The problem is, if you ban and hide all the evidence of the crimes being committed, then it's as if no crime has been committed at all.
This isn't really about child porn. But if you can keep child porn off of Freenet, then there is no point in even having a Freenet that wont work.
That being said, Freenet is not the only way to do it. In fact Freenet is not even a good way to do what they are trying to do, because it's far too complicated and the governments can simply kill anyone who runs Freenet, or deliberately plant Kiddie Porn on Freenet so they can make the case to ban it in their country.
Why did they open their product to children anyway? They should have kept it as an adult college generaton product. I'd probably still be using it if they didn't open it to everyone.
Look, I'd be fine if it wasn't reaching a point where people are being raided by the FBI for clicking illegal hyperlinks, but it has reached that point.
It's time to do something radical technologically in my opinion. It's a lot cheaper to solve this technologically than to let bad laws ruin the internet experience for everyone.
So how do you want to save the internet? I say the best way to do it is to build in technological and legal solutions which limit liability of websites and users of those websites and place 100% of the liability on the parents.
If a 15 year old breaks into the unrestricted chatroom and talks to adults, it's their parents fault, it's not the websites fault, or the adults fault.
And no, you cannot label the adults in the chatroom pedophiles if they aren't actively seeking children. But go into ANY chatroom these days, even the "adult" oriented chatrooms, and somehow they are all filled with teenagers.
A safe internet, designed for minors to access. This internet should require adult verification from their parents allowing their children to access the sites.
How do we stop the bad people accessing the kiddies' intarwebs ?
Something has to be done.
Indeed. Parents need to start taking some fucking responsibility.
Why would an adult want to access the kiddie intraweb? Any adult who is trying to access these sorts of site should be investigated immediately.
Look, I'm not saying ban all who are under 15 from accessing the internet. If someone is under 15 and their parents give them permission to access the internet, they have every right to access the internet. Their parents should be responsible for monitoring their use of the internet if their parents believe their child has a right to access.
However the current trend is that parents expect MySpace, and adult users of MySpace to change our behavior and protect THEIR kids from the dangerous internet. It's not my job to protect some other persons kids. It's not MySpaces job to protect other peoples kids either.
And parents obviously aren't doing a good job protecting their own kids if there is some sorta pedophile problem with the internet. So it's in the best interest of the internet and the adult users of the internet, to force parents to be responsible and monitor their child/teens internet access.
While they say no alcohol is served on MySpace, there are many corrupting elements on MySpace and it has nothing to do with alcohol. MySpace is simply not a place for kids. There are adults on MySpace doing adult things, having adult discussions. MySpace is not like slashdot where there are moderators and "rules".
A Slashdot conversation which is inappropriate for minors can be moderated. The same cannot be said about MySpace. And honestly, if you are under 15 and using MySpace, your parents are probably being irresponsible. MySpace is not a toy designed for children. It's as adult as a bar or strip club in my opinion.
Lets solve this problem once and for all and come up with ONE age of consent. One age which applies to all US territories and the internet, so that adults can know when they are breaking the law.
To have no age of consent is equal to having the drinking age be different in every state and having some states have bars with minors in them and other states having bars set to be over 21.
Instead of having the age of consent be state by state, why don't these federal politicians who want to pass all these internet laws to ban free speech, simply pass one age of consent bill which once and for all sets the age of consent across the entire country?
It's a lot easier to protect children when we actually know what a child is in the eyes of the law.
As far as I'm concerned. It's better to be safe than sorry. Assume 18 is the absolute minimum age, because from a legal perspective, if they are over 18 then you can't be sued as easily.
And I don't think we'd need ID's in every area of the internet. But if you want uncensored communication, because of how vague the current laws are, they can use the current laws to limit your free speech if minors are in the room.
It would be best if minors were not in the room, or if you could have anonymous / secure / private speech, as these seem to be the only two options which preserve free speech on the internet.
The truth is, a few sick pedophiles can ruin the internet for everyone else. Pedophiles make the entire internet look bad and many people use these pedophiles as an example of why we need to get rid of free speech on the internet.
The only way to preserve free speech on the internet at this point is technologically. The legal system is a generation behind the technology and probably always will be. The legal system can't even make up their mind on what the age of consent is.
Until they come up with a national age of consent, it will remain very difficult problem.
If there were a national age of consent then there could be a simple legal technological solution.
The problem is not going to be solved just by telling parents to supervise the internet.
Yeah if the child is actually a child, as in under 15, then yes the parents should be supervising the internet for them, but what about when they are over 15 and under 18?
How can you have a chatroom or a "space" on the inernet which is not commercial, but which restricts the age limit to 18+? That is the question I'm asking. The law says that 18+ cannot have unrestricted communication with those under 18. The laws are probably extreme, but these are the laws, and the technology has to adapt to the laws to protect their users.
If something is not done, then there will be a lot of unnecessary lawsuits.
A safe internet, designed for minors to access. This internet should require adult verification from their parents allowing their children to access the sites.
And an unrestricted unsafe internet where anything goes. And anyone who chooses to access this internet should be in no position to turn to lawsuits and press charges on people.
The key is, you can't mix the two worlds. The best way to protect minors is to build an internet for minors. The current internet is designed for adults and is unrestricted because adults can handle unrestricted "free" speech.
Minors on the other hand should have their parents at some level, through some means, set for them the level of censorship. And certain portions of the internet (chatrooms), have to be age restricted.
How often do you go into a chatroom which says its for over 21, and somehow some minors are always in the chatroom? How exactly is this different from walking into a bar and it's supposed to be over 21, yet minors are in the bar drinking with adults?
