I don't see what the fundamental problem would be in trying to get rid of punishment. Not having punishment doesn't mean the system would, for example, be easier on offenders and less gratifying for victims.

You could in fact create a rather draconian restorative justice system without any punishment at all: instead of prison or death sentences, enforce only full monetary compensation for any damages the offender has caused. If they're rich, well sure they might get away with most things, but if that leaves a bad taste in a victim's mouth then the compensation was simply set too low. It's hard to put a price on some types of damage, for example permanent serious disability, so you might play it safe and make it astronomical.

Seizing and selling all the offender's earthly possessions doesn't cover it? Well, that's the part where you "enforce compensation" by shipping them to a labour camp where they toil indefinitely until it's all been paid for. It would probably feel like a punishment, but that's just happenstance and something which vengefully-minded people would be free to secretly take solace in.

Might be a bit far off in the future as far as practical implementation goes, obviously.

This sounds very much like the argument that the universe must have been designed for humans (or, if you prefer, known terrestrial life in general) because conditions on Earth are so very suitable for us that finding ourselves on a one-in-a-million planet like this instead of an inhospitable rock is incredibly unlikely.

The fault in both is the same fallacious idea of winning the lottery. Just like there were no humans which were dropped off to a random planet and against all odds it happened to be a hospitable one, there was no "me" that was dropped off to a random material body and against all odds it happened to be a human one. In neither case did I win the lottery, because I didn't participate in one; I'm only a result of one.

For those who are unfamiliar with the paradox it's about a hungry ass being placed in the exact middle of two identical stacks of grass. Having no reason to choose one over the other (since they're identical) the ass is paralyzed into indecision and eventually dies of starvation.

How do we solve this paradox? — TheMadFool

Sorry for being dense, but what do you mean by solving? Are you hoping to find an explanation of why such a situation couldn't occur, or an explanation of what would be required for it to occur, or something else?

An ass wouldn't actually die of starvation in front of two stacks of grass. However, there could conceivably be an organism which would, and of course similar problems regularly manifest in other information-processing systems such as computer software. What more is there to say about it?

Why? — intrapersona

What do you mean, why? What sort of answer are you looking for? Do you want an explanation from the angle of developmental psychology about how most people end up that way, or possible evolutionary benefits those traits might provide which could explain their prevalence, or just a description of exactly what in their brain or thought processes causes it?

Of course, if it's any of the above then I can't help since sadly I'm not a scientist in any of those fields. :-}

I wouldn't call it hypocricy, lack of sincerity or even political correctness if someone isn't interested in hearing just about anyone's opinions about their character traits and personality. To be sincere, one doesn't need to put themselves up for some kind of peer review.

Most of what you're saying makes it sound like you really wanted to give your opinion on their personal faults and they didn't want that. Whether me or someone else here would consider them to have been unreasonable or not depends very much on exactly how you behaved (which we don't know), since you're describing a social interaction, not a logical debate.

What is up with this? What could be the cause of it? — intrapersona

Well it's a complicated combination of both how most people's brain just happens to be wired and culture, surely. Usually people aren't comfortable with in-depth analysis or critique of their character traits and personality unless they feel particularly safe, comfortable and relaxed, trust the other person to not misuse (or misplace) the information, and actually want to do it (for whatever reason). For better or worse (although I'll say I'd lean towards better, in case you'd otherwise think otherwise), people for whom that sort of thing comes easily probably have a way above average likelihood of being somewhere on the autism spectrum.

The utility we produce for the rest of the population is nil- perhaps our contribution through consumption (and the growth of GDP unwittingly), and some twisting of logic with the butterfly effect may be some counter arguments here (that all the small things contribute somehow to an outcome), but practically speaking, as we usually understand the term in common usage, not many people "contribute" in a way that increases the utility a great deal to the populous (of a country/world). — schopenhauer1

Maybe the common usage really isn't very good then.

If you have, for example, a brilliant scientist making great discoveries and providing heaps of utility that way, how is it twisting of logic to point out that they've probably been carried by a huge amount of "ordinary" people providing the necessary infrastructure and other essentials for the scientist to be able to make those discoveries in the first place? You can't genetically engineer cures for diseases or design better computer chips without a pretty modern society behind you, and that requires masses of ordinary people running the everyday aspects of it.

