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The problem when you start throwing around empathy alongside such concepts as 'helping' abusers 'mend their ways' is that one rather feels that anyone whose views do not rather closely match your own political angle, especially with respect an issue you are deeply invested in, will be singled out for this 'help.' Being offended has become a weapon in popular debate - and I find myself remarkably disinclined to further structure things to its advantage.

Isn't that essentially what Cortana, Siri and whatever that Google assistant (Google Now?) are supposed to be? They don't seem to work very well atm.

I agree with forest, someone should not be penalised for answering a question honestly.

Roles can help to keep conversations civil when the participants are benign as well as malign by removing communication friction. For malign actors they make it easier to pick out specific behaviours to review in one on ones and - if they persist - dismiss them for.

> Would it make it worse (easier to get drugs) or better (less stigma about treatment).

That may not be as binary as it seems on idle reflection.

There certainly are drugs that used in extremes, and (occasionally) in moderation, put people in a position where day to day functioning is impossible, but equally there are drugs that cause very little harm for reasonable consumption patterns. All else being equal, who would you rather have living next door? A drunk or someone who smokes a fair bit of weed on the weekend?

There's this thing that people do - certainly that governments seem to do with respect to the issues surrounding decriminalisation and/or legalisation - where the ideal, the thing they measure success by, is getting people to stop doing something that they wouldn't choose for themselves. That metric doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense.

Yes, because some people's utility functions are strongly inimical to other's likely happiness. It will be feudalism all over again, with vastly higher stakes.

If you have a bunch of the super-rich, and everyone else just at some happy medium, then you'll eventually output a mad god-king - in charge of some ridiculous multiple of the power that the majority of the planet can bring to bear - whose favourite sports are gassing countries where people's skin is the wrong colour and fucking the peasants to death on a Thursday.

> Would you stay at a company in whose purpose you don't believe, if you liked your manager?

There are a couple of people on my current project whose company I enjoy and who have personal attributes that I'd like to foster in myself. I'm staying with it solely for that reason, the business model it uses was dead in the water two years ago and it's in the die-off period - the project itself is just making efficiency savings on something that's never going to be profitable again.

I'd choose to do so again, it's never made life bad for me to choose to share closer company with the people I respect - and when the time to move jobs has come up, a few months ahead of the crash, there have always been plenty of friends in other companies that would put in a good word.

What has been a bad call for me has been to stay in bad company, for the chance to work on something 'important' while management has been incompetent or peers have been markedly hostile. That's contributed to some of the lowest times of my life.

22.7%, according to the forbes quote that my search engine serves me. - I shan't bother to view their article, for obvious reasons.

One danger is that driver B will respond by driving without taking out insurance if it becomes too expensive. Which would leave people in a bad situation when he finally runs someone over.

> Please in the future consider the concept of rhetorical license.

I considered it, but I didn't grant it since it was not clear that it applied - nor for like discussions would it be clear in the future. You adopted an extreme position which is not analogous to the discussion you wished to have, and that is not an act of rhetoric; discussion as an art and a skill. It is simply poor communication - as evidenced by how widely your claims would imply you to be misunderstood.

Rhetorical license doesn't cover that. The charity of understanding others extend a speaker is not an unlimited effort.

> I'd like to shift towards the "less Evil/more privacy", but no one here or anywhere wants to try to come up with ways to do that, because everyone just assumes privacy gives Evil room to grow.

It does. You gave such an example yourself: TOR and child pornography. More widely speaking, it's possible to lessen the 'evil' in society through a great many means - better school, better welfare provision, stronger community links. More to the point many, even on this site, seem in favour of taking those steps: Strong encryption? Please. Better schools? Yes please. Better community organisations? Yeah. There are of course people who'd say no, but that does not change the fact that people in favour of them are easily found.

Many of the steps that could be taken in that regard seem orthogonal to the larger discussion at hand, (encryption security - as structured by reasonable context,) mind.

> [P]eople will continue to pick the "no Evil/no privacy" option

If that was an available option, it would be fine. I'd choose no evil and no privacy because I'd know that my information, and more importantly the information of public officials and company leaders; folks who wield power; wouldn't be abused.

But that's not an option that's on the table, and whatever it is they intend to pick it is not what people accomplish when they endorse surveillance. Our governments do some pretty evil stuff and those are the people who end up with the power in these sorts of arrangements. What people are being given the choice between is 'a dubious promise of safety; an evil that doesn't offend them personally; and no privacy' - or 'a perceived higher rate of evil that does offend them personally; you're under threat, they're coming for your kids, hate freedom etc; and privacy.'

You seem to be taking the no evil part of things as essentially solved. But it's not. We do not have systems we can trust not to abuse this.

If it's a mass of stats or something like that, I'll fire up a flash card program. If it's something more abstract, an important concept or the like, then I'll try to apply it to something - use it in a program, try to see what it implies in different contexts.

Mmm. There's a connotation with shields that they are just as you say, protective in nature. There's consequently a negative association with their removal. However, the person's still being protected from undesired input while they're looking for a job: The criteria for desirable/acceptable have changed. Their 'shields,' using those criteria, are still up.

It's a tricky analogy that, as you note, is easy to misunderstand. The writer may not have meant it in the sense that it was received.