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I’m really confused why the authors barely mention agency: knowing is fine and useful if you _can do_ something about it. Cassandra’s curse was not to know bu

by bertil 4y ago

I’m really confused why the authors barely mention *agency*: knowing is fine and useful if you _can do_ something about it. Cassandra’s curse was not to know but that she wouldn’t be believed. Every circumstances that I can think of regretting knowing something (friends who were going to separate, systemic racism in algorithm that my team implemented, global warming), how certain I am is far less important than whether I can do something about it.

nonrandomstring 4y ago
Good point. But there are Knowledge Hazards that stand alone. Such as traumatic images you cannot unsee. A lot of people who work in digital forensics would love a zero knowledge proof that a folder is full of CP without having to look at it. That's pretty much the idea of the CSAM algorithm Apple wanted to push, which makes it a pretty great idea minus the digitally rapey forcing it on people without their consent bit. > "Only 1% of participants consistently wanted to know" Wow! I sometimes feel "better not to know" but for the most-part I am scientific/rationalist and will take all the intel I can get even if it may be challenging. There's one exception: I often deliberately don't google people I am going to meet. I want the relationship to evolve organically. If it's an interview I might check a bit on their professional background, and the orgs they've worked with, but even given the opportunity to see a much deeper dox I'll pass on it. I feel it's degrading. Also that it may give me a false impression that excludes opportunities. I would only break that "polite ignorance" if I needed to assess the risk of someone or suspected a problem.
- bombcar 4y ago
  That last part is quite important; we've lost the ability to lose things to time, and it can be brought back up quite easily. Part of it has been loss in trust of the people in society setup as gatekeepers, but the "cure" of everyone doing it themselves may be worse than the disease.
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    That theme, of whether the age of 'benevolent elites' has given way to a hyper-liberal vigilantism (and whether that's worse) is explored quite nicely by Adam Curtis in some of his more recent films.
- bertil 4y ago
  In the case of CSAM, I think you are conflating not wanting to see, which I appreciate, and wanting, needing really, to know to make decision. Knowing gives agency, the ability ot fight a crime in that case. People who are exposed to it suffer less from being exposed to it and more from the inability to see the flow stop.
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    Yes I agree. We've come full circle back to Cassandra. The thing with cybersecurity that infuriates me with frustration is telling people the things they don't want to know yet knowing I am powerless to stop them harming themselves and others with stubbornly bad choices. I'm sure healthcare professionals get the same. It's why I wrote in Digital Vegan quite a lot about drug addiction and technology.
yccs27 4y ago
I see two distinct motivations for not wanting to know: - You have no agency, so the information would just be depressing without enabling you to do something about it. - You have agency, and indeed you'd have to do something if you knew (for moral, legal or general responsibility reasons) - but you don't _want_ to do anything.
- bombcar 4y ago
  The second is common, especially when dealing with a bureaucracy that isn't fully aligned with what should be done. As long as you maintain plausible deniability, things continue to work. Hence things like "work to rule" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule
photochemsyn 4y ago
Agency can be a burden: knowing about something and also knowing that you can do something about it, but that there is a cost to doing something about it, can expose serious deficiencies in human beings (gross cowardice in particular). Churches with serial molesters as priests are a rather grim example: apparently quite a few people knew what was going on in many (most?) of these cases, but the cost of taking action was viewed as being too detrimental to the image of the church, so, they let it continue. This kind of behavior was also seen with those FBI agents and internal executives who were informed about the USA Gymnast's serial child predator by some of the victims (the FBI is now facing a $1 billion lawsuit for negligence, a case worth watching): https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wait-happened-larry-nassar-conviction-130000749.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wait-happened-larry-nassar-co... This is why higher-ups in organizations often don't want to get memos from middle managers about problems lower down, because then they lose the 'plausible deniability' defense when it comes to a criminal prosecution or a civil court case.

I’m really confused why the authors barely mention *agency*: knowing is fine and useful if you _can do_ something about it. Cassandra’s curse was not to know bu

by bertil 4y ago

nonrandomstring 4y ago

Good point. But there are Knowledge Hazards that stand alone. Such as traumatic images you cannot unsee. A lot of people who work in digital forensics would love a zero knowledge proof that a folder is full of CP without having to look at it. That's pretty much the idea of the CSAM algorithm Apple wanted to push, which makes it a pretty great idea minus the digitally rapey forcing it on people without their consent bit. > "Only 1% of participants consistently wanted to know" Wow! I sometimes feel "better not to know" but for the most-part I am scientific/rationalist and will take all the intel I can get even if it may be challenging. There's one exception: I often deliberately don't google people I am going to meet. I want the relationship to evolve organically. If it's an interview I might check a bit on their professional background, and the orgs they've worked with, but even given the opportunity to see a much deeper dox I'll pass on it. I feel it's degrading. Also that it may give me a false impression that excludes opportunities. I would only break that "polite ignorance" if I needed to assess the risk of someone or suspected a problem.

bombcar 4y ago
That last part is quite important; we've lost the ability to lose things to time, and it can be brought back up quite easily. Part of it has been loss in trust of the people in society setup as gatekeepers, but the "cure" of everyone doing it themselves may be worse than the disease.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  That theme, of whether the age of 'benevolent elites' has given way to a hyper-liberal vigilantism (and whether that's worse) is explored quite nicely by Adam Curtis in some of his more recent films.
bertil 4y ago
In the case of CSAM, I think you are conflating not wanting to see, which I appreciate, and wanting, needing really, to know to make decision. Knowing gives agency, the ability ot fight a crime in that case. People who are exposed to it suffer less from being exposed to it and more from the inability to see the flow stop.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  Yes I agree. We've come full circle back to Cassandra. The thing with cybersecurity that infuriates me with frustration is telling people the things they don't want to know yet knowing I am powerless to stop them harming themselves and others with stubbornly bad choices. I'm sure healthcare professionals get the same. It's why I wrote in Digital Vegan quite a lot about drug addiction and technology.

yccs27 4y ago

I see two distinct motivations for not wanting to know: - You have no agency, so the information would just be depressing without enabling you to do something about it. - You have agency, and indeed you'd have to do something if you knew (for moral, legal or general responsibility reasons) - but you don't _want_ to do anything.

bombcar 4y ago
The second is common, especially when dealing with a bureaucracy that isn't fully aligned with what should be done. As long as you maintain plausible deniability, things continue to work. Hence things like "work to rule" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule

photochemsyn 4y ago

Agency can be a burden: knowing about something and also knowing that you can do something about it, but that there is a cost to doing something about it, can expose serious deficiencies in human beings (gross cowardice in particular). Churches with serial molesters as priests are a rather grim example: apparently quite a few people knew what was going on in many (most?) of these cases, but the cost of taking action was viewed as being too detrimental to the image of the church, so, they let it continue. This kind of behavior was also seen with those FBI agents and internal executives who were informed about the USA Gymnast's serial child predator by some of the victims (the FBI is now facing a $1 billion lawsuit for negligence, a case worth watching): https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wait-happened-larry-nassar-conviction-130000749.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wait-happened-larry-nassar-co... This is why higher-ups in organizations often don't want to get memos from middle managers about problems lower down, because then they lose the 'plausible deniability' defense when it comes to a criminal prosecution or a civil court case.