4 ms·

Of course, there are many much more subtle and effective ways to stifle free speech and human rights than a big firewall which can easily be circumvented with a

Of course, there are many much more subtle and effective ways to stifle free speech and human rights than a big firewall which can easily be circumvented with a VPN. MITM attacks, botnet troll armies, astroturfing, etc. etc. Good luck finding proof of that though.

tptacek 10y ago
"I can't find proof of this, therefore it must be happening" is very popular message board logic.
- alanwatts 10y ago
  As are appeals to authority. i.e.: "I can't find proof of this, therefore it must not be happening Let me ask you this, what precisely would suffice as proof, in your opinion, of such activities? On the internet, maybe there really is no such thing as undeniable "proof" that anyone did anything, considering how easy it is to fabricate evidence. [1] [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11440594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11440594
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Pointing out that you've presented no evidence for an argument is not an "appeal to authority".
    - alanwatts 10y ago
      >Argument from ignorance (from Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents "a lack of contrary evidence"), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false (or vice versa). This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that: there may have been an insufficient investigation, and therefore there is insufficient information to prove the proposition be either true or false. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance Open and shut case, Johnson!
      - meepmorp 10y ago
        If anyone here could be reasonably construed as arguing from ignorance it'd be you. You said that "there are many much more subtle and effective ways to stifle free speech and human rights than a big firewall," such as "MITM attacks, botnet troll armies, astroturfing, etc. etc." If you're not asserting that such techniques are being deployed, then ok. But if you are, and follow that up with "Good luck finding proof of that though," as though that's a perfectly reasonable excuse for not being able to back up what you're alleging, then you are yourself asserting "a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false."
        alanwatts 10y ago
        Of course such attacks are being deployed, but by whom and for what purpose? Here is an example of one such attack, which the researchers called "Censorship 2.0". https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/38wl43/we_used_sock_puppets_in_rnetsec_last_year_and_are/ https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/38wl43/we_used_sock... See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Team#Use_by_repressive_governments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Team#Use_by_repressive...
- PavlovsCat 10y ago
  > "I can't find proof of this, therefore it must be happening" is very popular message board logic. It's also not what they said, at all. If anything, you could say they argued it might be happening because it's more effective. From seeing the things people and companies do openly, from marketing to politics, I see no reason to believe that moral qualms is what would keep them from doing more. And while I don't know about MITM attacks, that seems like something that would be done on an individual basis; as for astroturfing and "troll armies", the logic is rather "if it makes sense, works, is cheap, has been reported on multiple times, then yeah, it's probably happening", at least for me, can't speak for the other poster. And is anyone honestly debating that > there are many much more subtle and effective ways to stifle free speech and human rights than a big firewall is true? Because refuting a straw man is not the same thing. And here too I'm sure I could find reading material if required, I'm sure. From the candid beginnings of marketing and public relations to all sorts of musings, short stories and probably even Star Trek episodes about how a prison you can see, one you know you're in, is much less insidious and effective than one where you think you're free, where you never try the door or don't even realize there is one. I remember a short story in my 8th grade textbook or something that was about a prison without walls. You can say and do what you want, sure, and you think you came up with what you want all by yourself, too, it's just you didn't. That's the general idea. Walls, like murder, are just very crude tools, they are not the zenith of oppression and exploitation. If you see huge concentrations of power, skepticism is always warranted. How could there be smoke without fire? It doesn't prove anything, sure, and even if I could prove that "there has to be a fire", then that doesn't make any wild fantasies about the nature of it correct. But still, to muse about causes one can't prove (yet) seems a lot less foolish than to for example say "oh look, a huge blob of smiling friendly power, it just has to be everything it says on the tin". I'd rather be wrong about something I investigated for the right reasons, than guess right by sheer dumb luck. But personally I prefer to think of useful ways that would also nip some fires in the bud anyway. I don't need to know if we are being manipulated, I know critical thought is required and I know group think can be dangerous even when not manipulated, which it is so readily. So why not catch one real and one potential bird with one stone that is obligatory? I don't know how much of a problem global warming is, but I know that renewable energies are a good idea regardless, at "worst" we simply get to use fossil fuels for more plastic and fertilizer rather than burning them. I don't know how many people the planet can sustain, but I know something that needs to grow to not collapse cannot work on a finite planet, and that we need to rethink that at least until we get out of the solar system and split up into a gazillion humanities that will do whatever. I don't need to know if someone is trying to guess my password, I simply generate a long random one anyway. And so on. Likewise, I don't know if there will ever be the kind of oppressive societies here and where you are that were the norm throughout history and are still plentiful in the world, and I can't prove the exact levels of fuckery we are under right now, much less my idle suspicion that the West might fall get phased out in favour of the Chinese model -- but I still strive to be the best and most free I can be. Certain things should not be a response to pressure from the outside, they should be growing anyway. If there is nothing on the outside trying to opppress, everybody is happy. If there is, it gets to pop, and everybody who matters is happy. Win/win?
- PavlovsCat 10y ago
  Aaand it's off the front page. http://i.imgur.com/FQNYhED.png http://i.imgur.com/FQNYhED.png Isn't that interesting? The story above this one is roughly as old, has half the upvotes, and more comments. The one just below it is a lot older, and has a lot more comments than upvotes. Conspiracy? No, just the audience I guess, but all the same: QED. > Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news — things which on their own merits would get the big headlines-being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals. http://orwell.ru/library/novels/Animal_Farm/english/efp_go http://orwell.ru/library/novels/Animal_Farm/english/efp_go
  - tptacek 10y ago
    This story was on the front page for hours today.
  - alanwatts 10y ago
    Not the first time this has happened to me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11109985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11109985

tptacek 10y ago

"I can't find proof of this, therefore it must be happening" is very popular message board logic.

alanwatts 10y ago
As are appeals to authority. i.e.: "I can't find proof of this, therefore it must not be happening Let me ask you this, what precisely would suffice as proof, in your opinion, of such activities? On the internet, maybe there really is no such thing as undeniable "proof" that anyone did anything, considering how easy it is to fabricate evidence. [1] [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11440594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11440594
- tptacek 10y ago
  Pointing out that you've presented no evidence for an argument is not an "appeal to authority".
  - alanwatts 10y ago
    >Argument from ignorance (from Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents "a lack of contrary evidence"), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false (or vice versa). This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that: there may have been an insufficient investigation, and therefore there is insufficient information to prove the proposition be either true or false. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance Open and shut case, Johnson!
    - meepmorp 10y ago
      If anyone here could be reasonably construed as arguing from ignorance it'd be you. You said that "there are many much more subtle and effective ways to stifle free speech and human rights than a big firewall," such as "MITM attacks, botnet troll armies, astroturfing, etc. etc." If you're not asserting that such techniques are being deployed, then ok. But if you are, and follow that up with "Good luck finding proof of that though," as though that's a perfectly reasonable excuse for not being able to back up what you're alleging, then you are yourself asserting "a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false."
      - alanwatts 10y ago
        Of course such attacks are being deployed, but by whom and for what purpose? Here is an example of one such attack, which the researchers called "Censorship 2.0". https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/38wl43/we_used_sock_puppets_in_rnetsec_last_year_and_are/ https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/38wl43/we_used_sock... See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Team#Use_by_repressive_governments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Team#Use_by_repressive...
PavlovsCat 10y ago
> "I can't find proof of this, therefore it must be happening" is very popular message board logic. It's also not what they said, at all. If anything, you could say they argued it might be happening because it's more effective. From seeing the things people and companies do openly, from marketing to politics, I see no reason to believe that moral qualms is what would keep them from doing more. And while I don't know about MITM attacks, that seems like something that would be done on an individual basis; as for astroturfing and "troll armies", the logic is rather "if it makes sense, works, is cheap, has been reported on multiple times, then yeah, it's probably happening", at least for me, can't speak for the other poster. And is anyone honestly debating that > there are many much more subtle and effective ways to stifle free speech and human rights than a big firewall is true? Because refuting a straw man is not the same thing. And here too I'm sure I could find reading material if required, I'm sure. From the candid beginnings of marketing and public relations to all sorts of musings, short stories and probably even Star Trek episodes about how a prison you can see, one you know you're in, is much less insidious and effective than one where you think you're free, where you never try the door or don't even realize there is one. I remember a short story in my 8th grade textbook or something that was about a prison without walls. You can say and do what you want, sure, and you think you came up with what you want all by yourself, too, it's just you didn't. That's the general idea. Walls, like murder, are just very crude tools, they are not the zenith of oppression and exploitation. If you see huge concentrations of power, skepticism is always warranted. How could there be smoke without fire? It doesn't prove anything, sure, and even if I could prove that "there has to be a fire", then that doesn't make any wild fantasies about the nature of it correct. But still, to muse about causes one can't prove (yet) seems a lot less foolish than to for example say "oh look, a huge blob of smiling friendly power, it just has to be everything it says on the tin". I'd rather be wrong about something I investigated for the right reasons, than guess right by sheer dumb luck. But personally I prefer to think of useful ways that would also nip some fires in the bud anyway. I don't need to know if we are being manipulated, I know critical thought is required and I know group think can be dangerous even when not manipulated, which it is so readily. So why not catch one real and one potential bird with one stone that is obligatory? I don't know how much of a problem global warming is, but I know that renewable energies are a good idea regardless, at "worst" we simply get to use fossil fuels for more plastic and fertilizer rather than burning them. I don't know how many people the planet can sustain, but I know something that needs to grow to not collapse cannot work on a finite planet, and that we need to rethink that at least until we get out of the solar system and split up into a gazillion humanities that will do whatever. I don't need to know if someone is trying to guess my password, I simply generate a long random one anyway. And so on. Likewise, I don't know if there will ever be the kind of oppressive societies here and where you are that were the norm throughout history and are still plentiful in the world, and I can't prove the exact levels of fuckery we are under right now, much less my idle suspicion that the West might fall get phased out in favour of the Chinese model -- but I still strive to be the best and most free I can be. Certain things should not be a response to pressure from the outside, they should be growing anyway. If there is nothing on the outside trying to opppress, everybody is happy. If there is, it gets to pop, and everybody who matters is happy. Win/win?
PavlovsCat 10y ago
Aaand it's off the front page. http://i.imgur.com/FQNYhED.png http://i.imgur.com/FQNYhED.png Isn't that interesting? The story above this one is roughly as old, has half the upvotes, and more comments. The one just below it is a lot older, and has a lot more comments than upvotes. Conspiracy? No, just the audience I guess, but all the same: QED. > Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news — things which on their own merits would get the big headlines-being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals. http://orwell.ru/library/novels/Animal_Farm/english/efp_go http://orwell.ru/library/novels/Animal_Farm/english/efp_go
- tptacek 10y ago
  This story was on the front page for hours today.
- alanwatts 10y ago
  Not the first time this has happened to me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11109985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11109985