TLDR: P ≠ NP
It's not proven that anything in TFA is actually NP.
Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms
251–260 of 281 posts
Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
ANU claims to have a quantum number generator available over the internet for free http://qrng.anu.edu.au/index.php Interfaces in several languages already available, including an F# interface I published yesterday https://github.com/jackfoxy/RandomBitsSolution I'm not qualified to judge the efficacy of the ANU generator, but I suspect it is good.
Thanks for that; good sources of random numbers are always appreciated.
3 <- chosen by fair dice roll
Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Cory Doctorow's talk at Google, he said that all routers today have interception technology in them. It's only a matter of being enabled or not in some countries or in others. But it seems so many have asked for it, that they don't even bother to build routers without that interception technology in them, so now their default router has interception built-in by default. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbYXBJOFgeI
Sigh. Routers are an interception technology.
Routers are a routing technology.
Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your argument is a non sequitur: states are necessary, therefore states are not systems through which coercive force flows. If you want to argue that states are necessary, fine. But call a spade a spade. Can you imagine a state that doesn't wield violence? That's what a state is . The lack of clarity on this issue leads to a lot of bad conclusions. When we argue that the state should solve any particular problem, we…
How do you measure the is-ness of the state? By it's budgetary expenditures? Many existent states (like Canada) have relatively small military budgets. For them, wielding or even threatening to wield violence is not their primary reason for being. Their primary reason for being is to ensure the health and welfare of their citizens, and they do so not by threat of violence, but by collection and distribution of taxes…
"Many existent states (like Canada) have relatively small military budgets. For them, wielding or even threatening to wield violence is not their primary reason for being. Their primary reason for being is to ensure the health and welfare of their citizens, and they do so not by threat of violence, but by collection and distribution of taxes and passing of laws."
The definition of a state as an institution which wields a geographic monopoly on violence is agnostic towards the "purpose" of the state. The definition concerns the means not the ends of the state. The goals of states are diverse and change over time, but their fundamental principles of operation do not.
"The vast majority of people in most democratic societies do not require the threat of arrest and imprisonment to follow the majority of laws."
Consider if this statement would remain true (and if so, for how long) if the threat of state violence were not present.
Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can vote, and that is proportionally meaningful. Want more say, convince more people to agree with you. You have zero say about anything criminals do. There is a vast difference.
That's simply not true. The odds of my own actions being able to prevent or interrupt a common criminal are vastly higher than the odds of a single vote affecting the outcome of any but the smallest local election. Again, proportions simply do not matter to the victim of violence. Like I said, if DEA agent busts down my door and shoots me, it is absolutely no consolation or justification that >50% of voters approve o…
> The odds of my own actions being able to prevent or interrupt a common criminal are vastly higher than the odds of a single vote affecting the outcome of any but the smallest local election.
I'm not talking about a crime; I'm talking about government rule vs warlord rule. And the issue is which most people prefer, not which allows you a better chance to disobey.
> Again, proportions simply do not matter to the victim of violence. Like I said, if DEA agent busts down my door and shoots me, it is absolutely no consolation or justification that >50% of voters approve of drug prohibition.
It absolutely is consolation and justification for the majority of people who support that policy. You might not like it; but individual liberty is not unlimited and the will of society, right or wrong, beats the pants off any other form of government we've found.
> If you propose the question "is it okay for a robber to take 30% of my paycheck as long as 51% of my community is okay with it?" most people will say "of course not!," but if you propose the exact same question, but with "a robber" to "the government," most people will say "yes of course that's okay."
The robber is taking something without giving something back; the government is taking their share of your wages for services rendered to you as a citizen. Completely different situations.
Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's important simply to be aware of how things work. I certainly wasn't advocating libertarianism or even any other political position.
