this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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[–] presoak@lazysoci.al -2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Do you think that some knowledge is naturally forbidden?

[–] WatDabney@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This doesn't even semm like a coherent question.

"Naturally forbidden" is, if I'm parsing it correctly, a nonsense phrase.

[–] presoak@lazysoci.al -1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Well if you think that there is a foundational right to privacy then it would follow.

[–] WatDabney@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

My post was a very condensed version of a very complex and detailed set of views. If you pull a phrase out of context and try to slap a trite and superficial interpretation on it, you're almost certainly going to get it wrong.

Some more details to aid in parsing the whole thing:

I don't think rights exist in any objective sense at all. They're entirely constructs. That means, among other things, that they can and should be shaped in such a way as to best serve their intended purpose.

I didn't say that privacy is a foundational right - I said that it's a foundational violated right. As I then went on to try to explain, my view is that the common conception of rights is backwards.

What I mean by that is that, for instance, nobody should have to claim a right to not have their privacy breached, since not having their privacy breached is the default. Their privacy can only be breached if someone else takes it upon themselves to act in a specific way in order to breach their privacy, so (and rather obviously IMO), if we're to grant credence to the constructs we call "rights'," then the way it should work is that that somebody else has to prove that they have a right to breach your privacy.

But the way that it actually works is that others breach your privacy as a matter of course and generally without controversy.

My view is that the fact that they can and do do that - that when the matter does come up, it's just treated as a given that they're entirely free to do that unless and until you can somehow prove that you have a right to stop them - serves to frame the whole issue in a way that grants people free reign to violate others as they please unless and until those others can successfully claim a right to stop them. In that sense, it's "foundational."

Or to put it another way - nobody starts by blithely presuming a right to kill other people. They start by blithely presuming a right to, for instance, violate other people's privacy, then expand from there.