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One very important benefit of privacy is it allows experimentation without commitment: because we live in a society that often rushes to label, pigeon-hole, and
by rohamg 12y ago
One very important benefit of privacy is it allows experimentation without commitment: because we live in a society that often rushes to label, pigeon-hole, and categorize, privacy allows one to experiment with activities, world views, preferences, without broadcasting the process to the entire world.
- miguelrochefort 12y agoSounds like you're describing an issue about society, not transparency. As long as we keep in mind that "label[s], pigeon-hole[s], and categori[es]" don't have to be permanent, and that people usually change as they learn, I don't see a problem with them. You can't really draw a line between "experimentation" and "commitment", as commitments usually become experimentations in hindsight. Unless we live all our lives in private, and only went in public when we were 100% sure that our positions about everything would never change (and that we're happy with them), I don't see this working very well. Sure, we all make a lot of mistakes when starting something new, but this is not a reason to do these things in private. Not only does it probably slow down the learning process, but it also increase other people's expectations. If we no longer see people making mistakes, we'll start believing that mistakes are bad. If we have to hide whenever we do something new (as encourage by the privacy movement), we'll probably just stop experimenting new things.
- 3rd3 12y agoI think you are not considering that the range of privacy can be larger than complete isolation.