6 ms·

This is about about as far as I can remember society being away from 1984. The NSA bulk surveillance is bad (doubleplus bad?), but remember the most pernicious

by 3am 13y ago

This is about about as far as I can remember society being away from 1984. The NSA bulk surveillance is bad (doubleplus bad?), but remember the most pernicious influence in the actual book wasn't the surveillance, but the criminalization of actual ideas and corrupting the language in order to accomplish that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak).. in particular whiteblack (not to minimize your own nom de plume).

PythonicAlpha 13y ago
Don't you think, that we already have criminalization of thoughts and corruption of language? No? Then think again. Doubleplus think.
- MartinCron 13y ago
  I'm trying to doubleplusthink on this one, but I really can't see any evidence of criminalization of thoughts. I have some pretty deplorable thoughts myself, and I seem to be getting away with it.
  - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
    You should just watch with an open mind what is going on in the world. There might be no mass-thought-reader yet, so you get through with your deplorable thoughts, but just take as a small example the era of McCarthy -- those that openly expressed possible communistic thoughts where persecuted. Or (to name a more current example) just say at the NY airport that the security measures are bullshit! ... just as doublethought-enhancer.
    - MartinCron 13y ago
      The McCarthy era was both a long time ago and is almost universally regarded as a political and ideological failure. Are you saying that our society is infested with crypto-McCarthyists?
      - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
        I don't answer to posts that are not earnest. (I could answer to the first sentence alone, but it does not make sense to me to answer in the context of the second)
  - Jare 13y ago
    > I have some pretty deplorable thoughts myself, and I seem to be getting away with it Only because you don't have 24/7 surveillance on you. Yet.
  - mhurron 13y ago
    http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/01/07/20-years-for-loli-manga-%E2%80%9Cvictims-don%E2%80%99t-have-to-exist%E2%80%9D/ http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/01/07/20-years-for-loli-m... "A federal appeals panel has upheld the 20 year sentence of a lolicon found to have received illustrations of underage sex by email, saying that “it is not a required that the minor depicted actually exists”, and so ruling art not to be universally protected free speech."
    - MartinCron 13y ago
      I was wondering if someone would bring that up. The prohibition of virtual child pornography is probably the closest thing to thought crime that we have. I think that using a particularly narrow example of restricted permissible expression isn't proof that society is getting closer to the totalitarian nightmare of 1984.
      - mhurron 13y ago
        Art, in part, put a guy in jail for 20 years, that is double the average of the crime of actual rape. I think that's going in a direction that we shouldn't go.
        MartinCron 13y ago
        I agree that it's a direction we shouldn't go, but I don't see it as a new thing or a thing that's getting progressively worse.
  - gumby 13y ago
    conviction for conspiracy to commit when no actually commission happened is an example (consider the FBI convicting someone of a terrorist plot when all other participants are FBI agents). Or, frankly, when a punishment for a crime is increased by its intent (e.g. race related or anti-homosexual) -- it's not only the crime that is punished but the thought behind it as well.
    - MartinCron 13y ago
      Those FBI stings are a pretty good example, though I would say that it's more textbook entrapment than thoughtcrime. It seems that they are selecting more for the ability to be manipulated over their ideological positions. As far as hate-crime goes, the notion behind increased punishment there is that the victims include an entire terrorized community, not just the direct victim. If I throw some trash on some guy's lawn, there's one victim (the guy). If I burn a cross on some guy's lawn, there are multiple victims (the other black families in the neighborhood). It's an important distinction.
      - gumby 13y ago
        Read up on the FBI "terrorism" plots most of them are beyond traditional entrapment and into enticement. For hate crime: yes, you've explained the justification for the designation. But it is thoughtcrime. You've merely said that it's legitimate.
dil8 13y ago
You just have to listen to a politician speak for a few minutes to see how language has been corrupted...
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  How has language been corrupted? They say exactly what they mean. They might lead you to believe they are saying something different, but is that language's fault, or is that because they are silver tongues?
  - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
    No, they change the meaning of language. Language is never living on an island. It lives with the users and the uses of it. By misusing the language, bending and caricaturing it, they corrupt it. Do you not realize it?
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      That's an artful phrasing, but an implication that your point 'is obvious' as the cornerstone of your argument is unconvincing. I postulate that artful, metaphorical, or misleading uses of language is both neither misuse nor bending it, and I would like a clearer explanation of what a corrupted language looks like, aside from "being corrupt".
      - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
        I give you one example: Because torture is forbidden, the US government just renamed the things they did to the prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo, just not naming it torture. Or because if the people in Guantanamo where soldiers they would have special rights and the other way around, if they where not, they should get a normal trial. So they just called them other names just to disguise that what they do is not right! That is corrupting the language. And I even see it in Germany. Because the basic rights (like free speech) are defined in our constitution and "security" is not among them, our former secretary of the interior said this would be a "super basic right" -- thus also putting security above all basic rights ... and giving our rights in the hands of the NSA. By this way, they corrupt our language and our thinking. Defining everything that way, how they pleasure and how they can betray us!
grey-area 13y ago
Some examples of Orwellian terms in common use: Enemy combatants, Collateral damage, Leader of the free world, National security, War for peace, Premptive strikes, Enhanced interrogation Some Orwellian concepts: War on abstract nouns (e.g on terror), Pervasive surveillance, Pervasive propaganda, Casual use of torture, Widespread hysteria and hatred over minor threats, Former hated enemies now allies and vice versa, Stark divides between the haves and have nots, A distant and poorly understood enemy necessitates perpetual conflict and sacrifice It's a really interesting book and I disagree that we are any farther on in these respects than we were in orwell's time. His book is of course a fantasy intended to illustrate our failings by exaggerating them, not a strict prediction of the future, but it still has a lot to teach us.
- MartinCron 13y ago
  It has been a long time since I last read 1984, but I don't see the war on abstract nouns (poverty, drugs, terror) as particularly Orwellian.
  - grey-area 13y ago
    I was thinking of things like sexcrime or thoughtcrime, though I don't think it is called a war in 1984. In a broader sense though, this sort of War on x is very Orwellian I think because it's directing the public to scapegoat segments of the population (drug users, muslims as potential terrorists) and blame them for their ills, and see themselves as perpetually at war with members of their own society, in the same way that in 1984 those guilty of vague, abstract crimes became the enemy and worthy of hate, simply by virtue of a government pronouncement. War has become normalised and part of everyday life, with the implication that as we are at war special rules apply and the enemy, as designated by the government, deserves no mercy because we are engaged in an existential struggle.
bernardom 13y ago
> The NSA bulk surveillance is bad (doubleplus bad?) Doubleplus ungood, actually.

