In the telepath society, is there a “polite” subculture where people don’t look at each other’s thoughts unless they’re explicitly marked public (as a subcultural norm) ? If so I probably would opt in. I might opt in anyway, but I’m not sure.
I would probably opt in to a society where one could optionally publish verified, authenticated, non-repudiatable thoughts and/or feelings.
(In shminux’s further specified “mandatory write / voluntary read Facebook stream” model, access to your thoughts would be effectively logged, because the accesses would appear in the accessor’s stream. I presume that you could also be alerted to people accessing your stream.)
My model is indeed “mandatory write / voluntary read”, possibly with optional reading alert. As for this “polite subculture”, given that “impolite” people cannot be forced to follow the public/private tag, I don’t know how likely this could emerge. Possible, of course, in the same way that passers by in large cities or passengers in a public elevator don’t meet each other’s eyes. But this habit arises from some basic level of privacy, which simply does not exist to begin with among telepaths.
I don’t mean that everyone else respects the privacy of the polite subculture, just that they respect it internally, and they don’t invade the privacy of those outside. Does that put them at a disadvantage ? Of course; but so does not carrying a firearm in places with very permissive gun control laws, and yet lots of people choose not to.
I guess your hypothetical includes universal telepathy and evaporation of the idea of privacy. In which case I am fighting the hypothetical (sorry). But I think that while a universal end of privacy may well follow from the technical capability of universal telepathy, I can imagine other plausible, less socially uniform, outcomes.
In the telepath society, is there a “polite” subculture where people don’t look at each other’s thoughts unless they’re explicitly marked public (as a subcultural norm) ? If so I probably would opt in. I might opt in anyway, but I’m not sure.
I would probably opt in to a society where one could optionally publish verified, authenticated, non-repudiatable thoughts and/or feelings.
(In shminux’s further specified “mandatory write / voluntary read Facebook stream” model, access to your thoughts would be effectively logged, because the accesses would appear in the accessor’s stream. I presume that you could also be alerted to people accessing your stream.)
My model is indeed “mandatory write / voluntary read”, possibly with optional reading alert. As for this “polite subculture”, given that “impolite” people cannot be forced to follow the public/private tag, I don’t know how likely this could emerge. Possible, of course, in the same way that passers by in large cities or passengers in a public elevator don’t meet each other’s eyes. But this habit arises from some basic level of privacy, which simply does not exist to begin with among telepaths.
I don’t mean that everyone else respects the privacy of the polite subculture, just that they respect it internally, and they don’t invade the privacy of those outside. Does that put them at a disadvantage ? Of course; but so does not carrying a firearm in places with very permissive gun control laws, and yet lots of people choose not to.
I guess your hypothetical includes universal telepathy and evaporation of the idea of privacy. In which case I am fighting the hypothetical (sorry). But I think that while a universal end of privacy may well follow from the technical capability of universal telepathy, I can imagine other plausible, less socially uniform, outcomes.