Better analogy is if you left confidential info clearly visible and readable in your car, and someone came along and saw it through the window, then told a nearby reporter about it, etc.
An even better analogy: you left confidential info *about me* clearly visible and readable in your car. I had trusted you to keep it secure and I had not noticed that you were failing to do that. He saw it, and let me know in the only way he could.
I really can't understand all those "hacking victim" apologists (note the quotes). Currently it is illegal for me to accidentally discover that my bank/phone company/isp is leaking my information or allowing transactions in my name. Without that knowledge, I can't even "vote with my wallet" and choose a more secure venue. Yet the "hacking victim" apologists only focus on how wrong the "hacker" was, instead of that his actions were the only way to learn about the "victim"'s gross negligence.
Obviously your post is already receiving comments from apologists, "he had to poke", "he copied the information" (both of which are obvious, specially the copying, which is automatic, and required if you want to give warning). Those replies - people speaking against their own interests in defence of a negligent mega-corporation - sadden me.
There is no difference between asking google to retrive information and provide a report than it is to request a secretary to find all references to a contract and provide a report.
There is one, very important, difference: asking google to retrieve information is much more efficient than requesting a secretary to do so. That's pretty much the point of asking google. There are people in this forum who will claim that the difference is essential. I find that position nonsensical, but by ignoring it, you leave open a point of attack. So I would make your conclusion more explicit:
The "report" in both cases should be considered free speech, regardless of how efficient were the means used to obtain it.
(I would also go beyond free speech here and include those actions that are considered correct or legal to do by yourself but become illegal if you ask someone else for assistance, free or not. But extending on this idea would probably be offtopic)
Seriously, I'll be truly amazed if the existence of a God is ever disproved
Re-read his post. He didn't say that the existence of a God was disproved. He said that Christianity was. Christianity makes some very specific statements about their god, some of which are nonsensical (like torturing itself to death so it could forgive "us" for a grievance committed by our supposed ancestors, which we inherit only because he made it so in the first place), some are contradictory (like being benevolent and... well, all his cruelty in the bible). Regardless of the (in)ability to rule out the concept of a "general" creator, specific statements of christianity can be disproved.
Since the people who most vocally support evolution almost always conflate the concepts of "evolution" (small-e, adaptation of a species over time) with "Evolution" (capital-e, origin of life)
What? As the GP told you, "Evolution", regardless of how you chose to capitalize it, says nothing about the origin of life. It explains the origin of *species*, not *life*, i.e, the observation that the biosphere today is wildly different than the biosphere several million years ago, giving an explanation of how it happens that is accurate enough to make predictions based on them ("if we do this, we should see speciacion... oh, look, speciacion!"). There is no "origin of life evolution". There is "abiogenesis", but claiming that abiogenesis is science stepping into religion demonstrates a severe lack of knowledge of what "science" and "abiogenesis" are (hint: the evidence for abiogenesis is more than "this self-contradictory book says so". The Miller-Urey experiment was a confirmation of a prediction based on the primordial soup theory -- that's science at its finest).
Read "sufficiently reliable", if you really want, in the sense that you have to assume that your memory is sufficiently reliable to reason.
Crap. And you are unable to infer from my position from the rest of the posts that that is precisely what I was saying all along. Come on, honestly, cant you figure out that given the context, "if I assume that all my memories are wrong" doesn't mean anything more than "extremely unreliable"? Otherwise the statement wouldn't make any sense.
My OP asked for a proof of some aspect of the real world. That's a question seeking truth, not utility.
Holy shit. You are really good at this [trolling thing]. No, your question asked for proof. That's seeking proof, not truth nor utility. Just proof. Even assuming that you asked for truth (I'll grant you that if you want), your question was malformed, and so was your answer: you can't prove anything through faith. I stated that before. I merely answer the next question that comes to mind, which is how to behave, and that is a question of utility, not truth. My bad for giving a useful answer.
Really, my bad. I think there is only one way of dealing with you. Reboot. Ask the question again with a precise definitions of all your terms, and I shall answer that and only that, so that you don't get "confused" (clearly on purpose) about what we are talking about. At this point, I have no idea of what you are asking. Proceed under that assumption.
Given that you are not going to read, replying would be a waste of time.
The alternative is not that your memory is always wrong but that it is unreliable. Geeks and their false binaries!
*sigh*. I don't know how to classify this. You just changed the argument right there. We know that memory is unreliable! (If we assume that it is, of course it is. If you assume that it isn't absolutely unreliable, once you get to neuroscience, you conclude that it is unreliable, eliminating contradictions even). I stated this already. So I guess I don't have "faith" in my memory being reliable because, well, I don't claim that it is.
What are we discussing, if not truth?
Moving the goalposts much? Your original question wasn't about truth.
That was not my question. I asked why do you place higher certainty on your perception than your memory, not which one is more useful.
No. You questioned the difference. I don't place so much certainty on my perception. It's quite irrelevant anyway.
No, these were my exact words: "Why do you place a higher certainty on your perception than on your memory? Why would you make a distinction?" And now I have to ask why questioning your perception is irrelevant but questioning your memory isn't.
What rot. Faith of all sorts is tested and rejected all the time. I think you're trying to build a strawman to fit what I assume are preconceptions about religion.
No, I'm not building a strawman. Before embarking on the reply, as a non-english speaker, I did a "define:faith" in google, just to be sure of the meaning. First meaning I got: "Complete trust or confidence in someone or something". If that's not the same, I apologize. But that's irrelevant. You are extending the definition of "faith" to cover each of the contradictory hypotheses that I assumed. Did I have "faith" in that memory is completely unreliable when I made that assumption, and then changed my "faith" when I assumed the contrary? If you answer "yes": well, great, I had "faith" then, but only after you twisted the meaning beyond recognition.
