> (though one could argue that sudden reveal of how common some preferences are could also force their societies to reconcile official values with reality).
Fundamentalists don't care for statistics and they usually aren't very open to new ideas. Besides if they would have lists of people watching gay porn, they'd probably have a minority anyway.
> If you really want to make revealing someone's sexual preferences his and his alone decision, you'd have to reduce human interactions to text-only chat.
Of course not. Gay people in countries where they are oppressed have to hide their sexual orientation and they succeed with that. And in more open societies people decide for themselves whether they want to 'come out' to others or not. Nobody has the right to take that decision from them.
If this decision is taken away from them, it may destroy their life. And if that happens because their browsers didn't guard their privacy, the technology sucks.
> We give up a lot of privacy to form a society.
No, our society is based on the individuals' privacy. That is why we vote in secrecy and why we value a persons' liberty.
Privacy doesn't mean that everything I do is a secret. It means that I have the right to choose what I want to be a secret and what not. And I should be able to count on that, since it's a human right.
Take a look at what happens in reality. People are killed all over the world for their beliefs, their political opinions, their sexual orientation. Peoples lifes depend on their privacy. It that is taken away from them, that is totalitarianism.
This is a strong point in favour of privacy. I don't feel I have much to add at this point in conversation, I need to think about this issue more. Thanks for elaborating :).
> That is why we vote in secrecy
Just to address this one thing though - from what I understand, we vote in secret so that we can't be forced to vote against our will by external actors via e.g. blackmail - not because we value privacy per se. Am I wrong here?
> Just to address this one thing though - from what I understand, we vote in secret so that we can't be forced to vote against our will by external actors via e.g. blackmail - not because we value privacy per se. Am I wrong here?
No, you're right. But I'd say that we implicitly value the privacy of the voting booth as a tool to guarantee a free election.
Fundamentalists don't care for statistics and they usually aren't very open to new ideas. Besides if they would have lists of people watching gay porn, they'd probably have a minority anyway.
> If you really want to make revealing someone's sexual preferences his and his alone decision, you'd have to reduce human interactions to text-only chat.
Of course not. Gay people in countries where they are oppressed have to hide their sexual orientation and they succeed with that. And in more open societies people decide for themselves whether they want to 'come out' to others or not. Nobody has the right to take that decision from them.
If this decision is taken away from them, it may destroy their life. And if that happens because their browsers didn't guard their privacy, the technology sucks.
> We give up a lot of privacy to form a society.
No, our society is based on the individuals' privacy. That is why we vote in secrecy and why we value a persons' liberty.
Privacy doesn't mean that everything I do is a secret. It means that I have the right to choose what I want to be a secret and what not. And I should be able to count on that, since it's a human right.
Take a look at what happens in reality. People are killed all over the world for their beliefs, their political opinions, their sexual orientation. Peoples lifes depend on their privacy. It that is taken away from them, that is totalitarianism.