umilegenio

I agree with your first comment, but disagree on the second one. It is weird to say that the robot wanted to eliminate a threat, most likely it was simply not programmed to avoid obstacles given the environemnt it was in. He ascribes an intention that was not there. To be fair, it is a quote from a book and not the words chosen directly by the author, but he could have clarified.

The second one seems fair: he is describing the result of what the Tesla Autopilot is doing. I do not think that he means to say that the Autopilot is understanding that there is a red light but then it makes a consciuous decision to itgnore it. He is just saying that the robot is malfunctioning, as it should be clear from context:

  "Today’s AI-related robot deaths are no different from the robot accidents of the past. Those industrial robots malfunctioned, and human operators trying to assist were killed in unexpected ways. [..] Malfunctioning Teslas on Autopilot have deviated from their advertised capabilities by misreading road markings, suddenly veering into other cars or trees, crashing into well-marked service vehicles, or ignoring red lights, stop signs, and crosswalks".

I do not think there is a more neutral way of describing the events.

That's true, but it does not automatically make them popular on the platform

I am the original author. I don't disagree with anything you said here, but it does not seem it contradicts what I am trying to say. Probably my article was a bit unclear on this point.

The connection between freedom of speech and privacy was just an example of how privacy affect other rights, too. I used it because I did not want to be too abstract. I used just one example, because I did not want to write too much on this. I wanted to write something that could be shared and read by a few people, rather than just hardcore privacy enthusiast.

Actually I really like your observations. Frankly this is another way (maybe a better one) to say what I was thinking:

>Privacy is about denying other people the information that they may use to obtain power over you in some way.

I might have been unclear on this aspect. My point was that privacy can affect other rights in complex ways, including, as a way of example, freedom of speech.

In the example I was talking about in the article, I was trying to say that nowadays people have different norms and opinions on what is fair. That is great, however this means that without privacy I can hurt you simply by sharing something about you with a a certain community. For instance, I can take something you said in private, or one fact about you (i.e., you are a member of party X, or have a certain sexuality, or belong to a certain religion) and share with a community that will misinterpret or attack you for that.

In the past we allowed the press to violate privacy of important people for something nefarious (i.e., they hunt people for sport). Now everybody has the power to violate privacy of anybody for any reason they see fit.

So, now maybe we should forbid everyone to violate the privacy of anyone, otherwise we will lose freedom of speech, because will be afraid to say anything for fear of being taken out of context. Maybe we should all agree that if you disagree with somebody you cannot call a mob to defend your opinion, but you should call them with your speech. That is not an obvious choice to make. As others have commented, what about actually powerful people? Just disagreeing with them will not change their opinion, because they are more powerful than you. So, I am not saying that is easy to understand what to do, but that privacy can actually change how we use other rights.

> I don't get the conception that the top problem our world have is people being judged about what they said.

It is not just what we say, they also judge who we are in their own terms.

> It's the news cycle, the constant barrage of irrelevant information. The murder of effective discussion and thought.

I agree that it is a big problem. In some ways we are the most educated civilizations in the history of mankind and yet public discourse is the stupidest it has ever been. I think this happens also [1] because everything we said is taken out of context, therefore only the simplest ideas can travel among the public. Imagine that you are a politician that want to disagree with their own party, what do you think people will hear more probably: 1) they are a traitor 2) they fully support our cause, however they disagree with this particular course of action because X

Without spaces and community in which we can discuss freely and with trust, complex opinions are difficult to form and defend. Since most discussions are either moved online or are easily shareable online by even one party we need strong privacy norms to allow such discussions to happen.

[1] it is not the only reason, of course

Thanks for sharing them.

My argument is that without privacy we cannot build and defend other rights. Privacy allows to define private, social and public spaces with different rules. Without privacy your private stuff can be shared with the public. You could lose your jobs because you said something that your community does not approve. Privay in the modern world is like borders. Without borders we cannot really decide which laws to apply, because anybody could come in and go, so it would become impossible to enforce any kind of law.

It is not really a big part of the thesis, rather an observation.

What you say about private communities is also true. However, I was referring more to the fact that everybody seem to nonchalantly use violent words and dangerous statements to express their disagreement, i.e., people are not just wrong, they are evil bastards that must be removed from public life and the nation itself.

