I talk to the girl at subway a few days a week. I don't even know her name (no name-tag). I have little personal investment in her. I mean, sure, I hope she's doing well, but not any more than any other near stranger.
On IRC and other internet forums, there are a couple people I talk to regularly; mostly just...whatever. I don't touch base with each twitter follower every day. That would be...burdensome. Even if I only have 300 something. Who are mostly spam-bots.
I ask the leader or most popular in the group how the rest of the group is doing. I ask the one who follows all the gossip and politics whats going on. I don't get involved and I don't talk to each one on a daily basis because I would not need to do that to get a status update.
>>Yeah but most of the time why would we care what person A thinks about person B even if they tell us?
Because even though you know both A and B, and are friends with them, they hate each other (A cheated on B back in the day), and so you know not to invite them both to the same dinner.
Or more importantly, those annoying group politics that every group of humans over the size of 10 inevitably develops.
You don't have to choose sides in group conflicts.
Assuming the Dunbar limit is real, and not just hand-waving of the sort that appeals to Malcolm Gladwell, it applies to the exponential space needed to store the square of the relationships maintained, not the time spent maintaining the relationships themselves.
In other words, it's not that its hard to remember stuff about 150 people - I interact with thousands of people at my lectures every year and remember their personalities if not their names - but rather trying to remember what Person A thinks about Person B and so forth. This is much more difficult.
Because of that, I'm skeptical of this researcher's findings having anything to do with it. If I have 100 friends or 500, it is just as easy for me to do my updates. Reading them all also isn't terribly difficult, but there's a lot of people that post nothing interesting, and fewer worth replying to.
Yeah but most of the time why would we care what person A thinks about person B even if they tell us?
Unless it influences or has to do with how you think about them or they think about you, why would you remember it?
For example, you might converse with a main developer of a software project not because you care about the person, but because you care about the software. If someone else would develop the software, you'd instead converse with that other person.
Of course, if you converse long enough with a person, chances are high that the person also starts to become important for you.
So the person has to be personally important? That would probably be far less than 150 people for most. Probably far less than 50 people.
How is meaningful defined? If you mean regular social contact with then it's easy to talk to 1000 people in a day. If you are talking about talking to 1000 people in different chatrooms on a regular basis thats also easy but it would probably be on a weekly basis.
How do we determine what a meaningful conversation is? Is this conversation you and I are having meaningful? How would I judge?
In fact, the US government might be one of the parties I censor my communication with, though I hadn't fully considered it in my thought experiment.
In such a situation requiring moral judgement, having more options is always better, and one option when dealing with sensitive information is to keep it private. The 'keep it private' option should be judged in the context of the facts at hand, not automatically and universally ruled out ahead of time on the basis that it is 'self-censorship'.
In fact, not saying anything is potentially as much an act of freedom as speaking out. It's not always the correct choice, but should always be an available one.
Thats why governments have surveillance. Even if you don't say anything at all they still will probably figure out what you are working on.
In their eyes you are free and therefore working already with them because otherwise you would be in on of their prison camps. Also, by not raising taxes to the sky they already pay you so you are already working for them. We don not count as ordinary citizens. We're an asset to them. A tool. When tools don't function properly anymore they are getting disposed. It really is that simple.
It doesn't work with zoo animals. It wont work with people. It's not like you can train monkeys with torture alone, but you can make them violent and unpredictable.
Point is if they are going to dispose of you either way, why be tortured for 20-30 years when you can be tortured for the least amount of time?
No rewards means they only have the threat of torture. After a certain point threats just don't work. This is why rewards are offered. This is why capitalism was introduced in the first place. Under Hitler or Stalin all they used was threats and those countries eventually collapsed. Why? Because the populace hated the government in the case of the Soviets, and in the case of Hitler, the human rights abuses and agenda of Germany conflicted with other nations.
The only reason this wouldn't collapse the government is because all governments are doing the exact same thing. So all governments are corrupt, and this government is just the most powerful of the corrupt.
