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Comment by everdev | Hacker News Reader

Yes, that's the surface response, but what's deeper than that?

Ultimately I think it's a rational fear of being ostracized (or worse) for having believed or done something deemed by the group to be "not OK". The right to privacy shoes us to explore the nature of ourselves without harming others and without putting us in danger of violating social norms.

The counter argument might be that with more visibility and openness, the more tolerant we all might be if each others faults, but unfortunately history does not seem to demonstrate this.

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> surface response

No, not really, it actually goes a quite deep. In a liberal democracy, it is not the citizens who need to justify their desire for privacy, it is the state that needs to justify impinging on it. This is very important, because the state always has Very Good Reasons™ for impinging on your privacy (and other rights).

Agreed, but saying "because I said so" doesn't really communicate your concerns. "I shouldn't have to because..." tends to help promote mutual understanding.

I know...but “because” communicates the need for justification...

Information wants to be free, its make more sense to promote openness and transparency. LGBT is gaining acceptance, one of the reason is I believe its because its more visible.

There are plenty of counterexamples. If I have an illness no amount of "openness" from others is going to solve the problem that someone might not want to hire me because of it.

There should still be some way for individuals to have the possibility to experience different facets of themselves. To give a stereotypical example, a middle-aged software programmer might want to experiment with psychedelic substances once in a while without the hassle of having to explain it to people in more mainstream spheres of his life. If every encounter has to be accounted for and recorded, this introduces significant mental strain and ends up impoverishing our lives.

So the issue is, in this context, to be able to experiment with psychedelic substances without hassle. Why do I have to explain it to people in the first place? Maybe because lack of information of knowledge about psychedelic substances ? More transparency and openness can help.

Another example, Why I do I feel the need to close the bathroom door when I take a dump ? Because it considered taboo or weird. But if more and more people take a dump with the door open, it will be less weird.

Its a hassle too to have to keep things private.

I mean it more in the sense of different social worlds. For instance you might relate differently to your relatives than with your friends. You might act in a certain way with some friends and not with other circles without it being duplicitous, but rather different facets of your identity that could not find an adequate expression if every aspect of your life was socially interlinked with every other.

Even if norms change to be far more permissive, there will still be issues with this. Besides, norms are never that permissive in absolute terms since some form of hierarchy quickly sets itself up in response to changing circumstances. For instance in some past contexts a young man might want to hide his promiscuity and adventurous experiences, whereas in some modern contexts he might want to hide his lack of promiscuity and adventurous (instagrammable?) experiences.

Norms always change and I will always have to adapt. In the near future, the advancement of technology make it harder and harder to keep information private. So I better be get used to worlds where every aspect of my life is socially interlinked with every other.

Heard. However, it should be up to the individual to decide how (and if) they want to broadcast their behavior.

To borrow your analogy - even if most people become comfortable with open-door-dumps, why should we force someone who isn't to do it?

Of course. One should always fight for their believe. If someone doesn't like the open-door-dumps then he/she should do whatever they can to prevent it. Likewise If I prefer open-door-dumps then I better work on to make it happen.

Yes, it would be way easier if everyone on Earth was kind and understanding. But vulnerability might not feel safe in an environment where we know there are real social and economic consequences for being vulnerable about certain things.

Until we stop judging each other, the right to privacy seems pretty important. That doesn't mean you always have to exercise it, but it should be your right.

There are different kinds of visibility. LGBT people are more publicly visible now because society is more accepting, and society has become more accepting largely as other people have come to know LGBT people in their individual lives. Being able to choose what they shared, with whom, when, where, and how has been an important part of that.

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