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A comment on The Fantasy of Opting Out. Parent comment

Re:The Fantasy of Opting Out by GCA10 on Thursday February 18, 2021 @01:02PM (#26183222)
Agreed that a lot of people do things that are appealing now and not so wise later. But I think we'll get farther if we talk about this as a "short horizon" problem, rather than assailing their mental capacity.

It's all a variant of "candy today; diabetes in 20 years." Public health experts have probably thought the hardest about how to get people to take the long term into account. There must be something in their playbook that could benefit the anti-surveillance cause.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Fantasy of Opting Out by colllectorof on Thursday February 18, 2021 @01:45PM (#26183809)
I would gladly just say "imagination" instead of "mental capacity to imagine", but that word has been ruined by making it sound like something only kids and painters have to exercise. Hard reality: modern world requires imagination to navigate.

For example, most people can imagine living with diabetes, but they have no idea what it would feel like if some entity started using their leaked data against them. It's a much more complex scenario with lots of possible outcomes and variables.

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