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Colbert turns his funny gun on Snowden in RSA keynote

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69 points tim333 | 1 comments | 02 Mar 14 11:56 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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danbruc ◴[02 Mar 14 13:37 UTC] No.7329102[source]▶
Why, if Snowden was concerned with letting us know how we are spied on, why did he let us know how we spy on other countries? I think we should spy on other countries.

The last sentence is where he is - only in my opinion of course - completely wrong; no country should spy on other countries without very good reasons. And wanting to know what is going on behind closed doors of foreign governments or companies misses my definition of very good reasons by orders of magnitude.

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wheaties ◴[02 Mar 14 13:52 UTC] No.7329135[source]▶
I think k we should spy on other countries and share his view of Snowden. I'm really glad Snow den leaked what he did, I just wish he didn't leak all of it. It does raise many questions on motivation. if he's disgusted with spy work in general he should just say so and be honest with the world. I could then have more respect for him doing what he did (and I do respect the conversation he's started.)
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danbruc ◴[02 Mar 14 13:58 UTC] No.7329149[source]▶
Can you give good reasons why the United States should spy on other countries? Or let's make it concrete, I am from Germany, why should the United States spy on Germany?
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wheaties ◴[02 Mar 14 14:05 UTC] No.7329167[source]▶
We can only gain by spying on you. We have a military base with defense systems in your country. Your political decisions therefore will have an impact on the effectiveness of our military system to defend our country.
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danbruc ◴[02 Mar 14 14:18 UTC] No.7329195{4}[source]▶
By robbing strangers in dark backstreets I can only gain, too. Because a country can gain something is not a good reason at all. And how do German decisions affect the United States' ability to defend themselves? We are thousands of kilometers away. We could maybe decided that we no longer want US military bases on German ground - quite unlikely if you ask me - but even if so, how does that impact the ability of the United States to protect their borders?
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jessedhillon ◴[02 Mar 14 15:50 UTC] No.7329487{5}[source]▶
By robbing strangers in the dark you can lose your life! I don't think you understand the argument here. I sincerely think you are confusing strongly the way you think the world should work with what decision-makers can do under the limits of bounded rationality. Because something is to be gained is almost the only justification for everything that happens.

If you want to figure out a world where people aren't self-interested and risk-averse, maybe a church would be a better place for you to have that discussion.

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1. danbruc ◴[02 Mar 14 16:42 UTC] No.7329677{6}[source]▶
If people are purely selfish, then everything is lost anyway - selfishness is not able to sustain a human society. And while people have to be selfish to some degree to sustain their lives, I see no reasons why they can not act altruistically after they secured basic human needs like food and shelter.

And I agree that most if not all decisions are based or should be based on the expected gain, but the question is then of course how you define or measure that gain. There may actually be a real gain for a country if you spy on other countries, but I argue that this is the wrong standard for gain in that situation, a selfish definition of gain. I would strongly prefer to consider the gain or loss for the whole world when evaluating decisions like whether or not to spy on other countries.