Wired has a story about OpenBazaar, a software project created with the idea of being to e-commerce what BitTorrent was to file sharing. From the article:
This weekend, the developers behind OpenBazaar plan to release a beta version of the software designed to let anyone privately and directly buy and sell goods online with no intermediary. They describe it as “pseudonymous, uncensored trade.” Rather than hosting its commerce on any server, OpenBazaar installs on users’ PCs, and allows them to list products in a file stored in a so-called “distributed hash table,” a database spread across many users’ machines. Everything will be paid in bitcoin. The result of that peer-to-peer architecture, they hope, will be a marketplace that no one—–no government, no company, not even the OpenBazaar programmers—can regulate or shut down.
But Patterson and OpenBazaar founder Brian Hoffman adamantly insist OpenBazaar isn’t designed for selling narcotics, guns, or other contraband. They see their invention as a freer, more democratic eBay or Craigslist, with no seller fees and no one to arbitrarily change the rules or censor products. “We’re not the ‘Super Silk Road.’ We’re trying to replace eBay in a better form,” says Patterson. “We recognize that people may choose to use that technology in a way we see as distasteful, immoral, and illegal, but we’re giving them the option to engage in a kind of human interaction that doesn’t exist right now.”
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Marand on Sunday August 31 2014, @11:15PM
I'm doing no such thing. My list is just examples of cases where people frequently blame the tool or object rather than the actions themselves because it's an easy scapegoat.
Blame television or video games for problems rather than face the problems themselves. Blame guns for gun violence rather than try to tackle the harder problems that create the violence. Your Prohibition mention is good, too, because it's another example I could have put on that list where people get hung up on the wrong part of the problem and want to ban something that, in itself, isn't inherently bad.
To further emphasise that my list wasn't just my own black-and-white opinions: I don't own any firearms but don't have a problem with them being legal; I don't enjoy drinking or use marijuana, but think both should be legal and related bad behaviour mitigated by the same laws that keep sober people in line; and I don't own any alt-currencies but support their existence. The common factor in all of these is that I do think that people should be rational and focus on the actual crimes and problems, rather than trying to hide the symptoms instead, but I don't see how that's a "black-and-white fallacy".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 01 2014, @04:08AM
It is black and white thinking because you believe the only way to reduce harm is to "focus on the actual problem" when real life is a combination of factors. Sometimes it is more effective to find a weak link in the chain. For example - more than half of gun deaths are suicides because people get sad and impulsive. You can pour a ton of money intro trying to stop people from being depressed and impulsive at the same time, or you can restrict access to guns so that they can't off themselves on a lark.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Monday September 01 2014, @05:33AM
Well, since you say I believe something, it must be true. Except it's not, because I never actually said or implied that. Doesn't matter, though. You're apparently so bothered by the fact that I mentioned guns in a statement about how people focus on the symptoms instead of the disease in regard to problem-solving, that you haven't noticed that you're doing the exact thing I said in the first post.
So, rather than attempting to help the mentally ill, you think it's better to take away one tool that can be used to commit suicide and pat yourself on the back that you saved the day. Doesn't matter that the person is still ill, still needs help, and still has other ways to commit suicide. If they kill themselves next week, it's okay, because at least it wasn't with a gun! Crisis averted!
Thanks for making my earlier point for me: people get too caught up on emotion-fueled crusades and ultimately don't give a shit about actually helping people or fixing the underlying problems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 01 2014, @06:21AM
> Well, since you say I believe something,
Dude, I quoted your words. And then you went on to repeat exactly what I accused you of believing. Look, some idiots around here like to declare they know what the other person is thinking in spite of the other person's own words. But I am going with your words. I'm not twisting them, I'm not taking them out of context, I'm not interpreting them. It is your words. "Focus on the actual problem" where the "actual problem" is one root cause rather than ALSO focusing on mitigating factors.
> So, rather than attempting to help the mentally ill,
What part of "combination of factors" do you think means a single factor?
Do you not recognize that "root cause" is absolutist? If there is one sentence in my response that you should respond to, it is that question.
> You're apparently so bothered by the fact that I mentioned guns
Lol. I didn't even notice you mentioned guns. I picked a simple example. I considered going with drunk-driving and how it is illegal for a bar to serve a customer who is drunk rather than outright prohibiting the sale of alcohol. But I picked one where the statistics were straight-forward and easily verified - over half of all gun deaths are suicides. And of course I already gave the example of restrictions on television versus outright banning. You protest too much, methinks.
Either way I won't be responding, you can't seem to hear what I'm saying and I think anyone else reading along who isn't an absolutist has probably figured out my point by now.