On LessWrong I use my surname and the first two letters of my lastname as nickname. That means, if someone Google’s my name he won’t find my LessWrong posts. If someone however knows me and reads LessWrong I think he can deduce my identity.
When possible I also use an avatar image of myself to make it easier to recognise me.
I’m doing Quantified Self community building and multiple people who are into Quantified Self participate on LessWrong. I might say things on LessWrong that offend somebody but I think that people here are generally able to accept people with different viewpoints and won’t hold something I write here against me outside of LessWrong.
My Quantified Self online identity is linked via speaking engagments and mainstream media interviews with my real life.
Other links between my online identity and offline identity are found in facebook. A bunch of my facebook friends come from online sources.
I was roommates for a few months with a guy where the first contact was online and where facebook was the medium that allowed me to know that he moved to my city and needed a place to live.
With another good friend of mine it was similar. We had minimal online contact. Then we became facebook friends. In physical space we meet the first time accidently in a toastmasters club and were surprised that we are facebook friends. Today he’s one of my best friends.
Especially if you have interests that aren’t shared by most people turning online relationships with people who share your interests into real world interactions is very worthwhile.
The less walls that you build around yourself with privacy protections, the more likely you are to interact with people you know online in real life.
So far I don’t know of a relationship that I lost because of something that I wrote online. If something I write online however offends someone I know offline to the extend that the person wants to end the relationship, we probably don’t have much shared interests anyway.
I want to interact in real life in a way with people that don’t involve hiding major parts of my personality. http://xkcd.com/137/
That said I don’t publish all information that I could publish. There’s information where I would it stupid to share it in a public fashion and I keep it private.
Till know I didn’t have any death threads or stalkers. The worst thing that happened to me was a journalist who didn’t spoke to me and who wrote an article that thrashed Quantified Self that included my real name and a quote from me.
I do think that I might have a future online presence that creates some threats and I did thought about the issue when I started using my real name online as I knew someone who went through it.
After someone DDoS his server and tried to spam other people with his email address (sometimes it possible to fake email addresses) he just said: “It comes with the territory of having strong online presence and saying controversial stuff.”
I think you have to see it a bit in perspective. 70 years ago people risked their life in war. They had a substantial chance of dying for their beliefs. Today the risk of dying for a controversial position is very low. You are probably more likely to be struck by an asteroid.
You don’t have to be as couragous as “Courage as contigous”-Julian Assange, but taking a few risks to be able to spread more opinions more effective is worthwhile.
On LessWrong I use my surname and the first two letters of my lastname as nickname. That means, if someone Google’s my name he won’t find my LessWrong posts. If someone however knows me and reads LessWrong I think he can deduce my identity. When possible I also use an avatar image of myself to make it easier to recognise me.
I’m doing Quantified Self community building and multiple people who are into Quantified Self participate on LessWrong. I might say things on LessWrong that offend somebody but I think that people here are generally able to accept people with different viewpoints and won’t hold something I write here against me outside of LessWrong.
My Quantified Self online identity is linked via speaking engagments and mainstream media interviews with my real life. Other links between my online identity and offline identity are found in facebook. A bunch of my facebook friends come from online sources.
I was roommates for a few months with a guy where the first contact was online and where facebook was the medium that allowed me to know that he moved to my city and needed a place to live. With another good friend of mine it was similar. We had minimal online contact. Then we became facebook friends. In physical space we meet the first time accidently in a toastmasters club and were surprised that we are facebook friends. Today he’s one of my best friends.
Especially if you have interests that aren’t shared by most people turning online relationships with people who share your interests into real world interactions is very worthwhile. The less walls that you build around yourself with privacy protections, the more likely you are to interact with people you know online in real life.
So far I don’t know of a relationship that I lost because of something that I wrote online. If something I write online however offends someone I know offline to the extend that the person wants to end the relationship, we probably don’t have much shared interests anyway.
I want to interact in real life in a way with people that don’t involve hiding major parts of my personality. http://xkcd.com/137/
That said I don’t publish all information that I could publish. There’s information where I would it stupid to share it in a public fashion and I keep it private.
Till know I didn’t have any death threads or stalkers. The worst thing that happened to me was a journalist who didn’t spoke to me and who wrote an article that thrashed Quantified Self that included my real name and a quote from me.
I do think that I might have a future online presence that creates some threats and I did thought about the issue when I started using my real name online as I knew someone who went through it. After someone DDoS his server and tried to spam other people with his email address (sometimes it possible to fake email addresses) he just said: “It comes with the territory of having strong online presence and saying controversial stuff.”
I think you have to see it a bit in perspective. 70 years ago people risked their life in war. They had a substantial chance of dying for their beliefs. Today the risk of dying for a controversial position is very low. You are probably more likely to be struck by an asteroid. You don’t have to be as couragous as “Courage as contigous”-Julian Assange, but taking a few risks to be able to spread more opinions more effective is worthwhile.