I don't agree with a lot of the things that various government organizations are allegedly doing either. However, I also understand that I probably don't have all the facts. I also know that even if I had all the facts, I would probably not commit much time to analyzing all of them, in order to make a sound decision on the best course of action. Why don't other people realize this?
We leave the economics to the economists, the physics to the physicists, and the medicine to the doctors. There are people--incompetent or not--who spend their entire lives dealing with government/country related issues. Yes, some of them might be corrupt, but are we naive enough to believe that an entire country is corrupt? Who are we to judge corruption, and what sources of information do we really have?
At one point or another, this argument for civil liberties gets repetitive and overblown. No one I know has ever felt like their freedoms were at stake, and the few government mistakes that the media captures should not be precedence to act against them. I make mistakes, you make mistakes - everyone makes mistakes. Hacking into their servers, getting people fired (and therefore replacing them with less experienced people), and leaking sensitive information so the uneducated public can get their opinions in, is -NOT- going to solve anything. At all. Ever.
Leaving medicine to doctors is not the same as leaving politics to politicians. One has far stricter requirements than the other. Not everybody can become a doctor. But almost anybody, from teachers to movie stars, can run for politics. There's also the issue of transparency and size of influence. A malpracticing doctor affects his patients and can be sent to prison. A corrupt government affects the entire country, but it's considerably harder to send people that make laws to prison.
Getting incompetent people fired may replace them with a less experienced, but more competent person. I'd value competency over experience.
Leaking information is the only way to justify hacking into the servers. There's no point of hacking in if you're not going to allow the public to see if the government is doing any underhanded actions.
Please don't include passive grubbing for upvotes as a preface to your comments. If you have something to say, even if it's controversial, have the courage to say it plainly without projecting anxiety about karma (of all things).
It's insulting by implication to the community here that expressing a contrary but constructive and well-written opinion would get you "massively down voted." For the most part, other readers can differentiate between constructive comments they disagree with and spammers, griefers, trolls, crapflooders, and trivial one-liners.
For starters, people in positions of power have a long history of acting in their own best interests and not the interest of the greater good. Some decisions about our government and country have both arbitrary criteria, and arbitrary outcomes. Historically, politicians will use this ambiguity to bias towards their own interests - including resisting changes that will bring more transparency to the benefits/harms of their "sound decision on the best course of action".
Second, some domains need specialists, some need generalists. To even suggest that we should rely on specialists in all situations is simply a flawed understanding of how knowledge evolves. In particular to running a country, we happen to be at a cycle where the information we use to make very important decisions for the purpose of our national interests is evolving very rapidly. Most likely success means finding new ways to understand information vs applying proven, specialized techniques.
We are not talking about people making mistakes, we are talking about a system that has consistently produced leaders that are incapable of acting in the best interests of their constituency. Its a broken system, and Anonymous / Lulz are making history right now.. they are forcing information to the surface. Their tactics are in fact a solution - setting a precedence to our leaders that their actions will be judged in the future much more openly than they were judged in the past.
And I'll tell you, a world where the individuals in our government system must be openly accountable for the decisions they make, and how those decisions affect others is a better world for all of us. The only other path has been retold countless times in history books, and its so much worse than any disclosure of factual data.
I know that's meant to be satirical, but it kind of derides the examples. Economists vote mostly based on their economic views, stem-cell researchers on stem-cell related views, and low-income families on social security. I just mean, leave specialized tasks to the specialists.
> They can't even come to a conclusion on climate change.
Who? Economists? Well, when the spectrum of climate change policies range from doing nothing to geo-engineering or reverting the economy to a time when there was mass poverty, disease and starvation, and given that warming predictions haven't panned out, I'm grateful economists haven't concluded anything.
Sorry, the "they" was too vague, I meant politicians. There are many in Congress that don't believe that climate change even exists. It seems that most scientists believe that it is the case though.
>At one point or another, this argument for civil liberties gets repetitive and overblown. No one I know has ever felt like their freedoms were at stake
Really? Make that one person, but there are surely more.
>Who are we to judge corruption, and what sources of information do we really have?
Who are a bunch of flawed humans to judge anything? Physics operates on a totally open system of merit. Economics as well. Doctors are directly responsible to reality. These are sciences. Government is not a science, and it is an intention of the system that the people should be able to evaluate it. From The Federalist #51:
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."
Incidentally, we do not "leave medicine to the doctors" in any realistic sense -- there are numerous byzantine legal controls on the medical profession, such as, for example, the FDA. To "leave medicine to the doctors" would be to abolish the FDA, medical malpractice litigation, patient privacy laws, etc.
>Hacking into their servers, getting people fired (and therefore replacing them with less experienced people), and leaking sensitive information so the uneducated public can get their opinions in, is -NOT- going to solve anything. At all. Ever.
Ultimately, experience is not a guarantee of competence or even a strong indicator in most fields, be it physics or government. Programming is a notable exception.
>I don't agree with a lot of the things that various government organizations are allegedly doing either. However, I also understand that I probably don't have all the facts. I also know that even if I had all the facts, I would probably not commit much time to analyzing all of them, in order to make a sound decision on the best course of action. Why don't other people realize this?
I realize it about you, specifically. Would you argue that because of their positions, the heads of the DEA and TSA are necessarily more competent than the vast number of medical, legal, and security experts who argue that their actions are often unnecessary and unjustified? There are people outside the government capable -- perhaps superbly so -- of analyzing the merit of government action.
