anonymous wrote: Faustine wrote:

So why is it that the vast majority of the technical and insightful contributions here seem to come from people who aren't averse to using a reasonable simulacrum of a real name and address?

I find the content from remailers is far higher than average for the list.

Fine, but "average" in this context isn't as useful as measuring the top n percent in terms of total value of information to any given participant.

I made the deliberate choice not to use a remailer because I think it's more interesting to contribute while having a prior body of posts "attached" to me. People come to know more what to expect--and if I irritate/bore/piss them off too much, they stop reading me. Which is exactly as it should be.

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So sign your messages. With your true name, if that's important.

I wonder why you seem to have missed my point about services like Hushmail and Cotse.

Though if you're after complete privacy re: your opinions and the details of your life, you're better off not writing them down in the first place, here or anywhere else.

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The technology isn't there yet, true, but it won't get there without deploying it and using it. Why isn't this obvious?

Even if the technology were 100% reliable, it's a matter of common sense. No amount of technology will ever keep you from trusting the wrong person, writing down something you should have kept in your head, or blabbing when you should have kept your mouth shut. In an absolute sense, "complete privacy" is only possible with an absence of communication signifiers. Developing privacy-enhancing technology, on the other hand, is absolutely crucial. But as I agree with what Bruce Schneier said about there being no such thing as "absolute security", I think it's always going to be a matter of what's "private enough" for any given situation. How "high stakes" you find posting to a mailing list depends on your particulars. And for me, Hushmail and Cotse are fine. If somebody is hell bent on fucking me over--here or elsewhere--the best remailer in the world won't help if they have the requisite knowledge, time, and resources. And I never said there was anything wrong with using a remailer. It's just that in the context of participating in a list, I think people tend to act worse since they have no real (or even symbolic) attachment to anything they say. I used to use a remailer to post to another list every single day for months. But I enjoy it more being a little more connected to it the way I participate here, that's all.

I assume everyone here weighed those considerations for themselves before they got here: as far as I'm concerned, nobody has the slightest business deciding it for anyone else.

Don't worry, the cypherpunks list isn't going anywhere. It's just not realistic to put that genie back in the bottle. It would have to be a separate list entirely or one which rode on the current cypherpunks list.

If your goal is to get rid of the technically incompetent and improve the quality of the list's content, you have to weigh the possibility of the bullshitting troll quotient going way, way up as well. And anyway, I think you're overestimating the skill level needed to use one: sure, the absolute cretins will have to go, but it remains to be seen how much moronic juvenalia will still be left over. Unfortunately, being intelligent and being immature are not mutually exclusive.

We may not be able to decide for others, but we can certainly look down on so-called cypherpunks who, in many cases, cannot even encrypt a message, never mind "writing code".

So are you basing your assessment of who to look down on solely on whether or not they use PGP and remailers here, or are you going by the total informative content(or lack thereof)in their posts? Personally, I wouldn't be too quick to assume I know what anyone around here can or can't do.

Many, in fact, exhibit hostility towards remailers and anonymity, as you do.

That is a gross misreading of what I said. In the context of addressing "what makes participating in a list worthwhile", I just don't believe dictating from on high "everyone must use a remailer" is going to fix all the problems you think it will. And it'll probably create a lot more new ones. But I could be wrong, it'll be interesting to see how it turns out if you actually get one going.

What I fail to understand is why such people are on this list in the first place, but, as you say, people make their own decisions. (None of these comments apply to Tim May, of course.)

Interesting how you know full well when you really need to make an exception to your too-broad generalization about people who use their real names on the list. ~Faustine.