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Lumifer comments on Open thread, Nov. 24 - Nov. 30, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: MrMind 24 November 2014 08:56AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 24 November 2014 11:46:40AM 1 point [-]

I am considering deleting all of my comments on Less Wrong (or, for comments I can't delete because they've been replied to, editing them to replace their text with a full stop and retracting them) and then deleting my account. Is there an easier way of doing that than by hand?

(In case you're wondering, that's because thanks to Randall Munroe the probability that any given person I know in meatspace will read my comments on Less Wrong just jumped up by orders of magnitude.)

Comment author: Lumifer 24 November 2014 05:45:03PM 2 points [-]

Keep in mind that you can delete posts from LW, but you can't delete things from internet archives.

Comment author: [deleted] 24 November 2014 06:28:31PM 0 points [-]

I'm mostly worried about people stumbling upon LW e.g. from the title text of that comic, starting browsing the site, reading my comments, and recognizing my username from elsewhere. Granted, someone motivated to doxx me enough to overcome trivial inconveniences could still do so, but I don't think that's likely to happen enough for me to worry about it.

Comment author: Nornagest 24 November 2014 11:52:57PM *  2 points [-]

At a guess, I'd say that the chances of there being:

  • someone you know
  • who read that particular XKCD
  • and was led to LW for the first time as a consequence of it
  • and continued to read enough of the site to stumble on your username
  • and was motivated to dox you for whatever reason

...is too low to motivate precipitous action. XKCD's pretty popular, but it's not so popular that I'd expect this to lead to a very big spike in long-term readership; at most you might want to remove your location tag (which I see you've already done) and maybe lurk for a while.

Comment author: [deleted] 25 November 2014 10:57:43AM 1 point [-]
  • You might be underestimating P(X read that particular XKCD | I know X), as I am a physicist, and know a fair number of engineers and computer scientists and a few mathematicians;
  • you might be underestimating P(X continued to read enough of the site to stumble on my username | X was led to LW for the first time) -- I've commented a lot, including on many of the posts linked to on the about page and the welcome threads;
  • it's not motivated doxxing (which I know is very very unlikely) that I'm worried about -- comments which I would mind someone I know in meatspace reading comprise a sizeable minority of all my comments (not just for the consequences to myself -- I'd dislike, as a terminal value, certain people to hear certain things I've said about certain topics, especially other people).
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