting aside their personal beliefs and tend to view things in a biased manner. The unfortunate outcome of this is they end up burying otherwise interesting viewpoints.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
I thought this was "news for nerds", not "political drivel in article descriptions".
Easy. I only want other peoples' information to be free.
I find a giant dose of hypocrisy works just fine.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Thank you, Cliff.
YHBT. HAND.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
David Brin's Transparent Society, where everyone, including our government, is under equal scrutiny, is probably the only way forward for those who believe that information wants to be free.
I think the key is that there's a very big difference between the information that "wants to be free" like algorithms, software, Cisco vulnerabilities, etc. and information like your globally-unqiue database key (SSN in the US). In one case there's you have information that has no particular relevance to any one person, but could benefit society as a whole in some way. The other case is information that identifies one person and doesn't necessarily help society in any way.
At least for the slashdot comparison, the submitter is comparing apples to oranges.
Not to take a side, but it's not hard to see the GOP argument here.
Fetus, embryo, pre-born child = innocent.
Capital criminal = guilty.
The general line of thinking is that if you violate or nearly violate someelse's right to life your own life is forfeit as a penalty.
It's not exactly rocket science.
Merits aside, really, it's not a mystery!
1) You don't know what "clique" means.
2) You don't know what "information wants to be free" means.
3) Opposing abortion and supporting the death penalty is not contradictory. Neither is the opposite position.
4) Slashbots simultaneously demand regulation and libertarianism because they're idiots.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Let's take your two examples: I'm not right-wing (nor am I left-wing for that matter), so I can only guess how they reconcile the seemingly contradicting abortion-no/death penalty-yes issues. It's probably a shade of gray like this: Every newly-formed life deserves a chance to live. But a criminal who does something so heinous that he forfeits his right to live among society should be put to death. Not a contradiction, but a recognition of differing circumstances.
On to 'information wants to be free.' That refers to knowledge that can benefit humanity, whether it's sharing of source code so that other coders can learn and improve, or sharing of knowledge so that everyone can benefit from the wisdom of the group. However, we do not want to give up our personal privacy because harm can come to us if that happens. Stalkers, criminals, cranks, whoever wants to harm us for either personal gain or vendettas, can do so if they know our name and SSN and so on. Not to mention spammers. See? It's once again not a contradiction but a recognition of differing circumstances.
I have to agree with bigwavejas. Troll" on /. == Satire.
Oh, I wish there was a way to explain humor or a poor attempt at it to the mods.
And Goddam /. for inventing "Troll" and "Flamebait"
Famous "Troll"s and "Flaimers:" people:
Thomas Paine
Thomas Jefferson
Ben Franklin
Karl Marx
Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King
Martin Luther
Ghandi
etc ...
People who spoke what they truly believed and got Fucked for it!!!
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
It's perfectly possible for someone to oppose abortion and support the death penalty, although I'm not sure how it would fit into the Christian ethic espoused by Republicans of late in the US. I, personally, oppose both, but not for the usual reasons.
Since I'm not religious, I believe that there is no inherent right to human life -- or anything else -- because no one has demonstrated the presence of a universal authority who could bestow that right. We are each granted "the right to life," such as it is, by our society. There are things you can do, such as committing a capital crime, that represent a voluntary renunciation of that right.
An unborn child, conversely, has done nothing to give up whatever right to live that society can confer.
I am troubled by abortion rights -- even in the absence of religious motivation -- because I can't answer the question, "When is it no longer OK to kill a baby?" At the moment of viability outside the mother's body? No; that fails as a test because technology will eventually make in vitro incubation a reality. At the moment of conception? Yeah, that would be fine, except for the point I just made. At the moment of discernible brain activity? Same problem. At the moment of birth? Only a barbarian would be OK with that. At the onset of conscious awareness? That happens after birth.
The reason why I oppose capital punishment is purely pragmatic -- I don't trust the government or the judicial system to get much of anything else right, so why should I trust these proven-fallible institutions with a decision that by definintion can't be reversed?
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
For example, many US Republicans are against abortion but in favour of the death penalty (no doubt they have their reasons)
The reasoning is generally based on accountability and culpability. A feutus is neither, while presumably an adult facing the death penalty is both. The larger problems with the death penalty isn't the taking of a life, but that the process is so potentially flawed for a miriad of reasons that the life in question may in fact not be culpable at all.
Please note that I'm not advocating, just clarify what was a needlessly murky aside which could have very appropriately removed by a more astute editor.
The web article linked in TFA is so blatantly biased and the author full of his own agenda that it makes for a poor basis for discussion, and ironically underscores the point illustrated by juxtaposing the Fitzgerald quote with the remainder of the topic at hand.
Lets get real: Information does not want to be free. Information does not want anything. Information is just information.
The only basis we could have for moralizing as we do about information is of a consequentialist bent. Saying "Information wants to be free" really means that, In general, the best consequences obtain if information is free. With this as a premise, the burden of proof when we talk about "information ethics" then falls on those who would restrict it.
Now, this shifting of the burden of proof should not be mistaken for (as it seems to have been by the poster) an objective and universal assessment of the ideal fate of *all* data. Obviously the best ends are not reached by my (or someone else's) making my banking information public. Its just that, thanks to the "Information wants to be free" mantra, the burden of proof falls on me to demonstrate why this particular information should be kept private, as opposed to the other way around -- wherein all data is kept private and proprietary and I have to argue for exceptions open standards, OSS, etc.
Hope this made sense.
caritj.org
First, as Orwell very correctly observed, the human mind is not the least bit troubled by self-contradiction. Logic is much more of a conceit or a learned skill than a human trait. Or as Swift said, human beings are just Rationis Capax. Well, it doesn't really surprise any observer of humanity that we're all so often blithely illogical even as we express pride at our reason and intelligence. It's just an all-too-familiar fact of life.
:D
The second thing is that people who are ungifted or unfamiliar with the subtleties of a situation very often mistake nuance for a self-contradiction. We've all watched politicians make our most cherished freedoms into evils to be ground under the bootheel of a five word slogan. The truth is that we reason modularly with symbols and representations that reduce the immediate and full impact of what they represent, and we communicate using the same imperfect tools.
Slogans about information wanting to be free are symbols that make a far more specific case than they appear - because (forgive the half-hearted semiotics) of their context. Take them out of context and you are now merely playing dishonest rhetorical games. To clarify this as one example: "we" (not really, but lets say for the sake of the example) don't want "information to be free" - we want copyright to be limited (or at least its enforcement to take a backseat to civil liberties). And yes, we consider privacy to be one of those civil liberties.
Remember, too, that common law, and indeed all of our human society, is not a mathematical model descended from the heavens. It's a permutation of our instictints and our necessities - strictly arbitrary and animal in nature.
There are many "inconsistencies" around us that deserve our full attention. And I take it as a compliment that the story's attempt at producing one for the slashdot crowd's approach towards copyright and privacy amounts to a vapid, dishonest hat-trick.
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
To paraphrase one of my favorite musicals, 1776
"You should know that information always wants to be free when its in the 3rd person, such as 'Your Information'. It is only in the 1st person, 'My Information' that it wants to be unfree.
Things fall down...People look up... And when it rains, it pours.
As with so many debates, the real problem is the issue is being misstated, so that there appears to be a contradiction where there is none. "Information should be free" refers to knowledge about facts such as history, public policy, etc. It does not refer to my bank accounts or medical history. Same goes for abortion vs death penalty. The former has not commited a crime that suggests he may not be cabaple of living in society. You may still disagree with views on either, but to juxtapose the two issues for purposes of debate is ignorant.
You raise an excellent argument but I fear that it creates the opposite of what you want. Credit information is far more valuable (to humanity and civilization) than are the latest music files by Brittany Spears.
If you study banking in China you find that one of the big problems over there is a lack of credit information systems. Its easy for someone to get a loan, skip the payments, go get another loan at another bank, skip the payments, and repeat as needed. In such a system honest people pay the price (high interest rates) to cover losses generated by dishonest borrowers. Without some mechanism for sharing credit histories, its almost impossible to have a viable credit card system or low-cost consumer loans (I'll leave it to others to argue whether these are Good Things or not).
The problem, and it is a massive one, is not that people are collecting the information, but that they are misusing the information or allowing to be misused by failing to secure it against criminal incursions. The same aggressive defense that prevents counterfeit currency in the U.S. should be applied to those that would counterfeit identities with stolen information. Your point about Choicepoint is well taken -- collectors of personal financial information should be held very accountable (and liable) for lapses in their security and for the actions of those they give data to.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Thus, saying "those silly republicans don't mind killing killers but don't want a fetus killed" implies the fetus is indeed alive, which is contradictory to most pro choice advocates will have you believe.
