site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   5159 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 26, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

After reading that post I'd honestly pay one of you guys to pentest dox me, because better a friend than an attacker. Hadn't realized there were so many automated tools.

Admittedly I am terrible at doing this. My heuristic to gauge how easy someone would be to dox is;

  1. Obviously directly proportional to how much details they share about their personal life.

  2. Directly proportional to the volume of content they have online as well. It's really hard to have thousands of comments online without giving away at least some identifiable information. Combining little bits of information over a long period of time can effectively nullify not sharing detailed information.

But the above is just basic applied information theory/ deduction. I am looking to learn more but I am getting some pisstake useless stuff anywhere I look online, it's as if no one wants you to learn how to potentially do bad things, lol. Also those who do might not want to give away their tricks.

Nonetheless using the heuristic above, I'd wager 2rafas doxxer was just a standard issue doxer, but Daseindustries doxxer must have been an elder god. (Assuming both of them start from 0 information like I would have to, which often isn't the case if they are 2-3 layers of separation away from you)

Yeah, I found a relative's Reddit account just because something he wrote sounded like something he would say, and when I checked his posting history, everything matched: the city he lived in, his career, his other opinions, his family.

A few others were opportunistic. Scott Alexander it was because someone said he was easy to dox so I went looking and quickly found out who he was. A regular here I figured out because he said something about himself that was extremely specific and Googleable. He probably isn't trying to be very anonymous though. The hardest were some reddit mods of a certain subreddit where I was told that some of were involved in political parties, but eventually I found some of them describe their jobs and combining that with the cities they lived in was able to find their LinkedIn accounts.

So, I don't think I've figure it out who anyone was completely from scratch without having some reason to think I'd be able to figure it out. I've never used any fancy tools though.

It may very well have been a legit (above) average neurodivergent slav who had a bone to pick with our Russian friend. As a group, they seem to be quite handy with computers.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats