Excellent book. Michael Shermer also has one called Why People Believe Weird Things, though it's not as interesting overall. Stephen Pinker's How the Mind Works is an entertaining book focusing on building up an understanding of the mind rather than the others' focus on dissecting superstition.
Can someone give a reference for the claim about the popularity of belief in astrology, UFO sightings, etc.?
David Brin's book The Transparent Society (part of which is available on his site) argues that universal surveillance is inevitable, and that the question is, who will have access to the data? Will the cameras all be aimed at us private citizens and watched by faceless Thought Police agents (or AIs, for the modern version), or will we too be able to tune in and know who is watching us and why? So far the answer seems to be the first one.
The more surprised we are that it has occurred, the more it seems to make sense that some necessary being (we can call him "God") is conducting things...
Without getting into the rest of this, why not use a different name, like "Frungy?" That would supply a name for the hypothetical superbeing without the extremely loaded meaning.
Regarding your third point, yes, a lot of data is out there. Collecting it is part of a two-step political strategy. Figure that a civil libertarian doesn't want their government monitoring and analyzing their every move for suspicious behavior. So, a well-meaning person who thinks such a system is a good idea will say the following. One: "We're implementing a bunch of specific data-gathering systems for a variety of mostly-harmless purposes. Don't be paranoid; we'd never hook them up into a massive all-seeing database to analyze your every move, and there are plenty of safeguards on the data." Two: "We're merging existing databases and applying powerful new data-mining tools to them, but how can you complain? You already agreed that we could collect this data, and we're doing it to fight drugs/porn/terrorism. Besides, we'd never add a bunch of new systems to collect yet more data." Repeat.
This petition is, as I write this, the #1 petition on the "Most Popular" list, with 1,672,571 signatures. It charges that "The idea of tracking every vehicle at all times is sinister and wrong." Its deadline is "today," the 20th. I'm interested in seeing what happens to it.
By the way, does that site have any way of verifying that there are actually 1.67M supporters as opposed to three supporters plus non-Brits, multiple clicks, fake names, and spambots?
Apparently the "climate Nuremburg" comment came from one David Roberts of a "humor" site that was making one of those ha-ha-only-serious comments:
Roberts wrote in the online publication on September 19, 2006, "When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards -- some sort of climate Nuremberg."
The comment got the attention of Congressional Republicans, here (with more details). Reason Magazine likened such a proposal to an inquisition, here. The Congressional article cited an author criticizing the use of the term "climate change denier," here. That writer's thread from two days later (2006.10.11) asks people to help find the origin of such terms. The first comment there cites a 2001 book review in Nature (big-name scientific journal) making the comparison:
The text [of "The Skeptical Environmentalist"] employs the strategy of those who, for example, argue that gay men aren't dying of AIDS, that Jews weren't singled out by the Nazis for extermination, and so on.
Similarly, a 2001 article in The Ecologist compares denial of global warming -- that is, refusal "to accept our responsibility for a crime of such enormity" with no regard to why -- with "the refusal of many European Jews to recognize their impending extermination."
So, for years there have been explicit comparisons in the media by people who support GW. So, it's true that at least some environmentalists with some influence are using "denial" in a loaded way to demonize their opponents. By the way, your own comment said no, it's not being used that way... and then that "Greenhouse denial can be at least as evil and murderous as Holocaust denial."
I'll just take issue here with the epithets being used here: "denial addicts" and "Greenhouse deniers." The first dismisses anyone who disagrees with the GW hypothesis as mentally unsound -- that is, they disagree because they're just crazy. The second is apparently a calculated attempt to compare anyone who disagrees with GW to a "Holocaust denier," implying that those who disagree are evil and murderous. Similarly, some writer recently gave the opinion that the "deniers" should be brought before a "climate Nuremburg" trial to punish them for delaying action on climate change through their sin of expressing the wrong opinions. Both terms are useful for winning an argument through name-calling, but they don't add much to the substance of the debate.
