- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
If they doing this might as well ban books also for harmful content to children:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_governments
If they doing this might as well ban books also for harmful content to children:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_governments
Iāll try to rephrase:
It makes more sense that politicians are simply like ordinary voters and are wrong and misguided when it comes to the internet (in this regard and others), and genuinely believe that the Online Safety Act is helpful for its stated purpose, than that they are using it as some nefarious way of helping out Google. The simple reason is that politicians are people too and just as susceptible to being wrong as voters are; we donāt actually need to hunt for any greater reason than that.
Besides that, we constantly talk about how politicians catastrophically fail to understand technology (I believe the Online Safety Act makes mention of hypothetical encryption-backdooring technology that is simply impossible). For politicians to have a different true motive - i.e. their stated motive is false - we are essentially saying that they couldnāt possibly have made got this wrong, there must be some corrupt reason for it - but we donāt actually believe they couldnāt have got it wrong because weāre constantly complaining about how they very obviously do get it wrong.
I also mentioned (but you didnāt mention being confused by it) that the UK government isnāt really friendly to American big-tech firms, who are universally opposed to the Act as a whole because of its threat to end-to-end encryption.
Politicians are people too, sure.
Doing a bad job of implementing a self serving plan doesnāt excuse the self serving plan.
Thatās some āboys will be boysā nonsense.
Take brexit and Alexander as example, his intent was to do something shitty for self gain, heās not an idiot no matter how it seems.
Thereās no chance he believed that ridiculous tagline about the NHS funding and Europe, even if he did, someone at some point would have pointed it out to him.
He did it anyway, thatās intent.
Regardless of the outcome, he did something he knew was shitty, for whatever reason he had.
These people might be idiots, but their intent is usually to do something shady, that they are incompetent and do a shitty job of it isnāt the point.
Wrt to the America thing, I agree, Iām not saying the government is working with tech companies, im saying their intent usually isnāt āsave the childrenā, at that point we absolutely should be hunting for the reasons, because if it isnāt the reason they have stated, what are they hiding?
But you havenāt provided any reason to believe itās self-serving (other than it is actually quite popular, so it will probably help to get them re-elected)
I agree. In that case, the tagline was objectively false and it was printed anyway, so we can conclude pretty safely that the people in charge of making it were lying. Thatās not the case here; there is genuine disagreement about whether the Online Safety Act will be a success. It is quite popular with the public - a clear majority of people do believe it will be a success. Whether it will be is not a matter of objective fact - not only can we not see the future, there is also no objective way to balance the benefit of decreasing harm to children by preventing access to harmful content with the cost of preventing their access to useful information and the cost of increased friction and privacy breaches to everyone else. If thereās a 0.01% chance of photographs of peopleās IDs being leaked online due to this, but a 90% chance that more than 100,000 children will be prevented from seeing content advocating suicide, is that OK? We donāt know if those are the correct percentages and, even if we did, that is a moral question, not a factual one.
The situation is wholly different than the Brexit bus.
Citation needed.
People donāt go into politics to line their pockets - not in the UK anyway. Itās just not that lucrative. People go into politics mostly for the right reasons (that is, they want to change the country in a way they believe will be better - even if you disagree about that) and some of them are natural grifters who try and make a quick buck off it as well.
Again, nobody in this thread or elsewhere has provided any evidence that this is not their intent. The only argument put forward comes down to āit wonāt actually save the children, so that canāt be their intent.ā But that is not how it works. People can disagree about things and on this particular matter most people disagree with you (and me.)
I can list examples of politicians promising things and then backtracking or making decisions that benefit them or their retinue directly but itās so entrenched in the zeitgeist Iād be genuinely shocked if you didnāt know any examples yourself.
So weāve established a baseline of possibility, we can work from here.
Yes, politicians are people too, there will be disagreements between them, most have no idea what they are talking about with regard to this so that discussion probably wonāt actually help anyone, but such is life.
Same with brexit, popular support isnāt necessarily an indicator of a good idea.
Agreed
Indeed, and by that rationale thereās no basis for saying this is a good idea with regard, specifically, to the protection of children.
Which is why many people say this isnāt about the protection of children, because they have no way of proving it, or really even a vague idea of how to measure it , at all.
