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Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana (1995)

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Re: Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana (1995)

#41

Post by Retra »

SilasX wrote: post #31
n7c3c1 wrote: post #8

I wonder what the equivalent of this is today. What are people saying will NEVER happen? Maybe self-driving cars?

Passing the Turing Test. Understanding consciousness.[1] Communicating human values to a computer so that it doesn't produce absurd judgments. VR simulations indistinguishable from reality. [1] Edit: people have different standards for this, of course, but something like, "where have a global, working model of a large domain in which predictions of consciousness aren't a special case, and in which people who study it…

Computers that can make ethical, legal, and moral decisions. Or ones that can do all three better than humans can.

Re: Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana (1995)

#42

Post by andreasvc »

Retra wrote: post #41
SilasX wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passing the Turing Test. Understanding consciousness.[1] Communicating human values to a computer so that it doesn't produce absurd judgments. VR simulations indistinguishable from reality. [1] Edit: people have different standards for this, of course, but something like, "where have a global, working model of a large domain in which predictions of consciousness aren't a special case, and in which people who study it…

Computers that can make ethical, legal, and moral decisions. Or ones that can do all three better than humans can.

Sure computers can make such decisions, be it with /dev/random or some sophisticated classifier. But we'd want justifications, and it's difficult to define what that entails. Moreover, what does it mean for a computer to be "better" at this than humans? The whole problem is ill defined.

Re: Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana (1995)

#43

Post by Retra »

andreasvc wrote: post #42
Retra wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers that can make ethical, legal, and moral decisions. Or ones that can do all three better than humans can.

Sure computers can make such decisions, be it with /dev/random or some sophisticated classifier. But we'd want justifications, and it's difficult to define what that entails. Moreover, what does it mean for a computer to be "better" at this than humans? The whole problem is ill defined.

Yes, it is ill defined right now. Are you willing to bet that it can't be properly defined? Or even that is currently is properly defined, and you just haven't been exposed to the definition?

Re: Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana (1995)

#44

Post by gnaritas »

rhino369 wrote: post #26
gnaritas wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My viewpoint is that things like Bitcoin are little more than cryptographically engineered Monopoly Money. Exactly like USD and all other first world currencies. Bitcoin is simply the next step in money.

It's not a next step because the US dollar is monopoly money forced on you by the government. Also it's supply is controlled to keep the value steady. Bitcoin has nobody forcing you into using it and nobody controls the price. Bitcoins are just bits on a ledger that maybe someone will buy from you tomorrow, maybe. Even in the niche roles where bitcoin is superior to bank accounts, credit cards, and cash, there is not…

> there is nothing beyond momentum keeping people from switching to another type of cyptocurrency. That's why it's monopoly money.

That statement demonstrates you don't understand cyptocurrency at all. You're absolutely wrong, the difference between them is security, and that's something people value. And no, you can't trivially just substitute another crypto in place of bitcoin, other cryptos have neither the liquidity nor the security (which comes from the size of the network) to effectively move around the amount of money bitcoin can move around.

> I don't think the networking effects are that strong for bitcoin

Which means flatly you don't understand how cryptos work; no one who does would make that statement.

Re: Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana (1995)

#45

Post by gnaritas »

Frondo wrote: post #38
gnaritas wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My viewpoint is that things like Bitcoin are little more than cryptographically engineered Monopoly Money. Exactly like USD and all other first world currencies. Bitcoin is simply the next step in money.

It's not the next step because it's anti-democratic. It's a step away from democratic government engagement in the money of a country. Bitcoin encodes a lot of economic assumptions and values into its design, but there's no practical way for the people affected by those decisions to work to change them, unlike money backed by a democratic government. I don't need to know how to code to vote in the regular elections t…

> It's not the next step because it's anti-democratic.

As that statement is wrong, so is everything else that follows. Democracy is built into the protocol, it is the very core of how bitcoin works.