In my opinion, I see no reason for minors to be using the same social networking services as adults, and in my opinion if they are under 15 they shouldn't be on social networking sites at all.
Can anything good come from letting minors access the adult oriented internet? We don't let them into clubs and bars, so why Myspace and Facebook?
What's the end game? Why should I care about what an evolved human being millions of years from now will be capable of? I'll be long dead. Not only that, but why is it important that he be a better version of ourselves? Where is this leading?
If you plan to have kids, then you have to care. The fact that our parents didn't care enough, is why we inherited the world we currently have. If you think we are bad now, while we were a lot worse in the past, there were also fewer of us.
The problem now is, humans are evolving their technology, but not evolving their society. Society is not keeping pace with the technology. So the whole point should be to better ourselves, to better the fate of your future offspring if you plan to have any, and also just to keep many innocent animal species which aren't human from paying the price for our stupidity.
While we wipe ourselves out in blind rage, we are also wiping many species of life out with us. So even if we do go extinct, and even if you don't think there is anything magical about life, it's still wrong to cause this damage.
Actually, being happy is pretty much the only thing they're concerned about. Since they lack higher reasoning, they don't know they'll die if they don't eat. They just "feel good" when they eat. They don't care about procreating, but sex "feels good".
Humans are one of the few animals who have sex for pleasure.
These animals lack the capability of focusing, or even thinking about survival. All they do is what makes them happy, and they've evolved to be happy when doing things that help with their survival. Not because there's a greater meaning in survival, but simply because animals that don't like to eat wouldn't have lasted long enough to procreate, and we wouldn't see them. Either way everyone is doing what makes them happy.
This is your opinion, and you are free to believe it. I do think animals are capable of reason.
Self-preservation is a natural law because anything without a self-preservation instinct isn't likely to survive and pass on its lack of self-preservation instinct. It's not something that needs to be any individual's goal. It's something that, as a species, you can't escape. Evolution will always favor species that have a self-preservation instinct over those that don't.
It has to be a goal because other species will prey on you if you don't develop survival strategies and tactics. In the case of humans, other humans will prey on you if you don't focus in survival. The native American tribes and the African tribes were happy, they didn't have to work, they had as much time with their family as they wanted.
What happened was that another group of humans who were not as happy, decided to take their land and resources to make themselves happy. The Europeans who did this were able to do this because at the time they had better weapons, the reason they had better weapons is because they had more experiences with conflict, war, and had to survive in environments which were more harsh.
In the environments that these Europeans were in at the time, they spent more time fighting, but at the same time the survival strategies and war tactics became more sophisticated. As a result, the native Americans and Africans did not have any concept of modern warfare, and the result was that all that happiness didn't mean a thing because they did not have the technology and weapons to protect their happiness from other groups of people.
On the contrary, sir. If I can't find happiness in life, then the laws of nature demand I die. This way, I won't pass my flawed genes forward, and humanity as a whole will be stronger. Only humans with strong self-preservation instincts and those that can find happiness in their environment will procreate.
Just because you aren't genetically perfect, it does not mean you are so genetically flawed that you should not procreate. Maybe you have
Hi. I'm under 30, and I'm concerned with being happy. I don't care if the USA will exist in 50 to 100 years. Life IS all about being happy, unless you have a religious conviction that tells you otherwise (and most people find happiness in the conviction as hard as they try not to).
This is why the USA probably wont exist, and why Climate Change probably wont be solved. The hard problems are not fun to solve, and a lot of the changes that we will have to make will make a lot of people unhappy.
But if it's just about keeping people happy, then our leaders should forget about the future of the earth and live it up. And we should forget about what happens to the United States.
To start, I have a question for you: what ever happened to you that you think happiness is not a goal to strive for? At the very end of your post, you say
so if we are facing regressions why should the young listen to their parents when their parents tell them it's all about being happy?
Yes I say this because a lot of the problems we have in the world are the direct result of powerful people doing what makes them happy. Perhaps winning wars is what makes us happy, so we should continue to launch and win wars forever because victory is going to keep us happy?
Hitler killed the Jews because their extermination made him happy. It doesn't matter if these actions or behaviors are reasonable, or in the best interest of the species, or of the earth, because it's what made people happy during that point in time, right? If your basis of right and wrong is simply having whats right be what makes people happy, then you are some sort of utilitarian.
The problem with this form of utilitarianism is sometimes what makes the most powerful people in the world happy, makes everyone else extremely unhappy. Right and wrong therefore has nothing to do with emotion and what people feel. Right and wrong can only be measured by the outcomes. You know something is right when the world is better because of what you did, but in specific when I say the world I'm saying your social pyramid, with you at the top of the pyramid, your family directly under you, your spouse and friends somewhere in the mix, and complete strangers at the bottom of the pyramid.
If this is the case, this also is your pyramid of responsibility. You are most responsible for protecting yourself physically because only by protecting yourself physically is anything below you on the pyramid even possible. The second responsibility is protecting your family, because for most people, they don't find happiness from their job, they find happiness from their family.
Look, I'm not saying I don't want to spend more time with my family. I'd love to be able to make enough money to protect what I care about while also enjoying what I care about, but we both know that I'm just one person and I'll never have the power to re-arrange the fucked up misery producing corporate culture.
I see no reason why we shouldn't have a shortened work week, more vacation time, and higher pay checks. Considering all the efficiency and productivity we gained from inventing automation and electronics, the only reason we continue to work 40 hours a week with almost no vacation time is because we truly deep down don't want to promote happiness. We deep down, desire to promote and sustain misery.
Deep down we don't really want to spend more times with our families, that is why we continue to increase the working hours. Even women who used to spend all their time raising children, want to put their children in day care for other people to raise.
