4 ms·

I strongly believe that tools are ethically neutral. A hammer, a knife or a government can be pretty useful, or pretty violent - depending on how you use it. T

by fwn 10y ago

I strongly believe that tools are ethically neutral. A hammer, a knife or a government can be pretty useful, or pretty violent - depending on how you use it. This alone does not imply that a hammer, a knife or a government should not exist or be banned. edit: words

tonyedgecombe 10y ago
It's interesting when you extend that discussion to guns, in the UK guns are quite difficult to get hold of, I wonder what the incident at Westminster would have looked like if they were as available as they are in the US. As always it's a trade off, some people loose the right to arm themselves at home but that means other people may not loose their life to a shooting.
- darfs 10y ago
  There is no other way to use a gun than shooting with it. (Useful! Of course you could use it like a hammer, but... Srsly.) It's whole purpose is, to hurt someone; i think that's some point to acknowledge first.
  - ajmurmann 10y ago
    You can go hunting with it or shoot for fun or make yourself feel safer. What can I do with encryption other than encrypt messages I want to hide? //Playing devil's advocate
    - danieldk 10y ago
      Well, there are very good reasons to hide messages. First of all, I don't want any company in transit, from my ISP, to the message broker, to the receivers ISP to mine my data and use/sell it for profit. Secondly, there are a lot of messages which are not illegal, but can be personally embarrassing if they were to become public. Think of sexually-tinted messages, psychological help, a kid who lives in a very conservative community and has doubts about their religion, discussions about a candidate for a job position, etc. The problem with backdoor is that the question is not if they are exploited, but when they are exploited. And this is all assuming that the organization that has backdoor access is not of ill will.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- ajmurmann 10y ago
  I had this thought as well. However, the comparison to knives seems better. It's pretty hard to make your own gun. It's pretty straight forward to make your own encryption app on top of existing OSS libraries. Like it's pretty easy to make your own makeshift, large knife. Maybe I just see it like that because I'm a software developer though.
  - Neliquat 10y ago
    It is not. Smash "home made gun" into youtube sometime. $30 at any hardware store and you have a functioning shotgun.
- Neliquat 10y ago
  That would mean the 1st cop he stabbed, who was unarmed, might have stopped it. Its dumb to play whatif in these situations.
nileshtrivedi 10y ago
What about guns, tanks or hydrogen bombs?
- goodplay 10y ago
  tools designed to directly cause destruction are not similar to tools designed to provide privacy.
  - petre 10y ago
    However they were treated as such by US export regulations.
    - goodplay 10y ago
      How does does this counter my point?
ktta 10y ago
> I strongly believe that tools are ethically neutral. Well, that's a very evasive argument in my opinion. It's absolutely true that objects are neutral, but you can't make a blanket argument with topics like these. That argument has been made lots of times by many (including me). But it eventually breaks down. You can't give a child a gun and when the kid shoots someone say it was the kid's fault. Whose fault is it? I'm guessing you're going to say the adult responsible for putting the gun within the reach of a child. You're still taking away an object from the kid. In this case it was a kid who didn't know better. Now this isn't a narrow argument. This becomes interesting when you get to powerful things, like say nuclear weapons. They aren't inherently evil too. But if you look around, UN is trying to ban them[1]. Shouldn't UN ban them? What I'm trying to get at is that you can't always but the blame on people. Just like you can't blame a child for not knowing better, you can't blame a person for knowing better (although people do). Sometimes you just have to take the gun (or nuclear weapons or encryption) away. [1]: https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/ https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/
- LoSboccacc 10y ago
  on the other hand a huge nuclear arsenal maintained a long period of peace during a troubled time, so there's that
  - ktta 10y ago
    > long period of peace What if the huge nuclear arsenal was in the wrong hands? That begs the question, what is 'wrong'? Your definition of peace was probably characterized as oppression/dominance by the people who did want to revolt. You don't account for the extremely subjective nature of things, especially when it comes to nationalistic actions of people.
  - natch 10y ago
    It arguably has so far, but let's not get too smug about it. The end of that story has not yet been written.
- fwn 10y ago
  I always thought that putting the blame on actual agents instead of stuff is the direct opposite of being evasive. You rightly said that I will answer that it was the adults fault. The bad act done with the weapon was giving it to a child, not the childs shooting someone. It gets clearer if the adult hands the weapon to a monkey or a randomized shooting machine. All three scenarios change nothing in regard to the moral responsibility of the adult. I do not know whether the UN should ban nuclear weapons, but if someone uses a nuclear weapon and we would check out who might be morally responsible for the attack, I'd point at the attacker.
jansho 10y ago
I believe the same. But what if these tools have too great impact if everything goes south? It happened with dynamites before, now look how jittery we are about nuclear. You can flip this for privacy too. The more governments can spy on everyone, well sure we may catch more terrorists and terrorism might even decrease. But at what cost? Totalitarianism? Shudder.
ue_ 10y ago
>or a government should not exist or be banned. I was with you up until 'government'. I regard states as exercising unjust authority over people and defenders of private property which is why I'm an anarcho-Communist. The way in which the modern world is divided up means that one must be a subject of some state, which I believe makes there no way to provide proper consent to be governed.