The thing is that the violence-based perspective isn't "how things work". It's simply one way to explain how things work, and it's a wildly ineffective one with a bare minimum of explanatory power: enough, mostly, to set up a false dichotomy between "bad violent people, i.e. amoral men in black with guns" and "you, who are totally not a violent person but would be only if forced, right?"
I didn't say that the violence-based perspective is how things work, I said that it's important to understand how things work and the implication there in my mind was that the violence-based perspective is an important part of that. I thought it was just too obvious to mention that there are many lenses through which to see the world.
For me, the way to refute Assange's point that states depend on violence and are therefore bad is not to say no they don't, or that that's not a useful perspective, but rather, "Look at the wondrous things we can build using our ability to marshal force effectively."
When I first heard about this violence-based perspective, it threw into question the notions of society and in particular human rights that I had from my high school education, because as you say, we have this internalized notion that violence is bad.
But now that I understand that rights really are just agreements between people that are brought into existence by violence, it actually makes me glad to have this violence around, and I don't see it as a universally bad thing. Nevertheless, I would prefer a society in which there is as little violence as possible, but I'm not by any means convinced that the answer there is "less state".
Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's simply not true. The odds of my own actions being able to prevent or interrupt a common criminal are vastly higher than the odds of a single vote affecting the outcome of any but the smallest local election. Again, proportions simply do not matter to the victim of violence. Like I said, if DEA agent busts down my door and shoots me, it is absolutely no consolation or justification that >50% of voters approve o…
> The odds of my own actions being able to prevent or interrupt a common criminal are vastly higher than the odds of a single vote affecting the outcome of any but the smallest local election. I'm not talking about a crime; I'm talking about government rule vs warlord rule. And the issue is which most people prefer, not which allows you a better chance to disobey. > Again, proportions simply do not matter to the vict…
> It absolutely is consolation and justification for the majority of people who support that policy.
Yes, but not for the victim of the policy. Slavery used to be approved by the vast majority of society.
> You might not like it; but individual liberty is not unlimited and the will of society, right or wrong, beats the pants off any other form of government we've found.
I don't like it, and I don't want to replace it with another form of government. My whole point in this thread has been that government actions are indistinguishable from actions which are widely accepted to be crimes, except that government has convinced society that its actions are acceptable.
> The robber is taking something without giving something back; the government is taking their share of your wages for services rendered to you as a citizen. Completely different situations.
Fine then, change my analogy to a robber that takes 30% of your paycheck, uses part of it to blow up some people in other countries, part of it to feed the poor, part of it to pay prison companies to contain nonviolent criminals, and part of it to build some roads.
Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms
#258Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
He offered to be questioned from the embassy, where he cannot be extradited from. Officials said no. He offered to go in for questioning under the condition that it was agreed that there would be no extradition. Officials said no. So he sought asylum in the embassy under the pretense that he would otherwise face torture and death at the hands of the United States. Ecuador agreed that this was a valid concern, so they…
I don't remember the reason for the first one, but in regards to the second line item, I am told that again, their legal process simply does not allow them to make such promises. Honestly, to me it looks a lot like Assange's argument boils down to, "I've asked for special treatment, but they won't give it to me. Clearly, they are conspiring against me."
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Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The odds of my own actions being able to prevent or interrupt a common criminal are vastly higher than the odds of a single vote affecting the outcome of any but the smallest local election. I'm not talking about a crime; I'm talking about government rule vs warlord rule. And the issue is which most people prefer, not which allows you a better chance to disobey. > Again, proportions simply do not matter to the vict…
> It absolutely is consolation and justification for the majority of people who support that policy. Yes, but not for the victim of the policy. Slavery used to be approved by the vast majority of society. > You might not like it; but individual liberty is not unlimited and the will of society, right or wrong, beats the pants off any other form of government we've found. I don't like it, and I don't want to replace it…
> except that government has convinced society that its actions are acceptable.
Government is society, we are our government, it is not some entity that has tricked everyone. It does what it does because open your eyes and look around, people want it doing those things.