Not exactly, but close. The idea is that if you send me a document or data set, I should be able to use the software of my choice to read or analyze it.
Many software vendors try to lock you in with their software so that your data is inaccessible but through the manner they choose.
I have to confess that when I have no definitive argument to make I tend to pick on bad arguments.
I wasn't making a straw man argument for censureship. I do not advocate censureship any more than you advocate child porn.
The internet is special, but not so special that we can act with impunity. It does not exist in a vacuum and not everything on the internet is benign. Because the underlying technology fosters anonymity, it doesn't give license to behave illegally, or even merely irresponsibly.
Furthermore, the idea that our minds are blank slates and we are shaped by our environment is, of course, preposterous. But we are affected by the activities we engage in. The US army uses video games to desensitise recruits to killing. A higher ratio of soldiers pull the trigger in battle after going through the training. That's right. A significant portion of soldiers die in fire fights without firing a shot! The thought of killing or maiming is too abhorent. So, how does the army decrease the proportion? They use video games as part of a regime to affect recruit's behaviour.
Oh yeah, and remember that movie where the the football team bonded by lying in between lanes on a freeway? People actually went out and tried it! Some of them were run over. Hey, I'm not making this up.
On the other hand, in general, subliminal suggestion just doesn't work. Showing Coke in a single frame during a movie will not make us buy coke. If we do get up, we might get a drink from the drinking fountain or buy Dr Pepper.
No amount of brain-washing will make me think water runs up hill. The most it can do is get a conditioned response to certain stimuli and to break my will -- not control my thoughts.
More aptly, we can watch the Godfather without want to go out and whack somebody.
So where does that leave us? The great majority of us want to enjoy art and activities unconstrained by the sad behaviour of the marginally or temporarily irrational. (The truly insane we can do nothing about.) We don't want to hold artists and creative people responsible for crimes commited by fans.
I don't have an answer. I just know that black/white categorization doesn't help.
I had trouble with the line from the original post that reads, "Yes, indeed, we always do anything we are told, don't we." This comment trivializes the issue and the concerns of people.
Does the poster truly believe that we are not somehow shaped by the behaviour we routinely engage in? I don't think the poster does. He needs to make a more convincing argument, such as 'these sites are really about Goth fashion more than sticking the digits of a corpse into one's orifices. It's all a storm in a tea cup.'
Let's look at it from the the cop's perspective for a second. He's getting heat from his superiors, who are getting heat from ministers (parliament ministers, not religious (not that the two are mutually exclusive)). The story gets a lot of press, people react because they've been hearing about bad content for years, molesters enticing kids in chat rooms, etc. Much like the Janet Jackson fiasco, which, on it's own, was no big deal. We saw her tit, big deal.That night, my kids watched an episode of Arrested Development revolving around a character's lust for his cousin, and the shame associated with it. I didn't have to explain the tit, they've seen plenty!
Cops and prosecuters routinely see stuff that would curl our hair.
Sorry, I rambled a bit but I don't have time to clean it up. And you're right, the burden of proof belongs with the censor.
Obsession can lead otherwise reasonable people to commit unlawful and unethical acts. I normally don't like 'down the slippery slope' arguments, but people start with victumless activity but then find they need greater depravity to get the same thrill.
Pornographers note this all the time. They have to keep upping the ante to retain market share. Hence the latest round of porno's with simulated rape.
So, it's really not that we're mindless sheep. It's about the wiring of the brain and how certain paths get re-inforced with habitual behaviour. Once re-inforced, additional sensory input is required to acquire the same thrill.
Lastly, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. You'll have to do much better than 'you can't show cause and effect' when the stakes are so high.
This is only true when all parties come to the market on an equal footing.
However, history demonstrates that when a powerful group needs something, they will introduce scarcities and other circumstances to coerce a weaker group to engage in a behaviour they wouldn't otherwise normally.
Diamond mines in Africa? Maybe. Organ harvesting? Definately not.
You should read up on computational linguistics. This includes Chomsky, but he can be a bit hard to digest for initiates.
We all think in the same structures at the most fundamental level. But I'm sure that the grammar of one's language may strengthen certain cognitive algorithms over others.
