3 ms·

Informations is just that… has no will nor wants

by freedom2099 4y ago

9dev 4y ago
Ah, come on. That’s the exact same argument as „guns don’t kill people, humans do“ - factually correct, but misses the entire point far and wide.
- colejohnson66 4y ago
  Not really. Guns serve one purpose, really: shooting at things, while possibly killing it (ignoring gun ranges). It’s why they were created in the first place. That’s why the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” argument is bogus. “Information,” OTOH, doesn’t serve any particular purpose. On its own, information is just bits; it’s how those bits are used that matters. Those bits can be arranged to say “Hello, world”, but they can also be arranged to make the Stuxnet virus.
  - bumby 4y ago
    Nuclear fissile material is similarly morally agnostic. It’s just matter, right? So is smallpox. It’s just DNA code at its heart, right? But it’s also recognized that wide access to some things creates a lopsided risk/reward profile.
    - colejohnson66 4y ago
      Correct. I’m not arguing that wide access is a good thing; Just that the comparison to the tired gun argument is wrong. Hence why I brought up a “bad” usage of the agnostic item. It’s not the best example, but it’s what I thought of on the spot.
  - akimball 4y ago
    A remotely operated hole punch. I have used one to quickly make small round holes in hard materials on several occasions. Also to install small lead weights into things. Mostly though, they are good for humanely harvesting meat.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
sdiupIGPWEfh 4y ago
It gets tiring playing word games to avoid the suggestion that certain natural pressures have personal agency. Water "wants" to flow downhill. Gasses "want" to expand to fill their container. Genes "wanting" to replicate drive animals literally wanting to reproduce, and the incidental awareness of that drive in some species comes down to a certain molecular arrangement brought about by said genes. The genes are data, the minds are data, and the natural pressure is that that data which succeeds in reproducing will tend to keep reproducing. So in the original sense of the notion of memes as proposed by Dawkins, yes, information "wants" to be free, as that is its tendency. The only other option is that said data ultimately dies out.

Informations is just that… has no will nor wants

9dev 4y ago

Ah, come on. That’s the exact same argument as „guns don’t kill people, humans do“ - factually correct, but misses the entire point far and wide.

colejohnson66 4y ago
Not really. Guns serve one purpose, really: shooting at things, while possibly killing it (ignoring gun ranges). It’s why they were created in the first place. That’s why the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” argument is bogus. “Information,” OTOH, doesn’t serve any particular purpose. On its own, information is just bits; it’s how those bits are used that matters. Those bits can be arranged to say “Hello, world”, but they can also be arranged to make the Stuxnet virus.
- bumby 4y ago
  Nuclear fissile material is similarly morally agnostic. It’s just matter, right? So is smallpox. It’s just DNA code at its heart, right? But it’s also recognized that wide access to some things creates a lopsided risk/reward profile.
  - colejohnson66 4y ago
    Correct. I’m not arguing that wide access is a good thing; Just that the comparison to the tired gun argument is wrong. Hence why I brought up a “bad” usage of the agnostic item. It’s not the best example, but it’s what I thought of on the spot.
- akimball 4y ago
  A remotely operated hole punch. I have used one to quickly make small round holes in hard materials on several occasions. Also to install small lead weights into things. Mostly though, they are good for humanely harvesting meat.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

sdiupIGPWEfh 4y ago

It gets tiring playing word games to avoid the suggestion that certain natural pressures have personal agency. Water "wants" to flow downhill. Gasses "want" to expand to fill their container. Genes "wanting" to replicate drive animals literally wanting to reproduce, and the incidental awareness of that drive in some species comes down to a certain molecular arrangement brought about by said genes. The genes are data, the minds are data, and the natural pressure is that that data which succeeds in reproducing will tend to keep reproducing. So in the original sense of the notion of memes as proposed by Dawkins, yes, information "wants" to be free, as that is its tendency. The only other option is that said data ultimately dies out.