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Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

nytimes.com

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Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#191

Post by jdmichal »

coldtea wrote: post #189
jdmichal wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> E.g. if I say "A is good for everybody, for X,Y,Z reasons" and I do the opposite of A, then the possibility of A really being good for everybody is somewhat lessened by the prior that "the person proposing A does not follow A". "It's good for you to not smoke. Now excuse me while I take my smoke break."

I'm not sure what is the example supposed to prove. That what I said doesn't always hold? Of course it doesn't. That's why I wrote about possibilities, and only said that the prior that the person preaching X doesn't follow X "somewhat lessens" the possibility that X is true. I never said that someone "preaching X and doing the opposite" proves that X is not true. If I had said that, your example would be a valid ref…

My point is that this thinking is a fallacy precisely because it is orthogonal to the argument being made. It is neither evidence for nor against the argument. You are making some sort of argument for heuristics, but heuristics are called such precisely because they are not solutions.

The correct answer is to independently validate the claims, or evaluate the merits of an argument on their own ground. That's tedious and often not worth the effort, and that's OK. We use heuristics all the time -- you don't ask your friend for his proof, because you use the heuristic of trust instead. But at least acknowledge that it's a heuristic and stop trying to claim it as a solution.

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#192

Post by stcredzero »

coldtea wrote: post #190
stcredzero wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thus it is enlightening to know if an argument for A is being made hypocritically, to evaluate the possibility of A being true in a wider context. That sounds like logic, but it makes much less sense than it sounds. So you're saying it's good to examine the hypocrisy of someone's argument, because of the possibility that there's contradictory facts or implications that the arguer is holding back on us? Not only is th…

> So you're saying it's good to examine the hypocrisy of someone's argument, because of the possibility that there's contradictory facts or implications that the arguer is holding back on us? Yes. > Not only is that also ad-hominem it's a fuzzy half-logical ad-hominem. It's also correct, and a pragmatic way to find hidden motives in real life.

It's also correct, and a pragmatic way

You're contradicting yourself right here, in a way that seems to indicate that you don't understand the important difference between these two circumstances.

Something that's pragmatic is merely mostly correct or most of the time correct. One could say the same thing about racial stereotypes in the US -- which is to say that heuristics shouldn't be treated as an argument. It's only at best a starting point. Quitting at that point is the worst kind of mental laziness.

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#193

Post by microtherion »

stillsut wrote: post #180
microtherion wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, don't worry! Thiel merely wants to shut down worthless, trashy publications like Gawker, and the presidential candidate he supports merely wants to shut down worthless, trashy publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post. Valuable, classy publications who adopt the proper fellatory posture toward their betters have nothing to fear whatsoever.

Perhaps you should look into the Citizen's United court case. Who was the plaintiff? Hillary Clinton. And what was she seeking to accomplish? Prevent the release of a movie which criticized her political career.

Hint: the case was named "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission". What does that tell you about who the plaintiff was?

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#194

Post by dragonwriter »

microtherion wrote: post #193
stillsut wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you should look into the Citizen's United court case. Who was the plaintiff? Hillary Clinton. And what was she seeking to accomplish? Prevent the release of a movie which criticized her political career.

Hint: the case was named "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission". What does that tell you about who the plaintiff was?

> Hint: the case was named "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission". What does that tell you about who the plaintiff was?

Very little, actually, because Supreme Court case title orders don't tell you who the plaintiff vs. defendant is, they tell you who filed the appeal from the case below. (However, it does tell you that Hillary Clinton wasn't the plaintiff, since she is neither "Citizens United" nor the "Federal Election Commission".)

However, in this case, the plaintiff below was the appellant, so...

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#195

Post by coldtea »

jdmichal wrote: post #184
coldtea wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's kind of what ad hominem is... Discredit the argument by discrediting the arguer. The thing is, that has zero effect on whether the argument is valid or not. In real life the content of an argument isn't the only think that matters. The motives of the arguer are also important -- what they're trying to achieve/sell by using it etc. That's because people don't only offer their arguments to have other people di…

If I'm trying to sell you a high-efficiency AC unit, I will assert that it's a high-efficiency AC unit that will reduce your monthly bills, so you should buy it. You answer back that of course I would say you should buy it, because I'm selling it... Except that has absolutely zero impact on the fact that the AC unit is high-efficiency thereby will save you money. This is why ad hominem is a fallacy. It provides zero…

>If I'm trying to sell you a high-efficiency AC unit, I will assert that it's a high-efficiency AC unit that will reduce your monthly bills, so you should buy it. You answer back that of course I would say you should buy it, because I'm selling it... Except that has absolutely zero impact on the fact that the AC unit is high-efficiency thereby will save you money.

I'm not suggesting you "answer back" anything -- I'm suggesting that you should check if the person praising something has hidden motives.

In fact, I'm saying something even more obvious: if a person praises something, and they don't seem particularly fond of having it or practicing it, then be suspicious.

As for selling something, it is already a great motive to make people lie and present the facts in a distorted way, withhold precious information, etc about a product. It happens EVERY single day in millions of stores, showrooms, ads, etc.

If you are only trying to evaluate the product based on what the seller tells you, you'll be duped. Even if it's 100% true in itself.

>It provides zero evidence for or against an argument. It's completely orthogonal.

Arguments in real life do not live in some platonic ideal sphere, isolated from everything else.

They intermingle with all kinds of "completely orthogonal" things.