That fact that you "sub-vocalize" in different languages means, just as you point out, that some languages are better at expressing certain ideas than others. For instance, there's some native South American language which has a preponderance of verbs. It has many ways to express "to sleep", including several variations that indicate different qualities of sleep one has while in one's canoe! So, a single word would connote the action, "I was sleeping peacefully in my canoe", or "I will be sleeping lightly in my canoe, listening for the arrival of the herd for their afternoon watering". (These are just guesses, not actual examples.)
Do you honestly believe any "group", particularly here on/., behaves any better than another?
I especially admire Jesuits (though I am not Catholic).
Oh yeah, Doctors Without Borders certainly rock. They have much more courage than I. I just sit here and make obnoxious pronouncements on/.
And one more, an Australian group, the Fred Hollows Foundation. They go around and fix people's glaucoma in villages throughout the developing world. When he was alive, Fred Hollows, famous WWII veteran, did it on a shoestring budget at great personal expense. He could have continued a lucrative private practice, but was so appalled by conditions within the Australian aboriginal community, that he gave it up and started treating aboriginals for free. The Fred Hollows foundation have saved 1000s from blindness.
I'm not going to be drawn into making any kind of assertion about slashdotters or subgroups of slashdotters!;-)
So I'm an enemy now? Certainly puts a damper on the discourse.
The neocons are particularly partial to distortions and straw man arguments. They also are have deep feelings of entitlement. Many left groups are similarly guilty. However, I don't agree with everything Senator John McCain says, but I assert he doesn't rely on distortions to hijack the debate.
By all means, argue the conservative viewpoint. But when you make a bad argument, I'm going to call you on it.
This Ninth Circuit paranoia is a neocon projection. They've been spouting this rubbish for years. I gave the alternative analysis, and also took the opportunity to expose neocon propaganda. Nothing personal; in fact, I did you a favor. Knowledge is power.
Of course the Ninth Circuit is the most overturned. It's geographically located in one of the fastest changing parts of the country (and world, for that matter), deals with the highest proportion of novel legal situations, and often must make determinations where there is no legal precedent. Those are the basic reasons it's decisions are overturned slightly more often than other circuits.
Please stop propagating Neocon distortions. If you want to be a conservative, fine. Please use sound arguments and avoid misrepresentations. It's a prerequisite to play the game.
...that the US 'hands off' approach to business...
Please do not perpetuate this fantasy. US businesses love 'hands on' as a market is first developed, then howl for 'hands off' when the market is safely divided among two or three mega-corps.
No space craft crashed because the the pub down the road serves up bitter in pints.
Odds are, the Pommies use metric for all things engineering. You won't see the weight of a Bentley described in stones. (Perhaps pounds, but Bentley is all about tradition.)
Hey, Mr Neocon Cant-bash-the-UN-enough: a global economy needs a global system of weights and measures. The Imperial system ain't up to it, so quit the kittens and get over it.
</rant>
Corporations can distort the market, cheat honest suppliers, benifit from publicly financed transport systems and universities, and use the money from obscene profits in ways I disagree with.
Leave out the 'use tax money in ways I disagree with'. It's such a bad argument, and goes against accepted economic definitions of wealth.
Do you want people to say, I disagree with the military being used to protect your corporate interests, and therefore I will deduct that portion from my income tax? Do you want privately financed armies? (Apologies in advance for the straw man argument.)
While not explicitly stated in your thoughtful post, I would like to assert that much of your argument is based on the 'rational being' assumption that underpins much of economic research.
Our own experience strongly suggests that people do not behave in ways consistent with maximizing their economic standing. People make trade offs all the time. In fact, while I can't name the references, there are many recent academic papers that do not make the 'rational being' assumption. (Wasn't the Nobel prize in economics recently awarded for such work?)
While 'the profit motive' has been very successful, it is also the source of much economic hardship. Witness Enron, MCI, Tyco, mutual funds abuse, etc. The economic success and excess of Europe and North America may be more a consequence of an abundance of natural resources and military might than market economy.
