Posted by
glen ropella on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Privacy-vs-Open-Public-Data-tp7581246p7581480.html
Steve Smith wrote at 01/18/2013 08:27 PM:
> My presence at the bar was public data and I didn't do anything in
> particular to keep it private. Fortunately neither of my parents were
> drinkers (except at home in small quantities) and only a couple of times
> did it seem like I was close to getting busted. It was a large enough
> town or small enough city that such a thing could happen... and a good
> lesson in the issues of public/private.
I've always found it a fun and interesting challenge when someone I know
expresses "too much" knowledge about me. In most polite contexts, this
doesn't seem to happen. Everyone is polite enough to let old people
tell the same story over and over again, or avoid correcting a friend
who remembers things wrong or embellishes for the purpose of the story.
I can remember vividly when I first grokked that quote by Emerson:
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by
little statesmen and philosophers and divines."
I was sitting at a crawfish boil at my uncle's house listening to two
men (it's always men who do this, I think) discuss in very great detail
what roads would take another guy to the beer store. This is in rural
Texas and it's debatable whether there were multiple (practical) paths.
They went on and on about the distance you had to go on any given road
and what landmarks you had to watch for. For me, somewhere at age 12-14
at the time, it was like listening to them talk about baseball or
football, which were the other useless subjects they talked for hours
about. Amazingly, the guy tasked to make the beer run tolerated all
this and showed no apprehension or anxiety whatsoever... perhaps because
it's a family full of cajuns? Had it been me, I would have abandoned
them and engaged in the search on my own within the first minute ... no
wonder they never liked me. >8^)
Anyway, my apathy toward that sort of thing changes if someone expresses
detailed, true[*], _personal_ knowledge about me, even if it's just one
on one conversation. In a friendly setting, it triggers a fugue-ish
introspection. In a hostile setting, it triggers a kind of super-search
to flesh out the knowledge graph around the factoid the bogey presented,
still introspective, but not reflective.
[*] Obviously, by "true", I mean their account matches my own memory.
If they're wrong, it triggers an entirely different set of behaviors.
--
glen
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