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For me the interesting thing happening here isn't the encryption debate itself, but the fascinating friction between politicians and engineers. It's the juxtapo

For me the interesting thing happening here isn't the encryption debate itself, but the fascinating friction between politicians and engineers. It's the juxtaposition between individuals whose profession relies on using rhetoric to convince others on an agenda regardless of logic versus professionals that rely on sound logic regardless of rhetoric. If logic doesn't prevail, Orwellian statements like "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" can conceivably be truisms (If it's not already the case now.)

DickingAround 11y ago
Their whole world is part of why we don't have the GDP growth we want. People fighting each other over things instead of fighting nature. They don't build and invent anything other than more actionless words and sentences. Their greatest battles result in people being swayed to one view or another but never something being invested in and grown to produce value. And that's why they're just a waste.
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  >People fighting each other over things instead of fighting nature. It's easy to criticize the endless debates (and it's often over subject matter that looks silly), but this sort of debate is a big part of the success of a country like the US. It prevents leaders from moving too quickly in a direction which may have negative consequences. The trade-off is that everything takes forever to get done. >but never something being invested in and grown to produce value. The US and its underlying political system has possibly created more value than any society in the history of the world. It's hard to argue that the system doesn't work.
  - DickingAround 11y ago
    It's a good point that solid debate at the federal level prevents them from moving too quickly. But I would counter by saying that if their debate is consuming a large portion of our GDP, the infighting alone holds us back and I'd prefer they just went home and did something else: 3.8T fed budget / 16.8T US GDP ~= 22% being consumed by them. If 10% of that is waste (~2% of GDP) and we're growing at 2% GDP/year, the difference is doubling in 30 years (which might not even show in GDP/person due to population growth) vs a 3.7X increase in 30 years, which is a strong and innovative nation. In short, even just a 10% waste on their part might be holding back the whole nation. I bet the overhead waste of the feds is 10%. I don't even want to think about how much the military waste is holding us back.
    - sdenton4 11y ago
      Yeah, we should have some kind of central authority figure to just make the right decisions instead of wasting all this time and effort on debate. What could go wrong?
      - studentrob 11y ago
        I hear China has one of those, maybe they will share their guy with us. It's all rainbows and unicorns over there.
      - criddell 11y ago
        If the central authority figure is an algorithm, I could be persuaded to support that. It's probably too soon, but I think one day having near real-time information on the state of the economy could enable a central controller that is more efficient than the markets. In any system, every decision is about trade-offs. I could see elections being created where individuals vote for algorithmic priorities (ie rank education, law enforcement, r&d spending, etc...).
    - merpnderp 11y ago
      Vitally important programs like Medicare have an acknowledged ~10% fraudulent payment rate. And that isn't counting inefficiencies, just outright fraud. So programs with less oversight, and less importance, are likely to have just as much if not more fraud. A lot of it perfectly legal and baked into the system like military contracts. Not embracing a culture of harsh punishment and strong public shaming of even the hint of corruption has cost this country trillions over the years. Trillions which would have compounded results (like maybe smaller classrooms with better educated teachers).
  - AndrewUnmuted 11y ago
    > his sort of debate is a big part of the success of a country like the US The problem with your statements is that the US has a Constitution, which explicitly restricts the actions that the federal government may take. The endless debate witnessed today in the United States is only evidence towards the fact that our government no longer leverages a respect for its own legal documents. This ends up making the battle unwinnable by either side, because while the one side argues with totally true technological facts, the other side argues in the domain of senseless rhetoric. Meanwhile, neither side is making the concrete legal argument that the Constitution forbids the FBI's desires outright - except for Apple themselves. Many of Apple's own defenders have verged into the territory of "but this is math and you have to accept it!" which only distracts from the much more horrifying disregard for common sense these politicians are displaying today. This is not a battle of mathematics - politicians should not need to leverage any knowledge of encryption to know that coercing a corporation into destroying its product's security apparatus is both unethical and illegal. > The US and its underlying political system has possibly created more value than any society in the history of the world. Apple, today, has done a lot more to bring value to the world than any of the politicians in DC have, today. Perhaps you could make such a fallacious argument about some of our better times of politics - but not today. Today's government has bumbling fools like Lindsay Graham and Joe Biden in leadership positions.
