Leaked: Info on US Data Collection Programs

[Flagg]

Evidence that he's a spy? Evidence that he lied about his salary (as opposed to slightly inaccurate reporting of current vs. max salary)? Oh, wait, providing evidence for your views would be too hard. Keep masturbating about your spy-punishing fantasies.

Your "evidence" is a web chat with someone claiming to be Snowden (something not even verified) who is just saying "nah uh". Look at the facts, the guy is working for this contractor for three months before suddenly running to Hong Kong with apparently tens of thousands of pages worth of classified information. If he was combing through it for only civilian applications of the program then he must have been going over it the entire time he was there leading anyone with a functioning brain to determine he was only there to collect the information for later dissemination. Or he's lying now to cover his ass because the Chinese won't protect him. The guy also gave to Ron Paul, noted insane racist. At best the guy is ADR, at worst he's a spy.

[Thanas]

Or, you know, he might have learned from the Manning case that it is best only to leak once you get away from the grasp of the US military.

[Terralthra]

Snowden was working for the CIA, NSA, and various contractors to those groups for 6+ years, not 3 months. CIA for 2006-2009, contractor at NSA for at least a year after 2009, Booz Hamilton as a sysadmin for 3 months. Oh, wait, there goes the "he only worked there for three months" narrative. According to interviews, he knew about the programs he leaked for years before leaking them, but held off on leaking in hopes that Barack Obama's election meant there would be a change away from a national security state, and instead saw it got worse.

The idea that he only worked in signal intelligence for 3 months, and therefore must have been spying the whole time, is based on incorrect facts.

"He gave to Ron Paul, who is an insane racist" is an ad hominem of the poisoning the well variety.

I have no idea what "ADR" is, but your evidence that he's a spy is based on an entirely made up history of his employment. Maybe you should reconsider your conclusions in light of the proven factual inaccuracies in your evidence?

[Flagg]

Looking into it more you are correct. I concede and apologize.

[Terralthra]

It's ok. The media narrative on this has been poisonous, and in many cases misleading.

According to him, he revealed his identity because a) he doesn't feel ashamed, because he's done nothing wrong and b) to keep his colleagues and family and so on from undergoing unnecessary questioning and possibly detainment. Whether those are good enough reasons, I couldn't tell you, but I don't think jumping from revealing his identity to "he's a narcissist scumbag spy" is really justified either.

I feel pretty much in tune with what he said himself:

US officials say terrorists already altering TTPs because of your leaks, & calling you traitor. Respond? http://t.co/WlK2qpYJki #AskSnowden— Kimberly Dozier (@KimberlyDozier) June 17, 2013

Answer:
US officials say this every time there's a public discussion that could limit their authority. US officials also provide misleading or directly false assertions about the value of these programs, as they did just recently with the Zazi case, which court documents clearly show was not unveiled by PRISM.

Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to acheive that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.

Further, it's important to bear in mind I'm being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead.Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.

Emphasis mine.

[Broomstick]

snip most of article

I'm only going to quote short bits of that article.

Have you ever thrown out some junk mail that came to your house but was addressed to someone else? That’s a violation of federal law punishable by up to 5 years in prison.

I actually do take this to the post office... but then I'm weird, and frequently go there to get my PO Box mail, where I also turn in mail not addressed to me. But yes, people frequently do throw such mail out and you know what - it's almost never prosecuted. The problem is that it COULD be - if the government wants to target you they'll start finding stuff like this to use against you as a form of harassment. It's like how eventually they nailed Al Capone on tax evasion, because they couldn't find sufficient evidence of other wrong doing to stand up in court.

Last September (2011), retired race-car champion Bobby Unser told a congressional hearing about his 1996 misdemeanor conviction for accidentally driving a snowmobile onto protected federal land, violating the Wilderness Act, while lost in a snowstorm. Though the judge gave him only a $75 fine, the 77-year-old racing legend got a criminal record.

Mr. Unser says he was charged after he went to authorities for help finding his abandoned snowmobile. “The criminal doesn’t usually call the police for help,” he says.

OK, first they start off talking about felonies, but his was a misdemeanor, which is a significantly different entity. It's on par with a parking ticket.

In 2009, Mr. Anderson loaned his son some tools to dig for arrowheads near a favorite campground of theirs. Unfortunately, they were on federal land….

There is no evidence the Andersons intended to break the law, or even knew the law existed, according to court records and interviews. But the law, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979, doesn’t require criminal intent and makes it a felony punishable by up to two years in prison to attempt to take artifacts off federal land without a permit.

I've yet to see a Federal campsite that didn't have signs posted about not taking stuff. A lot of this comes down to people not reading fucking signs and notices or arrogantly thinking it doesn't apply to them. Now, it's possible nothing was posted (or someone stole the sign) but my first question when hearing this story is "did they ignore a sign or posting?".

Faced with the evidence of an non-intentional crime, most prosecutors, of course, would use their discretion and not threaten imprisonment.

And this is an important point that Carinthium ignores - that even if we have the phrase "ignorance of the law is no excuse" is also a frequent mitigating circumstance, just as a violation being a first offense is often a rationale for probation rather than an actual punishment. Even when one is manifestly NOT ignorant - say, for a speeding violation - you may get only a warning rather than the maximum penalty under some circumstances.

Of course, this makes the gears seize up in Carinthium's brain, because he can't comprehend the social customs and needs that result in the law not being mechanically enforced without discretion or mercy.

One of the responses to the revelations about the mass spying on Americans by the NSA and other agencies is “I have nothing to hide. What me worry?” I tweeted in response “If you have nothing to hide, you live a boring life.” More fundamentally, the NSA spying machine has reduced the cost of evidence so that today our freedom–or our independence–is to a large extent at the discretion of those in control of the panopticon.

^ This is the most important point of the article: the government can now amass evidence of every trivial violation you have ever made and use it against you. And sooner or later, we all go that mile-an-hour too fast or while tossing out our junk mail don't see that one of the items wasn't addressed to us. Now that can be used against us, and with the secret systems and secret writs and secret evidence we can no longer defend ourselves from our own government. People say "there is no privacy anymore, get over it" without realizing the penalty that that entails.

[Broomstick]

I would also ask people to keep off the ad hominem attacks- they are irrelevant to the argument, after all.

Hey, cocksucker, you said you didn't want any special treatment and now you're crying because someone called you an asshat and you're too fucking stupid to know the difference between an ad homiem and an insult. Must suck to be you socially since you can't keep up with witty repartee.

1- So we have different meanings of what "a little" means, then.

You admit you have no degree or certification in law. Therefore, you are a layperson on this topic. You may even have misunderstandings acquired during your self-study and since you adamantly refuse to listen to others those mistakes will never be corrected.

2- You seem to have an assumption that people need to have learned about a topic through formal education in order to argue about it.

Of course not, but you have repeatedly demonstrated that you are not even self-educated, you refuse to educate yourself by reading what more knowledgeable people have suggested for furthering your self-education, and thus your attempts to "argue" are laughable to everyone but yourself. Regrettably, your disability gets in the way of you recognizing the social cues that, for a neurotypical, would encourage them to beat a strategic retreat and learn more before returning to the subject. You have repeatedly said that you do not want special treatment, so don't cry why it isn't given to you. You are being stupid, therefore we are mocking you.

Justify that assumption, particularly keeping in mind that a large part of this is Ethics.

Which, clearly, you are just as ignorant of as legal matters and which you again refuse to educate yourself further. You are being stupid, therefore we are mocking you.

It depends how you define "universial ethics". If you mean "moral sentiments all human share" then yes, there are universial ethics.

Name them.

ANYBODY with morals wants reality to conform to their ideals, not just me. Unless you're completely 100% happy with the world as it is and see no problems with anything happening in it.

Well, no shit I'd like to live in a world that conforms to MY ideals but I'm also savvy enough to realize that's NOT reality! Sorry, it's not. And it never will be. Unlike you, however, I don't insist on throwing out the good because it's not perfect. Compromise is not a dirty word and pragmatism is necessary to exist in the real world.

