Hacker News Reader

Doesn't matter what position I'm speaking from. Can you argue against my points? Of course, poor and desperate people will take whatever benefits are given them despite how damaging they will be in the long term. Your chemo analogy doesn't hold water here because chemo actually is better in the long term - you don't have to keep doing it once your cancer is cured. This is more akin to acquiring cancer on purpose to cure a cold.

View on HN

I'm arguing from pragmatism, not moral idealism.

If your theory of privacy doesn't account for how poor desperate people will happily trade privacy for survival and provide a better option, privacy will simply lose, over and over again. If the best you can do is "this is wrong, giving up privacy is like cancer", privacy is just doomed. Privacy is already losing everywhere. You'll have to come up with a technical solution that actually meets people's felt needs.

I don't think we're arguing about the same thing. I never said (and neither did the article) that we shouldn't use systems like these. What I am criticising is the Indian govt. selling off the data and not taking privacy into account.

BTW, this is not just an idealistic point we're arguing for. This is long-term pragmatism. Majority of the people will always go for short-term gains, this is well known.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com