4 ms·

"decency" is not definable, that's why it's tyrannical to legislate about it. Laws serve to establish a framework merely for peaceful coexistence. To use them t

"decency" is not definable, that's why it's tyrannical to legislate about it. Laws serve to establish a framework merely for peaceful coexistence. To use them to try to make everyone decent is surgery with a sledgehammer.

Macha 5y ago
Right, and that's why we have GDPR consent and legitimate interests and all those other terms to come to something that is legally definable.
- thegrimmest 5y ago
  All of those things are basically religious terms to me. Some people subscribe to the religion that they have a "right to be forgotten" or a "right to their data". I don't subscribe to this religion, I want out.
  - Macha 5y ago
    You can lobby for the law to be changed. Don't be surprised you can't get a critical mass for "Yes, I'd like businesses to be able to track me". You could just as equally declare copyright law or property law to be a religion and insist you don't want to subscribe to it, but society as a whole does, and so if you want to participate you just have to lump it.
    - thegrimmest 5y ago
      What if the laws were the other way, and business were being mandated to track everything they can about the people they interact with? How would this tyranny be different from the one existing currently? Just because the majority decides something, that doesn't mean it's not tyrannical. People should be free to peacefully interact with each other as they individually see fit. Some people may track, some may choose not to, advertise that fact. Any picking of sides is totally arbitrary and therefore unjust.
      - Macha 5y ago
        Is it not tyrannical to prevent you from selling copies of Lord of the Rings without paying the author by that same logic? If the majority of society was in favour of tracking everything then the opponents of that would have the same options of lobbying to change people's minds. As seen in the difference between end user reactions to GDPR vs ACTA, that seems like it would be much easier.
        thegrimmest 5y ago
        Yes? Copyright law was widely regarded as tyrannical when first introduced. Anything to which violence is an inappropriate response should not be legislated.
        leephillips 5y ago
        Why is violence an inappropriate response to someone threatening your livelihood by violating your copyright?
        thegrimmest 5y ago
        Because once you've told something to someone it's not yours anymore? Sure you can sign an agreement, but the consequences of violating it are civil, not criminal.
      - Kim_Bruning 5y ago
        The European union has evolved from the European Economic Union, and they are generally pretty pro-business and pro-freedom. One thing you want to keep an eye on that is actually harmful to business (and economic freedom) is if some part of the economy gets caught up in a race-to-the-bottom. This is a situation where everyone's best move is to defect, and then defect again, all the way down until no one is free/making a profit/happy/etc anymore. In this case there is a clear race to the bottom situation where everyone ends up having to track everything about everyone, just to keep up with the competition. As this would be pretty much truly be a panopticon-like tyranny by any other name, that's clearly not desirable. In this case the EU is trying to make legislation that stops the race from going all the way down, by leveling the playing field so that everyone can conveniently say "see, we can't go further because it's actually illegal now". So the net (long-term) freedom is actually increased by this measure.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Kim_Bruning 5y ago
    During WWII in Europe, numerous people in occupied territories learned that it is very important to be able to retain your privacy and ensure people don't learn too much about you. While people of Jewish ancestry are often taken as the canonical example, many other groups of people and individuals learned that "I have nothing to hide" is most definitely never true. Would it surprise you that it is in fact Germany that now has very strong privacy protections these days?
leephillips 5y ago
Do you have opinions about different laws? That some are arbitrary and unjust, whereas others are good? How do you form these opinions?
- thegrimmest 5y ago
  By whether these laws enforce negative rights or positive ones. You should have a right to do whatever you want as long as you're not directly interfering with the rights of others to do the same. That's what it means to be free.
  - leephillips 5y ago
    Is this demarcation a form of religion? Or can you demonstrate its objectivity?
    - thegrimmest 5y ago
      The demarcation represents a minimum set of restrictions on behavior which fundamentally differentiate civilization from its opposite - namely the presupposition of peaceful coexistence. From there, there is no means to derive the degree of compulsion to cooperate, so better not at all.
      - leephillips 5y ago
        Why is peaceful coexistence the supreme goal? What if my religion, in contrast with yours, holds out another goal as more important than that?
munk-a 5y ago
I'd actually challenge you to find a law in society that doesn't have some origin in vague decency - the legal framework built above decency is something we expect to be rather stable over the long term but, at a really basic level, we have a law to not murder people because we really don't appreciate it when people do it - not because there is some natural law inscribed in our DNA stating that murder must be a crime. Laws conform with societal ethics and those ethics absolutely change over time and are never uniformly agreed to by all individuals. Lastly - scale absolutely does matter when it comes to laws we want to enforce. We don't want to enforce a no-gossip law because the invasiveness of enforcement would be unbelievably deep, so decency is there to tell you that while you won't get arrested for doing a thing you should feel guilty about it - most members of society get equipped with this guilt during their upbringing and so criminally malicious gossip is a problem we mostly ignore at a societal level. Laws are absolutely BS in their inherent nature and a construct of society that could easily shift radically with large political shifts - but that doesn't mean they're invalid.
- thegrimmest 5y ago
  We have laws not to murder people because the state assumes a monopoly on violence. In absence of retributive justice we did and do continue to murder each other in blood feuds that last generations. This is perfectly normal human behavior. The state is there merely to provide a framework in which people who hate each other can be expected to surrender their natural right to use violence. To me that's where the right of one group (the government) to legitimately use force ends. The sledgehammer that is the legal system should only be used to administrate the peace. Beyond that, the only concept that can really be impartially measured is liberty. How free are you? In the graph of all possible actions, which are legitimately available to you? Everything else is an attempt to define good or evil, or right and wrong, and is therefore some form of religion. In a world where we are all equal, have no oracle to discern good from evil, and disagree diametrically, the only reasonable thing to do is optimize for liberty, and let everyone figure it out for themselves. Scale does matter, but not in regards to rights. If you have the right to do a thing, you have the right to do it a million times. If you have the right to write something down, you have the right to keep it in a database. If you can publish your letters, you can do so over HTTP as well. This isn't a new conversation. People have been publishing memoirs of their private correspondence since the printing press. What disturbs me is how we seem to be shifting our consensus that they have the right to do so.

