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In D&D there is a certain type of spell called Power Word Kill which works slightly differently based on the version of D&D you're playing with, but the effect

In D&D there is a certain type of spell called Power Word Kill which works slightly differently based on the version of D&D you're playing with, but the effect is that it essentially kills a single individual with a single word. I'm not saying phosphorus should be legal or illegal, but at some point "it's just a packet I sent on the internet" or "it's just a PDF I sent to someone overseas" or "it's just an element" misses the point. In most democratic countries there are procedures for getting what you need if you what you're doing is fundamentally good. Nuclear power plants get uranium. Science researchers get viruses. Anti-virus vendors get malware. A certain degree of limiting the power of individual actors is wise.

monksy 7y ago
<Cia Joins The Chat>
sneak 7y ago
> A certain degree of limiting the power of individual actors is wise. Unless you’re the individual and you aren’t malicious, you just want some glassware. I think your approach that people should be kept in a sandbox until they can prove to the state that they are “fundamentally good” is a terrifying one.
- chickenpotpie 7y ago
  There has to be some line where we say that an item is too dangerous for any random individual to own. Glassware should be unregulated, but if someone wants a nuclear bomb, I want to know who they are and what they plan on doing with it.
  - sneak 7y ago
    Do you know the names of the people in your own country who have nuclear weapons? Do you have access to the information about what they intend to do with them? Is it, perhaps, illegal for them to even tell you?
    - qtplatypus 7y ago
      In the US the person who has nuclear weapons is Dan Brouillette.
      - sneak 7y ago
        He’s the Secretary of the DoE. He has no weapons. Even if he were the Secretary of Defense, he would have no weapons. They merely command people who command other people who have such weapons. You don’t know the names, plans, or motivations of any of those people.
        qtplatypus 7y ago
        The department of energy is responsible for the nuclear weapons program and the nominal owner of the weapons.
  - salawat 7y ago
    Noted. For consistency sake however, I find having meaningful input or influence on the legislative process dangerous. Therefore I want to know who you are and what you intend to do with your vote or political aspirations. No lying now; that's illegal, and we'll arrest you if you do. It can very easily cut both ways, and lead to very fundamental rights which we hold dear being infringed upon. The more indirect the level of control, generally the greater the potential for abuse or de facto banning. The best regulation is the one we don't have to make, because we can manage to work it out between one another. This has the bonus of not sending a message to our descendants that we do not care for their eventual civil liberties, and what they do given they will be in a far better position to utilize them then than we are today.
- MaulingMonkey 7y ago
  This rationale ad absurdum would suggest you should be able to keep a nuclear bomb without proving anything to the state - an equally terrifying prospect. I doubt you're advocating for unrestricted access to nuclear bombs any more than 3pt14159 is advocating for restricting access to table salt (and I haven't seen 3pt14159 suggest glassware should be restricted either.) The question, then, is where to draw the line. It can be terrifyingly low, it can be terrifyingly high. Restricting glassware does seem pretty absurd on it's face to me, although I'm only hearing one side of the argument so far. Phosphorus - that can be dangerous in large quantities even if you mean well. Neither I nor the fire department will be terribly amused if you warehouse large quantities of it in a residential neighborhood. Small amounts - sure, don't write laws that let you throw the book at people for small scale hobby chemestry. Even nuclear material in some quantities can be fine. We certainly shouldn't arrest people for the americium-241 in their smoke detectors either.
  - sneak 7y ago
