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I don't want to call you out personally, but I absolutely hate how servile this attitude is. Its as if you can't even imagine a world where you get some of the

I don't want to call you out personally, but I absolutely hate how servile this attitude is. Its as if you can't even imagine a world where you get some of these benefits but where your privacy is protected either legally or technically. Both are totally possible, but your lazy attitude about it is part of the problem. One of these days all this data we've just been casually giving out is going to be used for a pogrom or some other terrible thing and then it will be too late for this facile "the benefits outweigh the costs" bullshit.

bilbo0s 7y ago
>it will be too late for this facile "the benefits outweigh the costs" bullshit. No it won't, because the horrible, but realistic, take is that the benefits indeed will outweigh the costs. For all the people who are not targets of the pogroms. Horrible as it sounds, a lot of people don't really care about things that happen to other people. Even if those other people die. Especially when the other people are not like them. Sometimes I wonder whether apathy is the true root of evil, not really money. I'm no different, I'm guilty of that tendency towards apathy as well. I'm certainly up in arms about privacy, but I really don't get the same way about women's issues. Nor black guys being gunned down by cops in their apartments. I may lament those situations, but I certainly don't donate money or time to those and other causes. Point is, root of the issue is that no one cares. Everyone has their own concerns. Which is democracy. And that's great. But inherent in that environment is a kind of built in "divide and conquer" quality that provides political and economic élites a convenient control mechanism.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  If blacks or women suffer from state suppression it would be natural to care for privacy too.
viraptor 7y ago
Yes we need a model where this can be done on a large scale with the way to compensate that doesn't involve private data. But realistically we just don't have that model. We can imagine the world where that's the result. The hard part is imagining how did we get there, and that's really not trivial - anyone has a chance to do it and succeed right now and it's just not happening. Then there's the technical issue of: We can't guarantee no collection right now, without rebuilding internet from scratch. Then we need to solve the spam/credible information problem again without existing identity information. So again, unless you want to live in a disconnected undocumented commune, you're drawing your own acceptance line somewhere. If you don't have own solutions to propose, calling others lazy is a bit of glass house situation.

bilbo0s 7y ago

>it will be too late for this facile "the benefits outweigh the costs" bullshit. No it won't, because the horrible, but realistic, take is that the benefits indeed will outweigh the costs. For all the people who are not targets of the pogroms. Horrible as it sounds, a lot of people don't really care about things that happen to other people. Even if those other people die. Especially when the other people are not like them. Sometimes I wonder whether apathy is the true root of evil, not really money. I'm no different, I'm guilty of that tendency towards apathy as well. I'm certainly up in arms about privacy, but I really don't get the same way about women's issues. Nor black guys being gunned down by cops in their apartments. I may lament those situations, but I certainly don't donate money or time to those and other causes. Point is, root of the issue is that no one cares. Everyone has their own concerns. Which is democracy. And that's great. But inherent in that environment is a kind of built in "divide and conquer" quality that provides political and economic élites a convenient control mechanism.

raxxorrax 7y ago
If blacks or women suffer from state suppression it would be natural to care for privacy too.

viraptor 7y ago

Yes we need a model where this can be done on a large scale with the way to compensate that doesn't involve private data. But realistically we just don't have that model. We can imagine the world where that's the result. The hard part is imagining how did we get there, and that's really not trivial - anyone has a chance to do it and succeed right now and it's just not happening. Then there's the technical issue of: We can't guarantee no collection right now, without rebuilding internet from scratch. Then we need to solve the spam/credible information problem again without existing identity information. So again, unless you want to live in a disconnected undocumented commune, you're drawing your own acceptance line somewhere. If you don't have own solutions to propose, calling others lazy is a bit of glass house situation.