In their eyes you are free and therefore working already with them because otherwise you would be in on of their prison camps. Also, by not raising taxes to the sky they already pay you so you are already working for them. We don not count as ordinary citizens. We're an asset to them. A tool. When tools don't function properly anymore they are getting disposed. It really is that simple.
Oh please. If you think you can control a monkey by torture, yes in some limited fashion you can, but the behavior of the monkey will be very unpredictable, unreliable, and potentially dangerous.
Even zoo animals have to be given treats. So if government thinks "well we haven't tortured you, so you should help us", that isn't going to work at all.
Torture, genocide, slavery, human rights abuses, these are also moral issues.
As is the question of who should get what information.
God only knows the difference between a snitch and a whistleblower and a leaker in most cases.
No those are ethics and legal issues involving rights, liberty, and can be defended on a libertarian amoral basis. You don't have to feel, you can think about why torture, genocide, slavery, are wrong for you personally. No appeal to empathy, sympathy, or any emotion besides perhaps fear of what could happen to you if you don't care about these issues.
So you think you can't be tortured if torture is legalized? You think you wouldn't get your turn? Common sense isn't the same as morality. You can ask any animal on the planet and it will choose not to be tortured, and probably not to be genocided, now that just leaves slavery. While a domesticated cat or dog wouldn't know it's a slave and wouldn't care, a human would know and I don't know any human that wants to be a slave.
So you have a situation where it's just common sense to want human rights. You might find a few lunatics who support torture, slavery, etc. And often these lunatics have a great deal of power and money, but most of them only support it because they aren't expecting to be victim to it. Do you think the Nazi's would have supported genocide if they suspected that the jews might win that war and start torturing and genociding their family members next?
There are other considerations, some of which you mention in passing, only to return to the us-vs-them analysis.
As long as you are making the whole thing an us-vs-them problem, you cannot assume a higher moral ground than the government (or members thereof).
We are all in the same boat, even if the government at present seems to be deluged by people who misunderstand the fundamental principles of human interaction.
We do not all share a self interest. So we aren't all in the same boat. My self interest or goal might not be yours. My fate might not be yours. I'm not you unless you prove otherwise.
If the time comes for bloody revolution, well, such a time may come.
If the time comes for revolution, it's will be even more us vs thems. Only your us might not be my us, and your them might not be my them. Essentially every social network for itself.
Until then, if the best we can do is replace the people in power with our own, then the best we can do is become the next source of the problem.
I agree, but my people might not be your people, so that is why we cannot be "us". But I do agree with the strategy but who wouldn't agree with that? It breaks down into which families? Which social networks? My social network isn't being put into power so what us?
It is common senselessness, not sense, to try to either subvert or get rid of the informant. In this world, there will always be more work that needs to be done than there are people to do it, and a person subverted is no more a contributing member of society than a person who has been disposed of.
I agree. An informant is beneficial to my side. A snitch on the other hand is a traitor and not useful to my side. If someone gives me valuable information then I appreciate those people, because their information could save my life, but if a person is snitching on me, that person can die in a fire.
Civic duty has nothing to do with who belongs to what group, nor with the agendas of (the people in) governments. Civic duty is much more about helping one's neighbors than about.
But why would I help neighbors who hurt me for a living? They make money hurting me, they don't help me, the society they designed was hyper competitive and they expect me to give a shit about concepts like civic duty?
Shouldn't they provide healthcare and jobs if they want people to give a shit about team spirit? There is no team spirit because the winning teams aren't just beating the losing teams by a few points, no they are beating the losing teams by blowout, and then bragging about it, and finally when the season is over then they want to go and try to take the best players from the losing teams or get them to not be such sore losers, well maybe if the game weren't designed where losing wasn't an option, people would care more about civic duty.
Currently it's too easy to lose, too hard to win, and hyper competitive. There is no community, there are just families and social networks. There is no civic duty, there are just personal friendships, personal relationships, and duty to that.
I don't believe in government brainwashing like civic duty. If government wants to give us all a duty, they can put their money where their mouth is and pay us to keep the duty. Otherwise there is nothing for me and mine to gain by doing that. Civic duty is BS, a scam, a trick to get people to volunteer to do stuff to save money for the government.