    > This rationale ad absurdum would suggest you should be able to keep a nuclear bomb without proving anything to the state - an equally terrifying prospect. This is precisely what other states do. Remember for a moment that nations are fictions, and jurisdictions are fairy tales. How is johnny down the road with a nuclear weapon any different than some other person unknown to you in military of the next country over with a nuclear weapon? Your regulation can not extend to the whole planet, and therefore someone you don’t know and don’t regulate will always have access to the highest levels of destructive technology you can’t keep a total secret, which is why the Teller-Ulam work is still classified. I just don’t see the distinction. If others who ignore your proposed restrictions and regulations having nuclear weapons is such an existential threat, should we be trying to kick people out of the nuclear club? I just don’t think the risk is as much as you seem to think it is. Humans don’t somehow suddenly become calmer, smarter, or more rational simply because they are wearing uniforms.
    - MaulingMonkey 7y ago
      > Your regulation can not extend to the whole planet I'd generally agree, but I happen to be from the USA - and my government spends an outlandish amount of money on military and diplomacy and geopolitical manuvering - which while perhaps not having the rigorous structure and definition of "regulation" - serves much the same purpouse. Casting all this effort aside as mere fictions falls flat. > should we be trying to kick people out of the nuclear club? I'll ask a better question: are "we" trying to kick people out of the nuclear club? Yes. In fact, "we" succeeded in doing so with Ukraine. "We" are certainly trying to keep countries like Iran and North Korea out of the nuclear club - with diplomacy, bribes in the form of economic aid, sanctions, bombs, assassinations, the works. "We" don't have total control, but regulations don't exert total control either. They are fictions of law that influence results but do not have the binding rigidity of a mathematical proof. They are flawed and imperfect, but that doesn't mean it can't possibly help and has no impact on the real world. Just as it's unrealistic to perfectly enforce all regulation, it's unrealistic to completely disarm the world, even if we sorely wanted to. So we focus on forcibly disarming those whom we believe to be the worst actors and the most unstable regions of the world, under the pretense of harm reduction (not harm elimination), and negotiate with others in mututal disarmament and observation treaties to ease tensions and reduce (but not eliminate) the chance of accidents. Imperfect, but realistic. > I just don’t think the risk is as much as you seem to think it is. I think you've got me pegged as more cautious than I am when it comes to the possibility of industrial or nuclear accidents or terrorism. I might've been asking for that by mirroring your "terrifying" wording. Either that or you're rather on the extreme end of the political spectrum yourself, in favor of deregulation, as I believe I'm less cautious than the average voter on that front, and believe my government to generally be overreacting on behalf of the voters. (Which isn't to say you're wrong, merely that I'm unconvinced.) I think you're also more worried than I am about the risk of government intervention infringing upon civil liberties. Which isn't to say I'm unworried - in fact, it's the very thing I worry about the most when it comes to the aforementioned government overreaction. But I'm not quite to the point of "no regulation is good regulation", which you're somewhat coming across as. EDIT: Aww heck, let me explicitly answer this too: > How is johnny down the road with a nuclear weapon any different than some other person unknown to you in military of the next country over with a nuclear weapon? Simple: I kinda half maybe partially trust my government, to kinda half maybe partially vet and trust the next country over, to kinda half maybe partially vet and trust their military personel before giving them access to nuclear weapons. It's not perfect, but it's kinda half maybe partially better than nothing. If we gave Johnny down the road nukes without vetting him at all, I bet that'd make a lot of countries nervous. Nervous enough to try and pressure us socially and economically into doing so. Maybe even enough to try and interfere with our elections, or use their own bribes, or assassins, or ...
beambot 7y ago
Deciding what is fundamentally good or drawing the line (eg the glassware) is the muddy part. The road to hell is paved with good intentions -- next thing you know, science chemistry kits are illegal & large swaths of population no longer believe in a spherical earth, evolution, and climate science.
