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They're not dense. These people consider that kind of stuff perfectly acceptable because they have a world view in which living in totalitarian society is acce

They're not dense. These people consider that kind of stuff perfectly acceptable because they have a world view in which living in totalitarian society is acceptable. Their world view simply does not align with yours or mine. They simply do not consider the use these kind of systems to be fundamentally incompatible with free society the way you or I do.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
> These people consider that kind of stuff perfectly acceptable because they have a world view in which living in totalitarian society is acceptable. Except they don't. The moment the totalitarian society started to demand conformance to something they don't like, you can be sure they would object.
- rc_hadoken 7y ago
  And said state will take off its hat, apologize and disappear? C'mon mate...
- closetohome 7y ago
  That's...literally everyone who supports totalitarian and authoritarian states. They support it because they share its values, and they like that those values are enforced. Nobody goes "well they put my ma in the gulag, but I still agree with them politically"
- jakeogh 7y ago
  They move the goalposts to the new normal, see "problems" still happening and apply the same solution iteratively to absurdim.
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    When organizations spend money on a 'tool' they will find a justification for it's existence. 30 years ago the city I lived in bought a helicopter for the police. So they could 'spot criminals from the air'. They actually appear to use it mostly to look for teenagers hanging out in parks after hours.
rotrux 7y ago
This thread is frustrating. First off, there's a typo in the quote. The word "who" is missing: "..someone who went hunting?" Second off, even if the missing word was "we": "...someone we went hunting." The CEO of the company supplying the software has a direct incentive to see things from the other side. It's not denseness; it's business. This is not a battle between totalitarians and freedom fighters, it's a battle between those who think security is more important within this context, and those who think privacy is more important within this context.
- LordDragonfang 7y ago
  A student got arrested for expressing frustration on twitter. It's hard not to read that as creeping into totalitarian.
  - rotrux 7y ago
    It's an anecdote. Overzealous policing has happened in lots of democracies for centuries.
Gibbon1 7y ago
Your comment reminds me of a cautionary essay by a adolescent psychologist. Her warning was that psychologists are not a normative group because of the conformist selection process. Getting a PhD in psychology is an exercise in knuckling under. That is something that is pretty alien to a typical teenager. As a result psychologists often see aberrant behavior in adolescents that is actually gob smack normal and ultimately harmless.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago

> These people consider that kind of stuff perfectly acceptable because they have a world view in which living in totalitarian society is acceptable. Except they don't. The moment the totalitarian society started to demand conformance to something they don't like, you can be sure they would object.

rc_hadoken 7y ago
And said state will take off its hat, apologize and disappear? C'mon mate...
closetohome 7y ago
That's...literally everyone who supports totalitarian and authoritarian states. They support it because they share its values, and they like that those values are enforced. Nobody goes "well they put my ma in the gulag, but I still agree with them politically"
jakeogh 7y ago
They move the goalposts to the new normal, see "problems" still happening and apply the same solution iteratively to absurdim.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  When organizations spend money on a 'tool' they will find a justification for it's existence. 30 years ago the city I lived in bought a helicopter for the police. So they could 'spot criminals from the air'. They actually appear to use it mostly to look for teenagers hanging out in parks after hours.

rotrux 7y ago

This thread is frustrating. First off, there's a typo in the quote. The word "who" is missing: "..someone who went hunting?" Second off, even if the missing word was "we": "...someone we went hunting." The CEO of the company supplying the software has a direct incentive to see things from the other side. It's not denseness; it's business. This is not a battle between totalitarians and freedom fighters, it's a battle between those who think security is more important within this context, and those who think privacy is more important within this context.

LordDragonfang 7y ago
A student got arrested for expressing frustration on twitter. It's hard not to read that as creeping into totalitarian.
- rotrux 7y ago
  It's an anecdote. Overzealous policing has happened in lots of democracies for centuries.

Gibbon1 7y ago

Your comment reminds me of a cautionary essay by a adolescent psychologist. Her warning was that psychologists are not a normative group because of the conformist selection process. Getting a PhD in psychology is an exercise in knuckling under. That is something that is pretty alien to a typical teenager. As a result psychologists often see aberrant behavior in adolescents that is actually gob smack normal and ultimately harmless.