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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2994 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Thoughtcrime comes to Fresno

Your point is that "thoughtcrime" was improperly used in the title, as evidenced by your own made-up definition of "thoughtcrime." I refuted that by quoting the actual description of thoughtcrime from Nineteen Eighty-Four indicating that thoughtcrime was fought in Orwell's novel through intensive blanket surveillance in order to determine dissent. I followed up with an example of Intrado's intensive blanket surveillance in order to determine facts or statements outside the norm of society.

Your response to this is that your new narrowly-determined standards for evidence do not meet your own proprietary requirements, at which point I

1) cease to care what you think

2) cease to humor your argument.

Have a nice weekend.





Existentialist  ·  2994 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It seems more like you're just doing a poor job of arguing your point, and that's why you don't want to continue. Otherwise, you're right, that was my initial point. I believed the use of 'thoughtcrime' was incorrect in the title. I still believe so. Then you made a counter argument, and I don't think you bothered to read what you quoted. You offered a quote from the article that didn't at all challenge what I was saying. You then pulled an excerpt from Nineteen Eighty-Four that didn't even define a thoughtcrime. It just details the surveillance capabilities of the Thought Police. For your convenience, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary:

    An instance of unorthodox or controversial thinking, considered as a criminal offence or as socially unacceptable

So no, I wasn't operating under my "own made-up definition of "thoughtcrime."" I was operating under the definition. The first use of the phrase in the novel that I can think of is after Winston is writing "DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER" over and over. The novel then explains that the criminal act of writing this doesn't matter, because the Thought Police would have already known Winston was thinking "DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER". This is a thoughtcrime. It is a thought that is criminal in and of itself. Your quote from the novel say the extent of a thoughtcrime can go so far as to include any simple support for political dissent. Even so, as I keep saying, this is not what Beware currently appears to be used for. The article says it's being used for consultation.

Anyway, you have a good weekend, too. :)