antillean
"The online data were collected in two stages. In the first stage, the participants were recruited via several open internet discussion forums and several student mailing lists. In this stage, data about religious and paranormal beliefs, systemizing, mechanical abilities, and core ontological confusions were collected. The rest of the data were collected 1.5 years later. The recruitment message was sent by email to all individuals who had participated in the first stage and who had given their email address for participating in further studies (N= 1537). Of them, 237 could not be contacted because of outdated email address, and 887 did not take part in the present study."
So this is a self-selecting study: the initial group of 1537 (which was self-selected) was whittled down (largely through self-selection) to the final 258 on whom the results are based. Further to that, the authors gave no information on which of the "several open internet discussion forums and several student mailing lists" they recruited or how they did that recruitment. And they made no comparison between the demographic makeup of their sample and the general Finnish population. (Probably because it would've counted against the validity of the study since, y'know, Finland isn't 63% female or 44% students.)
Again, not many people live in or around the libertarian bubble. And there are lots of intelligent people who avoid it for very, very good reasons.
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1. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2016/02/apple-fb...
2. http://www.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx
Firstly because, well, that's just the way it is sometimes. Putting a gate in your wall can let in bad guys who can plunder your city, yes. But it can also let in good guys who can fortify it. You just need to design and use your gate well...and, I suppose, think of the government as good guys. (Soz, I've been indulging in some nostalgia with AOE 2: HD recently....)
And two: who says this has to involve decreasing IT security? I haven't seen enough evidence of cooperation between the gov't and the tech industry on this for me to believe that an agreement on this would require decreasing IT security.
The tech community's solutions WAY too often feel like they're motivated only by libertarian concerns for freedom which, while extremely important, are not exhaustively fundamental or final to -- and certainly do not settle the question for -- non-libertarians.
1. https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-stop-the-burr-feins...
How does that work with Norway and Switzerland? Or is that different because they're members of the Schengen?
The argument runs like this.
The UK's current level of migration is seen as a problem by the current UK government, by a significant proportion of British citizens, and probably even by a good few in the left-leaning parties. While the UK's in the EU, there's almost nothing that can be done to curb skilled or unskilled migration from the EU. Any government of a UK in the EU that wants to curb migration has to do so by clamping down on non-EU migrants. There's already no legal unskilled migrant route to the UK, so that means cutting back on skilled migration.
That clamping down is for me a personal pain, so much of a pain that it feels like every time I see Theresa May in the news it's because she wants to make it harder for me and other non-EU nationals to work in the UK. (I try really, really hard not to hate her.) If the UK left the EU, that'd allow the British government to apply the same rules across the board (to EU citizens as well as non-EU citizens) which'd probably lead to any UK government (from migration-hating UKIP to migration-loving Greens) having a more sensible approach to skilled migration. And not only is that in my own interest as a non-EU Commonwealth national, it's also in the UK's interest as far as having a sensible skilled migration policy goes.
This argument is, of course, too narrow on something as broad as the UK's members in the EU to be enough: it doesn't deal with the host of other things around British EU membership (wealth, security, environment, international influence etc). But my working visa issues are so frustrating that I find it a very, very tempting argument.
"The UK and Republic of Ireland have opted out. The UK wants to maintain its own borders, and Dublin prefers to preserve its free movement arrangement with the UK - called the Common Travel Area - rather than join Schengen."
What? Why shouldn't I be angry if a fool intentionally hurts me?
And you think it's an indictment on Biblical (and, apparently, also Oxonion) definitions of "fair" that they'd disagree with you on that?
On that view, it's generally just right to reward people for good and punish them for evil. Consequences -- even grand ones like balancing the cosmic scales of justice -- don't enter it.
Not all secular societies or people are consequentalists. Some are at least as interested in the moral righteousness of a system -- in its means, in its processes, in what it does on the way to its ends -- as they are in what that system accomplishes. There are secular humanist deontologists and virtue ethicists.
As a family of concepts human rights often rely on the concept of dignity, so all law (or ethics) -- European, American, African, Samoan, Caribbean, Peruvian, whatever -- that is based on or significantly influenced by human rights often also relies on the concept of dignity. But yeah, as you say, the concept is so broad and, without a substantiating framework, generally empty of meaning that I can imagine that (though not how) some could use it to say that even 1) planning and intentionally murdering 77 innocent people and then 2) going on to remain unreformed and unrepentant of it shouldn't "justify the destruction of all of a person's future". (Though, thankfully, as far as I know, people who think like that so far either 1) lack the courage of their convictions or 2) lack the power (or both) to actually impose that view of 'dignity' on any society.)
That's a strange use of the word "secular", for which the Oxford dictionary that Google uses lists as "not connected with religious or spiritual matters". What's particularly religious or spiritual about the idea that the justice system ought to be about meting justice?
What's the rationale for that limit? Is that the maximum time it takes to reform someone? The time after which anyone's being a threat to society expires? The magic number of years for just retribution for all (combinations of) crimes?
Can you link to that article?
And I mean that literally. I started typing about five different responses, each beginning differently. None of them seemed to work, and besides I would've probably ended up typing too much anyway.
Instead I refer you to:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimacy_(political) and http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legitimacy/
I hope, for the sake of American democracy, that this just isn't true.
I'm talking about greater goods than privacy and order, goods that make privacy and order good.
And I'm not just talking about things that one group or another really thinks should be illegal. I'm also talking about things that we've decided to tolerate as legal, but which we think are wrong -- maybe even grossly wrong -- and therefore (strongly) disapprove of and want to (strongly) discourage. I don't think things are so simple in those cases, either.
I was speaking generally. I said that it's reason/evidence in favour of a conclusion. I said that it isn't proof of it. Those kinds of general rules and presumptions are useful for all kinds of things and in all kinds of ways. Or do you think that our judgements should be entirely composed of perfectly comprehensive and universal rules?
Is it that simple? Would the outright violation of a hack be the end of the story if we were talking about something that we all agree is wrong and/or illegal? What if it was a hack on a website that connected child pornographers, or cocaine dealers, or human traffickers, or arms dealers, or planet-destroyers, or abortionists, or super-rich exploitative CEOs?
EDIT: That list started off in my head as stuff that I thought there might be agreement on, but I couldn't think of anything beyond child pornographers, so it turned into stuff that significant groups feel very strongly about but on which there is no general agreement. Hopefully both sets of stuff make my point.
The reputation, marketing, and design of guns is a good bit more varied than Ashley Madison's. But yes, buying and learning to use a gun shows a certain intention or willingness to kill. It may be to kill a deer you're hunting or to kill a person in self defence, but in general it's evidence of a certain willingness to kill.