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> We need to accept that some of these ideas ... are inherently dangerous. This line of reasoning leads to censorship. It's the same line of reasoning used by

> We need to accept that some of these ideas ... are inherently dangerous. This line of reasoning leads to censorship. It's the same line of reasoning used by every dictator and demagogue as well as China today. Why? The idea of democracy seems dangerous to a king. Ideas are not dangerous. Ideas are never dangerous. Ideas acted upon might cause danger or harm, but an idea itself never does, never has, and never will cause harm directly. Open debate of ideas, or the testing of opposing ideas to find the best among them, is necessary for progress... not only to find and establish new ideas, but to question widely held ideas today in the hopes of finding something better. To have open debate--to find the best ideas--you need to listen to ideas with which you might not agree, or which you might find--if acted upon--dangerous.

nine_k 9y ago
Yes, some ideas are inherently dangerous. An idea of atoms splitting leads to an atomic bomb, for instance. Some substances, tools, machines, etc are also inherently dangerous, and can't be made not to be. Does this mean that we should never use a saw, light a fire, or discuss [insert a controversial topic here]? Somehow people came up with protocols to work with inherently dangerous material things that lower the risk of a serious injury to acceptable bounds. I don't see why this would not apply to inherently dangerous ideas. I'd hazard to say that for the last 2500 years quite a few devices were invented in this space, allowing to think much of the previously unthinkable without turning into ravaging monsters or becoming insane. I suspect that we could just continue using these devices (e.g. "freedom of speech", "critical thinking", separation of author's personality form their ideas, etc), instead of running in terror from "dangerous ideas" while swinging a banhammer.
- scrollaway 9y ago
  > Yes, some ideas are inherently dangerous. An idea of atoms splitting leads to an atomic bomb, for instance. You're missing the parent's point. An idea not being acted upon is not dangerous. The idea of splitting atoms is not dangerous and the atomic bomb is not dangerous: An atomic bomb getting built (the idea being acted upon) is dangerous. Why are full disclosure policies recommended by security researchers? Why is open source healthy for security in general? Why is "security through obscurity" frowned upon? Because it is important to be able to discuss threats in order to better protect yourself from them. Burying your head in the sand is just a shitty tactic for dealing with danger. Being able to discuss controversial ideas is extremely important, whether it's to better protect yourself from them (eg. extreme-right ideology) or to independently research facts hidden from you by people who don't have your best interests in mind (eg. north korean censorship). And let's be honest here, from what I've seen of my (left leaning) twitter feed, Sam is being attacked extremely harshly for his "controversial" post. If people here think that the article is wrong, this is a terrible way to prove it so.
  - ENOTTY 9y ago
    Leave the security community out of it. Your rhetorical questions are not at all settled dogma in the community. > Why are full disclosure policies recommended by security researchers? This is still a somewhat controversial issue. Coordinated or "responsible" disclosure appears to be advocated by most security researchers. Meanwhile, the full-disclosure mailing list still exists, but the activity on the list is far lower than it once was. > Why is open source healthy for security in general? This is also controversial. Open source software has its fair share in-the-wild 0days. The "many eyes" theory only works if there actually are many friendly eyes, and so far, it seems like that is not true. Nobody does this crap for free. > Why is "security through obscurity" frowned upon? Because it is important to be able to discuss threats in order to better protect yourself from them. "Security through obscurity" does not come from the "information must be free" community. The phrase comes from the idea that you should assume that your adversary knows everything about the defenses you have set up.
  - citruscomputing 9y ago
    > An idea not being acted upon is not dangerous. A gun not being fired is not dangerous. A deadly virus that is contained is not dangerous. Ideas are seeds; action is impossible without them. All you're doing is pushing the responsibility one step further; instead of preventing the spread of ideas we have to prevent their effects. Now instead of dealing with the cause, we have to deal with the symptoms. A meme like "immigrants are the source of all our problems" is a dangerous idea, because of the actions it can directly cause. Preventing its spread is just good mental hygiene. Cults are another place where ideas are most certainly dangerous; but this time for the individual. So is any religion/ideology people are willing to die for. Most ideas are not dangerous. Also, I might be completely wrong; if I lived in Galileo's time, I might be claiming heliocentricity is a dangerous idea.
    - Veelox 9y ago
      A meme like "immigrants are universally good for our country" is also a dangerous idea.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Beyond what 'scrollaway wrote, I'd add that even granting some degree of danger inherent to an idea, it's only because dangerous is synonymous with powerful, which - in case of science and technology - is usually synonymous with useful. So the idea of atoms splitting leads to atomic bombs, which - when used on people - are evil, but it also leads to nuclear power plants (and by extension, to fixing current energy problems in an environmentally-friendly way), it leads to new scanning methods in medicine, it leads to improvements in agriculture, etc., and it leads to many similarly powerful spin-off ideas. Hell, it could open up the Solar System for us if people weren't scared shitless of it. Sure we got MAD, and we pointed a lot of nukes at each other, but we survived, and so far we're much better off with the idea of splitting atoms than without it. And genetic engineering, while opening us up for new kinds of dangers, also has so much more potential than nuclear physics. It has the theoretical capacity of solving most of the problems of humanity, from food supply and environmental damage, to sickness, decay and death. I'd say that the biggest moral hazard here is not pursuing it. And ultimately, let's not forget that scientific ideas are either good or bad models of the world, and whatever practical danger that comes of it is because of people who go apeshit and exploit achievements of science and technology to further their insanity. So maybe let's focus on restricting the impact of dangerous groups of people. As for the ideas themselves, to quote Eugene T. Gendlin: What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn't there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.
empath75 9y ago
Ideas being dangerous is one of the reasons that free speech is important. If they weren’t dangerous to someone nobody would bother opposing them.

