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Comment by colllectorof | Hacker News Reader

The wast majority of people out there have no mental capacity to imagine how data they post online and provide to various orgs could be and most likely eventually will be used against them. This is evidenced by the continuing proliferation of dumb comments along the lines of "I am boring", "I am doing nothing wrong", etc.

There is a tremendous cognitive bias in play here. The idea that because most people around you don't weaponize certain types of information means no one anywhere will ever weaponize that information, even if it is globally and indefinitely available.

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Agreed that a lot of people do things that are appealing now and not so wise later. But I think we'll get farther if we talk about this as a "short horizon" problem, rather than assailing their mental capacity.

It's all a variant of "candy today; diabetes in 20 years." Public health experts have probably thought the hardest about how to get people to take the long term into account. There must be something in their playbook that could benefit the anti-surveillance cause.

I would gladly just say "imagination" instead of "mental capacity to imagine", but that word has been ruined by making it sound like something only kids and painters have to exercise. Hard reality: modern world requires imagination to navigate.

For example, most people can imagine living with diabetes, but they have no idea what it would feel like if some entity started using their leaked data against them. It's a much more complex scenario with lots of possible outcomes and variables.

They don’t have the mental capacity? In what sense?

Capacity as relates to e.g. lung capacity - many people can grow their lung capacity and run or bike long distances, but many can't and don't.

So yeah, people can lack mental capacity without being stupid. They are nevertheless extremely uninteresting people who can't fathom, much like cattle, how they are being harvested.

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