Come back when you've actually lived on your own, supporting yourself without assistance, for 5 years or so. If you can manage that, which I doubt. In the real world when things aren't perfect taking your toys and storming back home in a huff just doesn't work because the bills still come due.

Because words are how we communicate you moron. That's why language affects what we know, and how we know it, and how well we understand it.

How, other than through pragmatism, can you make an argument from the nature of words against my ethical argument earlier?

What, exactly, is your problem with pragmatism asshole?

Have you actually read Kant? (If you have, there is then the question of whether or not you understood any of it, but let's take this one step at a time...)

"The tradition of deontology" might be more accurate, but it comes to the same thing- moral values should not be compromised by pragmatism.

So you haven't read Kant. You do realize you're edging over into the territory called "lies", don't you? You're claiming to be an authority on things you clearly know nothing about.

You can't speak about Kant until you've actually read his words Holy fuck, what is wrong with you that you can't manage that? You clearly read and write English at a level sufficient to comprehend his works.

You feckless ass, civilization is how humanity deals with the ambiguity of the world and AVOIDS anarchy. Anarchy sucks for everyone but the guy on top - and no one stays on top for long. Anarchy means the biggest badass takes your stuff, rapes you and your relatives, and makes you work for his benefit instead of yours. Does that sound like fun to you? Are you convinced, like most who are pro-anarchy, that you are the biggest and baddest? The odds are very much against it, AND on top of that you have a mental disability that puts you at enormous disadvantage in a constantly changing political landscape which means, at best you'd be someone's butt monkey, if they didn't just kill you outright for being so fucking annoying. Avoiding that horseshit is WHY we have laws in the first place. Maybe YOU don't like that but since I'm all too aware I am NOT the biggest and baddest I'll take civilization with all its flaws over that, thank you very much.

I never claimed I would be at the top in an anarchic society- what I claimed was that because the alternative is morally wrong, I am obliged to work for anarchy as the alternative.

So... might makes right and the biggest asshole gets your stuff/your ass/your labor is morally superior to what we have now? Is that your argument, that if we can't have perfect laws then a "society" where there are no rules is better? You on board with being assfucked, robbed, and ground underfoot? Because that's what happens to the disabled in such situations, and shithead, you ARE clearly at a disadvantage.

Most of your second argument is ad hominem.

No, most of it is INSULT you dumbass.

The nature of how words work is irrelevant to my argument that lack of understandability in law is morally wrong.

The irony, it burns. The stupidity is strong with this one.

[Carinthium]

Carny, learn the difference between an insult and an ad-hom FFS. Also, your debate tactic is to erect a nice high wall of ignorance with pretentkousness and smug as mortar. You talk about pragmatism despite setting unreasonably high standards, you talk about ethics despite being unable to treat other people as moral entities, you talk about lawmaking despite having a severe deficiency to handle abstractions, you talk about theories and ideas as if you're some sort of knowledgeable authority despite having never actually read up on them and you think that every other human being shares your disabilifies.

If I were to write an essay about the Dunning-Krueger effecr, your postd alone would suffice as case study.

1- Any appeal to the consequences of actions without an ethical argument for why consequences of actions matter is a pragmatic argument.
2- Just because I apply a different set of morals to you doesn't mean I'm not treating people as moral entities.
3- I am knowledgable enough to discuss the topics- I figure if my opponents are using them as arguments, they should be the ones to post the releveant parts. This is basically a disagreement about conventions.
4- I never claimed every other human shares my disabilities. I did, however, recieve quite a good argument based on the number of laws Americans unknowingly break.

Hey, cocksucker, you said you didn't want any special treatment and now you're crying because someone called you an asshat and you're too fucking stupid to know the difference between an ad homiem and an insult. Must suck to be you socially since you can't keep up with witty repartee.

I don't want any special treatment- nor, however, do I want people citing my Aspergers as "evidence" I am wrong. Logically, it isn't.

You admit you have no degree or certification in law. Therefore, you are a layperson on this topic. You may even have misunderstandings acquired during your self-study and since you adamantly refuse to listen to others those mistakes will never be corrected.

