Well, it's a defence that the defendant can claim, and it's up to the prosecution to prove anything to the contrary. Of course, there's not going to be some deterministic algorithm to determine who has their keys and who doesn't, so it would be up to the prosecutor to examine the circumstances, and make whatever arguments he can. It maybe possible, for example, to show that the files were encrypted recently enough so that the person couldn't have forgotten the key without some kind of memory problem. It would depend entirely on the situation.
So, just add a little exception, under the massive assumption that such an exception is already there, for people who do not have the encryption key available to them. If a law can be easily fixed, and its correct implementation is what would be enforced in the courts anyway, I would not tend to call the law (or at least its implementation) stupid.
IANAL, but I'm sure it would come down to the interpretation of "witness". The password does not incriminate her, but the data it allows access to does. Some have argued that it's like a key that unlocks a safe, which can be constitutionally requested (I would tend to side with this view), while it could conceivably be construed that it's like providing directions to buried, pilfered loot, which I would think would not be constitutionally requestable.
In my view, the fact that the information must be spoken by her is hardly the point. Why should it matter so terribly if the data is stored as files on a computer, locked by an encryption key, rather than as printed documents, locked in a safe with a physical key? Presumably, the same data could be stored by either method. The two keys themselves share the same critical properties: that they are both (usually) trivial to give, their authenticity is trivial to verify, neither of them contain any evidence against their owners, and both yield access to evidence that exists outside the owner's mind.
Your pass-phrase WOULD be incriminating evidence, and they cannot get you to reveal it.
Nice try, but the prosecutor has already said that she didn't need to disclose it, merely enter it into the machine. Her previous alleged murders would remain a secret.
I guess the question is, where does failure to decrypt data fall on the scale beginning with "not doing the prosecution's job for them", ending with "destruction of evidence", and with "hiding evidence" in the middle? I would put it near the middle, but on the beginning side.
And I think the original point stands... sometimes we consider various kinds of cronyism, back room deals, government contracts, negligence, etc. as examples of corruption, even if they're somehow legal. Just because most people don't know, or care enough to say anything about it, doesn't mean it's not shitty. We're not lawyers, so we judge right and wrong on the stricter criteria of everyday life.
OK, now that you've made your case, allow me to make mine.
The criteria of everyday life and everyday people sucks. Most people will listen to the flimsiest evidence for something that vindicates their beliefs (and in a small part, their identity), and draw completely fallacious conclusions that they are correct. Worse still, they will then use these fallacious conclusions as evidence to solidify their beliefs, until they have this illusion of a pile of evidence mounting behind them. If you try to follow almost anything up, it turns to smoke, often in the form of speculations. They draw up a situation that fits both their beliefs and the thin pieces of actual data, with no evidence other than mountain of other "evidence" that also turns to smoke. In this way, they build a castle on sand, with the appearance of solidity and stability, until you start to tap the bricks.
You know how you feel when you read a really earnest defence of a really dumb conspiracy theory? Well, I feel like this all the time when I read people's arguments that a given action of the government is due to corruption (I also feel this way when I read christian apologetics, and sporadic other topics, so it's not just government).
Government corruption is one such castle made from fallacies. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, because it clearly does from the actual hard evidence we have received about previous government scandals. However, I have heard people discuss points of alleged corruption, and it's like they don't even check to see if there are any other possibilities. They are so convinced that the government is corrupt, they don't even bother to check whether it's true or not, and so it makes them more sure. This leads to an exponential growth of false assurance.
Here's a litmus test. How many actual times can you think of examples of times when you've seen governmental negligence? You might think, "loads of times", as many would. However, think harder about it. How many times do you actually know for sure (i.e. there's no other feasible and adequate explanation for the series of events that occurred) that some governmental screw-up occurred, when it realistically could have been prevented by the people involved doing their job better? If it couldn't be prevented by people doing the job better, then it is a problem of the system, which is not fair to blame on the government. I think, if you think back, there will only be at most a couple of times where it is actually known the government was negligent, and the rest of the time we kind of assumed it was, because governments are negligent by nature.
So yes, you are correct, "knowing" something in court is very different from "knowing" something in real life, a distinction that mirrors the distinction between "fact" and "belief".
Insecure inept governments and conspiring power-mongers are not contradictory, in fact their conspiracies are just an additional example/trait of an inept and/or corrupted government or societal structure.
You've obviously got a much better handle on conspiracies than the average conspiracy theorist, but I don't think you've adequately supported your conclusion. Why do "inept" and "corrupt" belong in the same category? Surely it takes some level of competence to execute any significant abuse of power under relatively intense public scrutiny and get away with it?
Wait, you know the US government is corrupt? Oh my god! Have you contacted the police, or the press, or corruption watchdogs, or presented your evidence somewhere on the internet, or anything like that?
I sympathise, but I disagree. People are allowed to define their own rules, and hence exceptions, in their own moral compass. I mean, if exceptions weren't allowed, then you could be a hypocrite for believing one "thing" is good, but not another "thing". Surely, either you believe everything is good, or everything is bad?
... how people can believe in the existence of a government that conspires to slowly erode our freedoms, but also maintains such poor security on their information.
