Comment by fuckyouriotshit | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fuckyouriotshit | Hacker News Reader

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fuckyouriotshit

> I'm not saying that its going to be easy but I doubt that its impossible.

So you're willing to concede that people being unable to make the choice to keep something about themselves private will make it harder for them to promote their own rights? Can you understand how a lack of the ability to have private conversations, relationships, etc. could cause serious problems for some people?

Because earlier in the thread you said: "I never heard any convincing argument about why privacy has value." but now you are seem to be implying that privacy actually does have value to some people, correct?

> That's why I'm advocating we spent the effort on solving the problem that arise when the information is public rather than trying to hide information.

That would be a reasonable statement if you weren't also earlier criticizing the concept of privacy and stating that it had no value. You can choose to reject the idea that people should have individual privacy and try to push for a world where people didn't feel that they had to keep secrets, but you'd need to fix all the systemic issues before you could ethically promote the sort of radical transparency that you're talking about.

Trying to claim that privacy doesn't matter because it'd "be better if everything was public" without first addressing these other issues is terribly callous and could only seek to increase the amount of trauma in the world.

>Can you understand how a lack of the ability to have private conversations, relationships, etc. could cause serious problems for some people?

Yes it could cause serious problem but not the privacy itself that the problem, its other people using it to harm other people is the problem.

My conversation being public by itself is not a problem, the problem is when people use it to harm me.

>but now you are seem to be implying that privacy actually does have value to some people, correct?

In any case its not the privacy itself that has value.

> Yes it could cause serious problem but not the privacy itself that the problem, its other people using it to harm other people is the problem.

So is it OK to advocate for the destruction of people's privacy in this situation or not?

If it is, then you're admitting that you just don't care about the harm that could occur (and trying to minimize the responsibility you'd have by hand-waving the issue as being "other people")

If it is not OK to destroy people's privacy in this situation, then your entire argument about how the coerced loss of privacy isn't a problem is contradictory.

>If it is, then you're admitting that you just don't care about the harm that could occur (and trying to minimize the responsibility you'd have by hand-waving the issue as being "other people")

No, to minimize harm is my eventual goal.

There are multiple way to achieve that.

You can try to by privacy or by fixing the actual issue.

I would much prefer the actual issue to be fixed.

When you fix the actual problem, the privacy become irrelevant.

>If it is not OK to destroy people's privacy in this situation, then your entire argument about how the coerced loss of privacy isn't a problem is contradictory

My argument is the loss of privacy by itself its not a problem.

So I gave you a real-world example of a situation where someone could be harmed by loss of privacy, and then asked if you thought it was OK to advocate the destruction of a person's privacy in that situation.

Your response was that you would "much prefer the actual issue to be fixed" and that "When you fix the actual problem, the privacy become irrelevant".

Which (presumably intentionally) sidesteps the question of whether you think it is reasonable to advocate for the destruction of someone's privacy when it is likely to cause them harm.

In your advocacy for the destruction of privacy in this thread, you haven't proposed anything which could minimize harm for people who rely on privacy; in fact you have taken great steps to even acknowledge that there are people who could be harmed by the destruction of their privacy.

At the same time, you're willing to acknowledge that you don't want to post comments here using anything other than a pseudonym because "the problem is right now I can't". So you are admitting that you'd prefer to keep some privacy around your identity.

This could be a reasonable position if you were willing to acknowledge that people (other than you) could be harmed by the loss of their privacy. You have refused to acknowledge this and so that argument is untenable.

Finally, you stated that your argument was that "the loss of privacy by itself is not a problem". You haven't provided any evidence nor explanation of why you believe this to be the case and have refused to acknowledge the value of privacy, despite multiple examples and the obvious hypocrisy of not "practicing what you preach" (though I'd be willing to accept this if you didn't claim that privacy has no value whatsoever)

I did give an example of a situation where someone could be harmed and you didn't bother to address it.

I think you're just being disingenuous and I don't see the point in engaging any further in this discussion.

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