Yeah, but as per my point, the value of physical object is potentially less than the damage of the act of pirating.
I mean, would you prefer your phone to be stolen, or would you prefer having your bank account drained to 0? Most people wouldn't choose the phone, even though it's the only physical object in this scenario. Even though the bank account is just a number stored by a bunch of bits, most people attribute more value to it than just its physical presence.
And that is why nobody makes games or music anymore.
Oh wait... they do....
That's a false dichotomy. If I have to explain why, then you're probably not worth my time.
Also, piracy has far from reached its potential. People still currently feel some semblance of a moral obligation to pay for what they use, so enough people are currently paying enough of the time only to make piracy a little painful Big Media, and a lot painful for smaller indie players.
But, as we've seen many times before, we also currently have an extremely tenuous hold on this moral obligation. Every time a game company announces whatever new DRM scheme, the first port of call is piracy, rather than a refusal to buy the game. It's gets worse too; remember when Modern Warfare 2 came out, sporting the news that it would not have a dedicated server? I recall the number of angry people who decided that it was only right that they pirate the game. After all, Infinity Ward screwed them good! I've also heard the price of new release CDs cited as the reason for piracy, and other similar blaming of others for their own behaviour.
From the some of the posts I see here, many people have already given up looking for specific acts to "cause" them to pirate, but now just blame everything on the companies. As you can see, the moral obligation to pay for what you use can trivially be corrupted, especially in the face of such a convenient way to break it.
Let's face it: having unlimited access to culture is pretty fucking amazing. A few moral concessions here and there to have a taste from this firehose of culture and entertainment seems like more than a fair trade. I used to do it all the time, but I stopped once I realised how addictive it can be.
Anyway, the point is, this tenuous moral obligation to pay for what you use, is currently the primary reason why anybody actually pays for music and games, and is thus the primary reason why anyone still make games or music professionally. I personally do not trust it to stick around in the face of an endless stream of free entertainment. So, that's why I am concerned about piracy.
And the piracy loss claims are simply made up to scam insurance and make it look scary.
Once you eliminate any physical damage, and the price that retailer bought the physical box, all that's left is a single lost sale. With piracy, the number lost sales are limited only by the "100% of demand" mark. Piracy is, potentially, considerably more financially damaging than physical theft.
That doesn't, however, mean that I think the penalties for piracy aren't ludicrous these days.
I suppose if you insist on viewing the proposition as one of logical implication, then yes, it would be a fallacy, because the arguement would effectively become "any time anyone does a bad thing, it means they're going to do a badder thing next" and I doubt that accords with most people's experience of the world.
Yes, I do insist on viewing the slippery slope fallacy by its defining characteristics. Like I said, a slippery slope is not just a sequence of negative events. There has to be a(n alleged) chain of implication. Here's an example of an argument that is not a slippery slope argument:
"My father's X-ray showed a lump on the prostate. Then, he'll find it painful to urinate. Then, he'll die."
This is not a slippery slope argument, because the statements do not follow on from each other (e.g. the pain signals from urination will not cause him to die). Instead, these follow from a single cause: that he has prostate cancer. Here's an example of a slippery slope argument:
"My father's X-ray showed a lump on the prostate. Then, he has cancer. Then, the cancer will spread to his brain or lungs. Then, this will cause him to die."
It seems reasonable, but due to the slippery nature of probabilities, it's a lot less solid than the sum of its parts.
In the case of the Pastor's lament, we have a master causes, like the cancer in the first argument, e.g. the Treaty of Versailles. Everything the Pastor said happened because of Germany's wounded pride, not because Germany hated the communists. So, in fact, the "archetypal" slippery slope, is not typically considered as a slippery slope.
That said, I genuinely believe you're the only person using the term in that way.
I did a critical thinking course at university, and this is exactly how it was presented to me. It's also exactly how I had perceived it previously. I can also back it up with Wikipedia:
The argument takes on one of various semantical forms:
* In the classical form, the arguer suggests that making a move in a particular direction starts something on a path down a "slippery slope". Having started down the metaphorical slope, it will continue to slide in the same direction (the arguer usually sees the direction as a negative direction, hence the "sliding downwards" metaphor).
* Modern usage includes a logically valid form, in which a minor action causes a significant impact through a long chain of logical relationships. Note that establishing this chain of logical implication (or quantifying the relevant probabilities) makes this form logically valid. The slippery slope argument remains a fallacy if such a chain is not established.
* Some claims lie in between the two. For example: "If we accept censorship on most disgusting material, the politicians may easily widen the area under censorship. This has happened often before too, with far-reaching consequences. Therefore, we should completely avoid the slippery slope of censorship." This claim is not a fallacy: some people think that there is enough evidence for the claim to be probably true, some not.
In all of these forms, notice that the "slope", or the chain of implication is always present.
But unless I didn't read far enough back up the thread, I don't think anyone is saying expanded censorship follows as a logical necessity of restricting Internet porn.
Perhaps, but really it's the argument I am attacking. People seem to find it very convincing, but I can't find any solid reason why it should be. I mean, the OP claimed that this story was a great example of a slippery slope related to censorship, but I see no reason to suggest that it was early censorship that caused this to happen, instead of common anti-pornography attitudes by peopl
Now you can argue that a slippery slope is not intended here. You might even be right, But based on experience, if the measure succeeds, there will be a lot of pressure to expand the scope the censorship.
