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> If these actions are being done domestically against US citizens, with no just cause sure I will get upset, but that has yet to be seen. May I just ask, why

> If these actions are being done domestically against US citizens, with no just cause sure I will get upset, but that has yet to be seen. May I just ask, why does this distinction matter? Why do you believe the world should be divided into "people who were issued bits of paper by my overlords" and "people who weren't"? I never understood this division in other people's heads. It leads to all sorts of philosophical problems, like for example people believing that war is ethical.

FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
I believe that in my heart as well. However, we don't currently live in a world with a federated global government. The recent election in the US highlighted that people do divide the world into imaginary lines on maps and it had a slogan: AMERICA FIRST. It's not just the political class that sees these divisions, it's a majority of the citizens. How would you spark a revolution in people's thinking?
- tehwalrus 10y ago
  I have written about this in the past. I believe I proposed something like a "no executive" world government, where you had international laws, defined by treaties, and a commitment by some treaty signatories to "arrest" any state actor which broke them. If this coalition of "world police" (which are, of course, armies) were powerful enough, I believe this could lead to less lawbreaking by governments (from the USA to Zimbabwe). Note, the commitment is not to start wars/invade, but specifically to arrest e.g. presidents or generals. You can't do this without an army, but the objective is considerably different from invading, neutralising any opposing forces, and securing a place. Of course, persuading people something like this is a good idea, your actual question, is just about the hardest problem I've ever thought about solving. I still don't really know where to begin, but I'm interested in teaching people epistemology before other things, as a means to halt the "post truth" stuff (which has been going on for years, not only recently!) By the way, if anyone wants to work on these idea with me - I'm calling the concept "World Peace, Inc" in my head - please get in touch with me (clues in profile). I'd love for this to be my job rather than the hobby I don't have time for.
  - FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
    > Of course, persuading people something like this is a good idea, your actual question, is just about the hardest problem I've ever thought about solving. It's borderline impossible. People are social animals. While they don't necessarily form hierarhical societies, they are easily swayed by someone who offers simple solutions to their complex problems and have a bias towards following others vs being their own individual sovereign. > "World Peace, Inc" Alright Tony Stark :) Are you recruiting Avengers and trying to successfully privatize world peace?
    - tehwalrus 10y ago
      Sadly, I'm not a billionaire. And privatise is a strong word - I think governments do a crappy job of it and I'd like to try! (I have stood for election, but winning while being nice is hard. note: I haven't stopped trying.)
  - sailfast 10y ago
    You know that what you're doing here is creating a world-dominating monopoly on the use of force, and whomever ran that army would be the defacto leader of the world, right? We're organized as nation-states in the first place so we can protect (generally) and pursue interests based on some sort of shared goal or value. For the United States, it's the constitution (ostensibly), for others it's different reasons. Federations of nation-states contributing to a global force might work without totally corrupting, but not a single "no-executive" force. Further, if everyone contributes forces then countries can opt-out and go their own way... for their own interests. (See the UN) Coming to an understanding between 10 people on what pizza to order is hard. Coming to an understanding between 8 Billion on who should be able to arrest them is extremely difficult.
    - tehwalrus 10y ago
      > whomever ran that army would be the defacto leader of the world That is specifically why I don't permit an executive. This isn't one army, it's an alliance of armies. They were (in my original proposal, not in the comment above) controlled by a council of heads of government who had to take (arrest) suggestions from the chief prosecutor of the international court, but were forbidden to take other actions collectively. In fact, I recall suggesting that such a group of allies would promise to use force only to defend direct attack on their own borders, and to execute arrests. > We're organized as nation-states in the first place so we can protect (generally) and pursue interests based on some sort of shared goal or value. I'm not sure I was ever offered a choice of whether or which nation to join, nor given any arguments for it. The reason(s) for their formation are certainly not rational - they are an emergent phenomenon! > the UN The UN is a diplomatic mission, which aims to give nations who come into conflict a neutral space in which to talk to one another like grown ups (or, often, not like grown ups.) It is a fundamentally different goal to an organisation which aims to use the traditional enforcement of rule of law to coerce those with political power to act within at least some behavioural boundaries. > Coming to an understanding between 8 Billion on who should be able to arrest them is extremely difficult. Actually, again, this hypothetical force only has arrest power over international crimes - specifically, crimes which are committed by people wielding state power. This includes members of governments, civil services, uncivil services (police, army), and so on, but most definitely not civilians. (An interested edge case I considered was the idea of an impromptu Texan militia who attempted to invade Mexico. I can't remember whether I decided they had designated themselves a pseudo-state or not by doing it. The same reasoning about whether jurisdiction should apply also works for most terrorists, anyway.)
- sailfast 10y ago
  One must make a strong justification for why treating the citizens of the world the same as an American is good for Americans. If we treat the world like we treat our citizens, then perhaps this leads to greater prosperity, more shared understanding about the rights of man, rule of law, and how to resolve conflicts (see the lately faltering "No two countries with a McDonald's have ever gone to war with each other" rule). Lately, this has been harder to justify as Americans have felt scared of foreign terrorism (not making a value judgment on that fear, but that the fear exists is real). Because of this the "evangelize to the world" feelings of the Cold War have given way to "protect us from the world - we need to get OURS." Many (including me) would argue this is short sighted. Best way to combat the narrative is to talk about the impacts of retreat from the world, and of arms races, etc. Communicating nuance, history, etc is hard. :/
  - JabavuAdams 10y ago
    > Because of this the "evangelize to the world" feelings of the Cold War have given way to "protect us from the world - we need to get OURS." But looking from the outside -- when has the US ever done anything but put America first? They have killed hundreds of thousands, to over a million people over the last 30 years by putting their interests first, by default.
- nostrademons 10y ago