Personal gain is not a prerequisite to be labeled a snitch. Personal loss of some kind PERCEIVED by the labeler is good enough for that.
And a "sellout" is NOT more accurate OR synonymous to a "snitch". A "sellout" MAY be a "snitch" who breaks a secrecy (or loyalty) contract for personal gain, but a "snitch" is NOT necessarily a "sellout" too.
Again. "Snitch" is NOT an objective word or a word of quantifiable value. It is a pejorative term. Basically a swear word.
I said typically, not as a prerequisite. And no it's not a meaningless swear word. When someone is a snitch we all know it. When someone isn't a snitch thats not as easy to determine and there is disagreement there. But there is no general disagreement, Judas was a snitch.
When using those, it is not your goal to be objective and correct in your assessment of someones actions - you use swear words to hurt people.
I disagree. Accuracy is important in the english language. Snitch is a slur? What about traitor? The breach of trust is part of it, but also the level of damage. Judas got Jesus killed, he's a snitch pure and simple.
It is a completely subjective decision by the labeler who and for what exactly will be labeled a "snitch".
So your argument is that snitches do not exist? I'm confused. What is your argument? And how do you see Judas if not as a snitch?
Also, as for "a former member of one group who spills the group secrets"... Again... NOT NECESSARILY. Just as the label is used purely subjectively, so is the actual loyalty, betrayal of secrets OR the belonging to a group. Labelers decide who is a "snitch" - not the one being labeled.
You don't have to be a member of the neighborhood gang for them to label you a snitch when you are called to testify on them.
But testifying and being a witness isn't the same as snitching. The classical definition of a traitor is someone who was a member of the gang who became a witness. Or if you want you can go back to Christ and Judas was the snitch. But yes there are gang members out there who see anyone who opposes them as a snitch, but not everybody uses words they don't understand in a way which is least accurate. Snitching can only apply if they are your comrades. A rival gang or random civilian testifying against you is not a snitch in anyones mind but yours, but Judas is a snitch in virtually everyones mind, and someone who is disloyal to their group is a snitch to the entire community, while in the case of a gang hating witnesses who have nothing to do with them, well that gang isn't going to get the support of the community like they would if they were dealing with an actual traitor, or actual snitch. Just like the US government cannot call any of us a snitch if we don't keep their secrets as civlians or if we testify against them in court.
You are in the THEIR neighborhood and that's enough for them.
Thats not necessarily true. Let me guess, you've never actually lived in one of those neighborhoods have you? Gang members aren't all lunatics. Most of them aren't going to think grandma or granddad, or mom and pop, or charlie, isn't going to testify against them if they start shooting random people in the neighborhood. They know damn well that if they do that, that the entire community will either hunt them down and do them in, or have them arrested and put them away. And no it's not snitching, it's witnessing.
That being said, it's generally frowned upon to be a witness, but thats because the police don't do a very good job protecting witnesses from the gang and it has nothing to do with the actual community views on snitching. People don't become witnesses against Gotti because Gotti might hunt down and hurt their children. It has nothing to do with culture, but more to do with power dynamics. If the police actually had the power to handle witnesses in such a way where they could testif
Slashdot Mirror
If the hackers are really skilled there wont be any evidence to use to connect them to computer crimes.
What then? Thats when all that other sort of nonsense will come into play.
Anonymous is in deep shit now. NATO has all sorts of agents everywhere willing to detain them by any means necessary.
Rape charges, entrapment, any means.
You don't have to choose sides in group conflicts.
Even if you don't, people will decide you are on one side or the other - or will dislike you intensely for being the one who wouldn't pick a side.
You can't be liked by everyone. Get used to it.
I talk to the girl at subway a few days a week. I don't even know her name (no name-tag). I have little personal investment in her. I mean, sure, I hope she's doing well, but not any more than any other near stranger.
On IRC and other internet forums, there are a couple people I talk to regularly; mostly just...whatever. I don't touch base with each twitter follower every day. That would be...burdensome. Even if I only have 300 something. Who are mostly spam-bots.
