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So what amazing sort of philosophical argument are you using to arrive at the value judgment that "privacy is bad?" I don't think it is good enough to just have

So what amazing sort of philosophical argument are you using to arrive at the value judgment that "privacy is bad?" I don't think it is good enough to just have this tacit idea "no privacy is inherently good but obviously we don't live in a Utopia;" I think that is a flawed concept entirely. In fact, I think your position is entirely immoral. You want to find some kind of technology to force me to give up my privacy to you, and absent such a technology, you think it is unfortunate because that would be Utopia ... That's just hard to take seriously.

mmalone 12y ago
The argument is that privacy serves no purpose aside from facilitating lies, and lies are bad. One challenge that has been presented is that there's a difference between "lying" and "not telling the whole truth" but I believe both are "moral bads" and I don't really want to get into that regardless (the distinction between passive and active moral decisions has been debated endlessly by philosophers already -- google "killing vs. letting die," for instance). I don't think it's infeasible to find a technology. I think it's infeasible to change our culture to be more accepting of the sorts of things that people choose to keep private. As long as people are persecuted for their completely normal beliefs and actions privacy has a place and keeping things private is justifiable. But if I were designing a utopia I think I'd try one with no privacy at all (everyone has access to the same set of facts about everyone / everything else) and see how things go. Why do you think my position is immoral? How is it a flawed concept? You haven't presented a logical argument for your position -- that privacy is good. I'd love to hear one that doesn't include a clause where "some bad actor does something immoral because of lack of privacy." Maybe P = NP, then we won't have a choice :) Edit: spelling.

mmalone 12y ago

The argument is that privacy serves no purpose aside from facilitating lies, and lies are bad. One challenge that has been presented is that there's a difference between "lying" and "not telling the whole truth" but I believe both are "moral bads" and I don't really want to get into that regardless (the distinction between passive and active moral decisions has been debated endlessly by philosophers already -- google "killing vs. letting die," for instance). I don't think it's infeasible to find a technology. I think it's infeasible to change our culture to be more accepting of the sorts of things that people choose to keep private. As long as people are persecuted for their completely normal beliefs and actions privacy has a place and keeping things private is justifiable. But if I were designing a utopia I think I'd try one with no privacy at all (everyone has access to the same set of facts about everyone / everything else) and see how things go. Why do you think my position is immoral? How is it a flawed concept? You haven't presented a logical argument for your position -- that privacy is good. I'd love to hear one that doesn't include a clause where "some bad actor does something immoral because of lack of privacy." Maybe P = NP, then we won't have a choice :) Edit: spelling.