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There's a Deleuze quote about this that I really like: “It is not the slumber of reason that engenders monsters, but vigilant and insomniac rationality”. What

by duairc 13y ago

There's a Deleuze quote about this that I really like: “It is not the slumber of reason that engenders monsters, but vigilant and insomniac rationality”. What I understand this to mean is that the nature of “rationality” is such that a rational person can rationalize anything. Nobody is saying “EXTERMINATE ALL RATIONAL THOUGHT”, obviously this is just you trolling, but to the extent that anything intelligent can be distilled from your reply, that's my response to it. We can always rationalise anything, especially misdeeds committed by those in positions of power over us. Sometimes it's important to halt that process and stop and just say "this is definitely fucked up", and yes, not to question it any further. It can actually be really hard not to question it sometimes, especially if you trust, or have been conditioned to trust, those in positions of power over you who are abusing you. You want to find reasons to defend their abuse of their power, you don't want it to be what it looks like. And you can find reasons for it, you always can. You will. But abuse is still abuse. So sometimes you have to stop and just say “this is fucked”.

tptacek 13y ago
"There's no possible reason for people to support these programs", the preceding comment says, "and so it is pointless and even harmful for us to talk about possible reasons".
- duairc 13y ago
  > There's no possible reason for people to support these programs and so it is pointless and even harmful for us to talk about possible reasons. I almost agree with this, were it not equivocating two different senses of the phrase “possible reason”. There's no legitimate reason for people to support these programs and so it is pointless and even harmful for us to talk about possible reasons. There are possible reasons to support these programs, but they're not legitimate or sensible or reasonable or good. And that's precisely why it is harmful to talk about possible reasons to support these programs. You make it harder for people to be sure in their own minds that they are as fucked up as they seem, which makes it harder to build resistance to them, which is an urgent necessity. It might sound like what I'm talking about is immaterial, but it's not. To build resistance you need morale, to have morale you need at the very least to have the surety that you're right. To participate in the endless repetition of half-baked, rational-sounding defences of the indefensible is to make it harder for those who want to attack the indefensible to believe that they're not crazy. But we need them to believe that they're not crazy.
  - tedunangst 13y ago
    Who decides what's legitimate and what's not?
    - duairc 13y ago
      The short answer is: you. Obviously there is no objective universal criteria for legitimacy or morality or anything like that. It will come down to what your personal politics are, a fact which will itself be hugely influenced by your material position in the web of power relations that structures your social reality.
      - ateeqs 13y ago
        This is true.
  - vasilipupkin 13y ago
    So I agree with the article and I agree that NSA has gone too far. But your comment feels like you have bought a jump to conclusions mat from "office space". If, for example, during the process of obtaining clearance, you were to receive certain information that you don't have now, perhaps that would change your opinion of legitimacy of these programs from a binary 0 or 1 to a more nuanced probability distribution
    - duairc 13y ago
      This reminds me a bit of Russell's teapot[1]. Basically, you're saying, imagine if there existed “certain information”, which nobody can tell me about, but if they could, it would change my beliefs? Okay. Given what I do know, I think the chances of these programs being legitimate are about the same as the chances that there is “between the Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit”. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
      - dreamfactory 13y ago