Oh wait, never mind, I just got it. This is clearly a ruse they orchestrated to make the truth seem implausible. Very sorry, continue with normal business.
Telstra isn't implementing any amazing technological changes or budgetary changes. Also, they've had this tech for a while now. On one of the other responses I posted about 30 minutes ago, I linked to an article from 2003 which discussed Telstra implementing this tech.
Snooping everyone's packets requires money. Even for a company with lots of it, they wouldn't spend it if they thought it was likely to bite them in the ass. There are plenty of reasons to hold off on a project like this, as well as many reasons to start it.
Either way, you've essentially gone 'I've no particular idea why this was implemented, just that there's a possibility it isn't related', I assume you believe it's more likely it isn't, where is I believe it's more likely it is.
Yes, but you've mostly missed my point. You have no evidence to support your case. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that you have presented so far that indicates the scenario you believe to be more likely than any one of them, let alone all other cases as a whole. I'm all for calling a difference of opinion when I believe there is one, but I simply don't think that's the case here.
You need to think about it from a logical perspective to understand exactly what is wrong. All of your arguments stem from the one fallacy, the fallacy of affirming the consequent. It's one of the most simple, common, and fallacious arguments there is. It goes simply like this:
Q P ---> Q -------- P
For example:
Jones was in Sydney If Jones committed the murder, then he would be in Sydney --------- Jones committed the murder
Similarly:
If the government made secret deals simultaneously with Telstra and Optus about censorship, then Telstra and Optus would announce their censorship in the same week Telstra and Optus announced their censorship in the same week ------- The government made secret deals simultaneously with Telstra and Optus about censorship
It's a well-established fallacy, whose problems logically most commonly stem from the fact that it ignores other possibilities, failing to eliminate them as viable possibilities. For example, there's absolutely nothing to suggest that Jones wasn't in Sydney because he's lived there since he was born, or that he came as a tourist from Taiwan, or that aliens beamed him down to insert anal probes into the local politicians' rectums. Similarly, well, everything I said about Optus and Telstra.
Sorry, I should have clarified, a "reasonable person" is a technical term meaning an objective view point, such that an objective person, on the balance of probabilities, would arrive at this result. It wasn't meant as an insult.
I'm sorry I jumped to conclusions. Well, I suppose it wasn't the least understandable conclusion to jump to, but still, my insults were an unnecessarily hostile response. However, now that I know what it means, I would have to fervently disagree. A rational person, in the sense you used, would weigh up competing alternatives as well as the conclusion you put forward, and weigh up exactly what your argument says about the probabilities of each possibility being correct. For that reason, it's not possible to convince a rational person without somehow, directly or indirectly, addressing the other possible conclusions, which, from what I can tell, your argument fails to do.
I study game theory, can you explain how it applies in this instance. From my cursory searches, Bigponds market share is between 40% to 50%, making it the dominant player.
I concede that I neglected to take Bigpond's size into account. Certainly it is in a position where it could simply look to corner the largest possible market. On the other hand, I still don't see the conclusion that Bigpond actually is targeting the biggest market as being necessarily true, or even significantly more likely than the alternative
I don't know. Perhaps there were technological and budgetary concerns. Perhaps the debate over the nationwide filter brought the issue to the forefront of people's minds, resulting in more demand from their target demographic. I'm not Telstra, so I can't really say anything for sure. (But that's just me; don't let it stop you from sounding so enlightened.)
Why did Optus simultaneously also do it?
Probably for similar reasons to Telstra's.
Why haven't they started to market this previously wildly unpopular feature?
There's a bit of a misconception that, in sensible business strategy, there's a dichotomy between hush-hush actions that never get publicised, and actions that are followed full-blown advertisement campaigns. It's perfectly possible Telstra is relying on a word-of-mouth response, or maybe they're working on a campaign as we speak.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps bringing up the point of child pornography on television, radio, newspapers, or any other public media, might piss off their customer bases. These people clearly like their taboos.
Taking into account that, I think a reasonable person would agree, that this isn't a sudden realization that they could appeal more that way.
If a reasonable person asks three perfectly answerable questions, ignores the response, draws conclusions from a vacuum of information, and (in the same vacuum of information) attempts to insult those who don't agree with said conclusions, then frankly, I don't want to be rational. I think any irrational person would agree with me.
Also, Telstra don't specifically target religious zealots, there are other ISPs for that. Telstra is trying to target average people. The largest demographic. That's all.
Simple game theory tells us that going for the juiciest target in a saturated market is rarely the best thing to do. So, assuming you rationally came to this conclusion, I conclude you have something other than the usual fallacy to support this claim. I would like to hear what it is.
Also, before you attempt to distort my words further, I want to say that I never claimed that they targeted religious zealots exclusively (and I acknowledge that you didn't either, directly). I meant that they targeted a more conservative demographic than, say, Internode. Religious zealots are just an (extreme) example of the people they target, specifically the ones who are most likely to support what Telstra is doing.
Name one time government did any good.
Mandatory education. Do I have to name only one, or am I allowed to name more?
What ISP do you know, that voluntarily does things like this, which don't improve its profitability, which expose it to reprisal, and targeted attacks, without being forced to by government?
