umilegenio
Joined 9 years ago
Joined 9 years ago
The connection between freedom of speech and privacy was just an example of how privacy affect other rights, too. I used it because I did not want to be too abstract. I used just one example, because I did not want to write too much on this. I wanted to write something that could be shared and read by a few people, rather than just hardcore privacy enthusiast.
Actually I really like your observations. Frankly this is another way (maybe a better one) to say what I was thinking:
>Privacy is about denying other people the information that they may use to obtain power over you in some way.
In the example I was talking about in the article, I was trying to say that nowadays people have different norms and opinions on what is fair. That is great, however this means that without privacy I can hurt you simply by sharing something about you with a a certain community. For instance, I can take something you said in private, or one fact about you (i.e., you are a member of party X, or have a certain sexuality, or belong to a certain religion) and share with a community that will misinterpret or attack you for that.
In the past we allowed the press to violate privacy of important people for something nefarious (i.e., they hunt people for sport). Now everybody has the power to violate privacy of anybody for any reason they see fit.
So, now maybe we should forbid everyone to violate the privacy of anyone, otherwise we will lose freedom of speech, because will be afraid to say anything for fear of being taken out of context. Maybe we should all agree that if you disagree with somebody you cannot call a mob to defend your opinion, but you should call them with your speech. That is not an obvious choice to make. As others have commented, what about actually powerful people? Just disagreeing with them will not change their opinion, because they are more powerful than you. So, I am not saying that is easy to understand what to do, but that privacy can actually change how we use other rights.
It is not just what we say, they also judge who we are in their own terms.
> It's the news cycle, the constant barrage of irrelevant information. The murder of effective discussion and thought.
I agree that it is a big problem. In some ways we are the most educated civilizations in the history of mankind and yet public discourse is the stupidest it has ever been. I think this happens also [1] because everything we said is taken out of context, therefore only the simplest ideas can travel among the public. Imagine that you are a politician that want to disagree with their own party, what do you think people will hear more probably: 1) they are a traitor 2) they fully support our cause, however they disagree with this particular course of action because X
Without spaces and community in which we can discuss freely and with trust, complex opinions are difficult to form and defend. Since most discussions are either moved online or are easily shareable online by even one party we need strong privacy norms to allow such discussions to happen.
[1] it is not the only reason, of course
What you say about private communities is also true. However, I was referring more to the fact that everybody seem to nonchalantly use violent words and dangerous statements to express their disagreement, i.e., people are not just wrong, they are evil bastards that must be removed from public life and the nation itself.
In my experience real anarchy, in the way you describe, has never been achieved. So, when I hear that it reminds me when people say that real comunism is great, it is just that the URSS was bad, fake communism (it happens here in Italy, not sure if that happens where you are). The only historical anarchy that I know is the one where there is no control. Maybe we can do a better version in the future, but for now that it is what happened.
To be fair, I am Italian, so maybe I am overreacting on the whole barbarians thing.
The second one seems fair: he is describing the result of what the Tesla Autopilot is doing. I do not think that he means to say that the Autopilot is understanding that there is a red light but then it makes a consciuous decision to itgnore it. He is just saying that the robot is malfunctioning, as it should be clear from context:
I do not think there is a more neutral way of describing the events.