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Weighing the Value of Privacy
An anonymous reader writes "A new study from HP Labs shows that the reluctance of individuals to reveal private information (or how much money they would demand to do so), depends on how far they perceive themselves to be from the norm. For example, those who think they are overweight ask a higher price to step on a scale in front of their peers, than those of average weight. From the article: 'How and why people decide to transition their information from the private to the public sphere is poorly understood. To address this puzzle, we conducted a reverse second-price auction to identify the monetary value of private information to individuals and how that value is set. Our results demonstrate that deviance, whether perceived or actual, from the group's average asymmetrically impacts the price demanded to reveal private information.'"
People are conditioned by society to feel that they need to be "normal" (read: exactly the same as everyone else) to such an extent that they're embarassed to reveal anything about themselves that shows how far from this false ideal they are.
And this is news now?
For example, those who think they are overweight ask a higher price to step on a scale in front of their peers, than those of average weight. :
I guess it's not the same for underweight.
It all depends on how bad this would be perceived
Obese people will less likely be understood by "normal" people whereas skeletic people will actually be overprotected as the ill people they represent.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Does this mean that based on this study anti-privacy activists (how else to call them) will start saying that "as shown by studies, if you don't want to share your private information, thoughts, etc, it IS because you have something that you think you should hide"? I can totally see this study being used to hassle people who just want some privacy. Whether true or not, this study is damaging to individuals and their privacy.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
To achieve valuable personal integration, people typically need a significant measure of security from invasions of their private space as well as their private records and information. In fact, they need more than immunity from invasion: they need time for reflection, time when they are not in co-operation with others or distracted by other commitments. In this sense, the right to privacy really is concerned with valuable (i.e. morally upright) individual self-development.
Whenever I visit a tourist attraction that has a guest register, I always sign it. After all, you never know when you'll need an alibi.
I've been doing this since I was a kid, but these days you don't have to take any positive action to leave a trail behind. Almost everything we do is recorded. Closed-circuit cameras watch us in most public places. Our credit-card purchases, japanese schoolgirl tentacle porn, telephone calls and Web surfing are all tracked these days.
Editorialists have decried these losses of privacy, as if it were the most sacred of human rights. But just what is the value of privacy? Do we really need it? And, indeed, can we afford it? After all, everything from your son's shoplifting to the destruction of the towers at the World Trade Center could have been prevented if we had less of an ability to do things in secret.
Actually this is not that offtopic : I didn't reveal my identity in order not to be associated with the poor karma this post had gotten : so, we have a typical example of what the article describe... IMHO ;) :)
PS: Do not upmod the parent otherwise you'll prove me false
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I find it sad that such things like privacy, love and even life itself are being compared to money. It tells a long way about a society's values.
Some things will never have a "replacement value" (that's what it is), but some believe they can change that. How much more materialistic can you get?
Decadence, here we come!
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
At one point in time it was "blindingly obvious" that the world was flat. At one point it was "blindingly obvious" that white skinned people were better than all other skin colours.
Just because something is "blindingly obvious" doesn't mean there shouldn't be proof to back it up.
This report may be crap, but just because something is "obvious" doesn't mean it shouldn't be researched and proofed
...Science Tells Us What We Already Know.
I just read the article (skimmed bits). They managed to determine that people don't like to release embarrasing information or break societal taboos.
No Shit.
The troll translation would be: Open Source coders know thier code has no value, so they give it away and hope someone else can make it better. (that's probably going to hurt me)
I don't find myself to be abnormal, at least I don't think so. I generally refrain from any kind of survey, I thought everyone does. But I don't have a problem tossing out an email address to get into a "membership" type site. SO I clearly either find the joining of sites as normalized, or email is just disposable.
Post: Sigged, for your pleasure.
Didn't somebody famous, like a couple hundred years ago, say that the quest for freedom is nothing but the fear of tyranny?
Researchers should get out more.
a 5 minute observation of real world is apparently worth 10 research papers on obvious conclusions.
