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Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

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Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#181

Post by cromwellian »

pedalpete wrote: post #168
cromwellian wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statements are mostly guilt by circumstance. IMHO, there's a lot of puffery and bullshit going on at these NGO conferences and meetings, where self-important people present platitudes in powerpoint slides about vacuous and abstract solutions for the world's problems. It's the same nonsense we've seen before. A bunch of bankers go to meet in secret, and all of a sudden people are talking about Bilderbergers/Trilat…

This is probably the clearest most concise rebuff of the Assange's talking points and I completely agree with you. However, in the interest of transparency, I wish you would have included that you work for Google. On another note, not only do I agree with your points, but I think you've got a great writing style.

Thanks. It's clearly marked in you HN profile who my employer is, I'm pretty transparent about it, I pretty much assume that anyone who suspects my bias or that I'm "shilling" will just look at my profile.

And yes, it cannot be denied that I have bias towards my employer. It doesn't make my arguments wrong, but it does raise suspicion as to my motivations.

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#182

Post by [deleted] »

cromwellian wrote: post #178
chippy wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>offensive Are you personally offended by this idea? Or is it offensive to the corporation of Google? If either, why? If not, will you expand on how it is offensive, please.

From my observations, a large contingent of the employees at Google are fairly progressive on the political spectrum, at the very least, even those on the economic right tend to be of the anti-interventionist libertarian stripe, and not in favor of building weapons to further a military empire. My guess is, you'd have a hard time getting people to explicitly work on something whose purpose is to kill people. Now, som…

[deleted]

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#183

Post by caraboga »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #175
valas wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you define a "lie"? It is full of misinformation and omission of fact which then creates a false narrative. There are a few options then: a) Assange is omitting important facts intentionally (which I don't think is the case). In this case you can call this misinformation a "lie". b) Assange truly believes in the narrative and honestly thinks the important facts are not that important. In this case, well, he is…

A little late, but there is no way to submit every piece of available (or even easily-researchable) information in one article. So I think every article would be guilty of lying were that the case. Also, the facts that you listed are not the facts that really sell his story. It's the connections, not the business Google was doing. Google's a company, I am at peace with the fact that they're selling their products to…

DARPA is the wrong agency to follow when it comes to intelligence funding. If you want to look at intelligence funding, DARPA is the wrong source. Check out IARPA instead. http://www.iarpa.gov/ These guys are the public intelligence research arm and researchers report to the Program Manager. Some of the programs are interesting. Some of them are downright... dodgy.

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#184

Post by aidenn0 »

Argorak wrote: post #139
valas wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you define a "lie"? It is full of misinformation and omission of fact which then creates a false narrative. There are a few options then: a) Assange is omitting important facts intentionally (which I don't think is the case). In this case you can call this misinformation a "lie". b) Assange truly believes in the narrative and honestly thinks the important facts are not that important. In this case, well, he is…

Omissions are not lies. Yes, it's true that a lot of PhD-Students get DARPA funding, but that doesn't make the fact less true that Google also gets this. All you are presenting is different interpretations of facts and weighting them differently - which is completely okay and a politics standard. I disagree with you on one thing: if the main asset of google is trust, how come it aggressively lobbies against german co…

Thor is the Norse god of lightning. Everyone who has been struck by lightning in the past 100 years did not worship Thor. No worshipers of Thor have been struck by lightning in the past 100 years.

Now this isn't very convincing, since you are well aware of the fact that there are few, if any living worshipers of Thor. However, if you weren't aware, it would be a highly deceitful narrative that uses only facts. Omissions with the intent to mislead are just as dishonest as lies.

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#185

Post by eevilspock »

mturmon wrote: post #49
TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DARPA point wasn't the only point of insanity. I just don't have the patience to sit and list out why his other points are equally silly for anyone versed in the space. The DARPA point was the easiest to explain and the most accessible for the Hacker News audience.

Here's another one: "In 2012, Google arrived on the list of top-spending Washington, D.C., lobbyists—a list typically stalked exclusively by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, military contractors, and the petro-carbon leviathans. Google entered the rankings above military aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, with a total of $18.2 million spent in 2012 to Lockheed’s $15.3 million. Boeing, the military contractor that absorbed…

The National Association of Realtors is evil in the ways it maintains its monopoly on home sale transactions. Its enormous amount of lobbying is all about guaranteeing that monopoly by buying lawmaker votes.

