Nick, My point is that there are things we do not want to be public that are not illegal nor shameful. An example of such a thing is a behavior or statement that seems to contradict one's relationship with another human. It's perfectly reasonable, but that other human can and frequently does feel emotional pain if they find out about it. Another example was brought up in the thread of how humans manipulate their social environment to prevent social pressure or improve their social situation.
BTW, I find it interesting if not ironic that the very systems that allow for ubiquitous surveillance are the same systems that allow for indiscriminate self-exposure - computers. Here's a prediction - someday there will be an app that will turn off surveillance cameras as one passes by them. That may be a black-market app - but it will exist. It's harder but not impossible to do the same for UAVs/RPAs/regular aircraft. The hardest type of surveillance to turn off is satellite - but it's also the easiest to predict. Ray Parks Consilient Heuristician/IDART Program Manager V: 505-844-4024 M: 505-238-9359 P: 505-951-6084 NIPR: rcpa...@sandia.gov<mailto:rcpa...@sandia.gov> SIPR: rcpar...@sandia.doe.sgov.gov<mailto:rcpar...@sandia.doe.sgov.gov> (send NIPR reminder) JWICS: dopa...@doe.ic.gov<mailto:dopa...@doe.ic.gov> (send NIPR reminder) On Jan 17, 2013, at 12:12 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: Sorry. I wasn’t asking whether we lie or not. Or even whether it eases some social situations. I was asking for a theory of why lying greases social situations. Why is the NET effect of small lies positive? I can think of some reasons. Like chimpanzees, we live in a fision-fusion situation. The size of the lie that one can “honestly” tell probably depends in many cases on the frequency with which one sees the person one is lying to. And then there is the distinction between speech as stroking and speech as conveying of information. I get that wrong, a lot. I am having a hard time thinking how this is related to my original question about whether there should be a law against using public data to track individual behavior. I know that I opened up the subthread about shame and guilt, so I stipulate that it is my fault that we are talking about it. And I actually think it is related. I just can’t state the relation. I am thinking we might be moving toward a belief that truth is like arousal … life goes best when one has a moderate level of it. There was a wonderful study done some years ago about he relation between truth and the best marriages. Married folk were asked to play The Dating Game together …. i.e., guess what spouses answers to personal questions would be, preferences, what have you. Three categories of respondents were identified: spouse pairs that had an unrealistical enhanced view of one another, spouse pairs that had an unrealistically jaundiced view of one another, and spouse pairs that had a realistic view of one another. As you might expect, the first group maintained the most enduring marriages. But this just brings me back to the need for a theory of why a society is better is there is just a bit less truth in it. A pragmatic notion, but not, I fear, a Pragmatic one. Nick
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