Codeuteronomy

Exodus

III

Personal data hygiene

Whatever you paste, you have shared. Decide what never enters the chat, and curate what the machine remembers.

The fifth chapter of Genesis said what enters a chat has been shared; living by that means deciding before the sensitive conversation which parts of your life stay out of it, and structuring around the boundary instead of hoping. Names, documents, identifiers, other people's stories: each can often be discussed usefully in abstract form, and the abstraction is your job, done before pasting, not regretted after.

Two habits make the boundary practical. Stage sensitive research in a throwaway context first, and promote the thread to your real workspace only once it proves worth keeping. And curate what any persistent assistant remembers: state explicitly, at the moment sensitive material comes up, what should not become part of its standing picture of you. Memory is a feature; unmanaged memory is a dossier.

How to practice it