4 ms·

Yes, you hit the nail on the head! The societal impacts have to be considered. If you rely on each person to rationally decide whether or not to sell 'their own

by floe 8y ago

Yes, you hit the nail on the head! The societal impacts have to be considered. If you rely on each person to rationally decide whether or not to sell 'their own' data, you'll have a tragedy of the commons situation. Maybe we will see a health insurance company that costs half as much as the rest, but to apply you have to give them all your social data and they run "CREATE TABLE rejected_applicants AS SELECT name, id FROM insurance_applicants WHERE health_risk_level >= .7". All the healthy people will rationally sell their data and try to join this company, and all the other companies will have sicker pools and have to double their prices. For a person who couldn't get accepted into the cheaper company, the fact that they can sell their own data is cold comfort. Privacy harms will always fall disproportionately on the marginalized: the poor, the sick, dissidents, and minorities. The framework of 'data ownership' can never make these harms right because it fails to recognize that half the people selling their data often hurts the other half.

scarejunba 8y ago
Enough with the paternalism. Let me use my data as I see fit. It's mine. Not yours. Stop putting limits on it. If I want to trade my information for money I should be allowed to. The problem with you guys is not that your ultimate goal isn't data ownership. The problem with you is that your ultimate goal is that you own and control everyone's data. You want to make the rules as to what they can do with it.
- jerf 8y ago
  Are you using your data as you see fit? By your own choice? Even if the first answer was "yes" (and, to be honest, it still isn't; if you had control I virtually guarantee that you would choose to change something about how it is distributed), this answer is certainly "no". You're not choosing right now. You're having done to you. If you want to complain about people making choices about what to do with your data, I can't fathom why you'd file that complaint against someone who wants to give you vastly more control than you have now.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - icebraining 8y ago
    What do you mean? Sure, currently personal data is being used without much control by the person. But the GP is not proposing more control, they're saying people should still not have choice, as that may harm the marginalized.
    - floe 8y ago
      I'm not saying that people shouldn't have the choice whether or not to sell their data - I'm saying that even if they have that choice, it doesn't prevent many society-wide harms. (Edit: Which implies that we do need to restrict some uses of large datasets that would cause these harms.) I'm not sure how you would characterize my position in terms of increasing or decreasing 'control' or 'choice' - I find those terms tricky to apply in this case, so I prefer to apply concrete concepts like 'harm'.
      - scarejunba 8y ago
        Harm is not a concrete concept in your characterization. It's pretty non-concrete and you've demonstrated no manner in which it occurs under the circumstance, only the possibility of it occurring. If my friends and I all decide to self-insure as a group and we will pool our money to do so and we all agree to be covered by our collective-owned policy only so long as we submit our data in to the group, I want that to be permissible. This is us choosing to interact with each other as a freely-associating group. That's our business. I don't want it restricted because I have lots of friends. And I'm sick of people continually taking away my right to use my data with other people who choose to use their data. There is a societal cost to not allowing freedom. I'm not game for some Communist-style Committee for Personal Use of Personal Data Voluntarily Given. Yes, CoPUPeDVoG is not okay.
      - icebraining 8y ago
        If we need to restrict, that means we need to take away some choice. It's a straight implication. I don't mean that pejoratively, I'm generally in favor of the idea.
- Frondo 8y ago
  I see no such claims that they have any desire to own and control everyone's data, and I don't see how personal jibes like that are advancing any dialogue here.
  - scarejunba 8y ago
    You don't see it? When they want to restrict me from sharing my health history with an insurer?
- floe 8y ago
  When you're talking about 'me' or 'my data' here, do you mean 'me' as in 'scarejunba' or 'me' as in 'the hypothetical CEO of a large health insurance corporation that wants to set discriminatory prices based on a huge data trove'? When you're talking about 'you' here, do you mean that I, 'floe', personally want to own and control all of your data? Or do you mean 'you' as in 'every single person working to build democratically-controlled restrictions on the use of data'?
  - scarejunba 8y ago
    I, 'scarejunba', wish to share my data with a health insurer. You, 'floe', wish to stop this. I consider this a concrete attack on my autonomy with nebulous positive value.
    - floe 8y ago
      Please see my reply to icebraining in this thread.
dorgo 8y ago
I see this insurance argument often and I don't understand it. High risk applicants should pay more. If the society decides to support the marginalized it can still do so without an obfuscation layer. Having said this, the insurance company should get the risk assessment only (without concrete data used to compute the risk).
- floe 8y ago
  > High risk applicants should pay more. I disagree because I believe that everyone should have health insurance. Forcing people to pay different amounts for insurance isn't much of 'insurance' at all, then, in my view. At the very least, there should be some limit on the difference in amounts that people pay; in the hypothetical I gave, that difference would grow as predictions become more and more accurate. I think this is a pretty common position (at least the weaker construction), but if you disagree, I understand how the argument wouldn't work for you.
  - scarejunba 8y ago
    You do not require banning sharing of information in order to have universal healthcare. I am for the latter but against the banning.
  - bhelkey 8y ago
    > Forcing people to pay different amounts for insurance isn't much of 'insurance' at all, then, in my view. I would argue that this is the core of insurance. I propose the following example: A thousand people have a 1% chance of owing $1000. Their EV is -$10. If company A offers insurance for $12, the company benefits by making $2 * 1000 and the individuals benefit by removing variance from their life. Lets add in a single person who has a 10% chance of owing $1000. Their EV is -$100. In a free market, why would A offer insurance for any amount less than $100? I am not saying that not everyone should have health insurance, but that perhaps insurance isn't the best system for healthcare.
    - klipt 8y ago
      > perhaps insurance isn't the best system for healthcare Certainly insurance tied to your employer is stupid. Someone gets cancer, loses their job due to being temporarily disabled during treatment, loses their insurance with their job? What kind of useless "insurance" stops paying out the moment you get sick?

