If you have a closet for your networking equipment, and you have an older desktop PC that's fairly efficient, and you're going to be buying bandwidth already, having a server of your own is a really good idea.
In addition, it can be a useful way to learn Linux and/or Windows Server admin skills.
However, this assumes you have all of the above, and the time to maintain the thing. Who fixes it if it dies? Now everyone relies on it. Who will make sure it is going to stay up for them?
If you work a guaranteed eight hours a day and no more, you might be able to fix it up when you get home or on the weekends. Sometimes however that's not an option.
Thus while the server is cheaper, the time to administrate it may not be.
Other aliens out there may have discovered what we haven't yet figured out:
Not everyone in the universe is nice.
Having a whole bunch of radio signals emanating from your planet is like saying "rob me! rape me! kill me!" to any wandering castoffs from alien civilization.
It might not even be organized military action; only pirates, or serial killers, or even just disaffected artists with a flesh fetish.
There's going to be a shift from passwords in general. Not only are they often insecure, but there's no verification that the person typing in the password is the user who owns it.
No, we're going to switch to biological means. This will be more secure, but as a side effect, there will be more assaults in which the eye/finger/penis is removed and used to gain access to these bio-protected systems.
There is only one time when you use real information: when you're paying for a service and it has a vested interest in keeping your information off the open internet.
Otherwise, it's time to fill in the B.S. Think of your best friend as a child, and a common object around the house. Those terms are your first name and last respectively.
Actually, to look at it more clearly, you're arguing for people to create objectionable speech. I'm suggesting that it will change society in ways that may not be positive. To a bigot, their preaching of bigotry (let's pick a neutral target and say they are bigoted against global warming) is harmless to you. You, on the other hand, don't want to live in a society where that is the norm.
You are telling me that it's great if someone wants to publish violent animal sex pornography; I am asking if the same applies to propaganda of another sort, and to make it interesting, presupposing that it was done with the force of commerce.
Let's hold up a bit. Whether or not he's wrong, I think the type of thinking he does is useful here.
Our entire society is detail-obsessed and linear thinking obsessed. Hazelton offers another view, which is a top-down analysis based on a high level of abstraction. If new ideas are going to emerge, they're going to come from this process, not more churning through details based on past precedent.
I think what he's doing here is quite valid. Markets need some regulation; that's clear, and as much as I'd like to agree with my libertarian friends, I can't stomach the idea of a world following the ethics of fast food and television, which is what would result with pure consumer markets.
However, it's important to make sure that regulation doesn't screw up the process of the markets themselves, and I think Hazelton's analysis here shows a good way to think about that kind of problem.
Whether or not I think he's wrong in this instance has no bearing on the validity of his inquiries as a whole.
Note also that the Finnish Freedom of Expression protects you against censorship by anyone. The U.S. equivalent protects you only against censorship by the Government.
Thank you for that addition. It's an important point. In the US, anyone with enough popularity can lobby for their propaganda to be taught in schools, which then causes large interest groups to drown out legitimate opinions.
It reminds me of something Stephen Pinker said in The Blank Slate, or maybe it was Socrates in The Republic. When something gets repeated enough, it builds inertia because people are personally terrified of not being part of the trend, and yet aren't brave enough to speak their minds otherwise, which is the one thing that could deliver them from their terror.
Why should you get your society where what you don't want is not allowed, but not others shouldn't get their own version?
Because it's not arbitrary. Some things work better than others. A society of obese people is going to have health problems.
Further, you could argue that we need to break up into sub-societies for people to have their own standards. But that sounds awful like the states' rights argument the Confederates were advancing.
Pickup trucks are perfectly legal; does that make them government-recommended?
Decisions that affect the health of a society are different from the type of mundane shopping decision you're arguing. Do you really think drug use is on par with what type of car you drive?
So what would be the social consequences?
The main consequence is that it determines what type of society you live in: does it have standards and values, or not?
That's not how a free society works, because everyone wants something different out of society. A lot of people want a society without black people, but they don't have the freedom to live in a society without black people.
I think you're confused here as well. The point of a free society is that you're not compelled to do things against your values. That doesn't mean there are no rules or standards. If anything, you've shown why our society has become "un-free" with the adoption of forced pluralism.
In substance, not much different than the original 1st amendment:
Everyone has the freedom of expression. Freedom of expression entails the right to express, disseminate and receive information, opinions and other communications without prior prevention by anyone.
Basically, you can express any idea you want, no matter how unpopular.
It has never had any bearing on pornography, which isn't an idea. It's just entertainment.
So you can't get animal porn and violent porn. Are you missing anything important?
I think it's interesting no one posted all the good things that were going to come of this. What you posted were fears (OMFG fascism) and somewhat circular reasoning about permissiveness.
