zlacker

Contrast it to living in a small town. Everyone talks, including the local store owners. There's very little privacy in having a private interest or hobby.

Local privacy is arguably far easier in a city, or in a crowded digital space. It all depends on the context of who you're trying to hide from. I'd much rather trust my privacy to Apple and Amazon if I wanted to quietly buy things no one else in my neighbourhood knew about.

>>parasu+(OP)
That's kind of the point though isn't it? I imagine folks are rather more polite in a small town than a big city. I don't think having lots of privacy is a natural state for people. I think transparency is the ally of good and opaqueness the cover for evil. Mind you it only works if everyone is watching everyone (a la small town) rather than big brother watching you.

More or less I'm advocating a distributed social credit system instead of a centralized one. In fact I'd say "distributed social credit" is a pretty good term for the social conditions we have spent most of our time evolving in.

>>thegri+u6
That's the opposite of live and let live.

>>pseuda+Vl
Behaviour expected by social norms and with purely social consequences is much preferred to behaviour dictated by governments which can have legal and physical consequences. In the first case, you are (supposed to be) protected from physical consequences by that very same government. You'll never be able to get away from people's expectations as long as you live amongst other people. What matters is what they can do about it.

>>thegri+Wo
Your analogy was small towns vs. big cities. Now it's society vs. government? Are we even still talking about social cooling?

Both small towns and big cities have governments. Social norms can include being heterosexual or following a specific religion. Not conforming to those expectations can have physical consequences too.

>>pseuda+PC
Right, and what I'm saying is that there can be an upside to increased social pressure to conform to social norms (also known as being polite) which is suggested by social cooling. I'm also saying that it's not equivalent to government-imposed social credit.