This Godly oversight was no problem (everything fit together pretty well with no one to question theology) until early adolescence, whereupon every time I reached for my joystick I knew my soul would burn in hell forever. I could hardly wait to confess my sins (to wipe my soul clean so, were I to die, I would not be cast into hell forever) and repeat the cycle.
This kept up until college when, in a fit of despair, I abandoned religion and gave up my soul (and religion with it) [thus committing one of the Seven Deadly Sins, despair. - RC theology may be ridiculous when viewed from outside but it's internal logic is very consistent!]
No fun, but given there was no outside influence that had ever led me to question the authority of the Roman Catholic religion, this was for the better.
I'm now at peace, but regret not earlier meeting someone who seriously questioned religion. My moral sense was always strong and stems from good parenting. I would likely be much farther along intellectually and emotionally without the religion.
Today God is still in the sky but he's not destructive or oppressive and pretty much keeps to himself. My childhood beliefs are now chapters in a child's storybook.
If the US is really about "freedom" why do you try to educate your kids to be on the receiving end of an authoritarian dictatorship?
That’s the American way.
What's the alternative way, and why are kids free-er in it?
How do kids vary in wealth and how does this affect their freedom? (For current kids? For American kids at different times?)
Only a radical, alt-right, white supremacist-fascist would consider our lawful, peace-keeping panopticon to be "authoritarian" - won't you please think of The Children?
What are you so afraid of? What are you hiding?
/s
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Does he believe current generations do?
> They will do whatever they want once they are confident that nobody will know.
To me, this is just how people tend to behave, no matter their age.
Do you?
1. Lost and found stations at events. People find stuff, people nearby don't claim it and often don't care if it's taken, but the finder still makes the effort to give it to lost and found or staff. Everytime I've done this, there've been a lot of unclaimed items. Each of those is evidence of, if not altruism, at least morality.
2. The vast majority of people don't shoplift, even at stores that put goods out front with no employees watching.
3. Charities, soup kitchens, anonymous donors.
We should be careful to not mistake cynicism as wisdom.
One of my favourite studies is just random virtue testing of strangers. Will they return lost property? It's easy, cheap, and frequently replicated.
The researchers "lose" a bunch of fairly typical wallets in discreet-but-obvious places, with some cash inside. The people who find the wallet have the opportunity to take the cash in the wallet, or just the whole wallet.
In most countries, the majority of wallets are returned to their owners, with the cash intact. In countries like Sweden or Japan, you can reasonably expect your wallet to be returned - rates are over 80%.
Most people are good. Or at least, they don't want to be a thief. Given the opportunity to get away with stealing a small amount of money, most people opt to go out of their way, even if it's just a few minutes of their time, to help the person get their wallet back.
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/20/734141432/what-dropping-17-00...
Seeking justice by apportioning more power to those with the incentive to abuse it does not result in a more just system.
Same with the idea of persistent surveillance -- it's only as good/useful as those who control the surveillance. In the case of authorities who are willing to abuse their power, surveillance does not make you more safe with these authorities, it just means that there is surveillance data they control, and it works for them, not not for you unless they decide to allow that.
Recordings get deleted "accidentally" all the time, and for most regulated businesses, at worst it's a small fine and some forms and mandatory training, none of which would make me feel particularly better if the "accidentally deleted" video was the only proof of the authority figures beating me to a pulp.
It's the same reason government backdoors can never be a tool "for the good guys"; once it's there, anyone able to pass a correct secret to the backdoor gets in, regardless of their intent or right to be.
Surveillance doesn't make us safer by default; it is a tool like any other, and it has it's legitimate uses and illegitimate uses. I don't feel safer if a stranger runs at me in an alley wielding a claw hammer just because I know that claw hammers are usually for construction work; I'm very much so aware that while a nail might survive the impact, my flesh and bone will not fare as well. Same with any surveillance -- I do not see how it's making _me_ safer, it's instead making someone else's job easier to monitor me, and I have no idea who that might be or why they're monitoring me.
This isn't to say it's always morally imperative wrong to have some sort of surveillance; I think a closed circuit recording system in a store is maybe frustrating, but I also don't have to go into that particular store I suppose. This does become a problem though once surveillance is everywhere, and even worse, when it's non-secured surveillance tech, so anyone might get at it.