I think what both people on either side of pro-life / pro-choice debate fail to see is that the each side is striving for the most compassionate and human choice given a core set of assumptions. Just this morning I was listening to Air America radio, and I heard callers impugn pro-life people opposed to stem cell research as being motivated by profit for drug companies and as being heartless towards suffering people with diabetes and spinal cord injuries. I've heard pro-life people call pro-choice people heartless baby-killers with no care for anyone but themselves.
Both sides are wrong about each other. Both sides are trying to do what they see as best with a compassionate heart. The core question about abortion is, "Is the unborn a human being?"
For those who answer, "Yes," pro-life is the only sane and humane choice. If we must treat the retard, the senile, the newly born, and others with undeveloped minds who are dependent on the care of others as having a right to life, we must treat the unborn similarly and must give that right to exist the highest priority. That life must not be sacrificed for the convenience of others when that life has done no deliberate harm to anyone. That is preserving the life and freedoms of the innocent.
For those who answer, "No," pro-choice is the only sane and humane choice. A woman must have the right to choose whether she is ready for motherhood and must not have it trust upon her. She must be allowed the freedom of control over what happens to her body. People who are dying of preventable diseases must have access to medicine that could save them regardless of the religious beliefs of other people. Their lives and freedoms have higher precedent than the offended sensibilities of others. That too is about preserving life and freedoms the innocent.
You'll find extremely few pro-lifers who don't believe that a fetus is a living child. You'll find extremely few pro-choicers who do believe that a fetus is a living child. It's this fundamental question of the humanity of the fetus that is at the core of the argument. Since neither side really wants to address this argument, they cast aspersions on the character of the other side. No one really wants to sit down and discuss this because the lines were drawn before I was born. It's kind of sad because I think that the argument is one that it important and there are secular and religious arguments for both sides.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
You are basically pushing the incorrect notion that "all opinions are equal", that all opinions should be treated with equal respect and never challenged, and that it is "biased" and "prejudiced" or even "offensive" to diss someone else's opinion if you believe it is wrong. This is Political Correctness run amok. People are NOT entitled to ignore facts and hold incorrect views, and they should be flamed if what they are saying is, in fact, incorrect, and does not take into cognisance all the facts.
For example, the astroturfers on /. keep pushing the (incorrect) idea that it represents a bias to seemingly apply "different standards" to different companies, based on the false implied premise that companies are like races, "all essentially equal and thus an unfair bias not to treat them equally" --- but this is nonsense because companies are not like races, companies really are very different from one another, and so it makes perfect sense to treat them differently. Many people here actually have a knowledge of what different companies have done over the years. It is not "biased" to thus dislike and distrust companies that really have behaved unethically for twenty odd years.
Likewise, the "differing views" you mention on the War on Iraq almost always ignore most of the facts that also happen to be kept out of the mainstream media. Nobody is entitled to hold particular views on a war if those views deliberately ignore significant facts.
OK true, "Troll" and "Flamebait" are the wrong moderations, sure, but that's only because there is no "-1 Ignorant" rating.
I'm tired of this "don't offend anyone" BS. People who speak rubbish should be flamed and offended.
I've never liked the phrase "information wants to be free." I prefer "ideas want to be free." Art, music, theories, paradigms, processes, designs, schemas...those are the things that have the potential to grow and be useful only if shared. They get combined into larger and more complex ideas. They're hopelessly complicated to attribute, and nearly every new idea is composed of bits of old ideas. Assigning "ownership" to creative works, and particularly for long periods of time, simply prevents new ideas from occurring (or gets new-idea-creators sued into oblivion). Ideas should be free, as in air.
Data, on the other hand, comes in a lot of forms. Some of those forms, like data collected in government-sponsored studies, should ALSO be free. Free because we've already paid for it. Free, as in beer. Other forms of data don't "want to be free," and personal information like medical records are surely one of those. Of course, there are some reasonable exceptions. Like aggregated disease statistics.
With data, I think there is a balance. I'm a privacy fanatic, but I'd surely hate to see us in as big a mess with regulating the use of personal information as we have with copyright regulation. Good grief, can you imagine if we all acted like the RIAA, suing friends for telling other friends about our lousy bowling scores?
