From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Tue Nov 17 1998 - 23:34:10 MST
> Kathryn Aegis writes:
> > I find this thread fun, but it seems to me that sweeping conclusions are
> > being made on very little data. I seriously doubt that most extropians...
>
> Eugene Leitl wrote: I don't think the data is statistically insignificant...
> Should be easy to check, but who says that ExI membership is not a yet
> another bias? (How many ExI members don't have web acess?)
ive an idea. there has been much discussion here regarding privacy and
extracting signals via voluntary submittal of information. the mb informal
poll exercise was most informative. is there some way to form an info
repository, a giant piggy bank for information? where anyone could
post a question, such as "are you a firstborn?" and individuals could
deposit answers without even revealing their identity?
friends, please be patient, as i have been grinding around on this
question for some time and you are perhaps getting bored with the meme.
i think this sort of thing is worthwhile, for if extropians can work out
a technique, we can introduce it to the entire internet world, and perhaps
then we can begin to extract critical health information from the huge
numbers of people available, and give humanity a valuable gift.
so heres the idea: get a group of volunteers willing to do something like
what i did with the meyers briggs test results: collect the info, strip off
the identities, tabulate and post the data. choose a different person
for each task: one for meyers briggs, one for are-you-firstborn, one
for whatever questions are posted and people are willing to answer.
note: we would not to post on the list like we did with the mb thing,
but would email privately to the one designated person tasked with a
given question. this looks like to me it extracts data about a population
without seriously compromising anyone's privacy.
after all the responses, i have concluded that infonudists like myself
are in the minority. regarding the mutual exclusivity between privacy vs
safety from data vandalism, informal polls work better if they sacrifice
data safety for privacy. spike
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