Topic on Comments:Hackers target Westboro Baptist Church website, Twitter account

This action violates all of our First Amendment rights and contradicts other Anonymous activists who proclaim the freedom to speak. The people of the Westboro Baptist Church have a right to speak their viewpoint, and the rest of us have a right to hear it. This is not just my opinion. It is the opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court, as recently stated in a case involving Westboro:

Snyder v. Phelps (2011) http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=2981429692939250360&q=%22Westboro+Baptist+Church%22&hl=en&as_sdt=4,60

It's an interesting question what specific legal code one might expect Anonymous to adhere to, but perhaps even more interesting to realize that in this case, Anonymous appears to have specified what standard it is holding WBC to. According to the statement by Anonymous, they're holding WBC to the code WBC itself claims to adhere to, namely Christian values and scripture.

Anonymous is not an entity that can "adhere" to a legal code, can "specify" anything, or can make a "statement". When used as the subject or the object of any sentence, "Anonymous" should be interpreted as shorthand for "Individuals acting in the name of Anonymous, the latter being nothing more than a synthesis of prior similar acts."

So, following your lead, an even more interesting question is, what kind of thing does the proper noun "Anonymous" refer to? My answer is that what we have here is a new linguistic or semantic innovation that is comparable to "fiat money". The proper noun "Anonymous" does indeed refer to an entity, but that entity exists only because of the fact of its prior use in referring to the same entity. Perhaps we can call this a "fiat entity" or a "fiat group". Like "fiat money", the (semantic) value of the proper noun "Anonymous" is determined in the way that is illustrated by the solution to a differential or difference equation.

Thank you for responding to my comment, Pi zero.

Any 'entity' consisting of an open set of people is, at some level, illusory. Look at it closely enough and there is no singular entity, just a lot of individual people choosing, perhaps, to behave as if there were an entity there. Pretending the entity into existence. Governments are like that too. http://xkcd.com/967/.

I'm a newbie so do not know whether I should treat this as a place to converse with you. Your page indicates that you are very involved and do lots of work for Wikipedia. Thank you for that. Wikipedia has changed my life. I am 58. I am stunned by what you all have done.

I do not know how to get notified when someone like you replies to a comment that I post. If you want to continue this conversation, you can send me email from IDEAFARM.COM. (My email is listed at the top.) I don't expect you to do that; I'd rather that you keep working on Wikipedia! But you're welcome to contact me. Bye.

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