Part of where the line is drawn for me (and the "fair use" doctrine relies heavily on this) is the use to which data is put. Since uses for others'personal information is almost entirely either prurient or commercial in nature, I strongly disfavor that sort of "sharing." It's not cognitive dissonance to dislike seeing people getting personal monetary or "prurient" gain from the uncompensated work of other people, but to be totally fine with non-selfish uses.
Just because this can't be reduced to a short catch-phrase doesn't mean it's inconsistent. Life is complicated. Millions of people who would never STEAL anything under any circumstances instinctively realize that while downloading a song they haven't paid for isn't WRONG, but that downloading and using someone else's credit card number IS wrong. It should be obvious that this is complicated, but that reasonable rules can be derived.
~
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." -Emerson
It is more accurate to say that, while the opinions themselves are not contradictory, the arguments are. The argument usually centers around the inviolable sanctity of life. This assumption means that it's better for a child to be born under bad circumstances, than to have died before he knew what hit him, because the world gets another sacred life. However, the death penalty involves snuffing out a sacred life, so we're down two sacref lives instead of just one.
A more rational pro-life argument is that a complete human life is created as soon as the sperm hits the egg, therefore terminating a pregnancy does harm. But, being more precise, it's also more open to criticism, either by redefining the moment life begins, or by weighing the harm of dying in the womb against the harm of being born in bad circumstances. In contrast, you can't change someone's mind about what's sacred.
The abortion debate, like the hacker debate and the copyfight, have the weakness that many arguments on both sides appeal to feelings rather than reason. This results inevitably in semantic shifting, as phrases lose their meaning when different personalities try to adapt them.
In this case, "information wants to be free" used to refer to the nature of information: secrets are hard to keep; some ideas have a tendency to spread while others bury themselves. But that's not what it means to the 13-year-old who sells pirate DVD's to his classmates.
Supporting the death penalty, yet opposing abortion, is contradictory, eh?
Ok, what about opposing the death penalty, yet supporting abortion? Isn't that JUST as contradictory in exactly the same way?
The justifications on both sides sound the same too:
"Adults who have shown that they only care about killing others have EARNED the death penalty, whereas an unborn child is innocent and has earned no such punishment."
Or, on the other hand
"An adult has an established identity, and as such killing him is always wrong, whereas a fetus has no identity, and as such is just extra tissue for disposal."
Neither view is actually contradictory in the mind of the person who holds it, because they see adults and unborn children as being separate cases to be governed by separate rules.
I am more interested in genuinely contradictory views such as "It is perfectly acceptable for a female interviewer to be granted access to the men's locker room, but it is outright wrong for a male interviewer to be granted access to the women's locker room. The men who don't want women watching them shower are just being silly, whereas the women who don't want men watching them shower are being quite reasonable."
--AC
Kang & Kodos: "Abortions for everybody!"
Crowd: "Boo!"
Kang & Kodos: "Er, abortions for nobody!"
Crowd: "Booo!"
Kang & Kodos: "Uh, abortions for some... tiny American flags for others!"
Crowd: "Yaaaaaay!"
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Hackerethics (CCC)
Specifically I am referring to: "Make public data available, protect private data."
To quote the CCC: "To protect the privacy of the individual and to strengthen the freedom of the information which concern the public the yet last point was added."
The Village is dying of thirst. By pure chance, a limitless wellspring is discovered. The man who discovered the spring is calculating and without pity, and he refuses to tell the village where the water source is unless the people pay his outrageous fee. The community suffers deeply.
One night a clever Thief follows the man and discovers the location of the wellspring. The Thief hurries home and tells the community. Everybody proclaims him a Hero. The community is saved, and goes on to thrive and become happy and healthy.
Sometimes the Thief is also the Hero.
I would say that Ownership of information is far less important than the Intent of the owner.
-FL
In your analogy, the information garnerer is a thief, and maybe a murderer. The 'clever Thief' is a co-discoverer and a hero because he shares the information.
You must separate what I own in information about myself, and what other information--not about myself-- that I own. If you find out that I've been married four times and use that against me, this is public information that can be found. If you find out that I haven't registered my dog, then you've broken into my home and examined private characteristics of me. These are two different things.
