[FRIAM] privacy games

[Steve Smith]

uǝlƃ ☣ -
>> 1st order)   When we encounter a signal (use text stream as a familiar example) we may or may not recognize that there is obfuscated meaning in that stream.  In the common example, of course, the stream usually looks like pure gibberish...  having an *apparent* high entropy.   Attempts to decode the stream usually involve seeking transforms which yield a low entropy or high information content.   Ideally, yielding a very specific, highly unambiguous text stream which is not only recognizeable to the decoder but possibly directly meaningful.   In the classic imagined examples, we have spies and counter spies attempting to pass messages and intercept/decode those messages, etc.    This is where the specific technical term /Steganography/ takes on interest and I think alludes to or defines your 3rd order?  I'm not trying to impute specific meaning that you didn't intend, just looking to tease out the language you are seeking to use and align it with existing lexicons which may
>> or may not be fully apt for what you are getting at.
> I don't quite understand how you're criticizing the 1st order idea. Is it only to say that I've mixed up my orders? ... that I'm confusing 1st with 3rd?  If so, then yes, I probably am. The particular examples of steganography I identified were "hiding" a QR code in an image (or vice versa) and hiding 2 images inside 1. And I used these as a foil to talk about the combinatorial explosion. So, while steganography, in general, and even these 2 examples are *not* purely 1st order, they help (I think) highlight the 1-many mapping. The more strictly 1st order demonstration of the 1-many mapping was the string comprehension example. Sorry for the confusion.
Sorry... I probably misinterpreted what you mean by criticism (you were
explicit about some of the things you didn't mean by "criticism").   My
intention above was to try to (continue to) niggle out a more complete
context for what you are proposing in your n-order idea of privacy.   I
*did* jump ahead in the next-to-last sentence reference to your 3rd
order.  I wasn't criticizing your reference to 1st order, just jumping
ahead, not suggesting YOU should restructure.
>> 2nd order)  I am literally not clear on what the implications of many-to-many are here.   1st order... one-to-many would seem to imply that the *decoder* is searching through the space of possible decodings (combinatoric) for the presumed singular encoder, but it also implies that the *encoder*  is choosing from a similarly large number of *encodings*.   Perhaps you are alluding to the case where some encodings can be decoded by more than one decoder or in some cases, multiple encoders can be decoded by the same decoder?  I'm not sure what you are getting at, though I *am* confident that you are getting at somethings specific that I'm simply missing (so far).
> The most important point to 2nd order privacy is the ability to use composite *encoders* whose [quasi]independence/[quasi]orthogonality is conserved across the many-many mapping. If there's a pattern on the surface that has been generated by a composite encoder-plex (with invariant orthogonality across the map), then you can use *either* decoder1 or decoder2 and get an independent decoding, that stands on its own. This is akin to your idea that your 20-year-old decoding of Pirsig was/is still just as proper as your recent decoding.
I think I'm getting more of the gist.   It seems to me that you could be
talking about iterative or superposive compositing of multiple
encoders?   Iterative, however, would not allow for decoding by *either*
but instead would require decoding by *both* (and in the correct
order).   Superposive would be more like encoding the signal with two
distinct encoders and then combining (shuffling, concatenating, ???) the
two resulting signals such that applying either of the decoders would
yield a combination of signal and (apparent) noise.   If the combining
method were simple/obvious like concatenation then the decoded signal
would be half signal and half-gibberish, otherwise, the combining method
itself might stand in for it's own *encoding*, complicating things
further.   Once again, I'm not really criticizing your order-2
description but trying to reflect to you how I am (partially)
understanding it, so you can set me straight on what you meant (not what
I thought I heard?).
> And 2nd order says it's *irrelevant* whether Pirsig did this intentionally or not. What's relevant is that the map is many-many ... i.e. allows for composite encoders with this invariant property across the encode-decode map.

With this example in hand, I'm trying to sort out my own
question/observation above.   In the case of Zen++ and Pirsig,  I would
say that his encoding method was in fact functionally very composable,
probably hierarchical.   Some of his narrative and imagery was targeted
at "any human being", other parts of it were targeted more specifically
at "those who have ridden and wrenched on motorcycles", and others on
"people who have undergone significant psychological/emotional
transformations/trauma", and some on "parents with a troubled teen", and
some on "those who have studied western philosophy and it's implications
on one's personal moral systems".     (and many more?)   to some extent,
my primary decoder for him (40 and 0 years ago respectively) was "what
of this sentence/paragraph/chapter do I understand implicitely and what
to I need to delve deeper, contemplate, or pass off as a question for
later scrutiny or to be forgotten mostly?"   This unshuffling left me
with the impressions that I was able to process intuitively/immediately
(and for the most part unable to actually reflect on because they sortof
went straight into my psyche), and those which I mulled as I read, or
mulled with Mary after a reading, discussing some of the aspects, and
those which I am still mulling or have forgotten.   My first read
through 40+ years ago had a lot more in the last category.   As I reread
what I write here, I wonder if this is a particularly bad example.   To
the extent that this fits what you are talking about, it is an extremely
rich/layered/convoluted example.  