Good reference! Here's the case you're referring to: Sherwood v. Walker, Michigan 1887. The lesson here was that if there is a "mistake of fact" concerning what it is that's being sold, then there is no real agreement on the deal, hence the contract isn't binding. I think the general rule is that taking advantage of the other side's ignorance or mistake is not usually acceptable, eg. buying a gem that the seller thinks is fake but that's actually real, unless the seller is the sort of person who really ought to know better, eg. a jeweler. There's also a famous case about two ships called Peerless bringing cotton from India during the American Civil War (when prices were fluctuating severely). Ironically, the two sides got confused as to which Peerless was meant, and because they traveled months apart, there was a major difference between the two loads of cotton, hence no contract or obligation for the buyer to accept the later delivery.
Actually, isn't it about time for an updated version of the old game "Core Wars?" That one had assembly-language programs battling each other in a sandboxed memory space. Why not a more complex simulation that runs offline, on one PC, simulating a vulnerable network and the programs attacking it?
Not true. Although some super-rich people are able to skate out of much of their taxes, the rich in this country pay a vastly disproportionate share of all income taxes. Income tax is a highly "progressive" system, meaning it's designed to hurt the rich the most. Corporate profits are in a sense double-taxed as well.
Having said that: The "FairTax" proposal would be a good idea.
Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief. No state organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in, any religion. The state protects normal religious activities. No one may make use of religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the educational system of the state. Religious bodies and religious affairs are not subject to any foreign domination.
Good that those reasonable limits are in place, huh? The state has many pressing needs and can't allow Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, or other troublemakers to interfere with the people's "education in... patriotism, collectivism, internationalism and communism and in dialectical and historical materialism." (Art. 24)
Although I can't find the paper offhand, this system of taxing media and players sounds like a more elaborate copyright system that's been seriously discussed academically. The proposal goes like this:
"Eliminate copyright protection; make copying files etc. legal. Tax everyone a flat fee. Anyone who creates books, music etc. can register their works with the government. Whenever anyone reads an e-book, plays a song, etc., their use of the media is anonymously reported to a government body, which then distributes the Copyright Tax money proportionately based on how popular each registered work is. If your book had.0001% of all readership and books made up 10% of all media use, your share of the money is based on those numbers."
My IP Law professor had us read and discuss this system, and the entire class gave it thumbs-down because of its numerous practical and philosophical flaws and potential for abuse. Anyway, taxing music players and recording media to compensate the recording industries seems like a back-door way of implementing this scheme, except that small-time creators are left out from compensation!
>>I know the Christians haven't exactly been nice to the Muslims, what with the Crusades and all...
I wouldn't worry about that. The Muslims were completely victorious each time. I don't see holding a grudge against people you beat. Though, I haven't talked with that many Muslims about the Crusades.
This part isn't historically accurate. Although the Crusaders didn't succeed in permanently "taking back" the "Holy Land," they did conquer Jerusalem in the First Crusade (massacring its people) and established a Crusader Kingdom for a long time with varying levels of power and size. Medieval fortresses such as that at Caesarea, in modern Israel, testify to the long-term presence of the Crusaders.
I haven't yet seen people make the connection between such a database and a proposed US one meant to let employers confirm that their employees are citizens or legal residents. Right now our enforcement of immigration law is a joke because these people can find jobs with employers who look the other way when they use fake Social Security numbers, right? For once I'm going to say this database policy is a reasonable move. Of course China wants it for more than keeping out illegal immigrants from North Korea, but there really is a legitimate use for it in the US.
I'm not thrilled with the idea of universal surveillance either, but it's been argued that the only choices are between that and one-way surveillance against us by governments and other powerful groups. See David Brin's The Transparent Society, a good chunk of which is free here. He wrote this pre-9/11, and I suspect he's not thrilled with the direction we're heading between those two alternatives.
Consider this in your analysis: Are the unemployed a party to the social contract? After all, they don't surrender taxes to uphold their part of the contract. Therefore, why can I not go around killing hobos and welfare moms? If they don't uphold their end of the deal, why are they afforded the same protections as taxpayers?
