>> 2) We can offer them some kind of compromise solution that may or may not actually address their problem, but will make them feel like it does, and which will in theory make them less likely to try and ban encryption.
> Why are those the only two solutions? That seems like a false dichotomy.
It's not? It's a real dichotomy. What other solution could there be?
3) Offer a better technical that is less of a compromise than what Apple is offering, or indeed is not a compromise at all.
> I mean, OK, I guess there are other solutions we could try like ignoring them or attacking them or putting them in prison or some garbage, but to me those kinds of solutions are off the table. So we either figure out some way to satisfy them, or convince them that we're right. That's not a false dichotomy, those are the only 2 options.
I assume you're suggesting #2 because you're sure as heck not suggesting #1, and I can't figure out what else you could be suggesting.
I’m not suggesting #2 because #2 is a straw man.
----
>> why do you think I think X
>Frankly, if this isn't what you think, then I don't understand what you're thinking.
Ok - that seems like a straightforward response. You don’t understand.. But I clearly am not saying the things you are attributing to me.
I have no repeatedly asked where I said anything that leads you to think they are my view. It’s rare that you answer. From my point of view that means you aren’t actually responding to what I have written. You read what I write, don’t understand it, and then make something up that isn’t what I’ve said (or is even directly contradicted by what I’ve said) and then you tell me that’s what I’m saying.
If this was a one time thing, it would be fine, but at this point it doesn’t seem to matter what I say - you’ll just respond as if I said something else, and you won’t explain why when asked. From here it looks like you are having a discussion with your own imagination, rather than with what I write.
Here’s an example:
>> You keep on saying that we need to offer solutions, we can't just criticize Apple's proposal,
Where do I ‘keep saying that we can’t just criticize apple’s proposal.’? If that is something I have said more than once, you should be able to quote me. If not then it isn’t actually something I keep saying, it’s only in your imagination that I am saying it.
> we have to offer an alternative if we're going to criticize. But why?
Another example of something I you are imagining me to be saying, but that I am not.
> - I thought the point was to get rid of people's fears: no, you're saying that's not what you mean.
I have now said it is not what I mean, multiple times with explanation, and yet you keep saying it is. Why is that?
> - I thought the point was to compromise with critics:
Why do you think that? I have never said it. Again it’s something you are imagining. What is the text that made you imagine it? If we knew that, we could uncover where you haven’t understood.
> no, you're saying that's not what you mean.
Of course, because I didn’t say it.
> - I thought the point was to try and get people to stop attacking encryption:
Again I have never said this was the point, not only that I have said we can never do so.
But you have not explained why you thought this was the point.
> no, you're saying that's not what you mean.
- Heck, I thought the point was to reduce CSAM, and you're telling me now that even that's not what you mean either?
In this case then misunderstanding is mine. I misunderstood ‘reduce csam’ as ‘reduce csam detection’. I.e. I read it as get Apple to reduce their efforts.
> What does it even mean to ‘reduce CSAM’?
This is what I do when I don’t understand what someone has written - I ask them. You answered, and we have uncovered where I misunderstood.
If you answered my questions, we might have understood why you haven’t been understanding me.
> Why do we care about changing people’s minds here about encryption?
It seems to me that you have an agenda to change people’s minds about encryption. What isn’t clear is why you attribute that to me.
> What? We're on the same thread, right? We're commenting under an article about Apple instituting policies to reduce CSAM, ie, to make it so there is less CSAM floating around in the wild. When you talk about a "solution", what problem are you even trying to solve? Because all of us here are talking about CSAM, that's what Apple's system is designed to detect.
Agreed - like I say I just misread the phrase.
> I don't understand. How can you possibly not be talking about CSAM right now? That's literally what this entire controversy is about, that's the only reason this thread exists.
Ageeed - like I say I just misread the phrase.
----
> Honest to God, hand over my heart, I am not trolling you right now.
The reason it looks like trolling, is that when you say ‘your are saying X’, and X doesn’t appear to be supported by my words, X seems like a straw man. I have assumed this not to be intentional, and I believe you, but by not answering the question ‘why would you think I think that?’ you created ambiguity in your intentions.