If I assume that my senses and memory are worth anything, I arrive to a set of conclusions. If I assume the contrary, I arrive to another set of conclusions.
Even to argue like this requires a faith ("assumption" about some aspect of reality without evidence) in your memory.
Let me get this straight. Assuming that something is true in order to advance an argument requires "faith" in that something?. Ok. Twisted meaning of faith. I also have faith in the axioms of euclidean geometry, and sometimes I even have faith in the axioms of non-euclidean geometries, because I assume them to be true when I do geometry.
It just happens that one of those sets of conclusions is empty.
It's not empty. It just means that you perhaps can't define life and reason and science in the way you may want.
"in the way I may want"? No, it means that if I assume that memory is absolutely unreliable, I'm not even able to think, because by the time I finish a thought, the previous one is already in the past, i.e, a memory. Even the assumption that memories are wrong are just a memory by the time that you start thinking about the consequences. "I'm assuming that all my memories are wrong. Given that... oh, wait, I remember that all my memories are wrong. Including this one. So I'll assume that all my memories are wrong. What I was doing? Oh, yes, trying to get to any conclusion under the assumption that all my memories are wrong. But that is a memory. So it is wrong. Why is it wrong? Ah, because I assumed that memory is wrong. Gah, I just remembered that. Invalid. Why?...".
and now I'm considering the other assumption, which I haven't finished exploring.
Recalling that you must assume that your memory is reliable in order to be able to rationally consider whether it is reliable.
Recalling that when? While I'm doing my reasoning? Well, yes, I recall "I'm assuming that my memory is reliable". But that's just my assumption, so there is no contradiction there. To think about the consequences of the assumption that memory is reliable I must assume that memory is reliable. Duh. To think derive any arithmetic result, I must assume the axioms. There is no circular thinking there. I'm not concluding my assumptions in either case.
What's more, I'm betting you're going to spend the majority of your life assuming it despite a total lack of evidence - i.e. faith.
I am touched that you are so keen to want me to respond;-).
Oh, please, don't be condescending. That's ridiculous. Either respond honestly, or don't do it at all.
I'm out of productive concentration today, so here goes...
I believe you. 28 Slashdot posts so far today. It doesn't seem that you are even trying to concentrate.
Why do you place a higher certainty on your perception than on your memory?
Memory is required to reason, while perception is only required to observe. We can do mathematics in our mind's eye (per Plato) but only because we possess memory. In particular, without memory we could identify neither contradiction nor perform philosophical induction. Memory is something more fundamental than any perception we have of the external world.
That was not my question. I asked why do you place higher certainty on your perception than your memory, not which one is more useful.
Why would you use a loaded word like "faith", instead of, let's say, "assumption"?
Faith is a type of assumption. Consider:
1) An applied assumption about an imagined world - an axiom;
2) An applied assumption about the real world based on observation but lacking theory - a working hypothesis;
3) An applied assumption about the real world lacking any evidence - faith.
No, it isn't, unless you stretch the word "faith" to mean that. An assumption is just that, an assumption. "Faith" is an unquestionable belief, an assumption isn't. If I assume that my senses and memory are worth anything, I arrive to a set of conclusions. If I assume the contrary, I arrive to another set of conclusions. It just happens that one of those sets of conclusions is empty. You are free to linger on that set. I'm not claiming the truthfulness of either assumption. I'm just claiming that I considered one assumption, got the empty set, and now I'm considering the other assumption, which I haven't finished exploring.
I'm making a cold, calculated decision between the two assumptions, on the basis of which one is more useful.
Usefulness is not a measure of truth.
When did I say it was?
To prove that the question is not pointless, you need to show that the answers lead to [observably] different results.
OK, you're proposing a definition for what makes a question "not pointless". Various responses:
1) Given enough time, whatever humans
do, I don't think the universe will be observably different.
I didn't say "given enough time". I didn't say the set of results "X time into the future, for some value of X". I also didn't say that it was a sufficient condition for usefulness, merely a necessary condition. But you are right, after the extinction of the human race, the question of whether I am blowing my nose right now, will be unanswerable and pointless, even though it is not pointless now. Feel free to construct an scenario in which the competing answers to your question lead to observably different results.
Any two alternatives only make a fleeting difference, just as a constantly tricked mind may be repeatedly remembering an inconsistency then forgetting that it has ever identified that consistency. Your little "observably" is implicitly considered below, though it may be that we're just not yet sufficiently advanced to devise an experiment to identify inconsistencies;
Let me simplify this for you. I "observe" (for some definition of "observe") my memory (whatever that is), and perceive it to be (sufficiently) accurate. Even if my memory is not accurate and my perception of it is just an illusion, I still perceive it to be (sufficiently) accurate. That is what makes your question unanswerable, and that is precisely what makes it meaningless
Dropping the F word again doesn't answer the AC's post.
Please address the AC's point, or go away. I'm not planning on "stealing" the AC's thread. I just want to keep you honest, or to uncover your dishonesty. Address the AC's point and you may deserve a further thought; drop another "you need to have faith" and you'll prove that you are trolling.
Really. It does not matter if the entire universe is nothing but a figment of my imagination and nothing and nobody else is real. If I can still use science to observe and predict, then science is useful for that. And that is how it is different from faith.
Hint: he stated that the question is pointless. You have received enough replies to have an idea of what that means, including mine, which you decided not to address. Hint #2: To prove that the question is not pointless, you need to show that the answers lead to [observably] different results. Go.
Really. It does not matter if the entire universe is nothing but a figment of my imagination and nothing and nobody else is real. If I can still use science to observe and predict, then science is useful for that.
And that is how it is different from faith.
Please have the intellectual honesty to address the point before being condescending:
That's OK, though. Once you've accepted it, all science is good and proper.
Well said. It does interest me that a simple question provokes so much emotion, though.
