Transparentism

Has anyone heard of Transparentism? Some guys in an IRC I frequent were talking about it. The idea around it is that nobody should hide anything, and that everyone should relinquish their anonymity and secrets to make the world better. It sounds pretty stupid to me, but I'm kind of interested in it now,

Never heard of it, but I can assume that it doesn't really work well, and attempting to push it on people is a bad idea. Any person willingly believing transparentism will also be willing to give me a list of their emails, passwords, theri credit card numbers and other soykaf like that. The idea sounds like it's founded on a similar basis as the "Nothing to hide" argument in privacy/security. Plus, it trusts on all sides sharing their secrets and not being anonymous. Few people would actually do that, and those who do are exposing themselves to be exploited

anybody willing to have no secrets lives a very shallow existence indeed

The abstract idea is interesting, but we can't know what would happen to people if they know and share everything. It could potentially take away from peoples happiness and the idea of the mysterious or other facets of life. IN REALITY this would not work though, because there will always be a few rotten apples, who'll abuse it and who will not share their secrets.

this was the theme of the movie "the circle" which while not the greatest movie, is quick to demonstrate how bad the idea is. While superficially the idea sounds good, there are two points that nullify the effect of bettering the world: >unaccounted for bad actors >crowds of differing opinion while people would inherently know when something bad may occur because of someone else, the classic problem of groupthink is evident: who will stop that bad thing that everyone knows will happen. another thing that could happen is someones actions or behaviors could be vastly misinterpreted, leading to false accusations with bogus evidence. crowds of differing opinion may also act against someone who broadcast an aspect of his life that they find upsetting. in a utopian society, or a small commune (i would guess <25 individuals) the concept would be needed, as maximal transparency would enable the fastest conveyance of information without ambiguity. this also has implications on transhumanism if we ever get around to direct brain-to-brain data transfer. though such data would likely be exploited and datamined (see "bad actors") >>10348 bruh...

I think practicing this amongst close friends or whoever else you deem worthy enough is a good idea. Not to make the world better or anything, but to be closer and have trust in one another. No good in having a friend who hides secrets from you, it can be harmful later on if you found out so it's best to just be open with them. If you had tried to implement this in daily life, it would just be destructive. You'd have to place your trust in every stranger or any other entity that they won't use your information against you. Like another lainon said, it'd have to be in a utopian society where nobody does anything wrong and everyone is 100% honest at all times.

the problem with 'transparentism', aside from the trivial that it is not about transparency, is that if everyone is 'absolutely public', which i doubt is possible, but we might be able to to it to some extent, such as with behavior, everyone is vulnerable to subtle manipulation, it will also break down barriers, making it easy for anyone to manipulate anyone. if we define a person as his psyche, and the body of a person as that part of existence (a la existentialism) which he (their psyche) controls, we create a society in the aspect of sharing our bodies, including the human biology, which already happens to some extent (e.g. when we lend each other things, do favors for each other), is amplified. each person is so dependent on all other people that he'll go along with obviously pernicious activities which they decided lest they do bad things to him. This is effectively the argument for individualism, because the effect of this 'transparentism' is that there will be only one society in which everyone is dependent on that society. If that society crashes, all members of that society will also crash. And 'transparentism' will crash when enough stupid people believe a pernicious action is good that they can lever everyone else to follow suit. >everyone [would have to be] 100% honest at all times No, we would know everything about everyone, including whether they are abusing anyone. The problem is that it would be very difficult to track all information about everyone. >we can't know what would happen to people if they know and share everything Yes we can, I just did. >no good having a friend who hides secrets from you So if he helps you with things you ask him to help you with and you are able to check that he did it properly, but you don't know everything about them, is that not good?

>>10357 >everyone is vulnerable to subtle manipulation This one gets it. Nobody is a perfect cognitive machine, and personal behavior biases could be explored even from physiological data collected through phones.

It's all you ever dreamed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIscL-Bjsq4 Komm Susser Todd.. When all selves crumble under the weight of ages. When mankind at least reaches instrumentality. All will be one, in the primordial sea of souls. Relinquish your boundaries, for they are nothing more than illusions, painful painful illusions. It is all so accelerationist. In time, I suppose everyone will eventually become parts of one increasingly integrated whole. Even disregarding technology, entropy and time work together to ensure this end regardless.

It's literally impossible, did you guys even watch eva. That would require total omniciense in every person, and a destruction of the barriers between individual egos. Basically human instrumentality. To be an individual is to have secrets.

Who's got more pointers to infoz on consequences of transparentism (which i read as the same as absence of privacy)? >>10357 How is that single highly interlocked society different from what we have right now, sans the 'highly' part?

>>10346 sounds like something from 1984.

It moght be worth pointing out that George Orwell did a deep dive into totalitarianism leading up to his book 1984. He concluded that for totalitarian control to work the population needed intimate knowledge of each other plus the belief that anyone coiud be attacked for any reason at any time. This promoted a mentality of keeping your head down and not stepping out of line. Transparentism fulfills the first requirement of intimate knowledge. The second requirement of fear is fulfilled by existing power disparities. If you know everything there is to know about the local police officer and vice versa, you are more vulnerable to the officer than you were before transparentism existed. This is because the officer by nature has more power amd privileges than the average citizen. Being transparent just magnifies that.