Because they're still presumably following the basic rules of not hurting anyone else. If they actually do attack people, then we punish them. As for their not following the "advanced rules" of working and paying taxes, we don't actually demand that of everyone in exchange for police protection. We only demand that they pay whatever taxes are assigned to them (often, none) and find some way of living that doesn't involve theft (but which can include any welfare we set up).
On drugs and religion: Right on. On identifying biases, I'd consider questioning the framework you set up to suggest that "natural rights" theory and capitalism are no better than racism and nobility, but it's a little late at night for that! Anyway, thanks for the discussion.
The difference is in whether you can negotiate. You can't sign a non-aggression pact with nature, or with a violent beast that can't or won't negotiate (a category that includes some H. sapiens). The only options against those things are to surrender, run or fight. Dealing with civilized humans allows the non-aggression pact as a better option. So again, there's a fundamental difference: is the enemy something you could negotiate with?
Getting back to rights and health care, there are some basic freedoms -- abilities -- that exist by virtue of a person being alive, like the abilities to move around and speak. When we codify these things as "rights" we're just setting limits on what anyone is allowed to do to anyone else, as individuals or as agents of the state. When an axe murderer is going around killing people, someone who's part of that social contract is breaking it. When a virus is killing people, there's no violation, because viruses aren't people! So, demanding police protection at taxpayers' expense is just part of that elaborate non-aggression pact with other people. Demanding health care at their expense (or education, or free cars, or bread and circuses...) is something new and different because it doesn't fall within the scope of protecting the individual's natural rights from other people.
What you could argue is that once that social contract is created, people can and should collectively give up more of their freedom for the sake of getting goods and services. But that's a different issue from whether "the right not to be sworded" and "the right to force others to give you medical treatment" are in the same category.
As a side note, your earlier saying that "there is no absolute reason carved on a stone somewhere" and therefore all rights are arbitrary is probably one of the reasons that religious folk criticize secular morality. Attacking the Enlightenment-era version of natural rights, so that there's no philosophical footing at all for a rule against shootin' and killin', is likely to scare some people into wanting religiously-imposed moral rules that look solid and virtuous on the surface.
Well said. See also my own reply to Miskatonic. Re: the problem of no one wanting to be the first to rebel, have you heard of this group, the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict? One of its founders gave a speech at my school explaining the group's mission to promote peaceful resistance against oppressive governments. (Lots of swag including a computer game the group has put out; see link.) One example he cited of how people have overcome the problem was a case of signaling: someone put out the word that those opposing the government should bang pots and pans out their windows on a certain day. So many people did it, and were hard enough to identify, that it was a relatively low-risk way for people to discover how much support a resistance movement had. Finding people willing to take action is sort of a Prisoner's Dilemma problem, and sharing information and building trust are ways of getting to a shared-victory outcome.
Right now, the UK is working on a "hatred bill" meant to outlaw certain criticism of religion, largely to protect Muslims. (Because you know, theirs is a religion of love and peace and crowds of them will firebomb you if you deny it.) It looks like the bill has been weakened with inclusion of pro-free-speech amendments, partly because Tony Blair failed to show up for a vote. From researching the bill a bit I see that it's already, or rather, still illegal to denounce the Church of England.
I've heard this before, and disagree partly because it ignores a distinction between a respect for the freedom of the individual that exists by default (in Locke's "state of nature") and a "right" to take things by force from other people.
That is, under a social contract theory of government, each person gives up some range of the things they would be able to do under anarchy, such as shooting anyone who annoys them. A relatively small government takes away only a limited range of that freedom of action, creating a framework of rules by which people can form enforceable contracts and protect themselves from violence. The purpose of that framework is to protect the remainder of individuals' freedom. A large and intrusive government does something fundamentally different: it invents new rights to receive goods and services at others' expense. Taxation -- taking wealth by force -- becomes not just a necessary evil to fund basic regulation of society, but a way of redistributing wealth.