If I remember my childhood at all, I remember my parents and elders constantly trying to put into my head that the world sucks, and I've got to work hard my whole life, and maybe I'll eventually be happy when I'm 60 and I work hard enough to be able to retire. I can be happy right now where I am. I'm getting paid a decent amount to do something I enjoy with people I enjoy b
All they are going to do is make the violence harder to see and trace. People will use poison instead of guns, and then what will these idiots think?
The goal is not to stop violence. The goal is to ban violent thoughts, which is really stupid because most murderers aren't obsessed with violent thoughts, they are the ones who actually do it.
As long as basic material needs are being met, I don't really care that much about the margins. I'm not so heavily invested in the trappings of wealth and status (and Yale is about status) that the fluctuations of the global economy are going to overdetermine my identity.
I've lost jobs, family members of mine have lost jobs both in the US and Latin America, and we bounced back. It's not that big a deal. We have networks of family and friends that help us out. Maybe this is what Americans need to learn: the importance of social capital. You earlier accused me of being a "liberal" who trusts the government. I think you're actually an old-school post-war self-alienating American who trusts the government to keep things safe and stable and the market to keep you employed, and so you don't bother to make a network of familiars and mutual support.
I have to ask: why are you alive? Why bother? Are you so instrumentalized, so completely in the thrall of the ethics of production and accumulation? Really, if I had your view of the world, I'd probably kill myself and save myself the misery.
Even if you aren't focused on status, it does not change the fact that employers still see a degree from Yale as being better than a degree from some lesser name school. People still give greater opportunity to people who go to schools like Yale and Harvard, regardless of what you think about status it just is what it is.
And no, I don't consider my identity to be my status, I consider my identity to be my family/clan. I consider my status to simply be a measure society uses to determine the greatness of a certain individual or of certain families.
Whats wrong with wanting to be great? Whats wrong with wanting to be recognized by society for your achievements?
Social networks are important, I agree with you on that, but most social networks are networks you were born into and not networks you formed or built on your own. It's next to impossible to "join" into a social network if you are born in the wrong neighborhood in the USA. It's not like these elite social networks are looking to invite kids from the lowest classes and rank of society.
Yes it does happen sometimes, and there are networks that do exist, but if you aren't born into one of these networks it can take a long time to form your own (generations), and a long time to connect your family to the already established network (generations). In either case it's going to take at least a generation in order to go from a disconnected family to a connected family.
The truth of the matter is, most of the time social status creates social capital. Most of the time, the kid goes to prep school, goes to Yale, and joins Skull & Bones or whatever frat, and through their previous status they either become "connected" or if they already were connected they become even more connected.
But how often can you say that kids living in ghettos, or in trailer parks, or in the third world countries, how often will these kids be invited into these exclusive social networks? I'd say not often enough, and this would be one of the reasons why these kids are more likely to join street gangs, or become neo-nazi's, because they have social capital but of the wrong kind.
I'm not an old school post war, I don't trust the government to keep me safe. I know the government is about as corrupt as my police department, if not moreso, and therefore I cannot expect the government or any institution to keep me safe or watch my back.
I do expect my family members to watch each others back. And I do expect my friends to watch my back. I expect more from the church than I expect from the government.
You ask me, why am I alive? Life is more like an project to me. I have a mission in life, a purpose, and I'm working towards accomplishing my set of goals. Whether or not I'm happy while I'm doing it does not matter.
The point is to be a good role model of what success is. I may not be
Assuming, of course, that they don't pick up all the culture from you and end up teaching their kids the same.
I personally will show my kids the example of doing the stuff I like and earning well from it; of loving knowledge and using that to navigate the world effectively; and of using intellect to help navigate the psychological labyrinth of living, including how to win friends, how to deal with peer pressure, how to deal with life's challenges.
I'll also, to the best of my ability, show an example for how to balance different priorities - how to have a life you enjoy, how to deal wisely with money while knowing that it is only a small part of life, something that's useful as a tool yet is only a tool.
This might be telling of our different backgrounds - I've grown up among researchers, which means I've always had the education and knowledge available, and while money has been tight, that's not been crucial. And I don't consider "better part of town" or "better school" to count much at all - we lived in a reasonably cheap area, and I don't think there's anywhere in the country I'm from where there's a stronger average.
Money just isn't what makes the difference, and neither knowledge nor money is what I feel I'd have been better off with as a child and adolescent - what I would have liked is more skills in happiness, more examples of how to deal with life in a fashion where different priorities was balanced for joy.
So, that is, to the best of my ability, what I'll give my children - and, from what I see of psychological research, it is also what is best for children.
Oh, and I don't care about all this "compete" stuff - the world is growing progressively richer through technology, and "compete" is only important if you want to show off having more toys than your neighbor, for social status. I can play better social status games than that.
Eivind.
Why do you assume your kids will be researchers and why do you assume that the United States will always have the best economy, and that you'll always be a part of the middle class? Or that the middle class will always exist?
When Hitler took over Germany, the people who had money had the greatest chances of survival. In the future if a world war 3 begins, those who have either the most money, or the best weapons, have the greatest chances of survival.
The world is a very competitive place, and it's only becoming more competitive. Now I admit, I've only been around under Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, so I only know the values of the leadership that I grew up with.
But if you pay attention to the policies, the laws being passed, and the value systems of the current political leadership, they don't give a damn whether or not you, me, or our children are happy. They just want us to have children so our children can be used to fight their wars and pay their taxes.