I think attribution of credit or blame is just one of those things that tend to be inherently so complicated that everyday language has to rely on extremely simplistic approximations, such as giving all the credit of a scientific discovery to the scientist, and not fairly distributing it down the whole causal chain. It'd be a mistake to confuse the simplistic way we choose who to credit or to blame with some kind of metaphysical truth about who is actually to credit or to blame.

What if the omnipotent being chooses not to exercise complete causal control over everything? — aletheist

That doesn't seem to make any logical sense, though. The being can't for example just create some another being and try to pass it off as autonomous and pretend that it doesn't know or isn't responsible for what the new being is going to do, because obviously all the new being's decisions will follow from the omnipotent being's decisions one way or another.

Well that was a pleasant surprise! I picked Sweden because my country wasn't in the list, and my guesses got me to #1 in the ranking, with Sweden at #11 so I guess I really do know Sweden better than the people in Sweden. :D

I'm not sure how much of it to attribute to dumb luck, though. I did answer everything by gut feeling, but I thought I had a reasonably solid gut feeling about all of them, but also there were only 8 questions so it's quite possible to get a good score with basic knowledge combined with a few lucky cases of gut feeling ending up being correct.

This would not be asserting that something is the case just because someone says that it is, though, would it? — Terrapin Station

Pretty much no one ever asserts that something is true because someone says it is. Someone who believes that crooked politicians run a pedophile ring out of the basement of a pizza joint isn't going to tell you that it's true because someone said so. They'll very specifically tell you that you shouldn't believe what people (such as the crooked politicians) say but that you should look at the totally credible evidence that was uncovered.

Teaching kids that they don't have to believe everything they're told (which is what your position seems to be) isn't going to stop them believing in the aforementioned kind of misinformation, because that's not why people start believing in it now.

Right. So what does the fact that for practicalities' sake, we have to do many things simply on the word of others have to do with my comment? — Terrapin Station

Seems to me that it shows why advice that one shouldn't believe things just because someone says is far from a complete solution, no?

You're not thinking that I'm saying that things aren't the case just because someone says them, are you? — Terrapin Station

No, I don't think I am.

The answer to this is simply to teach kids, starting in elementary school, to not simply believe someting just because someone says it. That includes teaching them to not simply believe what teachers, parents, etc. say just because they say it. — Terrapin Station

The problem with that is that we have to simply believe what others say all the time. In our daily lives we constantly have to basically trust what we're being told because there's no time nor means to try to verify everything. The basis for almost everything we do is ultimately based on what we've been told.

With news this is particularly a problem, because the whole point of news is to be told things you don't know. Good old fashioned critical thinking will help you filter out the most outrageous nonsense you come across, but most of the time we can do little more than try to be smart about who to trust.

We still want to say in this situation that what the guy did was morally wrong. — dukkha

We do? I wouldn't.

Now, I'm not saying I'm completely immune to judging actions which, objectively, cause no harm or cause a net benefit. If I do happen to notice someone discreetly looting a corpse (which is of course different from your example, where no one notices), then that's likely to give me a very negative first impression of that person. However, that's not because I think there's something inherently wrong with looting a corpse as such if no harm is done, it's simply because of my fuzzy human intuition about social conventions which says that people who loot corpses are very very likely to be asses, and also the fact that I wouldn't immediately know whether there is some potential harm involved or not.

If, however, they beforehand confessed to me that they think it's senseless to bury expensive rings, and that they're going to make themselves the last person to go to the casket and that they're going to pilfer the ring, sell it, and donate the money to the blind kittens' orphanage, and somehow I'm actually convinced that they won't be caught and are actually speaking the truth, then... great! Wonderful, please go ahead. It's the right thing to do and hopefully I wouldn't wimp out of helping them.

So, let's sum this up... it's a fact that psychiatrists are greedy, immoral and corrupt to the bone, not to mention at the same time hilariously stupid, and of course also a bunch of faggot cuckoos consulting lying books who want people to be sick and suffer and will stop at nothing to destroy all signs of greatness and mostly just want to enslave you to society? And that psychiatrists (probably pretty regularly) sending Alexander the Great, Jesus, Mohammed, Napoleon and Julius Caesar to the asylum is actually a really bad thing?

And you realized all this, plus the fact that progressives are actually Nazis trying to control your thoughts, after you quit seeing psychiatrists and taking your medication?

Kids, take heed. Take your meds and don't skip sessions.

