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This quote never made sense to me. My decision to prefer one of these over the other doesn't mean I don't deserve either. It's a decision I make with my own uni

This quote never made sense to me. My decision to prefer one of these over the other doesn't mean I don't deserve either. It's a decision I make with my own unique economic and threat parameters. Being "deserving" plays no role here.

qohen 3y ago
The quote actually meant something rather different than people think and has been taken out of context. Here's a discussion about it[0]. First, here's the TL;DR: SIEGEL: So far from being a pro-privacy quotation, if anything, it's a pro-taxation and pro-defense spending quotation. WITTES: It is a quotation that defends the authority of a legislature to govern in the interests of collective security. It means, in context, not quite the opposite of what it's almost always quoted as saying but much closer to the opposite than to the thing that people think it means. And here's the detail, discussed just before the TL;DR (I put in some paragraph breaks): SIEGEL: And what was the context of this remark? WITTES: He was writing about a tax dispute between the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the family of the Penns, the proprietary family of the Pennsylvania colony who ruled it from afar. And the legislature was trying to tax the Penn family lands to pay for frontier defense during the French and Indian War. And the Penn family kept instructing the governor to veto. Franklin felt that this was a great affront to the ability of the legislature to govern. And so he actually meant purchase a little temporary safety very literally. The Penn family was trying to give a lump sum of money in exchange for the General Assembly's acknowledging that it did not have the authority to tax it. [0] https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...
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JohnFen 3y ago
I think what he was saying, in rather poetic language, is that if you give up liberty to gain safety, you won't get either of those things. I don't think he meant "deserves" in the literal sense.
- xNeil 3y ago
  That's a good way to think about it. Way I saw it was - if you are foolish enough to give up liberty for safety, you don't deserve the safety anyways.
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rightbyte 3y ago
Ye it doesn't make sense. These rule of thumbs need the implied "too much" in them from the get go, or people will use them to silly extremes in the wrong ways. That applies all too well to programmers.
CoastalCoder 3y ago
I've become skeptical, at least at first, of pithy / catchy phrases. Many seem to be well known because they're memorable, but some people assume they're well know because they contain wisdom. E.g., "It's always darkest before dawn." or (the often misconstrued) "The exception proves the rule."
brigandish 3y ago
Morals are about behaving right or wrong because that leads to good things or bad things, so, if you make the wrong choice (here, giving up some liberty for a small amount of safety) then you do indeed deserve what you get - neither - because you chose wrong.

qohen 3y ago

The quote actually meant something rather different than people think and has been taken out of context. Here's a discussion about it[0]. First, here's the TL;DR: SIEGEL: So far from being a pro-privacy quotation, if anything, it's a pro-taxation and pro-defense spending quotation. WITTES: It is a quotation that defends the authority of a legislature to govern in the interests of collective security. It means, in context, not quite the opposite of what it's almost always quoted as saying but much closer to the opposite than to the thing that people think it means. And here's the detail, discussed just before the TL;DR (I put in some paragraph breaks): SIEGEL: And what was the context of this remark? WITTES: He was writing about a tax dispute between the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the family of the Penns, the proprietary family of the Pennsylvania colony who ruled it from afar. And the legislature was trying to tax the Penn family lands to pay for frontier defense during the French and Indian War. And the Penn family kept instructing the governor to veto. Franklin felt that this was a great affront to the ability of the legislature to govern. And so he actually meant purchase a little temporary safety very literally. The Penn family was trying to give a lump sum of money in exchange for the General Assembly's acknowledging that it did not have the authority to tax it. [0] https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...

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JohnFen 3y ago

I think what he was saying, in rather poetic language, is that if you give up liberty to gain safety, you won't get either of those things. I don't think he meant "deserves" in the literal sense.

xNeil 3y ago
That's a good way to think about it. Way I saw it was - if you are foolish enough to give up liberty for safety, you don't deserve the safety anyways.

deleted 3y ago

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rightbyte 3y ago

Ye it doesn't make sense. These rule of thumbs need the implied "too much" in them from the get go, or people will use them to silly extremes in the wrong ways. That applies all too well to programmers.

CoastalCoder 3y ago

I've become skeptical, at least at first, of pithy / catchy phrases. Many seem to be well known because they're memorable, but some people assume they're well know because they contain wisdom. E.g., "It's always darkest before dawn." or (the often misconstrued) "The exception proves the rule."

brigandish 3y ago

Morals are about behaving right or wrong because that leads to good things or bad things, so, if you make the wrong choice (here, giving up some liberty for a small amount of safety) then you do indeed deserve what you get - neither - because you chose wrong.