Telstra has always marketed itself as a family-oriented ISP. Look at its ads. They're all squeaky-clean family scenes where everyone smiles and has fun, the kids text friends and engage in wholesome activities, and everyone gathers around the television in the end.
Telstra panders to the conservatives and religious zealots. If there's one ISP who would benefit from censoring the internet, it would be Telstra.
No, of course not. That's the way research is conducted: basically, you make up some crazy pseudo-mathematical formula, show that at least one data point satisfies the formula, and pointedly ignore all other data.
And while we're out reminding people how to perform basic, necessary tasks in their profession, I'd like to remind recording studio guys to hit the "record" button before the artist starts singing, the software engineer to compile and test his code at least once before shipping, and slashdotter to think before he posts.
And I think you are absolutely wrong. There are so many federal (and state) laws in existence that no one actually knows every single federal law. I'm convinced if you told each person a random law from the list of tens of thousands of obscure esoteric laws, around half will agree with the law and the other half wont. And in some cases if not in most, we'd first hear about the law at that point. It's illegal to have a lobster of the wrong size. That is a federal crime, but I'm sure you didn't know about that did you and never even had the chance to determine how you feel about it. I think thats how the majority of laws would be, and if you Google "Stupid laws" or "Dumb laws" there will probably be a lot of laws you never even knew existed so you would have no way to know whether or not you agree with them.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I know there are heaps. I've looked from time to time at the most recently passed laws (especially since opinions similar to yours keep surfacing), and every time, I'm bombarded with several laws I've never heard of. When I look into them, a vast majority don't apply to me, and most seem reasonably justified. Lots lots laws does not imply that they are frivolous or unjustified. Often these laws clarify thorny or grey legal issues. If you presented these laws to people, with the appropriate context, I have no doubt that most people would have no problem with them being in the books, even if they don't agree with the number of laws on the books in entirety.
What you are doing and what the lawmakers do is they present to the public media all the laws they think that we are likely to agree with but then they keep quiet or don't mention the laws they passed which would upset us or which they know we wouldn't agree with.
What!? They covered up the Claims Resolution Act of 2010? I didn't see anything about it on the 9 o'clock news, so therefore they must have covered it up. I am totally outraged! Truly government is evil and has run amok when politicians don't even try to inform me about the latest on relief for modern discriminated black farmers!
The patriot act for example they don't like to talk about, or eminent domain, or gun control, or internet gambling, or marijuana and the drug laws. They know most Americans disagree with these laws so they go out of their way not to focus on talking about it.
While I don't doubt that a majority of Americans disagree with patriot act (I am highly dubious about the rest, except eminent domain, which I am not sure about), you should also know that it is a fact of democratic politics that some issues will be kept out of debates, simply because weighing in on them loses more votes from their constituents than it gains. It doesn't imply that the US government is enacting some kind of coup on its people.
No I'm not satisfied with government, and while I do think government should fight violent crimes, those laws you mention are but a small fraction of the laws actually in place. If the only thing the government did was protect life and liberty I would not have a problem with government.
It's true, I mentioned only a fraction of the laws in place, but I think you'll find that it's actually quite substantial if you expand the categories. There are lots of bills, for example, about education.
Also, quick question: do you approve of hate speech/crime legislation? Some would argue that it is an assault on liberty (i.e. free speech). Others would argue that hate speech intimidates minorities to the extent that their own liberties are curtailed (e.g. they can't go out at night for fear of being assaulted). So, would the government be better protecting life and liberty with such legislation, or without, and why?
That is not true at all. Practically every law being passes is for the
There's an interesting parallel between conspiracy theorists and the political strawmen they burn: both use fear to overwhelm critical thought. An overwhelming majority of conspiracy theories can be debunked by simply considering the logistics of such an operation (e.g. the genesis of the operation, the amount of cooperation it requires from political rivals, the information that needs to be kept secret, the loose ends that would be left, etc). But, of course, none of this is considered when that cold chill goes down the spine.
These people are not more perceptive, more savvy, or more intelligent. What they say is, for a vast majority of the time, completely without worth or merit. Promoting them as some kind of rebel against government lies simply feeds the delusion. Whenever you read a conspiracy theory, stop, think to yourself, is it actually truly possible for something like this to happen, and would anyone actually want to be a part of it if it could? Remember this, mods, next time you consider modding a conspiracy theorist "interesting", or worse, "insightful".
The numbers prove you wrong. Polls have been taken year after year and the congress approval rating is around 20%. Only the 20% agree with the laws they are passing.
First of all, and I cannot stress this enough, this is an auxilliary point for me. The view that everyone agrees the government is too damn big is simply incorrect. While there are plenty of people who do think this, there are plenty of others who would prefer they take a far more active role in addressing social problems. I don't claim that most people approve of congress, or that a majority want bigger government, or anything like that. I was more commenting for the sake of discussion. My point, the one I really care about, is that out of the laws we have now, if you pick any one law and one person at random, the chances are the person would agree with the law being in place. This does not imply that people are satisfied with congress. Case in point: what percentage, roughly, of the laws I referred to earlier did you disagree with? Are you satisfied with the government?