The core question is whose rights are being violated by the existence of animal porn, that supposedly gives you the right to initiate force against those who view animal porn. Your rights do not get violated by the mere existence of the stuff, and to claim as such is an extraordinary stretch - how are your rights violated - are you unable to go out in public because there are posters of animal porn everywhere?
The point is that many of us don't want to live in a society where deviancy is the accepted norm. Legalizing animal porn takes that away from us.
Prohibition and proscription DO NOT WORK. Each person, and children *are* people, must develop in themselves informed reasons as to why certain behaviors are not healthy for them.
You've confused prohibition and a lack of honest answers.
I suggest honest answers, and a strong signal that certain behaviors are seen as bad for a reason.
Letting kids "make up their own minds" before they're ready results in the kind of situation you found yourself in.
When I had questions about sex, I did what any good nerd would do... I hit the encyclopedia and then, some of the more detailed sources in the library. It wasn't difficult to find and had no prurient content, thus didn't mislead me as you misled yourself.
Don't blame prohibition for where you wandered off track, and definitely don't do the same to your kids by enforcing no standards in some kind of tantrum against the authority you blame for your own mistakes.
"My opponent is an x, so his argument cannot be valid."
Here's your statement:
After all, controlling what is and is not allowed to be discussed is what allowed totalitarian ideologies to wield sufficient power to perform their atrocities, and the justifications to establish such censorship in the first place are similar to those used by those who want to censor pornography.
Totalitarian ideologies also prohibit murder; should we legalize murder then to avoid being totalitarian?
Your argument presupposes that the source of totalitarianism is censorship, when in fact the source of totalitarianism is total state control.
Similarity in argument doesn't make a valid comparison.
Then you reveal for the second time you don't recognize the ad hominem format. This is the statement you claimed was an ad hominem attack:
In addition, if you're over 13, it's a pointless and recognizably played out tactic.
Doesn't fit the form. An ad hominem of the same would be:
Restricting others from doing things you don't approve of, actively anti-freedom.
Allowing others to do things you don't want to do yourself, do not accept as moral/proper/right, is being a passive advocate for freedom.
Do you really think the world is this simple?
Allow everything then; now you've got maximal freedom and all our problems go away.
Right?
Oh -- that's not so. How could that be? It turns out that societies are defined by their values, not by allowing everyone to do everything (having no values).
The current dogma approved by your government, media and social group is that allowing any behavior is good, and restricting any behavior is bad.
But life isn't that simple, unless you're talking about a loyalty test to an authoritarian regime.
I've never quite understood how you can say "Allowing (x) to happen imposes your viewpoint on me".
It's a good day to extend that thinking.
Allowing (x) to happen does several things:
1. Signals social approval of (x) 2. Increases the frequency of (x) as a result 3. Creates social consequences of (x) 4. Disallows a society where (x) is not present
Let's look at these one by one.
First, your society is signaling to its own member that (x) is not just accepted behavior, but thus is recommended behavior. If we legalize eating raw octopus, we have said nothing is wrong with it; that puts it, in the binary of behaviors described by government, in the "approved" category by not being in the "disapproved category."
Second, that means more people are going to do it
Third, this means that all of us are going to experience the social consequences of it. We are all subsidizing it, in effect, even if we disagree with it.
Fourth, you have eliminated my ability to have the society I want, which doesn't include it.
Let's look at marijuana.
1. We legalize dope. You now have no reason to tell your kids not to do it, since gov't thinks it's OK.. 2. People smoke more of it. 3. Whatever social consequences of pot-smoking occur and we all pay for them instead of putting that money toward other things, like space exploration or ocean renewal. 4. I lose the ability to live in a society where pot-smoking is not normal. I may want this for moral reasons, ethical reasons, or even scientific reasons. But either way, I'm deprived.
You've fallen into a fallacy:
How is "You may do this, or may not, depending on your choice," more imposing than "You may not do this"? How in the world is freedom more imposing than restriction?
You're looking at a change in state of the law, not a change in state of society.
Either way, permission or denial, a change has been effected and that changes the overall experience of the society.
Calling it "freedom" (etc) is just a linguistic and political trope in this case, as it doesn't relate to the effect of what you're describing.
Permissiveness is not victimless. It is simply a change in status, much like denial. Thus, any condition is an imposition in effect.
Currently, our society has a bias in favor of permissiveness, using the "it's not a change to you" argument that you outlined above. However, this is fading, since people are seeing that all these permissive changes have long-term social consequences starting with the perception of approval.
S/he was pointing out that if you asked 10 different people what behaviour is unhealthy and should be banned, you would get 10 different answers. Who are you to decide that X should be banned, but Y should be allowed? Moreover, who are you to judge people who are considered by society's standards to be overweight?