Seriously, from a sales perspective, information that people ask for is ALWAYS WORTH MORE than useless information.
Hence, at some point, some person asked for this study, and the researches said, sure I'll take the contract. Why? Because it was WORTH something to somebody.
When people who are disadvanged are asked for something they actually have dear to them, they value it more.
Ask how many programers would take as much money as they can get for a program like:
10 Print "Sucker"
20 Goto 10
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
For example, those who think they are overweight ask a higher price to step on a scale in front of their peers, than those of average weight.
That may be true, but I think it's only a one-way logic. I doubt you can reverse-deduce the weight of people by asking them how much they'd pay to reveal it. The best proof is that these guys aren't necessarily all obese, and these guys definitely aren't on the skinny side.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
In my perception, one of the differences between the US (where I have now been almost 10 times for 2-4 weeks) and German society (where I live) is that the pressure to conform is noticeably higher in the American society. Of course, you can always find niches where pretty much anything is accepted. And yes, intolerance does exist in Germany, too :) But as a small tendency, I would say this difference clearly exists. So my prediction would be that the correlation would be considerable smaller among German participants.
Btw, I am not sure whether I should find this study interesting or distasteful. The idea of someone trying to find out how much I value my privacy in monetary terms makes me feel pretty uneasy, to say the least.
For example, those who think they are overweight ask a higher price to step on a scale in front of their peers, than those of average weight.
What if someone's embarassing private information was that they were broke?
it leads to the conclusion that everybody who fights for privacy rights is a pervert.
If this goes to a border public then it will be blow for the privacy movement.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Well, if you assume people bid rationally, then 2nd bid auction is the same as a standard auction with small increments, as explained in another post. The only advantage is that it leads to the same result faster.
But part of the point of auctions is that people don't act completely rationally. Let's say there is a really cool _____ that you would like to get. You think it's so great that you would pay 500$ for it. You bid that. Now someone else bids 510$. Don't you think you would go on? And maybe still go on over 530$? And there you are, the seller getting 10% more than in the 2nd bid auction.
since when is someone who thinks he/she is overweight, really overweight? Almost every woman tried to convince me/herself that she is fat.
The second auction was for age, not height. (See page 3, paragraph 2.)
When you get the simple facts wrong, people will tend to doubt that you've made valid conclusions.
The 'why' of it I would submit is trivial, despite what a pompus french charater in a tech-noir movie might think. But there is something useful here. They can trick people into giving a little more useful information. If you can devise questions of a "How much would you charge me if I wanted ..." variety that interlocked with other questions which you cared about the answers to you might be able to put the data together in such a way that you could not only tell whether they were lying, but how much. You just need the questions you really want the answers to, questions about what they consider normal, and questions about how much would they charge for presumably related truths. The idea being that they wouldn't have as much incentive to lie about what they'd charge as what the objective truth really is, and if they did, it's not likely they'd know how to lie effectively. With the added bonus of being able to factor out responses of the "ELEVENTY BILLION DOLLARS!!" variety.
Surveys about drug usage, depression, aggression, or quite plainly anything that might have a componant of shame could become more accurate.
It is a well conducted experiment by academic standards, but I believe its conclusions cannot be extrapolated to real life just yet.
The first problem here is of anchoring with the $25 figure. An example is generally given in literature that first you ask a person when did Genghis Khan live. Say someone says 1275 AD. Next if you ask them how many movie theatres are there in Russia - you will find their answer strongly affected by the number 1275. This is called "anchoring." Anchoring may have reflected why people asked between $4 and $19. They were looking at a 20% to 80 percent increase in that session's earnings and so looks "big" to the $25 anchor.
This is even more problematic. Once you have committed to coming would you just walk out of the whole situation ? Has the time that you spent thinking about this before you came played a role in whether you stay or leave?