by floe 8y ago

scarejunba 8y ago

Enough with the paternalism. Let me use my data as I see fit. It's mine. Not yours. Stop putting limits on it. If I want to trade my information for money I should be allowed to. The problem with you guys is not that your ultimate goal isn't data ownership. The problem with you is that your ultimate goal is that you own and control everyone's data. You want to make the rules as to what they can do with it.

jerf 8y ago
Are you using your data as you see fit? By your own choice? Even if the first answer was "yes" (and, to be honest, it still isn't; if you had control I virtually guarantee that you would choose to change something about how it is distributed), this answer is certainly "no". You're not choosing right now. You're having done to you. If you want to complain about people making choices about what to do with your data, I can't fathom why you'd file that complaint against someone who wants to give you vastly more control than you have now.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- icebraining 8y ago
  What do you mean? Sure, currently personal data is being used without much control by the person. But the GP is not proposing more control, they're saying people should still not have choice, as that may harm the marginalized.
  - floe 8y ago
    I'm not saying that people shouldn't have the choice whether or not to sell their data - I'm saying that even if they have that choice, it doesn't prevent many society-wide harms. (Edit: Which implies that we do need to restrict some uses of large datasets that would cause these harms.) I'm not sure how you would characterize my position in terms of increasing or decreasing 'control' or 'choice' - I find those terms tricky to apply in this case, so I prefer to apply concrete concepts like 'harm'.
    - scarejunba 8y ago
      Harm is not a concrete concept in your characterization. It's pretty non-concrete and you've demonstrated no manner in which it occurs under the circumstance, only the possibility of it occurring. If my friends and I all decide to self-insure as a group and we will pool our money to do so and we all agree to be covered by our collective-owned policy only so long as we submit our data in to the group, I want that to be permissible. This is us choosing to interact with each other as a freely-associating group. That's our business. I don't want it restricted because I have lots of friends. And I'm sick of people continually taking away my right to use my data with other people who choose to use their data. There is a societal cost to not allowing freedom. I'm not game for some Communist-style Committee for Personal Use of Personal Data Voluntarily Given. Yes, CoPUPeDVoG is not okay.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      If we need to restrict, that means we need to take away some choice. It's a straight implication. I don't mean that pejoratively, I'm generally in favor of the idea.
Frondo 8y ago
I see no such claims that they have any desire to own and control everyone's data, and I don't see how personal jibes like that are advancing any dialogue here.
- scarejunba 8y ago
  You don't see it? When they want to restrict me from sharing my health history with an insurer?
floe 8y ago
When you're talking about 'me' or 'my data' here, do you mean 'me' as in 'scarejunba' or 'me' as in 'the hypothetical CEO of a large health insurance corporation that wants to set discriminatory prices based on a huge data trove'? When you're talking about 'you' here, do you mean that I, 'floe', personally want to own and control all of your data? Or do you mean 'you' as in 'every single person working to build democratically-controlled restrictions on the use of data'?
- scarejunba 8y ago
  I, 'scarejunba', wish to share my data with a health insurer. You, 'floe', wish to stop this. I consider this a concrete attack on my autonomy with nebulous positive value.
  - floe 8y ago
    Please see my reply to icebraining in this thread.

dorgo 8y ago

I see this insurance argument often and I don't understand it. High risk applicants should pay more. If the society decides to support the marginalized it can still do so without an obfuscation layer. Having said this, the insurance company should get the risk assessment only (without concrete data used to compute the risk).

floe 8y ago
> High risk applicants should pay more. I disagree because I believe that everyone should have health insurance. Forcing people to pay different amounts for insurance isn't much of 'insurance' at all, then, in my view. At the very least, there should be some limit on the difference in amounts that people pay; in the hypothetical I gave, that difference would grow as predictions become more and more accurate. I think this is a pretty common position (at least the weaker construction), but if you disagree, I understand how the argument wouldn't work for you.
- scarejunba 8y ago
  You do not require banning sharing of information in order to have universal healthcare. I am for the latter but against the banning.
- bhelkey 8y ago
  > Forcing people to pay different amounts for insurance isn't much of 'insurance' at all, then, in my view. I would argue that this is the core of insurance. I propose the following example: A thousand people have a 1% chance of owing $1000. Their EV is -$10. If company A offers insurance for $12, the company benefits by making $2 * 1000 and the individuals benefit by removing variance from their life. Lets add in a single person who has a 10% chance of owing $1000. Their EV is -$100. In a free market, why would A offer insurance for any amount less than $100? I am not saying that not everyone should have health insurance, but that perhaps insurance isn't the best system for healthcare.
  - klipt 8y ago
    > perhaps insurance isn't the best system for healthcare Certainly insurance tied to your employer is stupid. Someone gets cancer, loses their job due to being temporarily disabled during treatment, loses their insurance with their job? What kind of useless "insurance" stops paying out the moment you get sick?