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Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

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Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#161

Post by nonrandomstring »

keiferski wrote: post #98

Philosophy warning: I don't know if there is a term for it, or if a philosopher/etc. has written about this phenomenon, but: a noticeable trend to me is what I'll call "the replacement of ethical expectations with specific, written down laws." Rather than expecting a human being to behave in certain ways intrinsically (i.e., normative ethics ) we tend to assume they will behave in the worst way possible, and then pas…

I think one word you might be looking for is "technocracy" [0]

Although the Wikipedia definition focuses on the appointment of experts to political power, there is an attendant dehumanisation where technical and legal approaches to everything replace human values.

Another important term might be "instrumental reason" [1]. This goes beyond simple quantitative utilitarianism to declare all areas of human discourse and relations as quantifiable, measurable and logically decidable.

My personal opinion is that way beyond Neil Postman's "Technopoly" we actually have a fully fledged new religion in which technological values have not _replaced_ ethical discourse, they are the new ethical discourse.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationality-instrumental/

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#162

Post by keiferski »

aidenn0 wrote: post #144
keiferski wrote: post #98

Philosophy warning: I don't know if there is a term for it, or if a philosopher/etc. has written about this phenomenon, but: a noticeable trend to me is what I'll call "the replacement of ethical expectations with specific, written down laws." Rather than expecting a human being to behave in certain ways intrinsically (i.e., normative ethics ) we tend to assume they will behave in the worst way possible, and then pas…

> Rather than expecting a human being to behave in certain ways intrinsically (i.e., normative ethics) we tend to assume they will behave in the worst way possible, and then pass laws to supposedly prevent that behavior from manifesting. This is a necessary consequence of civilization. If you have a city of 8 million people, then you have 80,000 people in the bottom percentile of behavior by normative ethics. If some…

Sure, but it seems like enforce these ethical behaviors and punish the bottom 1% that goes against them is just as much of a solution as redesign society and the environment so that everyone can't act like that 1%.

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#163

Post by stuartjohnson12 »

keiferski wrote: post #148
2024throwaway wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> religious or ethical norms Truly confused why `religious` norms come into play here.

Because the modern Western world is in a "religion hangover" where it wants to reject all outwardly religious ideas, while simultaneously denying that a) religions have been the foundation of pretty much all ethical behavior since the beginning of civilization and b) many supposedly secular belief systems are really just extensions of religious ones with the "I believe in..." statement cut off.

I think the important distinction is not similarity/distance as a vector of meaning, but the ability to update those vectors in response to new data.

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#164

Post by maerF0x0 »

ytx wrote: post #143
keiferski wrote: post #98

Philosophy warning: I don't know if there is a term for it, or if a philosopher/etc. has written about this phenomenon, but: a noticeable trend to me is what I'll call "the replacement of ethical expectations with specific, written down laws." Rather than expecting a human being to behave in certain ways intrinsically (i.e., normative ethics ) we tend to assume they will behave in the worst way possible, and then pas…

I think it's partially a size/scale problem. If 1000 people have access to flipper zeroes, the probability of an unethical actor might be low, and normative ethics may be enough. But if 1 million people have access to flipper zeroes, the probability of at least 1 bad actor is high, and laws/enforcement/deterrents must be enacted, even if the baseline ethical rate is still high.

And the crux of the argument is whether you believe the law will prevent the bad actor from acquiring one or not. Or if the law will only prevent the other 999 law abiding ones. Personally, my take/view on it is that (deeply) unethical people are going to break the laws regardless of what society says or encodes. This probably is a commentary on the failures of policing to enact what we've encoded in law. Part of it being a problem that many laws are overstated (eg It's illegal to own a flipper zero vs It's illegal to use a flipper zero on someone else's car without permission) ...

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#165

Post by engineer_22 »

eunos wrote: post #130
keiferski wrote: post #98

Philosophy warning: I don't know if there is a term for it, or if a philosopher/etc. has written about this phenomenon, but: a noticeable trend to me is what I'll call "the replacement of ethical expectations with specific, written down laws." Rather than expecting a human being to behave in certain ways intrinsically (i.e., normative ethics ) we tend to assume they will behave in the worst way possible, and then pas…

>My theory is that this is a consequence of relativism and the general cultural exhaustion Western society seems to have with enforcing any sort of religious or ethical norms. Uhh noo, this philosophy already there as old as Chinese Legalism ca 400 BC

OP is talking about western culture - there is no Chinese Legalism tradition in Western Culture so yours is a red herring.