The slippery slope argument that you're retroactively applying here begins with "coming for the communists", and as per the slippery slope formula, each step likely implies the next step, so eventually we conclude that "coming for the communists" implies "coming for me". That's the slippery slope formula. I would like to stress this point, in case it gets misconstrued as "bad shit happening all in a row for whatever reason".
So, the question is, can we legitimately argue that coming for communists likely implies that we will then come for trade unionists? Or that that would subsequently imply they would come for the Jews? I know of many people who hate trade unions, but have absolutely no problem with the Jews. In fact, far more than people than I know who have a problem with Jews! This tells me that the probability that a randomly chosen group will persecute the Jews, given that they persecute the trade unions, is probably relatively low. So, the fact that the Nazis persecuted both means that either it was a genuine coincidence, or far more likely, there were other factors at play here, namely they hated both for separate reasons. Either way, this is not a typical slippery slope involved here. You genuinely need more information to draw the conclusion from the hypotheses, and in this case, there really was more information. We can't expect this implicitly in general.
You say that there is pressure to expand the scope of censorship. That is sometimes true, but always there is pressure to reduce it, or at least not to increase it (especially since the fall of Nazism), so we usually end up with very little censorship. See, the way I see it, is that there are two major groups here: people who want no censorship, or extremely little censorship, and those who want a bit of limited censorship, for the sake of their children, or to not feel persecuted, etc, etc. Those in the latter category tend to push for more censorship, since most democracies have so little, but this does not imply that they will support censorship until it becomes extreme. They want to expand the scope of censorship, but only by a small amount.
I didn't say otherwise. A fallacy does not imply that the conclusions are false, it just means that more information is needed, beyond the stated premises, to necessarily come to the conclusion. The premises and the conclusion may well be right, but at the same time, in other similar situations, the premises could be true, but the conclusions false.
In a formal fallacy, it's true that the conclusion could be correct most of the time (or even all of the time, for certain fallacies). However, this is not what we're referring to. It's an informal fallacy, meaning that the conclusion, given the premises are true, has a relatively low chance of being true.
The slippery slope argument has such a low chance of being true. In fact, it's quite low; there's been few situations where extreme censorship has been achieved. It shows, starkly, how fallacious the slippery slope argument truly is.
Or perhaps one of the myriad of other significantly more likely possibilities could occur. Like, for example, each ISP just adds a little boolean value to their customer records, and never deliberately distributes any lists to anyone outside the company (except possibly advertisers).
Is there a better example of the slippery slope associated with any censorship?
Probably not. There aren't a lot of examples of a "successful" slippery slope because it is a fallacy; even given the premises of the argument are true, the conclusion is still unlikely. Even with this case, I would think that there are some fundamental attitude differences in the UK that make this kind of thing possible, not merely that the UK public slipped up once, let a little bit of censorship in, and have regretted it ever since.
No, you were defending his arguments. On Slashdot. Spazmonkey and I weren't on a street corner having it out with baseball bats. There was no opportunity for you to defend him.
Sorry; that is what I meant. I was defending his arguments. Now there is absolutely no confusion as to what I was doing. I'm still not sure what your point is.
Your arguments were not validated by facts
Actually, that's patently false. The only facts I was using in my argument are here for everyone to see: spazmonkey's argument and your response. Everything I said was supported completely by these facts.
You are attempting to change the topic of the discussion, making your ego the center piece of it.
Oh this is rich. It was, in fact, you who began insulting me. You changed the subject to me. If you noticed, I have been doing nothing but defend against such unsubstantiated bullshit, comment on your obvious mental and social deficiencies, and defend the argument of spazmonkey.
And, on the topic of dishonestly changing the topic of discussion, it was in fact you who was trying to change my argument into the one you wanted it to be. The blindness to blatant and repeated hypocrisy is yet another characterising attribute of certain idiots.
Again, its not about your ego...
[Digging yourself deeper]
...your kinky fantasies about babysitting others are best left private, in my humble opinion.
Nice. I like the punchline.
All of which you cunningly failed to present. Repeatedly.
Actually, I did. I quoted you in a passage where you clearly had failed to read/comprehend my argument. My argument is one of the most fundamental and important facts that needs to be considered before countering it. If you can't succeed at that, then there's really very little hope for you.
Ok. Now, there you got me. Since all one can see on a discussion board is what is written, I have rarely the unparalleled privilege of sparring on Slashdot with adversaries who insist on ensuring that no relationship whatsoever exists between what they write and what they assert! Whatever it says about you, this somewhat unorthodox strategy sure makes for a difficult task to address your assertions, I give you that!
Everything that I assert is written for anyone to see, and anyone with intelligence to understand. Everything. I am extremely precise with my words, to protect against semantics, and to ensure that vast majority of people who contradict me either make the one-time mistake of misreading me, or are simply idiots who can't seem to comprehend the subtleties in what I've written. I have been known many times in the past to defend arguments that I fundamentally disagree with. Not because I necessarily feel that they have some merit, but because no argument, no matter how bad, warrants the use of bad arguments to refute it. If it's going to be refuted, it needs to be done properly, preferably with an argument that is unassailable.
Why? If a bad argument B is allowed to counter a bad argument A, even if a good counterargument C exists, then supporters of argument A tend to focus B, and quietly ignore C. Worse still, when someone challenges them with C, they use a strawman argument to transform it into B, and argue from there that the other person is wrong. I have seen it many times, including many times here on slashdot.