Lastly, I'd like to point out, again without source, that altruistic behaviour has been observed (and documented) in primate populations. While altruism was obliquely mentioned in your post, I believe the underlying assumption is that altruism doesn't exist or at most is negligible as a market and societal force.
Steven Pinker supplies a biological foundation for altruism; and the internet, a source of an incredible amount of economic activity, was born of the altruistic endeavours of thousands of programmers.
The idea that only free software can improve humanity or betters society reminds me of the socialist progaganda the hippie college students pass out.
Yes! I've always found the idea that closed source in a free market can increase wealth and better society as evangalized by kinder, gentler republican party propaganda to be much more palatable.
The acceptable alternative is to go find some other lower paying job, which will still be much higher paying than anything that is available to average Indians.
One, that's not acceptable, it breaks the social contract. Two, a low paying job here does not purchase more basics than similar pay there.
I do not dismiss those concerns of yours any more carelessly than those of Indians.
You did. You rejoiced that jobs were leaving one country and going to another with no regard for the consequences in the first country.
It is plainly dishonest and self-serving to claim that the inequality between India and the United States is hard to quantify.
It is plainly neither of those things. What metric or set of metrics would you choose? GNP? Average household income? How would you account for basic living expense variations? I bet I could feed my family very well for a week with USD$20 in India. You couldn't feed a family badly for two days in the US with $20.
Would you use portion of income to accommodation expense ratio? How do you compare a two bedroom house in the US to a two bedroom house in India? A lot of Indians in upper castes have full time servants. How would you account for that? How would you account for leisure and attitudes towards leisure? How would you account for work and attitudes towards work? Do Indians and US workers work at the same rate?
If an IT job is nothing but a drop in the bucket in India, then it's nothing but a drop in the bucket in the U.S.
No, the change in the equality balance will amount to a drop in the bucket. But, it will devastate many families. Why do these families make that sacrifice?
Why do you care so much?
I'll put that down as a simple oversite on your part and restrain myself as a gesture of good will.
It would behoove you to ponder the fact that you belong to the elite, educated class of the world. And you find yourself in this position not because of your own doing.
This is not news.
I am. There are more of those in India.
So, I'm in this position not because of my own doing, as you point out, but somehow I'm to bear the burden of correction by becoming destitute, or working poor at best?
You know, the majority of the money will not go to India, but to the management and shareholders of the US companies. So, effectively, there is a huge shift in wealth from the many to the few, with a nominal benefit to India.
Because of the existing social contract. If you don't want me to fairly earn a living wage, then an acceptable alternative must be made prior to the economic rug being pulled from under my family.
I'm all for a better global distribution of wealth. However, one cannot carelessly dismiss my ongoing costs, my obligations, my blood, sweat, and tears, my positive contribution to society, when praising change in a hard-to-quantify equality balance, the results of which would amount to less than a drop in the bucket and mainly benefit an elite, educated class of a country that is hardly guiltless.
You may not have obligations beyond yourself. You should be more considerate of those that do. After all, it is the economic activity of other people's children that will maintain economic security when you're old and wrinkly.
For "Will there be such a benefit to the commonwealth with DRM?...", please insert:
Will there be such a benefit to the commonwealth with a system of honor payment for electronic distribution? I suspect no because the content, goals of the content-providers, and goals of the consumer are too heterogenous. Furthermore, content providers view DRM as a way to create scarcity and therefore keep prices high. It's too profitable for them to give up.
Of course, you can always try charging a reasonable price and trusting people to be honest.
I appreciate this sentiment, I really do. However, the problem is then that a small core group subsidizes the larger group. For NPR, for which I've heard only about 8% of listeners actually support with donations (but there is some contention), this is mitigated by the fact that there is a benefit to the public at large. It is hard to quantify, but I posit that this is why the minority is willing to carry the non-contributing listeners.
Will there be such a benefit to the commonwealth with DRM? I suspect no, because content providers will view DRM as a way to keep purchase prices high and distribution costs low.
Great post. Let me remind you Gore is saying the people are corrupt and therefore demand harsh governance. This is how the people would support (or are supporting) their lavish life-style.
