Live data from Hacker News

Why was this secret?

sivers.org

101–110 of 219 posts

Re: Why was this secret?

#101
Why was her diary secret? Well, because she wanted it so. And that should be enough.

When it comes to information that any given person regards as intimate about oneself, that should always be enough. It doesn't matter that someone else might peruse that information and say, "there is nothing special here." Why? Because it is not that person's judgment to make. There may be nothing special about my exact bank balance or net worth or state of my health or sex life or political or religious affiliations (or lack of affiliations) or any other information that I may consider private but that doesn't mean I want that information broadcast to the world only to invite identity thieves, malicious third-parties, political enemies, or anybody else who might bear a grudge or harbor an animus to have a field day with it. But they are just "facts", you might say. No, in the wrong hands, they are ammunition by which to hurt you if people want and, even if the facts themselves are innocent enough, people have a ready capacity as may suit their whims or prejudices or any other ulterior motives they may have to do you wrong and what may appear as innocent "facts" to one person can easily be transmuted into a vile weapon that can cost you your job, your important relationship, or any other of many things that might be the subject of someone's jealousy or other animus toward you (a lifetime of courtroom experience has certainly shown me how easy it is for a motivated adversary to take otherwise innocent facts and twist them into malicious aspersions if they really want to). What is more, even if nobody had any interest whatever in harming me through misuse of that information, it is part of my essential humanity that I can separate that which I regard as intimate (to me) from that which is made freely available for public consumption. There is a reason why the word "vulgar" developed negative connotations over the centuries: it originally meant nothing more than "belonging to the crowd." Well, crowds can trample on things you might regard as precious and it should be your choice and no one else's whether you want to open up important parts of your life for public consumption.

If I happen not to want to keep any part of my life secret, well, that is fine too. That is a choice every person can make for himself so long as he doesn't go about over-sanctimoniously proclaiming that others must do the same or harming others about him by revealing things that they consider intimate as he opens the book of his own life to the world.

It is the same in the business world. One can open-source his own works as a matter of commitment to the idea that all information ought to be free or for any other reason but that doesn't mean the law ought to abrogate protections for proprietary, trade secret information that most businesses need to keep confidential information as a matter of competitive advantage. If I am a broker who depends for his livelihood in serving a customer base that it took years to develop, I would be rightly upset if someone came in and simply handed all my customer information over to my competitors. So too would a development team that has invested huge amounts of money and time into a development effort that gives them a significant competitive advantage over others and whose business model turns on keeping that advantage to themselves exclusively. So too would most any company management if its confidential business plans for winning key markets suddenly got broadcast publicly over the web. Examples of this type can be multiplied endlessly and really are self-evident to anyone who has had much in the way of real-world business experience.

Again, any private business is free to make a contrary judgment and to open itself up at every level so that it maintains no private or secret information whatever. That is their choice. But, if I want to keep things secret in my business, no one should be able to force me to do otherwise or to try to shame me into believing that I am doing something wrong.

Laws and public policy cannot make these choices for us as individual actors but it is essential that they set up a structure to protect those who would seek to keep their confidential information private. How and to what degree that happens in practical execution can be a complex topic in our technological age but the abiding principle, to me, is very clear: privacy is valuable in any society and laws should be shaped accordingly.

So, why, then, is this secret? Because the person it most affects wants it that way and the rest of us should respect that person's wishes to keep it so.

Re: Why was this secret?

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? Are you going to stay awake 24/7 to stop those abusers when they get too close to their victims?

If the theoretical data is available on the theoretical abuser, the police could monitor it, or you could have a non-profit service which monitors the proximity and alerts authorities / sends a "get out of the house" message to you.

So, instead of living a life in relative safety, you get to spend the rest of your life on alert and in fear. I really don't see how you can argue that this would be an acceptable solution.

Re: Why was this secret?

#104
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reasons for privacy are always so contrived. "Dystopian futures", "enemies trying to ruin lives" etc. etc. It never resonates with me. That's because you're an average Joe. And even you, you use a pseudonymous account name here on HN. Now think of all the lives of change-makers, dissidents, activists etc that were fucked up with the use of such private information (from their sexual preferences to who they meet…

> That's because you're an average Joe. And I think this article is written targeting the average Joe. Everyone is getting off on tangents about how the gov't is going to go fascist and that privacy is the best thing in the world. He isn't arguing that privacy is inherently bad, or you should never ever have secrets. Yeah, if your trying to overthrow an fascist regime, it makes sense to have secrets. But again, that'…

Well said, there may be legitimate reasons to keep secrets but secrets for their own sake are bullshit and make the world worse.

Re: Why was this secret?

#105
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? You think that, for instance, someone trying to leave an abusive partner doesn't have more reason to want their whereabouts unknown than someone with no psychotic acquaintances? Someone who turned state's witness against their drug dealer friends?

Let's flip that around. The key point would be "everyone's location ... No exceptions". Then you'd know if that abusive partner was approaching you (and call relevant authorities). The dealers would probably also be known without needing a witness. Of course, we'd also know who was sleeping with whom and when. It's an interesting thought experiment to imagine such a world but for it to be viable, society would have t…

In the case of witness protection: The witness does not know every member of the mafia, but the mafia knows the witness. There is inherently an asymmetry of power in such situations.

Re: Why was this secret?

