reply on: Privacy is a Social Good \ stacker news ~privacy

110 sats \ 5 replies \ @k00b 11 Apr \ on: Privacy is a Social Good privacy

Thus, too much information sharing is bound to cause bitterness and resentment which in turn causes unstable organizations because humans are very status-aware.

I wish this weren't true but it is. I remember, years ago, experiments with transparent compensation within tech companies. While it's ideal wrt people not feeling like information is being hidden, it breeds resentment. It's a lot like polyamory in that seems ultra-rational in one framing, but it's a mess in practice.

One of the features of "old money" people is that they're very good at identifying other "old money" people while simultaneously hiding their wealth from people that are not as rich as they are.

I watched Born Rich, a documentary by a J&J heir, not too long ago which provided a similar insight.

119 sats \ 3 replies \ @Bell_curve 11 Apr

I think salespeople are transparent about salary and bonuses

Maybe salespeople are weird lol

I think law firms are transparent about salaries: partners, associates, paralegals etc.

10 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 12 Apr

I think its because sales are a little more naturally zero sum.

Law firms have transparent pay? Maybe because everything is a billable hour?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @nym 12 Apr

Yea, a salary versus a commission can make so much difference in lifestyle.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 12 Apr

Partners in a law firm know everyone compensation

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 11 Apr

This also reminded me of Orlovesky's Inevitability of cypherpunk for a proper civilization which says similar things in the context of inter-civilization privacy:

The only way to technologically enable the second option is to put a foundational laws into the universe design which enables "hiding" of less powerful agents from more powerful - i.e. privacy.

It seems that the Universe we live in enables that – at least existence of such mathematical constructs as hash functions and discrete logarithm problem for elliptic curves suggests such an option.

Thus, any civilization striving for a long-term survival needs to develop privacy technologies and (as a consequence) censorship-resistance at the scale of inter-agent communications.

The above also gives a perfect explanation to the Fermi paradox: the evolved civilizations must hide behind cryptographic systems which makes them for the external observer to be indistinguishable from the rest of cosmic background.

In this context, and perhaps all contexts, privacy is security.