So, failing to distinguish between a right not to be robbed and a right to rob others seems to me a failure to distinguish between what we could plausibly call "natural rights" and a series of invented rights. These invented rights actually limit individual freedom rather than protecting it.
That's why the Government should be providing health insurance, and limiting the price of medication, like in every other first-world country.
You mean, solving the problem of people not having enough money for it by taking money from them and indirectly funneling it back to them? Well, as long as there are enough rich people to overcharge, and as long as you can force people to join and pay who don't want to, you can hide the true costs and make the health care look cheaper than private industry can provide. Maybe. For a while. Assuming that individual choice and minimizing bureaucracy aren't factors worth considering.
From taking patent law, this application reminds me of a case: Juicy Whip v. Orange Bang, involving a device meant to display a fake drink container to trick consumers into thinking their drink was being dispensed from a bubbling container instead of being made on-the-fly from mix. The courts concluded that the immorality of an invention was no bar to its being patented. Although the PTO reacted to Rifkin's stunt of trying to patent human/animal chimeras by saying there'll be no patents on monsters."
To be fair, non-consensual iris-scanning tech isn't innately evil, just evil in how it's going to be used. On a related note see this story claiming that leaked UK documents show a plan to upgrade cameras to use "T-ray" tech, spying on people through their clothes. (Not sure it's actually practical to do this from a street-corner camera; don't you need an active beam generator?) Add better AI and we will, presumably, have a government that watches all citizens at all times for suspicious behavior.
For anyone that hasn't heard of it yet, check out David Brin's The Transparent Society for a different take on the privacy issue.
I think we're rushing to conclusions if we say, "Wow, a cure for cancer and big evil corporations are suppressing it for lack of profit!" The stuff's not proved to be useful in humans yet, right?
Slashdot Mirror
Excellent book. Michael Shermer also has one called Why People Believe Weird Things, though it's not as interesting overall. Stephen Pinker's How the Mind Works is an entertaining book focusing on building up an understanding of the mind rather than the others' focus on dissecting superstition.
Can someone give a reference for the claim about the popularity of belief in astrology, UFO sightings, etc.?
David Brin's book The Transparent Society (part of which is available on his site) argues that universal surveillance is inevitable, and that the question is, who will have access to the data? Will the cameras all be aimed at us private citizens and watched by faceless Thought Police agents (or AIs, for the modern version), or will we too be able to tune in and know who is watching us and why? So far the answer seems to be the first one.
The more surprised we are that it has occurred, the more it seems to make sense that some necessary being (we can call him "God") is conducting things...
Without getting into the rest of this, why not use a different name, like "Frungy?" That would supply a name for the hypothetical superbeing without the extremely loaded meaning.
Regarding your third point, yes, a lot of data is out there. Collecting it is part of a two-step political strategy. Figure that a civil libertarian doesn't want their government monitoring and analyzing their every move for suspicious behavior. So, a well-meaning person who thinks such a system is a good idea will say the following. One: "We're implementing a bunch of specific data-gathering systems for a variety of mostly-harmless purposes. Don't be paranoid; we'd never hook them up into a massive all-seeing database to analyze your every move, and there are plenty of safeguards on the data." Two: "We're merging existing databases and applying powerful new data-mining tools to them, but how can you complain? You already agreed that we could collect this data, and we're doing it to fight drugs/porn/terrorism. Besides, we'd never add a bunch of new systems to collect yet more data." Repeat.
In related news, Blair has called for a universal database of the DNA of British subjects and backed a bill against speech that "stirs up religious hatred." The UK has begun using cameras that bark orders at people. Then there's the plan to monitor all vehicle movements in the UK, the topic of petition #1 on the UK petition site.
This petition is, as I write this, the #1 petition on the "Most Popular" list, with 1,672,571 signatures. It charges that "The idea of tracking every vehicle at all times is sinister and wrong." Its deadline is "today," the 20th. I'm interested in seeing what happens to it.
By the way, does that site have any way of verifying that there are actually 1.67M supporters as opposed to three supporters plus non-Brits, multiple clicks, fake names, and spambots?
