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Cowards

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Re: Cowards

#161

Post by tokenadult »

Rather than calling anyone a coward, I will acknowledge that standing up for freedom is never easy. I know through direct personal acquaintance people who spent hard prison time during Taiwan's transition from dictatorship to democracy, who were arrested after leading peaceful public protest demonstrations of the kind that happen every day here in the United States. I have seen what kind of sustained effort--and, yes, individual courage--it takes to move a society from a default condition of tyranny to a default condition of freedom and rule by the people.

Rather than name-calling, let's learn how to fight for freedom. I posted yesterday, to NO upvotes,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5840000

a link to the free online book From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation by Gene Sharp,

http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/FDTD.pdf

an experienced activist and supporter of people power democratic movements that originated under some of the world's toughest dictatorships. We can learn a lot more from him and his writings and those of his collaborators

http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html

than we can learn from anyone on Uncrunched or TechCrunch or any high-tech publication about how to win freedom even while under intense pressure from dictators. Try it. Don't decry anyone else for lacking courage. Build up your own courage. Build up your own effective communication with other freedom fighters, so that the movement for freedom has solidarity, unity of purpose, and resilience. Roll up your sleeves and get to work. (Anyone can participate: as a foreign student in Taiwan in the early 1980s, I was able to turn Chinese-language speech contests for foreign students into opportunities to express dissent from the dictatorship in the hearing of government officials of the dictatorship. This just takes courage and preparation.)

Re: Cowards

#163

Post by 6d0debc071 »

What I find odd isn't that they don't tell the truth. I never expected them to. That they didn't remain silent on the issue is odd though. What can denying possibly gain them at this point other than tanking their credibility?

Re: Cowards

#164

Post by vadiml »

e_w wrote: post #140
vadiml wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Risking one’s own well being to help the community is basically a definition of an altruistic behaviour. Nobody and i mean NOBODY can reach and keep the position of CEO of big international corporation by exhibiting altruistic tendencies. The environment is too competitive and it promotes egoism and punishes altruism. (BTW, The same reasoning stand for political leadership too). So, I don’t think we can really expect…

Sorry, but this is a textbook example of oversimplification.

I'd say it is basic game theory and statistics. If we have population of individuals who exhibit three types of behaviour: A - altruistic (1% of population) E - egoistic (1% ...) N - Normal (randomly A or B 98% of population) Let's them play a game where E - type has muuuuch better chances to win.... It is obvious that the proportion of E - types in the winner population will grow during the tournament. This explain the current state of world affaires: Usually 'Supreme Leader' is the "biggest bastard of them all"...

Re: Cowards

#165

Post by viscanti »

sage_joch wrote: post #6
jmduke wrote: post #2

There's a meme on Reddit that revolves around 'so brave': basically calling people/posts/comments out for obvious pandering. This reads like a pastiche of Keith Olbermann, all bravado and empty gusto. Arrington writes: What has these people, among the wealthiest on the planet, so scared that they find themselves engaging in these verbal gymnastics to avoid telling a simple truth? and then acknowledges that doing so,…

> What the hell does this even mean? It means that if telling the truth is illegal, they should have the courage to break the law.

> It means that if telling the truth is illegal, they should have the courage to break the law.

The time for these companies to fight was before they gave away their user's info, not after they got caught doing so. If they weren't going to standup and do the right thing then, it's unrealistic to expect that they'd somehow find the courage now.

Re: Cowards

#166

Post by FajitaNachos »

robomartin wrote: post #156
scythe wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y'know, I'd like to believe I'd do that in this situation, too. But people are more generous in theory than in practice. You have to realize: Mark Zuckerberg isn't just looking out for Mark Zuckerberg by posting what he did. He has a family, a social life, and a whole lot of people at Facebook who depend on him. To whom, perhaps, it would not be fair for Zuck to martyr himself on the great gallows of the United State…

> You have to realize: Mark Zuckerberg isn't just looking out for Mark Zuckerberg by posting what he did. He has a family, a social life, and a whole lot of people at Facebook who depend on him. To whom, perhaps, it would not be fair for Zuck to martyr himself on the great gallows of the United States of Atrocity in futile protest of its horrifying surveillance subterfuge. He also has over a billion people who would…

I'm pretty sure most of the one billion people you are referencing wouldn't give a shit if Mark Zuckerberg was in jail so long as Facebook was still up and running.

Re: Cowards

#167

Post by edw519 »

First they came for the terrorists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a terrorist.

Then they came for the whistle blowers, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a whistle blower.

Then they came for the illegal aliens, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not an illegal alien.

Then they came for the hackers--and there was no one left to speak for us.

Re: Cowards

#168

Post by TheCondor »

There are some fundamental issues here that are upsetting, to say the least. It's a dark day when telling the truths illegal and I'm pretty sure that's not what was intended by the forefathers...

Re: cowards, It's easy to say that when you don't have skin in the game. These guys do and I too expect more of them but I can't fault them, nobody wants to go to prison. Something completely legal, completely within their rights and abilities that they can do is lobby and spend and campaign to end the patriot act and they are billionaires...

Re: Cowards

#169

Post by grandalf »

jmduke wrote: post #2

There's a meme on Reddit that revolves around 'so brave': basically calling people/posts/comments out for obvious pandering. This reads like a pastiche of Keith Olbermann, all bravado and empty gusto. Arrington writes: What has these people, among the wealthiest on the planet, so scared that they find themselves engaging in these verbal gymnastics to avoid telling a simple truth? and then acknowledges that doing so,…

A tangential ad hominem about Arrington's personal life does not constitute a counter-argument.

Re: Cowards

#170

Post by hobs »

robomartin wrote: post #156
scythe wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y'know, I'd like to believe I'd do that in this situation, too. But people are more generous in theory than in practice. You have to realize: Mark Zuckerberg isn't just looking out for Mark Zuckerberg by posting what he did. He has a family, a social life, and a whole lot of people at Facebook who depend on him. To whom, perhaps, it would not be fair for Zuck to martyr himself on the great gallows of the United State…

> You have to realize: Mark Zuckerberg isn't just looking out for Mark Zuckerberg by posting what he did. He has a family, a social life, and a whole lot of people at Facebook who depend on him. To whom, perhaps, it would not be fair for Zuck to martyr himself on the great gallows of the United States of Atrocity in futile protest of its horrifying surveillance subterfuge. He also has over a billion people who would…

>Having him put it all on the table to defend his user's privacy ...

Defend their privacy so he can immediately sell it to the highest bidder?

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