Invading Our Privacy, One School at a Time

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Fall_Child42
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Post by Fall_Child42 » Fri Nov 09, 2007 12:11 pm

vinylvengeance wrote:In my opinion, acceptance of measures such as these is a slippery slope. It may not necessarily be bad to begin with, and in fact may prove beneficial in some instances. The problem is when you put the pieces in place for someone to take advantage of who is a Hitler, or has a thirst for control and power, you run the risk of basically giving someone all the power they need. One reason I am against domestic spying/eavesdropping, an internal federal protection and policing agency such as "homeland security," or a degradation of privacy and civil rights for "protection" purposes, is the fact that they are systems in place that can at any time be used by the right individual to create a totalitarian state. Lets not forget how easily dictators in the past such as Hitler were able to turn democratic societies into totalitarian regimes almost overnight, and many times by simply by manipulating systems put in place to "protect" and "serve" the people.
And I hope no one ever things another Hitler could never pop again because evil men like that can exist in any time and political system, and are always looking to achieve their own goals and fulfill there own lust for power. Why should we put systems in place that such men could possibly find ways to abuse.

ERROR: BAD ARGUMENT
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godix
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Post by godix » Fri Nov 09, 2007 12:13 pm

Godwin demands this thread be locked.
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Post by MadScientist » Fri Nov 09, 2007 12:51 pm

Fall_Child42 wrote:ERROR: BAD ARGUMENT
You got me there. My whole argument fell apart after I read your response :roll:
For the sake of sparing this thread, I won't get into a big defence of my opinion, especially because I don't claim to know everything or claim my argument is necessarily right. Also, its just my opinion, and I am no expert in these things. But I will say, while my choice of words and choice of examples (Hitler) is probably not the best, I have read quite a bit on his rise to power and his manipulation of the democratic system, which is why I used that example.

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godix
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Post by godix » Fri Nov 09, 2007 1:16 pm

Learn <a href="http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/">these</a> then don't do them. Especially #38
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Post by MadScientist » Fri Nov 09, 2007 2:43 pm

godix wrote:Learn <a href="http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/">these</a> then don't do them. Especially #38
Good link, and good to know. Although slippery slope arguments can be valid (and there are examples of that), so I don't consider that an absolute authority on constructing arguments. But according to that my statement certainly doesn't fall under the "valid" or "proper" use of the argument. So I do concede that.

And now that I have drawn this thread off topic enough, I will be quiet now. :oops:

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Nessephanie
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Post by Nessephanie » Fri Nov 09, 2007 4:41 pm

That's the problem with this whole topic. It's one big assumption of a slippery slope that will inevitably lead to our doom. I don't see that happening *shrugs*

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Post by inthesto » Fri Nov 09, 2007 5:22 pm

We should stop research on infectious diseases because somebody could use that to make biological weapons to kill us all.
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BasharOfTheAges
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Post by BasharOfTheAges » Fri Nov 09, 2007 5:55 pm

To continue the aside (and bring it full-circle back to the classroom), the whole slippery slope argument is the basis behind how most ethics, politics, and history classes are taught. It's a matter of recognizing past mistakes, extrapolating back to early warning signs, and then ideally stooping such things at the early stages (even if multiple things could fork from the "early warning signs" that have nothing to do with what you want to prevent). Realistically, though people just ignore shit and say how it's different - for example, Iraq isn't another Vietnam - Iraq is a dessert, and Vietnam is a jungle.
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Post by Ayanefan » Fri Nov 09, 2007 11:02 pm

I'm not gonna read this whole thing but I'll gladly put a tracker on my girls.

And if the Marauders Map can track anyone, why not use that?
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godix
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Post by godix » Fri Nov 09, 2007 11:09 pm

BasharOfTheAges wrote:To continue the aside (and bring it full-circle back to the classroom), the whole slippery slope argument is the basis behind how most ethics, politics, and history classes are taught. It's a matter of recognizing past mistakes, extrapolating back to early warning signs, and then ideally stooping such things at the early stages (even if multiple things could fork from the "early warning signs" that have nothing to do with what you want to prevent). Realistically, though people just ignore shit and say how it's different - for example, Iraq isn't another Vietnam - Iraq is a dessert, and Vietnam is a jungle.
The problem with slippery slope and why it's a fallacy is that it pretends the future can be predicted and can not be changed. Argue issues today on the merits of those issues not what they might turn into in the future. It is possible to support voluntary tracking of children today and oppose mandatory tracking of children tomorrow. They're similar issues but they ain't the same and one does not directly lead to the other if people oppose it leading there. So yeah, use history and your brain to figure out where something will lead then prevent it from leading there is you think that's bad. But that's still no reason to oppose a decent idea. Now if tracking kids at all is a decent idea is open to debate but what MIGHT happen tomorrow shouldn't be part of that debate really.

For those who just don't get it, consider what might be wrong with the following argument: We can't allow governments to be democracies, history shows that Hitler was elected to power so allowing a country to be a democracy will lead to the next holocaust.


As a total side note, Vietnam war is ~ 60,000 US casualties, which is roughly 6000 per year. Iraq war is ~3900 casualties. In other words less soldiers have died in four years of Iraq than died in a single year of Vietnam. Iraq and Vietnam has similarities but the differences are far more than just desert vs jungle. There exists valid reasons to oppose Iraq but the fact that 30 years ago we fought in Vietnam isn't one of them.
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