For instance, the US has the smallest middle class of any developed country.
Slashdot Mirror
Not exactly, but close. The idea is that if you send me a document or data set, I should be able to use the software of my choice to read or analyze it.
Many software vendors try to lock you in with their software so that your data is inaccessible but through the manner they choose.
I have to confess that when I have no definitive argument to make I tend to pick on bad arguments. I wasn't making a straw man argument for censureship. I do not advocate censureship any more than you advocate child porn.
The internet is special, but not so special that we can act with impunity. It does not exist in a vacuum and not everything on the internet is benign. Because the underlying technology fosters anonymity, it doesn't give license to behave illegally, or even merely irresponsibly.
Furthermore, the idea that our minds are blank slates and we are shaped by our environment is, of course, preposterous. But we are affected by the activities we engage in. The US army uses video games to desensitise recruits to killing. A higher ratio of soldiers pull the trigger in battle after going through the training. That's right. A significant portion of soldiers die in fire fights without firing a shot! The thought of killing or maiming is too abhorent. So, how does the army decrease the proportion? They use video games as part of a regime to affect recruit's behaviour.
Oh yeah, and remember that movie where the the football team bonded by lying in between lanes on a freeway? People actually went out and tried it! Some of them were run over. Hey, I'm not making this up.
On the other hand, in general, subliminal suggestion just doesn't work. Showing Coke in a single frame during a movie will not make us buy coke. If we do get up, we might get a drink from the drinking fountain or buy Dr Pepper.
No amount of brain-washing will make me think water runs up hill. The most it can do is get a conditioned response to certain stimuli and to break my will -- not control my thoughts.
More aptly, we can watch the Godfather without want to go out and whack somebody.
So where does that leave us? The great majority of us want to enjoy art and activities unconstrained by the sad behaviour of the marginally or temporarily irrational. (The truly insane we can do nothing about.) We don't want to hold artists and creative people responsible for crimes commited by fans.
I don't have an answer. I just know that black/white categorization doesn't help.
I had trouble with the line from the original post that reads, "Yes, indeed, we always do anything we are told, don't we." This comment trivializes the issue and the concerns of people. Does the poster truly believe that we are not somehow shaped by the behaviour we routinely engage in? I don't think the poster does. He needs to make a more convincing argument, such as 'these sites are really about Goth fashion more than sticking the digits of a corpse into one's orifices. It's all a storm in a tea cup.'
Let's look at it from the the cop's perspective for a second. He's getting heat from his superiors, who are getting heat from ministers (parliament ministers, not religious (not that the two are mutually exclusive)). The story gets a lot of press, people react because they've been hearing about bad content for years, molesters enticing kids in chat rooms, etc. Much like the Janet Jackson fiasco, which, on it's own, was no big deal. We saw her tit, big deal.That night, my kids watched an episode of Arrested Development revolving around a character's lust for his cousin, and the shame associated with it. I didn't have to explain the tit, they've seen plenty!
Cops and prosecuters routinely see stuff that would curl our hair.
Sorry, I rambled a bit but I don't have time to clean it up. And you're right, the burden of proof belongs with the censor.
Obsession can lead otherwise reasonable people to commit unlawful and unethical acts. I normally don't like 'down the slippery slope' arguments, but people start with victumless activity but then find they need greater depravity to get the same thrill.
Pornographers note this all the time. They have to keep upping the ante to retain market share. Hence the latest round of porno's with simulated rape.
So, it's really not that we're mindless sheep. It's about the wiring of the brain and how certain paths get re-inforced with habitual behaviour. Once re-inforced, additional sensory input is required to acquire the same thrill.
Lastly, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. You'll have to do much better than 'you can't show cause and effect' when the stakes are so high.
This is only true when all parties come to the market on an equal footing.
However, history demonstrates that when a powerful group needs something, they will introduce scarcities and other circumstances to coerce a weaker group to engage in a behaviour they wouldn't otherwise normally.
Diamond mines in Africa? Maybe. Organ harvesting? Definately not.
You should read up on computational linguistics. This includes Chomsky, but he can be a bit hard to digest for initiates.
