Nanashi

• NanashiMay 25, 2015, 2:06 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: Jiro’s comment on: How my so­cial skills went from hor­rible to mediocre

  My use of the term “you” when I said “why should you care about other people” (and the rest of the post for that matter) was a stylistic use in the global sense, not personally directed at him.

• NanashiMay 24, 2015, 5:22 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: query’s comment on: How my so­cial skills went from hor­rible to mediocre

  Thanks for the reply. The part about it being “really easy” was a glib attempt at humor, in the same vein as saying, “Losing weight is really easy: you just stop eating so much and start working out more!” Or “It’s easy to quit smoking, just don’t smoke!” As with many things in life there’s a big gap between knowing what one should do and then actually doing it.

  As you said, intellectually accepting something tends to be much easier than emotionally integrating it. I wish I had better advice when it came to that part of things. The best I can do is just point to the key premise behind social skills and hope to highlight some mistakes that smart people tend to make when approaching the issue.

• NanashiMay 24, 2015, 4:49 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: Creutzer’s comment on: How my so­cial skills went from hor­rible to mediocre

  If you understand the concept that other people have value, then it sounds like your primary issue is just with the semantic meaning behind “genuinely caring about other people’s success”. Which is fine, it’s an overly complex idea to try to distill into a single sentence and I would expect there to be a fair amount of clarification needed.

  But to be clear, it’s a semantic disagreement rather than one about the underlying meaning. If I had to be less succinct with my explanation I’d say: “Being confident enough in one’s own self-improvement processes that one expects more incremental value in dedicating unallocated time to other people’s success than one’s own.” If you have a disagreement with that, I’d much rather discuss that than semantics.

  (The reason I chose one phrasing over the other is that, “I care more about your success than my own” sounds a lot more palatable to the person I’m helping out than, “I expect to see more value if I spend this time helping you than if I spend this time helping me.”)

• NanashiMay 24, 2015, 4:13 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: Jiro’s comment on: How my so­cial skills went from hor­rible to mediocre

  I never said anything about caring about random strangers more than you friends.

• NanashiMay 24, 2015, 2:48 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: Creutzer’s comment on: How my so­cial skills went from hor­rible to mediocre

  Your reluctance is both common and understandable. But it’s actually not that difficult to reconcile. Let’s talk about this from an egoist perspective. First of all, why should you care about other people? Simple: other people are a potentially valuable resource. Despite protestations otherwise, many smart people labor under the delusion that they are of singular genius and importance, and thus have a very difficult time truly grasping the idea that other people can be as valuable as they themselves are.

  Your car, computer, bike, house, appliances, etc. are all resources that can accomplish certain ends much more efficiently than you can. So it doesn’t feel alien to put your own short term needs secondary to the long term maintenance of these resources. The reason it feels so alien to do the same thing with people is that you haven’t quite internalized the value of other people.

  But what does that have to do with valuing other people’s success more than yours? Simple: if you’ve already made the right meta-cognitive choices, then the incremental value of spending “unallocated” time on yourself isn’t all that high. If you already devote an hour a day to reading, then opting to spend two hours at home reading on a weekend instead of going out doesn’t really provide much incremental benefit. If you are confident enough in your own life choices, then you don’t need to spend much active time on your own success because it’s already taking care of itself.

  The stereotypical charismatic, socially adept extrovert tends to be much more confident and slightly less “intelligent” than your average LWer. Why is that? First of all, they’re not worried that the time they spend on others will affect themselves negatively. And because they aren’t as “intelligent”, they have a more acute awareness of just how valuable other people can be.

  TL;DR: it only requires a fundamental change in your values if part of your fundamental value system says “other people are worthless”. And it only requires a delusion if you decide to take the straw-man interpretation of my post rather than the reasonable one.

• NanashiMay 22, 2015, 9:54 PM

  8 points

  0

  on: How my so­cial skills went from hor­rible to mediocre

  Some quick background: a friend and I run the sales department of a multi-million dollar company. We built that company from the ground up from about 15 clients to 5,000 and counting, and now manage 20+ sales reps.

  Contrary to popular opinion, social interaction is really fucking easy. There’s one common trait among likable people, (and I don’t mean likable in the shitty, salesy sort of way where a person is so outgoing you feel obligated to say you like them, when in fact you think they’re a giant turd)). That trait can be easily explained: you truly, genuinely care about other people’s success more than yourself.

