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The thread topic is "FBI Surveilling U.S. With Drones".

by ferdo 13y ago

scott_s 13y ago
That does not answer my question. Yes, I can quite easily come up with many ways in which that quote is relevant to the topic. But what were your intentions? The problem with dropping a quote without context is that people end up countering points they think the person was trying to make. The person you responded to said "Hey, here's a bunch of good uses of drones that we currently can't do." The implication of dropping your quote there is, "I don't want you to do those things." Or maybe you did not mean to imply those things. Which is rather my point that without context, there's not much value in dropping a quote. I find quotes are great to illustrate or support discussion. But they are not discussion itself.
- ferdo 13y ago
  > But what were your intentions? I fail to see why my intentions matter one whit in a discussion about increased surveillance by the government.
  - scott_s 13y ago
    I was asking what your intended contribution to the conversation was. What point were you trying to make?
    - ferdo 13y ago
      The point was made in my first post: "the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics or sociopaths, but by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal.""
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  People who use your products or subsystems for evil are NOT going to tell you about it. Yes, you can do great stuff with drones. But to bring that up in the context of BAD stuff possibly being done with them, can seem naive and (inadvertently or not) help covering for bad stuff. Let's say there is a topic about how a flaw in the SSL implementation of browser X can be used to take over the machine of a user by sending them to a specific link; and someone says "yeah but without that bug SSL is quite useful actually". It's at least kinda missing the point, and in a way that's in the playbook of PR firms to boot. To start out with "I am amazed at the disconnect" and the continue trying to create a disconnect is kinda rich, if you think about it.

The thread topic is "FBI Surveilling U.S. With Drones".

by ferdo 13y ago

The thread topic is "FBI Surveilling U.S. With Drones".

That does not answer my question. Yes, I can quite easily come up with many ways in which that quote is relevant to the topic. But what were your intentions? The problem with dropping a quote without context is that people end up countering points they think the person was trying to make. The person you responded to said "Hey, here's a bunch of good uses of drones that we currently can't do." The implication of dropping your quote there is, "I don't want you to do those things." Or maybe you did not mean to imply those things. Which is rather my point that without context, there's not much value in dropping a quote. I find quotes are great to illustrate or support discussion. But they are not discussion itself.

ferdo 13y ago
> But what were your intentions? I fail to see why my intentions matter one whit in a discussion about increased surveillance by the government.
- scott_s 13y ago
  I was asking what your intended contribution to the conversation was. What point were you trying to make?
  - ferdo 13y ago
    The point was made in my first post: "the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics or sociopaths, but by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal.""
PavlovsCat 13y ago
People who use your products or subsystems for evil are NOT going to tell you about it. Yes, you can do great stuff with drones. But to bring that up in the context of BAD stuff possibly being done with them, can seem naive and (inadvertently or not) help covering for bad stuff. Let's say there is a topic about how a flaw in the SSL implementation of browser X can be used to take over the machine of a user by sending them to a specific link; and someone says "yeah but without that bug SSL is quite useful actually". It's at least kinda missing the point, and in a way that's in the playbook of PR firms to boot. To start out with "I am amazed at the disconnect" and the continue trying to create a disconnect is kinda rich, if you think about it.