OK, now that I have the defensive-sounding stuff out of the way, I can go back on the attack. It's interesting your interpretation of the 20% approval rating. It seems to me that you didn't even consider the possibility that you were wrong. What makes you assume that all the people were unhappy with passing more laws? Perhaps it was the wrong laws? Perhaps it was the relative inaction of congress that is causing the dissatisfaction? Perhaps it is congress's pandering to the libertarian minority that is causing the low approval ratings? (OK, I don't believe that, but it still demonstrates what I'm saying.) This provides no proof whatosever towards your point, as it is as consistent with mine, and many other views.
If you are young and gay you don't like the laws which discriminate against you. If you are a minority you don't like the laws which discriminate against you. If you are poor, you don't like the fact that healthcare and college isn't free or that there is a war on drugs which targets you. If you are rich you don't like the high taxes.
Certainly, but it's only a tiny minority of laws that piss off minorities. Most of the law, people are happy to obey. And again, it doesn't mean they want a smaller government, just a different one. Perhaps, some minorities who are being terrorised by racists want stronger hate crime legislation. It's far from being unheard of.
Are you telling me that the majority of people want bigger government? Are you telling me they want the government to police their lives?
Firstly, no, not necessarily a majority, just a significant number of people. As for your other question, perhaps people don't want the government policing their lives; people rarely petition for laws that target themselves, but the lives of people around them. The concerned family of an abused woman might petition for stronger powers for police to break up domestic abuse situations. They fear that they, and the people around them, will suffer without some specific extensions on existing laws.
Most of the laws being passed are the sort of laws which give the government more power whether the people agree with it or not.
That's actually not true. Read anything other than slashdot and you'll see that it's false. I think slashdotters are rapidly losing the right to criticise Fox News.
This is why the people are trying to starve the beast and force the government to cut spending. It's because the people don't like the laws.
Don't you guys have a small debt of some description?
Most people? I don't think most people would say the laws are just.
I disagree. Whether they know it or not, I think that out of all the laws that enforced out there, at least in functioning democracies, they would agree with most of them. Some may focus so much on the select few they consider unjust, that they actually lose sight on how many laws they willingly obey, and would suffer from the loss thereof. Things like various bans on violent/sexual crimes, laws protecting property, the major traffic offences, safety regulations for public places, education requirements (ignorance is a dangerous thing), worker's rights, environmental protection legislation, etc, etc. In these categories alone, there are hundreds of examples of laws that, while we could do without, we would be significantly worse off.
Everyone is under suspicion and surveillance because there's so many laws that we are all treated as suspects. So I suspect the majority believe most of the laws are unjust and that there's too many laws and too much government.
Not everyone lives in the US, you know. Most of us aren't so paranoid about our governments.
I don't see or meet people who think we need more intrusive bigger government and I don't meet people who say they want more laws to police people.
Ever heard the phrase, "There ought to be a law..."? I know plenty of people who applaud various police crack-downs, or bans on things they consider dangerous. But, that's really neither here nor there. You don't have to want to extend the current set of laws in order to appreciate them. The fact that most people don't want to specifically extend the laws is more a product of there being no reason to, rather than a general dislike of laws themselves.
Your argument seems to be something like, "If copyright infringement is OK then I'm not at fault for stealing your car as long as I get someone else to do it for me."
Close. My argument is, if the reasoning you are spouting is complete and sound, regardless of what you've applied it to, then you believe it's OK to possess stolen property, for example, a car. Same atoms, same energy, yada-yada-yada.
But not whether the idea/object/etc is illegal.
There's no such thing as an illegal object, just illegal actions of creation, possession, use, etc. Every crime is an action, by definition. Hence the greater emphasis put on the action, and less on the object, including its make-up.
If there is no harm done in the method of acquisition then it is absurd for the acquisition to be illegal too.
Agreed. However, trivialising the object, or even the action, doesn't help you at all.
Making a copy of a sequence of bits spoken by a friend harms no-one, except in the "every day you don't give me $5 you are harming me because then I'm $5 poorer each day" meaningless entitlement sense.
No, it's more in the "you are harming me because I worked and spent money on the agreement you would behave in a certain way, and you turned around and screwed me" sense. Just like I would raise hell if my boss decided that one week he would continue to employ me, but not pay me the wages we agreed upon.
What are you talking about? You're modifying part of a storage medium representing your employer's bank balance, depriving him of the enjoyment of the higher balance.
"Depriving"? "Enjoyment"? I have never heard of this type of matter or energy! Surely no such things enter into moral discussions about mere flows of electrons? You commented, not moments ago, on the absurdity of assigning two different legalities to two identical strings of 1s and 0s, regardless of origin. Surely it is similarly absurd to assign two different legalities to the same physical event, regardless of its genesis (including consent)?
This is nothing like copying using your media while maintaining the original.
No, it's not, but in saying so, you've missed the point entirely. I like copyright, and I think it's hugely beneficial to our culture in ways most people don't consider, and in ways we cannot even predict. That said, I can handle people who don't respect copyright, or who want to have it redacted, even if they haven't fully thought it through. The thing you need to understand about me is that I like copyright, but I am truly passionate about logic and reason.