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#166

Post by Draiken »

keiferski wrote: post #133
sokoloff wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would "enforcing any sort of religious or ethical norms" look like in a society that used those methods to effectively prevent the exploitation of vehicle owners by car thieves?

The obvious answer would be to harshly punish theft via jail time/etc., but that's sort of not my point, and I don't think that's actually the root issue. Because it's more that stealing cars is apparently an acceptable activity for a lot of people to do. By acceptable , I mean socially, to friends, to family members, to themselves. That seems like a major societal failing to me, much moreso than "this car isn't desi…

That makes zero sense to me.

Theft is not acceptable by any means. People that steal do so by several motives, most commonly because they feel like they have to due to poverty, addiction, etc.

You also already get punished for it with harsh penalties. But no matter how dystopian a government gets, it can't guarantee 100% enforcement of any law.

To fix that, we'd have to create a society that takes care of those motives that drive theft, so it doesn't happen anymore.

Unfortunately that will never exist in our current society.

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#167

Post by newsclues »

acdha wrote: post #88
newsclues wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are computers now. What do we know about computer security and physical access? If I can touch the machine, I can hack and own it. No level of technology will stop this. But cutting off the profit motive by making it very hard to export cars will have a massive impact on these crimes, and for old and new cars.

> What do we know about computer security and physical access? If I can touch the machine, I can hack and own it. It’s not the 2000s any more. Even national security agencies have trouble with phone decryption, and that suggests a path forward for cars using a tamper-resistant secure element since car thieves won’t spend more money attacking something than they can resell it for. Cars need service regularly you can h…

They get exported overseas and any technology lock or security device gets ripped out and replaced.

This isn’t about extracting encrypted data, but bypassing systems to start a car.

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#169

Post by nativeit »

MikeSchurman wrote: post #149
keiferski wrote: post #98

Philosophy warning: I don't know if there is a term for it, or if a philosopher/etc. has written about this phenomenon, but: a noticeable trend to me is what I'll call "the replacement of ethical expectations with specific, written down laws." Rather than expecting a human being to behave in certain ways intrinsically (i.e., normative ethics ) we tend to assume they will behave in the worst way possible, and then pas…

Ishmael or My Ishmael touches on this subject. Thank you for reminding me. I forget exactly, but, the basic idea is primitive people didn't have all these laws about what to do. They expected you to behave, and if you did not, the tribe did not necessarily punish you, they taught you and made it right somehow (justice). Any MY description does not give this idea justice, so I need to go back and find the reference in…

Good pull. I used to obsess over Daniel Quinn’s novels. They’re kind of perfect for the college kid finding philosophy for the first time.

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#170

Post by solardev »

keiferski wrote: post #98

Philosophy warning: I don't know if there is a term for it, or if a philosopher/etc. has written about this phenomenon, but: a noticeable trend to me is what I'll call "the replacement of ethical expectations with specific, written down laws." Rather than expecting a human being to behave in certain ways intrinsically (i.e., normative ethics ) we tend to assume they will behave in the worst way possible, and then pas…

That may be a slight oversimplification? I think there's whole fields dedicated to these questions, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_law?wprov=sfla1 or the overarching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics?wprov=sfla1, with overlaps into sociology and anthropology.

Not all societies are so law-heavy, especially the ones that are more shame-driven: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt%E2%80%93shame%E2%80%93fe.... As a random example, Japan during the pandemic had a really high mask wearing rate despite it not being a legal requirement; there was just a strong social expectation for it.

That's not to say that their approach was better or worse than the West's, just that different societies will naturally evolve different means to regulate group behavior.

Families, villages, cities, states, nations, cults, religions, companies, departments, teams... every community has their own framework for defining and moderating acceptable behavior, and sometimes they can be more important than the national laws, or may be just one variable in a complex algorithm of behavior.

It just depends.

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