I ask the leader or most popular in the group how the rest of the group is doing. I ask the one who follows all the gossip and politics whats going on. I don't get involved and I don't talk to each one on a daily basis because I would not need to do that to get a status update.
>>Yeah but most of the time why would we care what person A thinks about person B even if they tell us?
Because even though you know both A and B, and are friends with them, they hate each other (A cheated on B back in the day), and so you know not to invite them both to the same dinner.
Or more importantly, those annoying group politics that every group of humans over the size of 10 inevitably develops.
You don't have to choose sides in group conflicts.
Assuming the Dunbar limit is real, and not just hand-waving of the sort that appeals to Malcolm Gladwell, it applies to the exponential space needed to store the square of the relationships maintained, not the time spent maintaining the relationships themselves.
In other words, it's not that its hard to remember stuff about 150 people - I interact with thousands of people at my lectures every year and remember their personalities if not their names - but rather trying to remember what Person A thinks about Person B and so forth. This is much more difficult.
Because of that, I'm skeptical of this researcher's findings having anything to do with it. If I have 100 friends or 500, it is just as easy for me to do my updates. Reading them all also isn't terribly difficult, but there's a lot of people that post nothing interesting, and fewer worth replying to.
Yeah but most of the time why would we care what person A thinks about person B even if they tell us?
Unless it influences or has to do with how you think about them or they think about you, why would you remember it?
For example, you might converse with a main developer of a software project not because you care about the person, but because you care about the software. If someone else would develop the software, you'd instead converse with that other person.
Of course, if you converse long enough with a person, chances are high that the person also starts to become important for you.
So the person has to be personally important? That would probably be far less than 150 people for most. Probably far less than 50 people.
Yes of course. These conversations aren't usually important to me. I'm sure I spend maybe 20 minutes a day on this sites or sites like this.
So you mean family? or are you talking about something else?
You can surely remember more than 150 different screen names you've communicated with and you probably can know a bit about all of them.
What is your point? George Bush remembered the names of virtually everyone he met, again whats your point?
How is meaningful defined? If you mean regular social contact with then it's easy to talk to 1000 people in a day.
If you are talking about talking to 1000 people in different chatrooms on a regular basis thats also easy but it would probably be on a weekly basis.
How do we determine what a meaningful conversation is? Is this conversation you and I are having meaningful? How would I judge?
If you talk to them on a daily basis, what do you consider that?
By importance? Importance is very difficult to quantify for any study because it's completely subjective.
In one IRC chatroom alone there could be 150+ regular chatters. Across a dozen of these there could be well over 1000.
It's not difficult to be in contact with hundreds of different people every day for months.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYOpiBmwv14
Compare for yourself.
Perfect design, made for mobile machines, cheap, powerful, fast, sleek.
I don't think it's that simple. China isn't going to go broke. They have more than enough people willing to work for peanuts.
Only it looks like suicide, accidents or random.
Just because it's a cold war or not a typical shooting war it doesn't mean it's not a war and that people don't get killed.
In fact, the US government might be one of the parties I censor my communication with, though I hadn't fully considered it in my thought experiment.
In such a situation requiring moral judgement, having more options is always better, and one option when dealing with sensitive information is to keep it private. The 'keep it private' option should be judged in the context of the facts at hand, not automatically and universally ruled out ahead of time on the basis that it is 'self-censorship'.
In fact, not saying anything is potentially as much an act of freedom as speaking out. It's not always the correct choice, but should always be an available one.
Thats why governments have surveillance. Even if you don't say anything at all they still will probably figure out what you are working on.
What then? Most of us don't even have the Saturn anymore and probably misplaced the receipt.
I'm surprised they didn't wait until 2012 to release this game. Maybe it should be called Duke Nukem Ancient.
In their eyes you are free and therefore working already with them because otherwise you would be in on of their prison camps. Also, by not raising taxes to the sky they already pay you so you are already working for them. We don not count as ordinary citizens. We're an asset to them. A tool. When tools don't function properly anymore they are getting disposed. It really is that simple.
