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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)

#51

Post by gnaritas »

Frondo wrote: post #49
gnaritas wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Bitcoin is a consensus network, to call that anti-democratic is just absolutely absurd. It is the very definition of a simple democracy, whoever controls 51% of the network wins.

> 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

Nonsense, winning in any democracy requires gaining the support of the majority. If your idea has merit, it'll be adopted when the majority of of the network agrees it has merit by adopting it.

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

#52

Post by Frondo »

gnaritas wrote: post #51
Frondo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Bitcoin is a consensus network, to call that anti-democratic is just absolutely absurd. It is the very definition of a simple democracy, whoever controls 51% of the network wins. > 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 Nonsense, winning in any democracy requires gaining the support of the majority. If…

Thanks for trying, but that's not democracy.

"You have to code, and then you have to get your changes distributed to more than half the world" fits no definition of democratic governance ever. The two are so far removed, I'm having trouble really understanding how you can conflate the two.

But I'll be charitable, and try and make sense of it, because you seem genuine (and genuinely confused).... I guess if you take a concept like "majority rules" and interpret it to its most shallow, then you can bend what you just described up there into a kind of democracy, but democracy isn't actually that shallow an idea.

It's about the distribution of political power to the people, not just "majority rules". That's why people get to vote on things that influence them, even where they're not subject-matter experts. Your typical bitcoin user is affected by Bitcoin design decisions, but has no say in them and no means to change them.

No, "just code it and get it adopted by 51% of the network" doesn't count. That's a far, far, far higher barrier to participation than a poll tax or a literacy test, and those have been dismissed long ago as crude methods of taking democratic power away from the people.

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

#53

Post by gnaritas »

Frondo wrote: post #52
gnaritas wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is a consensus network, to call that anti-democratic is just absolutely absurd. It is the very definition of a simple democracy, whoever controls 51% of the network wins. > 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 Nonsense, winning in any democracy requires gaining the support of the majority. If…

Thanks for trying, but that's not democracy. "You have to code, and then you have to get your changes distributed to more than half the world" fits no definition of democratic governance ever. The two are so far removed, I'm having trouble really understanding how you can conflate the two. But I'll be charitable, and try and make sense of it, because you seem genuine (and genuinely confused).... I guess if you take a…

> "You have to code, and then you have to get your changes distributed to more than half the world" fits no definition of democratic governance ever.

You don't have to code. You have to have an idea worth being coded and make enough people care that someone does it, this is no different than implementing any other idea in any kind of democracy. It's called lobbying and getting support and under no democracy is getting change into place free of effort.

It doesn't look like democracy to you because you don't want it to, nothing more nothing less, your mind is closed and you're only looking for excuses to dismiss it.

And yes, it is democracy, as a decentralized ledger, it only changes when the network by a majority agrees the change is acceptable. Choosing which split of a network to follow is voting, if your personal definition of democracy claims this isn't democracy, then your definition is wrong. It is democratic to the core, there is by definition no central authority, change happens only by mass approval.

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

#54

Post by Retra »

andreasvc wrote: post #50
Retra wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>You have made a definition of morality that philosophers and other people will all agree on?

No, I have one that works. I really don't care what any philosophers have to say about it. And if you think everyone has to agree to something before it can be useful, then I can see why you'd think this is a social problem.

>Where do you get this "finite number of consistent models" from?

There's a finite number of people, a finite number of configurations their brains have been in, and thus a finite number of models provided by those configurations.

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

#55

Post by andreasvc »

Retra wrote: post #54
andreasvc wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>You have made a definition of morality that philosophers and other people will all agree on? No, I have one that works. I really don't care what any philosophers have to say about it. And if you think everyone has to agree to something before it can be useful, then I can see why you'd think this is a social problem. >Where do you get this "finite number of consistent models" from? There's a finite number of people,…

Again, I could hand-wavingly claim that /dev/random "works". What does "one that works" mean? You may not care for philosophers, but making claims about morality is definitely within their territory, plus it's a philosophical claim in itself to state that philosophy is not relevant.

The argument about finite brain configurations is not compelling. There's no reason why only brain states that have occurred would be relevant. Morality deals with hypotheticals and counterfactuals: what would be the moral judgment in this or that situation. I think it would be uncontroversial to claim that there are an infinity of such hypothetical situations, and each model of morality can deal with them differently, ergo you get an infinity of possible models.

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

#56

Post by Retra »

andreasvc wrote: post #55
Retra wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You have made a definition of morality that philosophers and other people will all agree on? No, I have one that works. I really don't care what any philosophers have to say about it. And if you think everyone has to agree to something before it can be useful, then I can see why you'd think this is a social problem. >Where do you get this "finite number of consistent models" from? There's a finite number of people,…

Again, I could hand-wavingly claim that /dev/random "works". What does "one that works" mean? You may not care for philosophers, but making claims about morality is definitely within their territory, plus it's a philosophical claim in itself to state that philosophy is not relevant. The argument about finite brain configurations is not compelling. There's no reason why only brain states that have occurred would be re…

I wouldn't claim that philosophy is not relevant, I would claim that our current batch of philosophers are. I'm a philosopher in as much a sense as it matters to this question, and I don't need others' approval to reach a conclusion. I'm not trying to run a popularity contest, after all.

>What does "one that works" mean?

It means it is both consistent with reality and useful.

>There's no reason why only brain states that have occurred would be relevant.

The reason those ones are relevant is because those are the only ones available for analysis. Those are the brains that determine what "human" currently means. We could evolve into toads in 100B years, but you'd hardly aspire to create a toad brain and call it a good human brain.

>I think it would be uncontroversial to claim that there are an infinity of such hypothetical situations, and each model of morality can deal with them differently, ergo you get an infinity of possible models.

You are confusing the multitude of possible moralities with the multitude of counterfactuals they model. More importantly, you or forgetting that we are only concerned with relevant moralities and relevant counterfactuals, and that we have to make our developments incrementally, and in finite time, which massively constrains the possibilities.

There are an infinite number of ways to skin a cat, but that doesn't mean we can't have a useful notion of the "right way" to do it.

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