  Do keep in mind that Trump received 63M votes out of a total population of 319M (~20%). Even if you consider the election a referendum on globalization (and there are many reasons besides nationalism that people may have voted for Trump, as well as reasons that an anti-globalist might have voted for Clinton), that's pretty far from a majority. Similarly, Brexit received 17.4M votes out of a total UK population of 64M (~26%). There are certainly a non-negligible number of people who believe in borders and nations and patriotism, and they can't and shouldn't be overlooked. But "majority" is stretching it. As for how to spark a revolution in people's thinking: you make your case to the young & open-minded, explaining why it's a good idea, and then you wait for the old and stubborn to die off. Some people will never change their mind, and you can't force them to. Everyone dies eventually, though, and if something is actually a good idea then future generations will have a chance to remake the world in their image.
  - zaroth 10y ago
    The right denominator is either eligible voters (241 million) or registered voters (146 million) not the overall population. [1] - http://www.statisticbrain.com/voting-statistics/ http://www.statisticbrain.com/voting-statistics/
    - nostrademons 10y ago
      Depends what you're using it for. The parent poster seemed to be implying a wish-list for a future utopian society, in which case the right denominator really is the whole population. (Or even more accurately, the set of all human beings that will be born in the future, but this causes issues with the numerator, since unborn humans don't exist yet.) The fact that children are legally prevented from voting has no bearing when you're talking about a future legal system that doesn't even allow the concept of national sovereignty; only their opinion matters. Indeed, there's reason to believe that their opinion may vary significantly from the majority opinion of people several decades older than them.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      The claim made based on the election results was about what it showed about the belief of the "majority of the citizens", so that's the right denominator, but if it matters Trump also didn't get a majority of eligible voters, or a majority of registered voters, or a majority of actual votes cast, or a majority of votes cast for one of the two major party candidates.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > The recent election in the US highlighted that people do divide the world into imaginary lines on maps and it had a slogan: AMERICA FIRST. It's not just the political class that sees these divisions, it's a majority of the citizens. Trump didn't even get a majority of the votes cast (or even just the votes cast for major party candidates), much less support from the "majority of the citizens".
dvcc 10y ago
That has less to do with how I feel and more to do with how the CIA is setup. Their role in domestic affairs is severely restricted, that is primarily the job of the FBI which has more requirements to conduct "searches". For them to be operating to the fullest extent of their perceived role, I can't find myself to be upset.
- karpodiem 10y ago
  "their role in domestic affairs is severely restricted" You're delusional if you still believe this.
  - bluejekyll 10y ago
    It's not delusional to accurately state the law. But there does need to be strong oversight of these organizations to make sure they actually follow the law. Edit: and yes, there is plenty of evidence that especially during the Vietnam war the CIA was actually breaking the law.
    - karpodiem 10y ago
      there is no oversight because it relies on the character of humans, who are weak and prone to folly. There is no paper trail for this abuse. This is a system that should not exist.
      - bluejekyll 10y ago
        I'm willing to acknowledge that you may have access to information that proves your point. But I know for a fact that the CIA does have a committee of elected officials that oversee it. Whether that is effective oversight is debatable, but the fact is that it exists, and they must legally disclose their actions. This means there are legal means by which they can be held to account in the cases where they do not.
        karpodiem 10y ago
danielam 10y ago
That some governments use that kind of tribal moral relativism to justify war does not mean that war cannot be waged for justifiable and morally good reasons.
- boomboomsubban 10y ago
  Give one example of a war where both sides had a justifiable and morally good reason.
  - andrewflnr 10y ago
    Why on earth would you ever expect both sides to have justifiable reasons?
    - robryan 10y ago
      Justifiable from their perspective. Most border disputes would fall under this, at various points in time both sides have controlled an area and believe that it is rightfully theirs.
      - andrewflnr 10y ago
        "Justifiable from their perspective" is trivial. Given the wealth of examples, which GGP can be assumed to know about, that's not what they were talking about.
    - boomboomsubban 10y ago
      It's the only situation where a build up of arms before war is understandable. Massing arms out of defense is basically indistinguishable from preparing an attack.
- tehwalrus 10y ago
  I agree with you, sort of. Specifically, I will admit that there are some cases where something some people would call war is justifiable.
- 10y ago
camdenlock 10y ago
> Why do you believe the world should be divided into "people who were issued bits of paper by my overlords" and "people who weren't"? Because different people, and different groups of people, have different beliefs and intentions. The current divisions, such as nation states, may seem arbitrary, but some of them are currently necessary. We quite simply do not live in a unified utopia as some posters here have deluded themselves into believing (which is an easy trap to fall into when one lives in a well-fed, massively rich democracy where one wants for nothing, such as the ones we all live in). Like it or not, these divisions exist, and will continue to exist well beyond our lifetimes. Groups of humans want to dominate other groups, to exterminate them, or worse. The divisions are necessary to protect the things we value, such as social progress, our loved ones, our innovations, and so on. In short, there is still a very clear and objective distinction between good and evil in the collective human species, and this leads to the development of the divisions with which you're uncomfortable. Thankfully, such feelings of "that's icky!" are not (yet) a primary factor in the decision-making process with respect to defending our side of the line. If it were, we wouldn't be having this discussion. We wouldn't be able to have many discussions at all, and particularly not on a medium so free as this one. We'd probably be doing manual labor in between sessions of worship to some supreme leader or god-authority. Yeah, I'll... I'll take those divisions for now, please.
nikdaheratik 10y ago
There's a big difference between war and spying. Accurate intelligence can actually prevent wars as it keeps governments honest about their movements and actions. It can also limit the damage of aggressive actions as it allows us to help target only the actual enemies rather than the enemies plus everyone in the entire village (obviously not 100% accurate). Your claim that having the tools to spy on people is inherently unethical, but I don't buy that. The ability to hack a TV is nowhere near the ability to destroy a city with a WMD. It's not even on the same slope.

FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago

I believe that in my heart as well. However, we don't currently live in a world with a federated global government. The recent election in the US highlighted that people do divide the world into imaginary lines on maps and it had a slogan: AMERICA FIRST. It's not just the political class that sees these divisions, it's a majority of the citizens. How would you spark a revolution in people's thinking?

tehwalrus 10y ago
I have written about this in the past. I believe I proposed something like a "no executive" world government, where you had international laws, defined by treaties, and a commitment by some treaty signatories to "arrest" any state actor which broke them. If this coalition of "world police" (which are, of course, armies) were powerful enough, I believe this could lead to less lawbreaking by governments (from the USA to Zimbabwe). Note, the commitment is not to start wars/invade, but specifically to arrest e.g. presidents or generals. You can't do this without an army, but the objective is considerably different from invading, neutralising any opposing forces, and securing a place. Of course, persuading people something like this is a good idea, your actual question, is just about the hardest problem I've ever thought about solving. I still don't really know where to begin, but I'm interested in teaching people epistemology before other things, as a means to halt the "post truth" stuff (which has been going on for years, not only recently!) By the way, if anyone wants to work on these idea with me - I'm calling the concept "World Peace, Inc" in my head - please get in touch with me (clues in profile). I'd love for this to be my job rather than the hobby I don't have time for.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
  > Of course, persuading people something like this is a good idea, your actual question, is just about the hardest problem I've ever thought about solving. It's borderline impossible. People are social animals. While they don't necessarily form hierarhical societies, they are easily swayed by someone who offers simple solutions to their complex problems and have a bias towards following others vs being their own individual sovereign. > "World Peace, Inc" Alright Tony Stark :) Are you recruiting Avengers and trying to successfully privatize world peace?
  - tehwalrus 10y ago
    Sadly, I'm not a billionaire. And privatise is a strong word - I think governments do a crappy job of it and I'd like to try! (I have stood for election, but winning while being nice is hard. note: I haven't stopped trying.)
- sailfast 10y ago
  You know that what you're doing here is creating a world-dominating monopoly on the use of force, and whomever ran that army would be the defacto leader of the world, right? We're organized as nation-states in the first place so we can protect (generally) and pursue interests based on some sort of shared goal or value. For the United States, it's the constitution (ostensibly), for others it's different reasons. Federations of nation-states contributing to a global force might work without totally corrupting, but not a single "no-executive" force. Further, if everyone contributes forces then countries can opt-out and go their own way... for their own interests. (See the UN) Coming to an understanding between 10 people on what pizza to order is hard. Coming to an understanding between 8 Billion on who should be able to arrest them is extremely difficult.
  - tehwalrus 10y ago
    > whomever ran that army would be the defacto leader of the world That is specifically why I don't permit an executive. This isn't one army, it's an alliance of armies. They were (in my original proposal, not in the comment above) controlled by a council of heads of government who had to take (arrest) suggestions from the chief prosecutor of the international court, but were forbidden to take other actions collectively. In fact, I recall suggesting that such a group of allies would promise to use force only to defend direct attack on their own borders, and to execute arrests. > We're organized as nation-states in the first place so we can protect (generally) and pursue interests based on some sort of shared goal or value. I'm not sure I was ever offered a choice of whether or which nation to join, nor given any arguments for it. The reason(s) for their formation are certainly not rational - they are an emergent phenomenon! > the UN The UN is a diplomatic mission, which aims to give nations who come into conflict a neutral space in which to talk to one another like grown ups (or, often, not like grown ups.) It is a fundamentally different goal to an organisation which aims to use the traditional enforcement of rule of law to coerce those with political power to act within at least some behavioural boundaries. > Coming to an understanding between 8 Billion on who should be able to arrest them is extremely difficult. Actually, again, this hypothetical force only has arrest power over international crimes - specifically, crimes which are committed by people wielding state power. This includes members of governments, civil services, uncivil services (police, army), and so on, but most definitely not civilians. (An interested edge case I considered was the idea of an impromptu Texan militia who attempted to invade Mexico. I can't remember whether I decided they had designated themselves a pseudo-state or not by doing it. The same reasoning about whether jurisdiction should apply also works for most terrorists, anyway.)
