Re: rant on the morality of confidentiality

[David Honig <honig@otc.net>]

At 04:42 PM 1/8/98 -0800, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote:
>good lord, no wonder 
>Ayn Rand is so uninfluential.
>

Methinks you are either tweaking us or 
are ourselves some 20 years ago..

Assuming the latter.
Howdy.  Calm down.  Everyone eventually
considers the Faustian bargains one finds
in one's environment, and realizes the 
bargains that others have made.  And one
chooses.  The universe owes you nothing.
Your goals and alliances are yours to choose.

Everyone picks what they are comfortable with, and it ain't your business
what they decide.  No one is
obligated to agree with you.  And  everyone is
obligated to let you alone, unless you violate their
right to be left alone.  But you know this.

If there are people w/ evil (and there are), well, stop tirading and deal
with it.   Route around the damage. You're not going to convince them, face
it.  Don't fill yourself with hate; mobilize.
Run for congress; send spoofmail from the pres;
write cryptocode; turn your grandma on to PGP;
volunteer to lecture to impressionable youngsters.

Once you get over the shock of realizing how
much things are not what they are supposed to be,
you'll be able to calm down, and think.  I'm not
an optimist but we have physics and mathematics
and economics in our favor, to paraphrase.

There *is* a reason to flame but flaming to the 
choir (or to the unbelievers, for that matter) 
isn't the solution.

On secrecy, Saint Chas. Darwin sat on evolution forever, until he reviewed
a paper that was going to scoop him, you know.  

later,





David Honig 			honig@alum.mit.edu
---------------------------------------------------
If we can prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people
under the pretense of
 caring for them, they will be happy.  -TJ