That's easy. It provokes so much emotion because you intentionally chose the wording to provoke that emotion ("prove... other than through faith", in an anti-faith thread). You can't prove/show anything through "faith", the question itself is ill formed. However, had you posted the question in another forum (say, a philosophy class, or even another thread on slashdot), or had used less inflammatory words, the result would most likely have been different.
Try this: "Tell me why you think that your memory is reliable."
"Tell me", instead of "prove" (or just drop the first half of the question), because you know well that if you reduce any question to "but it all may just be an illusion", which was your goal, then nothing can be proven. "Think that", instead of "show through faith", because faith, specially in the context of this thread, implies a suspension of reasoning.
Your use of "prove" and "faith" was to provoke a reaction, which is perfectly acceptable if your goal is to stir a discussion (a technique used often in philosophy classes). But wondering afterwards why the "simple question" provokes the reaction, when you worded it precisely with that goal, is hypocritical.
And I don't care whether what I am seeing right now exists - all that matters is that I perceive its existence.
But I can't be so sure about one second ago. This is why I have to have faith in my memory, i.e. trust it without proof.
Why do you place a higher certainty on your perception than on your memory? Why would you make a distinction? If there is no distinction and trusting your senses is a matter of faith, why do you need to ask the (then) superfluous question about the accuracy of memory? If trusting your senses is not a matter of faith, why then trusting your memory is?
You do as well, of course. Embrace your faith.
And what's your point? Why would you use a loaded word like "faith", instead of, let's say, "assumption"? What's your agenda behind the use of that word? I do embrace my assumption that both my memory and perception are somewhat reliable. No, I don't have faith in it. I assume it to be true. I could assume it is false (and probably some people do), but the assumption that memory and/or perception are absolutely unreliable is less useful than the assumption that they are reliable, *even* if they turn out to be absolutely unreliable. That is, even if all my memories and perceptions are false and my thoughts *right now* where the only truth (side question: why would my thoughts *right now* be spared, as implied by "I think therefore I am"?), the assumption of unreliability is still no more useful than the assumption of reliability. So, right now, I'm not having "faith" that I read your message a few minutes ago. I'm making a cold, calculated decision between the two assumptions, on the basis of which one is more useful.
Engineers never reduce enough. Otherwise they would be mathematicians, and not be so laughably angered by philosophy.
Well, I am a mathematician... I am not angered by philosophy, but I'm angered by crappy philosophy. I'm curious, though: as a mathematician, do you take your axioms as "faith" as well? (If "yes": really!? If "no": why not?)
Of course, one must wonder, why YOUR credit cards would be used on a company computer... don't want the feds to track the downloads to your home perhaps?
Buying stuff on behalf of your employer, perhaps? (to be refunded later).
Gah, I should have kept reading. this post just answered my question:
But ordinary English speakers will often take the other definition. They'll take it to mean 'concentrating on the accumulation of ownership of stuff rather than on social relationships, personal achievements, intellectual matters, helping people, being a good member of society and so on'. Spoken about scientists especially this is plainly ridiculous. But it's hardly beyond some people to exploit the ambiguity.
If that makes me a "materialist", so be it, even though I did to choose to be called that.
I don't get it... What's so bad about being called a "materialist"? Mind you, I have only passing knowledge of the philosophical meanings, I've never really studied it (my philosophy professor was lacking... she seemed to believe that philosophy was about who could better ridicule opposing point of views), and I end up conflating materialism and physicalism together.
We just try not to involve our superstitious beliefs into that process, and manage hypothetical assertions with some degree of rigor.
I don't think that/makes/ you a materialist, but your overall post makes me think that you are nonetheless.
Disclaimer: I'm not a native English speaker, so I may just be lost with the "colloquial" meaning of the word. This is kind of the point of my question:D. For comparison, where I come from, "materialism" refers just to the philosophical definition (afaik), but "idealism" ranges from the philosophical meaning to a colloquial "complete disregard of the reality around you to the point of believing that thinking about it will be enough to change it".
I have a son who is autistic. [...] BTW, he graduated with honors and made me one proud Dad.
This is offtopic (modders: please mod me offtopic!) but... it seems you are a awesome dad. I have no children yet, but I sometimes worry about them having some kind of disability and not knowing how to act if that happened. Your post, short as it was, is inspiring. Thank you for sharing it! And of course... keep up the good work.
Awesome, thank you!
Unfortunately, I don't own any bull. But I plan on getting a dog. If you want, you can move close to me and pick up its shit when I walk it. In fact, I would gladly authorize it.
So do you make it a habit to just go rummaging around in people's garbage? I imagine if someone was cleaning out their garage and had stuff all over their driveway and then went inside for a moment, you'd feel free to take whatever since it's in a public place.
I think I'm feeding a troll, so I will stop now. You seem to be too dense to understand that if you put something private in a location where it is expected that people will see it, say, a web server, a public folder, or painted in giant letters at the front of your house, and someone sees it, he will not even know he is not supposed to be seeing it until after he sees it. That's not taking anything from anyone.
Just to drive the point through: I'm posting this on a public forum, but I'm explicitly NOT AUTHORIZING YOU to read it. So, if you even read this post (let alone reading this sentence), you are already "taking shit that doesn't belong to you". What's that, you didn't know it? Tough luck, according to you, that doesn't matter, you accessed my post anyway. That's a weird situation... if you reply, you'll be disproving your own point!
They copied what any reasonable person would know is confidential information. They knew it was confidential when they took and that's why they tried blackmail.
You are arguing that the mere act of accessing a public document on a public folder is wrong. I'm saying that it is not the act of accessing it what is wrong (because anyone could have accessed it, without any warning or notice that it was out of limits, despite it being in a public place), but what they did with it afterwards. That's what's wrong. Who is the dense one?
All your stupid analogies of hiking through forests and opens doors are irrelevant. They STOLE the information. If you can't recognize that then you are lost.
