Is Privacy Holding Back Humanity?

[benitez17]

Also, hording information is another step away from my utopian vision of a free information society, it's just another barrier between us and realising our potential as a species.

I don't believe many people (besides Google) have the same view of utopia as you (how is a person withholding their credit card information or banking data harming you?), but that's a different topic.

[JJMcClure]

I don't believe many people (besides Google) have the same view of utopia as you (how is a person withholding their credit card information or banking data harming you?), but that's a different topic.

It's a topic I don't mind discussing and since I started the thread I guess it's ok for me to run with it (I wouldn't mind if anyone else had though, I like organic threads that go wherever the discussion takes them). I have no idea how many people share my view and I don't think you do either although I guess it's fair to say it's not a majority view, but then most people don't question the way we live and rarely look beyond the humdrum matters of human society, it's everything to them.

People withholding their credit card data from me doesn't affect me one way or the other. The fact that we live in a society that has an economy that in turn requires privacy and hording of information for competitive adantage does affect me greatly in almost every aspect of my life. We consider ourselves advanced but we're still quite a primitive species at the mercy of our evolved behaviours, competing with each other for economic gain because greed used to have a survival benefit, disagreeing over various spiritual belief systems in our anthropocentric view of the universe, completely oblivious to our fragile reality and hampered in our long term survival prospects because of it all. Imagine where we could be if we focussed our energy on less insular and trivial issues like who has my email address or which company owns which politican and which war needs to happen to maintain that. Privacy is just another symptom of the general problem.

I don't want to have to protect my credit card information, I want to not need it in the first place.

[benitez17]

It's a topic I don't mind discussing and since I started the thread I guess it's ok for me to run with it (I wouldn't mind if anyone else had though, I like organic threads that go wherever the discussion takes them). I have no idea how many people share my view and I don't think you do either although I guess it's fair to say it's not a majority view, but then most people don't question the way we live and rarely look beyond the humdrum matters of human society, it's everything to them.

People withholding their credit card data from me doesn't affect me one way or the other. The fact that we live in a society that has an economy that in turn requires privacy and hording of information for competitive adantage does affect me greatly in almost every aspect of my life. We consider ourselves advanced but we're still quite a primitive species at the mercy of our evolved behaviours, competing with each other for economic gain because greed used to have a survival benefit, disagreeing over various spiritual belief systems in our anthropocentric view of the universe, completely oblivious to our fragile reality and hampered in our long term survival prospects because of it all. Imagine where we could be if we focussed our energy on less insular and trivial issues like who has my email address or which company owns which politican and which war needs to happen to maintain that. Privacy is just another symptom of the general problem.

I don't want to have to protect my credit card information, I want to not need it in the first place.

Until all humans are altruistic, or at least have no malicious intent at any time, individuals will have to protect themselves at some level (which is what privacy is really about).

How do you intend to remove all possibility for individual harm from society?

[JJMcClure]

How do you intend to remove all possibility for individual harm from society?

By removing the need. Humans don't need to be altruistic for us to stop fighting over everything, they just need to have everything provided for them. At the moment we scrabble around on the surface of our planet spending bazillions on wars over mythical beliefs or who owns the energy supplies the use of which poisons the very air that we breath and many other totally useless efforts (like marketing) intended only to make a small minority even richer and more powerful.

Because I have a requirement to feed, clothe and house myself and my family I go along with it all but what we should to do is pool our incredible collective potential and work out a way to provide enough room and resources for the entire human race to never have to lift a finger to provide for themselves. There'd be no need for privacy or the collection of wealth, it wouldn't mean anything. Power would be a moot point, you basically wouldn't have any unless people vountarily submitted themselves to you which they could if they wanted to. If we conquered the technical obstacles we could move out into the galaxy where there are literally infinite resources for the taking. We've made adaptations to survive and evolve for this long, we can make them again.

[benitez17]

By removing the need. Humans don't need to be altruistic for us to stop fighting over everything, they just need to have everything provided for them. At the moment we scrabble around on the surface of our planet spending bazillions on wars over mythical beliefs or who owns the energy supplies the use of which poisons the very air that we breath and many other totally useless efforts (like marketing) intended only to make a small minority even richer and more powerful.