by fwn 10y ago

tonyedgecombe 10y ago

It's interesting when you extend that discussion to guns, in the UK guns are quite difficult to get hold of, I wonder what the incident at Westminster would have looked like if they were as available as they are in the US. As always it's a trade off, some people loose the right to arm themselves at home but that means other people may not loose their life to a shooting.

darfs 10y ago
There is no other way to use a gun than shooting with it. (Useful! Of course you could use it like a hammer, but... Srsly.) It's whole purpose is, to hurt someone; i think that's some point to acknowledge first.
- ajmurmann 10y ago
  You can go hunting with it or shoot for fun or make yourself feel safer. What can I do with encryption other than encrypt messages I want to hide? //Playing devil's advocate
  - danieldk 10y ago
    Well, there are very good reasons to hide messages. First of all, I don't want any company in transit, from my ISP, to the message broker, to the receivers ISP to mine my data and use/sell it for profit. Secondly, there are a lot of messages which are not illegal, but can be personally embarrassing if they were to become public. Think of sexually-tinted messages, psychological help, a kid who lives in a very conservative community and has doubts about their religion, discussions about a candidate for a job position, etc. The problem with backdoor is that the question is not if they are exploited, but when they are exploited. And this is all assuming that the organization that has backdoor access is not of ill will.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
ajmurmann 10y ago
I had this thought as well. However, the comparison to knives seems better. It's pretty hard to make your own gun. It's pretty straight forward to make your own encryption app on top of existing OSS libraries. Like it's pretty easy to make your own makeshift, large knife. Maybe I just see it like that because I'm a software developer though.
- Neliquat 10y ago
  It is not. Smash "home made gun" into youtube sometime. $30 at any hardware store and you have a functioning shotgun.
Neliquat 10y ago
That would mean the 1st cop he stabbed, who was unarmed, might have stopped it. Its dumb to play whatif in these situations.

nileshtrivedi 10y ago

What about guns, tanks or hydrogen bombs?

goodplay 10y ago
tools designed to directly cause destruction are not similar to tools designed to provide privacy.
- petre 10y ago
  However they were treated as such by US export regulations.
  - goodplay 10y ago
    How does does this counter my point?

ktta 10y ago

> I strongly believe that tools are ethically neutral. Well, that's a very evasive argument in my opinion. It's absolutely true that objects are neutral, but you can't make a blanket argument with topics like these. That argument has been made lots of times by many (including me). But it eventually breaks down. You can't give a child a gun and when the kid shoots someone say it was the kid's fault. Whose fault is it? I'm guessing you're going to say the adult responsible for putting the gun within the reach of a child. You're still taking away an object from the kid. In this case it was a kid who didn't know better. Now this isn't a narrow argument. This becomes interesting when you get to powerful things, like say nuclear weapons. They aren't inherently evil too. But if you look around, UN is trying to ban them[1]. Shouldn't UN ban them? What I'm trying to get at is that you can't always but the blame on people. Just like you can't blame a child for not knowing better, you can't blame a person for knowing better (although people do). Sometimes you just have to take the gun (or nuclear weapons or encryption) away. [1]: https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/ https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/

LoSboccacc 10y ago
on the other hand a huge nuclear arsenal maintained a long period of peace during a troubled time, so there's that
- ktta 10y ago
  > long period of peace What if the huge nuclear arsenal was in the wrong hands? That begs the question, what is 'wrong'? Your definition of peace was probably characterized as oppression/dominance by the people who did want to revolt. You don't account for the extremely subjective nature of things, especially when it comes to nationalistic actions of people.
- natch 10y ago
  It arguably has so far, but let's not get too smug about it. The end of that story has not yet been written.
fwn 10y ago
I always thought that putting the blame on actual agents instead of stuff is the direct opposite of being evasive. You rightly said that I will answer that it was the adults fault. The bad act done with the weapon was giving it to a child, not the childs shooting someone. It gets clearer if the adult hands the weapon to a monkey or a randomized shooting machine. All three scenarios change nothing in regard to the moral responsibility of the adult. I do not know whether the UN should ban nuclear weapons, but if someone uses a nuclear weapon and we would check out who might be morally responsible for the attack, I'd point at the attacker.

jansho 10y ago

I believe the same. But what if these tools have too great impact if everything goes south? It happened with dynamites before, now look how jittery we are about nuclear. You can flip this for privacy too. The more governments can spy on everyone, well sure we may catch more terrorists and terrorism might even decrease. But at what cost? Totalitarianism? Shudder.

ue_ 10y ago

>or a government should not exist or be banned. I was with you up until 'government'. I regard states as exercising unjust authority over people and defenders of private property which is why I'm an anarcho-Communist. The way in which the modern world is divided up means that one must be a subject of some state, which I believe makes there no way to provide proper consent to be governed.