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What this really indicates, bot or not, is that once you educate people, they will act in their self (and more importantly, self+others) interests. Oppressive
by blunte 10y ago
What this really indicates, bot or not, is that once you educate people, they will act in their self (and more importantly, self+others) interests. Oppressive and controlling (controlling or controling, I can never decide) regimes will try to prevent it. But it is like trying to prevent wind.
The wind will come. You must adapt and accept. And if you are against the wind, you must change.
- olalonde 10y agoI appreciate the poetry but blocking Tor is a lot easier than preventing the wind and some governments (e.g. China) successfully do so.
- blunte 10y agoBlocking Tor is one thing. But once people have made an effort to use Tor, you have lost as a regime.
- blunte 10y agoHoly shit! -4 to that? I don't mean to get all meta, but really I must be further out of touch than I realized.
- schoen 10y agoI didn't downvote you, but I can imagine two different reasons that people might have done so: (1) They want to emphasize that there are lots of reasons to use Tor other than political dissidence and that Tor use should be normal or common for lots of people in lots of situations. (2) They feel like the role of tools like Tor in facilitating political dissidence is overstated and that you were implying that Tor will be crucial or extremely powerful in political conflict situations, rather than, say, hopefully somewhat useful. edit: (3) They feel like you're overstating how effective political dissidence can be (because having public opinion turn against a government doesn't mean that the government will lose power).
- rawmaterial 10y ago*(3) see Assad.
- blunte 10y agoIt's a matter of intent. If people are willing to try to get around oppression, they have already indicated their intent to strive for better. Maybe it takes a year, or 5, or 10, or more, but people will group and work for freedom. That is my point.
- morsch 10y agoThe same could be said for tyranny.
- cmurf 10y agoI don't know what this means. People in the U.S. use Tor, has it lost as a regime? What does "lost" mean in this context? Some moral authority? All moral authority? I think we can say that as governments do in fact continue to exist while their citizens use Tor, that the statement is sufficiently vague that it's meaningless.
- runn1ng 10y agoChina is also doing large-scale experiments with artifical changing of the weather, so...
- jimmaswell 10y ago>What this really indicates, bot or not, is that once you educate people, they will act in their self (and more importantly, self+others) interests. That's an idealistic sentiment that's unfortunately not actually true. There are abundant examples if you look at politics or gambling.
- loup-vaillant 10y agoGambling is a (serious) game, where you're totally supposed to eat you neighbour to get on top. Politics works on a heavily skewed sample of power-hungry people. Politicians are nothing like their people. Most are among the top 1%, which is a weird bunch: they are visible, powerful, don't have the same incentives, and don't live under the same social pressures as the rest of us.