I don't know what you're going to infer about me from this atypically candid rant, but rest assured, I don't care. Not one bit. Sometimes, when I come here to continue a long discussion, I feel a little bit nervous. Not for you, however. You insult me, you attack my arguments, but I simply don't have the respect for you necessary for me to care. After all, you've made so many stabs in the dark, and all of them have missed
You might have misunderstood me (I suppose I wasn't entirely clear on the subject). By "system", I don't necessarily mean that a law needs to be passed, or money needs to be specifically invested. I just mean that we need some kind of plan of how exactly we're supposed to provide ourselves with culture. It may be just as simple as "scrap copyright and be done with it". However, I also stipulated that such a plan must be proven, that is, it needs to have been implemented long enough for us to see without a reasonable doubt that it could replace copyright. So, "scrap copyright and be done with it" needs to be implemented (i.e. we need artists to choose to release via this method, i.e. by choosing to totally reject their copyrights, and not have to fall back on copyright in order to support themselves).
As for evidence why we need a proven system, I guess I don't have any. It's a pretty fundamental tenet of modern philosophy to require some kind of evidence for assertions. So, if you assert that we are guaranteed to have a rich culture if we scrap copyright, or if we weaken copyright to the point of uselessness, then I would expect, at least, some kind of evidence, if not a working prototype model.
No, I'm just not as prone to fallacies as you are.
Ha! This from the person who presented us this little strawman gem?
If everyone was like this kid, and copyright couldn't touch us, then our culture would die a slow and painful death.
That explains why there wasn't any "culture" at all until a few hundred years ago, right?
And I should point out, you haven't actually pointed out any fallacy I've committed. It's a fairly clear fact that, without any significant number of people willing to provide us with culture, we're simply not going to get culture. It's not going to magically appear because you made some some unfounded accusation of committing a fallacy.
I suggest you read the history section on Wikipedia's Copyright page.
I skimmed it. I could find no explicit or implicit statements that said copyright was never intended to stop non-commercial sharing. Hence, my point that you and the OP were talking out of your respective revisionist asses.
You may also want to consider the number of countries which have things like "Fair Use" allowances, allow downloading and similar non-commercial infringement, or simply turn a blind eye to anything that isn't commercial infringement. Some USA-specific evidence is that until very recently, only commercialised infringement has been a criminal offence, and pursuing perpetrators outside of organised commercial infringement operations practically unheard of.
If Copyright really were about *every* copyright infringement, and not primarily about commercialised infringement, then "Fair Use", "Fair Dealing", time-shifting and "personal" infringement in things like mix tapes would never have been allowed in the first place.
That is another strawman, supported on a false dichotomy. I never claimed that every copyright infringement should be punished, just that it's stupid to "draw the line" at commercial infringement. Are you sure you should be accusing people of being "prone to fallacies"?
I have no problem with fair use. It's an integral part of copyright. It, however, the exceptions necessarily need to be in certain limited circumstances. As I said before, there's nobody out there who actually wants to infringe on a copyright with a commercial dealer. Anyone who wants to infringe a copyright can do it from the privacy and convenience of their own internet connection. If we allow non-commercial sharing, then that's not the exception, that's the rule. It completely defeats the purpose of both fair use and copyright to allow such all-encompassin
Right. I couldn't help but notice that you failed to address the point of this entire pleasant discussion, i.e. that Wikileaks did not hide the older files because of some "anti American" biases - as the post you defended insinuated
Wrong again. All I was doing was defending spazmonkey. I wasn't actually trying to comment on Wikileak's situation, merely saying that if spazmonkey's concerns were legitimate, then they couldn't be dismissed in the way that you dismissed them.
I should also say that you need to get a clue sometime soon, because every comment I read of yours is making me lose faith that you'll ever actually comprehend what's going on around you. I'm not here to babysit for you; at some point you're going to have to listen to the people talking to you.
And then you accuse me of an "inability to process factual information", which "has you laughing".
And you then deliver me even more evidence.
If I am right or wrong is decided by the facts, like in this case, in which they validated my assertion completely. And in which case you assumed implicitly that you were right all the time...
Ha! Like you even know what I'm asserting! Your inability to process what I'm saying makes you completely unqualified to talk about my assertions, much less my assumptions. Rest assured, if you accuse me of implicitly assuming that I am right all the time, the chances are overwhelmingly in favour of you either honestly misreading me, dishonestly misrepresenting me, or you're just a plain idiot. I think we all know which category you fall into.
In fact, I'm not even sure you're aware of what you are asserting! Certainly, you've provided evidence for one of your assertions (they're not facts until the files are actually up). You've provided exactly zero evidence in your litany of other assertions (and how could you when they're all completely false?), most of which are designed to try to put words in my mouth.
But then again, it is one of defining characteristic of idiots to see their own major flaws in everyone else. There is even a term for it: "Psychological projection" of which the "straw man argument" is but a sub-species.
No, it's not a "defining characteristic" of idiots. It's a feature of certain idiots. There are plenty of other ways to be an idiot, for example, some people's idiocy manifests itself as an inability to understand other people, even when they are speaking on very simple topics. Other idiots find that they can't help but run their mouths off, when a mildly intelligent person would know when to back off. In your case, it appears to be an unfortunate case of "all of the above".
I should also mention that the strawman argument is not typically a form of psychological projection. The person does not project their own opinions onto the other person, rather simply an easier to counter opinion. For example, if you were able to, hypothetically, provide evidence for some assertion, and someone was arguing with you on a different topic, you may decide to pretend that they were arguing against your assertion, particularly if arguing against their actual point was too hard. That would be a quintessential strawman.