> I understand that this is frustrating to you,
It’s not so much ‘frustrating’, as not functional as a discussion. If you misunderstand me and don’t answer questions aimed at getting to the root of the misunderstanding then you’ll likely just talk past me. I am just trying to evaluate whether an alternative is possible.
> but my experience throughout this conversation has been:
- You say something
- I try to interpret and build on it
- You tell me that's not what you meant and ask me why I thought that
- Okay, I try to reinterpret and explain
- The cycle repeats
This seems like close to a description of what I am seeing but not quite. Let’s examine the steps:
1. You say something
2. I try to interpret and build on it
3. You tell me that's not what you meant and ask me why I thought that
4. Okay, I try to reinterpret and explain
5. The cycle repeats
In #2 you say ‘You tell me that's not what you meant and ask me why I thought that’. This isn’t quite true. I often don’t ask ‘why you thought that’ in a vague way. I ask ‘what did I say that made you think that’. I ad,it there may be a few lapses, but most of the time I ask what i said that led to your understanding.
In #4 you said “I try to reinterpret and explain”. What you don’t do is answer the question - what is it I said that led to your understanding?
By not answering this question, we don’t get to the root cause of the misunderstanding.
a> - The only information I can get out of you is that I apparently don't understand you.
You don’t.
> I'm not getting any clarification. You just tell me that I'm misunderstanding your position and then you move on.
This is false. I ask what I said that led to the misunderstanding. I do not move on.
What are you trying to accomplish by proposing "alternative" solutions to Apple's proposal?
> You seem to think this will help keep people from attacking encryption,
What have I said that makes you think that?
[there are a few paragraphs that I can’t respond to because they don’t make sense]
> But then I'm told that taking encryption off the table means that "you aren’t willing to participate with people who don’t agree to a set of terms".
Did I misunderstand you? Did you mean something else by ‘taking encryption off the table’?
> So apparently encryption is on the table, and I am coming up with alternative solutions in order to convince people to attack something else? But that's not what you mean either, because you tell me that people will always attack encryption, so I don't even know.
I thought you agreed that there are some people who will always attack encryption. I didn’t think it was just me ‘telling you that’. Did I misunderstand you - do you think you can get people to stop attacking encryption?
> You're jumping back and forth between positions that seem completely contradictory to me.
That’s possible, but I don’t think so. Can you quote where you think I have contradicted myself?
> I thought that you had a different view than me about how reasonable privacy-critics actually were, but apparently you also have different views than me about what the problem is that Apple is trying to solve, what privacy-critics even want in the first place, what the end goal of all of this public debate actually is. Maybe you even disagree with me about what privacy and human rights are, since "those are all in fact fluid concepts whose status is changing as time goes by".
This seems like sarcasm and bad faith. You are misrepresenting me. For example, I have never mentioned human rights.
Privacy on the other hand, is definitely a fluid concept.
What we consider it to mean has changed over time as both technology and society have developed.
> So I need you to either lay out your views very plainly without any flowery language or expansion in a way that I can understand,
What do you mean by flowery language?
> or I need to stop having this conversation because I don't know what else I can say other than that I find your views incomprehensible.
I know you do.
> If you can't do that, then fine, we can mutually call each others' views gibberish and incoherent,
Your views to the extent that I know them, don’t seem gibberish or incoherent. It’s when you incorporate interpretations of my views that don’t relate to what I have said, that what you write appears incoherent to me.
and we can go off and do something more productive with our evenings. But I'll give this exactly one last try:
----
> Most of what you’ve written in this reply is frankly incoherent
Okay, plain language, no elaboration. Maybe this isn't what you're arguing about, maybe it is. I don't care. Here's my position:
A) it is desirable to reduce CSAM without violating privacy.
B) the downsides of violating privacy are greater than the upsides of reducing CSAM.
C) most of the people arguing in favor of violating privacy to stop CSAM are either arguing in bad faith or ignorance.
D) the ones that aren't should be gently educated about the downsides of breaking encryption and violating human rights.
E) the ones that refuse to be educated are never going to change their views.
F) compromising with them is a waste of time, and calls to "work with the critics" instead of educating them are a waste of time.