So we can say that our bosses and our leaders don't give a damn about happiness. If anything, they want to turn happiness into a product and then sell it to you through pills, or through concepts like intellectual property. No one seems to care about the people who can't afford the happy pills or the license to access the intellectual property.
So what is wrong with social status? If you look at society, everything in our society rewards social status. If you have social status, the government rewards you with lower taxes, better quality service, and a lower chance of being drafted into world war 3.
If you don't have social status, you get treated as trash, either trailer trash or ghetto trash. I don't see the government or the media making any distinction between the different kinds of people who live in a certain neighborhood. Therefore if you somehow are unlucky enough to be born in Compton, there is an entire set of media stereotypes about you from before you were born and people still will judge you and not want to be fr
And it's okay that you are irrational, but putting any emotion before survival is irrational.
That's your opinion, and you're entitled to it. However, you failed to offer any arguments to back it up.
In order for my view to be irrational, my arguments need fail a point of logic. However, you're attacking the axiom my argument was based on, without defending your own axiom. Why is survival important? Why do you exist? If you are leading a miserable life, is death not preferable?
I continue on living because I like living. I'm fairly happy. The moment that ceases to be true, suicide is the only logical option. The alternative is to prolong a state you're not satisfied with, only to have it eventually end nevertheless. Therefore, in my view, you are the one being irrational.
Why do dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, and other animals exist? They exist to procreate, and evolve into newer better versions of themselves.
You don't think these other animals are busy trying to figure out how to be happy right? All these animals focus on is how to survive from one day to the next, and on how to best survive as a species. And the reason is, self preservation is a natural law, and the basis of this natural law is the basis for all reason and rational thought.
The basis for capitalism is based on each individual being a reasonable actor who acts in his or her best interest. If you believe it's not in your best interest to survive, then you certainly are not reasonable in the way that animals are because it's against the laws of nature to not want to survive.
But I realize you are human, and some humans do care more about how they feel than about whether or not they survive as an individual, or as a species, but that sort of thinking is not rational and the burden would be on you to convince me or anyone that this line of thought is rational. I don't see how you can believe suicide is the logical option, it's self murder.
Now, it's possible that society is just not designed in a way which you consider humane, and I can agree with you there. Capitalism is inhumane.
If you are up on the whole "global" thing, then you know that because there is no "global" government, and "global" currency, the whole global thing is not going to work in your favor if you currently live in the USA.
Also, because your family is from Latin America and your wife is from Europe, why should be you loyal to the United States of America? If Latin America and Europe were to improve at the expense of the United States of America, because your family is spread out over multiple countries, you'd ever understand the impact that people feel when their entire family is in one country.
How would you feel if you had family members who lost their careers so that jobs could be created in Latin America? What if you had family members who are in the fields in direct competition?
Don't you realize that my family in some situations will be in direct competition with your family in Latin America, and this may skew my political views on globalization?
I'm not anti-globalization. Globalization would be fine if I could work a 20 hour work week in exchange. But that's not what globalization is doing, all globalization is doing right now is causing the US dollar to fall, causing corporations to look elsewhere for employees, and making the US workforce insecure.
While you might not be threatened by this, and maybe I might not be threatened by this, a lot of Americans are threatened by this and whether you like it or not, it is a competition for employment, employability, and globalization becomes global competition. I'm not sure where you get the idea that it's one big team, as if we can all win at once, even if globalization helps us all win in the long term, no one wants to be the loser right now.
You really have no idea what you're talking about, and you have a grotesquely blinkered view of the possibilities of existence, even in the U.S. You are probably a liberal who believes the government exists to protect you, provide you with shelter and security. And I bet you believe that it's other peoples job to protect and raise your kids.
The truth of the matter is, society is cold, heartless, and ruthless. You've got to look out for #1, that is the only rule in society and in capitalism. That is the only rule in politics.
Look out for #1, protect you and yours, and I'll protect me and mine. And that is American capitalism.
You can say that not every American believes in the capitalist culture, but the truth is, the people who make the decisions don't really care what you or I believe in. They have decided on this form of capitalism where we work longer and harder, they have decided to let the environment get this bad, and my thinking and philosophy is very flexible.
When my environment changes, my philosophy changes to adapt to my environment. I don't keep a static philosophy in an environment of constant change. This means when the economy is good perhaps I won't be so pessimistic, but we are in pessimistic times.
The USA is in the process of collapse, you can believe what I'm saying or stay naive, but the dollar is sinking and oil is rising, which means the USA is collapsing. If the USA is collapsing and we hit rock bottom, we will end up with another Gilded Age and another Depression.
If you look at what our bosses/leaders are saying, they are just telling us to compete more, work harder, and compete with the billions of Asians, and Africans in a fight for our lives/jobs. So we no longer dictate the rules anymore, if we ever did. If they say you have to work longer hours just to maintain your current quality of life, then you'll have to work longer hours.
And if you want your children to have a quality of life as good as yours, if you have a bachelors degree, your children need a masters degree. This means you can't keep doing the same thing you have been doing anymore. It's not enough to just stay afloat and get by in an environment where your job and your skills aren't extremely valuable.
What I'm trying to say is, we are not in a position to dictate what kind of capitalism we have. We have global capitalism, in a global economy, with global corporations, and therefore we have global competition.
How do you expect to survive if you keep acting like you have the same challenges and competition level that your grand parents had? You don't live in the same world they had, they did not have competition from China, India, Africa and Mexico offering ever cheaper yet more skilled labor.
I respect your point of view, I just think it's an outdated view of the world. It's the old view of the new world and it isn't going to work in a global economy. Perhaps if the economy were not global I'd be taking the exact same view as you.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is, if you ban and hide all the evidence of the crimes being committed, then it's as if no crime has been committed at all.
