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All of identity.key's Comments + Replies

I discovered LessWrong... during Good Heart Week
identity.key60

Rationalization is probably the one that was the most enlightening. I tend to sometimes (knowingly) think in that way, but didn't necessarily view it as a negative thing (and didn't know the term) before reading the tag description here. Confirmation Bias seems like it's related to (or could be a part of) rationalization as well. Another one that stood out was Akrasia.

These are the ones that stood out to me initially. Looking now at the Concepts page again, I feel like I should at some point check out all of the terms at least by hovering over them, becaus... (read more)

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LessWrong FAQ
identity.key40

It appears that there is a typo in the first sentence:

This is a new FAQ written LessWrong 2.0.

I would expect it to read something like "This is a new FAQ written for LessWrong 2.0." instead.

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Best informative videos on the Internet
Answer by identity.key50

I'll mention a few YouTube channels that have quite a large following, but maybe some people aren't aware of them:

  • Kurzgesagt has animated videos on a variety of real-world problems, theories, etc. 
  • Grant Sanderson's 3Blue1Brown describes math concepts and related topics with animations and visualizations from a perspective of how you could "re-derive" / "re-invent" them yourself.
  • Ben Eater explains fundamentals of electronics, computers, CPUs, and other related topics.

There are also many math channels mentioned in A Layman’s Guide to Recreational Mathem... (read more)

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How to openly maintain a single identity while keeping it private?
identity.key20

I agree that deniability from a technical perspective (such as absence of a direct link from the account on one platform to the account on the other platform and vice versa) doesn't necessarily make it much harder to identify that it's the same person. On the other hand, even if the username, profile picture, etc. are exactly the same, one needs to be careful about associating the accounts too quickly, especially in the case of some common/simple username—it could just be a coincidence.

It seems that things like behavior and writing style are more important... (read more)

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2TLW
I agree with you. Unfortunately, many of the actors in my threat model wouldn't. Style and behaviour[1] can leak a bunch of info, agreed. One approach that can mitigate this to an extent is to come up with a character that is a reasonable proxy for you on the subject, and have said pseudonym consistently attempt to emulate that character[2]. This is a good skill to have anyways[3]. 1. ^ This is one reason to be cautious of rich text editors on websites. Leaking keystrokes as you are composing a post leaks far more info than the final text[4]. Typing in an external application and pasting in once you are done is less terrible. 2. ^ (And, to be clear, don't emulate said character otherwise!) 3. ^ It is useful for writing dialogue, and it is useful for modelling others in general. 4. ^ ...though even just the final text leaks a lot of info.
How to openly maintain a single identity while keeping it private?
identity.key10

Who are you trying to confuse into keeping your identities separate?

This is a good question, I don't really have a specific threat model in mind. Obviously, I want "the bad guys" to know as little about me as possible, but I can't seem to easily define who they are and how I would identify someone as belonging to them before I had a chance to talk with that someone or at least observe their behavior for a while. Regarding the quiz idea in my question, them having similar interests (or knowing mine) doesn't guarantee that they aren't part of "the bad guys" either.

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