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This is about the silliest thing I've read in awhile. All right so he wants to do this dumb PR stunt where he films his life and he wants to raise money on Kick

This is about the silliest thing I've read in awhile. All right so he wants to do this dumb PR stunt where he films his life and he wants to raise money on Kickstarters. OK, I will just wait for him to raise the money, log in to his Kickstarter or his bank account, take all his money and voila I have won the game. I mean this is extraordinarily ridiculous and I don't know how this is making any intelligible point about society or how we shouldn't care about privacy. So without privacy politicians would work to build a Utopia or something? This is not worth the time of The Atlantic, or what I thought that institution was about. The idea that people will act more ethically because of privacy is something out of a Dystopian novel, but he actually sees this as Utopian; this makes me wonder if this is a prank. Let us wonder, if we give up all privacy, I imagine this applies to institutions. So, when Google gives me their Secret key, or wait, no one will ever use encryption because there will be no secrets, what stops someone from firing a nuclear weapon because of course we will not have secrets like the "launch codes." I realize in such a Utopia we won't need nuclear weapons but let's Utopia will start tomorrow, before we get rid of these weapons ... What's to stop some mentally ill person from using the free knowledge to destroy the world of all new-found anti-privacy advocates? Oh, you may say "we won't share those secrets." OK, where does this end because I don't know see how you get Utopia without everyone following this silly idea. I mean, it may come as a surprise, but humans are (relatively) intelligent self-interested agents and will not always follow such noble ideals as no-privacy, particularly if they will have grey area sorts of cases, such as keep launch codes secret. It's just such a farce. I never thought anyone could make Zuckerberg seem like someone that has intelligent thoughts about privacy but here we are.

mmalone 12y ago
In a hypothetical world with no privacy and perfect information I'd just make my nuclear launch system (which also has perfect information) only launch when the right people ask them too. You can't pretend to be those people because you can't lie because the launch system would know because there's no privacy. I don't know of any way to actually implement this in practice -- there probably isn't one -- but it's an interesting thought experiment. It's possible that privacy isn't a moral right and perhaps isn't necessary at all. The argument for privacy seems to be predicated on other people being immoral. If you could identify immoral people 100% accurately then perhaps the need for privacy goes away. In fact, if that were the status quo you might claim that keeping something private is immoral.

mmalone 12y ago

In a hypothetical world with no privacy and perfect information I'd just make my nuclear launch system (which also has perfect information) only launch when the right people ask them too. You can't pretend to be those people because you can't lie because the launch system would know because there's no privacy. I don't know of any way to actually implement this in practice -- there probably isn't one -- but it's an interesting thought experiment. It's possible that privacy isn't a moral right and perhaps isn't necessary at all. The argument for privacy seems to be predicated on other people being immoral. If you could identify immoral people 100% accurately then perhaps the need for privacy goes away. In fact, if that were the status quo you might claim that keeping something private is immoral.