Macha 5y ago

Right, and that's why we have GDPR consent and legitimate interests and all those other terms to come to something that is legally definable.

thegrimmest 5y ago
All of those things are basically religious terms to me. Some people subscribe to the religion that they have a "right to be forgotten" or a "right to their data". I don't subscribe to this religion, I want out.
- Macha 5y ago
  You can lobby for the law to be changed. Don't be surprised you can't get a critical mass for "Yes, I'd like businesses to be able to track me". You could just as equally declare copyright law or property law to be a religion and insist you don't want to subscribe to it, but society as a whole does, and so if you want to participate you just have to lump it.
  - thegrimmest 5y ago
    What if the laws were the other way, and business were being mandated to track everything they can about the people they interact with? How would this tyranny be different from the one existing currently? Just because the majority decides something, that doesn't mean it's not tyrannical. People should be free to peacefully interact with each other as they individually see fit. Some people may track, some may choose not to, advertise that fact. Any picking of sides is totally arbitrary and therefore unjust.
    - Macha 5y ago
      Is it not tyrannical to prevent you from selling copies of Lord of the Rings without paying the author by that same logic? If the majority of society was in favour of tracking everything then the opponents of that would have the same options of lobbying to change people's minds. As seen in the difference between end user reactions to GDPR vs ACTA, that seems like it would be much easier.
      - thegrimmest 5y ago
        Yes? Copyright law was widely regarded as tyrannical when first introduced. Anything to which violence is an inappropriate response should not be legislated.
        leephillips 5y ago
        Why is violence an inappropriate response to someone threatening your livelihood by violating your copyright?
        thegrimmest 5y ago
        Because once you've told something to someone it's not yours anymore? Sure you can sign an agreement, but the consequences of violating it are civil, not criminal.
    - Kim_Bruning 5y ago
      The European union has evolved from the European Economic Union, and they are generally pretty pro-business and pro-freedom. One thing you want to keep an eye on that is actually harmful to business (and economic freedom) is if some part of the economy gets caught up in a race-to-the-bottom. This is a situation where everyone's best move is to defect, and then defect again, all the way down until no one is free/making a profit/happy/etc anymore. In this case there is a clear race to the bottom situation where everyone ends up having to track everything about everyone, just to keep up with the competition. As this would be pretty much truly be a panopticon-like tyranny by any other name, that's clearly not desirable. In this case the EU is trying to make legislation that stops the race from going all the way down, by leveling the playing field so that everyone can conveniently say "see, we can't go further because it's actually illegal now". So the net (long-term) freedom is actually increased by this measure.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Kim_Bruning 5y ago
  During WWII in Europe, numerous people in occupied territories learned that it is very important to be able to retain your privacy and ensure people don't learn too much about you. While people of Jewish ancestry are often taken as the canonical example, many other groups of people and individuals learned that "I have nothing to hide" is most definitely never true. Would it surprise you that it is in fact Germany that now has very strong privacy protections these days?