Sometimes, judging the person making the argument, and their motives, is even more important (and insightful) than judging the argument.

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#196

Post by jdmichal »

coldtea wrote: post #195
jdmichal wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm trying to sell you a high-efficiency AC unit, I will assert that it's a high-efficiency AC unit that will reduce your monthly bills, so you should buy it. You answer back that of course I would say you should buy it, because I'm selling it... Except that has absolutely zero impact on the fact that the AC unit is high-efficiency thereby will save you money. This is why ad hominem is a fallacy. It provides zero…

> If I'm trying to sell you a high-efficiency AC unit, I will assert that it's a high-efficiency AC unit that will reduce your monthly bills, so you should buy it. You answer back that of course I would say you should buy it, because I'm selling it... Except that has absolutely zero impact on the fact that the AC unit is high-efficiency thereby will save you money. I'm not suggesting you "answer back" anything -- I'm…

> If you are only trying to evaluate the product based on what the seller tells you, you'll be duped. Even if it's 100% true in itself.

I never advised that, but nice strawman. I advised to evaluate the arguments on their own ground. This AC is efficient and will save you money -- that is something you can independently verify, if it's important to you to do so. And if you're buying an AC and you care about efficiency, that seems like the type of thing you should care to do.

That doesn't mean that you should automatically distrust a salesman. It also doesn't mean you should trust them, though apparently that's a dichotomy that exists for you. It's a null input -- there's zero actionable information if what you care about is buying an efficient AC.

> Sometimes, judging the person making the argument, and their motives, is even more important (and insightful) than judging the argument.

That's fine... If your goal is to gain insight into a person and their motives. If your goal is to judge their argument, then it's absolute and complete fallacy.

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#197

Post by coldtea »

jdmichal wrote: post #196
coldtea wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I'm trying to sell you a high-efficiency AC unit, I will assert that it's a high-efficiency AC unit that will reduce your monthly bills, so you should buy it. You answer back that of course I would say you should buy it, because I'm selling it... Except that has absolutely zero impact on the fact that the AC unit is high-efficiency thereby will save you money. I'm not suggesting you "answer back" anything -- I'm…

> If you are only trying to evaluate the product based on what the seller tells you, you'll be duped. Even if it's 100% true in itself. I never advised that, but nice strawman. I advised to evaluate the arguments on their own ground. This AC is efficient and will save you money -- that is something you can independently verify, if it's important to you to do so. And if you're buying an AC and you care about efficienc…

>This AC is efficient and will save you money -- that is something you can independently verify, if it's important to you to do so. And if you're buying an AC and you care about efficiency, that seems like the type of thing you should care to do.

Another AC might be just as efficient. Or maybe I just don't even need an AC and while the numbers are all true, they're overselling the benefits. Merely finding out whether a particular model they're trying to sell me is as efficient as they say doesn't help me evaluate their suggestion in the broader context.

>That doesn't mean that you should automatically distrust a salesman. It also doesn't mean you should trust them, though apparently that's a dichotomy that exists for you. It's a null input -- there's zero actionable information if what you care about is buying an efficient AC.

I'm not sure how we got to the salesmen example.

The example I initially gave was about distrusting people that say "X is good for you", but do not follow X themselves -- and about distrusting X for that.

Whereas distrusting doesn't mean "X is thus bad, period", means "you should better investigate X, something seems fishy".

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#198

Post by 20yrs_no_equity »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #125
nikcheerla wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accusations of cognitive dissonance are fruitless – there's a sizable block of 'gay conservative Christians' who probably think that you're experiencing cognitive dissonance and that their beliefs make sens given their worldview.

I'm sure that's true about many, perhaps most gay conservative Christians. But Thiel is demonstrably a smart, capable, and educated person, which makes it all the more impressive that his worldview can apparently accommodate what amounts to wizardry, manifested through a dizzying array of fables whose magical interpretation violate both common sense and Occam's razor to a degree I can hardly begin to express. I can u…

The "culture war" is this idea that just because we are gay we're supposed to be democrats.

But you're ignoring that Hillary Clinton was campaigning against gay marriage from 1991-2013, basically up until the Supreme Court made the issue moot. It was Bill Clinton, with 3/4 of Congressional Democrats support who signed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 -- the last year I considered my self a Democrat.

Not everyone who is a republican is a christian. I happen to be an atheist libertarian.

Putting me in box, labelling it and then insisting that I must be experiencing "cognitive dissonance" if I'm not a democrat is ... not exactly a rational argument.

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#199

Post by 20yrs_no_equity »

r00fus wrote: post #171
maverick_iceman wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peter Thiel is the bad guy because he is a libertarian who took down Left's darling Gawker. That's why all the lefties are so butthurt.

Gawker was a pain in the ass. No one I know liked them. But they didn't deserve to be put out of business because they crossed a billionaire. That's why "so called lefties" are up in arms about this. Peter Thiel intend to be untouchable. He proposes blood transfusions from young people [1], and wants to live forever. I daresay his entire motive seems at odds with social contract.

Well, article 4 of section 3 of my copy of the social contract disagrees completely.

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#200

Post by 20yrs_no_equity »

spdustin wrote: post #105
serge2k wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> presidential candidate he supports So if Thiel was a democrat then none of this would be a problem?

That's not it, and I think you know it. If Thiel supported any candidate that championed the importance of the press to an informed electorate, it would be better. But right now, he supports a candidate who openly states his desire to strip citizens, in this example the press, of their constitutional rights.

Citation required.
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