Because I have a requirement to feed, clothe and house myself and my family I go along with it all but what we should to do is pool our incredible collective potential and work out a way to provide enough room and resources for the entire human race to never have to lift a finger to provide for themselves. There'd be no need for privacy or the collection of wealth, it wouldn't mean anything. Power would be a moot point, you basically wouldn't have any unless people vountarily submitted themselves to you which they could if they wanted to. If we conquered the technical obstacles we could move out into the galaxy where there are literally infinite resources for the taking. We've made adaptations to survive and evolve for this long, we can make them again.

What evidence do you have that human demand is finite, and that greed, envy, and anger are solely created by unmet physical needs or desires?

Also, there are some things that just can't be provided to everyone.

[Kay]

The utopia sounds great - in theory. But we all have different needs and wants. I wear old clothes, rarely wear proper shoes, and don't wear jewellery. Yet I spend a small fortune on food and drink. I don't have children (expensive!). How can you fairly distribute the resources so I get my "fair" share of gourmet treats? Maybe someone with 10 kids would want (demand?) them too. I suppose it could be done via a system of tokens - everyone gets so much to spend as they wish. How could that work? Money, perhaps?

Also, by removing the need to "earn" a living, you'd get a lot of hangers-on who would contribute nothing. Life's takers. I think that you have to earn/make your own tokens to spend as you wish by providing something that people want and which they'll reward you for.

[Clinton]

but what we should to do is pool our incredible collective potential and work out a way to provide enough room and resources for the entire human race to never have to lift a finger to provide for themselves.

Let me know when that happens and I'll sign up.

If we conquered the technical obstacles we could move out into the galaxy where there are literally infinite resources for the taking.

When moving out into the galaxy becomes a reality I can see the blog posts
"Top 10 Ways to Find Yourself a Planet with the Most Resources"
and the ebooks
"Planetary Real Estate - The New Gold Rush"

[tke71709]

Utopian ideas are great so long as no one actually tries to implement them

[benitez17]

Utopian ideas are great so long as no one actually tries to implement them

The problem is that everyone's version of utopia is different.

[JJMcClure]

Actually the problem is that everyone is looking at this in terms of how we live now, on this one you have to think out of the box. We shouldn't be focussing on privacy either, it's just one of many symptoms of the greater problem. On the other thread it was relevant, on this one it's been singled out and creates a false paradigm. Privacy is not single handedly holding our species back, like I said, it's 'just another barrier', a behavioural adaptation that makes sense the way we live now because hording information gives a competitive edge but one that is helping to lessen our long term survival likelihood. (And part of the problem is right there, we live such short mayfly life spans that we struggle to imagine anything beyond our own life)

There are two main contributing factors to the way we live, behavioural adaptations like intelligence that helped us evolve to a point where we're currently a successful species, and resource availability. Greed, as an example, promoted survival because if you surrounded yourself with material goods you were more likely to survive and pass on that gene for wanting more. It helped us get this far but like many other adaptations it's now holding us back. To imagine a world without everyone striving to have as much as they can, you have to remove the need for them to do it and to do that you have to find a way to provide for everyone without anyone having to lift a finger themselves.

The answer is pretty simple, Artificial Intelligence and the exploitation of off world resources. AI gives us the starting point to develop mechanisms that will do all the work that we currently do and the resources for every human alive to live in comfort are there for the taking just in our own solar system, let alone the rest of the galaxy. Both technologies are in their infancy but instead of spending every effort to develop them and free ourselves from our tiny venerable ball of rock we just waste money and effort fighting each other so that a small minority can remain in power.

Perhaps we'll always keep our economic imperatives, maybe we need them and it's too late to evolve new behaviours. Perhaps we'll free ourselves from them and spend our lives in the pursuit of leisure without the need to worry about paying the bills or where the next meal is coming from. I don't know if the future I hope for can ever realy happen, but I do know that the way we're living now has serious implications for our survival as a species, and they're not good.

The problem is that everyone's version of utopia is different.

What you’re not seeing is that in the future I’d like to see for our species you can have whatever version of Utopia you like as long as everyone involved is a consenting adult…. I wish there were another word for what I’m trying to describe, ‘utopia’ is a word that fills people’s heads with preconceptions.