> ...Instead of block and battle, deflect and settle.
I love that appraoch!
Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery
221–230 of 329 posts
Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery
#222> If you defiantly refuse to say who you are, it can make people angry that you’re upsetting social reciprocity. Citation needed. This entire post/idea seems to be based on "you can't just make up an obviously anonymous avatar/username anymore (like BakedPotato138)" and I frankly don't see why not. It's been working fine for decades. The only people who are upset over this are authorities and corporations. And in tho…
I have lost many potential friends because I chose not to give my real name. It gives me some anxiety thinking about whom I've lost, but it's a normal thing to respect other people's boundaries, and my boundary is that I don't feel comfortable with giving my real name to people I haven't met in person. And I have ethical reservations to go as far as lying to make up a real name just to keep a friendship founded entirely on something I'm not comfortable with.
It almost makes it seem like it's wrong to keep the social boundaries I have and that I'm doing harm to myself by withholding new human relationships just because of my discomfort. But I know that if those people are generally going to carry those standards then I can't change them, and it's my choice to disagree.
Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery
#223I'm surprised to see commenters comparing use of made up personas to lying.
There're communities that create/change their personas to match how they perceive themselves, encourage their members to experiment with presented identities, and expect the society to respect and accept presented personas without questioning. I'm totally OK with that. How is this different from presenting oneself as an alter-ego though?
Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery
#224"Tell white lies to avoid awkward conversations" is perhaps not the revelation the author thought it might be.
Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery
#225Ah 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…
> 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.…
> hiring a contracter, ..., engaging in the political process, holding a job
These are all situations where the desire for anonymity is outweighed by the requirement for accountability.
You're aware that 'hiring a contractor' requires entering into a contract right? And so does being employed.
Entering into a contract without establishing your identity implies a desire not to be bound by the terms of that contract. Is that your intent?
As for 'engaging in the political process', I have never heard anyone argue that the problem with politics is that people are too honest and open. Do we need more anonymous political party donors?
Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
That phrasing has to do with how Kant thinks you come to discover moral truths: it’s an appeal to Kant’s idea of the categorical imperative which, for him, is the basis of all morals. So, essentially, the claim here is “since you cannot lie all the time and have a functioning society then, by my prior arguments about what morality is, you can never lie”
Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery
#227Art Vandelay, importer/exporter.
That's funny, we have the same name! I must be the next Art Vandelay in the phonebook, right under you...But i'm an architect! :-)
Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is "do the best you can possibly do" not (a) a rule and (b) not moral?
That's not a quote that appears anywhere prior to this in the thread, from what I can see. You seem to have made it up from scratch here. The rule given above is "Something can not be immoral if it is the best of a series of bad options". In the context of the thread, it's being used to justify creating a fake persona and providing false details about yourself as part of a strategy of maintaining anonymity. And alrea…
I don’t think you can argue that steal from friend is the best in that situation. If truly the options are steal from friend or starve to death right now, then perhaps but that’s not realistic.
I’m not sure what you think someone should do rather than make the best decision given all options.
There are many ways to absolve yourself of tricky moral quandaries. But I don’t think using a fake name on a web form is a mora quandary.
If we’re in a world where the only options are that one can’t lie about themself online or not participate then that’s a bad world.
I think it depends on the intent of the lie in that lying to get out of advertising seems ok, but lying to trick someone into a date seems bad.
Of course it’s hard to truly know, so people have to fall back do what they think is best and rely on the guidance of trusted friends.
This is how morality in general works, I think. And we just have societal morals that are widely accepted. I think advertising is immoral and unethical, but that’s not a belief commonly held by enough to make it into culture and laws.
Re: Want anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery
#229Ah 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…
Maybe I'm from a different era, but I still think that the best default position is that anything somebody has listed about themselves online may be a work of fiction that we shouldn't be expected to take at face value in most contexts. If encryption is not immoral, encrypting your personal information is also not immoral, even if you also want plausible deniability. Privacy is not unethical. If a persona and pseudonym is the best route to that, you aren't hurting anybody.
As a person who prizes the idea that what we say and do are more important than who we are, I disagree that honesty and ethics always align. If some dishonesty maximizes peoples' actual wellbeing, then that dishonestly is probably actually more ethical than the honesty that compromises and hurts people for no gain other than ideological purity.