- Umn44 11y ago
  "Their greatest battles result in people being swayed to one view or another but never something being invested in and grown to produce value. And that's why they're just a waste." Many "engineering" types do not produce any value at all, they more often than not hinder innovation. Nowhere can this be seen more in engineering types being attracted to voodoo economics like libertarianism and deep ideological commitments to capitalism. Good engineers know the world runs on the laws of nature, not human beings political bullshit. You want to maximize your ability to solve problems. Stupid bullshit property and IP laws do the opposite. The last thing any real engineer wants to do is hinder peoples access to information about solving complex problems, the more minds and eyeballs you have on a problem the faster you can find flaws in your own thinking and approach to the problem by finding things you would have never thought of on your own. Our current world does the opposite. If you look at most beliefs of engineers they skew hard right, that's a sign of mental weakness since real science heavily skews left when you consider things like the environment and the life support systems on earth when you discover how interlocked they are to supporting your survival. In the end good engineers know that mankind is seriously fucked up animal and know not to place too much faith in our species, because they know we've fucked up bad in how we've organized our world around money and territoriality instead of solving problems.
criddell 11y ago
> professionals that rely on sound logic regardless of rhetoric There's plenty of rhetoric employed on all sides of this debate.
davidw 11y ago
Politicians who are doing a good job are good at ironing out compromises, which are often necessary. People want different things and have different ideas about how to accomplish them. Sometimes there are clear answers, often there are not. Something we need to be careful of as 'logical' people is that all-or-nothing, we are right attitude: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/12/more-engineers-in-jihad.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/12/mor...
- PavlovsCat 11y ago
  > compromises, which are often necessary On the other hand, if the only tool you have is compromises, then every problem might seem like it is caused by lack of compromise, when at least sometimes it's rather a lack of honesty, and a want of adults putting their foot down and enforcing honesty. http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/deceive.pdf http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/deceive.pdf > We review literatures on agreeing to disagree and on the rationality of differing priors, in order to evaluate the honesty of typical disagreements. A robust result is that honest truth-seeking agents with common priors should not knowingly disagree. Typical disagreement seems explainable by a combination of random belief influences and by priors that tell each person that he reasons better than others. When criticizing others, however, people seem to uphold rationality standards that disapprove of such self-favoring priors. This suggests that typical disagreements are dishonest. We conclude by briefly considering how one might try to become more honest when disagreeing.
ThrustVectoring 11y ago
I think you're selling the politicians a little short. The big difference is that political arguments tend to be created conclusion-first, while engineering arguments tend to be created logic-first. The political arguments aren't illogical. They just tend to be created for a purpose, so most of what they tell you about is how much effort and skill is being invested to further that purpose. Conclusion-last logical arguments tell you more about how the world works.
PavlovsCat 11y ago
> Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible. -- George Orwell, letter to Noel Willmett (1944) [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/12/george-orwell-s-letter-on-why-he-wrote-1984.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/12/george-orwe... ] And here's a scary thought: for the purpose of ballistics etc. it's perfectly sufficient that some black box machine can think logically. That is, logically and based on true premises and sanity - because maybe you could say people like Hitler or Charles Manson were thinking logically based on flawed premises they made up on the spot. There is no such thing as "sound logic" in a vacuum, after all, it's always based on premises, and the "super hard" sciences, e.g. measuring how long a piece of rope is, say nothing about whether you should lynch people with that rope or or use it to build a swing set. The husband of Clara Immerwahr ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Immerwahr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Immerwahr - I like linking it that way because I simply adore that name (you could translate it as "evertrue"), and because she makes the contrast to Fritz Haber even bigger ) may have been a great scientist/engineer, but that doesn't say anything for or against his opinions about whom to feed and whom to let starve (seeing how the invention he was part if is feeding billions of people now), or whom to use toxic gas on. It's more or less orthogonal, I think. What I could agree with is "logically sound" being a placeholder for all sorts of things, intellectual honesty, reflection/debugging, honesty/transparency, reproducable facts, and so on, and all of that opposed to sophistry and marketing. But the premises play as big a role as the process IMHO, and crooked premises plus a logical process still equal a crooked outcome.

