I’ve been thinking about this statement in particular: ‘If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide.’ People naturally seem to gravitate to the logical contraposition: If P, then Q. Therefore if !Q, then !P. If you have something to hide, then you MUST have done something wrong. Drawing from this logical statement, they infer that anyone who even tries to hide anything MUST be doing something wrong.
It seems obvious to me, however, that not all people who attempt to hide things have done something wrong. Where is the logical error? Is it in the inversion of ‘nothing’ and ‘something’? It’s been a long time since my symbolic logic courses involving the negation of universal quantification.
If you disagree with “anyone who even tries to hide anything MUST be doing something wrong.”, then you disagree with it’s logically equivalent contraposition ‘If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide.’. And indeed you do, you say there are people who’ve done nothing wrong but do have something to hide. There’s no logical error, you just disagree with a premise.
It’s not so much a matter of disagreement as being able to come up with solid counterexamples that a theoretical ‘common person’ would agree with.
For instance: If you want to get someone a gift for a birthday, it is a common social convention that the exact gift should be kept a secret from the receiver until their birthday.
As ChristianKI indicated, sometimes you must keep secrets either for social or professional obligations. A good example would be where doctors are required to keep patient records from unauthorized access (by law, no less).
Normally, people dismiss these sorts of arguments with a simple, ‘Well, of course except for that.’ As we move into the future, however, where technology increases to the point where surveillence is pervasive, is the only privacy we’re going to have remaining going to occur in doctor’s offices?
Oh, I thought your main concern was about the logic, not the propositions.
Cases where you done nothing wrong yet have something to hide:
The bathroom window of my house doesn’t close well, just push the top from outsides and it’ll come open. Also I’m on holidays the first two weeks of November.
Harry Potter dies in the next HPMOR chapter
I’m actually really desperate for this job and would actually accept half the salary I’m asking for
I actually find your conversation extremely boring
Normally, people dismiss these sorts of arguments with a simple, ‘Well, of course except for that.’
I don’t think it’s that easy. I want the right to take note about secrets that my friends tell me in my evernote account. I want to be able to take those notes without violating a promise that I gave my friend to keep his secret.
Let’s say Alice confines her friends Bob and Coral that she has a drug problem. She’s a cocaine addict. She gets them to promise to keep the information secret.
In the current situation the two would violate that promise if they would talk about the problem on the telephone.
I think you could argue that there an implicit demand for that secrecy even if Alice doesn’t specifically ask for secrecy.
Communicating the information on an unencrypted channel is morally questionable.
Bob is not allowed to just call Alice and ask her whether she succeeded in being clean for the last days.
Bob has the choice between, establishing an encrypted channel to talk to Alice, not help her by providing social support on the issue over the telephone or violating his secrecy promise.
If Alice wants to get a security clearance for her job she might be out of luck if the conversation with Bob is captured by government computers.
When talking about people who claim they have nothing to hide, I think that’s the best strategy. Showing them how they potentially hurt other people or at least break promises they make to other people.
I think the question is poorly formulated. If you say:
P: you have done something wrong
Q: you have a reason to hide something
P->Q: If you have done something wrong, then you have a reason to hide something
!Q->!P: If you do not have a reason to hide something, then you have not done something wrong
Which seems quite consistent to me, as it makes it possible to have a reason to hide something without having done something wrong. The negations of the original are throwing me, and I think the if-then phrase might be backwards as the causality should be doing something wrong causes you to have something to hide, rather than the reverse. My logic course was long enough ago that I can’t pin it exactly.
Part of the problem turns out to be equivocation on “wrong”. Consider the position of a chocolate-lover living in a hypothetical society where 1% of people are chocolate-lovers, 89% of people are not chocolate-lovers but are tolerant of people who are, and 10% of people think that anyone who eats chocolate should be shunned, persecuted, fired, exiled, tortured, or what-have-you.
Eating chocolate is not wrong according to our standards, nor by their own, nor by those of the majority of their society. However, many chocolate-eaters in this hypothetical society would prefer to cover up their actions, not out of shame but out of risk avoidance. They don’t want to be mistreated by the anti-chocolate people who outnumber them ten to one. In the 1 in 10 chance that their boss is anti-chocolate, they don’t want to be fired or mistreated on the job. And so on.
In effect, the saying should be, “If you haven’t done anything that anyone anywhere disapproves of, you have nothing to hide.”
