[ExI] sanity and connectedness, was: RE: list test

[Anders Sandberg]

On 2013-07-29 13:36, BillK wrote:
> If a Google Glass user looks at you and almost no data appears, then
> you become a very suspicious character, with all the disadvantages
> that implies.

Interesting analogy: apparently in the US not having many credit checks 
logged is almost as bad for loan applications as having a lot of them. 
Which of course opens the question of open the system is for people 
coming from abroad (I suspect the answer is that the high variance of 
Americans anyway makes the system fairly soft).

> So you now have to go to all the trouble of maintaining
> a normal user profile, full of innocuous comments and events (but
> still make it attractive and interesting). This is an ongoing task,
> not a do once and forget about it task. So there is really no option
> but to broadcast your real (but sanitized) personality.

Actually, wouldn't that be an interesting application to write? 
Something that generates surface plausible web traces?

I have been thinking of having a little script reading web pages and 
generating a random clickstream, including searches based on random 
words picked up on earlier pages. No doubt it would soon develop its own 
"personality" due to what it reads (Eherenfest's urn model?) One might 
even have a few separate such scripts producing a mixed activity trace.

Harder would be to script a social networking bot. But there seem to be 
plenty of spambots around, and I can imagine hiring mechanical turks to 
add some pattern recognition.

The point is, these profiles would be boring. Which is perfect: you do 
not want people to look closely, just jump to the cool person next to you.

> In the world of nudity, wearing camouflage makes you *more* conspicuous.

But nobody looks twice at the not-handsome person. Or the one in a 
nude-colored clothes.


-- 
Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford University