[tossaccount123]

It's fascinating how obviously smart people can rationalize their actions.

Schmidt and Google claim to be "progressive" but that kind of rationale of "nothing to hide" would mean that every progressive movement would have been shut down in its early stages had this kind of tech and surveillance been available at the time because it went against what was currently judged as right by the people in power

[balls187]

> It's fascinating how obviously smart people can rationalize their actions.

It's the classic dilemma: "People ask 'Can we do this?' and rarely ask 'Should we do this?'"

[jimmy1]

What was the point of you pointing out Eric's claim to a particular political ideology after a statement of his intelligence? Are you somehow implying one is more virtuous / intelligent than another? If we changed that to conservatism does that your meaning or what you were trying to convey?

[zepto]

Seems pretty clear that the comment was meant to show a conflict between Schmidt’s statement and his political leanings.

I don’t see how this implies anything about a particular political ideology being more virtuous. Why would you even think that?

[_underfl0w_]

I sense some projecting happening here. You may want to re-read the parent, but without assuming that their tone is one of condescension.

[tossaccount123]

I was more pointing out how either side can hypocritically rationalize things that run counter to their supposed beliefs because they make money off being hypocrites.

Nobody thinks they're evil, people can rationalize all sorts of crazy behavior.

[pdkl95]

> Nobody thinks they're evil,

I do, because evil is banal. Rationalizing crazy behavior is what evil usually looks like. Larger evils occur when "trivial" problems are ignored, allowing the deviant behavior to be normalized. Intentions are not relevant, because it's easy to rationalize away the craziest of behaviors.

"No one involved in an extralegal activity thinks of themselves as nefarious. I'm a businessman, okay?" - Quark, DS9 S6E25