Apparently the "climate Nuremburg" comment came from one David Roberts of a "humor" site that was making one of those ha-ha-only-serious comments:
Roberts wrote in the online publication on September 19, 2006, "When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards -- some sort of climate Nuremberg."
The comment got the attention of Congressional Republicans, here (with more details). Reason Magazine likened such a proposal to an inquisition, here. The Congressional article cited an author criticizing the use of the term "climate change denier," here. That writer's thread from two days later (2006.10.11) asks people to help find the origin of such terms. The first comment there cites a 2001 book review in Nature (big-name scientific journal) making the comparison:
The text [of "The Skeptical Environmentalist"] employs the strategy of those who, for example, argue that gay men aren't dying of AIDS, that Jews weren't singled out by the Nazis for extermination, and so on.
Similarly, a 2001 article in The Ecologist compares denial of global warming -- that is, refusal "to accept our responsibility for a crime of such enormity" with no regard to why -- with "the refusal of many European Jews to recognize their impending extermination."
So, for years there have been explicit comparisons in the media by people who support GW. So, it's true that at least some environmentalists with some influence are using "denial" in a loaded way to demonize their opponents. By the way, your own comment said no, it's not being used that way... and then that "Greenhouse denial can be at least as evil and murderous as Holocaust denial."
I'll just take issue here with the epithets being used here: "denial addicts" and "Greenhouse deniers." The first dismisses anyone who disagrees with the GW hypothesis as mentally unsound -- that is, they disagree because they're just crazy. The second is apparently a calculated attempt to compare anyone who disagrees with GW to a "Holocaust denier," implying that those who disagree are evil and murderous. Similarly, some writer recently gave the opinion that the "deniers" should be brought before a "climate Nuremburg" trial to punish them for delaying action on climate change through their sin of expressing the wrong opinions. Both terms are useful for winning an argument through name-calling, but they don't add much to the substance of the debate.
If that's so, could the RIAA be hauled into criminal court for conspiracy to commit piracy?
Good reference! Here's the case you're referring to: Sherwood v. Walker, Michigan 1887. The lesson here was that if there is a "mistake of fact" concerning what it is that's being sold, then there is no real agreement on the deal, hence the contract isn't binding. I think the general rule is that taking advantage of the other side's ignorance or mistake is not usually acceptable, eg. buying a gem that the seller thinks is fake but that's actually real, unless the seller is the sort of person who really ought to know better, eg. a jeweler. There's also a famous case about two ships called Peerless bringing cotton from India during the American Civil War (when prices were fluctuating severely). Ironically, the two sides got confused as to which Peerless was meant, and because they traveled months apart, there was a major difference between the two loads of cotton, hence no contract or obligation for the buyer to accept the later delivery.
Yes. As I understand it, the drug was originally developed to increase blood flow to the heart. It missed.
Actually, isn't it about time for an updated version of the old game "Core Wars?" That one had assembly-language programs battling each other in a sandboxed memory space. Why not a more complex simulation that runs offline, on one PC, simulating a vulnerable network and the programs attacking it?
Not true. Although some super-rich people are able to skate out of much of their taxes, the rich in this country pay a vastly disproportionate share of all income taxes. Income tax is a highly "progressive" system, meaning it's designed to hurt the rich the most. Corporate profits are in a sense double-taxed as well.
Having said that: The "FairTax" proposal would be a good idea.
For comparison, from the "Constitution of the People's Republic of China":
Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief. No state organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in, any religion. The state protects normal religious activities. No one may make use of religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the educational system of the state. Religious bodies and religious affairs are not subject to any foreign domination.
Good that those reasonable limits are in place, huh? The state has many pressing needs and can't allow Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, or other troublemakers to interfere with the people's "education in... patriotism, collectivism, internationalism and communism and in dialectical and historical materialism." (Art. 24)
Although I can't find the paper offhand, this system of taxing media and players sounds like a more elaborate copyright system that's been seriously discussed academically. The proposal goes like this:
.0001% of all readership and books made up 10% of all media use, your share of the money is based on those numbers."
