7 ms·
This is a brilliant response. We must value Privacy and Security above all else. Once we open the door to oppress a group's voice we unanimously despise: we all
by Proof 9y ago
This is a brilliant response. We must value Privacy and Security above all else. Once we open the door to oppress a group's voice we unanimously despise: we allow our own voices to be oppresssd in the future.
- eeks 9y agoExactly the comment I was about to make. Cannot agree more.
- mozumder 9y agoSlippery slope fallacies are not a real problem. You deal with the problem at hand now, not some problem in the far distant future. Greedy algorithms exist and solve plenty of problems just fine.
- 21 9y agoWhy doesn't this also apply the other way? White supremacists talk about killing jews and blacks, but so far it's only talk. The few which actually did kill somebody, like the car driver, got arrested. So why not let the police deal with the problem at hand instead of talking about how the white supremacists will kill many in the distant future. Why is it not a slippery slope to say that allowing marches today will lead to genocides tomorrow?
- jacquesm 9y ago> White supremacists talk about killing jews and blacks, but so far it's only talk. Do yourself a favor and open a history book. Regions of interest: Germany, roughly 1932-1945, South Africa, 1948-1991.
- 21 9y agoI was just applying their argument against their own logic. The world is not what it was 70 years ago. Today when a genocide happens somewhere on Earth the UN quickly intervenes. The US is not some weak-ass state like Germany was in the 30s, even if Trump would order some sort of genocide today it would quickly be blocked at many levels.
- jacquesm 9y ago> The world is not what it was 70 years ago. Indeed, it is worse in many respects, better in others. For instance: 70 years ago it took a couple of days to organize something involving ten thousand people. Now you can do that in 10 minutes with a social media post in the right spot. > Today when a genocide happens somewhere on Earth the UN quickly intervenes. You do realize that the largest participant in such peacekeeping missions has decided to abdicate? > The US is not some weak-ass state like Germany was in the 30s You are significantly under-estimating the strength of pre-war Germany in spite of having been beaten in World War I. In fact, you could easily argue that it was specifically this kind of under-estimation that directly led to World War II. > even if Trump would order some sort of genocide today it would quickly be blocked at many levels. It would never play out like that. Trump is not going to order some sort of genocide directly. He'll simply stand aside while others do the dirty work and he'll lament at how terrible it is that they are resisting causing violence on both sides. One of my theories about why the GOP does not want to throw Trump out is that they are - rightfully - scared of what kind of backlash that will cause and that they hope against hope that they will be voted out in 2018 so others will be seen as responsible for throwing the lit fuse into the armory.
- 21 9y ago> It would never play out like that. Trump is not going to order some sort of genocide directly. He'll simply stand aside while others do the dirty work and he'll lament at how terrible it is that they are resisting causing violence on both sides. I think you'll agree that a systematic genocide like the ones you mention where you go into a city and round people up cannot happen. That would require the police, national guard, army to stand down and allow it. So we are left with small scale attacks, the kind terrorists do. We need to fight and guard against those, infiltrate the cells and arrest anyone actually planning such thing, but they are not in the category of genocide, especially because in a genocide the killers walk away with nothing happening to them (because they are protected by the state), but in a terrorist attack you either die or are quickly caught.
- jacquesm 9y ago
- dcow 9y agoDo _yourself_ a favor and read _The Big Lie_. The first chapter alone will really surprise you.
- jacquesm 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11:_The_Big_Lie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11:_The_Big_Lie That one? You're joking, right?
- dcow 9y agoI'm not sure how you assumed that one. I mean the currently bestselling: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N39W2DI https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N39W2DI
- pizza 9y agoYou think Dinesh D'Souza is reliable? This guy? http://www.politifact.com/personalities/dinesh-dsouza/statements/byruling/pants-fire/ http://www.politifact.com/personalities/dinesh-dsouza/statem...
- dcow 9y agoHe's a researcher at the Hoover Institute at Stanford.
- dragonwriter 9y agoBeing a scholar at an ideological think tank is a good indicator of having a particular ideology. Which might add credibility to statements contrary to that bias, but not so much otherwise.
- dcow 9y agoI actually had a discussion about this last night. We came to the conclusion that you can't invalidate an argument solely because it might be biased. Otherwise you'd probably invalidate all arguments due to some bias found somewhere. We agreed you must take biased arguments with a grain of salt, recognize and assess bias, etc. but the presence of bias does not alone invalidate an argument. Even "scientific research" is biased, ask Kuhn.
- kabouseng 9y agoSouth Africa, 1948-1991 Far more blacks died to state (or any other) violence during free democratic South Africa than during apartheid South Africa. It is simply dishonest to categorise apartheid South Africa with Nazi Germany.
- jacquesm 9y agoIt's not about who died it is about why people died. Your argument is roughly analogous to people saying that Hitler had the trains running on time. Sure under apartheid there was less overt violence and you could easily argue that South Africa was safer and altogether a better place to live back then than it is today. But that would be entirely missing the point of why Apartheid is wrong.
- observation 9y agoI wonder at what point would you say "Yup, that's been a failed experiment"? Do your ideals have a metric by which they may be considered? Do you believe the 'lesser of the two evils' to be a false dichotomy for this case?
- jacquesm 9y agoYou mean as in when the British were running India it was a better country? Or when the Dutch traded the occasional slave but Surinam was an orderly place that it was ok? I strongly believe that there are things that humanity should not engage in, slavery, human trafficking and Nazism are on that list. There is no 'lesser of two evils' when those are involved.