This isn't really about child porn. But if you can keep child porn off of Freenet, then there is no point in even having a Freenet that wont work.
That being said, Freenet is not the only way to do it. In fact Freenet is not even a good way to do what they are trying to do, because it's far too complicated and the governments can simply kill anyone who runs Freenet, or deliberately plant Kiddie Porn on Freenet so they can make the case to ban it in their country.
Why did they open their product to children anyway?
They should have kept it as an adult college generaton product. I'd probably still be using it if they didn't open it to everyone.
Brilliant idea.
So why are children on facebook, a site which started out as a college oriented adult site?
Look, I'd be fine if it wasn't reaching a point where people are being raided by the FBI for clicking illegal hyperlinks, but it has reached that point.
It's time to do something radical technologically in my opinion. It's a lot cheaper to solve this technologically than to let bad laws ruin the internet experience for everyone.
So how do you want to save the internet? I say the best way to do it is to build in technological and legal solutions which limit liability of websites and users of those websites and place 100% of the liability on the parents.
If a 15 year old breaks into the unrestricted chatroom and talks to adults, it's their parents fault, it's not the websites fault, or the adults fault.
And no, you cannot label the adults in the chatroom pedophiles if they aren't actively seeking children. But go into ANY chatroom these days, even the "adult" oriented chatrooms, and somehow they are all filled with teenagers.
A safe internet, designed for minors to access. This internet should require adult verification from their parents allowing their children to access the sites.
How do we stop the bad people accessing the kiddies' intarwebs ?
Something has to be done.
Indeed. Parents need to start taking some fucking responsibility.
Why would an adult want to access the kiddie intraweb? Any adult who is trying to access these sorts of site should be investigated immediately.This will save resources.
Thats why you amend the constitution and add an age of consent to it.
Look, I'm not saying ban all who are under 15 from accessing the internet. If someone is under 15 and their parents give them permission to access the internet, they have every right to access the internet. Their parents should be responsible for monitoring their use of the internet if their parents believe their child has a right to access.
However the current trend is that parents expect MySpace, and adult users of MySpace to change our behavior and protect THEIR kids from the dangerous internet. It's not my job to protect some other persons kids. It's not MySpaces job to protect other peoples kids either.
And parents obviously aren't doing a good job protecting their own kids if there is some sorta pedophile problem with the internet. So it's in the best interest of the internet and the adult users of the internet, to force parents to be responsible and monitor their child/teens internet access.
While they say no alcohol is served on MySpace, there are many corrupting elements on MySpace and it has nothing to do with alcohol. MySpace is simply not a place for kids. There are adults on MySpace doing adult things, having adult discussions. MySpace is not like slashdot where there are moderators and "rules".
A Slashdot conversation which is inappropriate for minors can be moderated. The same cannot be said about MySpace. And honestly, if you are under 15 and using MySpace, your parents are probably being irresponsible. MySpace is not a toy designed for children. It's as adult as a bar or strip club in my opinion.
Lets solve this problem once and for all and come up with ONE age of consent. One age which applies to all US territories and the internet, so that adults can know when they are breaking the law.
To have no age of consent is equal to having the drinking age be different in every state and having some states have bars with minors in them and other states having bars set to be over 21.
You cannot govern this way.
Instead of having the age of consent be state by state, why don't these federal politicians who want to pass all these internet laws to ban free speech, simply pass one age of consent bill which once and for all sets the age of consent across the entire country?
It's a lot easier to protect children when we actually know what a child is in the eyes of the law.
As far as I'm concerned. It's better to be safe than sorry. Assume 18 is the absolute minimum age, because from a legal perspective, if they are over 18 then you can't be sued as easily.
And I don't think we'd need ID's in every area of the internet. But if you want uncensored communication, because of how vague the current laws are, they can use the current laws to limit your free speech if minors are in the room.
It would be best if minors were not in the room, or if you could have anonymous / secure / private speech, as these seem to be the only two options which preserve free speech on the internet.
The truth is, a few sick pedophiles can ruin the internet for everyone else. Pedophiles make the entire internet look bad and many people use these pedophiles as an example of why we need to get rid of free speech on the internet.
The only way to preserve free speech on the internet at this point is technologically. The legal system is a generation behind the technology and probably always will be. The legal system can't even make up their mind on what the age of consent is.
Until they come up with a national age of consent, it will remain very difficult problem.
If there were a national age of consent then there could be a simple legal technological solution.
The problem is not going to be solved just by telling parents to supervise the internet.
Yeah if the child is actually a child, as in under 15, then yes the parents should be supervising the internet for them, but what about when they are over 15 and under 18?
How can you have a chatroom or a "space" on the inernet which is not commercial, but which restricts the age limit to 18+? That is the question I'm asking. The law says that 18+ cannot have unrestricted communication with those under 18. The laws are probably extreme, but these are the laws, and the technology has to adapt to the laws to protect their users.
If something is not done, then there will be a lot of unnecessary lawsuits.
A safe internet, designed for minors to access. This internet should require adult verification from their parents allowing their children to access the sites.
And an unrestricted unsafe internet where anything goes. And anyone who chooses to access this internet should be in no position to turn to lawsuits and press charges on people.
The key is, you can't mix the two worlds. The best way to protect minors is to build an internet for minors. The current internet is designed for adults and is unrestricted because adults can handle unrestricted "free" speech.
Minors on the other hand should have their parents at some level, through some means, set for them the level of censorship. And certain portions of the internet (chatrooms), have to be age restricted.
How often do you go into a chatroom which says its for over 21, and somehow some minors are always in the chatroom? How exactly is this different from walking into a bar and it's supposed to be over 21, yet minors are in the bar drinking with adults?
Something has to be done.
In my opinion, I see no reason for minors to be using the same social networking services as adults, and in my opinion if they are under 15 they shouldn't be on social networking sites at all.
Can anything good come from letting minors access the adult oriented internet? We don't let them into clubs and bars, so why Myspace and Facebook?
What's the end game? Why should I care about what an evolved human being millions of years from now will be capable of? I'll be long dead. Not only that, but why is it important that he be a better version of ourselves? Where is this leading?
If you plan to have kids, then you have to care. The fact that our parents didn't care enough, is why we inherited the world we currently have. If you think we are bad now, while we were a lot worse in the past, there were also fewer of us.
The problem now is, humans are evolving their technology, but not evolving their society. Society is not keeping pace with the technology.
So the whole point should be to better ourselves, to better the fate of your future offspring if you plan to have any, and also just to keep many innocent animal species which aren't human from paying the price for our stupidity.
While we wipe ourselves out in blind rage, we are also wiping many species of life out with us. So even if we do go extinct, and even if you don't think there is anything magical about life, it's still wrong to cause this damage.
Actually, being happy is pretty much the only thing they're concerned about. Since they lack higher reasoning, they don't know they'll die if they don't eat. They just "feel good" when they eat. They don't care about procreating, but sex "feels good".
Humans are one of the few animals who have sex for pleasure.
These animals lack the capability of focusing, or even thinking about survival. All they do is what makes them happy, and they've evolved to be happy when doing things that help with their survival. Not because there's a greater meaning in survival, but simply because animals that don't like to eat wouldn't have lasted long enough to procreate, and we wouldn't see them. Either way everyone is doing what makes them happy.
This is your opinion, and you are free to believe it. I do think animals are capable of reason.
Self-preservation is a natural law because anything without a self-preservation instinct isn't likely to survive and pass on its lack of self-preservation instinct. It's not something that needs to be any individual's goal. It's something that, as a species, you can't escape. Evolution will always favor species that have a self-preservation instinct over those that don't.
It has to be a goal because other species will prey on you if you don't develop survival strategies and tactics. In the case of humans, other humans will prey on you if you don't focus in survival. The native American tribes and the African tribes were happy, they didn't have to work, they had as much time with their family as they wanted.
What happened was that another group of humans who were not as happy, decided to take their land and resources to make themselves happy. The Europeans who did this were able to do this because at the time they had better weapons, the reason they had better weapons is because they had more experiences with conflict, war, and had to survive in environments which were more harsh.
In the environments that these Europeans were in at the time, they spent more time fighting, but at the same time the survival strategies and war tactics became more sophisticated. As a result, the native Americans and Africans did not have any concept of modern warfare, and the result was that all that happiness didn't mean a thing because they did not have the technology and weapons to protect their happiness from other groups of people.
On the contrary, sir. If I can't find happiness in life, then the laws of nature demand I die. This way, I won't pass my flawed genes forward, and humanity as a whole will be stronger. Only humans with strong self-preservation instincts and those that can find happiness in their environment will procreate.
Just because you aren't genetically perfect, it does not mean you are so genetically flawed that you should not procreate. Maybe you have
Hi. I'm under 30, and I'm concerned with being happy. I don't care if the USA will exist in 50 to 100 years. Life IS all about being happy, unless you have a religious conviction that tells you otherwise (and most people find happiness in the conviction as hard as they try not to).
This is why the USA probably wont exist, and why Climate Change probably wont be solved. The hard problems are not fun to solve, and a lot of the changes that we will have to make will make a lot of people unhappy.
But if it's just about keeping people happy, then our leaders should forget about the future of the earth and live it up. And we should forget about what happens to the United States.
To start, I have a question for you: what ever happened to you that you think happiness is not a goal to strive for? At the very end of your post, you say
so if we are facing regressions why should the young listen to their parents when their parents tell them it's all about being happy?
Yes I say this because a lot of the problems we have in the world are the direct result of powerful people doing what makes them happy. Perhaps winning wars is what makes us happy, so we should continue to launch and win wars forever because victory is going to keep us happy?
Hitler killed the Jews because their extermination made him happy. It doesn't matter if these actions or behaviors are reasonable, or in the best interest of the species, or of the earth, because it's what made people happy during that point in time, right? If your basis of right and wrong is simply having whats right be what makes people happy, then you are some sort of utilitarian.
The problem with this form of utilitarianism is sometimes what makes the most powerful people in the world happy, makes everyone else extremely unhappy. Right and wrong therefore has nothing to do with emotion and what people feel. Right and wrong can only be measured by the outcomes. You know something is right when the world is better because of what you did, but in specific when I say the world I'm saying your social pyramid, with you at the top of the pyramid, your family directly under you, your spouse and friends somewhere in the mix, and complete strangers at the bottom of the pyramid.
If this is the case, this also is your pyramid of responsibility. You are most responsible for protecting yourself physically because only by protecting yourself physically is anything below you on the pyramid even possible. The second responsibility is protecting your family, because for most people, they don't find happiness from their job, they find happiness from their family.
Look, I'm not saying I don't want to spend more time with my family. I'd love to be able to make enough money to protect what I care about while also enjoying what I care about, but we both know that I'm just one person and I'll never have the power to re-arrange the fucked up misery producing corporate culture.
I see no reason why we shouldn't have a shortened work week, more vacation time, and higher pay checks. Considering all the efficiency and productivity we gained from inventing automation and electronics, the only reason we continue to work 40 hours a week with almost no vacation time is because we truly deep down don't want to promote happiness. We deep down, desire to promote and sustain misery.
Deep down we don't really want to spend more times with our families, that is why we continue to increase the working hours. Even women who used to spend all their time raising children, want to put their children in day care for other people to raise.
If I remember my childhood at all, I remember my parents and elders constantly trying to put into my head that the world sucks, and I've got to work hard my whole life, and maybe I'll eventually be happy when I'm 60 and I work hard enough to be able to retire. I can be happy right now where I am. I'm getting paid a decent amount to do something I enjoy with people I enjoy b
All they are going to do is make the violence harder to see and trace. People will use poison instead of guns, and then what will these idiots think?
The goal is not to stop violence. The goal is to ban violent thoughts, which is really stupid because most murderers aren't obsessed with violent thoughts, they are the ones who actually do it.
If they say that even simulations are illegal, when no human is harmed by it, that is the definition of a thought crime.
You don't seem to get it.
As long as basic material needs are being met, I don't really care that much about the margins. I'm not so heavily invested in the trappings of wealth and status (and Yale is about status) that the fluctuations of the global economy are going to overdetermine my identity.
I've lost jobs, family members of mine have lost jobs both in the US and Latin America, and we bounced back. It's not that big a deal. We have networks of family and friends that help us out. Maybe this is what Americans need to learn: the importance of social capital. You earlier accused me of being a "liberal" who trusts the government. I think you're actually an old-school post-war self-alienating American who trusts the government to keep things safe and stable and the market to keep you employed, and so you don't bother to make a network of familiars and mutual support.
I have to ask: why are you alive? Why bother? Are you so instrumentalized, so completely in the thrall of the ethics of production and accumulation? Really, if I had your view of the world, I'd probably kill myself and save myself the misery.
Even if you aren't focused on status, it does not change the fact that employers still see a degree from Yale as being better than a degree from some lesser name school. People still give greater opportunity to people who go to schools like Yale and Harvard, regardless of what you think about status it just is what it is.
And no, I don't consider my identity to be my status, I consider my identity to be my family/clan. I consider my status to simply be a measure society uses to determine the greatness of a certain individual or of certain families.
Whats wrong with wanting to be great? Whats wrong with wanting to be recognized by society for your achievements?
Social networks are important, I agree with you on that, but most social networks are networks you were born into and not networks you formed or built on your own. It's next to impossible to "join" into a social network if you are born in the wrong neighborhood in the USA. It's not like these elite social networks are looking to invite kids from the lowest classes and rank of society.
Yes it does happen sometimes, and there are networks that do exist, but if you aren't born into one of these networks it can take a long time to form your own (generations), and a long time to connect your family to the already established network (generations). In either case it's going to take at least a generation in order to go from a disconnected family to a connected family.
The truth of the matter is, most of the time social status creates social capital. Most of the time, the kid goes to prep school, goes to Yale, and joins Skull & Bones or whatever frat, and through their previous status they either become "connected" or if they already were connected they become even more connected.
But how often can you say that kids living in ghettos, or in trailer parks, or in the third world countries, how often will these kids be invited into these exclusive social networks? I'd say not often enough, and this would be one of the reasons why these kids are more likely to join street gangs, or become neo-nazi's, because they have social capital but of the wrong kind.
I'm not an old school post war, I don't trust the government to keep me safe. I know the government is about as corrupt as my police department, if not moreso, and therefore I cannot expect the government or any institution to keep me safe or watch my back.
I do expect my family members to watch each others back. And I do expect my friends to watch my back. I expect more from the church than I expect from the government.
You ask me, why am I alive? Life is more like an project to me. I have a mission in life, a purpose, and I'm working towards accomplishing my set of goals. Whether or not I'm happy while I'm doing it does not matter.
The point is to be a good role model of what success is. I may not be
Assuming, of course, that they don't pick up all the culture from you and end up teaching their kids the same.
I personally will show my kids the example of doing the stuff I like and earning well from it; of loving knowledge and using that to navigate the world effectively; and of using intellect to help navigate the psychological labyrinth of living, including how to win friends, how to deal with peer pressure, how to deal with life's challenges.
I'll also, to the best of my ability, show an example for how to balance different priorities - how to have a life you enjoy, how to deal wisely with money while knowing that it is only a small part of life, something that's useful as a tool yet is only a tool.
This might be telling of our different backgrounds - I've grown up among researchers, which means I've always had the education and knowledge available, and while money has been tight, that's not been crucial. And I don't consider "better part of town" or "better school" to count much at all - we lived in a reasonably cheap area, and I don't think there's anywhere in the country I'm from where there's a stronger average.
Money just isn't what makes the difference, and neither knowledge nor money is what I feel I'd have been better off with as a child and adolescent - what I would have liked is more skills in happiness, more examples of how to deal with life in a fashion where different priorities was balanced for joy.
So, that is, to the best of my ability, what I'll give my children - and, from what I see of psychological research, it is also what is best for children.
Oh, and I don't care about all this "compete" stuff - the world is growing progressively richer through technology, and "compete" is only important if you want to show off having more toys than your neighbor, for social status. I can play better social status games than that.
Eivind.
Why do you assume your kids will be researchers and why do you assume that the United States will always have the best economy, and that you'll always be a part of the middle class? Or that the middle class will always exist?
When Hitler took over Germany, the people who had money had the greatest chances of survival. In the future if a world war 3 begins, those who have either the most money, or the best weapons, have the greatest chances of survival.
The world is a very competitive place, and it's only becoming more competitive. Now I admit, I've only been around under Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, so I only know the values of the leadership that I grew up with.
