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ionelvHaving one name only is good for certain things: tagging all accomplishments and wrongdoings to the individual that they belong to. The downside is loss of anonymity (which is quite precious for many reasons, e.g. keeping unwanted attention at bay, staying away from vulture media, corp or govt overreach). Having multiple names tackles the downsides somewhat. Writers (subversive or heavily eschewing social mores) and revolutionaries have used secondary monikers as protection from dragging their public and primary personhoods into their more speculative personas. People in witness protection programs, criminals or released prisoners have used it too.
Speculations:
1. Would it make sense for most people to have an anonymous public presence that is heavily insulated from prying eyes (including govt, corps, banks, friends, even immediate family)? What would be the pros and cons of such a society? Did this happen in the past and what did we learn from it (e.g. pirates, mercenaries, corporations, LLCs, gangsters)? How would it be accomplished today (e.g. blockchain)?
2. Should people be allowed to change their name/identity as easily as buying a loaf of bread? Should they be allowed to change their social security numbers as well (which would trigger a complete redo of most pension and retirement schemes)?
3. Should people be allowed to swap or trade their names and identities as they please? Historically, imposters, bastard children and cuckoo children come to mind as protoexamples of this scheme.
4. Should citizenship, private/public ownership and national borders be completely redefined to account for the above?
5. Should animals, plants, natural ecosystems, robots and AIs be granted (un)limited personhood status with (un)equal rights to humans? Why or why not?
6. Should money be redefined to be more explicit about its time value or completely replaced/complemented (gradually or in few discrete gated steps) with a different and more flexible universal exchange medium (e.g. crypto coin, rare elements, social credits)?
7. How do various value systems compare against each other empirically (e.g. religious, philosophical, consumerist, modern/Western union/pension schemes, etc)?
Speculations:
1. Would it make sense for most people to have an anonymous public presence that is heavily insulated from prying eyes (including govt, corps, banks, friends, even immediate family)? What would be the pros and cons of such a society? Did this happen in the past and what did we learn from it (e.g. pirates, mercenaries, corporations, LLCs, gangsters)? How would it be accomplished today (e.g. blockchain)?
2. Should people be allowed to change their name/identity as easily as buying a loaf of bread? Should they be allowed to change their social security numbers as well (which would trigger a complete redo of most pension and retirement schemes)?
3. Should people be allowed to swap or trade their names and identities as they please? Historically, imposters, bastard children and cuckoo children come to mind as protoexamples of this scheme.
4. Should citizenship, private/public ownership and national borders be completely redefined to account for the above?
5. Should animals, plants, natural ecosystems, robots and AIs be granted (un)limited personhood status with (un)equal rights to humans? Why or why not?
6. Should money be redefined to be more explicit about its time value or completely replaced/complemented (gradually or in few discrete gated steps) with a different and more flexible universal exchange medium (e.g. crypto coin, rare elements, social credits)?
7. How do various value systems compare against each other empirically (e.g. religious, philosophical, consumerist, modern/Western union/pension schemes, etc)?
no subject
Date: 2025-09-04 12:58 pm (UTC)The practicality argument swings the other way with SSNs but they are also problematic because they encode other information (and apparently the formula to generate them is quite easy to reverse engineer).
Canada has a bit of an interesting approach, where you can more or less do what you like as long as you tell the government and can get between one and three citizens to attest you're legit?
Re: personhood, it is a bit of a dodge of the main question but it does seem clear most systems have mechanisms to grant legal standing to entities that are not human individuals (the State, first and foremost, but also corporations and seized property). It seems odd to argue 99 bottles of vinegar can have legal standing but the Mississippi river cannot.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-06 02:42 am (UTC)SSNs are a big problem because they function almost like superdumb password like 1234 (at least in the US) that can be used to not only steal someone's identity but their life savings and future earnings as well and we know and can do much better than that if it weren't for inertia and clueslessness galore at most of the decision making levels.
On the personhood thing, the state, corporations and property personhoods are at their most basic level just a very elaborate moating system that mainly benefits the rich, kinda like a one way valve to extract wealth and funnel it mainly in one direction or very few narrow directions, ain't it?
no subject
Date: 2025-09-06 01:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-07 08:15 pm (UTC)1. Whatever protections there are for the little people, my feel is that they are mostly inconsequential or insignificant breaks on the runaway train of wealth accumulation (which Piketty has amply demonstrated that it has been concentrating in very few hands for more than a century now if not two centuries).
2. Whatever recent protections have been applied in Indian law seems like a classic case of too little too late for the whole planet though. I sure hope that I am wrong.