Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by anbop 2521 days ago
That’s not a logical argument by Franklin, it’s his opinion. There’s no axiomatic reason why Ben Franklin’s opinion is more correct than anyone else’s, even William Barr’s.
3 comments

Says the rhetoritician; cleverly trying to blur the issue. Opinion or no, the principle is consistent through much of the intellectual environ's of the time. If both statememt's are read as opinion's neither wins. If both are construed as statements of fact, Franklin's still holds the more portentous conclusion. Namely that the being willing to sacrifice his capacity to guide himself to live longer , will inevitably result in neither goal being attained. Everyone dies.

So that's really a bit of a non-starter. I would say that Franklin has more credibility however; if only because of the man's legendary common sense.

I'll also point out, Franklin's sentiment can be traced back to the principle that "Vigilia aeterna est pretium libertatis". A consequence of which is, sorry Mr. Barr. Tell your police to do some actual investigative work. It is not the job of the populace to relinquish essential liberty to make tyranny in the making that much further realized.

It is what we do with our Liberty that elevates us as angels, or drops us to the level of daemonic debasement.

Law enforcement needs to understand their job should never be made trivial as their very existence in and of itself is as the sole means to rescension of that which culturally we value most; hich should absolutely be as burdensome a process as possible in the light of what is being taken.

Never mind that making unbackdoored encryption illegal just adds a token charge to a long list of other charges, which to me is an absolute anti-pattern, of the same level as most firearm regulation in light of the second amendment; which I'll admit to being a bit of a hard-liner on.

My 2 cents.

Your comparison to the second amendment is not just "on the same level", but entirely accurate.

To this day the United States Munitions List, classifies cryptographic devices under Category XIII Materials and Miscellaneous Articles.

All the way back to the pre-constitution 1784 Virgina General Assembly, to some extent recognizes the need for secure communications channels in a militia. "There shall be a private muster of every company once in every three months", and setting forth those in charge of initiating and communicating the time and place of the muster.

People often focus on the first amendment right to encryption. But I at least feel that the second amendment right is equally strong, with the governments own position on arms control behind it, legal interpretation should if anything not tolerate it's own inconsistency.

Benjamin Franklin is a Founding Father and has been generally accepted as an authority for more than 200 years, especially on the subject of freedoms and rights. He was a renown political theorist, politician, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat in his own day, not to mention the fact his reputation has stood the test of time.

William Barr is none of these thing.

So... Appeal to authority then?
Can you call it that though?

One is a person with a well-earned a reputation, the other.. well you get the point.

>Can you call it that though? >One is a person with a well-earned a reputation, the other.. well you get the point.

Yes

>An argument from authority, also called an appeal to authority, or argumentum ad verecundiam, is a form of defeasible argument in which a claimed authority's support is used as evidence for an argument's conclusion

You're not defending the point logically; you're only supporting argument is that someone with a good reputation supports it as well.

> You're not defending the point logically;

He absolutely is

The annoying thing about "logical fallacies" is that if anyone season argument they disagree with that resembles a "fallacy", that quote it and act like theyve won.

He is not saying that everything Benjamin Franklin has ever said is true. Obviously. However, if a well renowned and respected Authority has an opinion that some evil schmuck disagrees with, it provides evidence as to who is more likely to be correct. That's not what an appeal to Authority is

>He absolutely is

Show me where that happened.

>The annoying thing about "logical fallacies" is that if anyone season argument they disagree with that resembles a "fallacy", that quote it and act like theyve won.

That is annoying and I agree, but that's not what's going on here.

>He is not saying that everything Benjamin Franklin has ever said is true.

No one said he was.

>However, if a well renowned and respected Authority has an opinion that some evil schmuck disagrees with, it provides evidence as to who is more likely to be correct.

No it doesn't. It absolutely _does not_. Reputation isn't irrelevant in so far as it lends credibility to a person's statements, but the discussion doesn't stop there. If you're going to defend a quote then defend it. Saying "this is true because X is trustworthy and Y is an 'evil schmuck'" is not an argument.

If this is not a prime example of Appeal to Authority then show me why it's not and provide an example. You're just throwing out your opinions as if they were fact.

And yet he owned slaves.
and...? For example, you can be a Nazi and a great mathematician or be a pedophile and a great philosopher....etc etc
Correct, I just roll my eyes whenever this is quoted

But if people disagree they can go ride a bike without a helmet, people in the transplant list will thank you.

If you keep posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait here we are going to ban you. I don't want to do that, because you've also posted good comments. Would you please fix this?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Agreed, I could have expressed my concerns with that quote differently.