There is however precedent for this kind of attempt at control to be poorly implemented and abused in other areas, such that there is a provable downside.
So if thereās no provable upside but there is a somewhat provable downside, which option should be used.
Thatās a different discussion, but yes, ethics, morals etc.
Itās a different scenario yes, but it proves the possibility of that type of action, which it seems you were denying by saying ātheyāre just idiots they couldnāt possibly be doing bad thingsā
There is an example of action not based in incompetence.
Indeed, this is personal opinion/anecdote.
I can give you examples of shady politicians doing shady things but probably not enough to demonstrably push it over that 50% line.
In the same way you canāt prove incompetence over intentional malice.
That level of naĆÆvetĆ© is staggering ( and also conveniently skips over power as a motivator )
Even if we donāt agree on the percentages i think we can agree that there is a level of political corruption, a quick buck doesnāt even begin to cover it.
Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak from recent memory, i could probably dredge up some more.
Thatās why i stated it as me saying, not as an objective fact, though i see that might not be clear.
Also remember the predictive analysis based on previous actions.
I the absence of hard proof iām pretty sure youāll agree that opinions can be formed using predictions based on past actions of the person and similar situations and scenarios.
as i said earlier(NOTE: this was actually in a different reply, but the point stands)
itās not:
so much as it is
āPreviously, on multiple occasions they have proven to not be doing things for the stated reasons, itās perhaps reasonable to work under the idea that they may be doing this againā.
That proves itās possible, not that it happened this time.
No, just because something is not objective does not mean that claims about at are baseless. Do you think that the article here āhas no basis for saying itās a bad ideaā? Surely not. Politics is, more often than not, about questions that donāt have objective answers. You say thereās a provable downside, but itās not actually provable; itās still theoretical at this point. We donāt know for sure whether anyoneās data will be leaked, for example. Itās in exactly the same realm as the potential upsides - it is likely (but impossible to quantify at this stage) that some people will feel curtailed in what they can do and say online, which will be negative for them. At the same time, it is likely (but impossble to quantify) that some children will not harm themselves because they wonāt have seen encouragement online to perform acts of self-harm.
Boris youāre probably right but I donāt think Sunak went into politics to enrich himself or to seek power. The rewards you get in the UK are just pitiful - Sunak did a hundred times better by marrying into wealth, and anyone could do better by getting a job in the City. I know dozens of people who earn more than an MP even if you count all the likely dinners gifts and cushy consulting jobs theyāre likely to get. Why bother going to the trouble of getting selected, getting elected, and then having to show up for whipped votes, merely for a chance at some perks, when you could do better with less faff elsewhere>
It might be interesting to listen to interviews with politicians from across the divide, preferably after theyāve left office. It wonāt make you agree with their position, but itāll make you see them in a different light when theyāre able to explain their thought process (which the media culture doesnāt permit when in office) and the principles behind what they did.
If you say something is true, then you should be able to justify it. Politics is not the realm of headcanon.
Yes, as Iāve previously pointed out, there are examples of this happening.
Can i prove itās a majority, probably not and it seems like a lot of effort so Iām not going to, but Iāll wait while you provide the majority of examples proving incompetence over malice.
Iām not sure why you asked about how i do predictive analysis and ask questions that ignore the answer.
Iām not saying this specific action can be proven to be a bad idea before it happens, i have, many times said that i judge these things based on what has come before and the outcomes of those things.
Read the rest of my replies for examples of how this works.
Again ignoring the idea of power as a motivation, but sure sunak probably had/has other avenues to money (and power).
If you are judging the potential benefits of being an MP/PM solely by the salary they pull in you have already failed to consider all of the relevant information.
You yourself mentioned corruption, and again the kickbacks and favours are well established.
I genuinely donāt understand how you think arguing this point and ignoring a large chunk of the salient information would work.
You have to be trolling at this point, so Iāll say it once more and then Iām just going to point at this line again in the future.
The things that they say and the outcomes that resulted from that donāt match a lot of the time, after-the-fact explanations add flavour sure, but given how often this makes little difference i will continue to base my predictions on what they stated they were going to do vs what happened.
Reading alexanders biography isnāt going to change the outcomes or the stated intents of the time.