Seriously, save any little bits of self-respect you may have. Actually read my posts before you reply again, if you decide to reply again. Don't assume that simply because I am arguing with you, that I am contradicting you on the topic of Wikileaks. I know that idiocy can be debilitating, but if you can collect some willpower together, you at least might prevent yourself from running your mouth off even further.
If copyright worked like the free market, then copyright holders would have to bear some of the consequences of infinite supply, rather than just reaping the benefits.
When I say "work like the free market", I mean to allow demand to reflect supply. That is:
a) Consumers buy only what they want b) What consumers want, they get
In order to ensure b), which is of vital importance, we need copyright, or at least some other proven system (of which I have looked and found none yet).
It's also interesting that you say "copyright holders... [reap] all the benefits", when it's actually us who reap the extra culture. Did you forget about that pivotal detail, or simply turn a blind eye?
No, copyright was supposed to protect against large scale, commercialised infringement.
Again, citation needed. It is my understanding that the people who proposed copyright saw from early on that creating a loophole for non-profit infringement would eventually render copyright completely useless. After all, what's the point of copyright if anyone can just download their own copy for free, legally? For that matter, who would ever buy an illegitimate copy, when they could legally get an equally legitimate free copy? Seriously, who?
That explains why there wasn't any "culture" at all until a few hundred years ago, right?
(I don't see why everyone jumps immediately to this strawman. It's not like it's ever convincing.)
Yes, it explains why there was no culture until a few hundred years ago. It explains why the vast majority of culture, spread extremely thinly to today's standards, was accessible only to the incredibly wealthy. It explains why careers in music were restricted to playing only very locally, and no recording at all. It explains why things like books and movies were not even feasible.
For the common man, culture sucked until only a few hundred years ago. You know how much (often crappy) free legitimate music there is floating out there? Well, divide that into a tiny fraction, and that's the kind of culture you're gunning for. I have absolutely no fucking clue how anyone with half a brain would pine for the "good old days" before copyright, unless they were multimillionaires pining for the days when they could lord their culture over the common peasant.
Self-entitled pricks such as yourself have lost sight of just how fortunate you truly are.
It was only intended to ensure that IF ANYONE made a coin or two from his work, then he should get part of it.
Citation needed. The common wisdom is that the purpose was to ensure that if the work is popular, then the artist is rewarded appropriately (you know, like every other product sold, so that the free market can actually work). This includes the kid down the street downloading for nothing else apart from his own profit. If everyone was like this kid, and copyright couldn't touch us, then our culture would die a slow and painful death. Thankfully, the people who suggested copyright had some foresight, and didn't restrict it only to for profit sharing.
Except for the fact that you don't have that right.
Says who? I assume it's some group of people, or if not, some set of rules invented by some group of people. What makes a liberty a right, if not the people who grant the power to enforce such rights?
The idea of suppressing other people simply because you don't like it is born out of the same irrationality as preventing people from other religions from worshiping.
So why should we suppress people who wish to suppress others? Especially if those people are in the majority?
I mean, consider religious intolerance, as an example. Imagine if a majority of people were truly intolerant to, say, Catholics. Not just that they didn't like them, that it truly hurt the majority of people to be around them, to be around them, to intersect with their culture in any conceivable way. Sure, you could tell me the analogy of the sheep and two wolves, and that anyone could be the next sheep, but let's assume this majority realises the risks involved, and would much prefer to simply persecute all Catholics instead. Who are we to tell them that they cannot? It just feels like we are imposing our moral values on people who may not be anything like us.
I don't know, maybe I'm making much ado about nothing. The US constitution has mechanisms for changing itself based on the needs of the American people. It's difficult to change, as it should be, but when we talk about democracies being better with limited government, it doesn't feel to different to saying "democracies are better without blasphemy", or something similar.
It is an irrationality to think that you should have the power over other people
Actually, I beg to differ here. It is a rationality that is unorthodox, especially in the US (or even most of the west). It's not irrational unless the belief has no cogent or consistent thought process behind it. Just like your rationale comes from a position based on fundamental truths, e.g. "murder is bad", certain other rationales will come from different fundamental truths, e.g. "God exists" and "God will punish you for the sins you allow others to commit".
Conspiracy theories and slippery slope arguments actually become quite reasonable with the precedents we've been setting recently.
No they don't, and to suggest otherwise demonstrates downright ignorance of the slippery slope fallacy. The only way to temper the slippery slope fallacy (i.e. make it a reasonably strong argument) is to either make each step practically certain to imply the next step (which will never happen with conspiracy theories) or to significantly shorten the length of the slippery slope. Neither of these things have happened here.
And yes, you got me, I've never actually driven my car into the interior of an airport building.
This is why democracy without incredibly limited government is always a bad thing because the majority can fuck with the minority in any way they wish without the minority being able to do anything about it, despite there being no harm for the majority if the minority is allowed to do what they wish.
So what if a minority (or even a majority) wishes to dictate how everyone (including themselves) should live, in certain areas? Then surely this incredibly limited government is simply a mechanism for ensuring your wishes trump their wishes, partially depriving them of their ability to affect the politics that are supposed to represent them, even if your wishes happened to be in minority?