Again, dispute based on definition of 'layperson'. As nominalism is true in philosophy, these can't be resolved.

Of course not, but you have repeatedly demonstrated that you are not even self-educated, you refuse to educate yourself by reading what more knowledgeable people have suggested for furthering your self-education, and thus your attempts to "argue" are laughable to everyone but yourself. Regrettably, your disability gets in the way of you recognizing the social cues that, for a neurotypical, would encourage them to beat a strategic retreat and learn more before returning to the subject. You have repeatedly said that you do not want special treatment, so don't cry why it isn't given to you. You are being stupid, therefore we are mocking you.

Justify that the claim that I don't know enough about the topic to argue about it.

Which, clearly, you are just as ignorant of as legal matters and which you again refuse to educate yourself further. You are being stupid, therefore we are mocking you.

You haven't justified your assumption.

Name them.

-A general stigmatisation of murder, with ocassional exceptions
-Implicit ideas of different social roles depending on age and gender as appropriate
-Implicit ideas in popular culture which are, to a degree, racist or at least discriminatory against outsiders
-A stigmatisation of sex between a man and their mother
-A stigmatisation of rape at least in some circumstances
-A set of rules giving adults authority over children and moral right to such

I could find more, but I figure that's enough.

Well, no shit I'd like to live in a world that conforms to MY ideals but I'm also savvy enough to realize that's NOT reality! Sorry, it's not. And it never will be. Unlike you, however, I don't insist on throwing out the good because it's not perfect. Compromise is not a dirty word and pragmatism is necessary to exist in the real world.

Come back when you've actually lived on your own, supporting yourself without assistance, for 5 years or so. If you can manage that, which I doubt. In the real world when things aren't perfect taking your toys and storming back home in a huff just doesn't work because the bills still come due.

Ignoring the ad hominem, I never claimed I could make my ideals reality (though were it realistically possible to win yes I would fight and kill for them). I'm just establishing their rightness as ideals on this thread.

What, exactly, is your problem with pragmatism asshole?

That nobody's justified it yet on an ethical basis.

So you haven't read Kant. You do realize you're edging over into the territory called "lies", don't you? You're claiming to be an authority on things you clearly know nothing about.

You can't speak about Kant until you've actually read his words Holy fuck, what is wrong with you that you can't manage that? You clearly read and write English at a level sufficient to comprehend his works.

I disagree- the statement was considered rhethorical, and was based on the well-known fact that Kant was a deontologist.

So... might makes right and the biggest asshole gets your stuff/your ass/your labor is morally superior to what we have now? Is that your argument, that if we can't have perfect laws then a "society" where there are no rules is better? You on board with being assfucked, robbed, and ground underfoot? Because that's what happens to the disabled in such situations, and shithead, you ARE clearly at a disadvantage.

Irrelevant unless pragmatism is established to be relevant.

The irony, it burns. The stupidity is strong with this one.

Why don't you establish that is relevant, then? The only possible way I could see for words to be relevant is an appeal to pragmatism which claims it is impossible to have unambigious words.

[loomer]

Justify the claim you don't know enough? MOTHERFUCKER, YOU DON'T EVEN GRASP RETROACTIVITY!

[Mr Bean]

Or, you know, he might have learned from the Manning case that it is best only to leak once you get away from the grasp of the US military.

As Cenk over at the Young Turks put it, Manning really drove home the point that even if you want to be a whistle blower you will be treated like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Fleeing the country is the only reason he's not in a jail cell as we speak with military officials consulting Chinese interrogation manuals for things they can do that won't show up in front of the cameras. Keep in mind where he fleed to all but insures he's still likely to end up in jail. But it will be a much more public affair than Manning and he might achieve his goal at the end of it.

You don't lock someone naked in a cell for twenty two hours a day and practice long term sleep deprivation techniques on him because he might be a "suicide risk". I believe Snowden is due for twenty years in lockup for what he released. But the good of what he's done to date requires that most of that sentence be suspended and he be monitored (Which thanks to Snowden we already know we were doing) instead of locking him up in general population and hoping we get lucky inside the first year.

[Terralthra]

Snowden himself made much the same point, in that Q&A I keep referencing:

1) Why did you choose Hong Kong to go to and then tell them about US hacking on their research facilities and universities?

1) First, the US Government, just as they did with other whistleblowers, immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That's not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it.

Second, let's be clear: I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous. These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target. Not only that, when NSA makes a technical mistake during an exploitation operation, critical systems crash. Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not even fighting? So we can potentially reveal a potential terrorist with the potential to kill fewer Americans than our own Police? No, the public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the "consent of the governed" is meaningless.
...
Do you believe that the treatment of Binney, Drake and others influenced your path? Do you feel the "system works" so to speak? #AskSnowden

— Jacob Appelbaum (@ioerror) June 17, 2013
Answer:

Binney, Drake, Kiriakou, and Manning are all examples of how overly-harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope, and skill involved in future disclosures. Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it. Instead, these draconian responses simply build better whistleblowers. If the Obama administration responds with an even harsher hand against me, they can be assured that they'll soon find themselves facing an equally harsh public response.

This disclosure provides Obama an opportunity to appeal for a return to sanity, constitutional policy, and the rule of law rather than men. He still has plenty of time to go down in history as the President who looked into the abyss and stepped back, rather than leaping forward into it. I would advise he personally call for a special committee to review these interception programs, repudiate the dangerous "State Secrets" privilege, and, upon preparing to leave office, begin a tradition for all Presidents forthwith to demonstrate their respect for the law by appointing a special investigator to review the policies of their years in office for any wrongdoing. There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny - they should be setting the example of transparency.

[Broomstick]

1- Any appeal to the consequences of actions without an ethical argument for why consequences of actions matter is a pragmatic argument.

And why is pragmatism unacceptable to you? Why do you think ethics based on pragmatism are less than ethics based on elaborate rules?

Just because I apply a different set of morals to you doesn't mean I'm not treating people as moral entities.

The problem is NOT that you are applying a different set of morals, it's that you refuse to acknowledge the existence of any other ethics than the ones you pulled out of your ass.

I am knowledgable enough to discuss the topics

No, you are not. Multiple people (like, just about everyone in this thread) is telling you that you are not knowledgeable enough. They are even giving you suggestions to increase your knowledge, yet you won't take the hint.

I never claimed every other human shares my disabilities. I did, however, recieve quite a good argument based on the number of laws Americans unknowingly break.

Which wasn't even yours and which you couldn't put forth even when asked to do so. On top of which you simply went "that, that's what I meant" without any form of discussion of the example.

In other words, you let someone else do the heavy lifting. So you're a user as well as an ignorant asshole.

Hey, cocksucker, you said you didn't want any special treatment and now you're crying because someone called you an asshat and you're too fucking stupid to know the difference between an ad homiem and an insult. Must suck to be you socially since you can't keep up with witty repartee.

I don't want any special treatment- nor, however, do I want people citing my Aspergers as "evidence" I am wrong. Logically, it isn't.

And.... where did I make any such statement? Nowhere. Nowhere is your Asperger's "evidence" that you are "wrong" - your demonstrated ignorance and swiss-cheese argument is the evidence that you are wrong.

See, we don't accept that autism or Asperger's is a get-out-of-the-argument-free card.

You admit you have no degree or certification in law. Therefore, you are a layperson on this topic. You may even have misunderstandings acquired during your self-study and since you adamantly refuse to listen to others those mistakes will never be corrected.

Again, dispute based on definition of 'layperson'.

Ah, once again you play with the definitions of words, failing to understand which is easily comprehended by everyone else here. You're a layperson when it comes to law.

As nominalism is true in philosophy, these can't be resolved.

Actually, it's not "true", it's been in dispute since Plato (at least) and by its nature is not really resolvable. Once again you attempt to dictate reality. One day, reality will bitchslap you upside the head.

Justify that the claim that I don't know enough about the topic to argue about it.

Well, two actual lawyers have stated such in this thread, for starters. You know, people whose actual profession is the law, who have studied it, earned degrees in it, have certifications and so forth.

Which, clearly, you are just as ignorant of as legal matters and which you again refuse to educate yourself further. You are being stupid, therefore we are mocking you.