For crying out loud, can you be any more stupid? Not only I'm not the one who posted that analogy, my posts have been about how unnecessary and intellectually weak it is to resort to analogies for something so trivial as this.
Oh, wait, you are the same one I just replied to. The one who can't read posts, and can't defend his point without using erroneous analogies. My bad. I should look at the usernames before replying. The GGGP stated:
By your reasoning, I could be arrested for trespassing whenever I walk through an unfenced forest not posted "hiking is authorized." Internet common practice and reasonable assumption is that anything neither protected nor explicitly prohibited, is allowed.
Please tell (or not), who authorized you to read this slashdot post? Or to visit slashdot in the first place? And how do you know if that authorization is valid? Or, when you clicked on the link to see my post, did you just assume that you were authorized to access it?
Btw, if you put your desk with all your private information in the middle of a busy sidewalk, where you expect people to walk by and look (the closest analogy I can think with a desk and a public web server, but really, no stupid analogies are necessary, given that you,/right now/, are just assuming that you are authorized to read slashdot), but don't want anyone to look at it... you have serious mental issues. Use some common sense. Put the desk inside the house. Don't hang your private information in a public space and expect the rest of the world to just know that we can't look that way (even if the law supports it).
You: "Well, your honor, the money was right there in the open"
Another analogy... You really can't understand withtout them, right?
As far as the file of usernames, why did you send it to yourself? Why didn't you bring it to their attention right away?
Because it was a file with an innocuous name, sitting in a public folder, together with other public files, and didn't know what it was until months later, and when I learned, I did bring it to their attention? You really can't read, huh?
This really takes the cake. Use some common sense! If it's something of value and clearly was not intended to be public, then don't copy/save it. Is the concept really all that difficult to understand?
Yes, that really takes the cake indeed. How do you propose to use common sense about the contents of the file before seeing said file? Is the concept really all that difficult to understand? (And, to make the cake even better... before now, you were not claiming that the issue was with saving the file, but merely with accessing it. If you decide to change your claim to "not take extra steps to keep it once you notice that it was not for public access", then we may be in agreement. But that was not your position until now.)
As I said, go ahead and do it and try your arguments out.
Having a tyrannical police force following stupid laws is not something to be proud of. It would be dumb to "do it and try your arguments out", but that still doesn't mean that you are right.
Where do you draw the lines between (legally) secured data that requires "hacking" to copy, private but inadequately secured data and open data?
Let me introduce you to the Continuum fallacy. Just because one can't draw a line, it doesn't mean that there is no difference. Typing a publicly accessible URL in a browser and having the server return the data referenced by that URL is not hacking, even if the owner "wanted" to keep it private but never told you. Conversely, finding a SQL injection and using it to get a dump of the database is wrong, even if the attack could be executed by just typing parameters in the URL bar. Where do you draw the line? There is no line! These two examples are remarkably similar.
In this case it seems clear that the hackers were aware that the data was supposed to be secure and their blackmail attempt proves that their intent was to gather and use data that was supposed by its owner to be private.
If they found the file, noticed the "potential", and decided to blackmail, then no, their intent wasn't to gather and use the data, their intent was just blackmail. But if they wanted to blackmail and went looking for something private to use, and typed the URL hoping to get the private data, then yes, they knew they weren't authorised and accessed it anyway - they are in the wrong both for accessing it and for the blackmail. In any case, they are on the hook for blackmail, so I have no problem with letting a jury decide their intent as well.
If you walked by a car, saw there was a wad of twenties on the front seat AND that the window was open...are you authorized to take it?
Did you not read the post you just replied to? I read it twice, but found no mention of any car with a wad of twenties. Is it that you can't understand his reasoning and you need to make up flawed analogies to make your point?
There is no difference between typing "http://amazon.com" in your browser, and typing "http://some/url/that/is/supposed/to/be/private". The server has a very precise way of informing you whether you are authorised or not to access the document: via status codes, and of course, denying access. If the server, for whatever reason, fails to deny access, a reasonable user has no way of knowing that he wasn't supposed to be accessing that document, until he sees it, but at that time, he already has it. The ethical issue is what he does with it afterwards, even if he typed the url on purpose ("what would happen if I type this url? / Oh, crap, it gave me the file!").
If you happen across a website that has some link to people's credit cards and the CCW codes and other personal information, are you authorized to take them, let alone use them?
To use them? No. To take them? In your own example, if I click on a link and end up with a bunch of credit cards, whether I had authorisation or not is a moot point: I have no way of knowing whether I'm authorised or not to access that data until either I'm denied access, or I receive the data and judge for myself.
I suppose that in your view, the Internet is a very scary place to be. Every time you click on a link, you risk hacking into someone else's server!
Personal anecdote: back in the days of dial-up BBSs, around the time I installed linux for the first time, I was logged in to my provider composing an email. Trying to attach a file, I found another called "shadow~" and sent it to myself. It just had a bunch of usernames with some garbage after it, so I ignored it. A couple of months later I had learned much more, and I remembered the file, so I went back to see if it was still there and if it really was the shadow file. It was, world-readable, and updated very recently! I guess that makes me, in your eyes, a criminal. Fortunately, not in the ISP's eyes: I called them, managed to get in touch with the technical staff, told them what I had found, and an hour later I got a thank you email with an explanation (a daily backup script was leaving a copy in the wrong place) and an invite to visit their campus to burn a copy of their RedHat disks because mine were outdated. If it were up to you, they should have jailed me instead for "stealing" a file that, at the time, had no idea of what it was.
(The GP also made the point that unfortunately, the laws favour your views instead of common sense, so clicking on a link can very well be scary. Ironically, that attitude makes us all less secure: I can't even try to see whether the data I give to the provider is minimally secure, and if by some freak accident I discover that it isn't, I would have to keep quiet and hope no one knows that I know)
Slashdot Mirror
Better analogy is if you left confidential info clearly visible and readable in your car, and someone came along and saw it through the window, then told a nearby reporter about it, etc.
