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Nitpick: doublethink is not about language, it's about keeping two contradictory ideas in one's mind and thinking them both true ("war is peace"). This is just

Nitpick: doublethink is not about language, it's about keeping two contradictory ideas in one's mind and thinking them both true ("war is peace"). This is just plain "surveillance is bad when bad people do it, not when good people do".

amiga386 1y ago
Just rephrase as "surveillance is bad when bad people do it and surveillance is good when our guys do it" to get the self-contradictory doublethink. If you want nuance, say that surveillance harms a person's privacy, and mass surveillance harms _everyone's_ privacy. You can then think up scenarios where you deem privacy invasion acceptable - for example, if you have reasonable suspicion a crime is being commited by a specific person, but not to put fear into the hearts of citizens and to spy on and thwart any organised resistance to your grip on power. You might then conclude that you should not perform mass surveillance as it's in keeping with the totalitarian approach.
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
  > "surveillance is bad when bad people do it and surveillance is good when our guys do it" is not contradictory unless you assume everyone shares your premise that surveillance is intrinsically bad which, obviously, they do not.
  - amiga386 1y ago
    It's contradictory because it posits "X is Y and X is not-Y" simultaneously. Also, I did not say surveillance was intrinsicly bad. I said it harms peoples' privacy, which it does, even if you think that harm is justified or beneficial, even if you think privacy itself is harmful and people should have less of it.
    - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
      It is literally not contradictory. "Surveillance-by-bad-people is bad. Surveillance-by-good-people is good." We accept this for almost everything in society, FWIW. "Enslavement-by-bad-people is bad. Enslavement-by-good-people (i.e. of bad people) is good." The moral valence of almost everything is conditional upon who is doing the action and why they're doing it. You need better a better argument than that it's contradictory.
      - amiga386 1y ago
        Did you just claim slavery is good?!?! There are no cases where slavery is good, regardless of who does it or who it's done to. The same goes for genocide, murder, robbery and so on. The ethic of reciprocity asks you to accept that "X harms Y" is the same as "Y harms X", while the totalitarian propaganda satirised in 1984 asks you to think of "them" and "us" and justifies immorality by claimimg it will benefit "us" and/or harm "them". The same theme ran through Animal Farm as well ("some animals are more equal than others"). It's still say it's doublethink to want to apply surveillance to some group of people but not others.
        sorcerer-mar 1y ago
        > There are no cases where slavery is good, regardless of who does it or who it's done to. The same goes for genocide, murder, robbery and so on. Have you heard of prisons? We use a different word for it so as to not introduce the (obviously false) semantic "contradiction". Perhaps if you want to say that forced labor is bad even after conviction, then let's say "kidnapping is bad when done by bad people, kidnapping is good when done by good people [to bad people]". Ta-da, you've invented prison.
      - throwaway1004 1y ago
        Distinction without difference: one would have to actually explain how surveillance is applied and leveraged differently across jurisdictions, allowing us to sub-divide into "good surveillance" and "bad surveillance", two different things. Otherwise, we're talking about the inherit good-or-bad nature of surveillance as a whole and, thus, using the character of those applying it is irrelevant and contradictory. The fact that many contradictory ideas are widely held or, at least, broadcast from the tallest proverbial hills, doesn't change the fact that they are contradictory. One thing all living generations seem to agree on is that politicians talk out of both sides of their mouth.
throwaway1004 1y ago
True, though there is much emphasis placed on the link between language and thought in the book. As the parent comment suggests, there is a lot of tacit differentiation-without-distinction when it comes to issues of privacy, censorship, and governance. I guess double-think is nothing more than an extreme form of cognitive dissonance being accepted by the masses, the interesting part is how this achieve in the book. Again, language & propaganda come first, then information control, followed by swift and brutal violence for dissidents.

amiga386 1y ago

Just rephrase as "surveillance is bad when bad people do it and surveillance is good when our guys do it" to get the self-contradictory doublethink. If you want nuance, say that surveillance harms a person's privacy, and mass surveillance harms _everyone's_ privacy. You can then think up scenarios where you deem privacy invasion acceptable - for example, if you have reasonable suspicion a crime is being commited by a specific person, but not to put fear into the hearts of citizens and to spy on and thwart any organised resistance to your grip on power. You might then conclude that you should not perform mass surveillance as it's in keeping with the totalitarian approach.

sorcerer-mar 1y ago
> "surveillance is bad when bad people do it and surveillance is good when our guys do it" is not contradictory unless you assume everyone shares your premise that surveillance is intrinsically bad which, obviously, they do not.
- amiga386 1y ago
  It's contradictory because it posits "X is Y and X is not-Y" simultaneously. Also, I did not say surveillance was intrinsicly bad. I said it harms peoples' privacy, which it does, even if you think that harm is justified or beneficial, even if you think privacy itself is harmful and people should have less of it.
  - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
    It is literally not contradictory. "Surveillance-by-bad-people is bad. Surveillance-by-good-people is good." We accept this for almost everything in society, FWIW. "Enslavement-by-bad-people is bad. Enslavement-by-good-people (i.e. of bad people) is good." The moral valence of almost everything is conditional upon who is doing the action and why they're doing it. You need better a better argument than that it's contradictory.
    - amiga386 1y ago
      Did you just claim slavery is good?!?! There are no cases where slavery is good, regardless of who does it or who it's done to. The same goes for genocide, murder, robbery and so on. The ethic of reciprocity asks you to accept that "X harms Y" is the same as "Y harms X", while the totalitarian propaganda satirised in 1984 asks you to think of "them" and "us" and justifies immorality by claimimg it will benefit "us" and/or harm "them". The same theme ran through Animal Farm as well ("some animals are more equal than others"). It's still say it's doublethink to want to apply surveillance to some group of people but not others.
      - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
        > There are no cases where slavery is good, regardless of who does it or who it's done to. The same goes for genocide, murder, robbery and so on. Have you heard of prisons? We use a different word for it so as to not introduce the (obviously false) semantic "contradiction". Perhaps if you want to say that forced labor is bad even after conviction, then let's say "kidnapping is bad when done by bad people, kidnapping is good when done by good people [to bad people]". Ta-da, you've invented prison.
    - throwaway1004 1y ago
      Distinction without difference: one would have to actually explain how surveillance is applied and leveraged differently across jurisdictions, allowing us to sub-divide into "good surveillance" and "bad surveillance", two different things. Otherwise, we're talking about the inherit good-or-bad nature of surveillance as a whole and, thus, using the character of those applying it is irrelevant and contradictory. The fact that many contradictory ideas are widely held or, at least, broadcast from the tallest proverbial hills, doesn't change the fact that they are contradictory. One thing all living generations seem to agree on is that politicians talk out of both sides of their mouth.

throwaway1004 1y ago

True, though there is much emphasis placed on the link between language and thought in the book. As the parent comment suggests, there is a lot of tacit differentiation-without-distinction when it comes to issues of privacy, censorship, and governance. I guess double-think is nothing more than an extreme form of cognitive dissonance being accepted by the masses, the interesting part is how this achieve in the book. Again, language & propaganda come first, then information control, followed by swift and brutal violence for dissidents.