You haven't justified your assumption.

It's not an assumption. It's something you have demonstrated. To start, you have attempted to argue constitutional matters which acknowledging you haven't read Holmes, and you attempt to discuss rule-based ethics while admitting you haven't read any Kant. You also don't understand what the word "retroactive" means, despite repeated attempts by people to define it and teach the meaning to you.

You're not ignorant, you're stupid. Ignorance we can fix, but you can't fix stupid.

Name them.

-A general stigmatisation of murder, with ocassional exceptions

The Yanomamo are rather infamous for their violence, with half of all men dying due to it, and have no bar to murder among their own. For most hunter-gatherers you could get away with murder if you had sufficient family/friends to defend you, or if you were such a badass that no one dared oppose you. Kind of like that anarchy you seem so fond of. No, there is no universal bar to murder.

-Implicit ideas of different social roles depending on age and gender as appropriate

So vague as to be meaningless. You can say the same of an ant colony.

-A stigmatisation of sex between a man and their mother

Ah, incest - but with multiple exceptions for royal families. Try again.

-A stigmatisation of rape at least in some circumstances

Another statement so vague as to be meaningless.

A set of rules giving adults authority over children and moral right to such

Right - because forcing infants and toddlers to fend for themselves is such a superior move!

So, did you pull all though out of your ass, or is this actually, you know, based on evidence?. If the latter please produce evidence of the evidence.

Well, no shit I'd like to live in a world that conforms to MY ideals but I'm also savvy enough to realize that's NOT reality! Sorry, it's not. And it never will be. Unlike you, however, I don't insist on throwing out the good because it's not perfect. Compromise is not a dirty word and pragmatism is necessary to exist in the real world.

Come back when you've actually lived on your own, supporting yourself without assistance, for 5 years or so. If you can manage that, which I doubt. In the real world when things aren't perfect taking your toys and storming back home in a huff just doesn't work because the bills still come due.

Ignoring the ad hominem, I never claimed I could make my ideals reality (though were it realistically possible to win yes I would fight and kill for them). I'm just establishing their rightness as ideals on this thread.

Again, it's not an ad homiem it's an INSULT. God, you are thick. And no, you haven't demonstrated the "rightness" of anything in this thread.

What, exactly, is your problem with pragmatism asshole?

That nobody's justified it yet on an ethical basis.

So, you haven't read read any Mill yet, either. Why am I not surprised?

You haven't justified YOUR ethics, either.

So you haven't read Kant. You do realize you're edging over into the territory called "lies", don't you? You're claiming to be an authority on things you clearly know nothing about.

You can't speak about Kant until you've actually read his words Holy fuck, what is wrong with you that you can't manage that? You clearly read and write English at a level sufficient to comprehend his works.

I disagree- the statement was considered rhethorical, and was based on the well-known fact that Kant was a deontologist.

\
You specifically invoked Kant, then made it clear you haven't a fucking clue about what Kant actually wrote. "Deontologists" are not an entirely monolithic group, you do know that, right? If you didn't then newsflash: deontologists are not identical.

So... might makes right and the biggest asshole gets your stuff/your ass/your labor is morally superior to what we have now? Is that your argument, that if we can't have perfect laws then a "society" where there are no rules is better? You on board with being assfucked, robbed, and ground underfoot? Because that's what happens to the disabled in such situations, and shithead, you ARE clearly at a disadvantage.

Irrelevant unless pragmatism is established to be relevant.

This is how I know you haven't moved out of mama's basement yet - when you have to live in the real world you must, of necessity, learn pragmatism even if you still seek an ideal state.

[Broomstick]

You don't lock someone naked in a cell for twenty two hours a day and practice long term sleep deprivation techniques on him because he might be a "suicide risk".

Actually, that strikes me as a good way to CREATE a suicide risk.

[Elfdart]

Hey bright boy, which one ran to Hong Kong and started giving the Chinese information about US hacking to ingratiate themselves with said foreign power so as to save his ass? Which one has repeatedly lied?

