4 ms·
Do you think people should be able to yell "Fire!" in a crowded room?
by snarf21 6y ago
Do you think people should be able to yell "Fire!" in a crowded room?
- erik_seaberg 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the... was a metaphor for writing to oppose the draft during World War I. It was a bad decision that has been partly overturned.
- dafoex 6y agoHonestly, yes. What if there was a fire? I understand that you intend that to read as "do you think people should be allowed to yell 'fire!' in a crowded room in which there is no fire", but for every false positive punished you create a chance for a false negative to arise from people to afraid to speak up for fear of getting it wrong.
- anigbrowl 6y agoI'd like to see some evidence for that assertion.
- dafoex 6y agoMy evidence is mainly from an infosec perspective: you aren't going to get your front desk to report suspicious activity if they have no incentive, or if they feel like they are fobbed off every time they try to report a potential issue. Every report of a problem, no matter how big or small, should at least be taken seriously enough to record the report and investigate its credibility - otherwise you'll set up a culture of issues going unreported because they get poo-pooed when they are reported. I'll see if I can find the talk where this concept was first put in such plain words to me, but I believe it was a Defcon talk called "Steal Everything, Kill Everyone, Cause Total Financial Ruin".
- anigbrowl 6y agoThat's not evidence, that's a hypothesis. Do you have evidence that fact-based reporting standards produces more false negatives than positives?
- dark_glass 6y agoTo add to the sibling comments, Christopher Hitchens literally yelled "Fire" in a crowded room [0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2uzEM0ugY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2uzEM0ugY