Re: Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana (1995)

#46

Post by ricksplat »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #27

Priceless! Cliff would not doubt have a good laugh at what he got wrong. I was involved in a discussion this weekend that had a similar tone around people becoming too future aware. Specifically when you know a lot about the underlying technology (as Cliff does (and did) about networking) you tend to extrapolate what you know, but when you don't know anything about the underlying technology you tend to extrapolate yo…

Agree on education - it's not just the teacher, it's also about being part of an actual class - the social dimension if you will - you learn as much from your classmates as you do from your teachers and indeed as many opportunities arise through the network you develop there too. Another benefit is that being part of a herd forces you to keep moving briskly through the material without getting to stuck on any one thing. There is a lot to be said too for the social support that is available when you have direct access to teachers and classmates. Doing any challenging course of learning is sufficiently taxing in this regard. I do see many online and distance learning approaches trying to tackle some of these confounding "emotional" aspects to education but I don't think they're quite there yet.

Re: Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana (1995)

#47

Post by andreasvc »

Retra wrote: post #43
andreasvc wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure computers can make such decisions, be it with /dev/random or some sophisticated classifier. But we'd want justifications, and it's difficult to define what that entails. Moreover, what does it mean for a computer to be "better" at this than humans? The whole problem is ill defined.

Yes, it is ill defined right now . Are you willing to bet that it can't be properly defined? Or even that is currently is properly defined, and you just haven't been exposed to the definition?

I am saying it's not a technological problem, it's a social problem.

Re: Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana (1995)

#48

Post by Retra »

andreasvc wrote: post #47
Retra wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is ill defined right now . Are you willing to bet that it can't be properly defined? Or even that is currently is properly defined, and you just haven't been exposed to the definition?

I am saying it's not a technological problem, it's a social problem.

You're certainly not saying anything useful.

I have personally made some headway on this problem, and I wouldn't be saying it was possible if I hadn't. Your inability to find a workable framework is more evidence to me of your lack of imagination than it is that the problem is fundamentally unsolvable. There's a finite number of consistent models to explore, and one of them will give us what we want.

It doesn't matter if you want to call that a technological problem or a social problem; the world isn't actually divided in those terms. So saying "social problems" strikes me as starting with a shitty model of what we are capable of. It's also just corporate-talk and there's no reason to expect it to be valid in this domain. The best that distinction has ever done is prime somebody to employ an actual problem solving technique.

Re: Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana (1995)

#49

Post by Frondo »

gnaritas wrote: post #45
Frondo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the next step because it's anti-democratic. It's a step away from democratic government engagement in the money of a country. Bitcoin encodes a lot of economic assumptions and values into its design, but there's no practical way for the people affected by those decisions to work to change them, unlike money backed by a democratic government. I don't need to know how to code to vote in the regular elections t…

> It's not the next step because it's anti-democratic. As that statement is wrong, so is everything else that follows. Democracy is built into the protocol, it is the very core of how bitcoin works.

Bitcoin is absolutely anti-democratic. There's no way for users to engage with the policy decisions implied in the design.

No bitcoin advocate has ever said anything about my point other than "Just code up your alternative and get 50% of the network to adopt it," which does not mesh with any definition of democratic engagement anywhere in history, and doesn't even make sense in the context of democratic governance.

I'll just note that you didn't even say that, you just said "yes it is! yes it is so democratic!" ... which, of course, it isn't, at all.

Re: Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana (1995)

#50

Post by andreasvc »

Retra wrote: post #48
andreasvc wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am saying it's not a technological problem, it's a social problem.

You're certainly not saying anything useful . I have personally made some headway on this problem, and I wouldn't be saying it was possible if I hadn't. Your inability to find a workable framework is more evidence to me of your lack of imagination than it is that the problem is fundamentally unsolvable. There's a finite number of consistent models to explore, and one of them will give us what we want. It doesn't matt…

Are we talking about the same thing? You have made a definition of morality that philosophers and other people will all agree on? Where do you get this "finite number of consistent models" from?
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