leephillips 5y ago

Do you have opinions about different laws? That some are arbitrary and unjust, whereas others are good? How do you form these opinions?

thegrimmest 5y ago
By whether these laws enforce negative rights or positive ones. You should have a right to do whatever you want as long as you're not directly interfering with the rights of others to do the same. That's what it means to be free.
- leephillips 5y ago
  Is this demarcation a form of religion? Or can you demonstrate its objectivity?
  - thegrimmest 5y ago
    The demarcation represents a minimum set of restrictions on behavior which fundamentally differentiate civilization from its opposite - namely the presupposition of peaceful coexistence. From there, there is no means to derive the degree of compulsion to cooperate, so better not at all.
    - leephillips 5y ago
      Why is peaceful coexistence the supreme goal? What if my religion, in contrast with yours, holds out another goal as more important than that?

munk-a 5y ago

I'd actually challenge you to find a law in society that doesn't have some origin in vague decency - the legal framework built above decency is something we expect to be rather stable over the long term but, at a really basic level, we have a law to not murder people because we really don't appreciate it when people do it - not because there is some natural law inscribed in our DNA stating that murder must be a crime. Laws conform with societal ethics and those ethics absolutely change over time and are never uniformly agreed to by all individuals. Lastly - scale absolutely does matter when it comes to laws we want to enforce. We don't want to enforce a no-gossip law because the invasiveness of enforcement would be unbelievably deep, so decency is there to tell you that while you won't get arrested for doing a thing you should feel guilty about it - most members of society get equipped with this guilt during their upbringing and so criminally malicious gossip is a problem we mostly ignore at a societal level. Laws are absolutely BS in their inherent nature and a construct of society that could easily shift radically with large political shifts - but that doesn't mean they're invalid.

thegrimmest 5y ago
We have laws not to murder people because the state assumes a monopoly on violence. In absence of retributive justice we did and do continue to murder each other in blood feuds that last generations. This is perfectly normal human behavior. The state is there merely to provide a framework in which people who hate each other can be expected to surrender their natural right to use violence. To me that's where the right of one group (the government) to legitimately use force ends. The sledgehammer that is the legal system should only be used to administrate the peace. Beyond that, the only concept that can really be impartially measured is liberty. How free are you? In the graph of all possible actions, which are legitimately available to you? Everything else is an attempt to define good or evil, or right and wrong, and is therefore some form of religion. In a world where we are all equal, have no oracle to discern good from evil, and disagree diametrically, the only reasonable thing to do is optimize for liberty, and let everyone figure it out for themselves. Scale does matter, but not in regards to rights. If you have the right to do a thing, you have the right to do it a million times. If you have the right to write something down, you have the right to keep it in a database. If you can publish your letters, you can do so over HTTP as well. This isn't a new conversation. People have been publishing memoirs of their private correspondence since the printing press. What disturbs me is how we seem to be shifting our consensus that they have the right to do so.