Seer of the tapes! Knower of the episodes!

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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • Pretty fucking good, actually. Which alarms me.

    You see I’ve observed that my life seems to get better when the rest of society gets worse, and vice versa. Not because of anything I do, it’s just how my luck works. When the economy tanks, I’m financially secure; when the economy is running hot, I’m broke. My wellbeing seems inversely correlated to the wellbeing of society at large.

    And I’m doing great. Better than ever, actually. Hence my alarm: according to the inverse wellbeing law, shit’s about to get real.

















  • “Privacy” in the modern sense is less about protecting you from personal embarrassment or financial loss, and more about protecting society from the dangers of mass data collection.

    Historical examples of mass datasets that were misused:

    • The Nazis used demographic records (birth, death, marriage records, etc.) to identify Jews and other undesirables in conquered countries.
    • Japanese Americans were identified for internment in part through illegal use of census information.
    • The Rwanda genocide was facilitated by tribal information being printed on drivers licenses.

    In none of these examples were the data collected for the evil purposes it was eventually used for. In some cases, the evil purposes were completely forbidden by the rules governing the data, but they were used anyway.

    Information is a form of knowledge. Knowledge is power. And power in the wrong hands is dangerous.