In the example I mentioned where the only footage of violence against me by persons is controlled by the persons themselves, what does it matter if it gets sent to S3 with immutability for 10 years? I still can't get that data if they don't want me to, in some countries the legal discovery process might _say_ all parties in a legal dispute must comply with the discovery process, but if one of the parties states they simply don't have the data, the courts can't do much of anything in such cases.
(The following statement is not to decry encryption, but more just to show that "deletion" is just an example there are many ways to "lose" such surveillance)
What if instead of deleting, we said "could not accesses, whoopsiekittens"? Let's say they do send the data to a centralized storage center, and naturally, they're encrypting all the data they send as per best practices? What exactly would I or anyone in my situation be able to do if the company "lost" the encryption key? Or they retrieve the data, muck a bit with the file to make it unreadable, and then just say "welp, guess just bad luck here"?
Unless it's _all open and all accessible_, it just means that those with the surveillance data have the power to use it however they want. Their excuses may be disprovable over time, but how long do you think most reasonable people would believe me if I tried to convince them that every excuse created was an intentional deception? How could I even prove it in most cases?
I am not advocating for non-stop surveillance and full open access to that surveillance to be clear; I have not thought what a system like that would look like and I am not able to say how it could work "for everyone", nor do I think it really could.
That's not the point, the point is instead that no matter how it's stored, unless everyone has equal access to it, it's still is surveillance that only those who control the surveillance data can use, regardless of what they decide to use it for. Body Cams for police in the US are a perfect example of this -- theoretically, they're for the public to use and for accountability with police, but since the police control the body cam footage and even get to decide that they don't _need_ the body cams at times, it's effectively surveillance that works for them when they want it to, and can be hidden when it works against them.
That is why you (and all the kids) wear a 360 degree camera connected to a mobile network that is backing up to a remote site you control.
Just like you want your own dashcam in the car to have the option to show your side in the event of a collision.
Or you start recording on your phone once you get pulled over by the cops.
None of what you mentioned really changes anything about my statement -- if the court date for my arrest where I was brutally beaten by officers for no reason is 30 days out, it doesn't matter that I got a video on my iPhone and uploaded it to whatever social media -- I'm still in jail, I still got the crap beat out of me, it's unclear if the video will even be accepted as evidence, the police video footage will also be considered as will their testimony.
Again, it's not about the actual video files, its about the concept of what surveillance can do, who actually is empowered by it, and who is surveilling who; the fact that there are continued policy brutality/abuse incidents despite the ever-present surveillance from all things is pretty supportive of what I'm intending to convey; they are surveilled for sure, but because they have the power/are protected by those who control the surveillance, they act with impunity because they _know that the surveillance works for them_; that is the point, not that you _can_ surveil someone if you want.
The purpose of a fine is to put a price on something. Parking on the school lawn is a nuisance, so to do it you have to pay $65. For most people that isn't worth it, but if Richie Rich wants to park on the lawn every day, that's great! Now society has more than $20,000/year to spend on homeless shelters or cancer research or whatever you like.
It works as long as the fine is at least as much as is necessary to compensate society for the nuisance. And if it isn't, you've set the amount of the fine wrong.
But the amount of the fine is the same for everyone because the amount of the nuisance is the same for everyone. You don't get a discount if you have less money because you only get to do it if you're willing to more than compensate society for the cost you're imposing.
The problem with surveillance is entirely different: It's not that powerful people don't suffer the same penalty as everyone else, it's that they excuse themselves from that penalty because the recording is "lost" whenever it's to their advantage. And a technology which is only used by the powerful to oppress is to be destroyed.
The law should be consistent for all persons; any punishments should be consistent and equal for the same crimes, while being reasonable punishment. If a rich kid can continue doing something destructive that we all agree is bad, the fact that they pay us $65 each time they do it is not relevant, and it more or less proves my original point; the law was made to prevent the senseless destruction, and just because someone is rich they can do what they want.