nine_k 9y ago

Yes, some ideas are inherently dangerous. An idea of atoms splitting leads to an atomic bomb, for instance. Some substances, tools, machines, etc are also inherently dangerous, and can't be made not to be. Does this mean that we should never use a saw, light a fire, or discuss [insert a controversial topic here]? Somehow people came up with protocols to work with inherently dangerous material things that lower the risk of a serious injury to acceptable bounds. I don't see why this would not apply to inherently dangerous ideas. I'd hazard to say that for the last 2500 years quite a few devices were invented in this space, allowing to think much of the previously unthinkable without turning into ravaging monsters or becoming insane. I suspect that we could just continue using these devices (e.g. "freedom of speech", "critical thinking", separation of author's personality form their ideas, etc), instead of running in terror from "dangerous ideas" while swinging a banhammer.

scrollaway 9y ago
> Yes, some ideas are inherently dangerous. An idea of atoms splitting leads to an atomic bomb, for instance. You're missing the parent's point. An idea not being acted upon is not dangerous. The idea of splitting atoms is not dangerous and the atomic bomb is not dangerous: An atomic bomb getting built (the idea being acted upon) is dangerous. Why are full disclosure policies recommended by security researchers? Why is open source healthy for security in general? Why is "security through obscurity" frowned upon? Because it is important to be able to discuss threats in order to better protect yourself from them. Burying your head in the sand is just a shitty tactic for dealing with danger. Being able to discuss controversial ideas is extremely important, whether it's to better protect yourself from them (eg. extreme-right ideology) or to independently research facts hidden from you by people who don't have your best interests in mind (eg. north korean censorship). And let's be honest here, from what I've seen of my (left leaning) twitter feed, Sam is being attacked extremely harshly for his "controversial" post. If people here think that the article is wrong, this is a terrible way to prove it so.
- ENOTTY 9y ago
  Leave the security community out of it. Your rhetorical questions are not at all settled dogma in the community. > Why are full disclosure policies recommended by security researchers? This is still a somewhat controversial issue. Coordinated or "responsible" disclosure appears to be advocated by most security researchers. Meanwhile, the full-disclosure mailing list still exists, but the activity on the list is far lower than it once was. > Why is open source healthy for security in general? This is also controversial. Open source software has its fair share in-the-wild 0days. The "many eyes" theory only works if there actually are many friendly eyes, and so far, it seems like that is not true. Nobody does this crap for free. > Why is "security through obscurity" frowned upon? Because it is important to be able to discuss threats in order to better protect yourself from them. "Security through obscurity" does not come from the "information must be free" community. The phrase comes from the idea that you should assume that your adversary knows everything about the defenses you have set up.
- citruscomputing 9y ago
  > An idea not being acted upon is not dangerous. A gun not being fired is not dangerous. A deadly virus that is contained is not dangerous. Ideas are seeds; action is impossible without them. All you're doing is pushing the responsibility one step further; instead of preventing the spread of ideas we have to prevent their effects. Now instead of dealing with the cause, we have to deal with the symptoms. A meme like "immigrants are the source of all our problems" is a dangerous idea, because of the actions it can directly cause. Preventing its spread is just good mental hygiene. Cults are another place where ideas are most certainly dangerous; but this time for the individual. So is any religion/ideology people are willing to die for. Most ideas are not dangerous. Also, I might be completely wrong; if I lived in Galileo's time, I might be claiming heliocentricity is a dangerous idea.
  - Veelox 9y ago
    A meme like "immigrants are universally good for our country" is also a dangerous idea.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
Beyond what 'scrollaway wrote, I'd add that even granting some degree of danger inherent to an idea, it's only because dangerous is synonymous with powerful, which - in case of science and technology - is usually synonymous with useful. So the idea of atoms splitting leads to atomic bombs, which - when used on people - are evil, but it also leads to nuclear power plants (and by extension, to fixing current energy problems in an environmentally-friendly way), it leads to new scanning methods in medicine, it leads to improvements in agriculture, etc., and it leads to many similarly powerful spin-off ideas. Hell, it could open up the Solar System for us if people weren't scared shitless of it. Sure we got MAD, and we pointed a lot of nukes at each other, but we survived, and so far we're much better off with the idea of splitting atoms than without it. And genetic engineering, while opening us up for new kinds of dangers, also has so much more potential than nuclear physics. It has the theoretical capacity of solving most of the problems of humanity, from food supply and environmental damage, to sickness, decay and death. I'd say that the biggest moral hazard here is not pursuing it. And ultimately, let's not forget that scientific ideas are either good or bad models of the world, and whatever practical danger that comes of it is because of people who go apeshit and exploit achievements of science and technology to further their insanity. So maybe let's focus on restricting the impact of dangerous groups of people. As for the ideas themselves, to quote Eugene T. Gendlin: What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn't there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.

empath75 9y ago

Ideas being dangerous is one of the reasons that free speech is important. If they weren’t dangerous to someone nobody would bother opposing them.