From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Jun 25 2001 - 13:59:18 MDT
James Higgins wrote:
>
> Oh, I'm certain Big Brother would love this. A database of which beliefs
> people agree and disagree with. Let the witch hunts begin!
I don't mind being hunted as a witch, as long as nobody possesses the
capability to burn me at the stake. I'm with Lee Daniel Crocker on this
one - a need for privacy is a symptom of a badly designed society.
Information, once disseminated, can never be recalled. Therefore, to try
and keep information private is the fragile strategy; to design a society
which can withstand the information being open is the nonfragile
strategy. (At Extro 5, LDC pointed out that the problem is not that a
cracker can obtain your social security number; the problem is that our
banking structure allows you to easily obtain a credit card in my name if
you have my social security number. He offered as an analogy a system
where ATMs allowed you to obtain cash using only the ATM card number,
rather than requiring the physical card plus a PIN.)
Ironically enough, LDC also wanted to send his kids to a fully monitored
school, something that sounded to me like a reasonably good approximation
of hell - although LDC did agree with me when I pointed out that the power
parents have over children needs to be substantially reduced before a
transparent school is a good idea.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://intelligence.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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