That’s disingenous. Microsoft themselves considered Linux a serious threat as early as 1998, as described in their own confidential memoranda. (AKA the Halloween Documents released by ESR.)
Your assertion, such as it is, is poorly formed. This research did not, as you imply, test 200 potential associations and report the one that was the “winner”. A single /a priori/ hypothesis was formulated and then tested using the data, in accordance with standard statistical methodology. The logical extension of your statement is that no association could ever be found since anything found is just a green-jelly bean association. When multiple tests of hypotheses are performed, accepted statistical practice is to the make the criterion for significance more stringent precisely to avoid the green-jellybean effect you are implying has occurred here.
Similarly illogical is pointing out the size of the questionnaire - as though the number of questions a person is asked has any impact whether eggs have an effect on Alzheimer’s disease incidence.
The difference being that sexuality is typically considered an innate desire, whilst the desire to commit violence is not.
Plus, we as a species have a biological imperative to protect our offspring, but apparently an immense capacity to ignore violence committed against others.
The difference being that sexuality is typically considered an innate desire, whilst the desire to commit violence is not.
Plus, we as a species have a biological imperative to protect our offspring, but apparently an immense capacity to ignore violence committed against others.
Of course they do, if enforced. The number of eight year-olds working in factories is substantially lower than it used to be due to regulations. *in modern democracies
The alternative is to refuse to delegate the formation and development of the character of our children and culture to automated systems and regulatory policies. Engage with your children on topics that matter. Discuss the pros and cons of various viewpoints and political platforms with your friends and neighbors, colleagues and fellow bus-riders. We, ourselves, are the psychosocial immune system for society, and if we construct an environment in which we can not be exposed harmful concepts, then we will never learn how to respond and combat it when we inevitably are exposed to it.
This is not to say that we should not actively work to prevent criminal acts, but that trying to establish a world in which such acts are impossible will cripple society in ways which will leave us vulnerable to much larger and more systemic abuses. Benjamin Franklin’s statement rings as true as ever, if in a rather updated context: “ They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Except that it is not materially false. Only in a perfect society will your “system that flags illicit content” not become a system that flags whatever some authoritarian regime considers threatening, and subverting public logging/auditing is similarly trivial to a motivated authoritarian. All your hypothetical solutions rely on humans, who are notoriously susceptible to being influenced by either money or being beaten with pipes, and on corporations, who are notoriously susceptible to being influenced by things that influence their stock price.
The Pleyel’s corollary to Murphy’s law is that all compromises to individuals’ rights made for the sake of security will eventually be used to further deprive them of those rights.
(I especially liked the line “You can require cops to build multiple sufficient points of independently corroborated evidence before arresting people.”)