On 9 December 2010 20:22, Francis Irving <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Dec 09, 2010 at 10:55:20AM +0000, Tim Morley wrote: >> On 9 Dec 2010, at 10:16, Seb Bacon wrote: >> >> > The problem with this theory is the law of unintended consequences, in my >> > view. >> >> Definitely. Anyone who claims to know with any confidence where this >> is going to lead us is either deluded or lying. >> >> Not saying that it's necessarily a bad thing to have done, but it's >> going to be Interesting. > > Seb, you have to be careful both ways with that kind of claim. > > Not publishing leaked documents that you've received could just > as easily lead to unintended consequences. And as you say, very hard > to tell which is worse. > > I think it is false morality to say that the route of not being > involved, of supposed inaction, is always superior. Inaction is just a > different form of action.
Sure. But it's Assange's *revolutionary logic* I find questionable, not the principle of transparency. The difference is between "I believe in transparency, so I will continually lobby for it and create infrastructure and culture for increasing it" and "I disagree with the entire current world order, which functions on secrecy, so I will go about destroying it by provoking it to overreact and thus delegitimise itself and cripple its ability to function" I disagree with many aspects of our current system, but I'm not ready to go about attempting to destroy it without a clue about what will happen during or after the supposed revolution. I'm particularly suspicious of individual revolutionaries. <insert cautionary tale about your favourite revolution-gone-despotic here>. On the other hand, the debate Wikileaks has created across the media is impressive. >> Not saying that it's necessarily a bad thing to have done, but it's >> going to be Interesting. What Tim said. Seb _______________________________________________ Mailing list [email protected] Archive, settings, or unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public
