The debate is not about politicians getting mind-killed but mainly about normal people getting mind-killed. The fact that a professional politician manages to think clearly doesn’t indicate that the average person on the street also thinks clearly.
At the moment I’m having a facebook discussion with a German friend (I’m also German) who thinks that the US is definitely responsible for shooting down that plane in the Ukraine.
While it’s possible, it’s also plausible that the rebels simply wanted to shoot down a military plane and mistakenly hit the civilian aircraft. I do think “mind-killed” is a pretty good description for that behavior.
In the city of Berlin a few years ago the Berlin government wanted to have a database with the names of all students and with schools the student goes to. There are cases where a student get’s accepted in two schools and then both schools run with a higher head count and the schools are late in reporting back that they have a lower student count. That makes it harder for the central school administration to distribute teachers so the central school administration wants a database with student names and their school.
The German pirate party opposed that program because it’s about centralized storage of personal data and all centralized storage of personal data is supposed to be fought. I also think that the label “mind-killed” is fitting at that point.
There also quite good experimental evidence that people who can successfully use Bayes theorem when given non-political examples with numbers fail to use it when given political examples with are otherwise identical. I have no reason to doubt that only happens with Americans who think about politics and that it doesn’t happen in Germany.
Here parties need to be in coalitions in order to get majorities; so they need to remain on speaking terms and know each others positions well enough to find compromises.
That’s not much different than the US. In the US bills usually net support from some senators of both parties to avoid getting filibustered.
A big difference in Germany is that we don’t have privately funded political TV ads. We also have political parties where a politician has to explain himself to other members of his party to get on the party list to get elected. US politicians instead have to convince private donors to fund their campaign.
The German pirate party opposed that program because it’s about centralized storage of personal data and all centralized storage of personal data is supposed to be fought. I also think that the label “mind-killed” is fitting at that point.
Alternatively they understood that “no centralized storage of personal data” is a much better Schelling point than “no centralized storage of personal data except in a few obviously harmless cases”. Or that allowing it in a harmless case can lead to a slippery slope. Beware of assuming that anything you don’t understand is mindkill.
Or that allowing it in a harmless case can lead to a slippery slope. Beware of assuming that anything you don’t understand is mindkill.
I do understand the relevant political field.
There are people in the privacy movement who prefer that the police in Berlin routinely breaks the law to locate people who confess to attempting suicide via the telephone over the police having the legal authority to locate those people.
At the same time the pirate party did very little to protest centralized storage of medical information because that wasn’t a topic on the agenda of the mainstream media.
Or that allowing it in a harmless case can lead to a slippery slope.
They don’t have the power whether or not to allow it or to enforce a Schelling point. As a strategic choice it’s very bad to not have the debate about privacy in a way where you argue based on rational arguments why certain state actions aren’t worth it. Without engaging in rational discourse but instead fighting for a Schelling point that way outside of what you can push through, you don’t effect political choices.
The German pirate party effectively did get nothing done on a political level in the face of the Snowden leaks right in front of a general German election because they didn’t fight for specific political goals to move public policy in the right direction. That’s very sad.
They also damaged themselves through infighting to the point of not entering the German federal parliament.
Things would have played out differently with competent people at the head of the pirate party. In that case we would have at least some decent pro-privacy laws passed and we would have a pirate party in the German federal parliament.
The debate is not about politicians getting mind-killed but mainly about normal people getting mind-killed. The fact that a professional politician manages to think clearly doesn’t indicate that the average person on the street also thinks clearly.
At the moment I’m having a facebook discussion with a German friend (I’m also German) who thinks that the US is definitely responsible for shooting down that plane in the Ukraine.
While it’s possible, it’s also plausible that the rebels simply wanted to shoot down a military plane and mistakenly hit the civilian aircraft. I do think “mind-killed” is a pretty good description for that behavior.
In the city of Berlin a few years ago the Berlin government wanted to have a database with the names of all students and with schools the student goes to. There are cases where a student get’s accepted in two schools and then both schools run with a higher head count and the schools are late in reporting back that they have a lower student count. That makes it harder for the central school administration to distribute teachers so the central school administration wants a database with student names and their school.
The German pirate party opposed that program because it’s about centralized storage of personal data and all centralized storage of personal data is supposed to be fought. I also think that the label “mind-killed” is fitting at that point.
There also quite good experimental evidence that people who can successfully use Bayes theorem when given non-political examples with numbers fail to use it when given political examples with are otherwise identical. I have no reason to doubt that only happens with Americans who think about politics and that it doesn’t happen in Germany.
That’s not much different than the US. In the US bills usually net support from some senators of both parties to avoid getting filibustered.
A big difference in Germany is that we don’t have privately funded political TV ads. We also have political parties where a politician has to explain himself to other members of his party to get on the party list to get elected. US politicians instead have to convince private donors to fund their campaign.
Alternatively they understood that “no centralized storage of personal data” is a much better Schelling point than “no centralized storage of personal data except in a few obviously harmless cases”. Or that allowing it in a harmless case can lead to a slippery slope. Beware of assuming that anything you don’t understand is mindkill.
I do understand the relevant political field.
There are people in the privacy movement who prefer that the police in Berlin routinely breaks the law to locate people who confess to attempting suicide via the telephone over the police having the legal authority to locate those people.
At the same time the pirate party did very little to protest centralized storage of medical information because that wasn’t a topic on the agenda of the mainstream media.
They don’t have the power whether or not to allow it or to enforce a Schelling point. As a strategic choice it’s very bad to not have the debate about privacy in a way where you argue based on rational arguments why certain state actions aren’t worth it. Without engaging in rational discourse but instead fighting for a Schelling point that way outside of what you can push through, you don’t effect political choices.
The German pirate party effectively did get nothing done on a political level in the face of the Snowden leaks right in front of a general German election because they didn’t fight for specific political goals to move public policy in the right direction. That’s very sad.
They also damaged themselves through infighting to the point of not entering the German federal parliament.
Things would have played out differently with competent people at the head of the pirate party. In that case we would have at least some decent pro-privacy laws passed and we would have a pirate party in the German federal parliament.