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  How are "It could just be a challenge for them." or "They could just be 'blindly' patriotic" legitimate reasons? Of course everything has a reason, we live in a causal universe. Your comment implies someone claimed it's magic, and I for one haven't heard that yet. So you may call that rational or intelligent, but that doesn't make it so. And then there's > "It's entirely possible that there are some really horrific classified things that were stopped via similar spying activities, so intercepting some Gmail messages seems like a much less evil alternative." "some Gmail messages"? How is this not belittling it? How is that, pardon my french, not a fucking joke to say at this stage to this audience? And how is that list complete? Why does "sustaining power over domestic and foreign democratic interests" not show up in it? It's not reasoning to just throw out some things, two thirds of it being silly [in the context of legitimate reasons, which is what the post started out claiming to enumerate] and stopping with one nice thing that could be possible, while ignoring not so nice things that could also be possible. It's rationalization.
md224 13y ago
> Sometimes it's important to halt that process and stop and just say "this is definitely fucked up", and yes, not to question it any further. In my opinion, there are few things more tragic than someone carrying out actions with serious consequences on behalf of a belief that they refuse to question. I believe I understand your pragmatic concerns. It is hard to act passionately while simultaneously entertaining doubts about your underlying beliefs. Obviously one does not need to set a timer and rigorously question their beliefs every five minutes. However, it is important that one welcomes evidence to the contrary and is willing to engage with that evidence. To do otherwise is to risk becoming a slave to dogma.
- duairc 13y ago
  In a way I actually agree with nearly everything you say, I just think you haven't taken what you say to its logical conclusion. The thing you seem to be missing is that there are no “neutral” beliefs. There's no “middle” in terms of ideology. Doing “nothing” is de facto maintaining the status quo, and acting to maintain the status quo is a positive action just as much as acting to abolish it is. The belief that the status quo should be maintained is a positive belief just as the belief that it should be abolished it is. Right? The thing is, by the very nature of ideology, those who wish to maintain the status quo rarely have their beliefs subjected to the same level of scrutiny as those who to abolish it. Therefore it is very easy for those who wish to maintain the status quo to believe that their beliefs and actions are sane, rational, reasonable, etc., because everything seems to reinforce that, while those who wish to abolish it are often portrayed as insane, irrational, “extremist”, etc., and as someone who does wish to abolish the status quo, it's very hard not to internalise some of that. Being constantly bombarded with that, having all of your beliefs constantly scrutinised from every angle inevitably manifests itself as incapacitating self-doubt that's very difficult to overcome sometimes. Sometimes the only way to cope with this is to temporarily suspend this constant questioning of everything you believe in. It is far more common that people who wish to maintain the status quo are slaves to dogma than that people who wish to abolish it are. Often, the latter do not have a choice about whether or not their beliefs are rigourously questioned every five minutes. But the former can comfortably go their whole lives without ever having their beliefs rigourously questioned by anybody. Edit: I think an NSA agent participating in these programs out of a belief that they are “serving their country” and who refuses to question what “serving their country” actually means is a slave to dogma. I do not think that somebody who believes that their communications should not be monitored or recorded without their consent and who refuses to question that belief is a slave to dogma.
ateeqs 13y ago
I thought you were trolling, and he was just responding to you?

