Is it immoral to steal an election so an Objectivist candidate wins?

[CapitalistSwine]

Second, I believe that you have the right to violate someone else's property is that person is going to use that property to destroy the world.

The first thing here, and something that you apparently did not grasp from OPAR is that, in Objectivism, the ends never justify the means. The means are something that must always be considered.

I also think your suggestion that this would "destroy the world" is quite an exaggeration.

Not is it not moral to do so, it violates their right to their property, hacking in this manner is a form of theft.

What Objectivist literature have you read other than OPAR? OPAR is not a good thing to read when you first start off, it would be like putting a kid with waterwings into a shark infested pool and deflating the waterwings. I suggest you purchase works such as the Virtue of Selfishness & Philosophy Who Needs it, potentially Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. There are also many audio lectures by Rand and others on various topics, many an hour long, on the registered members area of ARI and plenty of videos on arc-tv.com

Edited July 14, 2010 by CapitalistSwine

[claire]

Jacobgalt, if your neighbor is powerful enough to have something that'll destroy the whole world, for god's sakes, run like hell. Do you really want to mess with that guy and steal his stuff????

(Now, all joking aside, please, do rethink how realistic some of your basis premises are. There seems to be a heavy focus on stealing, destroying, etc.) Is that really what you've gotten out of OPAR?)

[Zip]

So all of you would disagree with Peikoff that hacking into computers to get the 'Climategate' emails was immoral, right?

You are dropping the context. In that scenario who initiated the force (fraud)?

[JacobGalt]

You are dropping the context. In that scenario who initiated the force (fraud)?

The hackers, yet Peikoff still said they were moral.

[Zip]

The hackers, yet Peikoff still said they were moral.

Wrong. The people who perpetrated the fraud were those "scientists" that suppressed data, who destroyed evidence that did not support their Warmist views. That is the initial fraud. They were forcing people to make decisions based on flawed or contrived data that is fraud. The same sort of fraud that any con man uses to get his way. The hackers were moral to fight back against this fraud/initiation of force.

[JacobGalt]

Wrong. The people who perpetrated the fraud were those "scientists" that suppressed data, who destroyed evidence that did not support their Warmist views. That is the initial fraud. They were forcing people to make decisions based on flawed or contrived data that is fraud. The same sort of fraud that any con man uses to get his way. The hackers were moral to fight back against this fraud/initiation of force.

So you have the right to fight back against government?

[Zip]

So you have the right to fight back against government?

Individuals in a free society have the right to fight back against force and fraud whenever they come up against them, the question is, what way do you go about fighting it?

I don't believe that these scientists were specifically agents of the government although they may have been offering scientific advice to the UK Government about global warming.

[DavidOdden]

So you have the right to fight back against government?

You always have the right, indeed moral obligation, to oppose any incursion of government into individual rights, and to oppose any failure of the government to protect individual rights. This does not mean one has the right to take vigilante / anarchist action. On the matter of so-called "global warming", governments are acting to impose sanctions on industries for producing CO2, and that is a violation of rights, just as taxation, conscription and any form of industrial regulation are violations if individual rights. Vigorously opposing the government in these areas is the right thing to do. The fundamental fact, which cannot be evaded, is that the government bears moral responsibility for these rights violations. This responsibility is not just on an abstraction "the government", it rests on those individuals -- legislators, members of parliament, regulators who promulgate law, and executives whose agreement is required to enact such law -- who create the law which violates rights.

Objectivism identifies reason as man's proper tool for survival, which means: you must use reason, and not force, if you wish to cause another person to act a particular way. Therefore, you must use reason, and not force, to get individuals in government to act in a rights-respecting manner. You may not influence votes by threatening the lives of lawmakers, or by any other act of force. The only exception is that if you live in a dictatorship, where there is no rule of law, then you may use any means necessary to overthrow the dictatorship.