An even better analogy: you left confidential info *about me* clearly visible and readable in your car. I had trusted you to keep it secure and I had not noticed that you were failing to do that. He saw it, and let me know in the only way he could.
I really can't understand all those "hacking victim" apologists (note the quotes). Currently it is illegal for me to accidentally discover that my bank/phone company/isp is leaking my information or allowing transactions in my name. Without that knowledge, I can't even "vote with my wallet" and choose a more secure venue. Yet the "hacking victim" apologists only focus on how wrong the "hacker" was, instead of that his actions were the only way to learn about the "victim"'s gross negligence.
Obviously your post is already receiving comments from apologists, "he had to poke", "he copied the information" (both of which are obvious, specially the copying, which is automatic, and required if you want to give warning). Those replies - people speaking against their own interests in defence of a negligent mega-corporation - sadden me.
There is no difference between asking google to retrive information and provide a report than it is to request a secretary to find all references to a contract and provide a report.
There is one, very important, difference: asking google to retrieve information is much more efficient than requesting a secretary to do so. That's pretty much the point of asking google. There are people in this forum who will claim that the difference is essential. I find that position nonsensical, but by ignoring it, you leave open a point of attack. So I would make your conclusion more explicit:
The "report" in both cases should be considered free speech, regardless of how efficient were the means used to obtain it.
(I would also go beyond free speech here and include those actions that are considered correct or legal to do by yourself but become illegal if you ask someone else for assistance, free or not. But extending on this idea would probably be offtopic)
Seriously, I'll be truly amazed if the existence of a God is ever disproved
Re-read his post. He didn't say that the existence of a God was disproved. He said that Christianity was. Christianity makes some very specific statements about their god, some of which are nonsensical (like torturing itself to death so it could forgive "us" for a grievance committed by our supposed ancestors, which we inherit only because he made it so in the first place), some are contradictory (like being benevolent and ... well, all his cruelty in the bible). Regardless of the (in)ability to rule out the concept of a "general" creator, specific statements of christianity can be disproved.
Since the people who most vocally support evolution almost always conflate the concepts of "evolution" (small-e, adaptation of a species over time) with "Evolution" (capital-e, origin of life)
What? As the GP told you, "Evolution", regardless of how you chose to capitalize it, says nothing about the origin of life. It explains the origin of *species*, not *life*, i.e, the observation that the biosphere today is wildly different than the biosphere several million years ago, giving an explanation of how it happens that is accurate enough to make predictions based on them ("if we do this, we should see speciacion... oh, look, speciacion!"). There is no "origin of life evolution". There is "abiogenesis", but claiming that abiogenesis is science stepping into religion demonstrates a severe lack of knowledge of what "science" and "abiogenesis" are (hint: the evidence for abiogenesis is more than "this self-contradictory book says so". The Miller-Urey experiment was a confirmation of a prediction based on the primordial soup theory -- that's science at its finest).
Read "sufficiently reliable", if you really want, in the sense that you have to assume that your memory is sufficiently reliable to reason.
Crap. And you are unable to infer from my position from the rest of the posts that that is precisely what I was saying all along. Come on, honestly, cant you figure out that given the context, "if I assume that all my memories are wrong" doesn't mean anything more than "extremely unreliable"? Otherwise the statement wouldn't make any sense.
My OP asked for a proof of some aspect of the real world. That's a question seeking truth, not utility.
Holy shit. You are really good at this [trolling thing]. No, your question asked for proof. That's seeking proof, not truth nor utility. Just proof. Even assuming that you asked for truth (I'll grant you that if you want), your question was malformed, and so was your answer: you can't prove anything through faith. I stated that before. I merely answer the next question that comes to mind, which is how to behave, and that is a question of utility, not truth. My bad for giving a useful answer.
Really, my bad. I think there is only one way of dealing with you. Reboot. Ask the question again with a precise definitions of all your terms, and I shall answer that and only that, so that you don't get "confused" (clearly on purpose) about what we are talking about. At this point, I have no idea of what you are asking. Proceed under that assumption.
The alternative is not that your memory is always wrong but that it is unreliable. Geeks and their false binaries!
*sigh*. I don't know how to classify this. You just changed the argument right there. We know that memory is unreliable! (If we assume that it is, of course it is. If you assume that it isn't absolutely unreliable, once you get to neuroscience, you conclude that it is unreliable, eliminating contradictions even). I stated this already. So I guess I don't have "faith" in my memory being reliable because, well, I don't claim that it is.
What are we discussing, if not truth?
Moving the goalposts much? Your original question wasn't about truth.
That was not my question. I asked why do you place higher certainty on your perception than your memory, not which one is more useful.
No. You questioned the difference. I don't place so much certainty on my perception. It's quite irrelevant anyway.
No, these were my exact words: "Why do you place a higher certainty on your perception than on your memory? Why would you make a distinction?" And now I have to ask why questioning your perception is irrelevant but questioning your memory isn't.
What rot. Faith of all sorts is tested and rejected all the time. I think you're trying to build a strawman to fit what I assume are preconceptions about religion.
No, I'm not building a strawman. Before embarking on the reply, as a non-english speaker, I did a "define:faith" in google, just to be sure of the meaning. First meaning I got: "Complete trust or confidence in someone or something". If that's not the same, I apologize. But that's irrelevant. You are extending the definition of "faith" to cover each of the contradictory hypotheses that I assumed. Did I have "faith" in that memory is completely unreliable when I made that assumption, and then changed my "faith" when I assumed the contrary? If you answer "yes": well, great, I had "faith" then, but only after you twisted the meaning beyond recognition.