Note the difference between “If you don’t have a reason to hide something, then you have done nothing wrong” and “if you have done nothing wrong, then you don’t have a reason to hide something.” A person who is totally open has no skeletons in their closet- but the fetishist has something in his closet that isn’t skeletons (unless it’s skeletons).
This assumes that there are two categories of things: Right and wrong.
In real life that’s not the case. If someone tries to judge us their is information that makes him think very highly of us and information that positive but doesn’t have such a big impact.
If you can control that someone only get’s to see the information that makes you look really awesome you achieved something by hiding the information that makes you look medicore.
Nothing you have done needs to be below some threshold that makes it wrong for you to have an advantage by hiding the worst things that you did. As the quality of the things you did naturally fluctuates there will always be worst things.
You could also have done something that a AI that analyses your habits likely pattern matches as suspicious. Given modern technology that means that you will less likely get a good rate when you want to get your mortgage.
Government can also give you trouble with extra inspections when you pattern match to be a dangerous person. It’s not directly punishment but when you run a restaurant and you get more food safety inspections than your competitors because you pattern match to be a dangerous person it still hurts you.
If you fly the TSA will bug you if you score highly on some metric. An AI analyses all communication data and those people who look suspicious will get flagged for extra scrutiny.
In our society we also have a concept that it’s okay to speak with friends in confidence. If you tell a friend that you protect a secret that he tells you, you have something to hide. I don’t think anyone would argue that it’s morally wrong to promise a friend that you will protect a secret he tells you.
If someone asks you whether you are feeling alright, you might not want to talk about a problem that you are facing with that person and hide the problem from them. That in no way implies that you think having the problem is “wrong” it just means that you don’t think that you will profit from discussing the problem with them.
If you made a new invention and haven’t yet patented it, you might want to hide that invention for some time till you are ready to bring the invention to market or patent it. Businesses also have various other forms of trade secrets that they hide. Most busineses don’t want to give a competitor their customer list.
If you are in a negotiation having more information than the other party can give you an advantage. As a result you don’t profit from sharing all information with them.
If you follow TDT you have to hide certain information, because otherwise someone could infer from the fact that you don’t talk about an issue that you feel badly about the issue.
You don’t want that political dissidents, who share your views, can be distinguished by a government from yourself, because you don’t want that the government has the power to go after every political dissident.
I’ve been thinking about this statement in particular: ‘If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide.’ People naturally seem to gravitate to the logical contraposition: If P, then Q. Therefore if !Q, then !P. If you have something to hide, then you MUST have done something wrong. Drawing from this logical statement, they infer that anyone who even tries to hide anything MUST be doing something wrong.
It seems obvious to me, however, that not all people who attempt to hide things have done something wrong. Where is the logical error? Is it in the inversion of ‘nothing’ and ‘something’? It’s been a long time since my symbolic logic courses involving the negation of universal quantification.
If you disagree with “anyone who even tries to hide anything MUST be doing something wrong.”, then you disagree with it’s logically equivalent contraposition ‘If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide.’. And indeed you do, you say there are people who’ve done nothing wrong but do have something to hide. There’s no logical error, you just disagree with a premise.
It’s not so much a matter of disagreement as being able to come up with solid counterexamples that a theoretical ‘common person’ would agree with.
For instance: If you want to get someone a gift for a birthday, it is a common social convention that the exact gift should be kept a secret from the receiver until their birthday.
As ChristianKI indicated, sometimes you must keep secrets either for social or professional obligations. A good example would be where doctors are required to keep patient records from unauthorized access (by law, no less).
Normally, people dismiss these sorts of arguments with a simple, ‘Well, of course except for that.’ As we move into the future, however, where technology increases to the point where surveillence is pervasive, is the only privacy we’re going to have remaining going to occur in doctor’s offices?
Oh, I thought your main concern was about the logic, not the propositions.
Cases where you done nothing wrong yet have something to hide:
The bathroom window of my house doesn’t close well, just push the top from outsides and it’ll come open. Also I’m on holidays the first two weeks of November.
Harry Potter dies in the next HPMOR chapter
I’m actually really desperate for this job and would actually accept half the salary I’m asking for
I actually find your conversation extremely boring
I don’t think it’s that easy. I want the right to take note about secrets that my friends tell me in my evernote account. I want to be able to take those notes without violating a promise that I gave my friend to keep his secret.
Let’s say Alice confines her friends Bob and Coral that she has a drug problem. She’s a cocaine addict. She gets them to promise to keep the information secret. In the current situation the two would violate that promise if they would talk about the problem on the telephone.
I think you could argue that there an implicit demand for that secrecy even if Alice doesn’t specifically ask for secrecy.