- kixiQu 7y ago
  Even setting aside the questionable association of beakers and evolution, you can take the same logic both ways: "next thing you know, asbestos is in every home and large swaths of the population take mass shootings for granted as an unpreventable phenomenon."
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    Asbestos used to be in most homes. There was a good reason and a replacement for it, as well as good rules for disposal. With high explosives, governments tend to go so far as to require a licence for handling. Fine for breaking that is enough of a deterrent. It's relatively easy to acquire, because otherwise that makes explosive use rather tricky to monitor. Sales and widespread manufacturing is regulated separately. Easier and cheaper to get than CFC gas license. Or the general chemical laboratory license required to do such experiments like synthesis. (You can go to a lab and practice there, with supervision. Much less silly, more expensive.) They're of course limited by volume, just so you don't go building unlicensed rockets and mines.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  Chemistry sets were emasculated right around 1970. I know because I got one of the good ones immediately prior. Had lots of fun making stink bombs, burning various chemicals just to see what would happen, dissolving things in acid, generating hydrogen gas, etc. The ones after 1970 were like "hey, watch salt dissolve in water."
  - ethbro 7y ago
    Looking back on it, the chemistry set I got in the 90s could have easily been outdone by rooting around under the kitchen sink with a copy of the AC.
leetcrew 7y ago
"it's just a number!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controvers... in all seriousness, I think it's worth drawing a distinction between laws that prohibit actions that actually harm people and laws that make life easier for law enforcement. sidestepping the controversial issue of drug policy itself, the manufacturing of drugs is the problematic behavior in the phosphorus example. the controls on phosphorus itself are just to make enforcement easier. we should look on the latter type of laws with great skepticism. this is not to say I feel fully comfortable with private citizens enriching large amounts of uranium, but to as great an extent as possible, people should be free to do stuff that doesn't actually hurt anyone. imo that's a key aspect of what we call a "free society".
catalogia 7y ago
If the intent is to protect people from phosphorus, I'd just like to point out that you can buy large amounts of gasoline without any paperwork, without even raising any eyebrows. If somebody wants to commit arson, bullshit regulations on phosphorus won't stop them. Nor does it require any knowledge a gradeschooler doesn't possess. This isn't even academic, a maniac killed 36 people like this in Japan last year. If the point is being missed, then what is the point being missed? What does regulating small amounts of phosphorus actually accomplish in a society where gasoline is available in every neighborhood?
- leetcrew 7y ago
  I share your position, but the obvious counterpart to this is that many regular people need access to gasoline as part of their daily lives. not so with phosphorus. in general, I don't think citizens should have to answer "why do you need this?" to the government, but you're not really comparing apples to apples here.
  - chickenpotpie 7y ago
    It's about the societal costs of denial vs. the risks of availability. Restricting gasoline to only certain individuals would cost millions to billions of dollars and would save us from a few fires a year. Restricting access to nuclear bombs costs almost nothing and saves huge risk.
    - catalogia 7y ago
      > Restricting access to nuclear bombs costs almost nothing and saves huge risk. That makes me wonder, if nuclear bombs were deregulated, who would actually be rich and stupid enough to actually construct their own? Larry Ellison maybe? Probably not even him.
      - chickenpotpie 7y ago
        If John McAfee ever became terminally ill, I could see him building one, driving out into a desert, and going out with a literal bang.
chickenpotpie 7y ago
Exactly, we make a lot of things that are fundamental parts of science illegal. The government bans certain properties of light without a permit to allow radio to work and uncontrolled fission reactions to stop millions from dying.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

