5 ms·

Keeping Secrets (2014)

60 points by yamrzou 2y ago

bell-cot 2y ago
The Dept. of Unaccountable & Mysterious is too interested protecting their perks, turf, and traditions - vs. the longer-term welfare of the whole organization. Clever disrupters aren't automatically right ("Rule of Cool"?), either. Timeless.
breck 2y ago
[flagged]
- Jtsummers 2y ago
  > I need to expand my mind more to understand why secrets are good and not evil. Can you explain why you think they're evil now? That seems like an awfully strong position.
  - breck 2y ago
    > Can you explain why you think they're evil now? That seems like an awfully strong position. I have been working on a long form essay on this for months. It has not fully annealed in my mind yet. But right now, heuristics leads me to think they are evil. I can think of so many times where I and people I care about have been harmed by secrets (some fatal). I can't think of a single case where I was helped by someone keeping a secret.
    - Jtsummers 2y ago
      Homosexuals in a homophobic society (especially the more violent ones) might appreciate you not outing them. They would probably consider you the one doing evil for revealing their secret. You really couldn’t think of things like that? At a less extreme position, are you willing to post your name and SSN in your public profile so others can benefit from your openness while you are harmed? Yeah, some things shouldn’t be secret. Some people hurt themselves and those around them with secrets. Asserting that all secrets are evil is just absurd though. Focus on helping them open up about what should be shared and help them understand why or that they are safe sharing with you. Don’t tell them they are committing an evil act by keeping secrets like some fire and brimstone preacher. Who wants to talk to that guy?
      - breck 2y ago
        > in a homophobic society (especially the more violent ones) There is your evil problem, right there. There is a saying "lesser of 2 evils". Secrecy may be the lesser of two evils, but it's still evil. I have tremendous respect for people who tell the truth in societies where doing so comes with repercussions. They are the ones who change the world. They are the good ones. The violent repressors are most evil of course, but the ones who practice secrecy in fear I also don't have much respect for. > are you willing to post your name and SSN in your public profile so others can benefit from your openness while you are harmed? I've done this many times. And no one has harmed me (well, a few dishonest people have tried, and it was very painful...for them). > Asserting that all secrets are evil is just absurd though Why? I am not sure if it is correct, but it seems like it might be. It might be that secrets are generally the lesser of 2 evils, but always above zero on the evil measure.
- mistrial9 2y ago
  first rule of fight club - never discuss fight club
- vinnyvichy 2y ago
  [dead]
- creeble 2y ago
  Cryptography is meant to preserve secrecy. Are you implying that cryptography is evil? Or that some other kind of secrecy (like keeping cryptographic algorithms secret) is evil?
  - breck 2y ago
    > Are you implying that cryptography is evil? I am open to the possibility that it is. I am not sure. For cryptography, my gut says 80% odds not evil, 20% odds evil, but that's after putting very little thought into it. I certainly know cryptography is used for quite a lot of evil. Is it used for good things? Perhaps it is always a suboptimal solution. These are good questions. Thank you.
- Retr0id 2y ago
  Secrecy is necessary for privacy, and you can find plenty of essays defending privacy rights. Also, if I asked you for the password to your HN account you probably wouldn't tell me, because it's a secret - and that doesn't make you evil.
  - llmfan 2y ago
    Everyone knows you have a secret password. Not so many people know that YC has a secret [insert whatever it is that they have that is secret but that we don't know about here].
    - Retr0id 2y ago
      I'm not sure precisely what you're getting at, but I'm not trying to argue that all secrets are good, merely that some secrets are not bad. I also have plenty of personal secrets that you don't know exist, but I don't see why that would change anything.
  - breck 2y ago
    > if I asked you for the password to your HN account you probably wouldn't tell me, because it's a secret - and that doesn't make you evil. I would tell you, but I would ask you why you wanted it first. There's no inherent need for us to have passwords. If people were always good then I would have no need for a password on this account. The login could just be "username" and one could assume that no one would pose as someone else. > Secrecy is necessary for privacy, and you can find plenty of essays defending privacy rights. I think "privacy rights" are completely redundant if one has property rights. If I have property rights on my home, there's no need for additional "privacy rights".
    - Retr0id 2y ago
      > I think "privacy rights" are completely redundant if one has property rights. That's a rather fringe belief, incompatible with widely held conventions such as the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights (among many others). I hold the equally fringe belief that property is theft.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- klodolph 2y ago
  Secrets include facts like “I am being treated for schizophrenia”, “I no longer believe the teachings of my church”, “I used to be a woman”, or “I testified against the mafia.” Disclosure of these secrets foreseeably results in irreparable harm.
