Beware Trivial Fears

It sounds like you're basically talking about chilling effects, if you're looking for further arguments along these lines.

Edited to add: I don't mean to sound dismissive. I expect there's some use in reframing these effects in LW terms, and in coming up with non-standard generalizations. Just wanted to point out that your idea, or one very close to it, is widely discussed and recognized as important. (It's even occasionally accounted for in court decisions!)

I was once engaged in a discussion on Facebook about Obama's foreign policy. Around that time, I was going to apply for a US visa. I stopped the discussion early. Semi-consciously, I was worried that what I was writing would be checked by US visa officials and would lead to my visa being denied.

Not necessarily an entirely trivial fear: while discussions about foreign policy probably won't get anyone's visa denied, "officials Googling a person and then denying them entry to the US due to something trivial" has happened before.

I don't think your fears are trivial, just slightly misguided. You don't need to be very afraid of the current surveillance state: It collects a lot of data but can't connect the dots. That's how they missed the Boston Marathon bombers.

But they're keeping the data. With data storage prices continuing to be in free-fall, petabytes of amassed surveillance data are definitely going to be proliferated eventually. Everything that ever happened on Facebook, for example, is eventually going to be public knowledge. And then it is only a question of when, not if, some future agent (AGI or not) connects the dots you left. It is hard to predict how long that'll take and even harder to predict what that agent's intent will be, but especially if you're planning to live a long time, or to have children, it may indeed be prudent to be very careful with the traces you leave.

Distuingish between low probability, low impact events and low probability, high impact events. The miniscule probability that some electronic gadget immediately dies when it exceeds its warranty should be neglected (in case you could actually afford the gadget in the first place) but the miniscule probability that I die from a heart attack at young age should be ground for some concern.

Some fears are trivial and some are not.

Today the Supreme Court justice Anthony Scalia said (emphasis mine):

Scalia was responding to a question about the court's 1944 decision in Kore­ma­tsu v. United States, which upheld the convictions of Gordon Hira­ba­ya­shi and Fred Kore­ma­tsu for violating an order to report to an internment camp. "Well, of course, Kore­ma­tsu was wrong. And I think we have repudiated in a later case. But you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again,"

Isn't this what Incognito Mode and proxies are for?

I am a PhD math student, and will later want tenure. Should I be afraid of posting LW related content, that might make me appear sexist/racist with my real name?

Does the surveillance state affect us? It has affected me, and I didn't realize that it was affecting me until recently.

People who don't take about certain issues because of the surveillance state obviously can't make those examples in this thread.

But I agree that all the examples you listed are pretty trivial. On of the reasons I post under an identity linked to my real name (firstname + first 2 letters of lastname) is that I think the benefits outweigh the fear that someone will use what I write against me.

Yeah, this reminds me of what China is doing now. During a flight back to North America, I stopped on a layover in China, and they took my biometrics (fingerprints and such). Now I learn that "China Is Harvesting 'Masses' of Data on Western Targets from Social Media". And I already know that China is disappearing Chinese nationals abroad (paywall warning). And as long as I can remember, they have worked very hard to make sure that leaders of big corporations and countries never refer to Taiwan as a "country".

But wait, I've already criticized the Chinese government on Twitter. Should I be worried? Maybe. But maybe, creating enough fear to discourage criticism of China is precisely the goal. As long as the Chinese government is okay with some foreigners being a little afraid of China, their current policies seem like a good way to project Chinese propaganda goals abroad. Their behavior will make westerners less likely to criticize China, and in turn, any Chinese nationals who wander abroad will hear less criticism about China, which in turn will discourage Chinese themselves from considering unwanted opinions, thus helping the government maintain control. Indeed, a simple fear-based strategy might even improve average opinions on China, without any need to act as a genuine threat. Just collect those biometrics and let critics know "we're watching you"...

I have generally tended to spend too much time trying to plan against negative scenarios. Seems like a good thing, to "be prepared", and all. But if the events aren't very likely, it's a waste of time and attention that could be better spent elsewhere. Perhaps worse, I think it distorts one's view of reality by the availability heuristic, so that the world seems more threatening than it is, so that I ended up not just feeling like the world was worse than it was, but acting on that inaccurate model of the world as well.

I try to remind myself to always estimate the likelihood of the bad thing happening, and if it's small enough, to let it go.

As the saying goes: Just because you're paranoid ...

Yes, I know these fears are silly.

Maybe not.