We all think in the same structures at the most fundamental level. But I'm sure that the grammar of one's language may strengthen certain cognitive algorithms over others.
That fact that you "sub-vocalize" in different languages means, just as you point out, that some languages are better at expressing certain ideas than others. For instance, there's some native South American language which has a preponderance of verbs. It has many ways to express "to sleep", including several variations that indicate different qualities of sleep one has while in one's canoe! So, a single word would connote the action, "I was sleeping peacefully in my canoe", or "I will be sleeping lightly in my canoe, listening for the arrival of the herd for their afternoon watering". (These are just guesses, not actual examples.)
Now, back to my canoe....
That was very inciteful. You must have a liberal arts background.
Rock like Atlas, Brother!
I especially admire Jesuits (though I am not Catholic).
Oh yeah, Doctors Without Borders certainly rock. They have much more courage than I. I just sit here and make obnoxious pronouncements on /.
And one more, an Australian group, the Fred Hollows Foundation. They go around and fix people's glaucoma in villages throughout the developing world. When he was alive, Fred Hollows, famous WWII veteran, did it on a shoestring budget at great personal expense. He could have continued a lucrative private practice, but was so appalled by conditions within the Australian aboriginal community, that he gave it up and started treating aboriginals for free. The Fred Hollows foundation have saved 1000s from blindness.
I'm not going to be drawn into making any kind of assertion about slashdotters or subgroups of slashdotters! ;-)
So I'm an enemy now? Certainly puts a damper on the discourse.
The neocons are particularly partial to distortions and straw man arguments. They also are have deep feelings of entitlement. Many left groups are similarly guilty. However, I don't agree with everything Senator John McCain says, but I assert he doesn't rely on distortions to hijack the debate.
By all means, argue the conservative viewpoint. But when you make a bad argument, I'm going to call you on it.
This Ninth Circuit paranoia is a neocon projection. They've been spouting this rubbish for years. I gave the alternative analysis, and also took the opportunity to expose neocon propaganda. Nothing personal; in fact, I did you a favor. Knowledge is power.
Bless the West Coast.
Of course the Ninth Circuit is the most overturned. It's geographically located in one of the fastest changing parts of the country (and world, for that matter), deals with the highest proportion of novel legal situations, and often must make determinations where there is no legal precedent. Those are the basic reasons it's decisions are overturned slightly more often than other circuits.
Please stop propagating Neocon distortions. If you want to be a conservative, fine. Please use sound arguments and avoid misrepresentations. It's a prerequisite to play the game.
Please do not perpetuate this fantasy. US businesses love 'hands on' as a market is first developed, then howl for 'hands off' when the market is safely divided among two or three mega-corps.
No space craft crashed because the the pub down the road serves up bitter in pints.
Odds are, the Pommies use metric for all things engineering. You won't see the weight of a Bentley described in stones. (Perhaps pounds, but Bentley is all about tradition.)
...the longer we wait to convert.
Gawdamm--Looks like Jimmie Carter was right.
Hey, Mr Neocon Cant-bash-the-UN-enough: a global economy needs a global system of weights and measures. The Imperial system ain't up to it, so quit the kittens and get over it.
</rant>
Hooopla! that was nearly as good as coffee.
Corporations can distort the market, cheat honest suppliers, benifit from publicly financed transport systems and universities, and use the money from obscene profits in ways I disagree with.
Leave out the 'use tax money in ways I disagree with'. It's such a bad argument, and goes against accepted economic definitions of wealth.
Do you want people to say, I disagree with the military being used to protect your corporate interests, and therefore I will deduct that portion from my income tax? Do you want privately financed armies? (Apologies in advance for the straw man argument.)
While not explicitly stated in your thoughtful post, I would like to assert that much of your argument is based on the 'rational being' assumption that underpins much of economic research.
Our own experience strongly suggests that people do not behave in ways consistent with maximizing their economic standing. People make trade offs all the time. In fact, while I can't name the references, there are many recent academic papers that do not make the 'rational being' assumption. (Wasn't the Nobel prize in economics recently awarded for such work?)
