What colour are your bits? (2004) • Hacker News Board

Re: What colour are your bits? (2004)

#21

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Feb 14, 2023, 2:26 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #12

It's a great illustration of what a pure and an impure (effectful) function is. The author complains that getting some bits as a result of function f() is seen by the legal system differently than when these bits are obtained via another function g() , even though f() ≡ g() 。 The problem is, of course, that f() and g() are not pure functions. They produce effects as a part of their being computed, such as accessing v…

I take it somewhat differently: the function by itself may be pure, but executing it is a real action in a physical universe - an event with causes and effects.

The colour of a thing isn't obtained from any state changes - rather, it's computed by going back down the causal chain leading to the thing in question. A pirated video file has a different colour than the bit-for-bit identical file that fell out of an RNG, for a very simple reason: in the first case, you actually got a pirated file. In the latter, you didn't. The provenance of data is what determines the colour.

I feel viewing colour as effects of an impure function implies that the colour is a thing that gets created due some events, and exists on its own. But it doesn't. Rather, the colour of a thing is a pure function of how that specific thing came to be, and also of the "colour palette" at the time of interest. That is, the same bytes can bear the colour "illegal" today, but be of "perfectly OK" colour tomorrow, due to a law change you aren't even aware of.

Curiously, while the article implies that the CS POV is grounded in hard reality and the legal POV is focused on make-believe constructed universe abstractions, I'm starting to think the opposite is the case. The legal POV is really about discovering how things came to be or happen. Looking at the causal network. That's as real as it gets. CS POV, in contrast, purposefully discards provenance and gives everything value semantics. That is clearly a fantasy view (though a very useful one for certain tasks).

Re: What colour are your bits? (2004)

#22

Post by throw009 » Wed, Feb 15, 2023, 12:31 AM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #13

throw009 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet was just colonised by bland NPCs and everyone interesting is now on the dark web. The reason why you don't see them here today is the same reason why you didn't see them in the NYT in 2003, you can't make money off ads when you're out of the Overton window.

It's hard to express how much I disagree with that position, given the context. Contrarianism isn't interesting purely for its own sake, especially in relation to child abuse. And the internet is full of voices who are knee-jerk contrarian for the pure sake of it. Most of what they have to say is meaningless noise.

That I was kids to stop being out on the sex offered registry for playing doctor isn't being contrarian, it's common sense.

The only people who think that we should keep busting teens by the truckload for sexting are closeted pedophiles.

Re: What colour are your bits? (2004)

#23

Post by Nursie » Wed, Feb 15, 2023, 3:43 AM UTC

msm_ wrote: post #19

Nursie wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fair to say that 20 years ago, discussions around CSAM were a lot less developed than they are today in a variety of ways. There were a lot more people much more ready to publicly make (IMHO terrible) arguments about how a jpg is just a stream of bits, which is a number, and you can't just arbitrarily ban specific large integers. Or about how nobody is harmed if streams of bits get passed around, it's ju…

> It's images/video of kids being raped, the continued existence and trading of which can be argued to do continuing harm to the victims. I don't think that's what the author is saying. They say that IF any real world kids are involved in the "production" of the video, the image is illegal (have a bad "colour"). Nobody disagrees with that, especially not the author of that blog post. This is contrasted with drawn or…

Sure, and I’m not trying to put words in the author’s mouth here. I wanted to give some ‘historical’ context for those who may not have been around back then.

But I think it’s either a sincere mistake or a very poor attitude to bring up consent affecting the colour in relation to CSAM, which they explicitly do about a third of the way into the article.

Re: What colour are your bits? (2004)

#24

Post by Nursie » Wed, Feb 15, 2023, 3:43 AM UTC

throw009 wrote: post #22

Nursie wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to express how much I disagree with that position, given the context. Contrarianism isn't interesting purely for its own sake, especially in relation to child abuse. And the internet is full of voices who are knee-jerk contrarian for the pure sake of it. Most of what they have to say is meaningless noise.

That I was kids to stop being out on the sex offered registry for playing doctor isn't being contrarian, it's common sense. The only people who think that we should keep busting teens by the truckload for sexting are closeted pedophiles.

Very nice straw man there.

Re: What colour are your bits? (2004)

#25

Post by Nursie » Wed, Feb 15, 2023, 3:48 AM UTC

deadbeeves wrote: post #16

Nursie wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fair to say that 20 years ago, discussions around CSAM were a lot less developed than they are today in a variety of ways. There were a lot more people much more ready to publicly make (IMHO terrible) arguments about how a jpg is just a stream of bits, which is a number, and you can't just arbitrarily ban specific large integers. Or about how nobody is harmed if streams of bits get passed around, it's ju…

It sounds like you're dismissing the arguments purely by what you think it would mean to consider them seriously. "If these arguments are valid, then these conclusions are valid. These conclusions should not be valid. Therefore the arguments are invalid." Why is it untenable that yes, data is data and it should move freely, and no, children should not be raped and filmed?

Well, because of the effects stated in the post you’re responding to.

It’s a source of continuing harm to the person who has been abused, and it creates bubbles of acceptance which go on to encourage creation of more material.

We have moved past the somewhat myopic “it’s just ones and zeroes” view of this in general, as a society. Actions have consequences, even actions as simple as exchanging a specific large integer with another computer.