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When you start looking more than 50 years into the past you need to realize that this was a time when people thought blacks were lesser people than whites, women couldn't vote, many people were illiterate, people didn't have access to information, and maybe most importantly people were much much poorer (just look at the GDP). Now a days people for the most part live comfortable lives, and what we think of as "hard times" now is not the same as before (where it would often mean starvation for a large segment of the population) So to think history will repeat itself seems to me very simplistic.

No country with a high GDP has turned authoritarian. Authoritarianism doesn't work in wealthy countries.

The drone killing is a seriously disturbing precedent, but with the backlash that's happened I think you won't be seeing that again (at least I hope).

The rest of your examples are definitely tools at the disposal of the executive branch, but they're on the same order of being put on the no fly list (the no-fly-list was more of an illustrative example than a definitive list of what the government can do). Annoying, but not at all equivalent at all to being jailed (as the parent comment stated).

Except that's not the reality. The reality is that if Obama really really hates someone and wants to make their life miserable, the most he can do it make it hard for him to fly (ie. the no-fly list). The government is constrained in what it can do, surveillance and omniscience doesn't change that.

If you think that's a possible reality you're living in a paranoid lala land - which isn't surprising given all the apocalyptic narratives we get from the media (gov't turning evil, zombies/robots taking over, evil agencies controlling the world).

The reality is that no wealthy democratic government in the past 50 years (some of which are less obsessed with protecting liberties) has slid back into tyranny. There are statistics that indicate that past a certain GDP threshold tyrannical governments become unsustainable.

This kind of thing is simply never going to happen.

This part especially his belief that privacy is a universal right:

More fundamentally, the "US Persons" protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%. Our founders did not write that "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal."

While not everyone has a job that's hourly, people still have a strong sense of their time's worth. Maybe working extra doesn't directly translate to X dollars at the end of the month, but it may mean you can negotiate a larger raise, or a bonus.

If you just try flying a kite on a good windy day an keep feeding it string, it will pretty quickly start loosing altitude.

EDIT: To those saying they're playing the long game; Playing the long game doesn't make sense. The long game is being fully wired. By the time poor areas become economically important enough to be advertised to, they will have traditional telecoms servicing them.

“It could replace 40 percent of the world’s demand for Portland cement."

Why not 100%?

Sounds like the cure for cancer. I'll believe it when I see it =)

It's really hard to quantify what effect has been of this. Bolivia by all metrics is an underdeveloped country. Has this contributed to it or not? No way to really know..

Also I'm not convinced about the social effects of heroin. I think it DID have effects on society and that's why it was eventually outlawed.

Maybe it made him reevaluate his priorities and look for an easier job.

I was just speculating.

I think this is a rather unique situation where a lot of pro-privacy people seemed to have switched sides.

That raises questions. What everyone seems to be concluding is that these people were insincere before and now their true colors are coming out. That sounds highly improbably and very conspiracy-theory-ish.

It's more likely that there is a lot going on than we know about. It doesn't necessarily make it okay.

It's just something to think about.

To have so many people switch their minds about privacy and to have this so secret for so long means there has got to be something BIG that they heard of day one of their jobs that drastically changed their value-system/world-view.

My guess is Snowden didn't have the whole picture (b/c he worked for a contractor)

"Liberty is the value of individuals to have agency (control over their own actions)"

Privacy is not a liberty. It's a restriction on the action of others.

TSA and no fly lists are restrictions on liberty.

There is all sorts of talk in this comment section about how people would fight the US military and stuff like that. There people are in la-la land. I'm not going to elaborate on this but: I think it's closely tied with the American obsession with the apocalypse (see zombie/post-apocalyptic movies)

People have very very different expectations from the government now than they did even 50 years ago. No first world country (even ones that don't cherish liberty as much as us) in the past 50 years has turned to tyranny. There are studies about how past a certain GDP tyranny becomes unsustainable - and we're well past that point.

I do what to clarify that I'm not against the second amendment at all. But the argument that it's to fight the government is absolutely absurd.

Sure you get better at things you actually enjoy doing, but sometimes you need to force yourself or - in the case of children - be forced to do something over and over to learn. I think teachers try to make writing more interesting, but it can be a pretty hard thing to do. Most kids will hate it no matter what they write.

Look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

I quickly looked through them and didn't find anything directly relating to symbolic logic. Most of symbolic logic was trying to understand what was at first pretty confusing notation and then trying to figure out how to represent things like sets without using Venn Diagrams.

At the end of the day I don't think you start to understand any larger truths about logic. Knowing how to write out De Morgan's law with symbols is frankly kinda useless.

Maybe it helps with mathematical thinking, but that's not relevant to most people.

On the other hand classes on ethics (which illustrate how not black and white the world is) and social philosophy (which present ethical models on which to base our society) both have been invaluable.

In fact, I'd argue the opposite. The French system places a big emphasis on learning grammar, conjugations, spelling and things like that - which frankly is a waste of time. I don't think I ever took a grammar course in the US. I couldn't tell you what a prepositional phrase is, but I can write a good essay.

Not saying you're wrong, but recognize that you're completely pulling this out of your ass.

Here the fundamental scoring method is still the test, so an individual's motivation is to do better for himself; the teams success is secondary (and if the test is curved it may be non existent). Free riders aren't punished or penalized and all sorts of outside influences come in where people start trading on money/sex/favors/friendships/etc.

Arguably those outside influences exist in the real world, but why create a system that explicitly has no mechanisms to counteract them? (ie. the prof says you can do anything that is legal and doesn't try to catch "cheaters")

It kinda reminds me of CS-whores. The one or two CS girls in each graduation class that regularly used sex-appeal/flirtation to get CS guys to do their homework (very successfully too!).

At some point your no longer testing people's knowledge and creative thinking, but their social skills and ability to manipulate others (and maybe their breast size/size of their 6 pack).

I feel like the professor treated this like a sick little game and enjoyed himself while doing it.

At the end of the day you are competing against your peers either through a curve, or through your raw grades because you're all going into the same fields and are competing for the same jobs with your GPAs. Making a system where cut-throat behavior is encouraged and putting down your pays off is really sad.

Not sure what you mean by national-strategic, but sure cramming people in like sardines makes it easier to make things efficient - but it's very realistic to make less dense populations efficient/sustainable too. Urban developement isn't some kind of ecological optimization problem. There are factors you are completely dismissing, like overall happiness, contribution to the community and the nation as a whole, cultural value generated etc.

The culture and appeal of SF are contingent on it staying small.