While 'the profit motive' has been very successful, it is also the source of much economic hardship. Witness Enron, MCI, Tyco, mutual funds abuse, etc. The economic success and excess of Europe and North America may be more a consequence of an abundance of natural resources and military might than market economy.
Lastly, I'd like to point out, again without source, that altruistic behaviour has been observed (and documented) in primate populations. While altruism was obliquely mentioned in your post, I believe the underlying assumption is that altruism doesn't exist or at most is negligible as a market and societal force. Steven Pinker supplies a biological foundation for altruism; and the internet, a source of an incredible amount of economic activity, was born of the altruistic endeavours of thousands of programmers.
Yes! I've always found the idea that closed source in a free market can increase wealth and better society as evangalized by kinder, gentler republican party propaganda to be much more palatable.
One, that's not acceptable, it breaks the social contract. Two, a low paying job here does not purchase more basics than similar pay there.
You did. You rejoiced that jobs were leaving one country and going to another with no regard for the consequences in the first country.
It is plainly neither of those things. What metric or set of metrics would you choose? GNP? Average household income? How would you account for basic living expense variations? I bet I could feed my family very well for a week with USD$20 in India. You couldn't feed a family badly for two days in the US with $20.
Would you use portion of income to accommodation expense ratio? How do you compare a two bedroom house in the US to a two bedroom house in India? A lot of Indians in upper castes have full time servants. How would you account for that? How would you account for leisure and attitudes towards leisure? How would you account for work and attitudes towards work? Do Indians and US workers work at the same rate?
No, the change in the equality balance will amount to a drop in the bucket. But, it will devastate many families. Why do these families make that sacrifice?
I'll put that down as a simple oversite on your part and restrain myself as a gesture of good will.
This is not news.
So, I'm in this position not because of my own doing, as you point out, but somehow I'm to bear the burden of correction by becoming destitute, or working poor at best?
You know, the majority of the money will not go to India, but to the management and shareholders of the US companies. So, effectively, there is a huge shift in wealth from the many to the few, with a nominal benefit to India.
Because of the existing social contract. If you don't want me to fairly earn a living wage, then an acceptable alternative must be made prior to the economic rug being pulled from under my family.
I'm all for a better global distribution of wealth. However, one cannot carelessly dismiss my ongoing costs, my obligations, my blood, sweat, and tears, my positive contribution to society, when praising change in a hard-to-quantify equality balance, the results of which would amount to less than a drop in the bucket and mainly benefit an elite, educated class of a country that is hardly guiltless.
You may not have obligations beyond yourself. You should be more considerate of those that do. After all, it is the economic activity of other people's children that will maintain economic security when you're old and wrinkly.
Oh, ...ok, you feed and educate my children.
How desperate do you need to be? Don't complain when all the mortgage foreclosures drive up interest rates.
I doubt the University educated programmers of India, while perhaps not enjoying our standard of living, are the desperate ones by Asian standards.
For "Will there be such a benefit to the commonwealth with DRM?...", please insert:
Will there be such a benefit to the commonwealth with a system of honor payment for electronic distribution? I suspect no because the content, goals of the content-providers, and goals of the consumer are too heterogenous. Furthermore, content providers view DRM as a way to create scarcity and therefore keep prices high. It's too profitable for them to give up.
I appreciate this sentiment, I really do. However, the problem is then that a small core group subsidizes the larger group. For NPR, for which I've heard only about 8% of listeners actually support with donations (but there is some contention), this is mitigated by the fact that there is a benefit to the public at large. It is hard to quantify, but I posit that this is why the minority is willing to carry the non-contributing listeners.
Will there be such a benefit to the commonwealth with DRM? I suspect no, because content providers will view DRM as a way to keep purchase prices high and distribution costs low.
After the New Economy
LOL!!
Great post. Let me remind you Gore is saying the people are corrupt and therefore demand harsh governance. This is how the people would support (or are supporting) their lavish life-style.
For instance, the US has the smallest middle class of any developed country.
(Apologies for the vagueness. I'm short on time.)
Yours is brilliant: "he seems to be a brighter tack...." Maybe not lol, but certainly ctm (chuckle to myself).