I don't know; it seems vaguely hypocritical to demand that an incredibly small government be permanently and inflexibly instated in a democracy, when incredibly small governments could well not be wanted. It just sounds, ironically enough, like yet another mechanism for majority consensus to oppress minority politics.
I, personally, would never hold up traffic (unless unavoidable) unless I'm doing the speed limit, or thereabouts. If they want to go faster than the speed limit, at the expense of the safety of myself and everyone else around them, they can wait until a lane opens up, at which point I will not hold them up any further. If they choose to tailgate in order to express this wish, I have been known to slowly lose speed, until they get the message and back off.
I'm entitled to at least two seconds behind me. If I don't get it, I may just slow down until the gap becomes two seconds.
and the govt...anyone that would like to see/monitor your driving habits.
When I read the title for this story, I hadn't even parsed it completely when I noticed that the words "Cameras" and "Mandatory" appeared in the sentence. I knew, from that moment, that somebody would somehow twist this into a privacy issue, possibly with a nice government conspiracy thrown in, even if it made absolutely no sense.
My false equivalences? My whining? What whining? What false equivalences? I was only working within the analogy constructed by you yourself, eventually coming to the conclusion that the analogy was flawed (that is, any equivalences that were formed were erroneous).
Your inability to process the factual information available around you has me laughing at your attempts to preach to me. I have similarly found that Slashdotters often have too much factual information available to them. They should start with an amount they can handle first. Perhaps you should start by reading the comments you reply to? If you're smart, it should save you some teeth marks in your foot. If you're not (and I have seen from this, and previous evidence, that you are not), it should save some bullet holes in your foot.
Have a nice life, idiot. Remember, you can't learn anything in life by assuming implicitly that you're right all the time.
As long as we're doing analogies with physical objects, it seems to me more like placing your wedding ring on a park bench when nobody is looking, leaving it there for a few weeks, and complaining when it's stolen.
Unlike with the pawnbroker, it's still illegal the activity, but it's hardly surprising that it occurred in the first place.
The only way you can defend this is if you are a short sighted fool who thinks unlimited surveillance by the Government is the only way to stop the terrorists taking your freedoms
The only way you could jump to this conclusion is if you were some inbred hillbilly hick. What? Why should my statements have to make sense if yours don't?
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
We do. How do you think we managed to come across this information in the first place?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but as per my point, the value of physical object is potentially less than the damage of the act of pirating.
I mean, would you prefer your phone to be stolen, or would you prefer having your bank account drained to 0? Most people wouldn't choose the phone, even though it's the only physical object in this scenario. Even though the bank account is just a number stored by a bunch of bits, most people attribute more value to it than just its physical presence.
That's a false dichotomy. If I have to explain why, then you're probably not worth my time.
Also, piracy has far from reached its potential. People still currently feel some semblance of a moral obligation to pay for what they use, so enough people are currently paying enough of the time only to make piracy a little painful Big Media, and a lot painful for smaller indie players.
But, as we've seen many times before, we also currently have an extremely tenuous hold on this moral obligation. Every time a game company announces whatever new DRM scheme, the first port of call is piracy, rather than a refusal to buy the game. It's gets worse too; remember when Modern Warfare 2 came out, sporting the news that it would not have a dedicated server? I recall the number of angry people who decided that it was only right that they pirate the game. After all, Infinity Ward screwed them good! I've also heard the price of new release CDs cited as the reason for piracy, and other similar blaming of others for their own behaviour.
From the some of the posts I see here, many people have already given up looking for specific acts to "cause" them to pirate, but now just blame everything on the companies. As you can see, the moral obligation to pay for what you use can trivially be corrupted, especially in the face of such a convenient way to break it.
Let's face it: having unlimited access to culture is pretty fucking amazing. A few moral concessions here and there to have a taste from this firehose of culture and entertainment seems like more than a fair trade. I used to do it all the time, but I stopped once I realised how addictive it can be.
Anyway, the point is, this tenuous moral obligation to pay for what you use, is currently the primary reason why anybody actually pays for music and games, and is thus the primary reason why anyone still make games or music professionally. I personally do not trust it to stick around in the face of an endless stream of free entertainment. So, that's why I am concerned about piracy.
No argument there.
Once you eliminate any physical damage, and the price that retailer bought the physical box, all that's left is a single lost sale. With piracy, the number lost sales are limited only by the "100% of demand" mark. Piracy is, potentially, considerably more financially damaging than physical theft.
That doesn't, however, mean that I think the penalties for piracy aren't ludicrous these days.
Yes, I do insist on viewing the slippery slope fallacy by its defining characteristics. Like I said, a slippery slope is not just a sequence of negative events. There has to be a(n alleged) chain of implication. Here's an example of an argument that is not a slippery slope argument:
"My father's X-ray showed a lump on the prostate. Then, he'll find it painful to urinate. Then, he'll die."
This is not a slippery slope argument, because the statements do not follow on from each other (e.g. the pain signals from urination will not cause him to die). Instead, these follow from a single cause: that he has prostate cancer. Here's an example of a slippery slope argument:
"My father's X-ray showed a lump on the prostate. Then, he has cancer. Then, the cancer will spread to his brain or lungs. Then, this will cause him to die."
It seems reasonable, but due to the slippery nature of probabilities, it's a lot less solid than the sum of its parts.
In the case of the Pastor's lament, we have a master causes, like the cancer in the first argument, e.g. the Treaty of Versailles. Everything the Pastor said happened because of Germany's wounded pride, not because Germany hated the communists. So, in fact, the "archetypal" slippery slope, is not typically considered as a slippery slope.