We all agree that socialist and Kantian philosophy are fundamental causes of modern rights violations by the government. The solution to this problem is to intellectually unseat these evil philosophies, using reason. Objectivism does not support the initiation of force against Kantian philosophers on the grounds that they provide the intellectual milieu necessary for statism, any more than it would support the initiation of force against legislators for voting to raise taxes or regulate industry. The proper tool to use in the war against evil is reason, not evil.

[RationalBiker]

So you have the right to fight back against government?

In some limited instances, even "the government" recognizes your right to fight back against having your rights violated. For instance, in many jurisdictions it is legal (as in legally defensible) to resist and fight back against unlawful arrests. Now, when I tell people that, I always add the caveat that should you decide to resist being arrested by the police, you better be damn sure of the legal ground you are standing on before doing so, not to mention considering how much you wish to risk your life in defense of your rights.

[CapitalistSwine]

One question. I have read a good amount of this ClimateGate stuff. I was curious if this action is still moral on the part of the hackers if they did not know beforehand that this institute was committing fraud. Could someone clear up if they knew beforehand? What led them to hack that place specifically?

[JacobGalt]

You always have the right, indeed moral obligation, to oppose any incursion of government into individual rights, and to oppose any failure of the government to protect individual rights. This does not mean one has the right to take vigilante / anarchist action. On the matter of so-called "global warming", governments are acting to impose sanctions on industries for producing CO2, and that is a violation of rights, just as taxation, conscription and any form of industrial regulation are violations if individual rights. Vigorously opposing the government in these areas is the right thing to do. The fundamental fact, which cannot be evaded, is that the government bears moral responsibility for these rights violations. This responsibility is not just on an abstraction "the government", it rests on those individuals -- legislators, members of parliament, regulators who promulgate law, and executives whose agreement is required to enact such law -- who create the law which violates rights.

Objectivism identifies reason as man's proper tool for survival, which means: you must use reason, and not force, if you wish to cause another person to act a particular way. Therefore, you must use reason, and not force, to get individuals in government to act in a rights-respecting manner. You may not influence votes by threatening the lives of lawmakers, or by any other act of force. The only exception is that if you live in a dictatorship, where there is no rule of law, then you may use any means necessary to overthrow the dictatorship.

We all agree that socialist and Kantian philosophy are fundamental causes of modern rights violations by the government. The solution to this problem is to intellectually unseat these evil philosophies, using reason. Objectivism does not support the initiation of force against Kantian philosophers on the grounds that they provide the intellectual milieu necessary for statism, any more than it would support the initiation of force against legislators for voting to raise taxes or regulate industry. The proper tool to use in the war against evil is reason, not evil.

Got it, thanks for the answer.

[emanon]

One question. I have read a good amount of this ClimateGate stuff. I was curious if this action is still moral on the part of the hackers if they did not know beforehand that this institute was committing fraud. Could someone clear up if they knew beforehand? What led them to hack that place specifically?

I don't know, but I'm curious about this myself. Did the hackers know before hacking in? If so, how?

If they were able to prove fraud on the part of ClimateGate prior to hacking in, why did they need to hack in anyway?

[DavidOdden]

Did the hackers know before hacking in? If so, how?

The hacked organization (Climatic Research Unit @ U. East Anglia) is well-known, and by reading publications emanating from there, one can understand what agenda they are pushing. If you know the nature of the scientific question, then you know that there is a good chance, at random, of detecting a smoking gun of scientific fraud. The general research approach is intellectually dishonest, but not necessarily actionable by contemporary academic standards. However, it is not beyond the realm of the plausible that some idiot would have sent an email saying "Hey, if we include the corrected data from Smith's database, we totally lose significance and the whole project is in the crapper. So let's just edit Smith's data back to the original and keep quiet about this. Oh, and delete this email". A lot of people don't understand about email.

I think the hackers were over-optimistic that there would be a clear smoking gun. Even if the researchers had a conscious scheme to falsify results, it is extremely unlikely that they would be stupid enough to document their evil deeds. Only Nixon was that stupid.