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From: R. Kovacs
Subject: An ontology for identity
Date: 12 Nisan 5783
Rav Halevi touches on something my grandfather used to say.
He would say: a Jew should be able to walk away. From a town, from a community, from a shul, from the whole business if necessary. This was not apostasy, he would say, this was survival. The door must remain open.
When I read Dr. Lobel's proposal, with its queries and its aggregations and its reasoning, I think: where is the door? If my identity is a node in a graph, linked to other nodes, reasoned over by machines, queried by institutions, where do I walk to?
The flat format that R. Nachmani found, the Geek Code style, it sits in my signature. It is mine. I can change it. I can delete it. I can write nonsense if I choose. No reasoner cares.
I am not a technical person. But I know the difference between a note in my pocket and a file in someone's database.
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