"Eliminate copyright protection; make copying files etc. legal. Tax everyone a flat fee. Anyone who creates books, music etc. can register their works with the government. Whenever anyone reads an e-book, plays a song, etc., their use of the media is anonymously reported to a government body, which then distributes the Copyright Tax money proportionately based on how popular each registered work is. If your book had
My IP Law professor had us read and discuss this system, and the entire class gave it thumbs-down because of its numerous practical and philosophical flaws and potential for abuse. Anyway, taxing music players and recording media to compensate the recording industries seems like a back-door way of implementing this scheme, except that small-time creators are left out from compensation!
>>I know the Christians haven't exactly been nice to the Muslims, what with the Crusades and all...
I wouldn't worry about that. The Muslims were completely victorious each time. I don't see holding a grudge against people you beat. Though, I haven't talked with that many Muslims about the Crusades.
This part isn't historically accurate. Although the Crusaders didn't succeed in permanently "taking back" the "Holy Land," they did conquer Jerusalem in the First Crusade (massacring its people) and established a Crusader Kingdom for a long time with varying levels of power and size. Medieval fortresses such as that at Caesarea, in modern Israel, testify to the long-term presence of the Crusaders.
I haven't yet seen people make the connection between such a database and a proposed US one meant to let employers confirm that their employees are citizens or legal residents. Right now our enforcement of immigration law is a joke because these people can find jobs with employers who look the other way when they use fake Social Security numbers, right? For once I'm going to say this database policy is a reasonable move. Of course China wants it for more than keeping out illegal immigrants from North Korea, but there really is a legitimate use for it in the US.
I'm not thrilled with the idea of universal surveillance either, but it's been argued that the only choices are between that and one-way surveillance against us by governments and other powerful groups. See David Brin's The Transparent Society, a good chunk of which is free here. He wrote this pre-9/11, and I suspect he's not thrilled with the direction we're heading between those two alternatives.
Consider this in your analysis: Are the unemployed a party to the social contract? After all, they don't surrender taxes to uphold their part of the contract. Therefore, why can I not go around killing hobos and welfare moms? If they don't uphold their end of the deal, why are they afforded the same protections as taxpayers?
Because they're still presumably following the basic rules of not hurting anyone else. If they actually do attack people, then we punish them. As for their not following the "advanced rules" of working and paying taxes, we don't actually demand that of everyone in exchange for police protection. We only demand that they pay whatever taxes are assigned to them (often, none) and find some way of living that doesn't involve theft (but which can include any welfare we set up).
On drugs and religion: Right on. On identifying biases, I'd consider questioning the framework you set up to suggest that "natural rights" theory and capitalism are no better than racism and nobility, but it's a little late at night for that! Anyway, thanks for the discussion.
The difference is in whether you can negotiate. You can't sign a non-aggression pact with nature, or with a violent beast that can't or won't negotiate (a category that includes some H. sapiens). The only options against those things are to surrender, run or fight. Dealing with civilized humans allows the non-aggression pact as a better option. So again, there's a fundamental difference: is the enemy something you could negotiate with?
Getting back to rights and health care, there are some basic freedoms -- abilities -- that exist by virtue of a person being alive, like the abilities to move around and speak. When we codify these things as "rights" we're just setting limits on what anyone is allowed to do to anyone else, as individuals or as agents of the state. When an axe murderer is going around killing people, someone who's part of that social contract is breaking it. When a virus is killing people, there's no violation, because viruses aren't people! So, demanding police protection at taxpayers' expense is just part of that elaborate non-aggression pact with other people. Demanding health care at their expense (or education, or free cars, or bread and circuses...) is something new and different because it doesn't fall within the scope of protecting the individual's natural rights from other people.
What you could argue is that once that social contract is created, people can and should collectively give up more of their freedom for the sake of getting goods and services. But that's a different issue from whether "the right not to be sworded" and "the right to force others to give you medical treatment" are in the same category.