Well, as I said the article is my opinion. So, let's agree to disagree.

In my experience real anarchy, in the way you describe, has never been achieved. So, when I hear that it reminds me when people say that real comunism is great, it is just that the URSS was bad, fake communism (it happens here in Italy, not sure if that happens where you are). The only historical anarchy that I know is the one where there is no control. Maybe we can do a better version in the future, but for now that it is what happened.

To be fair, I am Italian, so maybe I am overreacting on the whole barbarians thing.

I am the original author. That are good points. I think that punishment would mostly comes through social interactions (i.e., we should chastise people) or technical means (i.e., you are banned from sharing content for X days), but also fines for the most egregious offenders. We fine people all the time.

> If I was flat out telling my family I didn't like race X and wished that religion Y could be outlawed, and then shared in the public realm that racists are terrible and that freedom of religion for all is paramount...shouldn't someone be able to call me out on it? And if not me, imagine a person of some power or influence: don't we want to know when someone's public political stance is different to how they really feel?

You can call out people in private for the bad stuff they share in private. However, you are right it is no so clear cut: we need to find balance. The issue is that making a special exception for powerful and influential people it is dangerous because it is not clear who are. In some way almost anybody has some authority: you might be a parent, the go-to guy for technical things in a community, the administrator of a forum or a open-source project, etc.

Remote working can be great for companies that are large and/or in the development/web service sector. In large companies most people already interact remotely (i.e., emails and calls). With all that this entails: clear communication, well documented processes, etc. So a good part of the work is already remote, in some sense. You only need to understand what part of the rest can be made remote.

Companies that work primarily with development/web service probably already work in good part with (remote) software. So working remotely is an easy step.

In short, I think that basically companies like Facebook are the one that have it easiest in being remote-first companies. And the ones that would get the most benefit from it. So, it is great that they adopted a remote-first approach, when they literally had no alternative.

However, we should remember that there are still lots of companies and people that will never thrive in a remote-first environment. And these might very well be the majority.

It's hard to reform when many Americans are in an abusive relationship with their own party. A Pew poll in 2017[1] showed that the majority of the most partisan supporters choose their own party because they hate the other one, rather than they like their own. You cannot make reform on destruction and hate. There is little positive energy to create really new proposals.

[1] https://www.people-press.org/2017/10/05/8-partisan-animosity...

I feel that these attacks on the rationality (and intelligence) of the average person are misguided. Rationality means evaluating the information provided to you. If you do not give importance to any qualitative information (e.g., taste), it makes sense to evaluate them on the quantitative information alone (i.e., lower fat) which is not relevant for many people.

I would go as far as to say that even in cases such as the gluten-free fad, people are somewhat justified. Producers started saying that their products were gluten-free to serve the customers that needed that information (i.e., celiacs). However, the average person did not know about celiac disease, so they reasonably thought that the information was for them. The logical conclusion was that gluten was bad. Now, that is wrong, but to be fair how are you supposed to know that? You are not a dietitian.

It's not a matter of rationality, but that is difficult to evaluate information if you do not understand the context in which is produced.

That seems great. I've read a comparison of different approaches to contact tracing. The one chosen by Singapore seems to be the best compromise between privacy and effectiveness: the data stays on your phone, but you can trace and warn people you have contacted.

in Italian - https://www.wired.it/internet/web/2020/03/24/coronavirus-app...

True, mine is a generalization. However Italian geography also lead to heavy concentration of people in limited areas. Lombardy, the worst hit region, has a population density of 420/km2. Look at this map of Italian geography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italy#/media/File:Italy_topogr...

I am not sure how much matters, but Italy has a high population density, higher than China: 201/km2. China has 145/km2, while United States has 36/km2. This mean that people are more widespread, so it should be easier to isolate parts of United States than it is to isolate parts of Italy, in case there are problematic areas. In short, New York might become a center of epidemic, but probably not the whole United States.

Basically this essay is about the issue that many internet services become monopolies and the negative effect of this phenomenon. The author argues that we have to create pro-market regulations and models of development (e.g., favors the creation of services that are open, like email, instead of one closed, like Whatsapp) that favors the creation of competition between different players.

Let's agree that is feasible, but unlikely.