It’s psychological. People can’t believe things which would make it too hard for them to stay the person they currently are. It’s almost impossible for anyone to do anything but ignore and repress such information. If you ask them later about it, they probably would deny even hearing it or having the conversation, because they wouldn’t actually remember it.
Ask anyone who tried to convince a sweeping societal change based on logical arguments. See what happened to Ignaz Semmelweis. You simply can’t convince people of hard things with logic.
I personally think security has been spoiled by unrealistic advice. "Use PGP" is the worst, but it's not alone. A few years ago a mass-market device (tens of millions sold) asked me to enter my password three times within two minutes in order to carry out one single operation, and it demanded that the password be secure enough that I needed two kinds of mode-shift to enter it on that device's keyboard. Who takes that vendor's ideas about security seriously after experiencing shit like that?
People might say that they want security, but when some logical person takes this literally and respond “Use PGP”, they might be logically correct (since as bad as it may be, there might not be any secure alternative to PGP), this advice will always be ignored because what people want is not actually security. What people want is to feel secure while not changing anything about what they are doing or how they are doing it.
Why do you think people's identity is tied to the auditability of complex computer systems?
For an excellent argument of why most people shouldn't do that, I recommend the essay "epistemic learned helplessness": https://web.archive.org/web/20180406150429/https://squid314....
The gist is that most people are so bad at evaluating logical arguments that they are more likely to be swayed by false arguments rather than correct ones, so the winning strategy is to simply ignore everything that sounds strange.
What does the Purism give me? None of my existing apps work with it.
Spending zero brain cells on which computer junk to buy and getting on with my life is the most rational choice imo.
If you want to run software that is only on Android or iOS, then buying a Linux phone would be illogical, no?
But you would probably benefit by recognizing that nothing about this is logical. There are some logical arguments why one ought to use (for instance) the Librem 5 phone as a phone and forgo the additional features present on mainstream smartphones. But you (or me) can’t be open to those logical arguments unless we’re already ready to change; i.e. when we already (irrationally) want to find a reason to do it. Then, logical arguments can be effective. But not otherwise.
—
I didn’t put you in a prison, Evey. I just showed you the bars.
[…]
You were in a cell, Evey. They offered you a choice between the death of your principles and the death of your body. You said you’d rather die. You faced the fear of your own death, and you were calm and still. Try to feel now what you felt then…
I… felt… like… an angel…
— V for Vendetta, issue 7, 1989
I don’t think that. I think people tie their identity to all sorts of things, including the obvious Apple and Android fans, but more importantly “user of mainstream apps”. Many people think they can’t be who they are (a.k.a. “can’t live”) without normal mainstream phone apps.
People don’t have to tie their identity to this, but many do.
You seem to misunderstand me. No decision we make is made logically – not a decision to buy a Librem 5, nor a decision to buy an iPhone or an Android-based phone. There may be one or several logical reasons for one or the other decision, but this is at most a tiny factor.
Trying to go "the obvious logical conclusion is this Purism phone, but your irrational monkey brain is too idiotic to see that (no offense intended)" is somewhere between ridiculous and insufferable. If you want to evangelize Linux, you're doing it wrong.
For most people on the street, this phone:
* Doesn't have a bunch of things you're used to in a smartphone
* Has stuff that you don't understand the value of
* From some company you've never heard of
* For $700
That's not some post facto breakdown. I commend their efforts, truly, sincerely, but to be blunt, they made a phone for Ed Snowden.
Me too, which is why I'm interested in the Librem 5 (and the Pinephone).
I don't have the energy to constantly be fighting my phone's attempts to trick me into surrendering all my data to various corporations.
No, that is not what I am doing. Read my previous comments if you don’t believe me. I am actually (in this thread, at least) not arguing about whether you should get a Purism phone or not. I am arguing that whatever you or I decide (yes, even if we do decide to get a Purism phone) our decision will not be logical. Even though there might be logical reasons for one or the other decision, those logical reasons are not the actual reasons for the decision. We and everybody else make decisions by irrationally picking one option which feels right and rationalizing it after the fact using whatever logic we can torture enough to support our decision.
Who did that? Certainly not me. I framed all decisions to be akin to that, not any particular one. We are all “feeble trapped brains” making irrational decisions, all the time. Yes, me too.
Your facts are the most compelling for you, since you’ve decided not to get a Librem 5 phone. If it were otherwise, you would have listed different facts.
Facts do not make people change their opinion.
Of course. Of course. Certain powers milked (and continues to milk) flashy terror attacks for political gains.