Just think about it for a second without getting caught up in the politics and ethics of it. These people believe that they have a soul or spirit that is somehow imbued with either masculinity or femininity that is opposite of their body's masculinity or femininity. Do souls or spirits have a quality of masculinity or femininity about them, and can souls be placed in the wrong body? — Harry Hindu

Surely you realize that the phrase "born in the wrong body" (or the idea in general) isn't necessarily to be taken literally and doesn't need to include any beliefs about souls or spirits? It can just be a way of saying "a big incompatibility with sense of identity and physical body" in a way which, I suppose, might better describe what it feels like to oneself. No doubt there's a lot of silly people who believe in masculine and feminine souls and what have you, but it doesn't make sense to claim that that's a requirement.

If people get offended when you suggest that really they might simply be delusional and wrong about it, that probably has something to do with the fact that they know that regardless of what you call their condition, they can't just make it go away. Calling something a delusion can be useful if there's a realistic possibility of actually dispelling the delusion, but if everyone involved knows that it's a more or less permanent delusion, then insisting on a negative word like delusion is to be a bit of an ass about it.

Transgenders have what is called a somatic delusion - where one believes that there is something wrong with their body.
http://www.minddisorders.com/Br-Del/Delusions.html

Why is it that we seem to allow some people to continue to hold their delusions, or even promote their delusional state, while others we try to "help" them overcome their delusions and see things as they truly are (that they are actually the gender they were born as). It comes down to "Is it moral to allow someone to continue believing in a lie, or to make them face the facts?" Would it be immoral to help reinforce their lie to themselves?

I would like to know how consistent people are in this. Why do we find it okay to tell the religious that they believe in a delusion, but not okay to tell this to a transgender?

Why do we find it okay to allow doctors to make money off mentally ill people to perform a sex change when that essentially counts as mutilating their body as a result of their delusion? — Harry Hindu

Well what's the latest science on that? Do transgender people have actual physiological differences in their brain or is it purely a psychological thing? What kind of treatment or therapy could "cure" them, and would that tend to be easier or harder than undergoing a sex change, or just living as transgender without a sex change?

Surely the answers to your questions depend on those.

It seems to me that in order to quench the rowdy disorder that comes from different people's opinions on what our social codes should be (moral relativism) people end up saying they accept all sorts of outrageous things in life (like transgender people) but secretly on the inside they keep their opinions to themselves because they know it would cause unrest due to the social order we formed to quench the rowdy disorder that comes from people offering or rather shouting differing opinions (moral relativism). — intrapersona

Or perhaps you're conflating people thinking there's something bad or wrong about something, and people just not liking that something. I bet a lot of people initially feel it's somehow icky to for example physically interact with a clearly transgendered person (or at least in certain combinations), but that doesn't mean they secretly think there's something unacceptable about that person or their choices. They might secretly simply realize that it's really just in their own head, and be able to separate their own preferences and biases from what they think should or shouldn't be socially acceptable.

I also think this is a large part of my thinking 'what the hell is going on?'. I had a female friend post a comment saying the election was entirely about gender. A male replied listing some other factors - her response was something about how it was so enlightening to here from men that male privileged doesn't exist.

When did this become a completely normal way to argue in a political discussion? — shmik

From what I've seen of U.S. political arguments in the past 15 years or so... it's always been like that, no? I mean that's exactly the same kind of thing that I've been seeing over and over and over again on the right-wing side as well. I find it truly bizarre that all of a sudden it's "the left" that is being accused of engaging in rhetorical misdirection and trying to redefine words and being intellectually dishonest and regressive, when that's precisely what you've had from "the right" for a really long time.

What, you're against torture or illegal wiretaps? Oh it's so enlightening to hear that you're on the side of terrorists.
What, you're for free healthcare? Oh it's good that you admit being a communist.
What, you want any gun control? Oh wow you just want to take everyone's guns so you can instate dictatorship.
What, you think women or minorities still face some problems? Oh well you just really hate white straight men don't you yeah we know you do.

Why are so many people suddenly seeming to forget that that kind of constant torrent of right-wing demagoguery really was a thing, and frankly still is? I feel like witnessing the onset of some kind of mass amnesia.

Yes, regressive anti-intellectualism is a problem, but it sure as hell is not a recent leftist invention even if it's now left-wing regressive anti-intellectualism that is more mainstream or gets more visibility than some 10 years ago.

