Re:CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans follow...
by darkerside on Wednesday May 04, 2022 @07:34AM
(#31259085)
Intentions and outcomes can certainly be different, but I think intentions provide a higher floor for the downside risk.
Re:CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans follow...
by ByteJockey on Saturday May 07, 2022 @04:43AM
(#31293050)
> but I think intentions provide a higher floor for the downside risk.
The quote at the end was supposed to convey the opposite message.
Re:CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans follow...
by darkerside on Saturday May 07, 2022 @11:59AM
(#31295665)
I think the risk C.S. describes there is the endless nature of the torment, not the severity. Stung by gadflies, not dismembered by a nemesis.
I don't want to get involved with what the CDC is doing here (because they're probably not doing anything too nefarious), but I would like to pull this point out. The intentions of an institution (or at least surface level justifications) are kind of unrelated to the point. What an institution thinks is best for someone and what that individual thinks is best for themselves are often quite different.
I'm reminded of the old CS Lewis quote here:
> Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.