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reasons for privacy are always so contrived. "Dystopian futures", "enemies trying to ruin lives" etc. etc. It never resonates with me. I think what the author is trying to say is that if you live an open life with few secrets, then your life will be less stressful. He's encouraging us to really reevaluate what we keep secret b/c when you sit down to think about it, it's most likely all in your head.

Yes, Dystopian future doesn't resonate with me either, but a Dystopian past would. I'm sure there's a scary example from history.

There are many, Eastern Germany is perhaps the worst example where 1 in 6 people were at least part time informants.

Re: Why was this secret?

#107
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reasons for privacy are always so contrived. "Dystopian futures", "enemies trying to ruin lives" etc. etc. It never resonates with me. That's because you're an average Joe. And even you, you use a pseudonymous account name here on HN. Now think of all the lives of change-makers, dissidents, activists etc that were fucked up with the use of such private information (from their sexual preferences to who they meet…

> That's because you're an average Joe. And I think this article is written targeting the average Joe. Everyone is getting off on tangents about how the gov't is going to go fascist and that privacy is the best thing in the world. He isn't arguing that privacy is inherently bad, or you should never ever have secrets. Yeah, if your trying to overthrow an fascist regime, it makes sense to have secrets. But again, that'…

>He isn't arguing that privacy is inherently bad, or you should never ever have secrets. Yeah, if your trying to overthrow an fascist regime, it makes sense to have secrets. But again, that's a contrived reason. If you're MLK, that's not really the norm.

That's a contrived reason too.

For one, it SHOULD be the norm. "Be the change you want to see in the world" and everything. It's not just something to pay lip service to.

Second, it doesn't matter if it "only" affects only 1 in 100,000, because what those 1 in 100,000 do affects millions of lives themselves. Heck, MLK was 1 in 250,000,000 and he affected the whole of the US.

>The point Mr.Sivers making is - generally people have more secrets than they really need and in the process they're making their lives more stressful. He's suggesting trying to re-evulate your need for privacy (I'm repeating myself).

Given the widespread violations of privacy, such an attitude is harmful even on the personal level. It can be seen as essentially a "giving up" to pressure from the goverment/spying corporations like Google.

But it gets worse, because it's also quite trivial, and the example he gives is bad. His friend might not mind showing him her "private notebook", because he is just a friend (probably not even a close one at that, since all of the stuff she wrote, he said it was irrelevant to him).

How about showing that same notebook to her husband, her children, her parents, her boss, close friends, some person she writes negatively about etc? Despite her giving lip service to openess, there's a reason she reffered to it as "ultra secret".

There are lots of secrets people want to have. And not just some MLK types: hundrends of millions of people.

How about trying to smoke a joint in the privacy of your own home?

According to some stats, tens of millions have done it, including in states that it's illegal. Should they all go to jail?

Or have an affair without your partner knowing?

Or what if sometime you visited a prostitute?

Or tell your friend that your boss is a jerk?

Or watch porn? Perhaps even kinky Japanese tentacle stuff.

Or write a comment against GOP / Obama in an internet forum.

Or discover you're gay at puberty and not announce your friends/parents until you decide the time is right?

Are you allowed to all these "secrets" (and tons more)? Why the fuck should anybody else, and especially the government, have this information on you?

Only a puritan society, that thinks all such stuff as "immoral" would see as OK to not be able to have secrects on such matters ("cheating on your partner? That's bad, and they should now it").

As for, "how the gov't is going to go fascist" -- who said it isn't already in certain aspects? Fascism is not a "take it all or leave it affair", you can pick and choose from it's practices. A basic characteristic of fascism was spying on their own citizens. And there are lots of others (e.g the ratio of incarceration and the militarization of police force is unprecedented in a regular Western democracy like France, Britain and co).

Re: Why was this secret?

#108
post #9

In the context of coding projects, the author's conclusion seems realistic. Given current events though, I can't help but wonder if there's a subtext about privacy and snooping. If so, then I would venture this observation: Your friend's super-secret diary is meaningless to you only because you have no desire to abuse the access you've been given. Suppose instead your friend's devious enemy obtained the diary. Then,…

The reasons for privacy are always so contrived. "Dystopian futures", "enemies trying to ruin lives" etc. etc. It never resonates with me. I think what the author is trying to say is that if you live an open life with few secrets, then your life will be less stressful. He's encouraging us to really reevaluate what we keep secret b/c when you sit down to think about it, it's most likely all in your head.

Yes open transparent society, this the future I'm looking forward to. I would no need to hide my credit card number, bank account, sexual quirk, etc, If anybody trying to abuse that, they will be easily tracked.

Re: Why was this secret?

#109
About half of my friends post every move they make throughout the day, photo-illustrated, to Facebook. They also have numerous short conversations with their friends, that are clearly just between the two of them and would normally be of no interest to anybody else. It's the equivalent of having private conversations out loud in front of everyone each of them have ever met in their lives.

I do not understand any of this behavior. I'm said to be a 'private person.' But it's clear to me that the zeitgeist is definitely not on my side here. I also wonder what all of this will be like in 20 years, given that Facebook has only been in widespread use for an utterly paltry 5 years.

Re: Why was this secret?

#110

Why was her diary secret? Well, because she wanted it so. And that should be enough. When it comes to information that any given person regards as intimate about oneself, that should always be enough. It doesn't matter that someone else might peruse that information and say, "there is nothing special here." Why? Because it is not that person's judgment to make. There may be nothing special about my exact bank balance…

If a competitor came in and took your customer list, would it be good for your customers?
Post reply on HN