What I really can't stand is the bullshit people invent in order to get this point across. It grates me like little else on the internet. It's not reserved for copyright discussions, but I have to say, as someone who sniffs out bullshit everywhere, all the time, it tends to be especially pungent in copyright discussions. Maybe it's because I'm biased against copyright, but that hasn't stopped me from sniffing out examples on my side as well, so I don't know. People spout logical travesties, like "Copyright is unnecessary because there will always be true artists that will always create with or without pay". Utter horseshit. The whole point of the argument is to conflate the conclusion the argument admits, which is there will be at least one artist creating, with the conclusion they want you to reach, which is that almost anyone that you like (who conveniently happen to be "true" artists) will continue to produce music (and distribute it for FREE!). I doubt they do it consciously, but it bugs the hell out of me.
Another example? Here's one you might appreciate, given our agreement on the reason for theft being illegal. I often question the reason why people support non-commercial infringement but not commercial infringement. I say,
What are you talking about? You've disturbed the arrangement of molecules of the car I was hoping to use.
So? You disturb them all the time. And besides, let's say someone else disturbs it for me. Then, I have your car, I have not changed it in any detectable way. Therefore, it is just as legal at my place as it was at yours.
Classical theft isn't theft because you're using something of mine. It's theft because you're denying me the ability to use it.
Not that it has anything to do with my argument, but for the record, I agree.
There is no meaningful difference between 111001101010 on my drive because I happened to come up with it using a PRNG and 111001101010 on my drive because i torrented Britney Fucking Spears.
Actually there is. If you like, I can come up with other examples where people (and courts), when morally (or legally) evaluating an incident, take into account more than the chemical composition of the objects involved. More often than not, the method of acquisition of an object decides whether the act of acquisition is moral/legal or not.
Here' a quickie: once a week, my boss allows banks to increase the float that represents my balance, at the expense of decreasing his float by the same amount. For week after week, this same event of numbers changing happens. However, if he fires me, I obtain his banking details, and I cause the same event to happen, it suddenly becomes morally and legally bad. It's the same stream of data flowing down the tubes, a similar stream of electrons passing through the lattice of metal ions. I don't know how metal molecules encode my employer's consent. Do you?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it's a defence that the defendant can claim, and it's up to the prosecution to prove anything to the contrary. Of course, there's not going to be some deterministic algorithm to determine who has their keys and who doesn't, so it would be up to the prosecutor to examine the circumstances, and make whatever arguments he can. It maybe possible, for example, to show that the files were encrypted recently enough so that the person couldn't have forgotten the key without some kind of memory problem. It would depend entirely on the situation.
I think you may have linked to the wrong comment. This one says no such thing.
If it is indeed the case that physical keys cannot be requested, then that does indeed change things.
So, just add a little exception, under the massive assumption that such an exception is already there, for people who do not have the encryption key available to them. If a law can be easily fixed, and its correct implementation is what would be enforced in the courts anyway, I would not tend to call the law (or at least its implementation) stupid.
IANAL, but I'm sure it would come down to the interpretation of "witness". The password does not incriminate her, but the data it allows access to does. Some have argued that it's like a key that unlocks a safe, which can be constitutionally requested (I would tend to side with this view), while it could conceivably be construed that it's like providing directions to buried, pilfered loot, which I would think would not be constitutionally requestable.
In my view, the fact that the information must be spoken by her is hardly the point. Why should it matter so terribly if the data is stored as files on a computer, locked by an encryption key, rather than as printed documents, locked in a safe with a physical key? Presumably, the same data could be stored by either method. The two keys themselves share the same critical properties: that they are both (usually) trivial to give, their authenticity is trivial to verify, neither of them contain any evidence against their owners, and both yield access to evidence that exists outside the owner's mind.
Anyway, they're my two cents.
Nice try, but the prosecutor has already said that she didn't need to disclose it, merely enter it into the machine. Her previous alleged murders would remain a secret.
I guess the question is, where does failure to decrypt data fall on the scale beginning with "not doing the prosecution's job for them", ending with "destruction of evidence", and with "hiding evidence" in the middle? I would put it near the middle, but on the beginning side.
What kind of wacky adventure will CmdrTaco have next? Tune in next week to find out!
OK, now that you've made your case, allow me to make mine.
The criteria of everyday life and everyday people sucks. Most people will listen to the flimsiest evidence for something that vindicates their beliefs (and in a small part, their identity), and draw completely fallacious conclusions that they are correct. Worse still, they will then use these fallacious conclusions as evidence to solidify their beliefs, until they have this illusion of a pile of evidence mounting behind them. If you try to follow almost anything up, it turns to smoke, often in the form of speculations. They draw up a situation that fits both their beliefs and the thin pieces of actual data, with no evidence other than mountain of other "evidence" that also turns to smoke. In this way, they build a castle on sand, with the appearance of solidity and stability, until you start to tap the bricks.
You know how you feel when you read a really earnest defence of a really dumb conspiracy theory? Well, I feel like this all the time when I read people's arguments that a given action of the government is due to corruption (I also feel this way when I read christian apologetics, and sporadic other topics, so it's not just government).
