4 ms·
Indeed, the ability to very accurately infer lots from very small amount of data is something I've long though of as the "Sherlock Holmes" problem. If there's j
by lelandbatey 6y ago
Indeed, the ability to very accurately infer lots from very small amount of data is something I've long though of as the "Sherlock Holmes" problem. If there's just a few people with the ability to deduce lots of things, then they can be amusing and offer some limited utility, like Sherlock Holmes.
Computers are powerful enough though, and people clever enough, that everyone can now have a Sherlock Holmes in their pocket. And large corporations can have smarts far beyond Sherlock Holmes. So what once was a "eh, there's no rule against it, if you have the information the smart guy should be able to use it", is now a case of "oh dang, hmmm maybe civilization is built on the idea that not everyone is Sherlock Holmes."
Maybe this should have been my own blog post somewhere, but anyway, it's one of the many new conundrums of our time.
- qchris 6y agoI, for one, would be very interested in reading a more in-depth exploration of this idea, and would encourage you to write and publish that blog post.
- selestify 6y agoSeconded
- jacquesm 6y ago33 bits... that's all you need.
- jimktrains2 6y agoI think it's the same problem as surveillance. When tailing someone required a substantial investment of an actual person's time and a wiretap literally required physical handling of the physical lines to that person's phone, it makes/made sense to give the police wide leverage in who they put under a lens because it required a substantial investment of time from the police in a way that was intrinsically limited and unable to scale to the population level. Enter today, when nearly everyone can be and is surveiled with detail cops of previous generation could only dream of, and we're still dealing with those same laws, but we removed the unwritten premises that they're based on: surveillance couldn't scale.