Anyway - thoughts? — shmik

I find it odd how so often I see people describing how they're disillusioned by their current or former political in-group, as if they suddenly see the motivations and shortcomings of other people on their side more clearly and realize that they're on average not that much smarter or nicer than anyone else. Or rather, I don't find it odd that people do come to those sort of realizations, but rather the fact that it often seems to be a bit of a shock to them because they so strongly identified with that group. Doesn't that just mean that they primarily identified with the people, and that the actual issues and arguments behind them were secondary?

You say that you had had discussions about abortions for years. What did those discussions entail if no one ever brought up considerations regarding the fetus? To me it seems like anywhere one goes to participate in discussion about a controversial topic like that, there's always someone who brings up the so-called pro-life side of the argument. Or did none of them simply ever manage to express themselves in a way which would have allowed you to really put yourself in their position and "get" what they're going on about?

I guess where I'm going with this might be that it's certainly healthy to notice that most people even on your own side on most issues aren't in for it because they've really rationally thought things through, but often more for simple tribalism and other less-rational reasons. However, I'd say it's equally important to use that realization not to just swing to the other tribe and think they're much better (not that it sounds like you were doing that, but still), but to stop strongly identifying with any particular group altogether, and to identify with the actual issues and arguments instead.

I do find issues of representation/objectification/etc interesting and worth of attention, just as I do things like structural racism, but I do think it's a huge mistake to try to frame them as a matter of personal ethical choices.

A lot of games present women in objectified roles? Sure, you can look at the statistics and conclude that there is a problem in there somewhere, but you cannot blame anyone in particular for it. You can't blame anyone who chose to make a game which happens to have women in objectified roles, and you can't blame anyone for playing one. The problem is too elusive for you to be able to determine whether it's actually happening in any particular instance or not, as is the chain of causation which supposedly leads to ethically relevant real-world consequences.

We can't know whether someone didn't hire a person because of their ethnicity or for some other reason. We can't know whether the shallow and sexualized female character someone wrote is depiction or endorsement. Making it into an ethical question for public debate is a moot point because only the person involved can know. Now, as I said I do find the issues interesting and worth of attention, but pointing fingers is usually pointless because almost everyone has plausible deniability.

In fact I said DC was wrong in claiming that human suffering and animal suffering ought to be presumed to be equal as we have good reason to believe that animals don't suffer from existential dread, for instance. — apokrisis

That doesn't make the claim wrong. Obviously when someone says that "human suffering and animal suffering are equal" they're not claiming that the forms of suffering that animals can experience are the exact same ones as the ones humans can (or vice versa), but that one unit of suffering is intrinsically just as bad regardless of what kind of being experiences it.

Are you seriously claiming that you thought that DC's claim that "human and animal suffering ought to be presumed to be equal" was meant in such a way that "animals don't suffer from existential dread so no they're not equal" is a valid logical counterargument?

And then morality in general has no transcendent or Platonic basis. It is simply the wisdom by which human societies live. So it could only be a group thing.

And being naturalistic in that fashion, it would be no surprise if morality evolves in step with lifestyle evolution. So what we do currently, or previously, can be examined in terms of why it worked - and by definition it has worked because here we are. However we are free to make a new kind of sense of the world, as encoded by our new moral codes.

But then, the anthropological examination of what has worked does throw up general and obvious "rules" - such as the ones that establish trade-offs between competitive and cooperative behaviours in any social group. — apokrisis

I don't know why you're writing a description of morality to me. I just pointed out that you're trying to argue against a prescriptive ethical claim by using descriptive claims about definitions of morality.

My best guess would have to be that you think prescriptive claims are inherently nonsensical, useless or something along those lines, and that's why you insist on treating them as descriptive claims. Is that right at all, or even close?

I talk about how things actually are. You talk about what you wish them to be. — apokrisis

Well this thread was about the latter. You seem to persistently be trying to use the former to argue against it.

Your continuing objection to darthbarracuda's claim that "speciesism is wrong" seems to basically be "no, because the definition of morality is what a group considers right/wrong and currently most people don't consider speciesism wrong so you're wrong by definition".

That is my position on this: speciesism is wrong and should be abolished in the same way racism, sexism, and homophobia have/should be. It is inconsistent to support the abolishment of the latter while ignoring the former. — darthbarracuda

Yes, of course.