If I assume that my senses and memory are worth anything, I arrive to a set of conclusions. If I assume the contrary, I arrive to another set of conclusions.
Even to argue like this requires a faith ("assumption" about some aspect of reality without evidence) in your memory.
Let me get this straight. Assuming that something is true in order to advance an argument requires "faith" in that something?. Ok. Twisted meaning of faith. I also have faith in the axioms of euclidean geometry, and sometimes I even have faith in the axioms of non-euclidean geometries, because I assume them to be true when I do geometry.
It just happens that one of those sets of conclusions is empty.
It's not empty. It just means that you perhaps can't define life and reason and science in the way you may want.
"in the way I may want"? No, it means that if I assume that memory is absolutely unreliable, I'm not even able to think, because by the time I finish a thought, the previous one is already in the past, i.e, a memory. Even the assumption that memories are wrong are just a memory by the time that you start thinking about the consequences. "I'm assuming that all my memories are wrong. Given that... oh, wait, I remember that all my memories are wrong. Including this one. So I'll assume that all my memories are wrong. What I was doing? Oh, yes, trying to get to any conclusion under the assumption that all my memories are wrong. But that is a memory. So it is wrong. Why is it wrong? Ah, because I assumed that memory is wrong. Gah, I just remembered that. Invalid. Why?...".
and now I'm considering the other assumption, which I haven't finished exploring.
Recalling that you must assume that your memory is reliable in order to be able to rationally consider whether it is reliable.
Recalling that when? While I'm doing my reasoning? Well, yes, I recall "I'm assuming that my memory is reliable". But that's just my assumption, so there is no contradiction there. To think about the consequences of the assumption that memory is reliable I must assume that memory is reliable. Duh. To think derive any arithmetic result, I must assume the axioms. There is no circular thinking there. I'm not concluding my assumptions in either case.
What's more, I'm betting you're going to spend the majority of your life assuming it despite a total lack of evidence - i.e. faith.
That's ridiculous. Do you spend your who
I am touched that you are so keen to want me to respond ;-).
Oh, please, don't be condescending. That's ridiculous. Either respond honestly, or don't do it at all.
I'm out of productive concentration today, so here goes...
I believe you. 28 Slashdot posts so far today. It doesn't seem that you are even trying to concentrate.
Why do you place a higher certainty on your perception than on your memory?
Memory is required to reason, while perception is only required to observe. We can do mathematics in our mind's eye (per Plato) but only because we possess memory. In particular, without memory we could identify neither contradiction nor perform philosophical induction. Memory is something more fundamental than any perception we have of the external world.
That was not my question. I asked why do you place higher certainty on your perception than your memory, not which one is more useful.
Why would you use a loaded word like "faith", instead of, let's say, "assumption"?
Faith is a type of assumption. Consider: 1) An applied assumption about an imagined world - an axiom; 2) An applied assumption about the real world based on observation but lacking theory - a working hypothesis; 3) An applied assumption about the real world lacking any evidence - faith.
No, it isn't, unless you stretch the word "faith" to mean that. An assumption is just that, an assumption. "Faith" is an unquestionable belief, an assumption isn't. If I assume that my senses and memory are worth anything, I arrive to a set of conclusions. If I assume the contrary, I arrive to another set of conclusions. It just happens that one of those sets of conclusions is empty. You are free to linger on that set. I'm not claiming the truthfulness of either assumption. I'm just claiming that I considered one assumption, got the empty set, and now I'm considering the other assumption, which I haven't finished exploring.
I'm making a cold, calculated decision between the two assumptions, on the basis of which one is more useful.
Usefulness is not a measure of truth.
When did I say it was?
To prove that the question is not pointless, you need to show that the answers lead to [observably] different results.
OK, you're proposing a definition for what makes a question "not pointless". Various responses:
1) Given enough time, whatever humans do, I don't think the universe will be observably different.
I didn't say "given enough time". I didn't say the set of results "X time into the future, for some value of X". I also didn't say that it was a sufficient condition for usefulness, merely a necessary condition. But you are right, after the extinction of the human race, the question of whether I am blowing my nose right now, will be unanswerable and pointless, even though it is not pointless now. Feel free to construct an scenario in which the competing answers to your question lead to observably different results.
Any two alternatives only make a fleeting difference, just as a constantly tricked mind may be repeatedly remembering an inconsistency then forgetting that it has ever identified that consistency. Your little "observably" is implicitly considered below, though it may be that we're just not yet sufficiently advanced to devise an experiment to identify inconsistencies;
Let me simplify this for you. I "observe" (for some definition of "observe") my memory (whatever that is), and perceive it to be (sufficiently) accurate. Even if my memory is not accurate and my perception of it is just an illusion, I still perceive it to be (sufficiently) accurate. That is what makes your question unanswerable, and that is precisely what makes it meaningless
Dropping the F word again doesn't answer the AC's post.
Please address the AC's point, or go away. I'm not planning on "stealing" the AC's thread. I just want to keep you honest, or to uncover your dishonesty. Address the AC's point and you may deserve a further thought; drop another "you need to have faith" and you'll prove that you are trolling.
Really. It does not matter if the entire universe is nothing but a figment of my imagination and nothing and nobody else is real. If I can still use science to observe and predict, then science is useful for that. And that is how it is different from faith.
Hint: he stated that the question is pointless. You have received enough replies to have an idea of what that means, including mine, which you decided not to address. Hint #2: To prove that the question is not pointless, you need to show that the answers lead to [observably] different results. Go.
Really. It does not matter if the entire universe is nothing but a figment of my imagination and nothing and nobody else is real. If I can still use science to observe and predict, then science is useful for that. And that is how it is different from faith.
Please have the intellectual honesty to address the point before being condescending:
That's OK, though. Once you've accepted it, all science is good and proper.
Well said. It does interest me that a simple question provokes so much emotion, though.