So, I don't buy your parable. Theft is theft. Co-discovery and the ability to go where others go is ok. The source of the water can be public knowledge. If the thief trespassed on the land to find the water, then there's a small crime involved. Whether the crime is overlooked because of the discovery is something else. That's why we have prosecutors, and warrants, and civil process.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
People are for anything that benefits them, and against anything that hurts/harms/annoys them. If the Information to be "freed" is something they personally want or could use, then they're for the freedom, no matter who would be hurt by it.
Since the release of their own personal information would hurt them in some way, they're against the "freedom" of that information.
Only the rare individual will be for something that will benefit the vast majority but hurt them personally.
There's no conflict in the two views, just ordinary selfishness. Part of the brilliance in the original design of the US government is in the use of selfishness in what I call the "Balance of Greed" to keep the country reasonably free and prosperous. The problem, of course, is what happens when one party or the other stops being greedy enough to steal the other guy's lunch. But never fear, sooner or later an opportunist will come along to balance things again. It's inevitable.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Absent any preventive measures, anyone can access any information they can physically aprehend. Thus the natural state of information is to be free for anyone to use. Only when people try to limit the spread of information does it become non free, and even then, like water, if there is a crack in your container it will leak out.
Hope that explains the analogy.
As for information being free and privacy, privacy is a stopgap measure to protect those with less access to information and less ability to act on that information from depredations by those with more information and ability to act on it.
If there were no imbalance, there would be no need for privacy. If anyone actually used information in a way the majority considered immoral, then everyone would know about it an could stop the abuse. There would be no need for privacy in financial transactions because everyone would know if you stole. There would be no need for privacy in personal affairs because no one would be able to use that information against you unfairly.
This assumes some perfect method of not only recording everything that happens to everyone on the planet all the time, but distributes the information to everyone else and correlates it so that any important information can be sorted out of the huge mass of information that is of no importance.
Until that time, although your personal and private information "wants to be free" in the same way that water wants to leak out of a glass if it can, you should try to make sure your glass has no cracks in it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
This whole article is nothing but a flamebait troll. Just like the mainstream media, it reduces complicated issues into aggravating soundbites designed for nothing but rowling its readers into generating a shitstorm of comments. The author/editors must be aiming this one at the Hall of Fame. Can we please extend the mod system to article submissions as well, please?
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
More than one person posts on Slashdot.
Some of these people think informaiton should be free. Another thinks completely differently, believing that holding some information privately is OK.
The conflict is between different people with different opinions, not between one person with differing opinions.
What's so unusual about that, and why is it people always think "typical slashdotters" always think alike?
Ask a liberal why the government should stay out of my life socially, but not out of my life financially. Watch them twist in the wind as they try to rectify that one.
Both the right and the left are hypocrites, just in different ways.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
you described co-discovery. These are different things. Theft is when you steal something you know about. Discovery is when you come upon something someone else knows. Trespass is being somewhere where you're physically/virtually unwanted. This isn't linguistic BS; these are readily defined semantical concepts within the context of your parable. Theft is not commendable. Co-discovery is. So is justice.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
If you were an Aristotlean, as most religious people are, despte their protestations, you have to __believe__ that nature abhors a vacuum, in spite of what our collective experience in outer space shows/tells you.
Its like living in a universe where the phlogiston theory actually works.
People are so stupid.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
p.s., what is this, flame day? First Intelligent Design, now abortion and death penalty.
I think God's getting ready to pull the rapture down. I wish he'd hurry. I've got a pipe bomb with Jesus written all over it, and I'm a-itchin' to use it.
Like what I said? You might like my music
People, it was not a troll. I was genuinely interested in the information privacy/liberty thing.
The reason it came across as troll-ish was because the trivial example of contradictory ideas I used was - I realise now - inflammatory to about half of Americans, who seem to be about 90% of Slashdotters.
See here for full explanation:
Re:This is the BESTEST TROLL EVAR!!!! by thetan (Score:1) Friday August 05, @01:39PM
To all those wishing to engage in me debate about the death penalty, abortion, separation of church and state and other uninteresting issues: I'm not going to help you untangle your fucked up worldview.
(If you're desperate to have your say, why don't you run along to my blog and post on the forum there?)
To those who stayed on-topic with thoughtful replies, thanks for your discussion. I read and appreciated them.
To those who've emailed me with back-slapping congratulatory emails about "good troll" and "take that slashweenies" etc - it was not my intent, so save your praise.
-Thetan.