Eventually some of them will be right. Choosing which to heed without hindsight is the problem. Though in this case, Stallman was not a lone kook at the time.
A) everything you know about Epstein and his circle was already public knowledge after his first conviction 20 years ago.
B) it wasn't "a group of extremely powerful and rich pedos" it was specifically Hollywood and Democratic elites raping, killing then eating babies (in service of Satan) that they raised in a network of secret tunnels
Just to clarify because my own mental parser failed:
He's not predicting that thousands will die because of mass surveillance--he's saying that the deaths of thousands in the 9/11 attacks are going to let the government deprive millions of their civil liberties.
I've never been super alarmist about this stuff. But recently was looking back and it really is staggering the amount of simple freedoms we've lost in the last 25 years. Partly through government overreach for 'security' and partly through technology becoming so pervasive. It really feels like rules get added regularly, and none ever get removed. Things just get stricter. And with technology we add a layer of self/citizen policing of everything. The 'disallowed' but relatively innocent things we could get up to as kids/teenagers just 20 years ago kids today could only dream of.
RMS was correct, as usual. Of course he could not have predicted the additional 1 million deaths due to military action (and estimated 3.5 million more from subsequent effects) in the resulting Middle Eastern/Central Asian conflicts over the following years.
Not counting the saved lives of course, that might be reasonable! It's like western liberals are failing the trolley problem again and again and are smug about it.
Wrote some of my thoughts somewhat related to this recently [1]. I've simply concluded that its a matter of numbers: the more centralized data becomes the easier it is for the government to coerce access. If the government could obtain the data of a million citizens by coercing or engaging in law fare against one or two companies, it's much easier done. If they had to individually coerce, sue, or otherwise hack into those same million customers, it becomes a lot more expensive and difficult. It sucks that's the way it is, but that's why I think the new internet has to reverse the rules and make authorities more particular about who they track rather than just casting a dragnet across N major providers.
Every time "these type of people" are dismissed as lunatics, as extremist and alarmist, time comes back to prove they were right.
I frankly dismissed the idea of "a group of extremely powerful and rich pedos" under a pizza store... and yes there were none under any pizza store.
Stallman and "rich pedos" aren't even close in terms of lunacy. I never thought that Stallman's rants were far fetched at all.
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/17/761718975/free-software-pione...
How is the link relevant to the topic at hand?
From the accounts I've read, RMS is a deeply unpleasant and problematic person.
Doesn't mean he's wrong.
Being wrong, being malicious, being harmful, and being unpleasant are all mostly separate, but get mixed up occasionally.
Eventually some of them will be right. Choosing which to heed without hindsight is the problem. Though in this case, Stallman was not a lone kook at the time.
A) everything you know about Epstein and his circle was already public knowledge after his first conviction 20 years ago.
B) it wasn't "a group of extremely powerful and rich pedos" it was specifically Hollywood and Democratic elites raping, killing then eating babies (in service of Satan) that they raised in a network of secret tunnels
Just to clarify because my own mental parser failed:
He's not predicting that thousands will die because of mass surveillance--he's saying that the deaths of thousands in the 9/11 attacks are going to let the government deprive millions of their civil liberties.
I've never been super alarmist about this stuff. But recently was looking back and it really is staggering the amount of simple freedoms we've lost in the last 25 years. Partly through government overreach for 'security' and partly through technology becoming so pervasive. It really feels like rules get added regularly, and none ever get removed. Things just get stricter. And with technology we add a layer of self/citizen policing of everything. The 'disallowed' but relatively innocent things we could get up to as kids/teenagers just 20 years ago kids today could only dream of.
RMS was correct, as usual. Of course he could not have predicted the additional 1 million deaths due to military action (and estimated 3.5 million more from subsequent effects) in the resulting Middle Eastern/Central Asian conflicts over the following years.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.DTH.IMRT?locations=I...
Not counting the saved lives of course, that might be reasonable! It's like western liberals are failing the trolley problem again and again and are smug about it.
The high infant death rates in Iraq prior to the global war on terror were also the result of US intervention.
https://www.newsweek.com/watch-madeleine-albright-saying-ira...
st iGNUtius called it, amen. :-P
Wrote some of my thoughts somewhat related to this recently [1]. I've simply concluded that its a matter of numbers: the more centralized data becomes the easier it is for the government to coerce access. If the government could obtain the data of a million citizens by coercing or engaging in law fare against one or two companies, it's much easier done. If they had to individually coerce, sue, or otherwise hack into those same million customers, it becomes a lot more expensive and difficult. It sucks that's the way it is, but that's why I think the new internet has to reverse the rules and make authorities more particular about who they track rather than just casting a dragnet across N major providers.
[1]: https://dntls.substack.com/p/the-new-internet