London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked • Hacker News Board

Re: London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked

#51

Post by task_queue » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 5:29 PM UTC

alexro wrote: post #43

task_queue wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good thing language and society are fluid despite being held back by people who are unchanging in opinion or operate on religious zeal. The function and intention of marriage has changed through time and locality. To pick a singular aspect of a complex social construct and use that to base its purpose and definition on is myopic.

So who is picking up one aspect of the complex relationship here? If I get together with an AI in the future you'll call it marriage too?

> So who is picking up one aspect of the complex relationship here?

Who is making it hard to believe you're arguing in good faith here? You've consistently harped on a reductionist definition of marriage in this thread.

>If I get together with an AI in the future you'll call it marriage too?

Personally, I truly do not care what you call it. If they're able to give consent and you can find a place to have wedding, good for you. If the law wants to respect it, congratulations.

Re: London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked

#52

Post by foldr » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 5:31 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #44

TomGullen wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? In the UK I'm pretty confident the definition of marriage isn't exclusive domain to heterosexual couples.

Same sex marriage is still not legal in NI, so you're not quite right for "UK". And gay people were only allowed to marry in 2014. The UK does better than most countries for supporting LGBT rights, but it took a long time. The UK discriminated against homosexuals for many years, and we still have some way to go to fully recognising rights of LGBT people.

>And gay people were only allowed to marry in 2014.

This is true, of course, but potentially a little misleading for people not familiar with the UK, since civil partnerships have been available since 2004.

Re: London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked

#53

Post by foldr » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 5:33 PM UTC

alexro wrote: post #48

ascorbic wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not talking about "every country in the world" though. We're talking about England, where your definition has not applied since 2013.

You confusing legal with cultural. If you go around taking about marriage only few will think about gay relationship. And in any case there is simply no real value for gays to become 'married' other than getting a sticker.

>And in any case there is simply no real value for gays to become 'married' other than getting a sticker.

The "sticker" was a visa in my husband's case. Although the UK does not require you to be married to your partner in order for them to get a visa, you have to provide all kinds of ridiculous documentation in the absence of a marriage certificate. In other countries (e.g. the US), being married is an absolute requirement.

Re: London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked

#54

Post by alexro » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 5:33 PM UTC

Spare_account wrote: post #46

alexro wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't make sense to call gay partnership a marriage. Marriage is a strictly defined cultural phenomenon meaning a relationship between a man and a woman with the original intention to continue the family by having kids.

No it isn't. Marriage was adopted by the Church and redefined along the lines you describe - it existed long before that as a legal process to control inheritance. You're welcome to do whatever you think is best within the confines of your own marriage but to say that marriage intrinsically has your preferred attributes is incorrect.

So are you saying that millions (and now billions) of Chinese and Indians who never had Bible and were absolutely poor used marriage to pass inheritance along? Also there were thousands of tribes who never had to worry about inheritance but who have traditions for marriages, no?

Re: London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked

#55

Post by alexro » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 5:35 PM UTC

dspillett wrote: post #41

alexro wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't make sense to call gay partnership a marriage. Marriage is a strictly defined cultural phenomenon meaning a relationship between a man and a woman with the original intention to continue the family by having kids.

> Marriage is a strictly defined cultural phenomenon > ... > with the original intention to continue the family by having kids. You need to review your history on marriage including, but by no means limited to, what the bible has to say on such matters. The biblical view of marriage is vastly different to simply "a man and a woman wanting to procreate", itself took on and in places redefined millennia of tradition th…

So you talking about gay rights but at the same time you refuse billions of people who lived and live outside of Biblical views to have their own views on the subject?

Re: London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked

#56

Post by superkuh » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 5:41 PM UTC

The issue here is not so much the invasive tracking and such. That's bad but it is private land.

The issue is that millions of dollars of taxpayers' money is being used to pay for things on private land as if it were public.

Re: London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked

#57

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 5:42 PM UTC

alexro wrote: post #30

TomGullen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say liberal, do you mean liberal but still will not do gay marriages?

It doesn't make sense to call gay partnership a marriage. Marriage is a strictly defined cultural phenomenon meaning a relationship between a man and a woman with the original intention to continue the family by having kids.

> Marriage is a strictly defined cultural phenomenon meaning a relationship between a man and a woman with the original intention to continue the family by having kids.

This is wrong in so many ways; "marriage" is a concept that exists in many cultures with many different different understandings, and those understandings have historically been fluid over time even within the same culture. Its most consistently a property arrangement between the parties; in the West its been separated from an essential intent for procreation for quite some time, though there are religious subcultures within Western societies for whom that may remain more important than it is in the broader society.

Re: London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked

#58

Post by alexro » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 5:45 PM UTC

task_queue wrote: post #51

alexro wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So who is picking up one aspect of the complex relationship here? If I get together with an AI in the future you'll call it marriage too?

> So who is picking up one aspect of the complex relationship here? Who is making it hard to believe you're arguing in good faith here? You've consistently harped on a reductionist definition of marriage in this thread. >If I get together with an AI in the future you'll call it marriage too? Personally, I truly do not care what you call it. If they're able to give consent and you can find a place to have wedding, goo…

That's the problem - your abstraction is leaking, whereas the man/woman/kids abstraction of the marriage is not.

Re: London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked

#59

Post by task_queue » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 5:45 PM UTC

alexro wrote: post #48

ascorbic wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not talking about "every country in the world" though. We're talking about England, where your definition has not applied since 2013.

You confusing legal with cultural. If you go around taking about marriage only few will think about gay relationship. And in any case there is simply no real value for gays to become 'married' other than getting a sticker.

If you've acknowledged that marriage culturally is a sticker, why care about something so insignificant?

Legally, there is obvious value. Stating such an opinion leads me to believe you are being willfully dishonest in your argument.

Re: London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked

#60

Post by deadfish » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 5:46 PM UTC

TomGullen wrote: post #24

No flying kites? Isn't that what we were saying you couldn't do under Taliban control about 5 years ago and laughing at how ludicrous it was? Nice to see tens of millions of public money going on vanity projects like this with ridiculous baggage attached to it. The £20mm public loan over a 50 year period sounds interesting. I wonder what interest rate they are getting on that. I would LOVE to see it. Maybe I'll do a…

It would probably be deemed 'commercially sensitive'. I sent a FOI to my university and that was what they used to get out of it.