by 3am 13y ago

PythonicAlpha 13y ago

Don't you think, that we already have criminalization of thoughts and corruption of language? No? Then think again. Doubleplus think.

MartinCron 13y ago
I'm trying to doubleplusthink on this one, but I really can't see any evidence of criminalization of thoughts. I have some pretty deplorable thoughts myself, and I seem to be getting away with it.
- PythonicAlpha 13y ago
  You should just watch with an open mind what is going on in the world. There might be no mass-thought-reader yet, so you get through with your deplorable thoughts, but just take as a small example the era of McCarthy -- those that openly expressed possible communistic thoughts where persecuted. Or (to name a more current example) just say at the NY airport that the security measures are bullshit! ... just as doublethought-enhancer.
  - MartinCron 13y ago
    The McCarthy era was both a long time ago and is almost universally regarded as a political and ideological failure. Are you saying that our society is infested with crypto-McCarthyists?
    - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
      I don't answer to posts that are not earnest. (I could answer to the first sentence alone, but it does not make sense to me to answer in the context of the second)
- Jare 13y ago
  > I have some pretty deplorable thoughts myself, and I seem to be getting away with it Only because you don't have 24/7 surveillance on you. Yet.
- mhurron 13y ago
  http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/01/07/20-years-for-loli-manga-%E2%80%9Cvictims-don%E2%80%99t-have-to-exist%E2%80%9D/ http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/01/07/20-years-for-loli-m... "A federal appeals panel has upheld the 20 year sentence of a lolicon found to have received illustrations of underage sex by email, saying that “it is not a required that the minor depicted actually exists”, and so ruling art not to be universally protected free speech."
  - MartinCron 13y ago
    I was wondering if someone would bring that up. The prohibition of virtual child pornography is probably the closest thing to thought crime that we have. I think that using a particularly narrow example of restricted permissible expression isn't proof that society is getting closer to the totalitarian nightmare of 1984.
    - mhurron 13y ago
      Art, in part, put a guy in jail for 20 years, that is double the average of the crime of actual rape. I think that's going in a direction that we shouldn't go.
      - MartinCron 13y ago
        I agree that it's a direction we shouldn't go, but I don't see it as a new thing or a thing that's getting progressively worse.
- gumby 13y ago
  conviction for conspiracy to commit when no actually commission happened is an example (consider the FBI convicting someone of a terrorist plot when all other participants are FBI agents). Or, frankly, when a punishment for a crime is increased by its intent (e.g. race related or anti-homosexual) -- it's not only the crime that is punished but the thought behind it as well.
  - MartinCron 13y ago
    Those FBI stings are a pretty good example, though I would say that it's more textbook entrapment than thoughtcrime. It seems that they are selecting more for the ability to be manipulated over their ideological positions. As far as hate-crime goes, the notion behind increased punishment there is that the victims include an entire terrorized community, not just the direct victim. If I throw some trash on some guy's lawn, there's one victim (the guy). If I burn a cross on some guy's lawn, there are multiple victims (the other black families in the neighborhood). It's an important distinction.
    - gumby 13y ago
      Read up on the FBI "terrorism" plots most of them are beyond traditional entrapment and into enticement. For hate crime: yes, you've explained the justification for the designation. But it is thoughtcrime. You've merely said that it's legitimate.

