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Ask HN: Has anyone solved P2P routing at 100B+ nodes without DHT degradation?

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Re: Ask HN: Has anyone solved P2P routing at 100B+ nodes without DHT degradation?

#11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do all individuals need to be in one network? There are literally zero decisions about my life that I want to allow people in China or Iran to vote on. I should hope they feel the same. There are almost no decisions (as someone in the US) that I want someone in California to have a vote on, and I'd be okay with zero. In fact I think California itself should really split into smaller, independent states (but that'…

Save your time - this is not real. The requirements are impossible and there are many other issues with the post.

That's why the nerd technical stuff isn't all that interesting to me; it's likely useless. But the idea that more democracy = better is an insidious one that I see often. Democracy is a means that applies in specific conditions. Self-determination is the good we're seeking. This should be obvious but somehow is not.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone solved P2P routing at 100B+ nodes without DHT degradation?

#12
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely right. However, covering the entire population of the planet is required not for making democratic decisions at a global scale, but for guaranteeing the absolute uniqueness of every single human being within the network.It is designed to allow anyone to enter and leave the system from any device as a unique, anonymous identity while seamlessly returning to the exact same session. Socially significa…

Such a "universal human ID" is so explosive that having it implanted subdermally would be no less invasive than what you are already suggesting. What would even be the point of democracy once privacy is gone and with it free speech? I think the closest real world model would be China, where the government gives you a "happy shiny society member" score for how little you ever dissent and how well you can recite propag…

If your goal is not to create communism or fascism, I just can't even imagine what this would be for. It would be a solution in search of a problem, unless the problem were a lack of authoritarian government

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone solved P2P routing at 100B+ nodes without DHT degradation?

#13
Great example of a technical solution for a real world problem… which simply won’t work as intended. Aside from the obvious use as a tool of repression, the real problem will be one of adoption: the only way everyone will adopt this is with it being shoved down their throats by their government. At that point, we have circled back to the point that they would only push such a tool if it benefited the status quo.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone solved P2P routing at 100B+ nodes without DHT degradation?

#14
post #6

Ok, I'm really curious. Is this just a troll? Phishing attempt for information about specific groups? Then again, the requirements would filter out serious responders, so maybe just spam? The post/project itself is an obvious scam. The first point is already impossible to do. The rest don't make much sense for the use case. And nobody would solve those issues without a serious lit review that doesn't require further…

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Re: Ask HN: Has anyone solved P2P routing at 100B+ nodes without DHT degradation?

#15
I feel bad that it seems like I'm really not in favor of this idea but I'm not entirely saying why. It's difficult to articulate.

Work in tech long enough and you'll encounter the idea of purity.

It is a highly useful concept in technology. It usually means that you've entered the domain of math -- that things have become elegant in their simplicity. Functions without side effects are commonly called "pure functions" for example becuase of the mathematically beautiful ways you can reason about them. A greeat deal of Computer Science in practice depends on the composability that comes from working with pure functions.

But there's a catch!! It's no mistake that "purity", the word used for the math-i-ness of a thing, is the same word used to describe religious extremism. Functionally pure systems only work if every function inside them is pure. One side-effect-having stinker deep, deep down there in the call tree ruins the whole illusion. Purity is necessarily all-encompassing and must seek to eradicate that which is impure so that only that reasoning can be restricted to that which is pure, and clean mathematical axioms can then be developed on which to base the elevated reasoning.

What I'm telling you in no uncertain terms is that Naziism was just such an exercise in the idea of purity as applied to human beings. All of the most horrific crimes against humanity: genocides, mass murders and the like, have been executed by people pursuing purity.

To hate people is, in a way, much kinder than to simply consider them to be completely outside the domain you care about. And because your goal is to reduce all of society and humanity to fit inside a domain with clean, machine-executable roles, you will only be able to fully satisfy your itch for purity once you have destroyed or fully excluded and marginalized all that does not conform.

I'm thankful then that I agree with others that your technical premise is a literal impossibility, a child's fantasy dispelled by first contact with the school of hard knocks.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone solved P2P routing at 100B+ nodes without DHT degradation?

#16

I feel bad that it seems like I'm really not in favor of this idea but I'm not entirely saying why. It's difficult to articulate. Work in tech long enough and you'll encounter the idea of purity. It is a highly useful concept in technology. It usually means that you've entered the domain of math -- that things have become elegant in their simplicity. Functions without side effects are commonly called "pure functions"…

The opposite of purity is resilience. Resilience is messiness. It's waste and death and competition and nations with different currencies and systems of measure and different languages and cultures. Pure systems are stiff and brittle. Resilient systems are supple and vital.

Resilient systems resist moving totally in any direction. The forces towards purity are as inevitable as is the growth of crystals, but it is roots and cells and creatures that took over the earth, not diamonds. Life finds a way.

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