  - breck 2y ago
    And yet if you disclosed these things publicly to an honest crowd, you would not be harmed but helped. Just because some bad people do bad things doesn't necessarily mean the morally right course of action is to start using secrecy. I am not 100% sure on this yet though. Thanks for the perspective.
- dang 2y ago
  It's time you stopped taking threads off-topic into whatever your personal thing is with YC/HN. As far as I know the only secrets anybody is keeping have to do with your own behavior, how badly you treated people who did nothing but try to help you, and how one by one you've exhausted their patience and goodwill. If you want to blog or whatever about how you're being persecuted, fine, but I don't see what obligation HN has to serve as a platform for it.
  - breck 2y ago
    > It's time you stopped taking threads off-topic into whatever your personal thing is with YC/HN. I thought HackerNews readers who read "Keeping Secrets" would be a good group to discuss the secret keeping of HackerNews with. I don't think that is off-topic at all, but I think it's fine if you disagree and respect your opinion. > It's time you stopped taking threads off-topic into whatever your personal thing is with YC/HN I think maybe you have filters setup or something that might show you a biased subset of my comments here. I just checked, and I had to go back 57 comments to find my last comment about my gripes with YC/HN. So ~2% of my comments might fit that bill. If only 2% of my comments are critical of YC, and if a high % of those are flagged (like this one), then that is a bit worrisome. Keep in mind I'm not harping on YC/HN to switch to Python or something. I am drilling in on one specific thing I think YC is getting wrong. And I am doing it because I think YC going more open would be better for YC, and be better for the world. When I started at Microsoft in 2014, people made fun of me for immediately installing Ubuntu on my Windows machine. I also constantly blasted "source depot (sd)", and pushed for github over and over again. A few years later, Windows shipped with Ubuntu and bought GitHub. And the stock price has done quite well. I would not push hard for something if I thought it was unimportant, or if I did not care for the organization. > As far as I know the only secrets anybody is keeping Does HackerNews not have a lot of secret features that regular HN users are not informed of? Does Bookface not have a lot of secret features people are told not to share/talk about? Does YC still do "off the record" dinners, where speakers sometimes tell tales of questionable behavior? Doesn't Jessica Livingston have a whole essay on her blog at this very moment (https://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/the-sound-of-silence https://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/the-sound-of-silence) admitting to having a lot of secrets [to her credit she seems to lament that!]? So can you explain to me how you don't know of any secrets? > with your own behavior I have done many dumb things in my life. When I do something wrong, it's generally out of acting too fast emotionally, and not taking the time to contemplate the best moves, and later I apologize and try to learn from it. I am sorry to anyone at YC who I hurt with my behavior in 2022. I exceeded the speed limit. However, my intentions were always good, and I think my actions, as ridiculous as they were, have helped reveal for many people what the speed limits are--something not talked about much. I am happy to be a guinea pig if it helps other people. And the positives to the world from what we've built and the impact of what we are doing will be far greater than the harm to people's feelings from those relatively small hours when I was behaving far worse than my potential. > If you want to blog or whatever about how you're being persecuted, fine, but I don't see what obligation HN has to serve as a platform for it. Again, a small % of my posts are critical of HN/YC. I do see why HN has an obligation: gratitude. I've been here since nearly the beginning, and have done my best to help likely thousands of startups and founders. I've given advice, time, hundreds of thousands in donations to HN users struggling with various things, have probably gotten thousands of people to sign up myself over the past ~16 years, etc. I obviously thoroughly enjoy this community, and get a lot of out of it myself, but I have pored a ton of myself into it as well, both online and in the offline relationships with other HN users. I think it's disrespectful to someone like me to block my emails, and flag my posts. I feel like I deserve better treatment than that.
- snapcaster 2y ago
  Well obviously because part of protecting a secret is not having it be known that you have a secret you're protecting
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
DoreenMichele 2y ago
Schwartz's less-than-comforting informal advice: "If you are prosecuted, Stanford will defend you. But if you're found guilty, we can't pay your fine and we can't go to jail for you." My impression is that it sounds like a super polite version of the Keanu Reeves movie Chain Reaction or the Val Kilmer flick The Saint in which people in possession of world changing knowledge must flee for their lives. Being "disruptive" has a reputation for making scads of money these days. Perhaps people should stop and think about how it can also make you enemies, make you a target, etc. Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.
- achillesheels 2y ago
  Truth. Good Courage towards improving human relations is necessary; resistance will always be.

