On 7/12/19 12:55 pm, Keith Bainbridge wrote:
On 3/12/19 8:42 pm, Keith Bainbridge wrote:
Just wondering if this is ALL good advice?
Should I use it for ALL my mail, or just sensitive stuff, like
lobbying politicians.
I'm still here. Have had a couple of questions that have gotten me
thinking deeply, primarily about whose/what safety I am really trying
to protect. Mu best answer is personal, physical safety of my family.
That has started me thinking that I should be hiding my location more
than what I am saying.
I'll be back.
Companies like G$ attempt to suck in every minute detail of our lives to
tune their AI to create a detailed profile of everyone one the planet,
which in turn is used to create the perfect personal echo chamber
especially for you. It won't take long before that AI is able to present
you with what you'd like to hear on virtually any topic with the aim of
manipulating to move your opinion about <anything> in the desired
direction using real news, half real news, fake news, absent news (news
you should hear but don't), you name it.
I'll hear a subtly or less subtly different message than you, each
message carefully crafted for each individual, for example to nudge you
to vote for one candidate or another or to buy more stuff you don't
need. This is very bad news for democracy, if that still exists, and the
planet.
Although I'd sometimes like to think I can, I am under no illusion that
I'll be able to outsmart that AI.
And yes, this message comes to you via G$. I use G$ primarily for email
lists, private stuff lives on a private email server. But hey, as
someone already mentioned, most people I'm emailing with use G$, M$, Y$
, F$ etc, so most of my email still ends up being processed.
A big problem if you ask me, that's virtually without solutions. That's
why all that G$, M$, Y$, F$ stuff is "so convenient" and "free". They
employ whole armies of psychologists studying the human mind hunting for
any and all human weaknesses.
Now back to the topic: does it make sense to encrypt anything? Surely
for communication between two individuals who'd like to keep their
conversation private. Otherwise IMHO only if we encrypt everything, to
make it sufficiently hard for their AI to do this work. But how much
additional energy would we consume doing that? Can we afford all that
extra energy? The consequences of runaway climate change might be even
worse.
As with most other relevant or urgent matters, humanity will not
voluntarily change course.
Am I just a cynical old bastard? If so, that would be good news!
:-)
J.