As a side note, your earlier saying that "there is no absolute reason carved on a stone somewhere" and therefore all rights are arbitrary is probably one of the reasons that religious folk criticize secular morality. Attacking the Enlightenment-era version of natural rights, so that there's no philosophical footing at all for a rule against shootin' and killin', is likely to scare some people into wanting religiously-imposed moral rules that look solid and virtuous on the surface.
Well said. See also my own reply to Miskatonic. Re: the problem of no one wanting to be the first to rebel, have you heard of this group, the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict? One of its founders gave a speech at my school explaining the group's mission to promote peaceful resistance against oppressive governments. (Lots of swag including a computer game the group has put out; see link.) One example he cited of how people have overcome the problem was a case of signaling: someone put out the word that those opposing the government should bang pots and pans out their windows on a certain day. So many people did it, and were hard enough to identify, that it was a relatively low-risk way for people to discover how much support a resistance movement had. Finding people willing to take action is sort of a Prisoner's Dilemma problem, and sharing information and building trust are ways of getting to a shared-victory outcome.
Right now, the UK is working on a "hatred bill" meant to outlaw certain criticism of religion, largely to protect Muslims. (Because you know, theirs is a religion of love and peace and crowds of them will firebomb you if you deny it.) It looks like the bill has been weakened with inclusion of pro-free-speech amendments, partly because Tony Blair failed to show up for a vote. From researching the bill a bit I see that it's already, or rather, still illegal to denounce the Church of England.
I've heard this before, and disagree partly because it ignores a distinction between a respect for the freedom of the individual that exists by default (in Locke's "state of nature") and a "right" to take things by force from other people.
That is, under a social contract theory of government, each person gives up some range of the things they would be able to do under anarchy, such as shooting anyone who annoys them. A relatively small government takes away only a limited range of that freedom of action, creating a framework of rules by which people can form enforceable contracts and protect themselves from violence. The purpose of that framework is to protect the remainder of individuals' freedom. A large and intrusive government does something fundamentally different: it invents new rights to receive goods and services at others' expense. Taxation -- taking wealth by force -- becomes not just a necessary evil to fund basic regulation of society, but a way of redistributing wealth.
So, failing to distinguish between a right not to be robbed and a right to rob others seems to me a failure to distinguish between what we could plausibly call "natural rights" and a series of invented rights. These invented rights actually limit individual freedom rather than protecting it.
(See Frederic Bastiat's The Law.)
That's why the Government should be providing health insurance, and limiting the price of medication, like in every other first-world country.
You mean, solving the problem of people not having enough money for it by taking money from them and indirectly funneling it back to them? Well, as long as there are enough rich people to overcharge, and as long as you can force people to join and pay who don't want to, you can hide the true costs and make the health care look cheaper than private industry can provide. Maybe. For a while. Assuming that individual choice and minimizing bureaucracy aren't factors worth considering.
From taking patent law, this application reminds me of a case: Juicy Whip v. Orange Bang, involving a device meant to display a fake drink container to trick consumers into thinking their drink was being dispensed from a bubbling container instead of being made on-the-fly from mix. The courts concluded that the immorality of an invention was no bar to its being patented. Although the PTO reacted to Rifkin's stunt of trying to patent human/animal chimeras by saying there'll be no patents on monsters."
To be fair, non-consensual iris-scanning tech isn't innately evil, just evil in how it's going to be used. On a related note see this story claiming that leaked UK documents show a plan to upgrade cameras to use "T-ray" tech, spying on people through their clothes. (Not sure it's actually practical to do this from a street-corner camera; don't you need an active beam generator?) Add better AI and we will, presumably, have a government that watches all citizens at all times for suspicious behavior.
For anyone that hasn't heard of it yet, check out David Brin's The Transparent Society for a different take on the privacy issue.
I think we're rushing to conclusions if we say, "Wow, a cure for cancer and big evil corporations are suppressing it for lack of profit!" The stuff's not proved to be useful in humans yet, right?