> maybe a utopian civilization would consider thoughts of evil, thoughts of crime and intentions to harm others as a justifiably punishable event.
Can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not but you're certainly not describing my utopia. So there, the idea that an "objective" utopia exists is disproven. Taking that argument further, who now decides whose utopia becomes the utopia? I admire Snowden a great deal for both his courage and his intellect, and one of the strongest arguments he makes against your utopia (again, I just can't tell if you're being sarcastic) is to remind us of the ancient-seeming idea of a "security state". That is, close to 100% security can be had, at the cost of liberty. In other words, it's a tradeoff. We can quibble about whether that tradeoff could be improved (the equivalent of a free lunch or "Pareto improvement" in economics), but "thoughtcrime" and "crimethink" is so far beyond where I would draw the line, you can't even see the line anymore from there…
Can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not but you're certainly not describing my utopia. So there, the idea that an "objective" utopia exists is disproven. Taking that argument further, who now decides whose utopia becomes the utopia? I admire Snowden a great deal for both his courage and his intellect, and one of the strongest arguments he makes against your utopia (again, I just can't tell if you're being sarcastic) is to remind us of the ancient-seeming idea of a "security state". That is, close to 100% security can be had, at the cost of liberty. In other words, it's a tradeoff. We can quibble about whether that tradeoff could be improved (the equivalent of a free lunch or "Pareto improvement" in economics), but "thoughtcrime" and "crimethink" is so far beyond where I would draw the line, you can't even see the line anymore from there…