Can you elaborate? Making this a closed, secret community throws a lot of red flags to me for “potentially evil”. It seems like we’d only want to keep it secret if we had a specific agenda (e.g. brainwash and enslave the masses).
I can see why if we accidentally did develop a method to brainwash and enslave people, we wouldn’t want it to get out, but that’s not the goal and doesn’t seem like a likely outcome. What’s so wrong with an open-source program to help people become “Less Awkward”?
What’s so wrong with an open-source program to help people become “Less Awkward”?
Learning new stuff often involves making mistakes until one gets it right. I imagine that if this community was created, many posts would be of the form “I did X recently and it went wrong; what could I have done better?”
Making mistakes in social situations is something that many find embarrassing, so they might want any such field reports not to become public knowledge. Hence, confidentiality may be necessary for people to talk openly.
Can you elaborate? Making this a closed, secret community throws a lot of red flags to me for “potentially evil”. It seems like we’d only want to keep it secret if we had a specific agenda (e.g. brainwash and enslave the masses).
I can see why if we accidentally did develop a method to brainwash and enslave people, we wouldn’t want it to get out, but that’s not the goal and doesn’t seem like a likely outcome. What’s so wrong with an open-source program to help people become “Less Awkward”?
Learning new stuff often involves making mistakes until one gets it right. I imagine that if this community was created, many posts would be of the form “I did X recently and it went wrong; what could I have done better?”
Making mistakes in social situations is something that many find embarrassing, so they might want any such field reports not to become public knowledge. Hence, confidentiality may be necessary for people to talk openly.
Anonymous != Closed
From a few other comments, I think Phil is more worried about:
what such an effort signals about members’ and affiliated groups’ intentions, or
keeping any high-value information that results in the hands of the good guys.
Could be mistaken, of course.