  If you’re a parent, it’s a lot easier to internalize this attitude. When you have a little kid running around your house, you understand pretty intuitively how you can love something that, for the most part, does nothing but eats, shits, makes messes, and generally disobeys you. You see the potential in that little person. You see the commonalities. You realize that little gremlin is like you in so, so many ways. Eventually it will grow up and become a real person, and that is exciting.

  I think you aren’t alone: MOST LWers (myself included) probably view themselves as one level higher than a “baseline person”. The problem that I’ve seen is, most smart people tend to react to “baselines” with a mixture of indifference, condescension and outright disdain. It’s hard to tell what is worse. But baseline people aren’t fundamentally lacking. They just haven’t grown up yet. If you look hard enough, you’ll realize the commonalities. You’ll realize the potential. You’ll realize that eventually, this baseline person you’re talking to is going to grow up and become a full-on person.

  Most people who are good with kids have a knack for talking to kids on the kids’ level. The phonies are the ones who talk to kids like they are these subhuman creatures that can’t comprehend anything more complex than Go Fish. The assholes are the ones who can’t even be bothered to condescend themselves to talk to an 8-year-old. After all, what could an 8-year-old possibly say that’s even remotely interesting?

  Ultimately that’s the key: realizing that, even an 8-year-old has the potential to bring something to the table eventually. Einstein, Feynman, Hofstadter, heck, even Yudkowsky, were all 8 years old at some point. But you can’t force one of those into existence.

  If you look at every person you interact with and say, “This could be the next Richard Feynman”, regardless of whether it takes 10 years, 20 years, 100 years, or 1,000 years, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to be invested in their success and their development as a person.

• NanashiApr 26, 2015, 7:24 PM

  4 points

  in reply to: Richard_Kennaway’s comment on: Self-ver­ifi­ca­tion

  Given that I’m 29, I think that would be spectacularly bewildering.

• NanashiApr 25, 2015, 8:49 PM

  4 points

  in reply to: oge’s comment on: Self-ver­ifi­ca­tion

  Specifically, I planned on imagining what my response would be if I found a message supposedly “from myself” that was transmitted using one of these methods. How likely would I be to truly integrate into my identity this event of which I have no memory?

• NanashiApr 20, 2015, 3:15 PM

  5 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Self-ver­ifi­ca­tion

  Am I going to receive my own message no matter what and the attacker is only going to try to confuse me with another message or messages?

  For the sake of this, you can assume you will receive your own message no matter what. An alternate way of phrasing it would be, “Your memories have been wiped. You wake up and you find a message that purports to be from yourself. What would the message need to contain in order for you to be highly confident the message actually did come from yourself.”

• NanashiApr 20, 2015, 12:28 AM

  4 points

  in reply to: g_pepper’s comment on: Self-ver­ifi­ca­tion

  I edited the post because I forgot to include a key constraint to the problem, which is that an attacker can/​will be trying to send you false information from “yourself” so you need a way to distinguish. In this case it’s relevant because an attacker could cover you with tattoos before your memories were wiped.

• NanashiApr 20, 2015, 12:27 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: Shmi’s comment on: Self-ver­ifi­ca­tion

  I edited the post because I forgot to include a key constraint to the problem, which is that an attacker can/​will be trying to send you false information from “yourself” so you need a way to distinguish. In this case it’s relevant because an attacker could create a false message and force you to swallow the key to that message right before your memories were wiped.

Self-ver­ifi­ca­tion

• NanashiApr 19, 2015, 11:54 AM

  2 points

  in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: A pair of free in­for­ma­tion se­cu­rity tools I wrote

  You didn’t. Sorry, I should have clarified. When I said “this thread” I meant “the comments in general” and not your particular reply.

• NanashiApr 19, 2015, 3:41 AM

  4 points

  in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: A pair of free in­for­ma­tion se­cu­rity tools I wrote

  Note that I said “all the potential security flaws we’ve discussed here”. Not, “any possible security flaw.”

  This is precisely why I’ve been annoyed by the direction this thread has taken. If someone wants to talk about potential flaws specific to this tool, I’m all ears. But instead it’s mostly been a discussion about all the different ways I could possibly slip a Trojan into this tool.

• NanashiApr 18, 2015, 7:46 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: Nanashi’s comment on: A pair of free in­for­ma­tion se­cu­rity tools I wrote

  Since someone seemed to take issue with this, I’ll clarify: all the potential security flaws that we’ve discussed here operate under the assumption that I maliciously attempted to subvert the stated purpose of this tool. Since I am ~100% confident that I did not, in fact, do this, I am not too concerned.