60 points by yamrzou 2y ago

The Dept. of Unaccountable & Mysterious is too interested protecting their perks, turf, and traditions - vs. the longer-term welfare of the whole organization. Clever disrupters aren't automatically right ("Rule of Cool"?), either. Timeless.

breck 2y ago

[flagged]

Jtsummers 2y ago
> I need to expand my mind more to understand why secrets are good and not evil. Can you explain why you think they're evil now? That seems like an awfully strong position.
- breck 2y ago
  > Can you explain why you think they're evil now? That seems like an awfully strong position. I have been working on a long form essay on this for months. It has not fully annealed in my mind yet. But right now, heuristics leads me to think they are evil. I can think of so many times where I and people I care about have been harmed by secrets (some fatal). I can't think of a single case where I was helped by someone keeping a secret.
  - Jtsummers 2y ago
    Homosexuals in a homophobic society (especially the more violent ones) might appreciate you not outing them. They would probably consider you the one doing evil for revealing their secret. You really couldn’t think of things like that? At a less extreme position, are you willing to post your name and SSN in your public profile so others can benefit from your openness while you are harmed? Yeah, some things shouldn’t be secret. Some people hurt themselves and those around them with secrets. Asserting that all secrets are evil is just absurd though. Focus on helping them open up about what should be shared and help them understand why or that they are safe sharing with you. Don’t tell them they are committing an evil act by keeping secrets like some fire and brimstone preacher. Who wants to talk to that guy?
    - breck 2y ago
      > in a homophobic society (especially the more violent ones) There is your evil problem, right there. There is a saying "lesser of 2 evils". Secrecy may be the lesser of two evils, but it's still evil. I have tremendous respect for people who tell the truth in societies where doing so comes with repercussions. They are the ones who change the world. They are the good ones. The violent repressors are most evil of course, but the ones who practice secrecy in fear I also don't have much respect for. > are you willing to post your name and SSN in your public profile so others can benefit from your openness while you are harmed? I've done this many times. And no one has harmed me (well, a few dishonest people have tried, and it was very painful...for them). > Asserting that all secrets are evil is just absurd though Why? I am not sure if it is correct, but it seems like it might be. It might be that secrets are generally the lesser of 2 evils, but always above zero on the evil measure.
mistrial9 2y ago
first rule of fight club - never discuss fight club
vinnyvichy 2y ago
[dead]
creeble 2y ago
Cryptography is meant to preserve secrecy. Are you implying that cryptography is evil? Or that some other kind of secrecy (like keeping cryptographic algorithms secret) is evil?
- breck 2y ago
  > Are you implying that cryptography is evil? I am open to the possibility that it is. I am not sure. For cryptography, my gut says 80% odds not evil, 20% odds evil, but that's after putting very little thought into it. I certainly know cryptography is used for quite a lot of evil. Is it used for good things? Perhaps it is always a suboptimal solution. These are good questions. Thank you.
Retr0id 2y ago
Secrecy is necessary for privacy, and you can find plenty of essays defending privacy rights. Also, if I asked you for the password to your HN account you probably wouldn't tell me, because it's a secret - and that doesn't make you evil.
- llmfan 2y ago
  Everyone knows you have a secret password. Not so many people know that YC has a secret [insert whatever it is that they have that is secret but that we don't know about here].
  - Retr0id 2y ago
    I'm not sure precisely what you're getting at, but I'm not trying to argue that all secrets are good, merely that some secrets are not bad. I also have plenty of personal secrets that you don't know exist, but I don't see why that would change anything.
- breck 2y ago
  > if I asked you for the password to your HN account you probably wouldn't tell me, because it's a secret - and that doesn't make you evil. I would tell you, but I would ask you why you wanted it first. There's no inherent need for us to have passwords. If people were always good then I would have no need for a password on this account. The login could just be "username" and one could assume that no one would pose as someone else. > Secrecy is necessary for privacy, and you can find plenty of essays defending privacy rights. I think "privacy rights" are completely redundant if one has property rights. If I have property rights on my home, there's no need for additional "privacy rights".
  - Retr0id 2y ago
    > I think "privacy rights" are completely redundant if one has property rights. That's a rather fringe belief, incompatible with widely held conventions such as the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights (among many others). I hold the equally fringe belief that property is theft.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
klodolph 2y ago
Secrets include facts like “I am being treated for schizophrenia”, “I no longer believe the teachings of my church”, “I used to be a woman”, or “I testified against the mafia.” Disclosure of these secrets foreseeably results in irreparable harm.
- breck 2y ago