sailfast 10y ago
One must make a strong justification for why treating the citizens of the world the same as an American is good for Americans. If we treat the world like we treat our citizens, then perhaps this leads to greater prosperity, more shared understanding about the rights of man, rule of law, and how to resolve conflicts (see the lately faltering "No two countries with a McDonald's have ever gone to war with each other" rule). Lately, this has been harder to justify as Americans have felt scared of foreign terrorism (not making a value judgment on that fear, but that the fear exists is real). Because of this the "evangelize to the world" feelings of the Cold War have given way to "protect us from the world - we need to get OURS." Many (including me) would argue this is short sighted. Best way to combat the narrative is to talk about the impacts of retreat from the world, and of arms races, etc. Communicating nuance, history, etc is hard. :/
- JabavuAdams 10y ago
  > Because of this the "evangelize to the world" feelings of the Cold War have given way to "protect us from the world - we need to get OURS." But looking from the outside -- when has the US ever done anything but put America first? They have killed hundreds of thousands, to over a million people over the last 30 years by putting their interests first, by default.
nostrademons 10y ago
Do keep in mind that Trump received 63M votes out of a total population of 319M (~20%). Even if you consider the election a referendum on globalization (and there are many reasons besides nationalism that people may have voted for Trump, as well as reasons that an anti-globalist might have voted for Clinton), that's pretty far from a majority. Similarly, Brexit received 17.4M votes out of a total UK population of 64M (~26%). There are certainly a non-negligible number of people who believe in borders and nations and patriotism, and they can't and shouldn't be overlooked. But "majority" is stretching it. As for how to spark a revolution in people's thinking: you make your case to the young & open-minded, explaining why it's a good idea, and then you wait for the old and stubborn to die off. Some people will never change their mind, and you can't force them to. Everyone dies eventually, though, and if something is actually a good idea then future generations will have a chance to remake the world in their image.
- zaroth 10y ago
  The right denominator is either eligible voters (241 million) or registered voters (146 million) not the overall population. [1] - http://www.statisticbrain.com/voting-statistics/ http://www.statisticbrain.com/voting-statistics/
  - nostrademons 10y ago
    Depends what you're using it for. The parent poster seemed to be implying a wish-list for a future utopian society, in which case the right denominator really is the whole population. (Or even more accurately, the set of all human beings that will be born in the future, but this causes issues with the numerator, since unborn humans don't exist yet.) The fact that children are legally prevented from voting has no bearing when you're talking about a future legal system that doesn't even allow the concept of national sovereignty; only their opinion matters. Indeed, there's reason to believe that their opinion may vary significantly from the majority opinion of people several decades older than them.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    The claim made based on the election results was about what it showed about the belief of the "majority of the citizens", so that's the right denominator, but if it matters Trump also didn't get a majority of eligible voters, or a majority of registered voters, or a majority of actual votes cast, or a majority of votes cast for one of the two major party candidates.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> The recent election in the US highlighted that people do divide the world into imaginary lines on maps and it had a slogan: AMERICA FIRST. It's not just the political class that sees these divisions, it's a majority of the citizens. Trump didn't even get a majority of the votes cast (or even just the votes cast for major party candidates), much less support from the "majority of the citizens".