Has anyone actually disagreed with this position in this thread? There's big piles of seemingly dissenting words but they all seem to be about metaethics.

I find that very strange position which is really only tenable if the act of suicide literally affects nobody which I would venture to suggest is never the case. The suicide of someone we know, even at a distance, is one of the most devastating psychological traumas possible. Add to that the burden on those responsible for finding the body, breaking the news, tying up the many loose ends (suicides rarely set their affairs in order beforehand), and it is simply impossible to see suicide as anything other than the most supremely selfish act possible, indiscriminately targeting others for incalculable injury. — Barry Etheridge

Where (and why) do you draw the line when it comes to shielding others from psychological pain?

If, say, your parents were devastated by their unshakable belief that you're going to suffer eternally in the fires of hell because of your lack of correct religious belief, would it be selfish and cruel of you to not lie to them about your religious beliefs to alleviate their psychological pain?

If someone is truly utterly offended at your choice of clothing (which you find entirely appropriate) and insists that it causes them genuine distress, will you cater to them and stop wearing it?

If you're in tremendous pain with a terminal medical condition and would rather opt for euthanasia or assisted suicide but one of your friends or family pleads you not to because if would be traumatizing for them, will you suck it up and linger in agony for a month or two more as to not incalculably injure that person?

Obviously I'm not expecting an answer to each question, those are just examples to illustrate that people can suffer psychological damage from all sorts of things, and in some cases it's simply because they're stupid. Since you're arguing against suicide on the grounds that it causes psychological damage to those left behind, then naturally you're saying that that's an acceptable or reasonable thing to be damaged by (as opposed to someone's clothing, for example, which I'm sure you'll agree would be stupid), but what exactly is the criteria for that? The intensity of their suffering, how difficult it would be for them to alter their thinking to avoid it, something else?

So if you could easily re-program your brain to work however you want (within reasonably human parameters) and alter your own motivations, likes, dislikes and interests, would you? If yes, how and why?

I'll skip the usual anti-natalist/efilist schtick and go with a slightly more fundamental problem: to what degree should predictions about actions of other moral agents affect one's ethical decisions?

Examples:

***

• Let's say you're a prisoner of some particularly unsavoury group. Due to this or that, you're ordered to execute another prisoner (maybe they tried to escape, or whatever) to set an example. Your captors proclaim that should you refuse, they'll simply do it themselves but also kill a random third prisoner. You can't know whether they'll follow through with their threat or not, but if they do, it's their choice and fault, not yours.
  
• Let's say you give to a charity delivering aid to civilians of a conflict zone which is prone to having its deliveries stolen by militants. You can't know whether that will happen to whichever truck happens to be carrying the supplies bought with your donation, but if it does, it's the militants' choice and fault, not yours.
  
• Let's say you end up in one of those hypothetical situations where the right thing to do involves a serious crime. If you do the right thing, the legal process can be expected to take you to prison. Yet, the legal process is comprised of moral agents, not robots. Is it your choice if you end up in prison, or is it the collective choice of the people who detain, transport, guard and sentence you?
  
• Let's say you meet someone who has a most peculiar mental disorder which makes them punch themselves in the face if they hear the word "zygheqt", and only through the most intense concentration can they prevent it from happening. If you say the word, is it your choice and fault when they receive a punch in the face if their concentration fails?
  
• Let's say that as part of your job, you have to do something that you feel is slightly wrong. Should you resign, your employer is likely to succeed in simply finding someone else to do it. If you stay because of that, is it your fault and choice that the slightly wrong thing keeps happening?

***

Should I make my choices only aiming to do "my part", and ignore even predictable choices of other moral agents? Or should I forego the idea of treating others as moral agents altogether and aim for what I predict would likely result in the best outcome regardless of whether I'd have to take some blame myself? Both approaches seem to have their own problems, which I don't feel necessary to go into right here and now.

So, that's one of my few philosophical obsessions.

I can't tell what half of that is saying. Need an example.

So what I'm interested in exploring is why we see pain as more pressing than pleasure.

Because that's how your brain happens to be wired. Why are you expecting to find it based on logic in the first place?

I'm curious; from what premises have you derived this conclusion?

Just from dissecting my own mind; I found that reduction of suffering is what all my wants eventually reduce into. Unless it turns out to be a want for which there is no axiomatic foundation at all, in which case it disappears.

