Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Benjamin Franklin’s alter egos gave him the most freedom

smithsonianmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 89 posts

Re: Benjamin Franklin’s alter egos gave him the most freedom

#21

Post by hdgvhicv »

embedding-shape wrote: post #20
Animats wrote: post #18

Most of the Founders published under pseudonyms, even after the Revolution. Hamilton, Madison, Jay, Franklin - all had pseudonyms for their political writings. The Federalist papers were signed "Publius". What Franklin did was in no way unusual for that group. In the US, anonymous speech is considered a core part of free expression, and is treated as a First Amendment right. That's a US perspective, stemming from US…

> That's a US perspective, stemming from US history. EU rights as to anonymous speech are weaker, It's interesting that on one hand you're right, in the US, anonymous speech receives near-absolute protection. In the EU, it's more of a "qualified right" than so absolute. But, on the other hand, in our modern age, EU seems better at defending against mandating backdoors or weakening end-to-end encryption violates the r…

US free speech is qualified too - just in different ways.

And even when free speech is protected, it doesn’t stop you receiving the consequences log being arrested or losing your job and home.

Re: Benjamin Franklin’s alter egos gave him the most freedom

#22

Post by [deleted] »

Animats wrote: post #18

Most of the Founders published under pseudonyms, even after the Revolution. Hamilton, Madison, Jay, Franklin - all had pseudonyms for their political writings. The Federalist papers were signed "Publius". What Franklin did was in no way unusual for that group. In the US, anonymous speech is considered a core part of free expression, and is treated as a First Amendment right. That's a US perspective, stemming from US…

[deleted]

Re: Benjamin Franklin’s alter egos gave him the most freedom

#24

Post by interludead »

Animats wrote: post #18

Most of the Founders published under pseudonyms, even after the Revolution. Hamilton, Madison, Jay, Franklin - all had pseudonyms for their political writings. The Federalist papers were signed "Publius". What Franklin did was in no way unusual for that group. In the US, anonymous speech is considered a core part of free expression, and is treated as a First Amendment right. That's a US perspective, stemming from US…

[flagged]

Re: Benjamin Franklin’s alter egos gave him the most freedom

#25

Post by kodoman »

Animats wrote: post #18

Most of the Founders published under pseudonyms, even after the Revolution. Hamilton, Madison, Jay, Franklin - all had pseudonyms for their political writings. The Federalist papers were signed "Publius". What Franklin did was in no way unusual for that group. In the US, anonymous speech is considered a core part of free expression, and is treated as a First Amendment right. That's a US perspective, stemming from US…

From the UK are bill of rights from 1689 has a clause called free speech in it. When you actually look at it's free speech... for parliament and parliamentarians from the king, Citizens get no such right. We have a clause that is the right to bear arms, when you look at it predicated on being the a protestant and parliament allowing you. No one actually reads these things or the history surrounding it here because when you do you quickly realize how pathetic are 'glorious revolution' is how weak the the brave people petitioning a foreign king to come over to overthrow a king they did not like because he was a catholic and wanted more tolerance for Catholics.

Not the biggest fan of where America is at the moment but American founding fathers are some of the most impressive people and the American revolution is incredible, where as are revolution is one of the saddest affairs in human history and it's continuation is a disaster in my opinion.

Re: Benjamin Franklin’s alter egos gave him the most freedom

#26

Post by dannyobrien »

embedding-shape wrote: post #20
Animats wrote: post #18

Most of the Founders published under pseudonyms, even after the Revolution. Hamilton, Madison, Jay, Franklin - all had pseudonyms for their political writings. The Federalist papers were signed "Publius". What Franklin did was in no way unusual for that group. In the US, anonymous speech is considered a core part of free expression, and is treated as a First Amendment right. That's a US perspective, stemming from US…

> That's a US perspective, stemming from US history. EU rights as to anonymous speech are weaker, It's interesting that on one hand you're right, in the US, anonymous speech receives near-absolute protection. In the EU, it's more of a "qualified right" than so absolute. But, on the other hand, in our modern age, EU seems better at defending against mandating backdoors or weakening end-to-end encryption violates the r…

Could you give examples of the US adding backdoors and weakening end-to-end encryption? I'll give you the almost-certain weakening of proposed crypto standards, and Clinton-era export controls, but I don't think I've seen any movement in that direction recently. The most successful attempts statutorily seem to be in the UK and the US.

