From: Iljitsch van Beijnum [mailto:iljitsch(_at_)muada(_dot_)com]
On 21-jul-2005, at 15:23, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:
The intellectual successors of Plato's faction gave us the
dark ages,
fascism and communism, argument from authority trumps all else. The
intellectual successors of Aristotle's faction gave us the
renaissance,
science, medicine, engineering.
Yeah right. Aristotle only paid lip service to emperical research.
One of his "observations" was that a stone that's twice as heavy,
falls twice as fast. Interestingly, during the middle ages they
couldn't get enough of Aristotle. (And nobody noticed that he was
wrong about falling stones, or much else for that matter.)
Aristotle used scientific method, his medieval successors did not.
Aristotle was wrong in many of his observations but he did assert that
knowledge comes from observation.
It was the slavish adherence to his statements by his 'followers' that
did his reputation in.
As an engineer, I'll take my cues from Galileo any day. As a writer,
there is a lot I can learn from Plato. But Aristotle...?
There are three versions of Plato, what he intended to say, what he said
and how it was read. I suspect that what he was intending to say in the
cave metaphor was that empirical measurements can be affected by more
than the thing we intend to measure. What he said was that ideal forms
are more real than observation. For the next two thousand years his
argument was used to assert the primacy of reason over observation.
Empirical observation of the state of Internet security trumps
argument
from authority in my view.
So what insights does your empirical approach to internet security
provide?
The Internet does not provide the necessary type of security for the
majority of its billion+ users.
Spam, phishing, DDoS extortion are all serious Internet security
problems. Attempting to change the subject, pretend that they are
someone else's concern, pretend that they are insoluble and so should be
ignored, all these evasions have to stop.
Helping to stop Internet crime is the IETF's responsibility. If the IETF
wants to remain an important player in Internet security standards it
has to address these issues.
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