  And yet if you disclosed these things publicly to an honest crowd, you would not be harmed but helped. Just because some bad people do bad things doesn't necessarily mean the morally right course of action is to start using secrecy. I am not 100% sure on this yet though. Thanks for the perspective.
dang 2y ago
It's time you stopped taking threads off-topic into whatever your personal thing is with YC/HN. As far as I know the only secrets anybody is keeping have to do with your own behavior, how badly you treated people who did nothing but try to help you, and how one by one you've exhausted their patience and goodwill. If you want to blog or whatever about how you're being persecuted, fine, but I don't see what obligation HN has to serve as a platform for it.
- breck 2y ago
  > It's time you stopped taking threads off-topic into whatever your personal thing is with YC/HN. I thought HackerNews readers who read "Keeping Secrets" would be a good group to discuss the secret keeping of HackerNews with. I don't think that is off-topic at all, but I think it's fine if you disagree and respect your opinion. > It's time you stopped taking threads off-topic into whatever your personal thing is with YC/HN I think maybe you have filters setup or something that might show you a biased subset of my comments here. I just checked, and I had to go back 57 comments to find my last comment about my gripes with YC/HN. So ~2% of my comments might fit that bill. If only 2% of my comments are critical of YC, and if a high % of those are flagged (like this one), then that is a bit worrisome. Keep in mind I'm not harping on YC/HN to switch to Python or something. I am drilling in on one specific thing I think YC is getting wrong. And I am doing it because I think YC going more open would be better for YC, and be better for the world. When I started at Microsoft in 2014, people made fun of me for immediately installing Ubuntu on my Windows machine. I also constantly blasted "source depot (sd)", and pushed for github over and over again. A few years later, Windows shipped with Ubuntu and bought GitHub. And the stock price has done quite well. I would not push hard for something if I thought it was unimportant, or if I did not care for the organization. > As far as I know the only secrets anybody is keeping Does HackerNews not have a lot of secret features that regular HN users are not informed of? Does Bookface not have a lot of secret features people are told not to share/talk about? Does YC still do "off the record" dinners, where speakers sometimes tell tales of questionable behavior? Doesn't Jessica Livingston have a whole essay on her blog at this very moment (https://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/the-sound-of-silence https://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/the-sound-of-silence) admitting to having a lot of secrets [to her credit she seems to lament that!]? So can you explain to me how you don't know of any secrets? > with your own behavior I have done many dumb things in my life. When I do something wrong, it's generally out of acting too fast emotionally, and not taking the time to contemplate the best moves, and later I apologize and try to learn from it. I am sorry to anyone at YC who I hurt with my behavior in 2022. I exceeded the speed limit. However, my intentions were always good, and I think my actions, as ridiculous as they were, have helped reveal for many people what the speed limits are--something not talked about much. I am happy to be a guinea pig if it helps other people. And the positives to the world from what we've built and the impact of what we are doing will be far greater than the harm to people's feelings from those relatively small hours when I was behaving far worse than my potential. > If you want to blog or whatever about how you're being persecuted, fine, but I don't see what obligation HN has to serve as a platform for it. Again, a small % of my posts are critical of HN/YC. I do see why HN has an obligation: gratitude. I've been here since nearly the beginning, and have done my best to help likely thousands of startups and founders. I've given advice, time, hundreds of thousands in donations to HN users struggling with various things, have probably gotten thousands of people to sign up myself over the past ~16 years, etc. I obviously thoroughly enjoy this community, and get a lot of out of it myself, but I have pored a ton of myself into it as well, both online and in the offline relationships with other HN users. I think it's disrespectful to someone like me to block my emails, and flag my posts. I feel like I deserve better treatment than that.
snapcaster 2y ago
Well obviously because part of protecting a secret is not having it be known that you have a secret you're protecting

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

DoreenMichele 2y ago

Schwartz's less-than-comforting informal advice: "If you are prosecuted, Stanford will defend you. But if you're found guilty, we can't pay your fine and we can't go to jail for you." My impression is that it sounds like a super polite version of the Keanu Reeves movie Chain Reaction or the Val Kilmer flick The Saint in which people in possession of world changing knowledge must flee for their lives. Being "disruptive" has a reputation for making scads of money these days. Perhaps people should stop and think about how it can also make you enemies, make you a target, etc. Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.

achillesheels 2y ago
Truth. Good Courage towards improving human relations is necessary; resistance will always be.