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Los Angeles City Council is considering sending "Dear John" letters to the registrants of cars seen in an area of San Fernando described as having a "thriving street prostitution problem". The plan would use automated license plate readers to identify vehicles that stopped in the area. Council member Nury Martinez claims "If you aren't soliciting, you have no reason to worry about finding one of these letters in your mailbox. But if you are, these letters will discourage you from returning."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/12/01/the-age-of-pre-crime-has-arrived/
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The Age of ‘Pre-Crime’ has Arrived
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @09:05PM
> Someone asked, "How can we make a bad situation worse?"
No they didn't and to characterize what happened like that is to utterly misunderstand how people work.
It makes for great rhetoric. But it's empty and useless rhetoric.
What actually happened is that they put ideology ahead of both empathy and practicality.
Sound like anyone you know?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @10:33PM
No they didn't and to characterize what happened like that is to utterly misunderstand how people work.
To not understand that people don't mean everything they say to be taken literally is to utterly misunderstand how people work, oh enlightened person.
What actually happened is that they put ideology ahead of both empathy and practicality.
Not to mention that their ideology doesn't favor freedom.
But "ideology" is such a dirty word. What we really need are more clear and sensible positions like yours, where you put forth the ideology that empathy and practicality are more important than ideology.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @10:59PM
> To not understand that people don't mean everything they say to be taken literally is to utterly misunderstand how people work, oh enlightened person.
That's funny since you are literally taking my words literally. I'm talking about the idea expressed in those words. Nobody went into that intending to make the situation worse.
> where you put forth the ideology that empathy and practicality are more important than ideology.
I concede. Treating people like people instead of relying on some arbitrary set of rigid rules is definitely ideological. You got me sheldon cooper!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @11:39PM
Nobody went into that intending to make the situation worse.
Which is your problem: You took that statement literally. Does he literally believe people went into the situation intending to make things worse? I don't know, but I doubt it.
I concede. Treating people like people instead of relying on some arbitrary set of rigid rules is definitely ideological.
My problem is that you seem to treat "ideology" as a bad word, but you subscribe to ideologies yourself. They're just different from the ideologies other people subscribe to. Ideology shouldn't be a bad word, but you should argue in favor of the ones you think are correct instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @12:49AM
> . Does he literally believe people went into the situation intending to make things worse?
Have you seen his posting history?
The guy is not subtle.
> My problem is that you seem to treat "ideology" as a bad word,
I treat strict adherence to ideology as a bad thing. That sort of simplification is black and white thinking which is great for physics and software, but not so much for people. Empathy and practicality are pretty much the opposite of black and white thinking. They require human judgment on a case by case basis. If that counts as ideology in your book, then your dictionary has defined ideology in such a broad manner as to be meaningless.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @01:02AM
I treat strict adherence to ideology as a bad thing.
I would say it depends on the ideology. I don't know every ideology that exists, so I can't say that strictly adhering to any ideology is necessarily bad.
If that counts as ideology in your book, then your dictionary has defined ideology in such a broad manner as to be meaningless.
The definition of ideology is broad in the first place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @01:39AM
> I would say it depends on the ideology. I don't know every ideology that exists, so I can't say that strictly adhering to any ideology is necessarily bad.
Forest and trees man. It isn't necessarily the content of ideology that is bad. It is the strict adherence part that is bad.
> The definition of ideology is broad in the first place.
That's a false dichotomy. It isn't a case of "broad" versus "not broad" it is a case of "broad" versus "anything under the sun."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @02:00AM
That's a false dichotomy.
No, it's not. I simply called it broad. That's not a false dichotomy. I did not specify the exact degree to which it is broad, and nor did I say that "broad" and "not broad" were the only two things that exist.
It isn't a case of "broad" versus "not broad" it is a case of "broad" versus "anything under the sun."
The actual definition is pretty vague and closer to the latter, sadly. I didn't come up with it. That's why I generally don't even bother using such terms unless someone else brings them up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @03:15AM
No, it's not. I simply called it broad. That's not a false dichotomy. I did not specify the exact degree to which it is broad, and nor did I say that "broad" and "not broad" were the only two things that exist.
Jesus christ. For someone complaining about literalism, you are way too fucking literal.
You offered that up as an excuse as to why your meaninglessly broad definition was acceptable. The "I didn't literally say that" excuse is simple denialism.
The actual definition is pretty vague and closer to the latter, sadly.
So, lets think this through. You are complaining that I used a word with a definition that is so broad as to have no essentially meaning. And that's meaningful to you?
Fucking dictionary pedants. Context dude.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @05:00AM
You offered that up as an excuse as to why your meaninglessly broad definition was acceptable. The "I didn't literally say that" excuse is simple denialism.
It's not denialism; it's just that you accused me of doing something I wasn't doing. I communicated my point by saying it's broad, and you somehow got from that
So, lets think this through. You are complaining that I used a word with a definition that is so broad as to have no essentially meaning.
Well, it began with you complaining about my use of the term being too broad, so I simply decided to point out that the actual definition is, in fact, extremely broad. I see this as valid.
Fucking dictionary pedants. Context dude.
Words have meanings. It seems to me that you were trying to redefine it to be less broad than it really is, without even being clear about how broad your new definition was.