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I'm not sure I agree with what I'm about to say myself, but wanted to see how others feel.... The advent of the internet has caused us to question a lot of our

I'm not sure I agree with what I'm about to say myself, but wanted to see how others feel.... The advent of the internet has caused us to question a lot of our rights as a people. We originally felt strongly around our right to free speech and our social networks embodied that to its logical conclusion, and now we're here at a dire state of hate speech and vitriol that threatens the (perceived) stability of our democracy. While the printing press and television have contributed to our partisanship, it's almost undeniable that the internet - and the ability for anyone anywhere to publish anything - has pushed us over the edge. There have been serious considerations about what we can do about this. One of the issues is that, as a people, we might not be ready to have all this power ourselves. I'm wondering if that extends to encryption and privacy. Can we, as a people, be trusted with this level of autonomy, power, and security?

icelancer 9y ago
>> Can we, as a people, be trusted with this level of autonomy, power, and security? A philosophical question is one worth considering for fun, but it has little practical value. There is no way to stop people from using mathematics to protect their privacy and their data, and any debate around that come from people who are innumerate. We can discuss the should/could stuff as a matter of interest to waste taxpayers' dollars and time, I suppose, but that's not what lawmakers generally try to discuss. They want to figure out how to do the impossible, or at least lie about it.
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  It's not impossible, you are confusing math with opsec I reality. Stop it. Pretending it's possible to encrypt effectively is going to give the government an excuse to apply rubber hose decryption under cover of deniability.
  - icelancer 9y ago
    >> Pretending it's possible to encrypt effectively Is not something I did.
jochung 9y ago
>dire state of hate speech and vitriol Yes, things are now so good for the average person that you can create mass hysteria over mean words. Not a satanic child murdering panic, not teenage violence, sex and substance abuse... just words. Once you stop consuming the outrage crack pipe, it all goes away. It's all a big game of signaling and sophistry. Ask yourself why the average journalist is qualified to whip you into a frenzy on topics that should rightly require years of study to become authoritative on. You can be trusted, you just gotta turn your brain back on. When there is a breakdown in the accepted mechanisms for spreading social consensus, you go back to primary sources. It shouldn't be a surprise: nature has told us that monocultures are eminently vulnerable. The solution is always diversity, the actual kind, not the ideological puritanism that has appropriated that concept for themselves.

icelancer 9y ago

>> Can we, as a people, be trusted with this level of autonomy, power, and security? A philosophical question is one worth considering for fun, but it has little practical value. There is no way to stop people from using mathematics to protect their privacy and their data, and any debate around that come from people who are innumerate. We can discuss the should/could stuff as a matter of interest to waste taxpayers' dollars and time, I suppose, but that's not what lawmakers generally try to discuss. They want to figure out how to do the impossible, or at least lie about it.

fjsolwmv 9y ago
It's not impossible, you are confusing math with opsec I reality. Stop it. Pretending it's possible to encrypt effectively is going to give the government an excuse to apply rubber hose decryption under cover of deniability.
- icelancer 9y ago
  >> Pretending it's possible to encrypt effectively Is not something I did.

jochung 9y ago

>dire state of hate speech and vitriol Yes, things are now so good for the average person that you can create mass hysteria over mean words. Not a satanic child murdering panic, not teenage violence, sex and substance abuse... just words. Once you stop consuming the outrage crack pipe, it all goes away. It's all a big game of signaling and sophistry. Ask yourself why the average journalist is qualified to whip you into a frenzy on topics that should rightly require years of study to become authoritative on. You can be trusted, you just gotta turn your brain back on. When there is a breakdown in the accepted mechanisms for spreading social consensus, you go back to primary sources. It shouldn't be a surprise: nature has told us that monocultures are eminently vulnerable. The solution is always diversity, the actual kind, not the ideological puritanism that has appropriated that concept for themselves.