[ExI] contest

[spike at rainier66.com]

> On Behalf Of Dave Sill via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] contest

 

No, it was trivial. I highlighted your name, right clicked, selected search DuckDuckGo. It was the first result.

 

That much is free. Of course they'll sell you the juicy deets if you want them.

 

-Dave

 

 

 

Dave perhaps you recall about 20 yrs ago when  we were talking about this a lot: privacy slips away over the years.  

 

There was a fun joke in Asimov Laughs book that went something like this.

 

Two dejected old men sit quietly on park bench.  One of them muses: A lifetime.  A lifetime of good deeds.  Medical school, hard work, generosity, charity work I did.  Meh.  I would walk down the street, old ladies would point after me and say “There goes Mrs. Schwarzkopf’s boy, fine boy, so proud.  DOCTUH he is, DOCTUH Schwarzkopf, that boy…”  Everywhere I went, they were so proud.  Then one time, just ooone time, I get caught with oooone little pecker…

 

I referenced that very old joke to make a point, something that SR or someone pointed out recently: in our world today, there is no longer any away to run to, if you screw up bigtime.  We are running out of away.

 

Eliezer predicted this back in about 1999.  He said something along the lines of:  Memory is already cheap and getting cheaper.  Access is already fast and getting faster.  Search engines are improving.  It will become harder and harder to outrun your past.  

 

Eli offered an example of something he posted to one of the alt.groups when he was 13, a short story SciFi story about Barney the purple dinosaur, a bit of text which embarrassed the 18 yr old Eliezer to no end.  Of course we all looked it up, and I thought it was marvelous for a 14 yr old.  But he opined if he had a time machine, he would go back to 1993 and not post that story.

 

I just looked, it’s still there, a 27 yr old piece of writing.

 

If we generate any juicy deets in our lives, they will never go away.  The stain of embarrassment can never be washed away.  Clarification: for those capable of that particular emotion, it can never be washed away.  For me it would be more like an ink stain on a black trousers.  But for normal people the stain of embarrassment can never be washed.

 

Quoting Eliezer’s prescient words: The internet never forgets.

 

spike

 

 

 

 

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