It doesn't work with zoo animals. It wont work with people. It's not like you can train monkeys with torture alone, but you can make them violent and unpredictable.
Point is if they are going to dispose of you either way, why be tortured for 20-30 years when you can be tortured for the least amount of time?
No rewards means they only have the threat of torture. After a certain point threats just don't work. This is why rewards are offered. This is why capitalism was introduced in the first place. Under Hitler or Stalin all they used was threats and those countries eventually collapsed. Why? Because the populace hated the government in the case of the Soviets, and in the case of Hitler, the human rights abuses and agenda of Germany conflicted with other nations.
The only reason this wouldn't collapse the government is because all governments are doing the exact same thing. So all governments are corrupt, and this government is just the most powerful of the corrupt.
In their eyes you are free and therefore working already with them because otherwise you would be in on of their prison camps. Also, by not raising taxes to the sky they already pay you so you are already working for them. We don not count as ordinary citizens. We're an asset to them. A tool. When tools don't function properly anymore they are getting disposed. It really is that simple.
Oh please. If you think you can control a monkey by torture, yes in some limited fashion you can, but the behavior of the monkey will be very unpredictable, unreliable, and potentially dangerous.
Even zoo animals have to be given treats. So if government thinks "well we haven't tortured you, so you should help us", that isn't going to work at all.
Torture, genocide, slavery, human rights abuses, these are also moral issues.
As is the question of who should get what information.
God only knows the difference between a snitch and a whistleblower and a leaker in most cases.
No those are ethics and legal issues involving rights, liberty, and can be defended on a libertarian amoral basis.
You don't have to feel, you can think about why torture, genocide, slavery, are wrong for you personally. No appeal to empathy, sympathy, or any emotion besides perhaps fear of what could happen to you if you don't care about these issues.
So you think you can't be tortured if torture is legalized? You think you wouldn't get your turn? Common sense isn't the same as morality. You can ask any animal on the planet and it will choose not to be tortured, and probably not to be genocided, now that just leaves slavery. While a domesticated cat or dog wouldn't know it's a slave and wouldn't care, a human would know and I don't know any human that wants to be a slave.
So you have a situation where it's just common sense to want human rights. You might find a few lunatics who support torture, slavery, etc. And often these lunatics have a great deal of power and money, but most of them only support it because they aren't expecting to be victim to it. Do you think the Nazi's would have supported genocide if they suspected that the jews might win that war and start torturing and genociding their family members next?
There are other considerations, some of which you mention in passing, only to return to the us-vs-them analysis.
As long as you are making the whole thing an us-vs-them problem, you cannot assume a higher moral ground than the government (or members thereof).
We are all in the same boat, even if the government at present seems to be deluged by people who misunderstand the fundamental principles of human interaction.
We do not all share a self interest. So we aren't all in the same boat. My self interest or goal might not be yours. My fate might not be yours. I'm not you unless you prove otherwise.
If the time comes for bloody revolution, well, such a time may come.
If the time comes for revolution, it's will be even more us vs thems. Only your us might not be my us, and your them might not be my them. Essentially every social network for itself.
Until then, if the best we can do is replace the people in power with our own, then the best we can do is become the next source of the problem.
I agree, but my people might not be your people, so that is why we cannot be "us". But I do agree with the strategy but who wouldn't agree with that? It breaks down into which families? Which social networks? My social network isn't being put into power so what us?
It is common senselessness, not sense, to try to either subvert or get rid of the informant. In this world, there will always be more work that needs to be done than there are people to do it, and a person subverted is no more a contributing member of society than a person who has been disposed of.
I agree. An informant is beneficial to my side. A snitch on the other hand is a traitor and not useful to my side. If someone gives me valuable information then I appreciate those people, because their information could save my life, but if a person is snitching on me, that person can die in a fire.
Civic duty has nothing to do with who belongs to what group, nor with the agendas of (the people in) governments. Civic duty is much more about helping one's neighbors than about .
But why would I help neighbors who hurt me for a living? They make money hurting me, they don't help me, the society they designed was hyper competitive and they expect me to give a shit about concepts like civic duty?
Shouldn't they provide healthcare and jobs if they want people to give a shit about team spirit? There is no team spirit because the winning teams aren't just beating the losing teams by a few points, no they are beating the losing teams by blowout, and then bragging about it, and finally when the season is over then they want to go and try to take the best players from the losing teams or get them to not be such sore losers, well maybe if the game weren't designed where losing wasn't an option, people would care more about civic duty.
Currently it's too easy to lose, too hard to win, and hyper competitive. There is no community, there are just families and social networks. There is no civic duty, there are just personal friendships, personal relationships, and duty to that.
I don't believe in government brainwashing like civic duty. If government wants to give us all a duty, they can put their money where their mouth is and pay us to keep the duty. Otherwise there is nothing for me and mine to gain by doing that. Civic duty is BS, a scam, a trick to get people to volunteer to do stuff to save money for the government.
Personal gain is not a prerequisite to be labeled a snitch. Personal loss of some kind PERCEIVED by the labeler is good enough for that.
And a "sellout" is NOT more accurate OR synonymous to a "snitch".
A "sellout" MAY be a "snitch" who breaks a secrecy (or loyalty) contract for personal gain, but a "snitch" is NOT necessarily a "sellout" too.
Again. "Snitch" is NOT an objective word or a word of quantifiable value. It is a pejorative term. Basically a swear word.
I said typically, not as a prerequisite. And no it's not a meaningless swear word. When someone is a snitch we all know it. When someone isn't a snitch thats not as easy to determine and there is disagreement there. But there is no general disagreement, Judas was a snitch.
When using those, it is not your goal to be objective and correct in your assessment of someones actions - you use swear words to hurt people.
I disagree. Accuracy is important in the english language. Snitch is a slur? What about traitor? The breach of trust is part of it, but also the level of damage. Judas got Jesus killed, he's a snitch pure and simple.
It is a completely subjective decision by the labeler who and for what exactly will be labeled a "snitch".
So your argument is that snitches do not exist? I'm confused. What is your argument? And how do you see Judas if not as a snitch?
Also, as for "a former member of one group who spills the group secrets"... Again... NOT NECESSARILY.
Just as the label is used purely subjectively, so is the actual loyalty, betrayal of secrets OR the belonging to a group. Labelers decide who is a "snitch" - not the one being labeled.
You don't have to be a member of the neighborhood gang for them to label you a snitch when you are called to testify on them.
But testifying and being a witness isn't the same as snitching. The classical definition of a traitor is someone who was a member of the gang who became a witness. Or if you want you can go back to Christ and Judas was the snitch. But yes there are gang members out there who see anyone who opposes them as a snitch, but not everybody uses words they don't understand in a way which is least accurate. Snitching can only apply if they are your comrades. A rival gang or random civilian testifying against you is not a snitch in anyones mind but yours, but Judas is a snitch in virtually everyones mind, and someone who is disloyal to their group is a snitch to the entire community, while in the case of a gang hating witnesses who have nothing to do with them, well that gang isn't going to get the support of the community like they would if they were dealing with an actual traitor, or actual snitch. Just like the US government cannot call any of us a snitch if we don't keep their secrets as civlians or if we testify against them in court.
You are in the THEIR neighborhood and that's enough for them.
Thats not necessarily true. Let me guess, you've never actually lived in one of those neighborhoods have you?
Gang members aren't all lunatics. Most of them aren't going to think grandma or granddad, or mom and pop, or charlie, isn't going to testify against them if they start shooting random people in the neighborhood. They know damn well that if they do that, that the entire community will either hunt them down and do them in, or have them arrested and put them away. And no it's not snitching, it's witnessing.
That being said, it's generally frowned upon to be a witness, but thats because the police don't do a very good job protecting witnesses from the gang and it has nothing to do with the actual community views on snitching. People don't become witnesses against Gotti because Gotti might hunt down and hurt their children. It has nothing to do with culture, but more to do with power dynamics. If the police actually had the power to handle witnesses in such a way where they could testif