BrotherRool said:
Your argument is probably the one thats persuading me the most.
Yay--I'm helping!
I've learnt a lot of things today about how not to structure debate topics and from now I will cut the silly titles and comics and flippant jokes let me assure you =D but because I've managed to create such a negative framing (and I really would like you to believe it was from me being a colossal idiot than any malice)
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor] (not really calling you stupid--it was just a perfect opportunity to use that quote).
The US and the EU do create privacy laws to restrict this sort of thing, do you disapprove of this behaviour?
Depends on the kind of law you mean. If it's a law to prevent getting private information without the consent of the person in question, then I'm generally against it (obviously there are exceptions, such as when there's a warrant). But if that information is being freely offered by the person then I don't think that should be any government's business.
Would it be fair to take it that you disapprove of governmental anti-smoking campaigns or would that be okay on the basis that they aren't restricting choice but merely trying to be persuasive.
I disagree with them on the basis that I don't think it's the government's role to try to influence the behavior of it's citizens unless that behavior is criminal. It's not my parent (and I wouldn't want my actual parents trying to persuade me away from smoking if I were a smoker--I'm an adult, I can make my own decisions).
And I mean there are a lot of people who haven't made a careful cost-benefit analysis, and of those people who have and made intelligent decisions, may just not have been aware of the facts (the ppl asking for citations on the government stuff). Does that affect the decision?
Either we trust adults to run their own lives, or we don't. If we do, then the government shouldn't be making laws to prevent people from making the "wrong" decision. If we don't, then we can't trust the lawmakers either (they're adults too, so their judgement is no more trustworthy than the judgement of the people they're passing laws to protect).
Or should the correct response just be to raise public awareness on these issues?
I have no problem with a private citizen launching some kind of campaign to raise awareness of these issues. But again, I don't think that's the government's place. I'm very much for limited government if that's not obvious by now.
And I don't know, to me it seems like this might exploit a weakness in our programming where we slightly overcompensate on short term goals over longer more nebulous affairs (there are plenty of people who wished they hadn't started smoking) so I'm thinking that maybe a government as a body of representative body has some responsibility to try and safeguard people, what would you say?
I want my government to safeguard me by keeping a police force and military, not by trying to make my decisions for me or by attempting to influence my decisions so that I do what the government thinks is right.
Besides, what happens when what the government thinks is the right decision turns out to be wrong? It's certainly happened before (check out "A History of Freedom of Thought" for an in-depth look at this problem. The book is mainly about censorship as it relates to religion, but a lot of the concepts carry over to this discussion). If I make a bad decision I suffer the consequences. When a government makes a bad decision all of it's citizens suffer the consequences.