[tor-teachers] tor-teachers Digest, Vol 2, Issue 13

kbaegis kbaegis at gmail.com
Tue Oct 20 15:10:27 UTC 2015


Thanks for asking what I think Jacob,

My personal stance is that when we start including political discussion
we implicitly begin excluding people.  Rational people, given the same
evidence, can reach the same conclusion.  Opinions simply don't work
this way.  You can't cite a reference, or make argument based on agreed
upon fact.  Well informed opinions, while based upon fact, imply a
certain attachment to the idea. 

Now let's play with an example:

"The founders wanted a democracy."

I think this is faulty decorum.  Has the above statement advanced the
discussion in any meaningful way?  If there's a disagreement, is there
any particular idea contained above that I can ask for a reference to
formally refute or am I stuck arguing about the difference between a
republic, democracy- and even more basically if a group of politicians
can agree on /anything./  It's easy to state opinions which require no
rigor or substance. 

I think that it's chiefly about exclusion.  It seems sensible to me that
TOR benefits from any member- not simply those who subscribe to a
certain ideology.  You absolutely need a dominant culture in the
development community.  That's sensible.  I would argue that this is
counterproductive on the teaching front. 

What does everyone else think? 

All of this aside, I was hoping that we could create some coordination
for classes.  Again, I already fly around the country teaching.  I'd
love to be able to teach TOR as well.  I just need students. 

Thanks,
Stephen

On 10/20/15 7:00 AM, tor-teachers-request at lists.torproject.org wrote:
> I feel that if we don't understand the principles behind Tor, we may
> have trouble teaching and evaluating related systems. The principles
> behind Tor which are very political in most contexts are why we're
> never going to see a backdoor inserted. Backdoor free crypto is a very
> serious political stance in my view.
>
> I'd still like to know what the original poster meant by political in
> the context of this mailing list. It seems that we should be open and
> willing to hear this definition and to use it as a starting point.
> there may be a set of people who consider themselves "non-political"
> when teaching Tor and I'd like to ensure that we don't exclude them.
> First though, I'd really like to hear what that means from someone who
> feels this describes their views or desires for this list.
>
> All the best,
> Jacob

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