dvcc 10y ago

That has less to do with how I feel and more to do with how the CIA is setup. Their role in domestic affairs is severely restricted, that is primarily the job of the FBI which has more requirements to conduct "searches". For them to be operating to the fullest extent of their perceived role, I can't find myself to be upset.

karpodiem 10y ago
"their role in domestic affairs is severely restricted" You're delusional if you still believe this.
- bluejekyll 10y ago
  It's not delusional to accurately state the law. But there does need to be strong oversight of these organizations to make sure they actually follow the law. Edit: and yes, there is plenty of evidence that especially during the Vietnam war the CIA was actually breaking the law.
  - karpodiem 10y ago
    there is no oversight because it relies on the character of humans, who are weak and prone to folly. There is no paper trail for this abuse. This is a system that should not exist.
    - bluejekyll 10y ago
      I'm willing to acknowledge that you may have access to information that proves your point. But I know for a fact that the CIA does have a committee of elected officials that oversee it. Whether that is effective oversight is debatable, but the fact is that it exists, and they must legally disclose their actions. This means there are legal means by which they can be held to account in the cases where they do not.
      - karpodiem 10y ago

danielam 10y ago

That some governments use that kind of tribal moral relativism to justify war does not mean that war cannot be waged for justifiable and morally good reasons.

boomboomsubban 10y ago
Give one example of a war where both sides had a justifiable and morally good reason.
- andrewflnr 10y ago
  Why on earth would you ever expect both sides to have justifiable reasons?
  - robryan 10y ago
    Justifiable from their perspective. Most border disputes would fall under this, at various points in time both sides have controlled an area and believe that it is rightfully theirs.
    - andrewflnr 10y ago
      "Justifiable from their perspective" is trivial. Given the wealth of examples, which GGP can be assumed to know about, that's not what they were talking about.
  - boomboomsubban 10y ago
    It's the only situation where a build up of arms before war is understandable. Massing arms out of defense is basically indistinguishable from preparing an attack.
tehwalrus 10y ago
I agree with you, sort of. Specifically, I will admit that there are some cases where something some people would call war is justifiable.
10y ago

camdenlock 10y ago

> Why do you believe the world should be divided into "people who were issued bits of paper by my overlords" and "people who weren't"? Because different people, and different groups of people, have different beliefs and intentions. The current divisions, such as nation states, may seem arbitrary, but some of them are currently necessary. We quite simply do not live in a unified utopia as some posters here have deluded themselves into believing (which is an easy trap to fall into when one lives in a well-fed, massively rich democracy where one wants for nothing, such as the ones we all live in). Like it or not, these divisions exist, and will continue to exist well beyond our lifetimes. Groups of humans want to dominate other groups, to exterminate them, or worse. The divisions are necessary to protect the things we value, such as social progress, our loved ones, our innovations, and so on. In short, there is still a very clear and objective distinction between good and evil in the collective human species, and this leads to the development of the divisions with which you're uncomfortable. Thankfully, such feelings of "that's icky!" are not (yet) a primary factor in the decision-making process with respect to defending our side of the line. If it were, we wouldn't be having this discussion. We wouldn't be able to have many discussions at all, and particularly not on a medium so free as this one. We'd probably be doing manual labor in between sessions of worship to some supreme leader or god-authority. Yeah, I'll... I'll take those divisions for now, please.

nikdaheratik 10y ago

There's a big difference between war and spying. Accurate intelligence can actually prevent wars as it keeps governments honest about their movements and actions. It can also limit the damage of aggressive actions as it allows us to help target only the actual enemies rather than the enemies plus everyone in the entire village (obviously not 100% accurate). Your claim that having the tools to spy on people is inherently unethical, but I don't buy that. The ability to hack a TV is nowhere near the ability to destroy a city with a WMD. It's not even on the same slope.