It is also somewhat if not extremely naive to assume that government officials make decisions from a competent and ethical stance, and that "mistakes" are indeed a result of circumstances rather than malice or neglect. Is it naive to assume a majority of legislators are corrupt? It doesn't matter -- it is possible to look at the evidence, so assumptions are largely unnecessary. When a serious Presidential contender argues that Paul Revere rode to "warn the British", the legitimacy of government can scarcely be assumed.
>Really? Make that one person, but there are surely more.
What liberties do you feel are at stake? Do you feel oppressed - that suddenly your rights may be taken away? Could you expand? I currently have no idea why you would feel this way.
>Who are a bunch of flawed humans to judge anything? Physics operates on a totally open system of merit. Economics as well. Doctors are directly responsible to reality. These are sciences. Government is not a science, and it is an intention of the system that the people should be able to evaluate it.
Flawed humans can judge the things which we have expertise over. Business is not a science either, but in many partnerships, one trusts the opinions of the other simply because they have more experience. You're right, that government is not a science. Yet, that doesn't eliminate the possibility of experts being better versed than the majority of people who have an opinion on the matter.
>Incidentally, we do not "leave medicine to the doctors" in any realistic sense -- there are numerous byzantine legal controls on the medical profession, such as, for example, the FDA. To "leave medicine to the doctors" would be to abolish the FDA
The FDA is a regulating body, kind of like the government. Now, what if they're also corrupt? Unlike government issues, we don't (I know some do, yes) apply as much pressure on the FDA because most people realize they don't understand how complex chemicals work. Yet, they think they understand complex social initiatives because it's more 'down to earth'.
> Ultimately, experience is not a guarantee of competence or even a strong indicator in most fields, be it physics or government.
Agreed, without objection. Yet, how do we know the replacement will be more competent? If we miss that mark, it'll just be someone of the same competency (with slight deviation), without the 20 years of mistakes to learn from. I remember working with an electrical engineer, who pointed out a large amount of issues that no degree of competence could have foreseen - because he had been in the field for so long.
> I realize it about you, specifically. Would you argue that because of their positions, the heads of the DEA and TSA are necessarily more competent than the vast number of medical, legal, and security experts who argue that their actions are often unnecessary and unjustified? There are people outside the government capable -- perhaps superbly so -- of analyzing the merit of government action.
Sure, but how do we identify who is right, out of the thousands of people who are wrong? I'm not arguing that the government is perfect. I'm simply saying it might be the most practical system.
>Yet, they think they understand complex social initiatives because it's more 'down to earth'.
To what precisely do you refer? Most people defer to someone who makes coherent arguments for their positions, rather than using gunpowder. The former group usually consists of experts.
If I don't have the greatest grip on airport security, that doesn't mean I can't defer to Bruce Schneier because I find his argument more coherent than John Pistole.
>Sure, but how do we identify who is right, out of the thousands of people who are wrong? I'm not arguing that the government is perfect. I'm simply saying it might be the most practical system.
In the end, the same way we choose who gets into the government in the first place -- popular opinion. This is not to say that popular opinion is always right, and in fact it is quite often wrong, but people are generally swayed by logic, and it just so happens that things which are close to the truth tend to be more convincing that utter lies. The responsibility of the government to popular opinion is the foundation of any democracy.
(Of course, I, as an individual, make judgments using logic, not popular opinion -- this much is clear -- but I am not a particularly special individual)
I was pretty angry about the above case you pointed out as well, but I do not believe it is a general descriptor for the majority of incidents. In any case, I understand the point you're making, and appreciate the clarification.
> In the end, the same way we choose who gets into the government in the first place -- popular opinion. This is not to say that popular opinion is always right, and in fact it is quite often wrong, but people are generally swayed by logic, and it just so happens that things which are close to the truth tend to be more convincing that utter lies. The responsibility of the government to popular opinion is the foundation of any democracy.
If we're using popular opinion, then I feel it'll just be government 2.0.
The point I really disagree with is: people are generally swayed by logic. That's not true. People are generally swayed by emotion - and there's a clear distinction. The best example of this is in hypnosis, where hypnotists induce a change in emotional state in order to break down barriers.
In any case, thanks for the discussion - it's made me consider some new views.
Well, obviously. That's the point. Government 1.0 sucks.
>The point I really disagree with is: people are generally swayed by logic. That's not true. People are generally swayed by emotion
These are not mutually exclusive. In general, humans try to be consistent -- hence the rise of philosophy multiple independent times in multiple independent cultures.
Is this necessarily to do with giving information to the uneducated public?
Most of the public will not do anything with this information, but I will tell you who will respond: their shareholders and more dangerously their competitors.
I don't agree with a lot of the things that various government organizations are allegedly doing either. However, I also understand that I probably don't have all the facts. I also know that even if I had all the facts, I would probably not commit much time to analyzing all of them, in order to make a sound decision on the best course of action. Why don't other people realize this?
We leave the economics to the economists, the physics to the physicists, and the medicine to the doctors. There are people--incompetent or not--who spend their entire lives dealing with government/country related issues. Yes, some of them might be corrupt, but are we naive enough to believe that an entire country is corrupt? Who are we to judge corruption, and what sources of information do we really have?
At one point or another, this argument for civil liberties gets repetitive and overblown. No one I know has ever felt like their freedoms were at stake, and the few government mistakes that the media captures should not be precedence to act against them. I make mistakes, you make mistakes - everyone makes mistakes. Hacking into their servers, getting people fired (and therefore replacing them with less experienced people), and leaking sensitive information so the uneducated public can get their opinions in, is -NOT- going to solve anything. At all. Ever.
Edit: Edited out a preface - wasn't aware. Sorry.