What a trivial and obvious "point," which defaults to an argument that health standards are arbitrary.
I contend they are not, especially in the case of obesity.
Even rudimentary data collection, doctors' experience, and so on, show us that obesity leads to health problems.
It's not an arbitrary choice.
The same is true of many other factors.
Claiming that reality is subjective is the oldest fallacy in human experience!
And here we have a perfect example of someone willing to impose their viewpoints on others while bristling at the thought of others exposing him to things he thinks are "bad".
Slashdot Mirror
If you have a closet for your networking equipment, and you have an older desktop PC that's fairly efficient, and you're going to be buying bandwidth already, having a server of your own is a really good idea.
In addition, it can be a useful way to learn Linux and/or Windows Server admin skills.
However, this assumes you have all of the above, and the time to maintain the thing. Who fixes it if it dies? Now everyone relies on it. Who will make sure it is going to stay up for them?
If you work a guaranteed eight hours a day and no more, you might be able to fix it up when you get home or on the weekends. Sometimes however that's not an option.
Thus while the server is cheaper, the time to administrate it may not be.
Other aliens out there may have discovered what we haven't yet figured out:
Not everyone in the universe is nice.
Having a whole bunch of radio signals emanating from your planet is like saying "rob me! rape me! kill me!" to any wandering castoffs from alien civilization.
It might not even be organized military action; only pirates, or serial killers, or even just disaffected artists with a flesh fetish.
There's going to be a shift from passwords in general. Not only are they often insecure, but there's no verification that the person typing in the password is the user who owns it.
No, we're going to switch to biological means. This will be more secure, but as a side effect, there will be more assaults in which the eye/finger/penis is removed and used to gain access to these bio-protected systems.
There is only one time when you use real information: when you're paying for a service and it has a vested interest in keeping your information off the open internet.
Otherwise, it's time to fill in the B.S. Think of your best friend as a child, and a common object around the house. Those terms are your first name and last respectively.
- Dave Paperweight
Actually, to look at it more clearly, you're arguing for people to create objectionable speech. I'm suggesting that it will change society in ways that may not be positive. To a bigot, their preaching of bigotry (let's pick a neutral target and say they are bigoted against global warming) is harmless to you. You, on the other hand, don't want to live in a society where that is the norm.
You are telling me that it's great if someone wants to publish violent animal sex pornography; I am asking if the same applies to propaganda of another sort, and to make it interesting, presupposing that it was done with the force of commerce.
Let's hold up a bit. Whether or not he's wrong, I think the type of thinking he does is useful here.
Our entire society is detail-obsessed and linear thinking obsessed. Hazelton offers another view, which is a top-down analysis based on a high level of abstraction. If new ideas are going to emerge, they're going to come from this process, not more churning through details based on past precedent.
I think what he's doing here is quite valid. Markets need some regulation; that's clear, and as much as I'd like to agree with my libertarian friends, I can't stomach the idea of a world following the ethics of fast food and television, which is what would result with pure consumer markets.
However, it's important to make sure that regulation doesn't screw up the process of the markets themselves, and I think Hazelton's analysis here shows a good way to think about that kind of problem.
Whether or not I think he's wrong in this instance has no bearing on the validity of his inquiries as a whole.
Thank you for that addition. It's an important point. In the US, anyone with enough popularity can lobby for their propaganda to be taught in schools, which then causes large interest groups to drown out legitimate opinions.
It reminds me of something Stephen Pinker said in The Blank Slate, or maybe it was Socrates in The Republic. When something gets repeated enough, it builds inertia because people are personally terrified of not being part of the trend, and yet aren't brave enough to speak their minds otherwise, which is the one thing that could deliver them from their terror.
Neither fits the form. Now you're arguing like an AOLer.
If ABC news dedicated its resources to publishing nothing but Nazi propaganda, and started gaining in popularity, would you have the same view?
Because it's not arbitrary. Some things work better than others. A society of obese people is going to have health problems.
Further, you could argue that we need to break up into sub-societies for people to have their own standards. But that sounds awful like the states' rights argument the Confederates were advancing.
Argument by appearance: found nowhere where the intelligent gather.
Now this is getting silly:
Decisions that affect the health of a society are different from the type of mundane shopping decision you're arguing. Do you really think drug use is on par with what type of car you drive?
The main consequence is that it determines what type of society you live in: does it have standards and values, or not?
I think you're confused here as well. The point of a free society is that you're not compelled to do things against your values. That doesn't mean there are no rules or standards. If anything, you've shown why our society has become "un-free" with the adoption of forced pluralism.
In substance, not much different than the original 1st amendment:
Basically, you can express any idea you want, no matter how unpopular.
It has never had any bearing on pornography, which isn't an idea. It's just entertainment.