- observation 9y agoIt's not as if I believe in slavery or Fascism myself, however everything should be examined contextually. The historical alternative to slavery was mass murder. Dan Carlin will tell you that. > There is no 'lesser of two evils' when those are involved. There kind of is. It takes no imagination on my part to come up with dozens of historical examples of Bad, Badder and Worse.
- johndough 9y agoIf the non-existence of the internet did not stop this, I am not convinced that censoring the internet will.
- jacquesm 9y agoI'm not convinced either so we're in agreement there. I do believe that the Internet can be an accelerator.
- mozumder 9y agoIt's because Nazis have already declared war on the US and committed to acts of violence. As a response, America literally declared war against them, and killed them wholesale. Remember, we're talking about self-declared Nazis, not your average racist. How else would you deal with a group that says "I'm going to kill you"? Don't be the idealistic engineering nerd that only acts on theory. Be the practical socialized person that knows how the real world works.
- 21 9y agoIf you want to be practical, why do you think they have such a huge swell of their ranks? I never in my life had watched a neo-nazi talk before last week. Since last week I've watched about an hour of their talk, first on Vice and then searching for one of the guys on Youtube. Streisand effect. How many vulnerable minds will be turned by this exposure? If they had their little march and the left ignored them, or even better, laughed at them for how silly they look with their nazi flags, they wouldn't be on all TV's and we wouldn't be discussing them.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> White supremacists talk about killing jews and blacks, but so far it's only talk. No, it's not. E.g., http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/06/18/white_extremist_murders_killed_at_least_60_in_u_s_since_1995.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/06/18/white_extr... [replaced with non-AMP link]
- chatmasta 9y agoTotal non-sequitur, but here's a great example of the problem with AMP. Instead of linking to slate (the original source), dragonwriter linked to google. Slate loses a backlink, and I can't even tell who the publisher is without following the truncated URL.
- dragonwriter 9y agoYeah, I try to remember not to use the AMP link (I don't see this as fundamentally an AMP problem as a UI problem with using bare hyperlinks in text that is exacerbated by AMP, but we use the message boards we have, not the message boards we wish we had.) I've corrected it.
- dcow 9y agoNot to mention the paid violence anti Trump protests/riots executed by members of the Democratic left. The recent case is in the realm of 3rd degree murder. The premeditated paid violence is far more troubling. edit I mean troubling at a social/political level. The death of a non-violent protester is no less sad or serious.
- jacquesm 9y agoYou really are way too easily influenced by this conspiracy stuff.
- dcow 9y agoHow about you you go back and reassess your bad previous assumption about what book I was referring to. I'm not into conspiracy stuff at all and don't understand how you think a crackpot book about 9/11 is relevant to this thread at all. IMO you're trying to find reasons to vilify me because I'm expressing a dissenting opinion.
- jacquesm 9y ago> Not to mention the paid violence anti Trump protests/riots executed by members of the Democratic left. Is what I was responding to. As for that other book, you're on your own there.
- MichaelGG 9y agoEvery expansion of "just for terrorists and child porn" to "well drug cartels too" to "well maybe drug users" and "people that have the wrong opinion" seem to disagree with you. Asset seizure is "ok" with people as long as it was only going to target Scarface-like people. But now you can be stopped and have your cash taken. Slippery slopes are alive and well. And really, these TDS morons do more harm to their cause than support. Acting like idiots in public, hijacking a pro-white demonstration to start going off on the disproportionate representation of Jews in in the US -- it's a bad tactic. Silencing these low-credence trolls isn't gonna help, only make crappy martyrs. Blocking TDS will probably be a net benefit for white nationalism and will do exactly nothing to stop "hate".
- MadSax 9y agoTotally agree. Censorship advocates are exercising the same flawed logic as those pushing the war on drugs. New day, different target, that's all.
- devindotcom 9y agoAlthough I agree in some ways, I don't think "oppress" is the correct word when companies and others are choosing not to implicitly support a particular viewpoint and exercising their own right to free speech to oppose it in an organized fashion. Oppression suggests actions more authoritarian, and targets much more vulnerable, than what we're seeing. I think it is inaccurate to say that white supremacists are being oppressed.
- dcow 9y agoI think the argument would be that TDS is operating at a scale where they cannot have the same reach they do without a CDN service. So a CDN to terminating their accounts is effectively silencing them. It would be the similar if Google decided to censor their results.
- jacquesm 9y agoThe Daily Stormer moving to Tor has very little to do with Privacy and Security. And who are the 'we' that are oppressing a groups voice, they simply find it hard to get commercial entities to provide them with a vehicle for their hateful bits. Note that Aurenheimer is the guy who single handedly managed to drive a very large number of people away from Slashdot and who tends to come across as a man who relishes to watch the world burn. Providing a service to such a character or not is the kind of decision a company should be allowed to make.
- schmichael 9y agoIt's not quite so simple. A tool that can protect privacy and provide security can be used to take privacy and security away from someone else. For example doxxing someone on a hidden service protects the doxxer's privacy but removes the target's privacy. I'm not trying to make a moral judgement about Tor. I just feel it's important to acknowledge the best way to protect privacy is not always obvious and is rarely if ever simple.
- wvenable 9y agoI had to ban all Tor exit node IP's from my service because of a single bad actor causing problems for a large group of people on a small service I maintain.
- schmichael 9y agoCoincidentally Cloudflare often blocks them as well: https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/203306930-Does-Cloudflare-block-Tor- https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/203306930-D...
- wvenable 9y agoHonestly, I should probably use Cloudflare but this is a negative-profit venture and it's likely not worth the cost.