Why do people think that computer science gives them the authority to pontificate on any topic of their choosing? Clearly the author has no idea what they are talking about, as by their own admission, "I’ve only taken 1 metaphysics class" and has a "suspicion" about the entire field. And even considering the question of "is all philosophy simply word confusion" would get you laughed out of the room by any philosophy grad student. You wouldn't like it if some philosophy student wrote blog posts about how P=NP without having the slightest knowledge of the field, so afford other areas of study the same respect.
Hey, bkoa. I actually just graduated with a master's degree in philosophy from Tufts University, one of the top philosophy programs in the country. (I also studied philosophy in undergrad.)
I'm perfectly happy with admitting that I don't know a lot about metaphysics and I'm perfectly happy for people to call me out on this point. (In fact, I call myself out on this point in a footnote in my post.) I just wanted to set the record straight: I am not merely a comp sci person who feels that he has the authority to "pontificate on any topic of their choosing."
Why does it matter? If an 8 year old wanted to pontificate on metaphysics, I would gladly listen to and engage them. And maybe I would learn something. Not all exchange has to be professionally compiled knowledge being bestowed to laypeople. I kind of think everyone can learn something from everybody on most any topic.
Within a discussion I think it makes sense to interpret statements based on the speaker and their epistemology. But that doesn't mean you can't have a conversation.
Philosophy touches many different fields and it seems quite natural to me that interested people explore the border regions. If you are a physicist or even if you are only interested in physics it is quite easy to recognize that there is a problem with the idea of free will. Or if you are a neurobiologist. Mathematicians naturally get into contact with logic, proofs, knowledge and the like. Or think of linguists. Not that any of them would be a full-fledged philosopher but there are for sure areas of philosophy where people from other professions naturally have something to say.
Just because CS people have a tendency to vastly overestimate their qualifications in other fields doesn't mean uniformed speculation about an incredibly well-discussed topic in philosophy is appropriate for HackerNews.
That's very elitist. Academic philosophers do not 'own' philosophy. What is the harm of us ordinary folk discussing it? (Also, if anything is inappropriate for HN, it's snarky one-liners. Please don't do that.)
You seem to have vastly overestimated your qualifications in philosophy.
Any rookie in philosophy 101 can tell you that tons of philosophers have been in favor of EVERYBODY participating in philosophical discussions, and that leaving philosophy to the "experts" is mostly an idea of academic philosophers (that is, people with very little contribution to the history of philosophy, and a whole lot of secondary and derived output of annotating the historically important --and usually "amateur"-- philosophers).
Well, maybe CS people realize most of the good questions in life simply cannot be answered by philosophers. They're just ill-equipped. It's really up to the physicists.
Did you read those articles? The first one is bringing the suit alleging that the college didn't investigate a rape allegation, and the second one alleges the medical system failed by prescribing a dangerous combination of medicines. The third was settled for a very small amount, only slightly more than a year of tuition at private schools. And the last one was fairly absurd and unreasonable and was almost certainly dismissed. So I don't think your argument or analogy really works to support your argument that colleges have to fear losing millions in lawsuits to parents of unstable kids.
The first one is a lawsuit against a college for referring a crime victim to the police. That's exactly the reason I'd avoid high-risk students - colleges are already being sued for not doing the job of other industries (police work, medical system, etc). Why bring on a student at high risk of needing special help from other industries?
The risk is not just losing millions, but also bad publicity and legal costs. Big organizations are extremely risk averse.
i'm not really directly responding to you, but this thing about schools investigating rapes is absolutely fucking ridiculous to me.
if there's been a suspected rape, the police need to be called, not the school. rape is a crime, not something for school politics to get its hands on.
calling the real police deters real actual rape, and false accusations of rape, both of which can ruin lives.
Honestly I think reddit has made me a slightly better person. But only because it serves as an aggregation of awful people who I strive to be as dissimilar to as possible.
Why do HN people feel the need to portray everything the US federal government goes after as a martyr for free speech? Of all the Internet-related crimes, I think stopping pornography depicting minors is one of the least controversial laws to possibly enforce. I know it's more convenient to group everything the FBI, CIA, and NSA do into an "obviously evil" bin, but sometimes you need to appreciate enough nuance to not defend all their online targets on principle. If this isn't one of those times, I don't know what is.
Just like they can always make the argument that they are protecting people with xyz questionable tactics, you can always make the claim that something on the Internet is for the purposes of free speech. That doesn't make you right, or even mean that free speech is the primary legal or moral distinguishing factor even if you are.
> I think stopping pornography depicting minors is one of the least controversial laws to possibly enforce.
While it might be uncontroversial, some people would still prefer if the state used effective and evidence-based methods to prevent child abuse, rather than using ineffective, costly, and what ever method that get most media attention.
For example, mandating that schools has trained counsels at staff is a prime example in identifying and preventing child abuse. Having a trained expert which kids, parents and teachers can go to is important line of defense. New teachers should also receive basic training when studying at the university, so they can detect psychological, emotional, social, and physical signs of abuse.
Current studied methods in creating effective prevention program also includes group-based sexual abuse prevention education for children (http://www.princeton.edu/futureofchildren/publications/docs/...). Sadly, the efforts in creating more effective prevention efforts is sadly somewhat low priority (see linked document).
It should also be noted, that in that whole document, more strict Internet regulation is not mentioned at all as effective prevention method. Feel free to speculate widely why the researchers did not mention it.
From what I can tell, the issue is that there has so far been no evidence that this move will do anything to actually prevent the distribution of child pornography. That is, it might be collateral damage without fulfilling its primary objective.
So? It's pretty clear that the owner knowingly allowed it and perhaps even promoted it. It's obvious that this person broke a serious law. Should the FBI just turn a blind eye because shutting down a hosting service won't be 100% effective at eliminating that content forever? No. We don't prosecute any crime conditionally on the basis of how effective that specific prosecution is at eliminating current/future instances of the same crime. Just because prosecutions of some Internet-related crimes are unjust doesn't mean you should employ mental gymnastics to side with every alleged Internet criminal.
I don't dispute that this if convicted is a criminal offence. I guess I was coming from the angle that the children who are the victims should be the priority...
I was thinking the same thing... While I agree that hosting cp is definitely a problem. Going after the service provider does not get to the root of the actual problem.
Having said that, the story is quite young so I guess we will have to wait and see what transpires.