I did a critical thinking course at university, and this is exactly how it was presented to me. It's also exactly how I had perceived it previously. I can also back it up with Wikipedia:
In all of these forms, notice that the "slope", or the chain of implication is always present.
Perhaps, but really it's the argument I am attacking. People seem to find it very convincing, but I can't find any solid reason why it should be. I mean, the OP claimed that this story was a great example of a slippery slope related to censorship, but I see no reason to suggest that it was early censorship that caused this to happen, instead of common anti-pornography attitudes by peopl
The slippery slope argument that you're retroactively applying here begins with "coming for the communists", and as per the slippery slope formula, each step likely implies the next step, so eventually we conclude that "coming for the communists" implies "coming for me". That's the slippery slope formula. I would like to stress this point, in case it gets misconstrued as "bad shit happening all in a row for whatever reason".
So, the question is, can we legitimately argue that coming for communists likely implies that we will then come for trade unionists? Or that that would subsequently imply they would come for the Jews? I know of many people who hate trade unions, but have absolutely no problem with the Jews. In fact, far more than people than I know who have a problem with Jews! This tells me that the probability that a randomly chosen group will persecute the Jews, given that they persecute the trade unions, is probably relatively low. So, the fact that the Nazis persecuted both means that either it was a genuine coincidence, or far more likely, there were other factors at play here, namely they hated both for separate reasons. Either way, this is not a typical slippery slope involved here. You genuinely need more information to draw the conclusion from the hypotheses, and in this case, there really was more information. We can't expect this implicitly in general.
You say that there is pressure to expand the scope of censorship. That is sometimes true, but always there is pressure to reduce it, or at least not to increase it (especially since the fall of Nazism), so we usually end up with very little censorship. See, the way I see it, is that there are two major groups here: people who want no censorship, or extremely little censorship, and those who want a bit of limited censorship, for the sake of their children, or to not feel persecuted, etc, etc. Those in the latter category tend to push for more censorship, since most democracies have so little, but this does not imply that they will support censorship until it becomes extreme. They want to expand the scope of censorship, but only by a small amount.
I didn't say otherwise. A fallacy does not imply that the conclusions are false, it just means that more information is needed, beyond the stated premises, to necessarily come to the conclusion. The premises and the conclusion may well be right, but at the same time, in other similar situations, the premises could be true, but the conclusions false.
In a formal fallacy, it's true that the conclusion could be correct most of the time (or even all of the time, for certain fallacies). However, this is not what we're referring to. It's an informal fallacy, meaning that the conclusion, given the premises are true, has a relatively low chance of being true.
The slippery slope argument has such a low chance of being true. In fact, it's quite low; there's been few situations where extreme censorship has been achieved. It shows, starkly, how fallacious the slippery slope argument truly is.
Or perhaps one of the myriad of other significantly more likely possibilities could occur. Like, for example, each ISP just adds a little boolean value to their customer records, and never deliberately distributes any lists to anyone outside the company (except possibly advertisers).
Probably not. There aren't a lot of examples of a "successful" slippery slope because it is a fallacy; even given the premises of the argument are true, the conclusion is still unlikely. Even with this case, I would think that there are some fundamental attitude differences in the UK that make this kind of thing possible, not merely that the UK public slipped up once, let a little bit of censorship in, and have regretted it ever since.
If the UK Gov't, by default, wants to block internet porn, then just reconfigure the government manually to a setting you like. Simple!
Sorry; that is what I meant. I was defending his arguments. Now there is absolutely no confusion as to what I was doing. I'm still not sure what your point is.
Actually, that's patently false. The only facts I was using in my argument are here for everyone to see: spazmonkey's argument and your response. Everything I said was supported completely by these facts.
Oh this is rich. It was, in fact, you who began insulting me. You changed the subject to me. If you noticed, I have been doing nothing but defend against such unsubstantiated bullshit, comment on your obvious mental and social deficiencies, and defend the argument of spazmonkey.
And, on the topic of dishonestly changing the topic of discussion, it was in fact you who was trying to change my argument into the one you wanted it to be. The blindness to blatant and repeated hypocrisy is yet another characterising attribute of certain idiots.
Nice. I like the punchline.
Actually, I did. I quoted you in a passage where you clearly had failed to read/comprehend my argument. My argument is one of the most fundamental and important facts that needs to be considered before countering it. If you can't succeed at that, then there's really very little hope for you.
Everything that I assert is written for anyone to see, and anyone with intelligence to understand. Everything. I am extremely precise with my words, to protect against semantics, and to ensure that vast majority of people who contradict me either make the one-time mistake of misreading me, or are simply idiots who can't seem to comprehend the subtleties in what I've written. I have been known many times in the past to defend arguments that I fundamentally disagree with. Not because I necessarily feel that they have some merit, but because no argument, no matter how bad, warrants the use of bad arguments to refute it. If it's going to be refuted, it needs to be done properly, preferably with an argument that is unassailable.
Why? If a bad argument B is allowed to counter a bad argument A, even if a good counterargument C exists, then supporters of argument A tend to focus B, and quietly ignore C. Worse still, when someone challenges them with C, they use a strawman argument to transform it into B, and argue from there that the other person is wrong. I have seen it many times, including many times here on slashdot.