I think it's interesting no one posted all the good things that were going to come of this. What you posted were fears (OMFG fascism) and somewhat circular reasoning about permissiveness.
No one mentioned anything good.
You said:
In reference to my statement:
I'm going to just leave this here to show how radically different the two are.
Your entire argument rests on that misreading. I am sorry to inform you of this, but your argument just died.
I summarized your statement in the title, and turn it around on you:
You're telling me I have to live around animal porn in a society that demands it be normal. Who gives you that right?
See: you're stupid.
I realize you're probably just typing in a meme by reflex action, but here's the definition:
Now let's look at the rest of what you typed:
The point is that many of us don't want to live in a society where deviancy is the accepted norm. Legalizing animal porn takes that away from us.
You've confused prohibition and a lack of honest answers.
I suggest honest answers, and a strong signal that certain behaviors are seen as bad for a reason.
Letting kids "make up their own minds" before they're ready results in the kind of situation you found yourself in.
When I had questions about sex, I did what any good nerd would do... I hit the encyclopedia and then, some of the more detailed sources in the library. It wasn't difficult to find and had no prurient content, thus didn't mislead me as you misled yourself.
Don't blame prohibition for where you wandered off track, and definitely don't do the same to your kids by enforcing no standards in some kind of tantrum against the authority you blame for your own mistakes.
The form of ad hominem:
"My opponent is an x, so his argument cannot be valid."
Here's your statement:
Totalitarian ideologies also prohibit murder; should we legalize murder then to avoid being totalitarian?
Your argument presupposes that the source of totalitarianism is censorship, when in fact the source of totalitarianism is total state control.
Similarity in argument doesn't make a valid comparison.
Then you reveal for the second time you don't recognize the ad hominem format. This is the statement you claimed was an ad hominem attack:
Doesn't fit the form. An ad hominem of the same would be:
"This guy is 13, so his argument can't be valid."
Use the traditional test: is it only for prurient interest (titillation) or does it offer some other content?
Do you really think the world is this simple?
Allow everything then; now you've got maximal freedom and all our problems go away.
Right?
Oh -- that's not so. How could that be? It turns out that societies are defined by their values, not by allowing everyone to do everything (having no values).
The current dogma approved by your government, media and social group is that allowing any behavior is good, and restricting any behavior is bad.
But life isn't that simple, unless you're talking about a loyalty test to an authoritarian regime.
It's a good day to extend that thinking.
Allowing (x) to happen does several things:
1. Signals social approval of (x)
2. Increases the frequency of (x) as a result
3. Creates social consequences of (x)
4. Disallows a society where (x) is not present
Let's look at these one by one.
First, your society is signaling to its own member that (x) is not just accepted behavior, but thus is recommended behavior. If we legalize eating raw octopus, we have said nothing is wrong with it; that puts it, in the binary of behaviors described by government, in the "approved" category by not being in the "disapproved category."
Second, that means more people are going to do it
Third, this means that all of us are going to experience the social consequences of it. We are all subsidizing it, in effect, even if we disagree with it.
Fourth, you have eliminated my ability to have the society I want, which doesn't include it.
Let's look at marijuana.
1. We legalize dope. You now have no reason to tell your kids not to do it, since gov't thinks it's OK..
2. People smoke more of it.
3. Whatever social consequences of pot-smoking occur and we all pay for them instead of putting that money toward other things, like space exploration or ocean renewal.
4. I lose the ability to live in a society where pot-smoking is not normal. I may want this for moral reasons, ethical reasons, or even scientific reasons. But either way, I'm deprived.
You've fallen into a fallacy:
You're looking at a change in state of the law, not a change in state of society.
Either way, permission or denial, a change has been effected and that changes the overall experience of the society.
Calling it "freedom" (etc) is just a linguistic and political trope in this case, as it doesn't relate to the effect of what you're describing.
Permissiveness is not victimless. It is simply a change in status, much like denial. Thus, any condition is an imposition in effect.
Currently, our society has a bias in favor of permissiveness, using the "it's not a change to you" argument that you outlined above. However, this is fading, since people are seeing that all these permissive changes have long-term social consequences starting with the perception of approval.
Hope that cleared it up for you.
What a trivial and obvious "point," which defaults to an argument that health standards are arbitrary.
I contend they are not, especially in the case of obesity.
Even rudimentary data collection, doctors' experience, and so on, show us that obesity leads to health problems.
It's not an arbitrary choice.
The same is true of many other factors.
Claiming that reality is subjective is the oldest fallacy in human experience!
I don't think obesity is normal or should be encouraged.
The rest of your ad hominem attacks were ignored, since we're adults here.
Isn't that what you're doing to me?
"Accept animal sex, or you're a fascist!"
You're joking, right? or are you 13?