The reality is that I came to this conclusion through a long process but I'm pretty tired. The process definitely considered whether the 'private' version of the world was even possible. I don't think it is. Surveillance will happen. Better we accept it and keep an eye on how it's used than pretend like we can prevent it in the long term. Even if you were able to discourage the ubiquitous 'high tech hackers' and 'big data' forms of surveillance (which I don't think you'll be able to do), bribes and drones will continue to be used for the powerful to get what they want.
In your utopia, if you ask me a question, do I have to answer honestly? That people would always want to answer honestly is not a satisfying answer.
If you don't answer honestly, then people won't consider your answers to be reliable, and therefore everything you say will have less value.
Imagine a person that's completely transparent and honest. You can't find a more predictable and reliable person. That's something you can trust and rely on. How could you dislike such a person? Honesty is beautiful.
We live in a society where there's a race to the bottom when in comes to openness. We all are ashamed, lie, cheat. Full of insecurities. Constant worries. Who would like that?
This leads to a society where appareance is more important than substance. You go to we'll rated schools nkt to learn and get better, but to impress your future employer and get prestigious jobs. They hire you for the same reason (safer to justify hiring Ivy League students to your boss). The best way to get a job and climb up the ladder is nkt to work on your skills, it's to bullshit well. All because we're used to seeing the perfect side of people (they get to choose what they show you). That's just disgusting.
I don't favor coercion, so nobody is going to be forced to say or do anything.
Refusing to answer would be like refusing to help someone who request your help. Considering that answering the question is relatively inexpensive, you really don't have a reason not to do so. Unless you're hiding something, which will make people think of you as selfish.
I wouldn't trust a person that is selective when it comes to answering questions. They'll only say the truth you want to hear, which will contribute to bias and poor understanding of reality.
Moreover, its just plain simpler for a person to systematically tell the truth. Seriously, the mental burden of remembering lies and keeping secrets is probably extremely underrated.
If it helps, I tend to be frank/blunt to an uncomfortable extent. I sort of try not to because people find it off-putting, but I also sometimes don't notice I'm doing it. So it's not like I am in opposition to what you are saying, but I don't necessary see that it would be so great.
(re being able to reply, there's a speed bump built into the site, if you click the time stamp through to the individual comment page you can always reply there)
Bathroom doors allow you to interact with yourself with some level of privacy. People know you're in there. They know for how long. They know if there are extreme sounds or scents. If you misuse the plumbing or other bathroom features there is clear evidence of this. In rare circumstances, the bathroom door can be kicked down while someone is using the bathroom.
The most common result of such information is "are you ok darling?".
Bathroom behaviours are interesting because they provide a real case study on the impact of acceptance on privacy. On a first date, where you're not presenting the real version of yourself, you don't want the other party on the date to know anything about the events while you're in the bathroom. Over time, if the relationship progresses, the secrecy around these events changes. The reason for this secrecy changing, I believe, is trust/acceptance. Over time you know that if the other person learns more about the bathroom events, it will not change how they perceive you. If you're in such a relationship, it also doesn't mean you wont use a bathroom door, and it doesn't mean you don't want your partner to use one.
Hopefully that analogy makes sense. Most privacy advocates have a list of 'secrets' they fear will be used against them. I think we're more likely to see a world where this fear is addressed through improved respect of differences, compared to a world where suddenly surveillance is effectively impossible.
> Most privacy advocates have a list of 'secrets' they fear will be used against them.
What makes you say that?
I don't think privacy advocates, and persons such as myself, differ in opinion on the problem today. The difference of opinion is on where we're trying to get to and how we get there.
Tbh, I don't know yet how to get to the end state I'd like to see.
Privacy is a good thing, whether you have secrets worth keeping or not is immaterial, privacy doesn't have anything to do with secrecy. The two are often mixed but if you look a bit longer you'll see that they are in fact orthogonal concepts only very loosely related.
Taking your bathroom example: there is obviously nothing secret about what is going on in that bathroom, you can infer most of it from your own experience. And yet, we do seem to feel the need for privacy.
Another example would be a diary. Diaries are intensely personal and our etiquette around them is that if you happen to come across someone's diary that you do not open it to read it. It is considered a private document, even if it will not contain any secrets it may contain thoughts that the writer does not want to divulge to the world at large.
So privacy does not require any secrets at all to be a very important thing to many people, including privacy advocates.
I don't think the word 'crucial' that you added is useful here.
Especially when not seeing that distinction might cause one to state something that is either not true or that inadvertently allows re-framing the discussion in ways that hamper progress.