Government corruption is one such castle made from fallacies. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, because it clearly does from the actual hard evidence we have received about previous government scandals. However, I have heard people discuss points of alleged corruption, and it's like they don't even check to see if there are any other possibilities. They are so convinced that the government is corrupt, they don't even bother to check whether it's true or not, and so it makes them more sure. This leads to an exponential growth of false assurance.
Here's a litmus test. How many actual times can you think of examples of times when you've seen governmental negligence? You might think, "loads of times", as many would. However, think harder about it. How many times do you actually know for sure (i.e. there's no other feasible and adequate explanation for the series of events that occurred) that some governmental screw-up occurred, when it realistically could have been prevented by the people involved doing their job better? If it couldn't be prevented by people doing the job better, then it is a problem of the system, which is not fair to blame on the government. I think, if you think back, there will only be at most a couple of times where it is actually known the government was negligent, and the rest of the time we kind of assumed it was, because governments are negligent by nature.
So yes, you are correct, "knowing" something in court is very different from "knowing" something in real life, a distinction that mirrors the distinction between "fact" and "belief".
You've obviously got a much better handle on conspiracies than the average conspiracy theorist, but I don't think you've adequately supported your conclusion. Why do "inept" and "corrupt" belong in the same category? Surely it takes some level of competence to execute any significant abuse of power under relatively intense public scrutiny and get away with it?
Wait, you know the US government is corrupt? Oh my god! Have you contacted the police, or the press, or corruption watchdogs, or presented your evidence somewhere on the internet, or anything like that?
I sympathise, but I disagree. People are allowed to define their own rules, and hence exceptions, in their own moral compass. I mean, if exceptions weren't allowed, then you could be a hypocrite for believing one "thing" is good, but not another "thing". Surely, either you believe everything is good, or everything is bad?
... how people can believe in the existence of a government that conspires to slowly erode our freedoms, but also maintains such poor security on their information.
Oh wait, never mind, I just got it. This is clearly a ruse they orchestrated to make the truth seem implausible. Very sorry, continue with normal business.
Snooping everyone's packets requires money. Even for a company with lots of it, they wouldn't spend it if they thought it was likely to bite them in the ass. There are plenty of reasons to hold off on a project like this, as well as many reasons to start it.
Yes, but you've mostly missed my point. You have no evidence to support your case. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that you have presented so far that indicates the scenario you believe to be more likely than any one of them, let alone all other cases as a whole. I'm all for calling a difference of opinion when I believe there is one, but I simply don't think that's the case here.
You need to think about it from a logical perspective to understand exactly what is wrong. All of your arguments stem from the one fallacy, the
fallacy of affirming the consequent. It's one of the most simple, common, and fallacious arguments there is. It goes simply like this:
Q
P ---> Q
--------
P
For example:
Jones was in Sydney
If Jones committed the murder, then he would be in Sydney
---------
Jones committed the murder
Similarly:
If the government made secret deals simultaneously with Telstra and Optus about censorship, then Telstra and Optus would announce their censorship in the same week
Telstra and Optus announced their censorship in the same week
-------
The government made secret deals simultaneously with Telstra and Optus about censorship
It's a well-established fallacy, whose problems logically most commonly stem from the fact that it ignores other possibilities, failing to eliminate them as viable possibilities. For example, there's absolutely nothing to suggest that Jones wasn't in Sydney because he's lived there since he was born, or that he came as a tourist from Taiwan, or that aliens beamed him down to insert anal probes into the local politicians' rectums. Similarly, well, everything I said about Optus and Telstra.
I'm sorry I jumped to conclusions. Well, I suppose it wasn't the least understandable conclusion to jump to, but still, my insults were an unnecessarily hostile response. However, now that I know what it means, I would have to fervently disagree. A rational person, in the sense you used, would weigh up competing alternatives as well as the conclusion you put forward, and weigh up exactly what your argument says about the probabilities of each possibility being correct. For that reason, it's not possible to convince a rational person without somehow, directly or indirectly, addressing the other possible conclusions, which, from what I can tell, your argument fails to do.
I concede that I neglected to take Bigpond's size into account. Certainly it is in a position where it could simply look to corner the largest possible market. On the other hand, I still don't see the conclusion that Bigpond actually is targeting the biggest market as being necessarily true, or even significantly more likely than the alternative
I don't know. Perhaps there were technological and budgetary concerns. Perhaps the debate over the nationwide filter brought the issue to the forefront of people's minds, resulting in more demand from their target demographic. I'm not Telstra, so I can't really say anything for sure. (But that's just me; don't let it stop you from sounding so enlightened.)
Probably for similar reasons to Telstra's.
There's a bit of a misconception that, in sensible business strategy, there's a dichotomy between hush-hush actions that never get publicised, and actions that are followed full-blown advertisement campaigns. It's perfectly possible Telstra is relying on a word-of-mouth response, or maybe they're working on a campaign as we speak.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps bringing up the point of child pornography on television, radio, newspapers, or any other public media, might piss off their customer bases. These people clearly like their taboos.