by duairc 13y ago

tptacek 13y ago

"There's no possible reason for people to support these programs", the preceding comment says, "and so it is pointless and even harmful for us to talk about possible reasons".

duairc 13y ago
> There's no possible reason for people to support these programs and so it is pointless and even harmful for us to talk about possible reasons. I almost agree with this, were it not equivocating two different senses of the phrase “possible reason”. There's no legitimate reason for people to support these programs and so it is pointless and even harmful for us to talk about possible reasons. There are possible reasons to support these programs, but they're not legitimate or sensible or reasonable or good. And that's precisely why it is harmful to talk about possible reasons to support these programs. You make it harder for people to be sure in their own minds that they are as fucked up as they seem, which makes it harder to build resistance to them, which is an urgent necessity. It might sound like what I'm talking about is immaterial, but it's not. To build resistance you need morale, to have morale you need at the very least to have the surety that you're right. To participate in the endless repetition of half-baked, rational-sounding defences of the indefensible is to make it harder for those who want to attack the indefensible to believe that they're not crazy. But we need them to believe that they're not crazy.
- tedunangst 13y ago
  Who decides what's legitimate and what's not?
  - duairc 13y ago
    The short answer is: you. Obviously there is no objective universal criteria for legitimacy or morality or anything like that. It will come down to what your personal politics are, a fact which will itself be hugely influenced by your material position in the web of power relations that structures your social reality.
    - ateeqs 13y ago
      This is true.
- vasilipupkin 13y ago
  So I agree with the article and I agree that NSA has gone too far. But your comment feels like you have bought a jump to conclusions mat from "office space". If, for example, during the process of obtaining clearance, you were to receive certain information that you don't have now, perhaps that would change your opinion of legitimacy of these programs from a binary 0 or 1 to a more nuanced probability distribution
  - duairc 13y ago
    This reminds me a bit of Russell's teapot[1]. Basically, you're saying, imagine if there existed “certain information”, which nobody can tell me about, but if they could, it would change my beliefs? Okay. Given what I do know, I think the chances of these programs being legitimate are about the same as the chances that there is “between the Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit”. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
    - dreamfactory 13y ago
PavlovsCat 13y ago
How are "It could just be a challenge for them." or "They could just be 'blindly' patriotic" legitimate reasons? Of course everything has a reason, we live in a causal universe. Your comment implies someone claimed it's magic, and I for one haven't heard that yet. So you may call that rational or intelligent, but that doesn't make it so. And then there's > "It's entirely possible that there are some really horrific classified things that were stopped via similar spying activities, so intercepting some Gmail messages seems like a much less evil alternative." "some Gmail messages"? How is this not belittling it? How is that, pardon my french, not a fucking joke to say at this stage to this audience? And how is that list complete? Why does "sustaining power over domestic and foreign democratic interests" not show up in it? It's not reasoning to just throw out some things, two thirds of it being silly [in the context of legitimate reasons, which is what the post started out claiming to enumerate] and stopping with one nice thing that could be possible, while ignoring not so nice things that could also be possible. It's rationalization.

md224 13y ago

> Sometimes it's important to halt that process and stop and just say "this is definitely fucked up", and yes, not to question it any further. In my opinion, there are few things more tragic than someone carrying out actions with serious consequences on behalf of a belief that they refuse to question. I believe I understand your pragmatic concerns. It is hard to act passionately while simultaneously entertaining doubts about your underlying beliefs. Obviously one does not need to set a timer and rigorously question their beliefs every five minutes. However, it is important that one welcomes evidence to the contrary and is willing to engage with that evidence. To do otherwise is to risk becoming a slave to dogma.

duairc 13y ago
In a way I actually agree with nearly everything you say, I just think you haven't taken what you say to its logical conclusion. The thing you seem to be missing is that there are no “neutral” beliefs. There's no “middle” in terms of ideology. Doing “nothing” is de facto maintaining the status quo, and acting to maintain the status quo is a positive action just as much as acting to abolish it is. The belief that the status quo should be maintained is a positive belief just as the belief that it should be abolished it is. Right? The thing is, by the very nature of ideology, those who wish to maintain the status quo rarely have their beliefs subjected to the same level of scrutiny as those who to abolish it. Therefore it is very easy for those who wish to maintain the status quo to believe that their beliefs and actions are sane, rational, reasonable, etc., because everything seems to reinforce that, while those who wish to abolish it are often portrayed as insane, irrational, “extremist”, etc., and as someone who does wish to abolish the status quo, it's very hard not to internalise some of that. Being constantly bombarded with that, having all of your beliefs constantly scrutinised from every angle inevitably manifests itself as incapacitating self-doubt that's very difficult to overcome sometimes. Sometimes the only way to cope with this is to temporarily suspend this constant questioning of everything you believe in. It is far more common that people who wish to maintain the status quo are slaves to dogma than that people who wish to abolish it are. Often, the latter do not have a choice about whether or not their beliefs are rigourously questioned every five minutes. But the former can comfortably go their whole lives without ever having their beliefs rigourously questioned by anybody. Edit: I think an NSA agent participating in these programs out of a belief that they are “serving their country” and who refuses to question what “serving their country” actually means is a slave to dogma. I do not think that somebody who believes that their communications should not be monitored or recorded without their consent and who refuses to question that belief is a slave to dogma.

ateeqs 13y ago

I thought you were trolling, and he was just responding to you?