>>10537 I would posit that brave new world is a better description of our specific dystopic state. Our populations increasingly amuse themselves to death, and have become so demanding for entertainment that all forms of information exchange must increasingly have entertainment value. This eventually results in the triviliazation of vital information exchanges and dialogues that must take place for human communication to be effective on a large scale. With this trivialization comes the stunting of intellectual growth and content in a society and eventually this leads to collapse of discourse, and all other communication vital to the societie's functioning. Egoist 1 Society 0 It is as you say however, in the meantime, the trivialization taking place will effect the most powerful actors last. Their overall content impact is large relative to their volume of output, in time that trend will reverse as they struggle to hold increasingly distracted audiences attention. This will erode their power base and ability to communicate within their exosting hierarchies. Consumerism, and capitalism is inherently unstable, it is designed to destroy itself and eventually replace itself with some other system whose exact nature has not yet been realized. This is all part of the asymptotic approach to complete individuation. In the ever increasing effort to unify, humans as they currently exist can only succeed in becoming more divided and calling attention to more and more ways we all differ. Unless our fundamental composition and frame of reference change, this trend will continue ad infinitum until extinction or transcendence takes place.

>>10537 We're in the early stages of dealing with this. We'll either learn to give more leniency to people and their secrets as we become a more and more technologically advanced society, or we'll go full 1984. That or maybe people will just start being super secretive in their online reactions, something I don't see the average normal person giving a soykaf about.

>>10537 >for totalitarian control to work Do you have any specific work in mind, Roy, where this reasoning is layed out?

Transparentism obviously is a good thing...but only if the most powerful people have to be transparent too. And that's why it will never happen.

>>10541 Well, Orwell's book 1984 was built on that idea, but for more of an overview, you can check out tgis New Yorker article on George Orwell and his research on writing within a totalitarian structure https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-george-orwell-predicted-the-challenge-of-writing-today

>>10542 There is still the imbalance of power. Knowing everything about the neighbor is pointless if the neoghbor happens to be a mayor or wealthy CEO. That neighbor would have more resources to marshall against anyone who engaged in resistance or opposition. Transparentism requires either complete acceptance of every possoble aspect of a person no matter how bizarre, or a tyrannical suppression into an enforced homogeneity. The latter is much easier to enact on a conceptual and moral level. Just think of the moral movements and panics we've had in recent years.

>>10540 I think a lot of people are going the other way, just accepting and not judging/ratting on each other. I would never snitch, and most people I know wouldn't either.

>>10550 >I think a lot of people are going the other way, just accepting and not judging/ratting on each other. On the surface maybe so, but in an increasingly online community, people cry to the rest of society or post antagonistic statements or otherwise report or "call out" individuals with a quite uncivil manner of hostility. playing directly into the field of Orwell, people only want their own version of commentary, and instead of understanding, they would suppress those with differing views. by this I mean that under the guise of transparentism, the argument becomes "all opinions are equal, but some are more equal than others"

I understand transparentism For one thing, privacy as we understand it was invented in the latter portion of human history: the last 3000~ years or so as we developed civilization and private dwellings, and even then private rooms were only developed about halfway through THAT history. Humans have an innate desire for privacy, but we prioritize it below most of our other needs the benefits of transparentism come in two main parts: preventing loss of energy due to lying, and promoting further growth and development of the human soul. Throughout human history, humans have lied for the sake of greed or vanity to the detriment of the rest of our species: life-saving new inventions and discoveries discredited by rival scientists, capitalists approving substandard buildings or suppressing new technologies in order to increase profits When it comes to protecting our inner minds from one another, what's really been allowed to happen is we feel entitled to be our worst selves inwardly and, as long as we never express our true selves outwardly, we feel fine about it I can see that taken to its utmost extreme this philosophy can also be used to stifle personal growth or suppress human social evolution but I see the logic in it. Humanity's unspoken tacit agreement that we don't culturally shame lying so that we can all continuously benefit from the behavior has not served us well thus far. Humans rely on the work of all humans before us to collect knowledge and cultivate understanding and misinformation fuarrrks us all collectively

interesting food for thought: The nature of common language and therefore though transmittance is wholly different in Asiatic cultures than western cultures. Asiatic cultures express thoughts using quite ambiguous statements that rely highly on the context surrounding them to understand. Conversely, western cultures rely heavily on technical language that bears an inherent specificity and does not require much context. As such, could it be argued that true transparentism is only possible in one or the other regions due to the ambiguity of language or lack thereof? TLDR: Asian language etiquette hints at a topic, but walks around it leaving statements open to interpretation. Meanwhile, western language etiquette is to directly state the topic. https://online.seu.edu/high-and-low-context-cultures/

>>10552 the world is a lot bigger than twitter, friend.

>>10347 It sounds stupid of only a handful of people does it, but, if everyone does it, what's to lose?

