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Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

covertactionmagazine.com

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Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#381

Post by fasterik »

lazide wrote: post #377
fasterik wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I get that it's more hip to be cynical. The problem is that cynicism is often an unconsidered attitude without any real substance or rigorous argument behind it.

Hardly. You assume that the current condition is not due to everyone already doing what you’re describing as best as they can. The issue is that they are, but the inherent corrupting influences of wealth, power, and human nature counteracting them to produce the current outcome. At the end of the day, this is the wheel. And the wheel will keep turning, regardless. Not understanding that just makes proposed reforms na…

The thing you're ignoring is that humans have reason, which is able to produce behavior that goes against human nature and its corrupting influences. There's a reason why some people give away large sums of money to reduce suffering in the world instead of spending it on themselves or their genetic offspring, for example. I would argue that we have made substantial progress in overcoming human nature through cultural evolution in the past few thousand years, which is a small fraction of the history of our species. I think your argument relies on an assumption that our current culture is somehow inevitable, but that seems pretty obviously false to me.

To take another angle, we could remove humans from the picture entirely. The problem of how to get autonomous agents to work together to accomplish a task is a computer science problem. I don't see a fundamental barrier to solving that problem. Getting humans to cooperate is a special case of that problem, with the extra requirement that you need some domain knowledge in the social sciences to be able to convince people to cooperate. Again, there's no fundamental barrier preventing us from doing that research.

That doesn't mean it's easy. But that's why I'm skeptical when someone claims that the problem is simply unsolvable. Whether intentional or not, people who deny that progress is possible are reinforcing and justifying the status quo.

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#382

Post by kyawzazaw »

jongjong wrote: post #357
HeckFeck wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly the problem. You know they are speaking an essential truth when you look at the feathers ruffled by Snowden, Assange and those who follow in their path. They will get their due acclaim if we're lucky to have a more moral and free society in the future.

Snowden actually got a lot of support. I remember that even some high profile corporate executives expressed support... Though a cynical take on that would be that it was just to cover their own asses because they wanted to make themselves (and their companies/platforms) look like victims of government surveillance as opposed to facilitators.

Do you have sources to those executives expressing support?

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#383

Post by r00fus »

trinsic2 wrote: post #229
paulmd wrote: post #71

Whistleblowers act against power structures and that's the ultimate transgression as far as the power structure is concerned. Transgressions in favor of the state are one thing, you'll get a slap on the wrist at most, even personal benefit and promotion in some cases, but transgressions against the state are what will provoke a real response. See, for example, the incredible vigor pursued against the people who relea…

This is why I don't operate in these power structures. From 1995 to 2005 I worked for corporations and seeing it was harmful to my well being, I decide to provide computer services directly to the public. Now I set my own rules, and I work very hard to set my own ethical spaces where people are forced to do the right thing if they want to operate in my world. I have found that people want to do the right things, but…

I’d go one step further. Corporation are literally the undead.

They live forever, devour our work product and consider themselves persons.

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#385

Post by torstenvl »

newZWhoDis wrote: post #44
morkalork wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets a bit complicated with the whole 5-eyes mutual back scratching thing though.

Exactly. The existence of, and participation in, FVEY is treason against the people of the United States. There is no such thing as an “allied intelligence agency”, by their very nature all non-US intelligence agencies are hostile to American citizens. Thus, our domestic agencies conspiring with hostile foreign entities to defraud and undermine the citizens of the United States is treason.

FVEY is an intelligence cooperation agreement that is invaluable to the security of the world. I don't see how any reasonable person could view it as anything negative.

What exactly is the objection to classifying some information as SECRET//US,UK,CAN,AUS,NZ instead of SECRET//NOFORN ?

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#386

Post by elefanten »

fasterik wrote: post #381
lazide wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly. You assume that the current condition is not due to everyone already doing what you’re describing as best as they can. The issue is that they are, but the inherent corrupting influences of wealth, power, and human nature counteracting them to produce the current outcome. At the end of the day, this is the wheel. And the wheel will keep turning, regardless. Not understanding that just makes proposed reforms na…

The thing you're ignoring is that humans have reason , which is able to produce behavior that goes against human nature and its corrupting influences. There's a reason why some people give away large sums of money to reduce suffering in the world instead of spending it on themselves or their genetic offspring, for example. I would argue that we have made substantial progress in overcoming human nature through cultura…

The only difference I see between your perspective and gp’s is timescale of change. Gp says current conditions are product of current human nature and the bounds can shift slowly. You’re more optimistic that the change can come fast. As you point out, we’ve changed a lot in the past few thousand — a small fraction of the species history. But gp is also sound in being skeptical of expecting radical change in a single-digit number of human lifespans. So for those of us with an opportunity to respond to this thread, for better or for worse, being able to engage with “corporations” and other extant shapes of power structures may be adaptive and strategic.