So, I try to be as rational as possible and rationalize away everything that I can. The only irrational axiomatic core that I cannot eliminate by means of reason is "suffering is bad", and thus negative utilitarianism is true for me.

I'm an efilist because I concluded negative utilitarianism to be true and minimization of suffering to be the only underlying moral imperative.

The expression "worth living" is meaningless to me because it's based on a premise I don't hold, namely that a mind's desire for continuing existence is a valid utilitarian preference that the death of that mind would violate.

Do you believe that life could be given any subjective value/meaning?

I could say that sure, one can "give subjective value/meaning" to anything whether it's hats, life, carrots or levitation. But as far as I'm concerned, there's no meaningful interpretations of what that could even mean which would have relevance to pretty much anything.

life is incapable of being given any subjective meaning by the humans who live it

That phrase is basically semantic garbage and doesn't make any sense to me, so I don't think it's a conclusion I've made.

I wouldn't call myself a nihilist, but I'm guessing that most people would consider efilism to necessarily entail nihilism, so maybe I'll qualify.

I'm not sure if anything in particular originally prompted it, but I just started thinking about ethical questions if not systematically then at least daily, and in the course of what I think was a couple of years, progressively chipping away notions and concepts which were unnecessary or ultimately didn't make sense. It probably helped a lot that I engaged in a lot of online debates, since through that I got to fine-tune my positions as well as better recognize and avoid faulty arguments and lines of thought.

However, I didn't subscribe to the idea of objective meaning or good even before that, so the process was more about figuring out what my own subjective perspective is exactly, rather than coming to realize the lack of an objective one.

I might add that contrary to what the common stereotype is about why/how people become nihilists (or something similar), in my case this specifically happened during a particularly stress- and depression-free part of my life.

Doesn't sound like there's much to disagree there.

However, I'm not familiar with the kind of academic philosophy that he's referring to, so I'd beseech anyone to give an example of something that Dennett would think is irrelevant and self-indulgent, but which you think isn't, and then to explain in plain english why it's not.

Of course an artificial intelligence can do anything a human brain can, because an artificial intelligence can be as similar to a human brain as you want.

Since the old forum is apparently not going to recover, I suppose I have to migrate here...

As someone who doesn't in principle recognize the notion of "rights" at all (I usually support them on practical grounds, of course), my line of thinking is roughly along these lines (although I think I'm stuck on one train of thought right now and might be forgetting other approaches):

Yes, no one cares about what websites I visit or what I talk about on the phone, because I'm no one. That doesn't mean I never become, either because of my own actions or simply due to association or chance, a person of interest that could have the collected data used against me unjustly. Most people break some laws constantly, and privately say things that would have massive repercussions if they said them in public. If you have enough surveillance data, there's a good chance that you can paint almost anyone as suspicious or dangerous or discredit them in the public eye.

Basically, with pervasive mass surveillance you'll have some kind of dirt on everyone, and almost anyone can be charged for something. If the surveillant wants to put someone in trouble or blackmail them, they can. Of course actors with little accountability can simply have people snatched from the street, shipped to a secret prison to be tortured and basically refuse any due process, but that's a method with different aims and different thresholds. You can't just disappear a known public figure for instance and not run the risk of the whole thing massively blowing up in your face, but having them arrested on seemingly plausible grounds and leaking their deepest darkest secrets to ruin their career and credibility? Seems a lot safer, and thus the threshold will be much lower.

You also can't discount plain stupidity and incompetence. There's a lot more room for false positives when you have a system that's trying to find something suspicious in anything and everything you say, write or look at. And even if we assume competence, if you look at the sort of nefarious crap intelligence agencies have been pulling for a long time it seems clear that organizations like that, as they exist today, cannot be trusted to behave.

I don't care if some guy in a cubicle sees my private data, it wouldn't even feel icky if I could trust that that's as far as it will go. But what we're talking about is more like the data getting secretly stored indefinitely to be used by anyone who happens to gain access to it, however far in the unforeseeable future in unforeseeable circumstances. That's icky.

You might say that that doesn't mean there's anything inherently wrong with surveillance and that we should just elect representatives who would make sure it's not abused, but my response to that is simply that that's backwards and that mass surveillance should obviously only be instituted once the safeguards are in place.

P.S. No one cares if the CIA looks at public FB or similar. People only object to mass surveillance of private communications.