Privacy is the natural state
My reading of your post coupled to my understanding prompting my post suggests the issue could get very tricksy, very quickly, but be interesting nonetheless. IIRC the context in which Bacon made his remark, I'm unable to source it, addressed the idea that physical law trumped idle conjecture and placed constraints on the possible. When I commented on privacy in nature I wasn't referring to a sort of J-J Rousseau theory of social contract but rather to the state in the wild as it exists between all animals. In nature territory defended against competing life forms may be the closest analogy to privacy, but like I said this could all get very tricky. Mill (the younger?) and Locke spoke to government and private property. Private property and privacy are social constructs, as is government. I've a bad feeling I'm missing an obvious premise here but at least I'd like to point out my comment on privacy was directed to the much broader context of nature rather than human artifacts and artifice.
cheers
I don't think you can accurately model inferences from personal data; non-sequiturs abound.
You can, if you're wreckless.
, privacy is going to have to adjust to what is now possible. While some of the things that are now possible are scary to people, many add to the public good.
"While all things are possible, not all things are permitted."Francis Bacon (17th C)
Bacon made his remark in a different context but I think it's germane in that privacy is legislated and enforced, and not naturally occurring.
Britain, at least from my POV, has undertaken a huge, perhaps unprecedented social experiment in immigration and mosaic, cultural restructuring. Significant immigration is necessary to bolster a competitive country's domestic workforce and it's international competitiveness, but, as everyone knows, it almost always brings with it social problems. The hue and cry historical precedent, in a skewed way speaks to a more European openness to a community policing itself whether by a sort of neighbourhood watch or a ring of cameras monitoring the streets. It's possible that North Americans, especially in the U.S.A. and Canada, are more sensitive to privacy concerns because development of the new world permitted far greater degree of privacy.
The above aside, I'm deeply vested in the concerns of the article because I'm interested in statistical modeling of political decisions and ways of abstracting inferences from personal data. I was fairly well schooled in statistics and probability to an undergraduate level but don't pretend to as wide an understanding of the field as I once had. While my interest is keyed to the problems of the individual in relation to the group, the relationship between an individual to the social unit speaks directly to privacy concerns. If my fledgling hypotheses are in any way indicative of what might be on the horizon then it's likely that along with the milieu that has spawned our current privacy concerns there are new tools that will let data be abstracted from the new milieu in a way that not only safeguards the privacy of individuals but might enhance one's privacy. Without blurting out my tentative ideas, possibly lucrative, and getting bitch slapped by some stats prof, I still think it's fair to say there's lots of room and time for the data that is now available to spawn a new tool set that will correct any current incursions into personal privacy.
why the hell did you post?
really, why the hell did you post? i'm not looking for any guidance from an asshole like you so why don't you just fuck off.
The word consilience was apparently coined by William Whewell, in The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, 1840. In this synthesis Whewell explained that, "The Consilience of Inductions takes place when an Induction, obtained from one class of facts, coincides with an Induction obtained from another different class. Thus Consilience is a test of the truth of the Theory in which it occurs."
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge is a 1998 book by biologist E. O. Wilson. In this book, Wilson discusses methods that have been used to unite the sciences and might in the future unite them with the humanities. Wilson prefers and uses the term consilience to describe the synthesis of knowledge from different specialized fields of human endeavor.
Biologist E.O. Wilson Pens Fiction Science: FiSci on Wednesday April 14, @06:05AM mindbrane Submitted by mindbrane on Wednesday April 14, @06:05AM mindbrane writes "Wired is running a short interview with noted naturalist and biologist E.O. Wilson as he speaks to the publication of his first novel. "Anthill tells the parallel stories of Raff Cody, a southern lawyer trying to preserve the wilderness of his youth, and the epic territorial wars among the ants that inhabit that land. Wilson has argued that our behavior is governed by genetics and evolutionary imperatives. In Anthill, he turns that conviction into a narrative technique, writing about human nature with the same detachment he uses when explaining how worker ants lick the secretions of their larvae for nourishment. But Wilson's novel is also an emotional plea to safeguard wild landscapes. Wilson talked to Wired about ants, evolution, and the creative aspects of the scientific process."
"The mind is just the brain doing its job." is a quote from an American neuroscientist, S. Levy (i think). The brain is stupefyingly complex. It seems to be widely distributed in terms of nodes and massively parallel processed. For example, a well known experiment had subjects meet a potential significant other in two settings. In one setting the meeting took place in mundane surroundings. In another setting the meeting took place on a high suspension bridge. In the second instance the same potential significant other was seen as much more attractive. The conclusion was drawn that the brain layers experiences and stuff leaks from one layer to another. If your in an exciting circumstance it's likely someone you meet there will appear more interesting. Just from this one experiment and the known complexity of our brains it should be at least likely that attempts to quantify our existentialist experience is doomed, happily in my opinion. It's not unlikely that if you subscribe to such a method and submit to a data driven religious experience then, more likely in the company of others who share your methods and beliefs, you'll get a rewarding experience, but it'll be a belief driven quasi religious experience none the less.
no, i did not RTFA.
I'm currently trying to arrive at a rational, fairly large computer investment in terms of what an individual might pay out. My thinking runs along some blurred lines only because the issues seem to be essentially unclear. Overall, is an individual as a heavy, personal computer user better off making a major long term investment in general computing power in terms of 32 bit architecture and, more or less, disposable units like the dual core, system on a chip, intel Pineview units; or, better off staying with the curve and building 64 bit multi core towers and waiting on the software to catch up to the 64 bit platforms? Say the prospective purchaser is thinking of what a "Beowulf cluster of these" could do.
More than 5 years ago I frequently said the tower was destined for the basement to share space with water heaters, freezers and furnaces. I still think that's the case. I think every home will have a server, maintained mostly by outside technicians and the house residents will use personal laptop/netbook units.
To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide a test load.