I don't know what you're going to infer about me from this atypically candid rant, but rest assured, I don't care. Not one bit. Sometimes, when I come here to continue a long discussion, I feel a little bit nervous. Not for you, however. You insult me, you attack my arguments, but I simply don't have the respect for you necessary for me to care. After all, you've made so many stabs in the dark, and all of them have missed
You might have misunderstood me (I suppose I wasn't entirely clear on the subject). By "system", I don't necessarily mean that a law needs to be passed, or money needs to be specifically invested. I just mean that we need some kind of plan of how exactly we're supposed to provide ourselves with culture. It may be just as simple as "scrap copyright and be done with it". However, I also stipulated that such a plan must be proven, that is, it needs to have been implemented long enough for us to see without a reasonable doubt that it could replace copyright. So, "scrap copyright and be done with it" needs to be implemented (i.e. we need artists to choose to release via this method, i.e. by choosing to totally reject their copyrights, and not have to fall back on copyright in order to support themselves).
As for evidence why we need a proven system, I guess I don't have any. It's a pretty fundamental tenet of modern philosophy to require some kind of evidence for assertions. So, if you assert that we are guaranteed to have a rich culture if we scrap copyright, or if we weaken copyright to the point of uselessness, then I would expect, at least, some kind of evidence, if not a working prototype model.
Ha! This from the person who presented us this little strawman gem?
And I should point out, you haven't actually pointed out any fallacy I've committed. It's a fairly clear fact that, without any significant number of people willing to provide us with culture, we're simply not going to get culture. It's not going to magically appear because you made some some unfounded accusation of committing a fallacy.
I skimmed it. I could find no explicit or implicit statements that said copyright was never intended to stop non-commercial sharing. Hence, my point that you and the OP were talking out of your respective revisionist asses.
That is another strawman, supported on a false dichotomy. I never claimed that every copyright infringement should be punished, just that it's stupid to "draw the line" at commercial infringement. Are you sure you should be accusing people of being "prone to fallacies"?
I have no problem with fair use. It's an integral part of copyright. It, however, the exceptions necessarily need to be in certain limited circumstances. As I said before, there's nobody out there who actually wants to infringe on a copyright with a commercial dealer. Anyone who wants to infringe a copyright can do it from the privacy and convenience of their own internet connection. If we allow non-commercial sharing, then that's not the exception, that's the rule. It completely defeats the purpose of both fair use and copyright to allow such all-encompassin
Wrong again. All I was doing was defending spazmonkey. I wasn't actually trying to comment on Wikileak's situation, merely saying that if spazmonkey's concerns were legitimate, then they couldn't be dismissed in the way that you dismissed them.
I should also say that you need to get a clue sometime soon, because every comment I read of yours is making me lose faith that you'll ever actually comprehend what's going on around you. I'm not here to babysit for you; at some point you're going to have to listen to the people talking to you.
And you then deliver me even more evidence.
Ha! Like you even know what I'm asserting! Your inability to process what I'm saying makes you completely unqualified to talk about my assertions, much less my assumptions. Rest assured, if you accuse me of implicitly assuming that I am right all the time, the chances are overwhelmingly in favour of you either honestly misreading me, dishonestly misrepresenting me, or you're just a plain idiot. I think we all know which category you fall into.
In fact, I'm not even sure you're aware of what you are asserting! Certainly, you've provided evidence for one of your assertions (they're not facts until the files are actually up). You've provided exactly zero evidence in your litany of other assertions (and how could you when they're all completely false?), most of which are designed to try to put words in my mouth.
No, it's not a "defining characteristic" of idiots. It's a feature of certain idiots. There are plenty of other ways to be an idiot, for example, some people's idiocy manifests itself as an inability to understand other people, even when they are speaking on very simple topics. Other idiots find that they can't help but run their mouths off, when a mildly intelligent person would know when to back off. In your case, it appears to be an unfortunate case of "all of the above".
I should also mention that the strawman argument is not typically a form of psychological projection. The person does not project their own opinions onto the other person, rather simply an easier to counter opinion. For example, if you were able to, hypothetically, provide evidence for some assertion, and someone was arguing with you on a different topic, you may decide to pretend that they were arguing against your assertion, particularly if arguing against their actual point was too hard. That would be a quintessential strawman.
Seriously, save any little bits of self-respect you may have. Actually read my posts before you reply again, if you decide to reply again. Don't assume that simply because I am arguing with you, that I am contradicting you on the topic of Wikileaks. I know that idiocy can be debilitating, but if you can collect some willpower together, you at least might prevent yourself from running your mouth off even further.
When I say "work like the free market", I mean to allow demand to reflect supply. That is:
a) Consumers buy only what they want
b) What consumers want, they get
In order to ensure b), which is of vital importance, we need copyright, or at least some other proven system (of which I have looked and found none yet).
It's also interesting that you say "copyright holders ... [reap] all the benefits", when it's actually us who reap the extra culture. Did you forget about that pivotal detail, or simply turn a blind eye?
Again, citation needed. It is my understanding that the people who proposed copyright saw from early on that creating a loophole for non-profit infringement would eventually render copyright completely useless. After all, what's the point of copyright if anyone can just download their own copy for free, legally? For that matter, who would ever buy an illegitimate copy, when they could legally get an equally legitimate free copy? Seriously, who?
(I don't see why everyone jumps immediately to this strawman. It's not like it's ever convincing.)
Yes, it explains why there was no culture until a few hundred years ago. It explains why the vast majority of culture, spread extremely thinly to today's standards, was accessible only to the incredibly wealthy. It explains why careers in music were restricted to playing only very locally, and no recording at all. It explains why things like books and movies were not even feasible.
