Quote by kawaiiguyThe
"wrong" position is always hard to defend, and I'm trying my best here. You should give this a shot,
it's pretty fun ;)
Actually, the nature of that exercise rather depends on what the opposing viewpoint exists because of. In this case for
example, the opposing viewpoint is basically propaganda for the purposes of enriching its proponents, so arguing it is
an exercise in controlling people by misleading them, which isn't something I'm terribly interested in. (I
only control people with the truth!)
Whereas if you look at something like the anti-abortionists, that's basically a problem of adaption to a world in
which humans are not evolved to live in. That side takes the ancient anti-killing-of-humans impulse into areas it was
never "designed" to operate in, without considering why this impulse exists and whether it is still serving
its purposes. Because it feels like a natural thing to do, if we still lived in the sort of environment evolution has
"prepared" us for, it would be the right policy. So arguing that would basically be a role-play, but I get
plenty of that sort of thing in RPGs. (Not the sort of thing that the RPG group
here is interested in).
And then when you get into something where the end effects are simply too complex to be predicted with accuracy, (like
smacking of children, or capitalism-socialism, for example), then arguing the other side is highly interesting, because
you know, they might actually be right. In that case I wouldn't describe the opposing side as 'wrong'
though, rather I'd say they were 'challenging my theory'.
Quote: Like it or not, there is such thing as intellectual
property.
Like I said, bribing politicians to write it into laws doesn't make it true. The notion of 'property' was
invented to deal with the sticky problem that many things, like a foodstuff for example, can't be effectively used
by the whole community (sharing food is splitting it into lots of little things), so you need a system to decide who
gets to use them. Consciously applying the term to anything, such as ideas, which doesn't have this restriction
which is the whole point of the word's existence, is almost inevitably an attempt at deception.
Quote: Hmm... how about packet sniffing? As long as you don't have any
malicious intent, that doesn't hurt anyone either. Unfortunately, people like to consider that "invasion of
privacy" and that's illegal somewhere too. To a lesser extent, take the cases of the people connecting to
unsecured wireless networks (they don't own). Apparently that's also illegal now too. I wouldn't say they
caused any harm to the people they were sharing the connection with.
Well, those two are rather tricky issues, because it's often difficult to figure out whether they are hurting
people or not. (Remember though that almost everyone has some sort of bandwidth cap.) But I think they're wandering
a bit off-topic.
Quote: While I mostly agree with what you've said, I think it's
important to explore the alternate view. I'd love to have free reign of what I buy, but I'm willing to accept
what the industry gives me.
It's only important to explore the alternative view if the people putting it forward actually believe it. Which
generally isn't the case when it comes from the mouths of corporations, seeing as they have one purpose and one
purpose only and that is to make profits. The alternative here is only a "point of view" as far as people have
been deceived by the propagandists. This angle isn't the result of anyone thinking its true, it's the result
of the belief in it being profitable to certain organisations.
Quote: Principles are hard to argue because everyone thinks they're
right. It's our ideas versus the ideas of the opposing party's.
If the people are sufficiently skilled at discussion and communication, a discussion of principles won't be so much
a clash of opinions as an exploration of differences. If you can trace everything back to first principles, you can find
out whether someone really has made a mistake, or whether there is a disagreement at the axiomatic level and the
viewpoints are irreconcilable. That is a successful discussion of principles. (Doesn't happen very often though.)