Also: the European Court of Human Rights, as a non-EU institution, doesn't have an enforcement mechanism, so I'm not sure it's a good example to give in defending against such proposals. For instance, Russia declined to respect that decision, and I don't think it's had much effect on the UK's backdoor regime.

Re: Benjamin Franklin’s alter egos gave him the most freedom

#27

Post by kodoman »

watwut wrote: post #15
arjie wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating. TIL. One wonders what we common folk would think of such activities. Would we treat Benjamin Franklin as some kind of modern Thiel-adjacent debauch who thinks himself far too smart? Or would canceling old Benjy actually have created a better world? Perhaps a man moderated by a society more observant and inclined to police might have been even more influential? I suppose we will never know but it is enter…

Thiel has completely different philosophy and believes. So, no, absolutely not.

I feel like everything I have seen of Thiel is not as well thought out as people claim, I feel he came to lots of his positions from a sort of contrarian attitude and simply the limited things he has been exposed to (that of course is true of everyone but to me it seems striking how little the things actually fit together are are sort of all just mushed together), Take for example The Straussian Moment, though quotes Strauss not actually very Straussian does not really use ancient wisdom and I think he adopted it because of the connection that the left made (incorrectly I think) to the neo-cons and Leo Strauss.

His use of Girard does not actually fit at all and his whole Anti-christ prophesy thing is a kind of inversion of Girard and actually identifies the anti-christ with the katechon the opposite to tertuilian, Girard himself (I think) and Schmitt.

I don't think his views are all that meaningful or held with real conviction other then they are views that allow him to behave how he wants for now. If his views came into conflict with his desired behavior he would adopt new ideas no doubt.

Re: Benjamin Franklin’s alter egos gave him the most freedom

#28

Post by embedding-shape »

dannyobrien wrote: post #26
embedding-shape wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a US perspective, stemming from US history. EU rights as to anonymous speech are weaker, It's interesting that on one hand you're right, in the US, anonymous speech receives near-absolute protection. In the EU, it's more of a "qualified right" than so absolute. But, on the other hand, in our modern age, EU seems better at defending against mandating backdoors or weakening end-to-end encryption violates the r…

Could you give examples of the US adding backdoors and weakening end-to-end encryption? I'll give you the almost-certain weakening of proposed crypto standards, and Clinton-era export controls, but I don't think I've seen any movement in that direction recently. The most successful attempts statutorily seem to be in the UK and the US. Also: the European Court of Human Rights, as a non-EU institution, doesn't have an…

> Could you give examples of the US adding backdoors and weakening end-to-end encryption?

Do you really need examples of this? There are countless of them, some programs you cannot have missed are PRISM, STATEROOM and BULLRUN but there are more of them too.

Re: Benjamin Franklin’s alter egos gave him the most freedom

#29

Post by embedding-shape »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #21
embedding-shape wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a US perspective, stemming from US history. EU rights as to anonymous speech are weaker, It's interesting that on one hand you're right, in the US, anonymous speech receives near-absolute protection. In the EU, it's more of a "qualified right" than so absolute. But, on the other hand, in our modern age, EU seems better at defending against mandating backdoors or weakening end-to-end encryption violates the r…

US free speech is qualified too - just in different ways. And even when free speech is protected, it doesn’t stop you receiving the consequences log being arrested or losing your job and home.

I feel like we're talking about different things here. I understand "free speech does not mean free of consequence", so if your employer doesn't like your opinions, you can get fired, that's all fine and dandy.

But why you add that someone could be arrested for free speech? The whole point of free speech, at least for me, is that the government cannot arrest you for that, even if all the people around you see you as despicable or whatever. What is "free speech" for you actually?

Re: Benjamin Franklin’s alter egos gave him the most freedom

#30

Post by yywwbbn »

embedding-shape wrote: post #20
Animats wrote: post #18

Most of the Founders published under pseudonyms, even after the Revolution. Hamilton, Madison, Jay, Franklin - all had pseudonyms for their political writings. The Federalist papers were signed "Publius". What Franklin did was in no way unusual for that group. In the US, anonymous speech is considered a core part of free expression, and is treated as a First Amendment right. That's a US perspective, stemming from US…

> That's a US perspective, stemming from US history. EU rights as to anonymous speech are weaker, It's interesting that on one hand you're right, in the US, anonymous speech receives near-absolute protection. In the EU, it's more of a "qualified right" than so absolute. But, on the other hand, in our modern age, EU seems better at defending against mandating backdoors or weakening end-to-end encryption violates the r…

[dead]
Post reply on HN