G) working with critics who refuse to be educated about the downsides of violating privacy will not help accomplish point A (it is desirable to reduce CSAM without violating privacy).
H) thus, we should refuse to engage with people about reducing CSAM unless they take encryption/privacy/human rights off of the table (on this point, you understood my views completely, people who view CSAM as a bigger deal than human rights shouldn't be engaged with)
I) a technical solution that reduces CSAM without violating privacy may or may not be possible. But it doesn't matter. Even if a technical solution without violating privacy is impossible, violating privacy is still off the table, because the downsides of removing poeple's privacy rights would still be larger than the upsides of removing CSAM.
Can you give me a straightforward, bullet-point list of what statements above you disagree with, if any?
Honestly, no. This looks like just a blunt attempt to win some argument of your own with me playing a role that has nothing to do with the conversation so far. You are also asking me to do a lot of work to answer your questions when you have been unwilling to answer mine. That doesn’t seem like good faith.
Remember, you came to this subthread by replying to me. But you have consistently ignored clarifying questions.
Was it your goal along was to simply ignore what I have been saying and find a spot to just make your own case? I am genuinely unsure.
How about we start somewhere simpler? When I ask ‘what did I say that made you thunk that’, can you explain why you rarely answer?
> When I ask ‘what did I say that made you thunk that’, can you explain why you rarely answer?
Okay, sure. When you ask me to try and justify why I think you hold your position, I interpret that as a distraction (hopefully a good faith one). I don't want to argue on a meta-level about why I got confused about your comments, I want to know what you believe. I'm frustrated that you keep trying to dig into "why are you confused" instead of just clarifying your position.
My feeling is we could have skipped this entire debate if you had sat down and made an extremely straightforward checklist of your main points, consisting of maybe 5-10 bullet points, each one to two sentences max. This is a thing I've done multiple times now about my beliefs/positions during this discussion. If we get mixed up about what the other person is saying, the best thing to do is not to dive into that, it's to take a step back and try to clarify from the start in extremely clear language.
You looked at the final checklist and said "this looks like just a blunt attempt to win some argument of your own". I looked at it as a charitable invitation to step back, write 10-20 sentences instead of 15 paragraphs, and to just cut through the noise and figure out where we disagree. If your checklist doesn't overlap with mine, fine. It's not bad for us to discover that we're arguing past each other. What's bad is if we spend X paragraphs getting frustrated about meta-arguments that have nothing to do with Apple.
I don't want to debate language or start cross indexing each other's comments, I want to debate ideas.
So when you tell me that I'm wrong about what you believe, I look over your statements and try to reinterpret, and I move on. Very rarely is my instinct to sit down and try to catalog a list of statements to try and prove to you that you do believe what I think, because I take it as a given that if you tell me that I misinterpreted you... I did.
So I accept it and move on.
----
Yes, we could get into a giant debate about "what makes you think I think that". That might go something like:
> You seem to think this will help keep people from attacking encryption,
> What have I said that makes you think that?
And I could reply by linking back to one of your previous comments:
> "Most people just want reasonable solutions and aren’t going to be persuaded by either extreme. If you make an argument about creeping authoritarianism they’ll say ‘child porn is a real problem, and that risk is distant’.
> If you offer them a more privacy preserving solution to choose as well as a less privacy preserving option, they’ll likely choose the more privacy preserving option.
> Apple is offering a much more privacy preserving option than just disabling encryption. People will accept it because it seems like a reasonable trade-off in the absence of anything better."
Which to me sounds quite a bit like: "offer a solution that doesn't target encryption, and then these people won't target encryption because 'most people just want reasonable solutions'".
----
But what's the point of the above conversation? I already know that you don't interpret those 3 paragraphs about a "privacy preserving option" as meaning "a proposal that will stop reasonable people from attacking encryption." Because you told me that's not what you believe.
So how weird and petty would I need to be to start arguing with you, "actually you did mean that, and I have proof!" Is it any value to either of us to try and trip each other up over "well, technically you said"? I'm not here trying to trap you, I want to understand you.
