Re: poly: Why so much anonymous virtual reality?

Perry responds:
>Robin Hanson writes:
>> Such technology would be hard because there are so many ways for
>> our personal styles to shine through, and our interactions use them in so
>> many ways. It's like acting a character in a play. Even when you have
>> a costume and makeup, it's really a lot of work to stay in character.
>> You have to be aware of how other people percieve you,
>> and react to them based on that. Managing different characters for
>> a dozen different regular contexts seems a great cognitive expense.
>
>I seem to do it already, now that I think about it. I don't act around
>my S.O. anything like the way I act around consulting clients. It
>isn't even an act -- it is just "natural".

No doubt there are many striking differences to you, but I bet there
more thanenough similarities for someone with enough documentation on
the two "yous" to identify them. Consider the rhythm of your voice,
of your walk, of when you use the toilet, of how often you need a drink,
etc. Especially consider your very distinctive style of conversation.

If each person is described by a vector bits, each of which describes
individual characteristics, the vast majority of the bits between two
personas can be different, and yet the persona can be identified if
just a few bits are predictably the same. To distinguish someone out
of a billion others, you just need 30 good bits. This can come from
30 bits which exactly correlate, or 90 bits which correlate much less
(1/3?).

Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-8614
Received on Thu Feb 26 17:54:07 1998