If Manning had fled the country, he wouldn't have been abused, humiliated, and threatened with death by the same National Security State you're hankering to feed Snowden to.

[Straha]

Then give me some even remotely plausible theories of justification. There aren't that many possibilities.

There are endless theoriest out there, seriously. Take your head out of the ass of analytic philosophy and pick one.

So you have a basically pragmatic structure of epistemic self-congradulation in which the purposes of an epistemic construct is to justify believing in the world as it is? Why not consider the possibility that it isn't?

I’m curious as to how you got that idea at all, especially when I’ve made clear through multiple discussions with you that I don’t think there’s a way to objectively comprehend ‘the world’ and that I think the concept of the world ‘as it is’ is fucking ludicrous.
More importantly you ducked the more basic issue that you yourself admit: Coherentism cannot account for the biases in subject formation and interaction with the world that I describe above. If Coherentism cannot account for such glaringly obvious a priori biases why is the system useful at all?

The thought experiment behind such a thing is not cultural. To demonstrate:

-A keeps ordering B about and telling him what to do. B correctly protests that he can't even understand said orders. A punishes him for violations anyway.

On the face of it, this seems problematic regardless of culture.

1. Everything is cultural. You’ve yet to offer, much less establish, any potential brightline between what is and isn’t ‘cultural’ much less offered any challenge to the fact that the concepts you’re talking about are immersed in social constructs that precede our understanding of the world.
2. By trying to elide the details of the example above you miss the point:
A. Cultural and linguistic biases control how we can imagine and understand the world and these biases play themselves out in how we ‘gut react’ to situations. An example: When Europeans first settled Australia the settlers labeled the aboriginal population as animals, and even went so far as to eventually regulate relations with them under the Flora and Fauna act. The massacres and horrors committed again them was justified because those couldn’t be seen as massacres because the aboriginals weren’t people.
B. This means that before any sort of engagement with what your gut feelings are or attempts to communicate across any border (‘individual’ or cultural) you need to have an understanding of where your personal/cultural boundaries are and deconstruct both how they come up and how that would engage with others. Further, because unintelligibility is inherent in any interaction this need to be a constant process engaged in at all times about all things.
C. Conversely, your stance ultimately leaves you powerless in the face of events like slavery or the holocaust because in the world where the perpetrator does not see this as wrong by your standards you have to let them be. Put another way, if you see a misogynist beating a woman because he thinks she’s inferior to him your ethical system doesn’t let you engage in any attempts to stop him. That’s fucked.

1- Deontology based on universial human intuitions
2- Deontology based on Cultural Supremacism (either ultimately circular or based on criticisms of other cultures)

1. Lulz, no. There is no universal human nature/intuition. They’re social constructs through and through, and you’ve done negative work on this point.
2. Firstly, that’s just downright disturbing. You should be ashamed of yourself. Second, determining cultural supremacy is a self-fulfilling prophecy especially in a world where cultures lack the tool to understand other cultures. Third, this leads to downright chilling conclusions. What happens when the ‘superior’ culture interacts with another culture that it deems inferior and wishes to curtail practices it finds morally questionable? Congrats dude, you’ve laid the foundation for ethnic cleansing and genocide the world over. Be proud.
3. Neither system works, and neither answers my critique or the foundational problems with your epistemology. Try again.

[Terralthra]

1. Lulz, no. There is no universal human nature/intuition. They’re social constructs through and through, and you’ve done negative work on this point.

Eh...I'm not so sure of that. It's an accepted axiom in certain fields that all human nature/intuition are cultural, but not proven by any stretch of the imagination. I think it more accurate to say that we, as individual humans, are the least well-placed to evaluate which, if any, of our gut intuitions are "human nature," and it's probably best in practice to default to cultural influence as the source of our impressions of human nature and intuition. Science hasn't advanced far enough to say any more definitive on the subject, but there are tantalizing clues (e.g. linguistic development of the words for various colors).

Not that I think Carinthium will understand this distinction.