>> 3rd order and beyond)  I don't know the technical implications in cryptography for iterated encodings by different means.  My own preferred examples have multiple encodings being very different in quality... and in particular semantic and socio-cultural encodings of a message as implied by your reference to Moorcock/Joyce and poetry in general.
> Excellent! Bring up "quality" is probably important, not least because that's the heart and soul of the hard problem ... the ultimate metaphysical assertion of privacy. 
Interesting that Pirsig harps on his own definition of "quality" (not
unlike Alexander's "Quality Without a Name") throughout.   I'm not sure
if you mean it in the same sense though?
> But I do think this is beyond 3rd order. Maybe it's the 4th and final order. It introduces an additional boundary. And (hearkening back to your and Jon's suggestion that the maps have to be lossless and maybe invertible) we'll have to start talking about whether there is a closure of the spaces beyond the boundaries. But I feel like you've jumped ahead and your inclusion of "and beyond" is making us sloppy.

I'm happy to let you manage the categories for the most part.

This brings up a struggle I have that might be worth sharing in this
venue on the off-chance that others here struggle with the same.  When
you first started using the term "straw man" or "strawman" I took it to
mean something modestly different than you intended.   I first
encountered the idea of a "strawman" NOT as something that an adversary
would create as an easily taken apart effigy for your real argument, but
rather as an armature for consensual building of an idea.   More like a
stick figure with the general proportions of a final sculpture that 2 or
more would build together.   

I see your throwdown here of 1,2,3rd order privacies as *that kind of*
strawman and the process for the rest of us being to offer
adjustments/additions/modifications to it to try to shape it into a more
elaborated "figure" that we might all come to share not only an
understanding of, but a stake in.

>> FWIW, I would like to suggest that not all obfuscation is adversarial in the strong sense. 
> I agree completely. I tried to say that by mentioning positively intentioned meta-games. Another of my favorite novels is "The Magus" by John Fowles. But I think pretty much any mentor-mentee meta-game falls in the same category.

I have read but not fully processed more of this thread and appreciate
the tack (if not tangent) it has taken toward collaborative/co-evolving
games with other's responses.  

Reading reviews of your book reference (Magus), I am reminded of Jim
Dodge's book "Stone Junction" which I also read twice (1990 and 2015)
with less distance of understanding but  definitely *additional* if not
significantly *different* decoders. 

I offer the following copy from the back cover for a hint of a taste:


    Editorial Reviews


      From the Back Cover

Stone Junction is a wise and wildly imaginative novel about Daniel
Pearse, an orphaned child who is taken under the wings of the
AMO-Alliance of Magicians and Outlaws. An assortment of sages sharpen
Daniel's wide-eyed outlook until he has the concentration of a card
shark Zen master, via apprenticeships in meditation, safecracking,
poker, and the art of walking through walls. The AMO know wizards are
made, not born, and this unconventional education sets Daniel on the
trail of a strange, six-pound diamond sphere, held by the U.S.
government in a New Mexico vault, rumored to be the Philosopher's Stone
or the Holy Grail.

Shadowing the slippery netherworlds of role-playing games like Magic or
Dungeons & Dragons, Daniel's quest to retrieve the magic stone and
discover who killed his mother becomes a bravura act of storytelling,
both a free-spirited adventure and a parable about the powers within us all.

"A post-psychedelic coming-of-age fable that's part Thomas Pynchon, part
Tolkien, part Richard Brautigan, a story that owes as much to The Once
and Future King as it does to Huckleberry Finn. Stone Junction is a
rollicking, frequently surprising adventure-cum-fairy tale. It also has
a sweetness about it and an indigenous American optimism, as if
somewhere out there, beyond the shopping malls, Oz is waiting."-The New
York Times Book Review

"Reading Stone Junction is like being at a nonstop party in celebration
of everything that matters."-Thomas Pynchon

Jim Dodge is also the author of Fup and Not Fade Away.



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