All of vdayan's Comments + Replies

vdayan10

What kind of settings do you ask about? Is it just sort of a sliding scale with your first example at one end and your second example at the other, or are there dimensions to it?

4Gunnar_Zarncke
I will not bring up the topic until personal details are mentioned. Things that are likely not already known to a number of people. I may bring it up anyway if the conversation is longer and thus constitutes something of private detail itself. I will refer to the detail and ask for example: "Do you want me to keep this details private? You didn't say so and I have noticed that people have widely different expectations about that." "Normally, I would not share personal details but I would like to able to pass on things I learned from it. So may I share anonymized information from this conversion? For example: 'A person I once talked to recommended to do X.'" "Please also note that I would share anything you tell me with a significant other (of which I currently do not have any). If you don't want me to share something with them we would have to discuss this in more detail." I will make an extra effort on topics that are typically seen as confidential for example about relationships, conflicts, or other details you'd share with a professional advisor. In such a case I might say: "I will treat all we say from now on as confidential. No private details leave this room without talking to you beforehand." Another type of question might be: "Are you public by default or private by default?" Someone pointed out to me that according to Danah Boyd the younger generation seems to run on "Public by Default, Private through Effort".
vdayan10

Do you mean that the mechanisms and expectations will be more severe if it's framed as value/harm rather than etiquette? If so, I wasn't intending to reduce the potential seriousness with my phrasing.

3Dagon
I suspect that "severity of mechanism" will have the same range for the two framings. I think the complexity and utility of the ruleset will be different. Trying to work from human norms and politeness/guess-culture assumptions will lead to weird exceptions and hard-to-predict behaviors. Working from a consequentialist harm/benefit framework seems likely to navigate those nuances and exceptions.
vdayan10

Nevertheless, even if there are confidentiality-bearing cost reduction skills which aren't widely applicable outside of this use case, I think they would be useful to know.

Were you mostly referring to the TAP you outlined about having meta-conversations? If so, that's definitely a good start, but I wonder if there's anything else possible.

vdayan10

I've also been working on gaining skills that make me more reliable at keeping things private, and making it lower cost for myself to take on confidential information.

Although we may be able to introduce and encourage good privacy etiquette in smaller groups, I doubt society at large will embrace such etiquette for a long time, if ever. Thus, I am interested to hear more about such skills/techniques to make confidentiality-bearing less costly to myself.

3Dagon
It's worth exploring what dimensions you're worried about. You'll come up with different mechanisms and different expectations (for yourself and others) if you frame it as "etiquette" or "norms" than if you frame it as "value or harm from additional disclosure".
5Raemon
Yeah, the use case I have for this post is mostly for small-to-medium sized groups of people (who disproportionately read LessWrong or hang out with people who do). Agreed it's unlikely to help with society as a whole, or at companies/social-groups that aren't predisposed to reading blogposts like this.
vdayan10

A related concern is that you might be the recipient of information spread by a marytavy, instead of either you or the person transmitting the information to you being the marytavy. This can be tricky because receiving the information N-hand often has a different tone than it does firsthand.

This problem (receiving secrets N-hand) doesn't even need to involve a marytavy, just 1+ unauthorized information transmitters.