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#186

Post by sitkack »

dalke wrote: post #80
TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #19

I did not realize what a nut Assange has become. The more there is the danger that he might be forgotten, the more ridiculous his theories of the world. However, you have to think about his target audience. The audience doesn't consist of people who are familiar with things like DARPA grants, and think tanks. For people in the know, this writing will read like lunacy, because they will understand that Assange sees de…

> In fact the worst thing you can say about those DARPA grants is that they are haphazardly doled out for some real stupid projects. There have been protests and boycotts against DARPA funding even back when it was ARPA. See http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~kuipers/opinions/no-military-fund... . This was especially an issue because "[t]he Mansfield Amendment of 1973 expressly limited appropriations for defense research thr…

I am bummed that the "silly research" is gone. Whether intended or not, it pushed for more military research, which when not weighed against a maturation of the human race puts us in a more precarious technological imbalance.

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#187

Post by sitkack »

andrewfong wrote: post #127
larrybrin wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't expect Google to gather personal information for the government. However, I expect them to continue to adopt the political role of the mainstream media: furthering an agenda which is * pro Israel, * anti-China, * anti-Russia, * ambivalent towards Europe, and * anti-racist (except when this racism is against Palestinians, Muslims living in Muslim countries, or Chinese living in China). Like the media, I think…

Spreading openness and democracy around the world is part of the "Jewish agenda"?

True for all the Jews I know.

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#188

Post by Argorak »

aidenn0 wrote: post #184
Argorak wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Omissions are not lies. Yes, it's true that a lot of PhD-Students get DARPA funding, but that doesn't make the fact less true that Google also gets this. All you are presenting is different interpretations of facts and weighting them differently - which is completely okay and a politics standard. I disagree with you on one thing: if the main asset of google is trust, how come it aggressively lobbies against german co…

Thor is the Norse god of lightning. Everyone who has been struck by lightning in the past 100 years did not worship Thor. No worshipers of Thor have been struck by lightning in the past 100 years. Now this isn't very convincing, since you are well aware of the fact that there are few, if any living worshipers of Thor. However, if you weren't aware, it would be a highly deceitful narrative that uses only facts. Omissi…

This is unhelpful, following this track, no discussion can happen without taking the full context of the universe into account. This might be fun for your 2-sentence statement, when discussing an entity as large as Google in relation to an entity as large as states, I'd be impressed to see you putting all context on the the table before I die.

Also, you cannot put the whole context on the table, as some of this is secret, meaning that you will necessarily omit things.

Which means you have to rely on heuristics. Or trust.

By the way, I follow Thor and I've been struck by a lightning.

Logic != Debate

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#189

Post by dalke »

sitkack wrote: post #186
dalke wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact the worst thing you can say about those DARPA grants is that they are haphazardly doled out for some real stupid projects. There have been protests and boycotts against DARPA funding even back when it was ARPA. See http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~kuipers/opinions/no-military-fund... . This was especially an issue because "[t]he Mansfield Amendment of 1973 expressly limited appropriations for defense research thr…

I am bummed that the "silly research" is gone. Whether intended or not, it pushed for more military research, which when not weighed against a maturation of the human race puts us in a more precarious technological imbalance.

The Mansfield amendment was deliberate, so yes, it was intended.

The question should be, why don't the non-military projects also not support "silly research"?

The answer seems to be a combination of factors. Since WWII the federal government switched to funding "silly research", instead of industry labs common in the pre-war era. Without a doubt this was enabled by government operations to run the war.

There's also the idea that government should be run like a business, and not waste money on 'silly' things.

Yes, it's crazy that the government likes its "five year plan" style of research, where you almost have to know the answer before you get research funding.

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#190

Post by aidenn0 »

Argorak wrote: post #188
aidenn0 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thor is the Norse god of lightning. Everyone who has been struck by lightning in the past 100 years did not worship Thor. No worshipers of Thor have been struck by lightning in the past 100 years. Now this isn't very convincing, since you are well aware of the fact that there are few, if any living worshipers of Thor. However, if you weren't aware, it would be a highly deceitful narrative that uses only facts. Omissi…

This is unhelpful, following this track, no discussion can happen without taking the full context of the universe into account. This might be fun for your 2-sentence statement, when discussing an entity as large as Google in relation to an entity as large as states, I'd be impressed to see you putting all context on the the table before I die. Also, you cannot put the whole context on the table, as some of this is se…

Reading my example it is obvious that the facts I state don't support the position that worshiping Thor prevents lightning strikes; reading a position where someone makes statements of fact that sound ominous without certain context, but are benign in-context, it is reasonable to assume that either:

1) They don't know what they are talking about

2) They are being deceitful

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