[murftown]

TL;DR - I respectfully disagree.

> Privacy is unfair because it highlights characteristics that are difficult to conceal.

The idea that privacy highlights characteristics that are difficult to conceal is possibly truthful, but it's a bit far-fetched, at least when making a case against something (privacy) and alleging that is causes damage (unfairness due to highlighting characteristics...). If privacy is guilty of this crime, then everything is unfair for all sorts of reasons. Some people being tall is unfair because it highlights others' feelings of being short. Some people being more attractive than others is unfair because is causes other people to feel badly about themselves.

None of these "causations" would lead you to believe we should actively try to "equalize" people across all those spectrums, right? That would cause (much) more damage than good. Have you read the Handicapper General? Kurt Vonnegut illustrates this idea.

Therefore, your catchy causation is not a good reason to recommend active destruction of existent privacy.

> Rather than coming up with strategies to help people hide aspects of themselves, such as lying, we should help people to be more tolerant and understanding.

Wow, that's a pretty broad, meta-level prescription there. I have a couple reservations about it:

1. There's no reason to assume it's an either-or game.

Helping people have privacy ("helping people hide aspects of themselves") is not at odds with helping people be tolerant and understanding. In fact, wouldn't "wanting/maintaining privacy" be an example of such a characteristic that distinguishes people, that some people may feel it desirable to conceal due to people being intolerant or not understanding, and that therefore you just recommended people should be more tolerant/understanding of? Or does your proposed implementation of "helping people to be more tolerant and understanding" include an implied whitelist of only certain approved "characteristics" that should be protected this way, and "wanting/maintaining privacy" isn't on the list? I see possible issues with this approach too.

2. Regarding being more tolerant and understanding...

I think it's much easier to treat people this way if you feel more-or-less content in your own life. Otherwise it's easy to let bitterness and resentment steer you into intolerant / non-understanding narratives and mindsets; it's easy to make up stories that justify your bitter feelings about others, and these stories often hinge on assumptions we make against people based on stereotypes or generalizations.

Yet there's no evidence that taking away people's privacy helps them achieve this contentment in their lives. What are examples of places where people have no privacy in their lives? Prisons? North Korea? Where does our idea come from that "total transparency" is guaranteed (or even likely) to unfold in some perfectly equal way that brings fairness, tolerance and understanding?

The internet is already filled with angry people who are sincerely enraged by reading about one another's "unacceptable" differences and experiencing cognitive dissonance about how different other people are; it is too easy for people to enter one another's personal mind spaces, and it's causing intolerance and misunderstanding. So what is your idea - we just do more of it and people will become tolerant and understanding? I don't see any evidence that that's the case.

[miguelrochefort]

I was trying to convey my intuition in terms OP could relate to. I obviously didn't do a very good job.

I don't care about equality of outcome. Heck, I'm not even sure I care about equality of opportunity. All I care about is efficiency, and privacy is inefficient. This is the main reason I despise it.

It also seems obvious that privacy is unsustainable and likely to disappear in the future. Knowing this, we should prepare for it. I don't see many people talking about this.

[murftown]

> privacy is inefficient. This is the main reason I despise it.

Certainly not in all cases, maybe not even most? For example, it's efficient to have a private key to log in to your server rather than just leaving it open to get hacked. It's efficient to have a private email inbox so your bank login doesn't get stolen. It's efficient to have a computer you can audit and control the software running on, so that your computer and data don't get compromised. Etc.

Everyone would be screwed without privacy. Being screwed is inefficient. This is the main reason I despise it. For people to move from more secure to less secure systems and paradigms in the name of "total transparency", they would need some assurance that they wouldn't be screwed. And I don't know if making an assurance like that is mathematically possible.

> It also seems obvious that privacy is unsustainable and likely to disappear in the future. Knowing this, we should prepare for it. I don't see many people talking about this.

This may seem obvious to you but I don't see any evidence for it. For one thing, how can you (even approximately) "measure" how much privacy there is? Privacy is by definition what you AREN'T able to see or account for in your ("total transparency") system. So if for example SMSs, IMs, emails and phone calls all become "totally transparent" (i.e. not secure), then we still have no evidence that privacy is "likely to disappear", because, for example, anyone can still just write their ideas in a physical notebook, and we have no idea how much this happens.

[miguelrochefort]

There's nothing efficient about keeping secrets and encrypting stuff. Our reliance on private key cryptography is horrifying. Keeping secrets is unsustainable, and making one mistake can break the whole system. This is far too fragile, and guaranteed to be universally broken in the near future.

The problems you described are authentication problems. It seems obvious that total transparency is the best (and only?) solution to those problems.

There will always be things we don't know. I don't think we'll ever become omniscient. That's fine. What I want is for people to understand how important it is to share and seek knowledge and resources. Tell people how you feel, share your medical records, open source your code, let people use your car. We can't work together if we don't share.