>>10659 the movie in >>10354 shows why it is bad... in everyone living completely open lives, people get mad at the little things about people and it escalates. employers could discriminate against your personal life, insurance companies could charge you more based on your publicly available decisions, competitors could discredit you using ad hominim logical fallacy.

What happens if you're holding other people's secrets? Is a Transparentist just a huge fuarrrking gossip who cannot be trusted with anything? It just seems an untenable position. What if I ask you your bank account number and PIN? What if I express a genuine interest in watching you poop? Everybody has to have some privacy. Sorry, this sounds like something stoned people came up with as a hypothetical, not a viable lifestyle.

>>10687 In a Transparentist society you wouldn't care if someone watched you soykaf, because that wouldn't really be weird since nobody really has a concept of privacy.

>>10693 there's a difference between having no privacy and being ok with others watching you poop. In societies where there simply isn't the luxury of private pooping spaces or whatever, people learn to avoid violating others' privacy. For instance, having sex on board a boat: you just don't act weird about it, it's still a very private experience between the people having sex.

My best friends are those whose identity I don't know and who don't know my identity. It's a friendship based on pure intentional text-based and image-supported communication. As soon as names, location, voice, face, expression, body, haircolor and so on are introduced honesty is not possible anymore. The moment I am identified I cannot speak my mind.

>>10696 Transparency is anonymity. If everyone knows everything about eachother then identity becomes meaningless.

>>10712 A deed for example still gets attributed to the actor, hence identity does bear a meaning.

I've believed in this for a long time. Never knew there was a name for it though. The immediate reaction from a lot of people is questions like "So you don't want any privacy?!" or "Then tell me who you are if you're for Transparentism" et cetera. Here's how I would answer some of them. "No privacy": I believe in two main types of privacy. Organic Privacy (OP) and Artificial Privacy (AP). OP is stuff where you naturally want privacy, sleeping, masturbation stuff like that. That shouldn't be taken away, it's evolutionary. AP on the other hand, is stuff that's not necessary to keep private in, general identities, what you think about people etc. If AP was abolished, society would benefit. "Tell me where you live"/Hypocrisy: I'll tell you where I live, but you have to tell me where you live too. Transparentism would have no point if only a small subset of a community was actually transparent, it's either everyone or nobody. Since nobody else is fully transparent, I will keep my identity hidden.

I don't think this is feasible for a modern society, beyond something like 1984, where every private home is under overt CCTV surveillance. How would you protect bank file numbers, personal phone numbers, ID details, medical records, etc, from theft and abuse? How can you verify IDs if all details are accessible? Does this society believe in censorship? State secrets? How would you stop stalking? Would all mail be public domain? Would copyright and trademark laws be enforced? Would commercial entities be allowed to keep trade secrets? Would you ban insider trading? How would you protect informants? How would you protect your nation against foreign espionage or fight organised crime? How does voting work? Is the internet like 4chan with permanent namefagging enabled and no private messaging of any kind? This is less thought out than fuarrrking Ayn Rand. Come on, people, tell me how all this soykaf is supposed to work, give me the Brave New World novel pitch for this. Worldbuilding! How does your Winston Smith go about his day in his cellophane jumpsuit, in his perspex office cubicle, before he goes home and jacks off to the neighbours screwing in the glass house next to his?

>>10725 If you see my post above, you'll see that I have outlined the difference between what I call Organic Privacy and Artificial Privacy. I would say there is a subset which falls somewhere in the middle of the theoretical Venn Diagram. This would include stuff like credit cards, passwords and the like. >beyond something like 1984, where every private home is under overt CCTV surveillance. Personally, I think it would work as some form of Libertarian society, be it anarchistic or minarchistic. Companies would be almost entirely transparent with their customers, ergo the free market takes charge. >Is the internet like 4chan with permanent namefagging enabled and no private messaging of any kind? I think that in some ways the internet can be seen as an entirely different beast from meatspace. Of course, like today we would still have sites like facebook which use real identities. I don't see why there couldn't still be Chans, where users can be anonymous.

>>10724 >>10727 Desire from privacy stems primarly from vulnerability. You're vulnerable physically as you have your pants around your ankles. In the same way, your bank creds are a vulnerability because if they get out your capital is out in the open. Now some privacy is only tangentially from vulnerability. What you say behind closed doors might not be critical if you're a square normal person but it is if you're not big gov's model citizen (and that wether you're law abiding but have radical ideas or a criminal). However if you only asked for privacy to discuss stuff at home when it's critical, you're doing something even worse for your privacy than just discussing it in a permanently tapped room. That's why the desire for privacy usually debunks the nothing to hide fallacy (and most people that say the contrary are just poisonning the well). It's only natural to defend against potential danger. And there's no difference between lo-tech "organic privacy" and hi-tech "artificial privacy", denying the security mechanisms of high tech services is just condemning their use to non-critical uses. Maybe you think that some functions requiring AP shouldn't exist. Like people shouldn't be using social telecoms at all for anything critical, just gratis entertainment and volunteer projects. But that's tyrannical, the cutoff is meaningless.

https://transparentist.neocities.org/ who did this