monksy 7y ago

sneak 7y ago

> A certain degree of limiting the power of individual actors is wise. Unless you’re the individual and you aren’t malicious, you just want some glassware. I think your approach that people should be kept in a sandbox until they can prove to the state that they are “fundamentally good” is a terrifying one.

chickenpotpie 7y ago
There has to be some line where we say that an item is too dangerous for any random individual to own. Glassware should be unregulated, but if someone wants a nuclear bomb, I want to know who they are and what they plan on doing with it.
- sneak 7y ago
  Do you know the names of the people in your own country who have nuclear weapons? Do you have access to the information about what they intend to do with them? Is it, perhaps, illegal for them to even tell you?
  - qtplatypus 7y ago
    In the US the person who has nuclear weapons is Dan Brouillette.
    - sneak 7y ago
      He’s the Secretary of the DoE. He has no weapons. Even if he were the Secretary of Defense, he would have no weapons. They merely command people who command other people who have such weapons. You don’t know the names, plans, or motivations of any of those people.
      - qtplatypus 7y ago
        The department of energy is responsible for the nuclear weapons program and the nominal owner of the weapons.
- salawat 7y ago
  Noted. For consistency sake however, I find having meaningful input or influence on the legislative process dangerous. Therefore I want to know who you are and what you intend to do with your vote or political aspirations. No lying now; that's illegal, and we'll arrest you if you do. It can very easily cut both ways, and lead to very fundamental rights which we hold dear being infringed upon. The more indirect the level of control, generally the greater the potential for abuse or de facto banning. The best regulation is the one we don't have to make, because we can manage to work it out between one another. This has the bonus of not sending a message to our descendants that we do not care for their eventual civil liberties, and what they do given they will be in a far better position to utilize them then than we are today.
MaulingMonkey 7y ago
This rationale ad absurdum would suggest you should be able to keep a nuclear bomb without proving anything to the state - an equally terrifying prospect. I doubt you're advocating for unrestricted access to nuclear bombs any more than 3pt14159 is advocating for restricting access to table salt (and I haven't seen 3pt14159 suggest glassware should be restricted either.) The question, then, is where to draw the line. It can be terrifyingly low, it can be terrifyingly high. Restricting glassware does seem pretty absurd on it's face to me, although I'm only hearing one side of the argument so far. Phosphorus - that can be dangerous in large quantities even if you mean well. Neither I nor the fire department will be terribly amused if you warehouse large quantities of it in a residential neighborhood. Small amounts - sure, don't write laws that let you throw the book at people for small scale hobby chemestry. Even nuclear material in some quantities can be fine. We certainly shouldn't arrest people for the americium-241 in their smoke detectors either.
- sneak 7y ago
  > This rationale ad absurdum would suggest you should be able to keep a nuclear bomb without proving anything to the state - an equally terrifying prospect. This is precisely what other states do. Remember for a moment that nations are fictions, and jurisdictions are fairy tales. How is johnny down the road with a nuclear weapon any different than some other person unknown to you in military of the next country over with a nuclear weapon? Your regulation can not extend to the whole planet, and therefore someone you don’t know and don’t regulate will always have access to the highest levels of destructive technology you can’t keep a total secret, which is why the Teller-Ulam work is still classified. I just don’t see the distinction. If others who ignore your proposed restrictions and regulations having nuclear weapons is such an existential threat, should we be trying to kick people out of the nuclear club? I just don’t think the risk is as much as you seem to think it is. Humans don’t somehow suddenly become calmer, smarter, or more rational simply because they are wearing uniforms.
  - MaulingMonkey 7y ago
    > Your regulation can not extend to the whole planet I'd generally agree, but I happen to be from the USA - and my government spends an outlandish amount of money on military and diplomacy and geopolitical manuvering - which while perhaps not having the rigorous structure and definition of "regulation" - serves much the same purpouse. Casting all this effort aside as mere fictions falls flat. > should we be trying to kick people out of the nuclear club? I'll ask a better question: are "we" trying to kick people out of the nuclear club? Yes. In fact, "we" succeeded in doing so with Ukraine. "We" are certainly trying to keep countries like Iran and North Korea out of the nuclear club - with diplomacy, bribes in the form of economic aid, sanctions, bombs, assassinations, the works. "We" don't have total control, but regulations don't exert total control either. They are fictions of law that influence results but do not have the binding rigidity of a mathematical proof. They are flawed and imperfect, but that doesn't mean it can't possibly help and has no impact on the real world. Just as it's unrealistic to perfectly enforce all regulation, it's unrealistic to completely disarm the world, even if we sorely wanted to. So we focus on forcibly disarming those whom we believe to be the worst actors and the most unstable regions of the world, under the pretense of harm reduction (not harm elimination), and negotiate with others in mututal disarmament and observation treaties to ease tensions and reduce (but not eliminate) the chance of accidents. Imperfect, but realistic. > I just don’t think the risk is as much as you seem to think it is. I think you've got me pegged as more cautious than I am when it comes to the possibility of industrial or nuclear accidents or terrorism. I might've been asking for that by mirroring your "terrifying" wording. Either that or you're rather on the extreme end of the political spectrum yourself, in favor of deregulation, as I believe I'm less cautious than the average voter on that front, and believe my government to generally be overreacting on behalf of the voters. (Which isn't to say you're wrong, merely that I'm unconvinced.) I think you're also more worried than I am about the risk of government intervention infringing upon civil liberties. Which isn't to say I'm unworried - in fact, it's the very thing I worry about the most when it comes to the aforementioned government overreaction. But I'm not quite to the point of "no regulation is good regulation", which you're somewhat coming across as. EDIT: Aww heck, let me explicitly answer this too: > How is johnny down the road with a nuclear weapon any different than some other person unknown to you in military of the next country over with a nuclear weapon? Simple: I kinda half maybe partially trust my government, to kinda half maybe partially vet and trust the next country over, to kinda half maybe partially vet and trust their military personel before giving them access to nuclear weapons. It's not perfect, but it's kinda half maybe partially better than nothing. If we gave Johnny down the road nukes without vetting him at all, I bet that'd make a lot of countries nervous. Nervous enough to try and pressure us socially and economically into doing so. Maybe even enough to try and interfere with our elections, or use their own bribes, or assassins, or ...

beambot 7y ago

Deciding what is fundamentally good or drawing the line (eg the glassware) is the muddy part. The road to hell is paved with good intentions -- next thing you know, science chemistry kits are illegal & large swaths of population no longer believe in a spherical earth, evolution, and climate science.

kixiQu 7y ago
Even setting aside the questionable association of beakers and evolution, you can take the same logic both ways: "next thing you know, asbestos is in every home and large swaths of the population take mass shootings for granted as an unpreventable phenomenon."
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  Asbestos used to be in most homes. There was a good reason and a replacement for it, as well as good rules for disposal. With high explosives, governments tend to go so far as to require a licence for handling. Fine for breaking that is enough of a deterrent. It's relatively easy to acquire, because otherwise that makes explosive use rather tricky to monitor. Sales and widespread manufacturing is regulated separately. Easier and cheaper to get than CFC gas license. Or the general chemical laboratory license required to do such experiments like synthesis. (You can go to a lab and practice there, with supervision. Much less silly, more expensive.) They're of course limited by volume, just so you don't go building unlicensed rockets and mines.
WalterBright 7y ago
Chemistry sets were emasculated right around 1970. I know because I got one of the good ones immediately prior. Had lots of fun making stink bombs, burning various chemicals just to see what would happen, dissolving things in acid, generating hydrogen gas, etc. The ones after 1970 were like "hey, watch salt dissolve in water."
- ethbro 7y ago
  Looking back on it, the chemistry set I got in the 90s could have easily been outdone by rooting around under the kitchen sink with a copy of the AC.

leetcrew 7y ago

"it's just a number!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controvers... in all seriousness, I think it's worth drawing a distinction between laws that prohibit actions that actually harm people and laws that make life easier for law enforcement. sidestepping the controversial issue of drug policy itself, the manufacturing of drugs is the problematic behavior in the phosphorus example. the controls on phosphorus itself are just to make enforcement easier. we should look on the latter type of laws with great skepticism. this is not to say I feel fully comfortable with private citizens enriching large amounts of uranium, but to as great an extent as possible, people should be free to do stuff that doesn't actually hurt anyone. imo that's a key aspect of what we call a "free society".

catalogia 7y ago

If the intent is to protect people from phosphorus, I'd just like to point out that you can buy large amounts of gasoline without any paperwork, without even raising any eyebrows. If somebody wants to commit arson, bullshit regulations on phosphorus won't stop them. Nor does it require any knowledge a gradeschooler doesn't possess. This isn't even academic, a maniac killed 36 people like this in Japan last year. If the point is being missed, then what is the point being missed? What does regulating small amounts of phosphorus actually accomplish in a society where gasoline is available in every neighborhood?

leetcrew 7y ago
I share your position, but the obvious counterpart to this is that many regular people need access to gasoline as part of their daily lives. not so with phosphorus. in general, I don't think citizens should have to answer "why do you need this?" to the government, but you're not really comparing apples to apples here.
- chickenpotpie 7y ago
  It's about the societal costs of denial vs. the risks of availability. Restricting gasoline to only certain individuals would cost millions to billions of dollars and would save us from a few fires a year. Restricting access to nuclear bombs costs almost nothing and saves huge risk.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    > Restricting access to nuclear bombs costs almost nothing and saves huge risk. That makes me wonder, if nuclear bombs were deregulated, who would actually be rich and stupid enough to actually construct their own? Larry Ellison maybe? Probably not even him.
    - chickenpotpie 7y ago
      If John McAfee ever became terminally ill, I could see him building one, driving out into a desert, and going out with a literal bang.

chickenpotpie 7y ago

Exactly, we make a lot of things that are fundamental parts of science illegal. The government bans certain properties of light without a permit to allow radio to work and uncontrolled fission reactions to stop millions from dying.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]