Dude with a cold hunts down stories about this whacky world with the aid of caffeine and liquor.
Sources
https://massivesci.com/articles/neuroscience-behavior-vs-technology/
https://www.unz.com/article/swimming-in-the-government-sewage/
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Aside from superior kernel architecture, greater choice in file systems, and the wisdom of not granting root access to anyone who drunkenly stumbles in at 3 AM the greatest advantages of Linux are not purely technical.
I am by nature an artist and not a technican. What artists crave, what artists need, above all is freedom.
Interestingly enough the societies that serve artists best are usually the best societies in which to live.
This is because such societies defend the whole by respecting the individual. Meaning that the rights of every citizen are sovereign and respected. From such respect of boundaries at the cell level the entire organism remains healthy.
Unfortunatley today we’re faced with various cancers. Cancers like Google, Facebook, and Amazon which openly and repeatedly flaunt the rights of the society that made them prosperous.
Some of these organizations attempt to hide their Orwellian ambitions. Others flaunt them outright. As is evidenced in this article about former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
One of the best arguments against Schmidt’s “if you have nothing to hide” philosophy is thinking space.
It’s something I never hear mentioned in defenses of electronic privacy.
For instnace the video linked to above makes the case that given the sheer number of laws on the books chances are that you’re breaking one of them. Thus everyone has something to hide. (It’s not the only argument made but it is the one that sticks out the most.)
I’d like to suggest the alternative of thinking space. This concept is very WYSIWYG. What you see is what you get. Thinking space is the freedom to think.
In a now ancient video wherein the late author Michael Chrichton laments the behavioral changes that occur when you think someone is watching. We already see the hampering on thinking space imposed by the never blinking eye of Sauron that is the internet.
Imagine if your friends could see and comment on your every thought as you were trying to form an idea or opinion.
The downside to telepathy you see is the inability to think.
If you think (and these days increasingly know) that someone is always watching – the spectrum of your ideas will narrow to what is socially accepatable.
Meaning that the information age has and will continue to paradoxically make people more easily programmable.
The solution to this troubling trend will be multifaceted. And one of the main drivers of this solution will be technological. We will need to foster viable alternatives to the data mining antics of big tech via consumer choices.
Switching to Linux in whole or in part, or at the very least adopting the privacy and invidualism inherent to the Linux mindset, is a great first step.
And if you’re still buying into the whole, “I have nothing to hide” mentality then:
Suppose that the Patriot Act, Eric Schmidt cites, is indeed there to protect you. If Google and the government can gain access to your information…for all the right reasons…then so can your boss, your rival, and your bitter lover.
Even if your personal life is miracolously squeaky clean there is the troubling fact of misunderstandings. A spook, or an employer, or what have you can misread any number of things like new job searchs, or the visiting of foreign news sites.
Or they can read you perfectly well and use that information to socially engineer you.
I breifly tried my hand at sales. Believe me the quickest way to get a stranger to buy a shitty cable package is to form a personal connection. What if instead of trying to figure out what sorts of Sports package I could seduce you with I already had your dossier?
That’s why privacy matters. Salesmen should have to earn their keep, the government has no right to your mind, and you downright need room to think!
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“All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Is a rather famous aphorism.
But how do you know that you are a good man? How do you know what you should do?
I use this aphorism and the resultant questions to highlight the importance of preparation. That is of preparing ones mind for struggle and moral quandries through establishing and examining principles.
The establishment and examination of principles is perhaps the most important function of philosophy.
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Free speech is life.
Allow me to elaborate.
Breathing is not considered a right.
It’s not considered in the same category as rights, privileges, and all the myriad distinctions thereof.
No. Even prisoners and slaves are unquestionably reserved the right to draw air. Certainly, a hair-splitter might say ah but they are killed!
Yes, sometimes but until the point of termination, no one rations their air…sets restrictions on it…how much to inhale…how much to exhale…and where such a thing is appropriate.
Throughout our lifetimes we adopt and abdicate many a position. In so doing we exhale and inhale ideas. If it is bizarre to assume restriction on literal respiration why is it any less bizarre to restrict intellectual respiration?
Yes. But breathing and speaking are two different things. You don’t need to speak to live. I disagree. We are a social species. Our very existence depends on interaction.
Ok. But its only a certain sort of speaking that is absolutely essential. Why should we let fascists, and bigots, and all kinds of meanies be mean?
Throughout our lifetiems, we adopt and abdicate many a position. Its important to allow this to take place naturally. You will gain very little in the way of reforming someone’s position by telling them to shut up. Even less so with the might of the state behind you.
People often say erroneous and heinous things. But we cannot know the intent with certainty. Even when the certainty of intent is almost certainly established we cannot penalize someone for intellectual respiration. This somewhat foppish metaphor I’ve adopted has its merits. It is used because throughout our lifetimes we adopt and abdicate many a position.
Speaking is popularly considered unproductive. Busy people use terse language and do busy things like profit handsomely from exporting manufacturing to exotic locations with charmingly lax labor laws. But even these humanitarians need to speak to do so. In fact, the assembly of ideas into an actionable coherency is speech whether or not it is externalized as air passing over the vocal chords.
When people mull a problem they often mutter under their breaths. This is because they are breathing in and out ideas. They are engaging in something that is more than a right. They are engaging in intellectual respiration.
Many people say things they don’t mean. They’re exhaling bad air. Should an accident of fraught nerves be grounds for prosecution? Again even if the intent of malice is clear there is no guarantee that the expression of an offensive and wrongheaded notion isn’t entirely or at leas in part representative of a misapprehension of the offendee.
Exhaling an idea is an inextricable part of processing that idea. Those who do so may process the idea entirely out of their being. It is not our business to force their breathing. You don’t do CPR on someone merely because they have a cough.
Let people be let people breathe.
But what if they shout fire in a theater? There is a difference between libel and speech. If you accuse the theater of being on fire when it clearly isn’t…I’m of course joking but I think this defense still holds.
Let people be let people breathe.
Anyone that’s around the age of thirty is likely well aware of the distance between the ideas and politics of their early twenties and their present outlook.
Should you have been throttled for thinking skinny jeans were cool?
Well, perhaps so. But then you have become the bully you wish to resist.
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