Honestly, the short answer to why I rarely reply back with quotes about "why I think you said that", is I kind of interpreted "what makes you think I think that" as a vaguely rude attempt to derail the conversation and debate language instead of ideas, and I've been trying to graciously sidestep it and move on.
- I'm happy to debate privacy with someone
- I'm happy to listen to them so I can understand their views better
- I'm not happy to debate whether or not someone believes something. I think that's a giant meaningless waste of time.
I don't think that means you're operating in bad faith, but I can't think anything I would rather do less than spend all day going back over all of your statements to cross-reference them so I can prove that... what? That I misunderstood your actual position? I believe you, you don't need to prove to me that I misunderstood you! Let's just skip that part and move on to explaining what the actual position really is.
It doesn't matter "why I think you said what I said", it just matters that I understand you. So why get into that meaningless debate instead of just asking you to clarify or trying to reinterpret? I don't care about technicalities and I don't care about "winning" against you, and I interpret "justify why you thought I thought that" as a meaningless distraction that only has value in Internet points, not in getting me any closer to understanding what your views are.
>> When I ask ‘what did I say that made you thunk that’, can you explain why you rarely answer?
> Okay, sure.
> When you ask me to try and justify why I think you hold your position,
At this point it’s hard to read you as honest because of the frequency with which you misrepresent me. I have to assume you are unaware of this.
I am talking about why you won’t identify which words of mine lead to your misunderstandings of my position.
Why would you represent that as asking you to ‘justify’ your interpretation? That isn’t what I’m doing, and more importantly it’s not something I said. I’m just asking you to tell me what you are interpreting so I can see if what I said was ambiguous and if so how.
> I interpret that as a distraction (hopefully a good faith one).
A distraction from what? Are you not seeking to understand? Later in this comment you claim to want to know what my views are. If you ignore clarifying questions as a ‘distraction’, it seems likely that misunderstandings will keep arising.
> I don't want to argue on a meta-level about why I got confused about your comments,
Who is asking you to ‘argue on a meta-level’? I am asking you to simply say what words you are referring to when a misunderstanding becomes apparent.
> I want to know what you believe.
I recommend trying to get to the bottom of misunderstandings then.
> I'm frustrated that you keep trying to dig into "why are you confused"
You misrepresent me again. Can you not see that I haven’t asked ‘why are you confused’?
I have asked what you are referring to when you attribute a view to me that I don’t think is contained in what I wrote.
> instead of just clarifying your position.
I could clarify my position if you were willing to tell me what I said that lead to your interpretations of my views.
> I could clarify my position if you were willing to tell me what I said that lead to your interpretations of my views.
Okay, holy crud, I'm out. I have zero interest in the evolution of this conversation from a debate about privacy/encryption tradeoffs, into "let's figure out who's arguing in good faith", into "explain to me why you think I'm asking you to explain to me what I'm thinking".
I've made a quick ~$5 donation to Matrix.org (https://imgur.com/a/wVj2neA) in the hope that their current work with on-by-default E2E encryption and P2P community hosting/connections will ideally make this entire conversation irrelevant in the future.
I wish you the best in coming up with your technical solutions.
> Why are those the only two solutions? That seems like a false dichotomy. It's not? It's a real dichotomy. What other solution could there be?
3) Offer a better technical that is less of a compromise than what Apple is offering, or indeed is not a compromise at all.
> I mean, OK, I guess there are other solutions we could try like ignoring them or attacking them or putting them in prison or some garbage, but to me those kinds of solutions are off the table. So we either figure out some way to satisfy them, or convince them that we're right. That's not a false dichotomy, those are the only 2 options. I assume you're suggesting #2 because you're sure as heck not suggesting #1, and I can't figure out what else you could be suggesting.
I’m not suggesting #2 because #2 is a straw man.
---- >> why do you think I think X
>Frankly, if this isn't what you think, then I don't understand what you're thinking.
Ok - that seems like a straightforward response. You don’t understand.. But I clearly am not saying the things you are attributing to me.
I have no repeatedly asked where I said anything that leads you to think they are my view. It’s rare that you answer. From my point of view that means you aren’t actually responding to what I have written. You read what I write, don’t understand it, and then make something up that isn’t what I’ve said (or is even directly contradicted by what I’ve said) and then you tell me that’s what I’m saying.