For the common man, culture sucked until only a few hundred years ago. You know how much (often crappy) free legitimate music there is floating out there? Well, divide that into a tiny fraction, and that's the kind of culture you're gunning for. I have absolutely no fucking clue how anyone with half a brain would pine for the "good old days" before copyright, unless they were multimillionaires pining for the days when they could lord their culture over the common peasant.
Self-entitled pricks such as yourself have lost sight of just how fortunate you truly are.
Citation needed. The common wisdom is that the purpose was to ensure that if the work is popular, then the artist is rewarded appropriately (you know, like every other product sold, so that the free market can actually work). This includes the kid down the street downloading for nothing else apart from his own profit. If everyone was like this kid, and copyright couldn't touch us, then our culture would die a slow and painful death. Thankfully, the people who suggested copyright had some foresight, and didn't restrict it only to for profit sharing.
Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Says who? I assume it's some group of people, or if not, some set of rules invented by some group of people. What makes a liberty a right, if not the people who grant the power to enforce such rights?
So why should we suppress people who wish to suppress others? Especially if those people are in the majority?
I mean, consider religious intolerance, as an example. Imagine if a majority of people were truly intolerant to, say, Catholics. Not just that they didn't like them, that it truly hurt the majority of people to be around them, to be around them, to intersect with their culture in any conceivable way. Sure, you could tell me the analogy of the sheep and two wolves, and that anyone could be the next sheep, but let's assume this majority realises the risks involved, and would much prefer to simply persecute all Catholics instead. Who are we to tell them that they cannot? It just feels like we are imposing our moral values on people who may not be anything like us.
I don't know, maybe I'm making much ado about nothing. The US constitution has mechanisms for changing itself based on the needs of the American people. It's difficult to change, as it should be, but when we talk about democracies being better with limited government, it doesn't feel to different to saying "democracies are better without blasphemy", or something similar.
Actually, I beg to differ here. It is a rationality that is unorthodox, especially in the US (or even most of the west). It's not irrational unless the belief has no cogent or consistent thought process behind it. Just like your rationale comes from a position based on fundamental truths, e.g. "murder is bad", certain other rationales will come from different fundamental truths, e.g. "God exists" and "God will punish you for the sins you allow others to commit".
No they don't, and to suggest otherwise demonstrates downright ignorance of the slippery slope fallacy. The only way to temper the slippery slope fallacy (i.e. make it a reasonably strong argument) is to either make each step practically certain to imply the next step (which will never happen with conspiracy theories) or to significantly shorten the length of the slippery slope. Neither of these things have happened here.
And yes, you got me, I've never actually driven my car into the interior of an airport building.
So what if a minority (or even a majority) wishes to dictate how everyone (including themselves) should live, in certain areas? Then surely this incredibly limited government is simply a mechanism for ensuring your wishes trump their wishes, partially depriving them of their ability to affect the politics that are supposed to represent them, even if your wishes happened to be in minority?
I don't know; it seems vaguely hypocritical to demand that an incredibly small government be permanently and inflexibly instated in a democracy, when incredibly small governments could well not be wanted. It just sounds, ironically enough, like yet another mechanism for majority consensus to oppress minority politics.
I, personally, would never hold up traffic (unless unavoidable) unless I'm doing the speed limit, or thereabouts. If they want to go faster than the speed limit, at the expense of the safety of myself and everyone else around them, they can wait until a lane opens up, at which point I will not hold them up any further. If they choose to tailgate in order to express this wish, I have been known to slowly lose speed, until they get the message and back off.
I'm entitled to at least two seconds behind me. If I don't get it, I may just slow down until the gap becomes two seconds.
Naturally. All you need to eliminate accidents is to turn off the handbrake, and put a brick on the accelerator.
When I read the title for this story, I hadn't even parsed it completely when I noticed that the words "Cameras" and "Mandatory" appeared in the sentence. I knew, from that moment, that somebody would somehow twist this into a privacy issue, possibly with a nice government conspiracy thrown in, even if it made absolutely no sense.
My false equivalences? My whining? What whining? What false equivalences? I was only working within the analogy constructed by you yourself, eventually coming to the conclusion that the analogy was flawed (that is, any equivalences that were formed were erroneous).
Your inability to process the factual information available around you has me laughing at your attempts to preach to me. I have similarly found that Slashdotters often have too much factual information available to them. They should start with an amount they can handle first. Perhaps you should start by reading the comments you reply to? If you're smart, it should save you some teeth marks in your foot. If you're not (and I have seen from this, and previous evidence, that you are not), it should save some bullet holes in your foot.
Have a nice life, idiot. Remember, you can't learn anything in life by assuming implicitly that you're right all the time.
As long as we're doing analogies with physical objects, it seems to me more like placing your wedding ring on a park bench when nobody is looking, leaving it there for a few weeks, and complaining when it's stolen.
Unlike with the pawnbroker, it's still illegal the activity, but it's hardly surprising that it occurred in the first place.
I assume you mean the US, right? I must have missed the news which proves the Jester was just covering for the US government.
Remember: the first sign of a conspiracy nutjob is the rejection of all evidence to the contrary.
The only way you could jump to this conclusion is if you were some inbred hillbilly hick. What? Why should my statements have to make sense if yours don't?
We do. How do you think we managed to come across this information in the first place?