But if you pay attention to the policies, the laws being passed, and the value systems of the current political leadership, they don't give a damn whether or not you, me, or our children are happy. They just want us to have children so our children can be used to fight their wars and pay their taxes.
So we can say that our bosses and our leaders don't give a damn about happiness. If anything, they want to turn happiness into a product and then sell it to you through pills, or through concepts like intellectual property. No one seems to care about the people who can't afford the happy pills or the license to access the intellectual property.
So what is wrong with social status? If you look at society, everything in our society rewards social status. If you have social status, the government rewards you with lower taxes, better quality service, and a lower chance of being drafted into world war 3.
If you don't have social status, you get treated as trash, either trailer trash or ghetto trash. I don't see the government or the media making any distinction between the different kinds of people who live in a certain neighborhood. Therefore if you somehow are unlucky enough to be born in Compton, there is an entire set of media stereotypes about you from before you were born and people still will judge you and not want to be fr
That's your opinion, and you're entitled to it. However, you failed to offer any arguments to back it up.
In order for my view to be irrational, my arguments need fail a point of logic. However, you're attacking the axiom my argument was based on, without defending your own axiom. Why is survival important? Why do you exist? If you are leading a miserable life, is death not preferable?
I continue on living because I like living. I'm fairly happy. The moment that ceases to be true, suicide is the only logical option. The alternative is to prolong a state you're not satisfied with, only to have it eventually end nevertheless. Therefore, in my view, you are the one being irrational.
Why do dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, and other animals exist? They exist to procreate, and evolve into newer better versions of themselves.You don't think these other animals are busy trying to figure out how to be happy right? All these animals focus on is how to survive from one day to the next, and on how to best survive as a species. And the reason is, self preservation is a natural law, and the basis of this natural law is the basis for all reason and rational thought.
The basis for capitalism is based on each individual being a reasonable actor who acts in his or her best interest. If you believe it's not in your best interest to survive, then you certainly are not reasonable in the way that animals are because it's against the laws of nature to not want to survive.
But I realize you are human, and some humans do care more about how they feel than about whether or not they survive as an individual, or as a species, but that sort of thinking is not rational and the burden would be on you to convince me or anyone that this line of thought is rational. I don't see how you can believe suicide is the logical option, it's self murder.
Now, it's possible that society is just not designed in a way which you consider humane, and I can agree with you there. Capitalism is inhumane.
Show me your evidence.
If you are up on the whole "global" thing, then you know that because there is no "global" government, and "global" currency, the whole global thing is not going to work in your favor if you currently live in the USA.
Also, because your family is from Latin America and your wife is from Europe, why should be you loyal to the United States of America? If Latin America and Europe were to improve at the expense of the United States of America, because your family is spread out over multiple countries, you'd ever understand the impact that people feel when their entire family is in one country.
How would you feel if you had family members who lost their careers so that jobs could be created in Latin America? What if you had family members who are in the fields in direct competition?
Don't you realize that my family in some situations will be in direct competition with your family in Latin America, and this may skew my political views on globalization?
I'm not anti-globalization. Globalization would be fine if I could work a 20 hour work week in exchange. But that's not what globalization is doing, all globalization is doing right now is causing the US dollar to fall, causing corporations to look elsewhere for employees, and making the US workforce insecure.
While you might not be threatened by this, and maybe I might not be threatened by this, a lot of Americans are threatened by this and whether you like it or not, it is a competition for employment, employability, and globalization becomes global competition. I'm not sure where you get the idea that it's one big team, as if we can all win at once, even if globalization helps us all win in the long term, no one wants to be the loser right now.
The truth of the matter is, society is cold, heartless, and ruthless. You've got to look out for #1, that is the only rule in society and in capitalism. That is the only rule in politics.
Look out for #1, protect you and yours, and I'll protect me and mine. And that is American capitalism.
You can say that not every American believes in the capitalist culture, but the truth is, the people who make the decisions don't really care what you or I believe in. They have decided on this form of capitalism where we work longer and harder, they have decided to let the environment get this bad, and my thinking and philosophy is very flexible.
When my environment changes, my philosophy changes to adapt to my environment. I don't keep a static philosophy in an environment of constant change. This means when the economy is good perhaps I won't be so pessimistic, but we are in pessimistic times.
The USA is in the process of collapse, you can believe what I'm saying or stay naive, but the dollar is sinking and oil is rising, which means the USA is collapsing. If the USA is collapsing and we hit rock bottom, we will end up with another Gilded Age and another Depression.
If you look at what our bosses/leaders are saying, they are just telling us to compete more, work harder, and compete with the billions of Asians, and Africans in a fight for our lives/jobs. So we no longer dictate the rules anymore, if we ever did. If they say you have to work longer hours just to maintain your current quality of life, then you'll have to work longer hours.
And if you want your children to have a quality of life as good as yours, if you have a bachelors degree, your children need a masters degree. This means you can't keep doing the same thing you have been doing anymore. It's not enough to just stay afloat and get by in an environment where your job and your skills aren't extremely valuable.
What I'm trying to say is, we are not in a position to dictate what kind of capitalism we have. We have global capitalism, in a global economy, with global corporations, and therefore we have global competition.
How do you expect to survive if you keep acting like you have the same challenges and competition level that your grand parents had? You don't live in the same world they had, they did not have competition from China, India, Africa and Mexico offering ever cheaper yet more skilled labor.
I respect your point of view, I just think it's an outdated view of the world. It's the old view of the new world and it isn't going to work in a global economy. Perhaps if the economy were not global I'd be taking the exact same view as you.
If that were true, kids wouldn't be killing kids.
Seems to me that it's more dangerous to be a kid now than it ever was.