I agree: knowledge should be free. But that doesn’t mean all information, especially private lives and deeply personal details, should be universally accessible.
People aren’t data packets. The idea that “everyone should know everything about everyone” assumes superhuman recall and universal comfort with exposure, neither of which exist. If we’re talking sci-fi (like the Borg), total transparency works for them because individuality and autonomy is erased. But that doesn’t work for people as we currently exist.
Here’s the key: privacy doesn’t hinder open information, it enables it. Encryption, VPNs, private browsing, these tools protect your ability to seek and share freely, without fear of surveillance or retaliation. Without privacy, power chills dissent. People stop asking questions.
So yes, free knowledge matters. But personal lives aren’t public records.
Privacy isn’t the enemy of openness.
It’s its best defense.
Edit: Reworked this to streamline my point. Some of the phrasing no longer matches the quotes you used in your response, the the general points remain the same.
But I’m not sure that vision logically extends to all information…
I see it more as a physical fact. Keeping a secret takes more effort than open communication. Information propagates like a fart.
assumes both a superhuman capacity for processing information
Well that would be google. You don’t need to carry the information around with you, you just need to know how to craft the right query.
and a uniform comfort with exposure,
It might just be the taboo of the hour too.
But that comes at the cost of individuality, autonomy, and the very idea of personal…
That’s a stretch
Anyway, here’s my key point. Protecting personal privacy doesn’t hinder the free flow of information, it enables it.
That’s a big stretch. Literally “inhibiting the flow increases the flow”. I mean I see your argument. But the constraining force here isn’t free information, it’s judgement and persecution.
So I agree, knowledge should be free.
Mine wasn’t an argument of moral imperative but physics. And fighting physics is exhausting.
I agree: knowledge should be free. But that doesn’t mean all information, especially private lives and deeply personal details, should be universally accessible.
People aren’t data packets. The idea that “everyone should know everything about everyone” assumes superhuman recall and universal comfort with exposure, neither of which exist. If we’re talking sci-fi (like the Borg), total transparency works for them because individuality and autonomy is erased. But that doesn’t work for people as we currently exist.
Here’s the key: privacy doesn’t hinder open information, it enables it. Encryption, VPNs, private browsing, these tools protect your ability to seek and share freely, without fear of surveillance or retaliation. Without privacy, power chills dissent. People stop asking questions.
So yes, free knowledge matters. But personal lives aren’t public records.
Privacy isn’t the enemy of openness.
It’s its best defense.
Edit: Reworked this to streamline my point. Some of the phrasing no longer matches the quotes you used in your response, the the general points remain the same.
I see it more as a physical fact. Keeping a secret takes more effort than open communication. Information propagates like a fart.
Well that would be google. You don’t need to carry the information around with you, you just need to know how to craft the right query.
It might just be the taboo of the hour too.
That’s a stretch
That’s a big stretch. Literally “inhibiting the flow increases the flow”. I mean I see your argument. But the constraining force here isn’t free information, it’s judgement and persecution.
Mine wasn’t an argument of moral imperative but physics. And fighting physics is exhausting.
Edit: I wrote a long rebuttal last night. Wasn’t sober. Woke up, read it, and thought: Ain’t nobody got time for that.
So instead, just the core point:
It’s not a stretch to say privacy protects both our legal rights and our willingness to access and share information.
It is a stretch to claim that not recording and uploading everything I do in private will cause a “state of deformity and disease.”
That’s not physics. That’s selling data collection as snake oil. It’s an attempt to justify a world view without examining it’s ramifications.