The problem here is of "framing." You have made it clear that till $ 100 is the maximum "reasonable" price for private info, other wise you get nothing. This framing of the issue is problematic because it definitely had an influence on what people thought was a fair price for the info. Some people chose "infinity" but that is less than 3 %. If this is extrapolated then there is only 3 % of the popluation that wants to avoid Big Brother and Animal Farm - and that is scary.
.
I can pick up medical data, and point out to the fact that there are many healthy people who enroll themselves in clinical trials for $500-1500. In exchange they are monitored for days and weeks, blood samples drawn upteen times - why ? Because at that time that $1000 is a lot of money in their life. Some friends of mine went thru this procedure and I don't think their decision to give "all medical data" was based on any of the hypotheses of the current study. (As an aside, based on those clinical trial stories I later developed the concept for a comic strip Test Pharm - Cultivating a treatment for everyone)
The problem is that real life is not uni-dimensional. Cause and Effect is not singular. There can be single cause - multiple effects, multiple causes - single effect, multiple causes - multiple effects.
I can't just say that disclosure of salary is connected to a group average. There are a host of other issues related to the salary information. The salary information has multiple repercussions. In some of these "repercussions" I am average, in others deviant. In some groups I am average in others I am deviant.
This deviance concept is generally used in the Police State defense. "It shouldn't bother you because you got nothing to hide - right ?" I think it is misplaced as it does not consider the various shades of deviances in multiple dimensions - and exaggerates a singular cause rather than a bundle of causes. For example, if tomorrow carrying an almanac becomes a crime by some interpretation of the Patriot Act, then I would be against random roadblocks to "fish" out
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
Some people are no doubt concerned that their deviancy, if revealed, might lead to some unpleasant consequences.
For instance, my neighbor might like studded leather and ball-gags, but as long as he's not kidnapping people to participate, and it's all according to Hoyle, then fine... who cares? (truthfully, I'd rather not know about it at all). Being a bit too deviant (or deviant in the wrong way) could lead to unpleasant personal, professional, or financial consequences.
I'd say it's pure self-interest and/or self-defense, rather than embarassment.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
that is used in mission and life critical situations.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Way OT I know, but would Glum Losers even work in practice? Seems you would have to have a hard time limit to the auction, otherwise it would never end..
.. and on forever, each topping the other because they can't afford to pay but can bid as high as they like because when they win they don't pay anything.
Auctioneer: What bid for this wierd wired widget?
Bidder 1 : $50 (this is what he'll pay if nobody else bids)
Bidder 2 : $1000 (thinking he won't have to pay)
Bidder 1 : $2000 (he doesn't want to pay either)
Bidder 2 : $3000 (he can't afford to pay, so had better make sure he wins)
Bidder 1 : $4000 (ditto)
Bidder 2 : $5000
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Heh. Never. Libertarian is codeword for private property worship at the expense of EVERYTHING else. What it means in practice is wildlife destruction (in the name of private property), habitat destruction (in the name of private property), destruction of historical landmarks, buildings, etc (in the name of private property), and the destruction of neighborhoods (It is MY private property so I can turn my yard into a junkyard if I want to, even though it degrades the value of the property of all my neighbors, pollutes the stream that happens to cross my yard, etc...in the name of private property).
Private property rights do not exist except as a social fiction generally agreed upon by any given society. Ask those peoples that were closer to nature (and the "natural state" than ANY white european has been for millennia)...native americans, or australian aborigines, or any of many other such peoples. They did not hold to the concept of private property. The idea of private property is a recent fiction, not an inborn fact.
Dump the over-the-top private property worship (I have no problem with reasonable
private property rights, but it is way beyond the pale when they are taken to the point of there being no public land, no protected wilderness, no protected anything.In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
The key is the perception. It just means that the best Open source coders think that many people could match their production if they just tried. Whereas many of the closed source programmers BELIEVE their product is outside the norm and don't want it proven to be just average.
Our founding fathers removed the guys in charge. Be American. Vote incumbents out.