That's easy. It provokes so much emotion because you intentionally chose the wording to provoke that emotion ("prove... other than through faith", in an anti-faith thread). You can't prove/show anything through "faith", the question itself is ill formed. However, had you posted the question in another forum (say, a philosophy class, or even another thread on slashdot), or had used less inflammatory words, the result would most likely have been different.
Try this: "Tell me why you think that your memory is reliable."
"Tell me", instead of "prove" (or just drop the first half of the question), because you know well that if you reduce any question to "but it all may just be an illusion", which was your goal, then nothing can be proven. "Think that", instead of "show through faith", because faith, specially in the context of this thread, implies a suspension of reasoning.
Your use of "prove" and "faith" was to provoke a reaction, which is perfectly acceptable if your goal is to stir a discussion (a technique used often in philosophy classes). But wondering afterwards why the "simple question" provokes the reaction, when you worded it precisely with that goal, is hypocritical.
And I don't care whether what I am seeing right now exists - all that matters is that I perceive its existence. But I can't be so sure about one second ago. This is why I have to have faith in my memory, i.e. trust it without proof.
Why do you place a higher certainty on your perception than on your memory? Why would you make a distinction? If there is no distinction and trusting your senses is a matter of faith, why do you need to ask the (then) superfluous question about the accuracy of memory? If trusting your senses is not a matter of faith, why then trusting your memory is?
You do as well, of course. Embrace your faith.
And what's your point? Why would you use a loaded word like "faith", instead of, let's say, "assumption"? What's your agenda behind the use of that word? I do embrace my assumption that both my memory and perception are somewhat reliable. No, I don't have faith in it. I assume it to be true. I could assume it is false (and probably some people do), but the assumption that memory and/or perception are absolutely unreliable is less useful than the assumption that they are reliable, *even* if they turn out to be absolutely unreliable. That is, even if all my memories and perceptions are false and my thoughts *right now* where the only truth (side question: why would my thoughts *right now* be spared, as implied by "I think therefore I am"?), the assumption of unreliability is still no more useful than the assumption of reliability. So, right now, I'm not having "faith" that I read your message a few minutes ago. I'm making a cold, calculated decision between the two assumptions, on the basis of which one is more useful.
Engineers never reduce enough. Otherwise they would be mathematicians, and not be so laughably angered by philosophy.
Well, I am a mathematician... I am not angered by philosophy, but I'm angered by crappy philosophy. I'm curious, though: as a mathematician, do you take your axioms as "faith" as well? (If "yes": really!? If "no": why not?)
Of course, one must wonder, why YOUR credit cards would be used on a company computer ... don't want the feds to track the downloads to your home perhaps?
Buying stuff on behalf of your employer, perhaps? (to be refunded later).
But ordinary English speakers will often take the other definition. They'll take it to mean 'concentrating on the accumulation of ownership of stuff rather than on social relationships, personal achievements, intellectual matters, helping people, being a good member of society and so on'. Spoken about scientists especially this is plainly ridiculous. But it's hardly beyond some people to exploit the ambiguity.
If that makes me a "materialist", so be it, even though I did to choose to be called that.
I don't get it... What's so bad about being called a "materialist"? Mind you, I have only passing knowledge of the philosophical meanings, I've never really studied it (my philosophy professor was lacking... she seemed to believe that philosophy was about who could better ridicule opposing point of views), and I end up conflating materialism and physicalism together.
We just try not to involve our superstitious beliefs into that process, and manage hypothetical assertions with some degree of rigor.
I don't think that /makes/ you a materialist, but your overall post makes me think that you are nonetheless.
Disclaimer: I'm not a native English speaker, so I may just be lost with the "colloquial" meaning of the word. This is kind of the point of my question :D. For comparison, where I come from, "materialism" refers just to the philosophical definition (afaik), but "idealism" ranges from the philosophical meaning to a colloquial "complete disregard of the reality around you to the point of believing that thinking about it will be enough to change it".
I have a son who is autistic. [...] BTW, he graduated with honors and made me one proud Dad.
This is offtopic (modders: please mod me offtopic!) but... it seems you are a awesome dad. I have no children yet, but I sometimes worry about them having some kind of disability and not knowing how to act if that happened. Your post, short as it was, is inspiring. Thank you for sharing it! And of course... keep up the good work.
Awesome, thank you! Unfortunately, I don't own any bull. But I plan on getting a dog. If you want, you can move close to me and pick up its shit when I walk it. In fact, I would gladly authorize it.
So do you make it a habit to just go rummaging around in people's garbage? I imagine if someone was cleaning out their garage and had stuff all over their driveway and then went inside for a moment, you'd feel free to take whatever since it's in a public place.
I think I'm feeding a troll, so I will stop now. You seem to be too dense to understand that if you put something private in a location where it is expected that people will see it, say, a web server, a public folder, or painted in giant letters at the front of your house, and someone sees it, he will not even know he is not supposed to be seeing it until after he sees it. That's not taking anything from anyone.
Just to drive the point through: I'm posting this on a public forum, but I'm explicitly NOT AUTHORIZING YOU to read it. So, if you even read this post (let alone reading this sentence), you are already "taking shit that doesn't belong to you". What's that, you didn't know it? Tough luck, according to you, that doesn't matter, you accessed my post anyway. That's a weird situation... if you reply, you'll be disproving your own point!
They copied what any reasonable person would know is confidential information. They knew it was confidential when they took and that's why they tried blackmail.
You are arguing that the mere act of accessing a public document on a public folder is wrong. I'm saying that it is not the act of accessing it what is wrong (because anyone could have accessed it, without any warning or notice that it was out of limits, despite it being in a public place), but what they did with it afterwards. That's what's wrong. Who is the dense one?
All your stupid analogies of hiking through forests and opens doors are irrelevant. They STOLE the information. If you can't recognize that then you are lost.
