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Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery

sive.rs

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Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery

#161

Post by prepend »

jacobmartin wrote: post #145
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is lying in-of-itself unethical? I'd be curious to probe a framework that thinks it is, while not holding that axiomatically. As someone who leans heavily into consequentialism, I can think of plenty of times lying can lead to a net positive for everyone. Likewise, there are harmful truths that should be suppressed. That suggests to me that lying is, in-of-itself, amoral. The effect of the lie (or the intent, if you…

The deontologist believes lying is against the universal maxim. If everybody lied all the time, we wouldn't have a functioning society. The virtue ethicist believes it is bad to be in a habit to lie because being predisposed to lying is opposed to the virtue of the truth. We've all known people who lie by habit and they are unpleasant and vicious to be around. I don't know if most virtue ethicists (who don't also fal…

> If everybody lied all the time, we wouldn't have a functioning society.

This is true. But I don’t think anyone makes the point that someone should lie all the time. Especially not that everyone should lie all the time.

I think that there’s an ethical argument for lieing for some greater purpose (eg, a spy working for the Underground Railroad).

Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery

#162

Post by mynameisvlad »

zajio1am wrote: post #119
rt4mn wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said, as someone who prizes ethical behavior, it's not possible to practice this and remain wholly honest without some sort of ethical loophole The primary "ethical loophole" here is that there is no viable ethical alternative. Something can not be immoral if it is the best of a series of bad options, and if you want to exsist in the world and protect your privacy, the only real option is to create a persona.…

> The primary "ethical loophole" here is that there is no viable ethical alternative. Something can not be immoral if it is the best of a series of bad options, and if you want to exsist in the world and protect your privacy, the only real option is to create a persona. There are simple ethical alternatives, just not disclose that information, or just avoid that questions. Lying in this case is clearly unacceptable.…

> There is a universal social contract not to lie.

The entire concept of “white lies” existing would indicate that it’s not nearly that universal.

Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery

#163

Post by ghaff »

buildsjets wrote: post #136
erstorreyk wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://stylometry.net/user?username=O__________O

stylometry.net is hot garbage. Zero of the candidates that it identifies as being related to buildsjets are my actual alternate accounts. The DBCooper one is interesting, it sounds like a username I might use, but it's still not me.

Stylometry is probably mostly useful if you have a small number of suspects with a decent-sized public corpus that you want to match against a book/set of blog posts etc. Even then it's just going to be statistical.

Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery

#164

Post by didgetmaster »

chaboud wrote: post #19

Ah yes... I'm Skimmington Harborough, Esq., I come from a family that made its fortune in philanthropy generations ago. This seems like a pretty straightforward mechanism for covert operatives, to generate a believable (and memorizable) cover that pulls attention away and maintains coherence. That said, as someone who prizes ethical behavior, it's not possible to practice this and remain wholly honest without some so…

Am I being unethical when I tell the medicare supplemental insurance salesman from India that I am only 22 years old (while hoping to be taken off their list of potential customers) when he asks me my age?

Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery

#165

Post by sircastor »

In one of his novels Cory Doctorow talks about his bad guys doing astroturfing with persona management software to help them track who said what to whom.

As the advertising and tracking arms race escalates, I wonder if there’s a burgeoning industry for personal persona management. So you can isolate your private life from your public life/lives.

Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery

#166

Post by mynameisvlad »

deegles wrote: post #124
zajio1am wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The primary "ethical loophole" here is that there is no viable ethical alternative. Something can not be immoral if it is the best of a series of bad options, and if you want to exsist in the world and protect your privacy, the only real option is to create a persona. There are simple ethical alternatives, just not disclose that information, or just avoid that questions. Lying in this case is clearly unacceptable.…

I don't agree that your RL identity is a "minor" thing. It's right up among the most important things.

That entirely depends on who you’re interacting with and the context of that interaction.

Your best friend? I would hope you feel comfortable enough sharing your RL identity or deeper secrets.

A random company you interact with? Why would it matter, let alone be one of the most important things?

Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery

#167

Post by akerl_ »

prepend wrote: post #159
akerl_ wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something can not be immoral if it is the best of a series of bad options You’re presenting this as if it’s a fact, but it doesn’t seem like it is. If for no other reason that it relies on a shared understanding of what’s “best” and what makes options “bad”. You could justify some pretty horrible decisions if you’re holding that as an axiom.

Of course you can. But you can justify horrible decisions with any axiom. It’s not like this is a worse approach than others. Is there some rule set you’re aware of that if you follow, horrible decisions cannot be justified?

I tend to just not invent "rules" out of thin air.

In absence of this supposed "rule", where "Something can not be immoral if it is the best of a series of bad options", you'd need to actually consider whether a decision is immoral. The rule shortcuts that and lets you say "well, there's no other option, so I must be in the clear morally here", which would be laughable if it wasn't so dangerous.

Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery

#168

Post by RealityVoid »

spitfire wrote: post #143
3pt14159 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was an NOC Agent for Canada then I got married. There's so much data out there, nothing is easy with creating a false persona. Your eyes, walk, fingerprints, etc. It's possible in the short run, but you're leaking a lot of data doing it. My MO when I really didn't want to end up Googleable was to just give my real first name and leave it at that even if people pressed. Edit: The reason is simple. If someone gives a…

What is a NOC agent? National occupation classification? Network operations centre?

I believe that is Non Official Cover Agent. Basically, a intelligence agent that, well, they do a lot of stuff, but from my understanding, not having worked in the system, they mostly handle informants and turn sources and handle intelligence gathering. A spy. It's non-official cover in the sense that they don't come as a diplomat attache or anything of the sorts but go there and present themselves as a private individual. Some countries, not sure of the case of Canada, you can't share your real job with your friends or family but have a cover story instead. They mostly present their real name as well, since it's hard to produce fake personas, hence... his original post.

Much less glamourous than James Bond, but I believe it's an.. interesting job.

Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery

#169

Post by jfengel »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #121
chaboud wrote: post #19

Ah yes... I'm Skimmington Harborough, Esq., I come from a family that made its fortune in philanthropy generations ago. This seems like a pretty straightforward mechanism for covert operatives, to generate a believable (and memorizable) cover that pulls attention away and maintains coherence. That said, as someone who prizes ethical behavior, it's not possible to practice this and remain wholly honest without some so…

Is lying in-of-itself unethical? I'd be curious to probe a framework that thinks it is, while not holding that axiomatically. As someone who leans heavily into consequentialism, I can think of plenty of times lying can lead to a net positive for everyone. Likewise, there are harmful truths that should be suppressed. That suggests to me that lying is, in-of-itself, amoral. The effect of the lie (or the intent, if you…

In deontology, lying-is-bad is practically the canonical example of a basic rule. Kant especially is famous for that -- leading directly to extensive arguments about whether "lying to the murderer at the door" is ethical.

It goes deeper than you might expect. There are good reasons to think that it might indeed be unethical to lie, even when the consequences are bad. I don't necessarily agree with the premises involved, but it's worth researching rather than dismissing out of hand. Especially since consequentialism has problems of its own, and it's a way to get an alternative take on the criticisms of consequentialism.

Personally, I'd like to see deontologists accept that lying isn't such a great example, and instead take up a different one. There can be good deontological approaches that accept that consequences can be part of rules.

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