US Government Continues Encryption War • Hacker News Board

Re: US Government Continues Encryption War

#91

Post by Thorentis » Sun, Nov 08, 2020, 5:54 AM UTC

justforyou wrote: post #61

Thorentis wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think heirarchy is a natural human inclination. It's observed in every part of the animal kingdom. But it is possible to simultaneously have hierarchy and autonomy at the lowest level. Subsidiarity and distributism are the only things I am convinced will work. Every other endeavour ends up being a free-for-all (that ultimately is self destructive) or a dictorship (that eventually implodes).

The entire spectrum of human behavior is natural, as is any conceivable action no matter how immoral. The observation of a behavior or inclanation in the wild is not a good basis for the structuring of a civilization.

Like I replied elsewhere, I think because nature selects for survival, there is something to be learned from the fact that human societies always tend towards hierarchy. I am not saying we should there have as much hierarchy as possible, but I am certainly opposed to any form of anarchism (which I don't believe would last long anyway). Give anarchy a month at most, and you'll have leaders with followers popping up everywhere, which will eventually combine into a smaller number of large hierarchies.

Re: US Government Continues Encryption War

#92

Post by Thorentis » Sun, Nov 08, 2020, 5:58 AM UTC

dandanua wrote: post #50

Thorentis wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think heirarchy is a natural human inclination. It's observed in every part of the animal kingdom. But it is possible to simultaneously have hierarchy and autonomy at the lowest level. Subsidiarity and distributism are the only things I am convinced will work. Every other endeavour ends up being a free-for-all (that ultimately is self destructive) or a dictorship (that eventually implodes).

Hierarchies are natural to everything, it's pointless to fight just them. I'm specifically against subordinate relations like master-slave. In a typical firm there is a boss that commands managers, workers etc. The boss has the most power. But he is still accountable to an agreement between him and workers. He can't do "whatever he wants". In a very centralized government systems you can't make top management account…

I would be more specific and say that every worker should be at autonomous as possible. I am a big proponent of distributism. The means of production should be as widely distributed as possible. This does not mean they should be concentrated in the hands of a small number of individuals (capitalism), nor should they belong to the state (communism). A good example of distributism is workers who own their own tools (the means of their own production). Software engineers have it pretty good in this regard. But this can apply to tradespeople, factory workers that collectively own shares in machinary, etc.

Re: US Government Continues Encryption War

#93

Post by suifbwish » Sat, Nov 14, 2020, 1:28 AM UTC

tjoff wrote: post #33

suifbwish wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand how they could ban strong encryption when everyone is gearing up for quantum resistance for blockchain technology. Once you have a distributed quantum resistant system good luck on that. There are so many ways this isn’t practical. If everyone just traded back and forth weakly encrypted garbage data chunks it would be indistinguishable from strong encryption. Also you can encrypt something with wea…

How is any of that relevant? If anything strong encryption gives better support of outlawing it, from a governments perspective. The fact that you can be a lawless individual and ignore it and obfuscate everything has no bearing on the legality of it. But it does mean that if they suspect you are doing anything illegal they don't have to figure out if you and what you are doing, since your obfuscation is enough to se…

I think you missed my point. Unless they make it illegal to transmit garbage data then there is no legal leg to stand on for prosecuting the use of encryption

Re: US Government Continues Encryption War

#94

Post by 0df8dkdf » Sun, Nov 15, 2020, 6:14 PM UTC

Thorentis wrote: post #90

leto_ii wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think heirarchy is a natural human inclination. It's observed in every part of the animal kingdom. I have two main objections to this line of thinking: 1. Even if a tendency or behavior can occur in "nature", that doesn't necessarily make it correct. By that measure murder, infanticide, rape etc. should also be considered acceptable since they occur in nature (both with humans and animals). 2. If you take a look…

1. Yes, agree, but this just depends on your opinion of what is "correct". Nature selects for survival, not correctness. I think rigid hierarchy is more advantageous for overall survival, but I am not advocating for that. I think there is something significant about the fact that humans almost always tend towards hierarchy (Lord of the Flies illustrates this). 2. I agree that large scale beauracracies are not in the…

> I think rigid hierarchy is more advantageous for overall survival

I can see how one can see it that way, it is probably what those who rigging the game were thinking when they first started, and like the saying goes "those who play a rigged game gets stupid over a long period of time". That's probably why empires collapse, too much corruption and too many people playing the rigged game. A rigged game kinda corrupt workability of the whole system. The short term advantage may not be so good in the long run.