Maybe I'm just old, but I still think wearing headphones conveys a detached air. My reaction isn't as strong as the 1981 interview, but it's there. Anyone else feel that way?
Ideally you'd want to be running Tor with transparent proxying of all traffic on a physically separate (and locked down) host. I believe there are guides on how to do all that on a raspberry pi out there.
On your primary browsing/whatever machine, I believe (but have not exhaustively researched) that it would still make sense to run inside a VM/container, because that would provide a much more 'generic' set of system characteristics (MAC address, clock jitter stats, CPUinfo, etc) than your actual hardware. It does provide a greater attack surface, so you'd have to weigh up the value of potentially masking physical identity vs likelihood of gaining root due to VM exploits.
There's also the risk of overconfidence because of these measures, which might lead you to overlook important details in the host OS, or in your communication habits.
An excellent summary. Trying to get everyone in China to speak Mandarin would be like getting everyone in Europe to speak English. It will never be 100% unless you obliterate other languages.
Should Obama be held responsible for the actions of his Naval officers if he declares we should pursue missile strikes in Syria?
I mean, saying something and then your fans going overboard is one thing. But everytime 'dickwolves' gets mentioned the fanatics pull out the big guns again... maybe at some point Gabe and Tycho should anticipate that women out there will be the target of those same fanatics if they push the D.W. button again?
If I say something that offends a certain religion and those people burn down a building in response, and I knew they would do that, am I responsible for that?
I used to think so -- if I didn't do X then bad thing Y wouldn't happen, so I could stop it, right? -- but it was some liberal friends of mine who convinced me otherwise. All you can be responsible for is yourself.
Point taken, and I actually try to preach that mantra myself. But I agree with jlgreco about the greater credibility our law seems to give to public figures with regard to incitement.
Certainly it's a problem I'm glad that I don't have to worry about, and I feel bad for Gabe in that regard just like I tend to pity many celebrity figures who just want their privacy back. :-/
This is a nice piece of self-help advice, but it's a self-delusory trick to reduce the level of mental insanity that comes from a full acknowledgement of responsibility.
Keep in mind that you're presuming a direct chain of cause and effect from your offensive words to the building-burning. When there isn't such a direct chain, then you have a much less direct responsibility. Which is the point. The strength of your agency in the causality is precisely what obligates you to make a meaningful decision.
If you didn't know that committing a diff would result in someone losing all their money, then it's not really your fault. But if you did, then it is.
It's liberalism's most detestable idiocy that everyone really is an island unto themselves and fuck the promontory that sinks into the sea. If you ever speak to anyone with the intent of persuading them at all, even if it's an evangelical-style "if only you'd read the Bible, you'd recognize that Jesus is your savior" except with facts and figures, you're somewhat responsible for the consequences of that persuasion.
I'm not convinced that we can map the ethics used with situations involving the military chain of command to situations involving informal mobs.
Now, we still have concepts like "inciting imminent lawless action" that are fairly non-controversial, so clearly there is at least some sense of blaming people who tell others to go make a mess, but I don't think that is nearly as clear-cut as your example.
Along the same vein: "The proposed speaker works for a university and/or has a phD or other bona fide high level scientific qualification". Many of the points they list are valid, but this conspicuous appeal to authority makes me much less inclined to watch the talks.
The TED folks are definitely not making an argument from authority; if they were they would say: all things said by people with scientific bona fides are true and you can't question them.
Instead, they're correctly observing that there's a correlation between scientific bona fides and scientifically accurate speakers. And that organizers will be better off if they use that as one rule of thumb in evaluating speakers, which is also true.
You only see an argument from authority because you've reduced their argument to a straw man. The purpose of TEDx isn't to be a final arbiter of all things true; it's just to surface things that are true and interesting.
Well argued, by far the clearest rebuttal I've read so far and I concede. I just hope that the rules of thumb they listed for "good science" are prioritized as listed, because I really believe content should be the key consideration.
If they are having a problem with perpetual-motion trolls and people speaking well outside their field of expertise then it is a valid reaction. If you are speaking on an academic subject then the default should be that there be some reason to believe you are credible on that subject.
To clarify. The bullet points are listed under "Marks of Good Science". Holding a degree does not mean your publications or claims are good science. It's fine if Ted wants to only have degree holders as speakers, but they should be clear that it's a bias they've chosen, not "good science".
They're organizers of a conference, not academics. If you require them to replicate the experiment to prove it's good science, you're crippling them. It's perfectly appropriate for them to apply conservative heuristics to make their editorial load manageable, and a good heuristic is "has the appropriate academic credentials."
An appeal to an authority who is an expert in the field is not a logical fallacy. It makes complete sense to want to hear about global warming from a climate scientist.
Yes it does, but that doesn't make their arguments valid. My whole point is not to keep experts out, but to judge the content on its scientific merit alone.
Appealing to an authority is not a fallacy unless it's misapplied. Saying "I'd rather learn about X from an expert in X" is completely legitimate; it's common sense, really.
From your link:
>Although certain classes of argument from authority can constitute strong inductive arguments, the appeal to authority is often applied fallaciously: either the authority is not a subject-matter expert, or there is no consensus among experts in the subject matter, or both