One of the big problems of this is that it treats criminal acts as a revenue stream; the point of the law isn't to fill the coffers, it's to keep everyone from just doing whatever they want without consideration for the consequences of their actions. An eye for an eye is great in theory, but is anyone really better off with two half-blind persons? Not to speak of recidivism; in your example, the intended behavior is we don't want people parking anywhere except designated parking spaces; if the penalty is just a fine, then really all it does is commoditize the activity the law is meaning to address. "You can't do this, unless you pay of course"
It's a similar idea to bail and to justice; consider two persons caught with coke, one who is wealthy and one who is not. We have the laws on cocaine because supposedly it's so vile towards society that it must be controlled (this is debatable, but not relevant). But, if someone can afford bail and the fines and walk free within a few hours and another will likely sit in jail for long time and be deprived of their freedom, the punishments aren't really the same in practice, even though on paper they are the same.
These are edge-cases yes, but they're edge-cases that are incredibly common and very impactful and harmful if you can't afford them. Having wealth negatively influences the justice system, and not in a way that is a betterment for society; society might get a booster of 20k as you proposed, but now the school or anyone who Richie Rich wants to bother by parking their car anywhere has no recourse against the action; Richie Rich already "paid" their debt to society quite literally with money, while still doing the stuff that society specifically said "hey stop that"; yes, in real life Richie Rich _might_ get enough instances where someone takes action or maybe the school will get a restraining order, but again, why should they have to? If the laws were agreed upon to generally be best for society, why is it alright to "just pay a fine" and allow the person to continue doing whatever they want? What about the law which is meant to prevent this action? Just because someone has money they should be allowed to violate it?
> It's not that powerful people don't suffer the same penalty as everyone else, it's that they excuse themselves from that penalty because the recording is "lost" whenever it's to their advantage.
I'm not sure how your two sentences can both ring true for you frankly speaking. The penalty of surveillance as I described it is that most people have 0 control over who records what about their lives, who is recording and where and when, etc. And worse, the actors implementing the surveillance are trying to make it _the law that they must have access_, even though there is 0 reason to believe that it will be used for the good of society based on the clearly recorded and documented abuses of this surveillance power by those in authority. If surveillance that you do not control can only harm you, not help you, and if those in power control the surveillance, then no, they do not have the same penalty; they are the adjudicators as to who the surveillance will help because they control it; if they don't want a penalty due to the surveillance of themselves, then there isn't a penalty -- how could there be? Credibility in technical matters only goes so far; let us not forget that footage of a person accused of murder shooting people was thrown out of court because the video was enlarged for viewing purposes, and thus considered "altered", as argued by the Defense;† the courts have very little patience for technological quibbles is the point, as while the statement is technically true, it's not like enlargement algorithms for video are some mystery, and it wasn't even argued that the content's expression and message changed, just that the video had been altered.
It's very scary stuff for me about surveillance and talks of justice, as it's far too easy to get into really spooky and bad situations as they are so many real life edge cases that absolutely are ripe for abuse (and frequently abused), especially by those in positions of authority and especially by the rich. Elon Musk and Donald Trump have frequently called out other for defamation, but openly will espouse any statements factually about just about anyone; Elon called the cave diver a pedophile, the mere accusation of which is enough to cause a ton of trouble for just about anyone. Somehow Elon won that law suit, and I'm not confident that a less rich person would have.
>It works as long as the fine is at least as much as is necessary to compensate society for the nuisance. And if it isn't, you've set the amount of the fine wrong.
I will end the rant that no one will read with this comment, which is the one that triggered me to respond to this: I don't think it's a good idea to commoditize punishments like this. It focuses purely on an if>then understanding of justice and law that only tries to satisfy a code-like logic. I wrote before the law should be applied equally, and I do maintain this; the total punishment as a result of the crime should be equal; if being able to pay to get less punishment overall is possible, then the fine is just a fee that rich people can pay to do what they want. This is not an argument for minimum sentencing guidelines, it is about appropriate responses to the infraction that are consistent and equally impactful; if being poor means that parking on a lawn (regardless of intent) deprives you of freedom because you couldn't pay a fine or bail right away, then the impact of the law for the person without money is greater than that of someone with money.
It similarly ignores intent -- if the person with money intends to continue breaking the law because they can pay it, then society is not made whole by the fines they pay; the behavior the law is intended to prevent and discourage is still happening, and increasing the fine equally for everyone just makes the impact for those without wealth even worse, and the gap between the punishments received only grows bigger.
Wealth should not allow you to skirt the law or punishment -- I understand that's quite idealistic and I have no doubts that we will not see this as a reality in some time; but let's not pretend that such a system is really a benefit. To use a classic scare tactic, is it really fair that a particularly bad person in bad circles can do some egregiously horrible, but avoids serious punishment because they happen to know a lot of bad people and can plea bargain while anyone else who does the same action would get the full force of the justice system bearing down on them? We would agree the two crimes are equally egregious I think, but we'd differ on whether the information given as part of the plea bargain is equal to the punishment the other person received, and I would not call the plea bargain in support of justice so much as just a quick way to get out of jail that actually encourages more bad behavior from the individual -- after all, the only reason they got a plea bargain is because they did enough illegal/bad stuff with other people that they have a treasure trove of knowledge. I sincerely question if the justice applied in such a situation will prevent the person from doing such activities again, or if they'll be emboldened to realize how much power they have to barter, and want to get more so they can get out even faster next time.
I strongly urge you to revisit your thoughts on justice, as the edge case failures are a matter of life and death sometimes, of having a normal life or being in prison for the rest of your days because you could't afford the same fines/fees/lawyers as someone else guilty of the same crime. And the edge cases are very common to the point that depending on who you are, it's almost expected that you will be targeted by police.
Justice cannot exist in such a system via fines; that's not justice, that's a class system enforced by the state, who will use violence to enforce it if required. I cannot find a favorable interpretation of such a system, even if it at first blush appears to be beneficial.
There are billions of people on this planet, you can pick any atrocious act and find enough footage to convince a tribe-scale monkey brain that once in a million people event is a Big Problem that we need to be solving.
I could imagine there being special carve outs for kids who are unlikely to know something bad is happening or to report it. Doesn’t mean every child needs more surveillance around them.
Nobody understands me:(
Sadly, so do many kids growing up without surveillance.
There are many kids bullied in schools, some of them to the point of suicide. Should we feel happy that their suffering provides to bullies the precious opportunity to reflect on their actions, which they would be deprived of in a safer school environment with cameras?
What's next? Abolish police, so that the adults can learn to live in peace without the external threats? Sounds great in theory, you probably wouldn't want it to happen in your city today.
I believe the person you are replying to is emphasizing the "~" in your comment. Yes, it's not like half the kids will commit self harm because they are bullied, but a very small percent will. How do we, as a society, weigh their suffering against those who are being surveiled without ever having done anything to trigger it?
Teachers, students, administrators, and often parents already know who the bullies are. The question is what to do about it.
The school authority figures (teachers and administrators) both know who the bullies are, and enable/cover for them. My theory is these figures often were once the bullies themselves back when they went to school, and they identify with today's bullies. They'll watch and wait until the victim fights back, and then punish the victim using the "Zero Tolerance for fighting" excuse.
Like do you actually think any kid who was a bully you grew up with went into teaching? There definitely are a few, but just like in the kids’ case, it’s suuuuuper obvious who they are — even as adults — and they are not the majority case in any school system I’ve ever been a part of.
FWIW it is literally legally difficult to do anything. A lot of forms of bullying are not illegal per se and kids — even asshole kids — do have a right to an education.
I think it odd how many wrong applications and problematic uses of in loco parentis schools actually use, but when it's dealing with a bully, it's all of a sudden retreating behind "well, legally we can't..."
And in tiny societies, just like in the real one, there will be injustices that need to be managed by some mechanism other than just “don’t go outside, put cameras everywhere.”
My personal and unproven theory is that most school staff are bullies/cowards themselves (two sides of the same coin). They have a instinctive fear of punishing bullies and dealing with the blowback from their parents because the odds are good that bully parents will raise bully kids. Victims are often socially awkward and an easy target to punish without much risk to the teacher.
The dynamic is laws and standards of evidence in court that make expulsion of problematic kids too costly, for example IDEA 2004.
Video and audio evidence is the only lawsuit proof mechanism to prove the problem child needs to be punished. And this applies in the adult world too, see cops and body/smartphone cameras.
Someone getting jumped? Video helps a lot. Someone being subtly poked and prodded for months on end who then turns around and punches a bully in the face… who is now expellable at the bully’s parents’ whim even though every individual in the school knows what happened?
