Hypertransparency

This article is part of the My Values series.

Hypertransparency is not just a willingness to reveal information when asked, it's an innate desire to actively share everything about yourself. This level of public living has been the subject of many a sci-fi story, but despite the extremes to which it can be taken, I believe it has a lot of merit.

For me personally, it serves two purposes:

First, it provides the information others need to better judge the authenticity of what I say and do. History has proven too many times that words are empty—that actions are proof. What I want, then, is to be able to stop talking about my life and simply let others see it and judge for themselves whether or not I am who I say I am.

Second, by the same mechanism, it provides pressure for me to live purposefully. It makes me carefully consider my actions and how well they reflect my values.

There are a lot of details in all this, though. For example, I've traditionally been fond of saying that I eat mostly vegan. However, a glance at my expenses would reveal that at the time of this writing, I actually spend 20% of my average monthly food budget on animal products (the vast majority of which is milk and cheese). Another important detail, though, is what percentage of my diet by weight is animal products? It would probably be signifcantly lower. I've only recenty started capturing this, though, and not in a way that's easy to generate reports on.

This kind of missing information is the downside to hypertransparency: In the absence of 100% data, it will inevitably paint a false picture.