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You are entirely correct. We need visceral examples. Even if they don't affect regular people directly they need to be the kind of thing that people instincti
by Amadou 13y ago
You are entirely correct. We need visceral examples. Even if they don't affect regular people directly they need to be the kind of thing that people instinctively recoil from. Emotion and vividness trump logical reasoning when it comes to swaying the masses, so we need vivid examples that make an emotional impact in order to win the public debate. I joke with friends that the NSA will be canceled overnight if we can just prove that they have been killing (american) babies.
The best example I've been able to find is the FBI's attempt to blackmail Martin Luther King into silence (actually suicide) by recording what was apparently a sexual peccadillo. It is a very concrete example of how surveillance can damage the fabric of society.
http://studentactivism.net/2012/01/15/the-fbis-attempt-to-blackmail-martin-luther-king-into-suicide/ http://studentactivism.net/2012/01/15/the-fbis-attempt-to-bl...
More recently, but much less vivid, is the example of the NSA snooping through Bill Clinton's email. If a former president is considered enough of a threat to record his email then something must be wrong.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/pinwale/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/pinwale/
It is also looking like the NSA->DEA->IRS flow of information might be a useful example simply because nobody like the IRS.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/irs-manual-dea-intel_n_3721938.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/irs-manual-dea-inte...
- harryh 13y ago> Emotion and vividness trump logical reasoning when it comes to swaying the masses See, you're going in the wrong direction right of the bat. The people that disagree with you aren't stupid. A lot of them are smarter than you are. They just have different values than you do. Speaking down to them will never work.
- Amadou 13y agoI don't know what to say to that - you provided a very vivid and emotionally-laden photo as what the "other side" was using to justify their position and now you say that the other side is not using vividness and emotion to make their point? What is your point?
- harryh 13y agoThat photo is a reminder if actual real problems, and quite big ones at that. It is not a mere play to emotion over logical reasoning.
- Amadou 13y agoSorry, I've found that arguments based on actual real problems don't resonate. Pointing out that bees kill more people each year in the US than terrorists, that the average american has 150x more chance of being killed by lightning than by a terrorist attack -- these straightforward statistical analyses don't convince because they aren't personal the way that photo is - practically everyone in the country spent weeks looking at versions of that photo. It just isn't the same.
- harryh 13y ago> Sorry, I've found that arguments based on actual real problems don't resonate. Pointing out that bees kill more people each year in the US than terrorists That's because this is a bad argument. Terrorism is about far more than just the number of fatalities.
- Amadou 13y agoYeah, it is about the emotional reaction that causes self-inflicted wounds far greater than the original attack. Which is why I'm talking about finding arguments that are also emotionally compelling.