4 ms·
I made no specific claim about "crypto" one way or the other. My point is that to decide if some activity is legal, or moral, etc., you have to look at what is
by staunton 2y ago
I made no specific claim about "crypto" one way or the other. My point is that to decide if some activity is legal, or moral, etc., you have to look at what is actually done.
It's not enough to look at whether the day-to-day work "feels like a normal job", or "looks like a normal job" from the outside. You can have a highly respectable job while interacting with people who all look like stereotypical movie mobsters (e.g. prison social worker). You can also sit in a respectable office all day wearing a nice suit while committing genocide.
- Terr_ 2y ago> "He was just a little villain. An old-fashioned craftsman, making crimes one-off. The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present–they are real." -- Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold
- ElFitz 2y agoTotally unrelated. But first Discworld, now this? I need your book recommendations, or reading list :)
- wiredfool 2y agoI can definitely recommend the Vorkosigan series by Bujold. That quote is from the first one, and echoes here and there throughout.
- ElFitz 2y agoThank you!
- Terr_ 2y agoPratchett and Bujold are pretty much my top-two, which extends the the degree to which I feel compelled to share quotes. Both are rather character-oriented and often I find things (jokes, references, turns of phrase) on a re-read that I didn't catch the first time. My main caution is that I wouldn't start with Pratchett's earliest works--there are already bunch of suggested reading-order guides out there. I spent a decade thinking Pratchett was overrated because I started with the wrong book. (IIRC The Colour of Magic seemed just too much of a parade of absurd situations for their own sake.) I like the City Watch books (starting in Guards! Guards!) and Small Gods is a decent stand-alone. For Bujold, the Vorkosigan series is the flagship, where I'd put the Curse of Chalion (fantasy) as a second.
- ElFitz 2y agoThanks!