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#387

Post by fasterik »

elefanten wrote: post #386
fasterik wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing you're ignoring is that humans have reason , which is able to produce behavior that goes against human nature and its corrupting influences. There's a reason why some people give away large sums of money to reduce suffering in the world instead of spending it on themselves or their genetic offspring, for example. I would argue that we have made substantial progress in overcoming human nature through cultura…

The only difference I see between your perspective and gp’s is timescale of change. Gp says current conditions are product of current human nature and the bounds can shift slowly. You’re more optimistic that the change can come fast. As you point out, we’ve changed a lot in the past few thousand — a small fraction of the species history. But gp is also sound in being skeptical of expecting radical change in a single-…

I never said change can come fast in terms of a human lifetime. I was pushing back against this idea, which seems to be widespread, that corporations and power structures are inherently bad. The alternative viewpoint which seems more reasonable to me is that the problems we see are caused by the wrong kind of corporations and power structures. GP implied that I am naive for having this viewpoint. It's not actually clear to me which of my statements they disagree with, but I think it's another example of this phenomenon where anyone who expresses optimism or a problem solving mindset gets cynically shot down.

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#388

Post by lazide »

fasterik wrote: post #387
elefanten wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only difference I see between your perspective and gp’s is timescale of change. Gp says current conditions are product of current human nature and the bounds can shift slowly. You’re more optimistic that the change can come fast. As you point out, we’ve changed a lot in the past few thousand — a small fraction of the species history. But gp is also sound in being skeptical of expecting radical change in a single-…

I never said change can come fast in terms of a human lifetime. I was pushing back against this idea, which seems to be widespread, that corporations and power structures are inherently bad. The alternative viewpoint which seems more reasonable to me is that the problems we see are caused by the wrong kind of corporations and power structures. GP implied that I am naive for having this viewpoint. It's not actually cl…

That is not what I'm saying at all.

I'm saying people are a mix of good and bad, and there are various levels of power and wealth inherent to the world, and that causes an inherent tension and level of corruption which you see manifest itself in all power structures around us.

Including corporations.

If you have a CONCRETE proposal for some kind of corporation which somehow counteracts the negative influences of humanity, while promoting the positive ones, while also actually working in real life, then please do propose it.

I'm also noting that those are already influences on the current formation and existence of the structures around us, so assuming that this is a new idea isn't helping anyone.

I'm not hearing anything concrete here though. I am hearing that you don't seem to be aware of the active and ongoing work to stop corruption and produce better outcomes in the governments and corporations that currently exist.

Attempts which sometimes succeed, sometimes get frustrated, etc. It's an active war, always has been, and IMO always will be.

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#389

Post by logicchains »

fasterik wrote: post #358
trinsic2 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I don't operate in these power structures. From 1995 to 2005 I worked for corporations and seeing it was harmful to my well being, I decide to provide computer services directly to the public. Now I set my own rules, and I work very hard to set my own ethical spaces where people are forced to do the right thing if they want to operate in my world. I have found that people want to do the right things, but…

There is nothing inherently good or bad about a group of people working toward some common purpose. In principle, given the right value system, incentives, and organizational structure, you could create a corporation that does an extraordinary amount of good in the world. The problem is bad power structures, not power structures per se . Just because corporations as they exist today have problems doesn't mean that we…

>There is nothing inherently good or bad about a group of people working toward some common purpose.

There's something inherently bad about "limited liability" corporations, by their very nature. Because to some degree they free the people in them from "natural justice"; people are able to get away unpunished with bad things that they as individuals couldn't due to shifting liability to the corporation.

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#390

Post by somenameforme »

kelnos wrote: post #341
copper-float wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to shift the dynamic in America from relying on these media conglomerates, to individuals doing their own research on things. Everyone knows the news media is rigged beyond saving, we need to let them die out, it's what they all deserve for betraying the trust of the people.

> Everyone knows the news media is rigged beyond saving Is that true, though? Or do we, in our bubble, just believe that? I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of people think the news media -- at least the particular subset of the news media they choose to watch -- is more or less ok.

Here's [1] a survey from the end of 2022 asking this exact question. Across all adults, those who have at least "some" trust in the news they personally get from national news orgs has fallen from 76% to 61% in the past 6 years. While that's still a majority, and a sizable majority, it won't be for long on the current trajectory. And that's for when the bar is set to "some trust"!

[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/10/27/u-s-adult...

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