Privacy, Honesty, Imperfect Glomarizing: Pick two

shelvacu

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Privacy, Honesty, Imperfect Glomarizing: Pick two — LessWrong

6 Privacy, Honesty, Imperfect Glomarizing: Pick two

by shelvacu

8th Mar 2026

1 min read

6

This is a general concept I've seen come up a few times and wanted to put down. It applies any time you are trying to decide on rules around lying. The trilemma is between:

Imperfect glomarizing: As an absolute, you have to pick this one if you are dealing with normal humans who want to have normal conversations. But the better people are at glomarizing, the more you can have Honesty and Privacy
Honesty: no intentional deception as a rule
Privacy: the ability for people to have private information in practice

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Privacy, Honesty, Imperfect Glomarizing: Pick two

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[-]Czynski19h30

I think this is poorly stated, in that the first two or three times I read it I think I got the opposite claim that was intended, and so did the one commenter before me. To rephrase verbosely to be sure:

If you are honest and privacy-preserving, your glomarization must be perfect.
If you can't glomarize and want to preserve privacy, you must be dishonest.
If you can't glomarize and are honest, you cannot protect privacy

Though you can go partway - 80%-perfect honesty and 80%-perfect glomarization is probably good for 80%-preserved privacy.

[-]Czynski21h10

So in the extreme you'd say that perfect privacy and perfect honesty mean no glomarization at all? That seems like it also removes privacy, to a sufficiently determined nosy 'attacker.'

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[-]CstineSublime17h00

What is an example of "perfect" glamorization in everyday conversation, and could you please contrast it with an imperfect glamorization?

How does glamorization differ from exaggeration?

i.e. "My son is a a really good guitar player", versus the exaggeration "my son is one of best guitarists I've ever heard". Is the exaggeration also glamorization? What would be an exaggeration of the positive qualities of something that isn't glamorization?

[-]Kaarel5h20

i think you misread "glomarization" :)

[-]Czynski6h10

Perfect glomarization is glomarizing for everything. Glomarize over whether your son is learning to play guitar at all, and for piano, flute, bagpipes, timpani, soccer, baseball, handegg, caber tossing, buzkashi, karate, and arnis, all at once, if he might find it embarrassing to be known to be learning any of them until he's publicly admitted to it.

So no, examples in everyday conversation are not really possible.

[-]Dagon1d-11

I'm not sure why "imperfect" is there only for glomarizing. In real humans, it applies to all three.

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