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> It's a basic human right. What do you mean by that? That phrase always struck me as an argument-ending non-argument. What if I disagree that you have a "righ

> It's a basic human right. What do you mean by that? That phrase always struck me as an argument-ending non-argument. What if I disagree that you have a "right" to privacy in any meaningful way? What if I think that I have a basic human right to control the data you choose to upload to my server?

SCHiM 10y ago
We'll first of all it's turtles all the way down. Like all morality there isn't an absolute answer that tells us what is good or bad in a secular setting. So the thing that comes closest is the culture and history we've been carrying with us. And that the 'right' to privacy has been a 'right' for a long time (eg. the right to private conversations and mail etc.)
- pjlegato 10y ago
  Only in western democracies. In Russia and China, for example, the government has the legal right to monitor any communication whatsoever, and always has.
dredmorbius 10y ago
There's a long litarture and philosophical debate on the whole concept of human rights. I also tend not to find those discussions particularly productive, as it's something a "get out of rational discussion free" card: a person can simply declare that some favourite property or aspect is some universally privileged right. I'm less familiar with the debate, its particulars, and various advocates than I'd like to be. Generally, though, I find the empirical arguments more persuasive. This isn't because I don't like the specific rights conveyed. Generally, most liberal rights strike me as personally quite desirable. And preferable on a social basis. It's the latter which I think makes a better basis for arguing for (or against) rights. There are rules of behavior, including rules reserved to individuals, which seem to make for more viable societies, cultures, and civilisations. There are also, though, overabundances of freedoms which can be counterproductive -- as Will Durant has noted, if you've got a choice between an excess of order or an excess of liberty, he'd choose order, because you still have order. (Mind, I'm not entirely convinced he's correct either.) But generally: a right (conditional, empirically-based, predicated on an increase in overall social welfare) to privacy strikes me as something which, on balance, tends to promote rather than diminish preferred function of society as a whole. And a loss of that privacy generates highly negative consequences. I'm les
- objectivistbrit 10y ago
  The irrationality you are noticing is to do with the modern concept of rights. Since the New Deal and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 'right' has come to cover things like right to a job, right to healthcare, right to electricity, right to broadband, and so on. But these rights impose obligations on other people, to either work to provide these rights for you, or to stump up the cash to pay for them. That means you need an agency which violates property rights. Since you can never raise enough taxes to pay for everyone's needs, there's no consistent way to implement the modern notion of rights, so it simply becomes a list of irrational demands. The only consistent system of rights (of rights which can be granted to everyone equally), take the right to life as a fundamental, and derive other rights from that. The derivative rights in such a system are the Enlightenment-era rights, I.e, life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    I'm not opposed to either the ideas of "rights", or of there being conflicting rights, or of there being rights of obligation, say, an obligation to help those in need (good sam laws, mariners' aid laws). I'm not even entirely concerned with rights being apparently, at least at first blush, inconsistent. What I am concerned with is what you've just done: to elevate a single right or a single set of rights to some priveleged status, simply on a say-so. These turn out to be both exceptionally arbitrary, on close examination, and frequently dysfunctional. Take a trolly problem, or a unit in battle, or a sinking ocean liner, or any number of other conditions, with your primacy of right-to-life, for example. Note that life, liberty, and happiness are given in the US Declaration of Independence (though not the Constitution) as unalienable rights. That is, not rights which must be granted (any two-bit punk can claim your life, a zip-tie can restrict your liberty, and a wailing child can remove your happiness), but they cannot be given to another -- unlike your property, or business income, or even spouse and children. So no, actually, I don't find that a convincing argument, though thanks.

SCHiM 10y ago

We'll first of all it's turtles all the way down. Like all morality there isn't an absolute answer that tells us what is good or bad in a secular setting. So the thing that comes closest is the culture and history we've been carrying with us. And that the 'right' to privacy has been a 'right' for a long time (eg. the right to private conversations and mail etc.)

pjlegato 10y ago
Only in western democracies. In Russia and China, for example, the government has the legal right to monitor any communication whatsoever, and always has.

dredmorbius 10y ago

There's a long litarture and philosophical debate on the whole concept of human rights. I also tend not to find those discussions particularly productive, as it's something a "get out of rational discussion free" card: a person can simply declare that some favourite property or aspect is some universally privileged right. I'm less familiar with the debate, its particulars, and various advocates than I'd like to be. Generally, though, I find the empirical arguments more persuasive. This isn't because I don't like the specific rights conveyed. Generally, most liberal rights strike me as personally quite desirable. And preferable on a social basis. It's the latter which I think makes a better basis for arguing for (or against) rights. There are rules of behavior, including rules reserved to individuals, which seem to make for more viable societies, cultures, and civilisations. There are also, though, overabundances of freedoms which can be counterproductive -- as Will Durant has noted, if you've got a choice between an excess of order or an excess of liberty, he'd choose order, because you still have order. (Mind, I'm not entirely convinced he's correct either.) But generally: a right (conditional, empirically-based, predicated on an increase in overall social welfare) to privacy strikes me as something which, on balance, tends to promote rather than diminish preferred function of society as a whole. And a loss of that privacy generates highly negative consequences. I'm les

objectivistbrit 10y ago
The irrationality you are noticing is to do with the modern concept of rights. Since the New Deal and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 'right' has come to cover things like right to a job, right to healthcare, right to electricity, right to broadband, and so on. But these rights impose obligations on other people, to either work to provide these rights for you, or to stump up the cash to pay for them. That means you need an agency which violates property rights. Since you can never raise enough taxes to pay for everyone's needs, there's no consistent way to implement the modern notion of rights, so it simply becomes a list of irrational demands. The only consistent system of rights (of rights which can be granted to everyone equally), take the right to life as a fundamental, and derive other rights from that. The derivative rights in such a system are the Enlightenment-era rights, I.e, life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  I'm not opposed to either the ideas of "rights", or of there being conflicting rights, or of there being rights of obligation, say, an obligation to help those in need (good sam laws, mariners' aid laws). I'm not even entirely concerned with rights being apparently, at least at first blush, inconsistent. What I am concerned with is what you've just done: to elevate a single right or a single set of rights to some priveleged status, simply on a say-so. These turn out to be both exceptionally arbitrary, on close examination, and frequently dysfunctional. Take a trolly problem, or a unit in battle, or a sinking ocean liner, or any number of other conditions, with your primacy of right-to-life, for example. Note that life, liberty, and happiness are given in the US Declaration of Independence (though not the Constitution) as unalienable rights. That is, not rights which must be granted (any two-bit punk can claim your life, a zip-tie can restrict your liberty, and a wailing child can remove your happiness), but they cannot be given to another -- unlike your property, or business income, or even spouse and children. So no, actually, I don't find that a convincing argument, though thanks.