Assuming heās not lying or spinning, which is a big if given his track record, then i might get some insight as to his stated intention, which i will still judge against the outcome.
This is the same method i would use for all political biographies.
If i say something is absolutely true, then i should back it up with absolute proof, this applies to everyone.
If i state something is my opinion (or itās clear that it is) then i should provide the information i can to show my working and how i came to that opinion, that gives others the opportunity to examine my reasoning and thought process and then perhaps question parts of it they disagree with.
This is how debate style conversations generally work.
I am legitimately unsure how you came to the conclusion that a discussion around politics (especially modern politics) has no room for the inclusion of the public opinion and perception of the politicians.
I mean, go up a few lines in your response for this banger :
You canāt have it both ways.
Without objectiveness you are left with subjectiveness, also known as personal opinion and perception (headcanon)
Whatās an area where something can be done maliciously or by accident? Car crashes? Workplace injury? Incorrect tax claims? Taking something from a shop? All of these are, to my understanding (and with decreasing confidence, but all have evidence - crime stats for the first, to, HMRC estimates and this Ipsos poll respectively) more likely to be accidental than malicious. To me this is a general principle: human beings are social animals and have an instinct to be agreeable and cooperative, to live within socially-agreed rules, to tell the truth and not to fuck people over. Those who break the rules are the exception - otherwise it wouldnāt make any sense to have rules and to have society.
So my background assumption is that people are honest. Seeing examples of people being dishonest doesnāt really change this background assumption much, because the nature of being in a society is that we point out and emphasise the times when people donāt abide by its rules; we have to use more robust methods to estimate its prevalance.
Kickbacks to politicians in the UK are comparatively tiny though. Enough to motivate someone whoās already a grifter, but not enough to cause anyone but the extraordinarily stupid to be motivated by getting them.
You pushed back on this before but I genuinely think that the reason people think otherwise is because they just canāt believe that (for example) Tories actually believe that the country would work better by spending less on public services and benefits. The only remaining explanation is kickbacks by the direct beneficiaries of these policies. Even if your logic isnāt as formalised as that, I still think that on some level that is the feeling that makes you ready to believe that Tory politicians are so unlike the population at large - that is, massively more dishonest.
Some politicians (like BoJo) have genuinely been caught lying with high confidence and high frequency, and so this baseline assumption doesnāt apply to them.
Itās about confidence. People in this thread expressed with no hint of doubt that the politicians who wrote the legislation did it for kickbacks from big tech. This is in spite of the fact that they have no direct evidence of this and itās implausible on account of big tech being unhappy with this law. This isnāt simply healthy skepticism, itās the same old useless cynicism.
The context was that you canāt just air your personal fan-fiction about politiciansā motivations and personal beliefs as if they were something more than that, so an excuse that āitās just an opinionā doesnāt wash when the video linked by OP is putting this idea (that the law was written at the behest of big tech) forward seriously.
By all means have your justified beliefs about politicians. But so far the only politician youāve actually mentioned convincingly as being corrupt is Boris Johnson. You havenāt, for example, leveled any attacks at Oliver Dowden who was the Minister for DCMS at the time of passing the Act. His register of interests does not mention any gifts or meetings with big tech firms.
PART 1/2
Is there a similar poll for political decisions and outcomes ?
Genuine question, thatās be super interesting, if so.
I think thatās where our difference in interpretation stems from , i think humans have the instinct for survival and reproduction, that agreement, cooperation and social interaction provided a better environment for survival is incidental.
Honesty is possible in a situation where survival isnāt on the line, in a life or death situation i think the person who would tell the truth knowing it will get them ( or more importantly, their family ) killed, is the outlier.
Outside of hyperbolous scenarios i think honesty is not the default in a situation where it doesnāt have a social/survival impact.
Such as a politician lying for fiscal/politician gain, knowing that there isnāt really any punishment for that.
I also disagree with this, itās a nice ideal and we should absolutely strive for this, but itās just not how it works in practice, from my experience.
I think we disagree on what the rules are, it seems like you think calling out perceived injustices in fairness and corruption being met with punishment for the corrupt is what should happen.