DickingAround 11y ago

Their whole world is part of why we don't have the GDP growth we want. People fighting each other over things instead of fighting nature. They don't build and invent anything other than more actionless words and sentences. Their greatest battles result in people being swayed to one view or another but never something being invested in and grown to produce value. And that's why they're just a waste.

forgetsusername 11y ago
>People fighting each other over things instead of fighting nature. It's easy to criticize the endless debates (and it's often over subject matter that looks silly), but this sort of debate is a big part of the success of a country like the US. It prevents leaders from moving too quickly in a direction which may have negative consequences. The trade-off is that everything takes forever to get done. >but never something being invested in and grown to produce value. The US and its underlying political system has possibly created more value than any society in the history of the world. It's hard to argue that the system doesn't work.
- DickingAround 11y ago
  It's a good point that solid debate at the federal level prevents them from moving too quickly. But I would counter by saying that if their debate is consuming a large portion of our GDP, the infighting alone holds us back and I'd prefer they just went home and did something else: 3.8T fed budget / 16.8T US GDP ~= 22% being consumed by them. If 10% of that is waste (~2% of GDP) and we're growing at 2% GDP/year, the difference is doubling in 30 years (which might not even show in GDP/person due to population growth) vs a 3.7X increase in 30 years, which is a strong and innovative nation. In short, even just a 10% waste on their part might be holding back the whole nation. I bet the overhead waste of the feds is 10%. I don't even want to think about how much the military waste is holding us back.
  - sdenton4 11y ago
    Yeah, we should have some kind of central authority figure to just make the right decisions instead of wasting all this time and effort on debate. What could go wrong?
    - studentrob 11y ago
      I hear China has one of those, maybe they will share their guy with us. It's all rainbows and unicorns over there.
    - criddell 11y ago
      If the central authority figure is an algorithm, I could be persuaded to support that. It's probably too soon, but I think one day having near real-time information on the state of the economy could enable a central controller that is more efficient than the markets. In any system, every decision is about trade-offs. I could see elections being created where individuals vote for algorithmic priorities (ie rank education, law enforcement, r&d spending, etc...).
  - merpnderp 11y ago
    Vitally important programs like Medicare have an acknowledged ~10% fraudulent payment rate. And that isn't counting inefficiencies, just outright fraud. So programs with less oversight, and less importance, are likely to have just as much if not more fraud. A lot of it perfectly legal and baked into the system like military contracts. Not embracing a culture of harsh punishment and strong public shaming of even the hint of corruption has cost this country trillions over the years. Trillions which would have compounded results (like maybe smaller classrooms with better educated teachers).
- AndrewUnmuted 11y ago
  > his sort of debate is a big part of the success of a country like the US The problem with your statements is that the US has a Constitution, which explicitly restricts the actions that the federal government may take. The endless debate witnessed today in the United States is only evidence towards the fact that our government no longer leverages a respect for its own legal documents. This ends up making the battle unwinnable by either side, because while the one side argues with totally true technological facts, the other side argues in the domain of senseless rhetoric. Meanwhile, neither side is making the concrete legal argument that the Constitution forbids the FBI's desires outright - except for Apple themselves. Many of Apple's own defenders have verged into the territory of "but this is math and you have to accept it!" which only distracts from the much more horrifying disregard for common sense these politicians are displaying today. This is not a battle of mathematics - politicians should not need to leverage any knowledge of encryption to know that coercing a corporation into destroying its product's security apparatus is both unethical and illegal. > The US and its underlying political system has possibly created more value than any society in the history of the world. Apple, today, has done a lot more to bring value to the world than any of the politicians in DC have, today. Perhaps you could make such a fallacious argument about some of our better times of politics - but not today. Today's government has bumbling fools like Lindsay Graham and Joe Biden in leadership positions.
Umn44 11y ago
"Their greatest battles result in people being swayed to one view or another but never something being invested in and grown to produce value. And that's why they're just a waste." Many "engineering" types do not produce any value at all, they more often than not hinder innovation. Nowhere can this be seen more in engineering types being attracted to voodoo economics like libertarianism and deep ideological commitments to capitalism. Good engineers know the world runs on the laws of nature, not human beings political bullshit. You want to maximize your ability to solve problems. Stupid bullshit property and IP laws do the opposite. The last thing any real engineer wants to do is hinder peoples access to information about solving complex problems, the more minds and eyeballs you have on a problem the faster you can find flaws in your own thinking and approach to the problem by finding things you would have never thought of on your own. Our current world does the opposite. If you look at most beliefs of engineers they skew hard right, that's a sign of mental weakness since real science heavily skews left when you consider things like the environment and the life support systems on earth when you discover how interlocked they are to supporting your survival. In the end good engineers know that mankind is seriously fucked up animal and know not to place too much faith in our species, because they know we've fucked up bad in how we've organized our world around money and territoriality instead of solving problems.

criddell 11y ago

> professionals that rely on sound logic regardless of rhetoric There's plenty of rhetoric employed on all sides of this debate.

davidw 11y ago

Politicians who are doing a good job are good at ironing out compromises, which are often necessary. People want different things and have different ideas about how to accomplish them. Sometimes there are clear answers, often there are not. Something we need to be careful of as 'logical' people is that all-or-nothing, we are right attitude: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/12/more-engineers-in-jihad.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/12/mor...

PavlovsCat 11y ago
> compromises, which are often necessary On the other hand, if the only tool you have is compromises, then every problem might seem like it is caused by lack of compromise, when at least sometimes it's rather a lack of honesty, and a want of adults putting their foot down and enforcing honesty. http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/deceive.pdf http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/deceive.pdf > We review literatures on agreeing to disagree and on the rationality of differing priors, in order to evaluate the honesty of typical disagreements. A robust result is that honest truth-seeking agents with common priors should not knowingly disagree. Typical disagreement seems explainable by a combination of random belief influences and by priors that tell each person that he reasons better than others. When criticizing others, however, people seem to uphold rationality standards that disapprove of such self-favoring priors. This suggests that typical disagreements are dishonest. We conclude by briefly considering how one might try to become more honest when disagreeing.

ThrustVectoring 11y ago

I think you're selling the politicians a little short. The big difference is that political arguments tend to be created conclusion-first, while engineering arguments tend to be created logic-first. The political arguments aren't illogical. They just tend to be created for a purpose, so most of what they tell you about is how much effort and skill is being invested to further that purpose. Conclusion-last logical arguments tell you more about how the world works.

PavlovsCat 11y ago

> Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible. -- George Orwell, letter to Noel Willmett (1944) [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/12/george-orwell-s-letter-on-why-he-wrote-1984.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/12/george-orwe... ] And here's a scary thought: for the purpose of ballistics etc. it's perfectly sufficient that some black box machine can think logically. That is, logically and based on true premises and sanity - because maybe you could say people like Hitler or Charles Manson were thinking logically based on flawed premises they made up on the spot. There is no such thing as "sound logic" in a vacuum, after all, it's always based on premises, and the "super hard" sciences, e.g. measuring how long a piece of rope is, say nothing about whether you should lynch people with that rope or or use it to build a swing set. The husband of Clara Immerwahr ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Immerwahr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Immerwahr - I like linking it that way because I simply adore that name (you could translate it as "evertrue"), and because she makes the contrast to Fritz Haber even bigger ) may have been a great scientist/engineer, but that doesn't say anything for or against his opinions about whom to feed and whom to let starve (seeing how the invention he was part if is feeding billions of people now), or whom to use toxic gas on. It's more or less orthogonal, I think. What I could agree with is "logically sound" being a placeholder for all sorts of things, intellectual honesty, reflection/debugging, honesty/transparency, reproducable facts, and so on, and all of that opposed to sophistry and marketing. But the premises play as big a role as the process IMHO, and crooked premises plus a logical process still equal a crooked outcome.