Communicating the information on an unencrypted channel is morally questionable. Bob is not allowed to just call Alice and ask her whether she succeeded in being clean for the last days.
Bob has the choice between, establishing an encrypted channel to talk to Alice, not help her by providing social support on the issue over the telephone or violating his secrecy promise. If Alice wants to get a security clearance for her job she might be out of luck if the conversation with Bob is captured by government computers.
When talking about people who claim they have nothing to hide, I think that’s the best strategy. Showing them how they potentially hurt other people or at least break promises they make to other people.
I think the question is poorly formulated. If you say:
P: you have done something wrong
Q: you have a reason to hide something
P->Q: If you have done something wrong, then you have a reason to hide something
!Q->!P: If you do not have a reason to hide something, then you have not done something wrong
Which seems quite consistent to me, as it makes it possible to have a reason to hide something without having done something wrong. The negations of the original are throwing me, and I think the if-then phrase might be backwards as the causality should be doing something wrong causes you to have something to hide, rather than the reverse. My logic course was long enough ago that I can’t pin it exactly.
Part of the problem turns out to be equivocation on “wrong”. Consider the position of a chocolate-lover living in a hypothetical society where 1% of people are chocolate-lovers, 89% of people are not chocolate-lovers but are tolerant of people who are, and 10% of people think that anyone who eats chocolate should be shunned, persecuted, fired, exiled, tortured, or what-have-you.
Eating chocolate is not wrong according to our standards, nor by their own, nor by those of the majority of their society. However, many chocolate-eaters in this hypothetical society would prefer to cover up their actions, not out of shame but out of risk avoidance. They don’t want to be mistreated by the anti-chocolate people who outnumber them ten to one. In the 1 in 10 chance that their boss is anti-chocolate, they don’t want to be fired or mistreated on the job. And so on.
In effect, the saying should be, “If you haven’t done anything that anyone anywhere disapproves of, you have nothing to hide.”
Note the difference between “If you don’t have a reason to hide something, then you have done nothing wrong” and “if you have done nothing wrong, then you don’t have a reason to hide something.” A person who is totally open has no skeletons in their closet- but the fetishist has something in his closet that isn’t skeletons (unless it’s skeletons).
Um, the statement “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide” is wrong to start with.
EDIT: Deleted the mistaken part of the post—was reading too fast and screwed up the formal logic counter-example. Mea culpa
No, it would be “Therefore if you’re not a human you’re not a man”, which does follow. The formal logic is fine.
This assumes that there are two categories of things: Right and wrong. In real life that’s not the case. If someone tries to judge us their is information that makes him think very highly of us and information that positive but doesn’t have such a big impact. If you can control that someone only get’s to see the information that makes you look really awesome you achieved something by hiding the information that makes you look medicore.
Nothing you have done needs to be below some threshold that makes it wrong for you to have an advantage by hiding the worst things that you did. As the quality of the things you did naturally fluctuates there will always be worst things.
You could also have done something that a AI that analyses your habits likely pattern matches as suspicious. Given modern technology that means that you will less likely get a good rate when you want to get your mortgage.
Government can also give you trouble with extra inspections when you pattern match to be a dangerous person. It’s not directly punishment but when you run a restaurant and you get more food safety inspections than your competitors because you pattern match to be a dangerous person it still hurts you.
If you fly the TSA will bug you if you score highly on some metric. An AI analyses all communication data and those people who look suspicious will get flagged for extra scrutiny.
In our society we also have a concept that it’s okay to speak with friends in confidence. If you tell a friend that you protect a secret that he tells you, you have something to hide. I don’t think anyone would argue that it’s morally wrong to promise a friend that you will protect a secret he tells you.
If someone asks you whether you are feeling alright, you might not want to talk about a problem that you are facing with that person and hide the problem from them. That in no way implies that you think having the problem is “wrong” it just means that you don’t think that you will profit from discussing the problem with them.
If you made a new invention and haven’t yet patented it, you might want to hide that invention for some time till you are ready to bring the invention to market or patent it. Businesses also have various other forms of trade secrets that they hide. Most busineses don’t want to give a competitor their customer list.
If you are in a negotiation having more information than the other party can give you an advantage. As a result you don’t profit from sharing all information with them.
If you follow TDT you have to hide certain information, because otherwise someone could infer from the fact that you don’t talk about an issue that you feel badly about the issue. You don’t want that political dissidents, who share your views, can be distinguished by a government from yourself, because you don’t want that the government has the power to go after every political dissident.