And let's be real here, this includes the teachers. I, and most of my peers, thought our teachers were ignorant to most of the drama in school. I went back a couple of years after I graduated, and learned that teachers generally know exactly what's going on, who is in what relationships, what fights are going on, and yes, who is a bully.
There’s some wisdom here. What I’ve heard before is that teachers enjoy the feeling of school popularity and the power that comes from it. Perhaps the fact that teachers in Japan also engage in bullying validates this theory.
My personal experience with bullies is that they will leverage the cameras to make their bullying even more effective. Most bullies work inside the system, and the worst ones are part of they system.
The cameras are abused through "crybullying," where you covertly antagonize someone into punching you, then you go crying to the teacher. The tapes indict your victim.
If you think about it, a lot of children’s stories and religions rely on this concept of the panopticon to inspirei moral behavior. Santa knows if you’ve been good or bad. God is always watching, and will reward or punish in the afterlife. Your soul will be reborn according to karma. Et cetera.
So is the use of constant, omniscient surveillance actually new to incentivize moral behavior new? Or have the methods / technology just gotten better?
If you raise your child on media from the last century that is.
Modern childrens television shows emphasize empathy over crude means like surveillance. Bluey is a great example.
Bluey is also one of the handful, perhaps single-digit number of, decent kid shows. Modern children television shows emphasize superstimuli, obnoxious behavior, and/or push merch. I am grateful it exists, because the space of children entertainment is much worse today than it was 30+ years ago.
Surveillance is blind to minor transgressions, supporting the idea that you can slight people and be a crappy human without consequences, and it is also far from omniscient, and can be specifically blind under circumstances that you may control. More so it can be wielded against other people by creating “scenes” that promote a narrative that harms them. It is not an judge of character, but rather of appearances.
Of course the fox is to install a strong moral character in the home, by way of teaching rather than training, but unfortunately many parents give similar attention to their children as they would a beloved pet, so that is not at all something that can be expected.
I've watched a lot of people who make precarious moral decisions slide into various modes of turmoil over time. And I'm not exclusion. Just because it isn't evident on the face doesn't mean it isn't working.
A salient difference is that you can see when the camera is there and when it isn't. You can test the fences and see what behavior is punished and not with a quick feedback loop.
If the only thing keeping you from being a sociopath is getting caught on camera, what do you do as soon as you're not on camera?
Your moral problem you pose, has no bearing on the legitimate needs of education. I would encurage reading "The Power of Culture" by Birbalsingh who runs a school in the UK that topped the "Progress 8" charts recently. That school works, the reason is they truly teach and they don't give in to these silly "moral" arguments. The most moral thing a parent or teacher can do is to ensure students learn so they are prepared for the future. End of story.
How much of what students learn in school actually helps them in future? Personally the only thing I learned in high school that I ever actually use is mathematics. I didn't learn anything about how to manage my finances, how to handle emotionally challenging situations, how the economy works, how to start a business, how to avoid toxic people/relationships, how to drive a car, how to eat healthy, how to exercise with good form, how to pay (or minimise) taxes, how to invest, how to save money, how to cook healthy food, how to sell/market products or myself, how to analyse ethical issues from multiple perspectives/philosophies, how to negotiate, how to wear a tie. The vast majority of things that actually contribute to someone having a healthy, happy and productive life are not taught in schools (or at least the schools I'm familiar with), although they certainly could be.
School teaches skills that you will use to benefit society. Lessons in tax cheating and being frugal are wholly antithetical to that.
You instead learn how to build a bridge, understand failures in history and how to work with toxic people you can't just run away from.
Your idea of school is indistinguishable from a FYP or curated YouTube channel...it's all about you. Where's the ROI?
Limiting what students can do and forcing them into rigid, limited curricula seems contrary to these goals...?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt%E2%80%93shame%E2%80%93fe...
On the other hand, public schools can and should take measures to control the specific behaviors that happen inside that school.
It was then explained to me that children who grow in over surveillance have a tendency of not exercising moral. They will do whatever they want once they are confident that nobody will know. It is the same thing with excess of punishment: if people know something is legal and won't be punished, they won't care about moral.
I tried to ask about the good side of having cameras but he said it was not worth the price of growing a generation of amorals.