In practice i think that only happens in the lower stakes, once you start pointing at people with wealth and power that rule quickly changes from ācall it out and weāll punish the offenderā to ācall it out and weāll punish you for pointing it out and as a deterrent to others who might do the sameā.
Thatās not a society that honesty and inherent (relative) goodness as foundational concepts would produce.
That comparatively is carrying a lot of weight there and again i think we just disagree about this point in general.
And again you are missing my point, that they believe or not it isnāt the issue.
I can say with full confidence i absolutely do not care if they believe it, or if they donāt, makes zero difference to me.
If a politician(or politicians) wants to run some shenanigans on PPE contracts, netting their friends x millions of pounds, it care not a whit if they believe in the general correctness of conservatism.
I will state it plainly, mark this as [POINT A] and point back to this, because it seems you are skipping this part entirely.
[POINT A]
If there is consistent historic precedent of a mismatch between stated intent and actual outcome by both the individual/institution and other related contexts then i will assume that behaviour will continue until proven otherwise.
Itās not āi donāt understand, so they must be corruptā itās āthey have a history of being shady and incompetent, so Iām going to assume they will continue to be shady and incompetentā
Their belief is irrelevant, their later explanations of their intent is perhaps cause for minor adjustment.
Feel free to rephrase the same assumption again, i will point back to this explanation.
Not that I know of. Thatās why Iām transferring by analogy from other walks of life.
All the research I am aware of - including what I referenced in the previous comment, is that people are honest by default, except for a few people who lie a lot. Boris Johnson is a serial liar and clearly falls into that camp.
If honesty were not the default, why would we believe what anyone has to say in situations where they have an incentive to lie, which is often? Why are such a small proportion of people criminals and fraudsters when for a lot of crimes, someone smart and cautious has a very low chance of being caught?
The evolutionary argument goes like this: social animals have selection pressure for traits that help the social group, because the social group contains related individuals, as well as carrying memetically inheritable behaviours. This means that the most successful groups are the ones that work well together. A group first of all has an incentive to punish individuals who act selfishly to harm the group - this will mean the group contains mostly individuals who, through self interest, will not betray the group. But a group which doesnāt have to spend energy finding and punishing traitorous individuals because it doesnāt contain as many in the first place will do even better. This creates a selection pressure behind mere self interest.
Powerful grifters try to protect themselves yes, but who got punished for pointing out that Boris is a serial liar? Have you read what the current government has said about the previous one? :P
As a society we generally hate that kind of behaviour. Society as a whole does not protect wealth and power; wealth and power forms its own group which tries to protect itself.
You should care because it entirely colours how you interact with political life. āShady behaviourā is about intent as well as outcome, and we are talking in this thread about shady behaviour, and hence about intent.
PART 2/2
I have stated multiple times i do not hold this view.
I have also stated that the sheer difference between what this bill says and the stated intent leans toward either technical incompetence and/or some other reason.
Big tech doesnāt like the encryption stuff, fine, but that doesnāt mean the other stuff wonāt benefit them.
If i had to guess at a reason other than idiocy Iād guess itās a governmental overreach thing.
This will vastly increase the powers and control available to the government in this space (at least the ones publicly utilised) , that isnāt conjecture.
See [POINT A]
The OP links to an EFF page , iām not seeing a video , but that might just be my browser.
The text however makes no reference to big tech pandering afaict.
I have been arguing from a perspective on politicians (and people) in general, Alexander was the easiest example because heās such a prominent example of a lack of consequences breeding shitbaggery.
And again, iāve also not been arguing the big tech direct intervention angle.
I shall point you to [POINT A] in general because it applies here but iāll also add something brief about this guy specifically.
From a quick peruse Iām seeing his Wikipedia and he seems like a standard conservative stereotype, if somewhat laid back in his upset at āwokenessā.
Not my kind of person but not moustache twistingly evil or anything afaict.
This is a long form āWonāt somebody please think of the children?ā.
It isnāt necessarily wrong, but it is putting great deal of emphasis on the perceived problems and basically no thought into how to do it.
Contextual incompetence rather than maliciousness.
If this singular person was responsible for the writing, presentation and ability of the bill to get this far through the system, iād be open to it just being technical idiocy.
Unfortunately it will have to have gone through the entire British political system to get there, which makes it subject to the will of many.
See [POINT A]