• NanashiApr 18, 2015, 7:36 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: Pentashagon’s comment on: A pair of free in­for­ma­tion se­cu­rity tools I wrote

  I agree with what you said, I just want to clarify something:

  My original statements were made in a very specific context: here are some ways you can attempt to verify this specific piece of software*. At no point did I suggest that any of those methods could be used universally, or that they were foolproof. I grew weary of ChristianKI continually implying this, so I stopped responding to him.

  So with that said: yes, using this program does require trusting me, the author. If you don’t trust me, I have suggested some ways you could verify for yourself. If you aren’t able to or it’s too much trouble, that’s fine; don’t use it. As mentioned before, I never meant this to be “PGP for the masses”.

• NanashiApr 17, 2015, 2:36 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: Unknowns’s comment on: A pair of free in­for­ma­tion se­cu­rity tools I wrote

  One possible way around that, would be to allow a potentially infinite number of hidden systems each with their own passcode.

  There are a few issues with this though:

  1. Depending on the size of the message, this could get big, fast.

  2. The content of any decoy messages would likely leak contextual clues as to their veracity, unless all decoy messages sounded equally plausible.

  3. Once you extract one password, the length of the message compared to the size of the encrypted payload would leak information about the number of hidden systems.

  With all that said, you could address these security concerns by only having the “hidden system” apply to the truly sensitive parts of the message. In other words, you would start with the main message that has been sanitized of any relevant information, and then encrypted. Then, for each piece of sanitized information, you’d provide several plausible answers, which are each encrypted with their own key.

  So for example you would have is a master message: Master: “The plan to [1] the [2] is confirmed at [3]”

  And then the possible answers:

  1. attack, vandalize, have lunch at, prank call

  2. enemy headquarters, subway platform, the local diner, your ex girlfriend

  3. noon, midnight, 17:00, tonight

  So the “full” password would basically be: Master Password + Password for Blank 1 + Password for Blank 2 + Password for Blank 3

  So for this example there would be 64 different combinations of possible answers ranging from the correct one: “The plan to attack the enemy headquarters is confirmed at noon.” to the incorrect but plausible “The plan to attack the enemy headquarters is confirmed at midnight” etc.

  This would address the issues of #1 and #2. However it still would be possible for the attacker to guess based on the size of the message how many different combinations there may be. This can be circumvented one of several ways:

  1. Have so many options that the knowledge of their quantity would be useless.

  2. Pad the message with garbage data.

  Of course this does present the logistical issue of how you exchange the correct password for such a message. Functionally the password exchange process would be no different than any other, this would simply require a longer password.

• NanashiApr 17, 2015, 10:14 AM

  4 points

  in reply to: ilzolende’s comment on: A pair of free in­for­ma­tion se­cu­rity tools I wrote

  Of course now if I want to rubber hose you, I’ll be sure to ask about your second account, too! Jokes aside, I think that’s a good tool to keep in the belt.

  I’ve always struggled with the idea of how to promote the practice without lessening its effectiveness since the more people that know about it, the more likely a rubber hoser is to ask about both.

• NanashiApr 17, 2015, 1:37 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: A pair of free in­for­ma­tion se­cu­rity tools I wrote

  Relevant quote: “[I]f we’re assuming an evil government that doesn’t stick to that standard, the same hypothetical gizmo can be used to detect any encrypted data.”

• NanashiApr 16, 2015, 8:13 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: A pair of free in­for­ma­tion se­cu­rity tools I wrote

  Protection against what

  I specifically outlined the three primary attack types: fusking, stolen-phone, targeted attacks.

  Imagine a scenario...

  In that scenario, I would hope the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard would apply (which this protocol passes). But if we’re assuming an evil government that doesn’t stick to that standard, the same hypothetical gizmo can be used to detect any encrypted data.

  what exactly do you gain by keeping them inside other images as opposed to random binary files?

  Convenience, a deterrent against attacks, and moderate protection.

  • Convenience: the iPhone doesn’t provide any sort of file system for you to store random binary files, and no supported protocol by which to transmit them anywhere. It does, however, have a very robust photo storage and transmission system and GUI.

  • Deterrent: In low-threat situations where potential attackers only have visual access to your images, there are no visual methods by which to distinguish your decoy pictures from normal pictures, and therefore make you a target.

  • Moderate protection: Any further compression or alteration of the decoy image will mung the data. Most (not all) means of transmitting images from an iPhone (social networking apps, email apps, online image storage services, etc.) will compress the image before sending/​storing, which as mentioned will mung the encrypted data. Obviously this should not be relied on because there are means (albeit less convenient) of transmitting the data from your phone without compression.