[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia as moral tool?

[Fred Bauder]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: geni [mailto:geniice at gmail.com]
>Sent: Tuesday, June 5, 2007 04:28 PM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia as moral tool?
>
>On 6/5/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>> We must work to strike a moral balance between to good of knowledge being available and the possible evil of harming others.
>
>It is impossible to know which bits of information cause damage it is
>impossible to quantify the damage and again impossible to quantify the
>good.

It's not at all impossible. Detailed information about private people is harmful. Even excessively detailed information about public figures. publishing private phone numbers of celebrities is an obvious pain in the ass. We don't need to know if George Bush has Herpes. People have a right to live without a spotlight turned on them. Likewise detailed information about how to kill people is rather obviously harmful. None of the statements you made are true. Rough approximations may be arrived at with respect to all 3.

>The field of science has been dealing with this problem for some time.
>The position of arguing that information is neither intrinsically good
>nor evil appears to be the only sustainable option.

The question is whether dissemination of the information is useful or harmful.

>-- 
>geni

Responses by Fred