What Urbit is • Hacker News Board

Re: What Urbit is

#201

Post by ZenoArrow » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 7:42 AM UTC

mixedCase wrote: post #187

ksrm wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you seriously not see how someone discussing how good a slave you would make is (at the very least) 'unwelcoming'?

Was that on Urbit's homepage? The docs? The IRC? The subreddit? Over e-mail? Was it something like "yeah it is a functional system... hey have I mentioned how much potential you have for whenever you feel like dedicating your life to slavery?" ...or was it just the guy rambling on a blog of his under a pen name? It's pretty obvious to anyone that the guy's views are obscenely offensive, but if the guy is strictly pro…

> "It's pretty obvious to anyone that the guy's views are obscenely offensive"

Is it? From what I've seen so far all the controversy has come from taking statements out of context.

However, I take your main point that it doesn't need to impact on Urbit.

Re: What Urbit is

#202

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 7:50 AM UTC

zardgiv wrote: post #120

mordocai wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off, in my opinion I don't really care what anyone thinks. I care about what they do and what they encourage other people to do (I can't find anything about moldbug treating anyone in any negative fashion nor encouraging others to do so). However, in the context of racist thoughts: 1. (Least bad, though still racist/bad) Believing that other ethnic groups are "better" or "superior" rather than "different". So i…

Under point 1, a belief that some ethnic groups are less intelligent than cattle, but believing that it is not a negative trait, would not be racist? I'd classify that as a racist belief, wouldn't you?

[deleted]

Re: What Urbit is

#203

Post by zardgiv » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 7:58 AM UTC

kaid wrote: post #185

zardgiv wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely silly. Just to take it to absurdity, and I'm not claiming Moldbug is a member of the Nazi party, but society would not collapse if we shunned people who espoused, for example, the ideals of Hitler and the Nazi party.

The shunning policy had done quite contrary consequences. The Lambdaconf campaign drew a lot of attention to the very person they want to no-platform, more and more people begin to search the identity Curtis Yarvin/Moldbug, even come to read his articles and try to interpret his ideologies, no matter whether they gonna protest or support. P.S. the nazi party was a frequent practitioner of this shunning policy.

Please try to follow the conversation. I was addressing the claim that shunning certain beliefs would cause society to collapse, and I've clearly demonstrated that to be false. Not sure how what you've ranted about here ties into that.

Re: What Urbit is

#204

Post by TruthAndDare » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 9:12 AM UTC

chriswait wrote: post #175

TruthAndDare wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> his belief that some ethnic groups are genetically better slaves I'm curious, do you take that to speak well or ill about the ethnic groups in question?

It's a shame you were downvoted here, you're asking a pretty interesting question.

Yeah, I mean, being strong as an ox would mean both that your abilities are superior to those of others and that you would make for a useful slave.

Re: What Urbit is

#205

Post by cronjobber » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 9:32 AM UTC

> For example, your urbit runs a single shopping app, which downloads catalogs and uploads orders. This app is one store which sells everything in the world, with a salesman who's 100% on your side and always has the best price.

That's written under the heading "The Urbit future". I presume that it is meant to describe how things would pan out if Urbit is a success.

But how is this vision enforced... or even made likely? Why would powerful monopolies like Amazon submit to this, instead of supplying an app specifically and exclusively for shopping at Amazon?

Re: What Urbit is

#206

Post by kaid » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 9:50 AM UTC

zardgiv wrote: post #203

kaid wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shunning policy had done quite contrary consequences. The Lambdaconf campaign drew a lot of attention to the very person they want to no-platform, more and more people begin to search the identity Curtis Yarvin/Moldbug, even come to read his articles and try to interpret his ideologies, no matter whether they gonna protest or support. P.S. the nazi party was a frequent practitioner of this shunning policy.

Please try to follow the conversation. I was addressing the claim that shunning certain beliefs would cause society to collapse, and I've clearly demonstrated that to be false. Not sure how what you've ranted about here ties into that.

In an individualist perspective, I agree with you, shunning won't cause society to collapse.

But when people advocating it to an aggressive level-extensively campaigning the rejection of a certain person at social scale, this is dangerous and smells like politics, and was exactly the way how hitler shunned the jews.

Re: What Urbit is

#207

Post by gjm11 » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 10:05 AM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #90

gjm11 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone can say they aren't an outspoken advocate for slavery. Take a look at this http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/why-c... and see whether you find it plausible to say that the author is not an outspoken advocate for slavery.

I have just taken a look at the blog post you linked to. If you've read that and come to the conclusion that the author is a racist, I can explain what you've missed in one word: intent. The author is exploring ideas. The early parts of the blog post set this exploratory tone quite clearly by framing Carlyle not as someone with absolute moral authority, but as an original thinker, a counterbalance to his time and our…

I didn't say anything about racism. I said that that blog post seems like sufficient grounds to call the author an "outspoken advocate of slavery" even if when that becomes inconvenient for him he says he isn't one.

And yes, he frames what he says as an exploration of Carlyle's ideas, but he's not just saying "Carlyle said this; isn't that interesting"; he's presenting his own opinions too.

As for whether believing that white people are (statistically, on balance) cleverer than black people makes you a "racist" -- which, again, was not what I was referring to above: it's really a question about the definition of "racist", and disputes over definitions tend to be unfruitful. For what it's worth, I would not call anyone a racist merely for believing that proposition.

Re: What Urbit is

#208

Post by dustingetz » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 11:48 AM UTC

lisper wrote: post #191

state wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sorry, I didn't recognize your handle. No problem. Just, you know, hi! I'm actually happy to pick this thread up. I remember really enjoying the last discussion. As (I think) we discussed last time I basically have two views: - Urbit actually works . Like, I actually build stuff on top of it. That's really the layer I'm most interested in. If it were built in Lisp, well, I probably wouldn't know the difference. I'm…

> I remember really enjoying the last discussion. Very happy to hear that. > I'm not sure I'm able to understand the implicit criticism at the user level. Let me make the criticism explicit then: inventing a new language is not hard. People do it all the time. It's an elementary exercise. However, inventing a good new language, i.e. one that actually advances the state of the art and provides a substantial advantage…

Forgive my ignorance, but a typed functional system all the way down to machine is a huge departure from today's languages built on top of imperative dynamic machines, and a huge advantage in building typed functional systems, isn't it? I would go so far as to say that without a new machine and new languages designed for it, the abstraction will always leak. Which is why our software sucks today.

Re: What Urbit is

#209

Post by kefka » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 12:47 PM UTC

yarvin9 wrote: post #180

Gaelan wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are eight billion people in the world. There are 4 billion possible planets. What is your plan for when urbit takes off and reaches internet-scale? BTW, ~bitret-worwyd here. ;)

~bitret, I remember you from a while back! A planet is like a car -- it's not a toy, it's a tool for a responsible grownup. There are about 4 billion adults in the world. And not all of them are even Internet users. Of course, the population keeps growing. Eventually either people have to learn to share, or the price will go up, or humanity will learn how to stop expanding exponentially. Think of a planet as a unit o…

> A planet is like a car -- it's not a toy, it's a tool for a responsible grownup. There are about 4 billion adults in the world. And not all of them are even Internet users.

There's a reason why the IETF decided to switch to 2^128 for IP6. Mainly, because there are more computers and devices that need addressing than IP4 can handle.

I have to question the design of Urbit why you chose to go with 2^32 addressing space?

> Of course, the population keeps growing. Eventually either people have to learn to share, or the price will go up, or humanity will learn how to stop expanding exponentially.

Again, the future is "Pay to Play", just like Ethereum? And, is that a population control argument? How would you propose to "stop expanding exponentially"? Chinese method? Ender's Game method, or something else unsavory?

> Think of a planet as a unit of autonomy and reputation, not of personality. The global supply of autonomy is 2^32 units. That's not perfect in any sense, but if the supply is infinite the network is ungovernable, and the value of each unit is zero.

Ah, so you are the "governor", hence why it must be governed? This is literally artificial scarcity on something that could easily have been near infinite

> It's also an improvement on a world in which there's one unit of autonomy, and its name is Mark Zuckerberg. Urbit does a lot for digital freedom, but we're not in the miracle business here. No one can do infinity for digital freedom.

So switching from one master to another makes better "freedom"? I get being against walled gardens. I'm against them as well. But you make no point why Urbit isn't just another walled garden (using funny language to hide behind it no less) with you at the helm.

Re: What Urbit is

#210

Post by yebyen » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 1:52 PM UTC

kefka wrote: post #209

yarvin9 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~bitret, I remember you from a while back! A planet is like a car -- it's not a toy, it's a tool for a responsible grownup. There are about 4 billion adults in the world. And not all of them are even Internet users. Of course, the population keeps growing. Eventually either people have to learn to share, or the price will go up, or humanity will learn how to stop expanding exponentially. Think of a planet as a unit o…

> A planet is like a car -- it's not a toy, it's a tool for a responsible grownup. There are about 4 billion adults in the world. And not all of them are even Internet users. There's a reason why the IETF decided to switch to 2^128 for IP6. Mainly, because there are more computers and devices that need addressing than IP4 can handle. I have to question the design of Urbit why you chose to go with 2^32 addressing spac…

> I have to question the design of Urbit why you chose to go with 2^32 addressing space?

They haven't. They went with base 256, for easier recognition of 32-bit (and 16-bit, and 8-bit) numbers. You can get a 2^128 identity or a 2^32 identity (or others.)

The fact that 64-bit numbers (like ~novfes-lodzod-sibfes-talzod) in Urbit's base 256 are twice as long as 32-bit numbers (~sibfes-talzod) which are twice as long as 16-bit numbers (~dalryp) and down to 8-bit numbers, which are the most memorable and highly coveted (disclosure: you're looking at a comment written by ~del, aka Hex number 0x25) is something between a feature of Urbit's networking stack, and an unavoidable consequence of doing math and dividing things up between persons that are remote from each other, therefore each needing addresses to be identifiable.

Identities that are made of 128-bit numbers are free, and essentially unlimited. They are basically public key hashes and the risk of a collision is sufficiently low that there is no need for them to be generated by a single authority and centrally assigned. (Note that this does not necessarily scale to the population of the earth and beyond as a solution to addressing graph nodes and efficiently routing traffic between them.) Identities that are made of shorter numbers are limited in number and assigned hierarchically; even if there are a boat-load of 64-bit numbers, it's not half as many, it's ½^64 times as many. Certainly there are more 64-bit numbers than humans on Earth today, or for the foreseeable future.

Whether you consider this to be more problem or solution will probably depend a lot on which side of the spam-wars you find yourself on. Currently there is no Urbit software or infrastructure that I am aware of that algorithmically discriminates against one kind of numbers or another.

You won't expect one authority to differentiate each of 8-billion humans and make sure that each one is granted a separate identity (but not more than one), will you? How about 256 such leaders? Still seems far-fetched, doesn't it... especially given the difficulty of coordinating 256 separate leaders. 65536 very smart individuals probably also cannot be expected to coordinate the identities of the rest of the humans in the world. It would be gargantuan undertaking just handling it when some of these leader-folks have forgotten or lost their passwords (and potentially disastrous for the 0.0015% of the world's population under their charge.)

64 bits of hierarchical ID space is enough for every 32-bit identity (planet) to individually dole out as many 64-bit numbers (moons) as there were 32-bit numbers to begin with. Urbit takes advantage of this roughly to make scaling the network's identity framework to rather immense proportions, happen at least a bit more naturally.

If your 32-bit leader gives a lot of 64-bit IDs to people that turn out to be spammers, you run the risk of being lumped in with those spammers by algorithmic processes. Imagine such a process that tries to discriminate against spammers and keep them from spamming everyone who is known on the whole network, at any scale. It's not a simple proposition, at all!