If this was a one time thing, it would be fine, but at this point it doesn’t seem to matter what I say - you’ll just respond as if I said something else, and you won’t explain why when asked. From here it looks like you are having a discussion with your own imagination, rather than with what I write.
Here’s an example:
>> You keep on saying that we need to offer solutions, we can't just criticize Apple's proposal,
Where do I ‘keep saying that we can’t just criticize apple’s proposal.’? If that is something I have said more than once, you should be able to quote me. If not then it isn’t actually something I keep saying, it’s only in your imagination that I am saying it.
> we have to offer an alternative if we're going to criticize. But why?
Another example of something I you are imagining me to be saying, but that I am not.
> - I thought the point was to get rid of people's fears: no, you're saying that's not what you mean.
I have now said it is not what I mean, multiple times with explanation, and yet you keep saying it is. Why is that?
> - I thought the point was to compromise with critics:
Why do you think that? I have never said it. Again it’s something you are imagining. What is the text that made you imagine it? If we knew that, we could uncover where you haven’t understood.
> no, you're saying that's not what you mean.
Of course, because I didn’t say it.
> - I thought the point was to try and get people to stop attacking encryption:
Again I have never said this was the point, not only that I have said we can never do so.
But you have not explained why you thought this was the point.
> no, you're saying that's not what you mean. - Heck, I thought the point was to reduce CSAM, and you're telling me now that even that's not what you mean either?
In this case then misunderstanding is mine. I misunderstood ‘reduce csam’ as ‘reduce csam detection’. I.e. I read it as get Apple to reduce their efforts.
> What does it even mean to ‘reduce CSAM’?
This is what I do when I don’t understand what someone has written - I ask them. You answered, and we have uncovered where I misunderstood.
If you answered my questions, we might have understood why you haven’t been understanding me.
> Why do we care about changing people’s minds here about encryption?
It seems to me that you have an agenda to change people’s minds about encryption. What isn’t clear is why you attribute that to me.
> What? We're on the same thread, right? We're commenting under an article about Apple instituting policies to reduce CSAM, ie, to make it so there is less CSAM floating around in the wild. When you talk about a "solution", what problem are you even trying to solve? Because all of us here are talking about CSAM, that's what Apple's system is designed to detect.
Agreed - like I say I just misread the phrase.
> I don't understand. How can you possibly not be talking about CSAM right now? That's literally what this entire controversy is about, that's the only reason this thread exists.
Ageeed - like I say I just misread the phrase. ---- > Honest to God, hand over my heart, I am not trolling you right now.
The reason it looks like trolling, is that when you say ‘your are saying X’, and X doesn’t appear to be supported by my words, X seems like a straw man. I have assumed this not to be intentional, and I believe you, but by not answering the question ‘why would you think I think that?’ you created ambiguity in your intentions.
> I understand that this is frustrating to you,
It’s not so much ‘frustrating’, as not functional as a discussion. If you misunderstand me and don’t answer questions aimed at getting to the root of the misunderstanding then you’ll likely just talk past me. I am just trying to evaluate whether an alternative is possible.
> but my experience throughout this conversation has been: - You say something - I try to interpret and build on it - You tell me that's not what you meant and ask me why I thought that - Okay, I try to reinterpret and explain - The cycle repeats
This seems like close to a description of what I am seeing but not quite. Let’s examine the steps:
1. You say something 2. I try to interpret and build on it 3. You tell me that's not what you meant and ask me why I thought that 4. Okay, I try to reinterpret and explain 5. The cycle repeats
In #2 you say ‘You tell me that's not what you meant and ask me why I thought that’. This isn’t quite true. I often don’t ask ‘why you thought that’ in a vague way. I ask ‘what did I say that made you think that’. I ad,it there may be a few lapses, but most of the time I ask what i said that led to your understanding.
In #4 you said “I try to reinterpret and explain”. What you don’t do is answer the question - what is it I said that led to your understanding?
By not answering this question, we don’t get to the root cause of the misunderstanding.
a> - The only information I can get out of you is that I apparently don't understand you.
You don’t.
> I'm not getting any clarification. You just tell me that I'm misunderstanding your position and then you move on.
This is false. I ask what I said that led to the misunderstanding. I do not move on.
What are you trying to accomplish by proposing "alternative" solutions to Apple's proposal?
> You seem to think this will help keep people from attacking encryption,
What have I said that makes you think that?
[there are a few paragraphs that I can’t respond to because they don’t make sense]
> But then I'm told that taking encryption off the table means that "you aren’t willing to participate with people who don’t agree to a set of terms".
Did I misunderstand you? Did you mean something else by ‘taking encryption off the table’?
> So apparently encryption is on the table, and I am coming up with alternative solutions in order to convince people to attack something else? But that's not what you mean either, because you tell me that people will always attack encryption, so I don't even know.
I thought you agreed that there are some people who will always attack encryption. I didn’t think it was just me ‘telling you that’. Did I misunderstand you - do you think you can get people to stop attacking encryption?
> You're jumping back and forth between positions that seem completely contradictory to me.
That’s possible, but I don’t think so. Can you quote where you think I have contradicted myself?
> I thought that you had a different view than me about how reasonable privacy-critics actually were, but apparently you also have different views than me about what the problem is that Apple is trying to solve, what privacy-critics even want in the first place, what the end goal of all of this public debate actually is. Maybe you even disagree with me about what privacy and human rights are, since "those are all in fact fluid concepts whose status is changing as time goes by".
This seems like sarcasm and bad faith. You are misrepresenting me. For example, I have never mentioned human rights.
Privacy on the other hand, is definitely a fluid concept.
What we consider it to mean has changed over time as both technology and society have developed.
> So I need you to either lay out your views very plainly without any flowery language or expansion in a way that I can understand,
What do you mean by flowery language?
> or I need to stop having this conversation because I don't know what else I can say other than that I find your views incomprehensible.
I know you do.
> If you can't do that, then fine, we can mutually call each others' views gibberish and incoherent,
Your views to the extent that I know them, don’t seem gibberish or incoherent. It’s when you incorporate interpretations of my views that don’t relate to what I have said, that what you write appears incoherent to me.
and we can go off and do something more productive with our evenings. But I'll give this exactly one last try: ---- > Most of what you’ve written in this reply is frankly incoherent Okay, plain language, no elaboration. Maybe this isn't what you're arguing about, maybe it is. I don't care. Here's my position: A) it is desirable to reduce CSAM without violating privacy. B) the downsides of violating privacy are greater than the upsides of reducing CSAM. C) most of the people arguing in favor of violating privacy to stop CSAM are either arguing in bad faith or ignorance. D) the ones that aren't should be gently educated about the downsides of breaking encryption and violating human rights. E) the ones that refuse to be educated are never going to change their views. F) compromising with them is a waste of time, and calls to "work with the critics" instead of educating them are a waste of time. G) working with critics who refuse to be educated about the downsides of violating privacy will not help accomplish point A (it is desirable to reduce CSAM without violating privacy). H) thus, we should refuse to engage with people about reducing CSAM unless they take encryption/privacy/human rights off of the table (on this point, you understood my views completely, people who view CSAM as a bigger deal than human rights shouldn't be engaged with) I) a technical solution that reduces CSAM without violating privacy may or may not be possible. But it doesn't matter. Even if a technical solution without violating privacy is impossible, violating privacy is still off the table, because the downsides of removing poeple's privacy rights would still be larger than the upsides of removing CSAM. Can you give me a straightforward, bullet-point list of what statements above you disagree with, if any?
Honestly, no. This looks like just a blunt attempt to win some argument of your own with me playing a role that has nothing to do with the conversation so far. You are also asking me to do a lot of work to answer your questions when you have been unwilling to answer mine. That doesn’t seem like good faith.
Remember, you came to this subthread by replying to me. But you have consistently ignored clarifying questions.
Was it your goal along was to simply ignore what I have been saying and find a spot to just make your own case? I am genuinely unsure.
How about we start somewhere simpler? When I ask ‘what did I say that made you thunk that’, can you explain why you rarely answer?