For crying out loud, can you be any more stupid? Not only I'm not the one who posted that analogy, my posts have been about how unnecessary and intellectually weak it is to resort to analogies for something so trivial as this.
By your reasoning, I could be arrested for trespassing whenever I walk through an unfenced forest not posted "hiking is authorized." Internet common practice and reasonable assumption is that anything neither protected nor explicitly prohibited, is allowed.
Please tell (or not), who authorized you to read this slashdot post? Or to visit slashdot in the first place? And how do you know if that authorization is valid? Or, when you clicked on the link to see my post, did you just assume that you were authorized to access it?
Btw, if you put your desk with all your private information in the middle of a busy sidewalk, where you expect people to walk by and look (the closest analogy I can think with a desk and a public web server, but really, no stupid analogies are necessary, given that you, /right now/, are just assuming that you are authorized to read slashdot), but don't want anyone to look at it... you have serious mental issues. Use some common sense. Put the desk inside the house. Don't hang your private information in a public space and expect the rest of the world to just know that we can't look that way (even if the law supports it).
You: "Well, your honor, the money was right there in the open"
Another analogy... You really can't understand withtout them, right?
As far as the file of usernames, why did you send it to yourself? Why didn't you bring it to their attention right away?
Because it was a file with an innocuous name, sitting in a public folder, together with other public files, and didn't know what it was until months later, and when I learned, I did bring it to their attention? You really can't read, huh?
This really takes the cake. Use some common sense! If it's something of value and clearly was not intended to be public, then don't copy/save it. Is the concept really all that difficult to understand?
Yes, that really takes the cake indeed. How do you propose to use common sense about the contents of the file before seeing said file? Is the concept really all that difficult to understand? (And, to make the cake even better... before now, you were not claiming that the issue was with saving the file, but merely with accessing it. If you decide to change your claim to "not take extra steps to keep it once you notice that it was not for public access", then we may be in agreement. But that was not your position until now.)
As I said, go ahead and do it and try your arguments out.
Having a tyrannical police force following stupid laws is not something to be proud of. It would be dumb to "do it and try your arguments out", but that still doesn't mean that you are right.
Where do you draw the lines between (legally) secured data that requires "hacking" to copy, private but inadequately secured data and open data?
Let me introduce you to the Continuum fallacy. Just because one can't draw a line, it doesn't mean that there is no difference. Typing a publicly accessible URL in a browser and having the server return the data referenced by that URL is not hacking, even if the owner "wanted" to keep it private but never told you. Conversely, finding a SQL injection and using it to get a dump of the database is wrong, even if the attack could be executed by just typing parameters in the URL bar. Where do you draw the line? There is no line! These two examples are remarkably similar.
In this case it seems clear that the hackers were aware that the data was supposed to be secure and their blackmail attempt proves that their intent was to gather and use data that was supposed by its owner to be private.
If they found the file, noticed the "potential", and decided to blackmail, then no, their intent wasn't to gather and use the data, their intent was just blackmail. But if they wanted to blackmail and went looking for something private to use, and typed the URL hoping to get the private data, then yes, they knew they weren't authorised and accessed it anyway - they are in the wrong both for accessing it and for the blackmail. In any case, they are on the hook for blackmail, so I have no problem with letting a jury decide their intent as well.
If you walked by a car, saw there was a wad of twenties on the front seat AND that the window was open...are you authorized to take it?
Did you not read the post you just replied to? I read it twice, but found no mention of any car with a wad of twenties. Is it that you can't understand his reasoning and you need to make up flawed analogies to make your point?
There is no difference between typing "http://amazon.com" in your browser, and typing "http://some/url/that/is/supposed/to/be/private". The server has a very precise way of informing you whether you are authorised or not to access the document: via status codes, and of course, denying access. If the server, for whatever reason, fails to deny access, a reasonable user has no way of knowing that he wasn't supposed to be accessing that document, until he sees it, but at that time, he already has it. The ethical issue is what he does with it afterwards, even if he typed the url on purpose ("what would happen if I type this url? / Oh, crap, it gave me the file!").
If you happen across a website that has some link to people's credit cards and the CCW codes and other personal information, are you authorized to take them, let alone use them?
To use them? No. To take them? In your own example, if I click on a link and end up with a bunch of credit cards, whether I had authorisation or not is a moot point: I have no way of knowing whether I'm authorised or not to access that data until either I'm denied access, or I receive the data and judge for myself.
I suppose that in your view, the Internet is a very scary place to be. Every time you click on a link, you risk hacking into someone else's server!
Personal anecdote: back in the days of dial-up BBSs, around the time I installed linux for the first time, I was logged in to my provider composing an email. Trying to attach a file, I found another called "shadow~" and sent it to myself. It just had a bunch of usernames with some garbage after it, so I ignored it. A couple of months later I had learned much more, and I remembered the file, so I went back to see if it was still there and if it really was the shadow file. It was, world-readable, and updated very recently! I guess that makes me, in your eyes, a criminal. Fortunately, not in the ISP's eyes: I called them, managed to get in touch with the technical staff, told them what I had found, and an hour later I got a thank you email with an explanation (a daily backup script was leaving a copy in the wrong place) and an invite to visit their campus to burn a copy of their RedHat disks because mine were outdated. If it were up to you, they should have jailed me instead for "stealing" a file that, at the time, had no idea of what it was.
(The GP also made the point that unfortunately, the laws favour your views instead of common sense, so clicking on a link can very well be scary. Ironically, that attitude makes us all less secure: I can't even try to see whether the data I give to the provider is minimally secure, and if by some freak accident I discover that it isn't, I would have to keep quiet and hope no one knows that I know)
can I pay someone else to ....
There's the rub.
He didn't ask if it was legal. He asked if it was acceptable. If you claim that it isn't, please, enlighten us.