dil8 13y ago

You just have to listen to a politician speak for a few minutes to see how language has been corrupted...

sliverstorm 13y ago
How has language been corrupted? They say exactly what they mean. They might lead you to believe they are saying something different, but is that language's fault, or is that because they are silver tongues?
- PythonicAlpha 13y ago
  No, they change the meaning of language. Language is never living on an island. It lives with the users and the uses of it. By misusing the language, bending and caricaturing it, they corrupt it. Do you not realize it?
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    That's an artful phrasing, but an implication that your point 'is obvious' as the cornerstone of your argument is unconvincing. I postulate that artful, metaphorical, or misleading uses of language is both neither misuse nor bending it, and I would like a clearer explanation of what a corrupted language looks like, aside from "being corrupt".
    - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
      I give you one example: Because torture is forbidden, the US government just renamed the things they did to the prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo, just not naming it torture. Or because if the people in Guantanamo where soldiers they would have special rights and the other way around, if they where not, they should get a normal trial. So they just called them other names just to disguise that what they do is not right! That is corrupting the language. And I even see it in Germany. Because the basic rights (like free speech) are defined in our constitution and "security" is not among them, our former secretary of the interior said this would be a "super basic right" -- thus also putting security above all basic rights ... and giving our rights in the hands of the NSA. By this way, they corrupt our language and our thinking. Defining everything that way, how they pleasure and how they can betray us!

grey-area 13y ago

Some examples of Orwellian terms in common use: Enemy combatants, Collateral damage, Leader of the free world, National security, War for peace, Premptive strikes, Enhanced interrogation Some Orwellian concepts: War on abstract nouns (e.g on terror), Pervasive surveillance, Pervasive propaganda, Casual use of torture, Widespread hysteria and hatred over minor threats, Former hated enemies now allies and vice versa, Stark divides between the haves and have nots, A distant and poorly understood enemy necessitates perpetual conflict and sacrifice It's a really interesting book and I disagree that we are any farther on in these respects than we were in orwell's time. His book is of course a fantasy intended to illustrate our failings by exaggerating them, not a strict prediction of the future, but it still has a lot to teach us.

MartinCron 13y ago
It has been a long time since I last read 1984, but I don't see the war on abstract nouns (poverty, drugs, terror) as particularly Orwellian.
- grey-area 13y ago
  I was thinking of things like sexcrime or thoughtcrime, though I don't think it is called a war in 1984. In a broader sense though, this sort of War on x is very Orwellian I think because it's directing the public to scapegoat segments of the population (drug users, muslims as potential terrorists) and blame them for their ills, and see themselves as perpetually at war with members of their own society, in the same way that in 1984 those guilty of vague, abstract crimes became the enemy and worthy of hate, simply by virtue of a government pronouncement. War has become normalised and part of everyday life, with the implication that as we are at war special rules apply and the enemy, as designated by the government, deserves no mercy because we are engaged in an existential struggle.

bernardom 13y ago

> The NSA bulk surveillance is bad (doubleplus bad?) Doubleplus ungood, actually.