If a reasonable person asks three perfectly answerable questions, ignores the response, draws conclusions from a vacuum of information, and (in the same vacuum of information) attempts to insult those who don't agree with said conclusions, then frankly, I don't want to be rational. I think any irrational person would agree with me.
Simple game theory tells us that going for the juiciest target in a saturated market is rarely the best thing to do. So, assuming you rationally came to this conclusion, I conclude you have something other than the usual fallacy to support this claim. I would like to hear what it is.
Also, before you attempt to distort my words further, I want to say that I never claimed that they targeted religious zealots exclusively (and I acknowledge that you didn't either, directly). I meant that they targeted a more conservative demographic than, say, Internode. Religious zealots are just an (extreme) example of the people they target, specifically the ones who are most likely to support what Telstra is doing.
Mandatory education. Do I have to name only one, or am I allowed to name more?
Telstra has always marketed itself as a family-oriented ISP. Look at its ads. They're all squeaky-clean family scenes where everyone smiles and has fun, the kids text friends and engage in wholesome activities, and everyone gathers around the television in the end.
Telstra panders to the conservatives and religious zealots. If there's one ISP who would benefit from censoring the internet, it would be Telstra.
No, of course not. That's the way research is conducted: basically, you make up some crazy pseudo-mathematical formula, show that at least one data point satisfies the formula, and pointedly ignore all other data.
And while we're out reminding people how to perform basic, necessary tasks in their profession, I'd like to remind recording studio guys to hit the "record" button before the artist starts singing, the software engineer to compile and test his code at least once before shipping, and slashdotter to think before he posts.
Wait, when did acknowledging the reason become a prerequisite for companies failing? Self-delusion is not a competitive edge!
No they don't.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I know there are heaps. I've looked from time to time at the most recently passed laws (especially since opinions similar to yours keep surfacing), and every time, I'm bombarded with several laws I've never heard of. When I look into them, a vast majority don't apply to me, and most seem reasonably justified. Lots lots laws does not imply that they are frivolous or unjustified. Often these laws clarify thorny or grey legal issues. If you presented these laws to people, with the appropriate context, I have no doubt that most people would have no problem with them being in the books, even if they don't agree with the number of laws on the books in entirety.
What!? They covered up the Claims Resolution Act of 2010? I didn't see anything about it on the 9 o'clock news, so therefore they must have covered it up. I am totally outraged! Truly government is evil and has run amok when politicians don't even try to inform me about the latest on relief for modern discriminated black farmers!
While I don't doubt that a majority of Americans disagree with patriot act (I am highly dubious about the rest, except eminent domain, which I am not sure about), you should also know that it is a fact of democratic politics that some issues will be kept out of debates, simply because weighing in on them loses more votes from their constituents than it gains. It doesn't imply that the US government is enacting some kind of coup on its people.
It's true, I mentioned only a fraction of the laws in place, but I think you'll find that it's actually quite substantial if you expand the categories. There are lots of bills, for example, about education.
Also, quick question: do you approve of hate speech/crime legislation? Some would argue that it is an assault on liberty (i.e. free speech). Others would argue that hate speech intimidates minorities to the extent that their own liberties are curtailed (e.g. they can't go out at night for fear of being assaulted). So, would the government be better protecting life and liberty with such legislation, or without, and why?
There's an interesting parallel between conspiracy theorists and the political strawmen they burn: both use fear to overwhelm critical thought. An overwhelming majority of conspiracy theories can be debunked by simply considering the logistics of such an operation (e.g. the genesis of the operation, the amount of cooperation it requires from political rivals, the information that needs to be kept secret, the loose ends that would be left, etc). But, of course, none of this is considered when that cold chill goes down the spine.
These people are not more perceptive, more savvy, or more intelligent. What they say is, for a vast majority of the time, completely without worth or merit. Promoting them as some kind of rebel against government lies simply feeds the delusion. Whenever you read a conspiracy theory, stop, think to yourself, is it actually truly possible for something like this to happen, and would anyone actually want to be a part of it if it could? Remember this, mods, next time you consider modding a conspiracy theorist "interesting", or worse, "insightful".
First of all, and I cannot stress this enough, this is an auxilliary point for me. The view that everyone agrees the government is too damn big is simply incorrect. While there are plenty of people who do think this, there are plenty of others who would prefer they take a far more active role in addressing social problems. I don't claim that most people approve of congress, or that a majority want bigger government, or anything like that. I was more commenting for the sake of discussion. My point, the one I really care about, is that out of the laws we have now, if you pick any one law and one person at random, the chances are the person would agree with the law being in place. This does not imply that people are satisfied with congress. Case in point: what percentage, roughly, of the laws I referred to earlier did you disagree with? Are you satisfied with the government?
OK, now that I have the defensive-sounding stuff out of the way, I can go back on the attack. It's interesting your interpretation of the 20% approval rating. It seems to me that you didn't even consider the possibility that you were wrong. What makes you assume that all the people were unhappy with passing more laws? Perhaps it was the wrong laws? Perhaps it was the relative inaction of congress that is causing the dissatisfaction? Perhaps it is congress's pandering to the libertarian minority that is causing the low approval ratings? (OK, I don't believe that, but it still demonstrates what I'm saying.) This provides no proof whatosever towards your point, as it is as consistent with mine, and many other views.