[loomer]

While it's more to do with law than with ethics, I've always found Hart's idea of law having a basic minimum content that can be derived from nature interesting, because it places Hart quite squarely in the category of those who believe that there is a fundamental human nature - but that this nature extends only to the biological imperatives, with all else being man-made (e.g. the basic minimum content includes things like 'you must never stop all reproduction of the species', while more specific laws on reproductive rights are solely man-made.) I have to admit I feel the same way, but that's a personal view and not one I'd care to wager on the accuracy of until there's more research on the matter.

[Simon_Jester]

I think you could safely start with that minimum as 'universal.' I mean, a law code that doesn't allow people to eat just fails, in a Darwinian sense, as the people scrap it and start over.

Of course, the example of food makes it obvious what the limitations of this are. "People must eat" is a truism, but eat what? What resources are available to them, what technology and ecology supports their diet? The laws needed for a fishing village to support itself (where all food is acquired by individuals or groups using manufactured goods- boats and nets- to bring food in) may not be the same as those for a pastoral herding society (where the means of food production is keeping up your cattle herd). And neither shares much with a society where food is grown by huge agribusiness combines.

Hm.

I think you could justify a sort of sliding scale between "natural-minimum" and "artificial" law, defined by what it takes to make a civilized culture functional. Laws against murder are kind of a necessity, but there's a lot of ways to make that work. It would be interesting to examine a modernish culture that had preserved the institution of weregild, for example. That's totally different from the way law about murder works today, but it just might serve the needed purpose.

[loomer]

My understanding is actually that South Korea still practices blood money, in addition to having a more 'modern' legal system. I've not examined it yet but the idea of blood money in a modern context - and the degree to which a wrongful death suit can be considered an inheritance of the germanic weregild in the common law tradition - is going to be the topic of my Honours paper.

[Metahive]

1- Any appeal to the consequences of actions without an ethical argument for why consequences of actions matter is a pragmatic argument.

Quoting platitudes without context is a waste of time. What's that even a reply to? Besides that, a bit more pragmatism would suit you. Going for extreme ends only doesn't work so well in the real world.

2- Just because I apply a different set of morals to you doesn't mean I'm not treating people as moral entities.

Then why's your whole argument so utterly self-centered? Why's it yourself you treat as the only relevant moral factor in this?

3- I am knowledgable enough to discuss the topics- I figure if my opponents are using them as arguments, they should be the ones to post the releveant parts. This is basically a disagreement about conventions.

Yes, expecting that someone inform himself before attempting to discuss a certain topic earnestly is a convention. A convention that beats the heck out of your proposal of letting even the most ignorant moron's opinion have equal weight with that of informed and learned people. Do you feel at home on creationist boards?

4- I never claimed every other human shares my disabilities. I did, however, recieve quite a good argument based on the number of laws Americans unknowingly break.

What, do you think they do this because they are all autists like you? Could you please have your sentences make sense, CWC?

[loomer]

Based on the general incoherence of his attempts to debate, Metahive, I'd say no to that last one.

[Flagg]

Hey bright boy, which one ran to Hong Kong and started giving the Chinese information about US hacking to ingratiate themselves with said foreign power so as to save his ass? Which one has repeatedly lied?

If Manning had fled the country, he wouldn't have been abused, humiliated, and threatened with death by the same National Security State you're hankering to feed Snowden to.

Already conceded fuckface.

[Mr Bean]

Snowden has left Hong Kong via Moscow for destination unknown. No one knows what country has agreed to take him but someone has.

[Mr Bean]

That report might be false true, kinda iffy but something interesting pointed out today by Professor Dershowitz over at Harvard. If Showden had simply been charged with everything but espionage then per HK law they would have have to hand him over.

"I think it's a dumb decision by the Justice Department to charge him with espionage," Dershowitz told CNN. "That's a political crime under the extradition we have with Hong Kong. It gives Hong Kong an excuse to say we don't have to extradite him.

"They should have indicted him only for theft and conversion of property. Then Hong Kong would have to comply with the extradition treaty and turn him over."

So twenty years in jail and easy to prove? Nah lets go for fifty years in jail and trigger the political crimes clause that gives HK the right to refuse to extradite him.

[Broomstick]

Possibly that's an illustration of how ideology can get in the way of achieving something.