Certainly, but it's only a tiny minority of laws that piss off minorities. Most of the law, people are happy to obey. And again, it doesn't mean they want a smaller government, just a different one. Perhaps, some minorities who are being terrorised by racists want stronger hate crime legislation. It's far from being unheard of.
Firstly, no, not necessarily a majority, just a significant number of people. As for your other question, perhaps people don't want the government policing their lives; people rarely petition for laws that target themselves, but the lives of people around them. The concerned family of an abused woman might petition for stronger powers for police to break up domestic abuse situations. They fear that they, and the people around them, will suffer without some specific extensions on existing laws.
That's actually not true. Read anything other than slashdot and you'll see that it's false. I think slashdotters are rapidly losing the right to criticise Fox News.
Don't you guys have a small debt of some description?
Why not kill two birds with one stone and vote for them? ;-)
I disagree. Whether they know it or not, I think that out of all the laws that enforced out there, at least in functioning democracies, they would agree with most of them. Some may focus so much on the select few they consider unjust, that they actually lose sight on how many laws they willingly obey, and would suffer from the loss thereof. Things like various bans on violent/sexual crimes, laws protecting property, the major traffic offences, safety regulations for public places, education requirements (ignorance is a dangerous thing), worker's rights, environmental protection legislation, etc, etc. In these categories alone, there are hundreds of examples of laws that, while we could do without, we would be significantly worse off.
Not everyone lives in the US, you know. Most of us aren't so paranoid about our governments.
Ever heard the phrase, "There ought to be a law..."? I know plenty of people who applaud various police crack-downs, or bans on things they consider dangerous. But, that's really neither here nor there. You don't have to want to extend the current set of laws in order to appreciate them. The fact that most people don't want to specifically extend the laws is more a product of there being no reason to, rather than a general dislike of laws themselves.
Close. My argument is, if the reasoning you are spouting is complete and sound, regardless of what you've applied it to, then you believe it's OK to possess stolen property, for example, a car. Same atoms, same energy, yada-yada-yada.
There's no such thing as an illegal object, just illegal actions of creation, possession, use, etc. Every crime is an action, by definition. Hence the greater emphasis put on the action, and less on the object, including its make-up.
Agreed. However, trivialising the object, or even the action, doesn't help you at all.
No, it's more in the "you are harming me because I worked and spent money on the agreement you would behave in a certain way, and you turned around and screwed me" sense. Just like I would raise hell if my boss decided that one week he would continue to employ me, but not pay me the wages we agreed upon.
"Depriving"? "Enjoyment"? I have never heard of this type of matter or energy! Surely no such things enter into moral discussions about mere flows of electrons? You commented, not moments ago, on the absurdity of assigning two different legalities to two identical strings of 1s and 0s, regardless of origin. Surely it is similarly absurd to assign two different legalities to the same physical event, regardless of its genesis (including consent)?
No, it's not, but in saying so, you've missed the point entirely. I like copyright, and I think it's hugely beneficial to our culture in ways most people don't consider, and in ways we cannot even predict. That said, I can handle people who don't respect copyright, or who want to have it redacted, even if they haven't fully thought it through. The thing you need to understand about me is that I like copyright, but I am truly passionate about logic and reason.
What I really can't stand is the bullshit people invent in order to get this point across. It grates me like little else on the internet. It's not reserved for copyright discussions, but I have to say, as someone who sniffs out bullshit everywhere, all the time, it tends to be especially pungent in copyright discussions. Maybe it's because I'm biased against copyright, but that hasn't stopped me from sniffing out examples on my side as well, so I don't know. People spout logical travesties, like "Copyright is unnecessary because there will always be true artists that will always create with or without pay". Utter horseshit. The whole point of the argument is to conflate the conclusion the argument admits, which is there will be at least one artist creating, with the conclusion they want you to reach, which is that almost anyone that you like (who conveniently happen to be "true" artists) will continue to produce music (and distribute it for FREE!). I doubt they do it consciously, but it bugs the hell out of me.
Another example? Here's one you might appreciate, given our agreement on the reason for theft being illegal. I often question the reason why people support non-commercial infringement but not commercial infringement. I say,
So? You disturb them all the time. And besides, let's say someone else disturbs it for me. Then, I have your car, I have not changed it in any detectable way. Therefore, it is just as legal at my place as it was at yours.
Not that it has anything to do with my argument, but for the record, I agree.
Actually there is. If you like, I can come up with other examples where people (and courts), when morally (or legally) evaluating an incident, take into account more than the chemical composition of the objects involved. More often than not, the method of acquisition of an object decides whether the act of acquisition is moral/legal or not.
Here' a quickie: once a week, my boss allows banks to increase the float that represents my balance, at the expense of decreasing his float by the same amount. For week after week, this same event of numbers changing happens. However, if he fires me, I obtain his banking details, and I cause the same event to happen, it suddenly becomes morally and legally bad. It's the same stream of data flowing down the tubes, a similar stream of electrons passing through the lattice of metal ions. I don't know how metal molecules encode my employer's consent. Do you?