Is Blockchain Technology Going to Disrupt Our Political System: We Hope So • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Blockchain Technology Going to Disrupt Our Political System: We Hope So

#41

Post by zilchers » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 4:57 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #12

As usual, I have little idea what the author means by "blockchain". If he means a bitcoin-like blockchain based on proof of work, it is completely overkill, as there is no problem in forking and merging vote logs if everything is authenticated and public enough. But anyway, it completely ignores the elephant in the room. Get an electronic voting system that is both anonymous, verifiable, and free of voting coercion,…

One of the issues with blockchain solutions in general is they usually DON'T mean proof of work. It's generally a proof of stake solution, which is honestly not that much different than some sort of certificate based system.

Re: Is Blockchain Technology Going to Disrupt Our Political System: We Hope So

#42

Post by olalonde » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 4:59 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #16

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> decline of nationalism and populism in the US Did you just put nationalism in a good light by comparing it with classism? First of all, the two are not necessarily opposed and often go together. Also this is a false dilemma. Humans can live without a group identity or identify as living beings instead of being a "proud $skin_color $religion $nationality $gender". It's not far-fetched to say that this could prevent…

I don't think human beings can live without group identity. I grew up in a DC suburb full of "open minded" cosmopolitan people. Group identity, along economic, political, and educational lines, was intense. People were vicious in demeaning "the dumb uneducated rednecks that live in flyover country." Group identity was asserted by having the right education, belonging to the right political party, having the right pro…

That used to be a common argument against atheism but I think it's been largely debunked over time (e.g. people can live without religion and won't necessarily replace it with something worse). There's also a distinction to be made between voluntary association through shared interests (e.g. on Hacker News) versus a largely irrational allegiance towards a nation state (which is not usually a deliberate decision but a product of the birth lottery).

I do agree that the modern welfare state would likely be difficult to maintain without national identity.

Re: Is Blockchain Technology Going to Disrupt Our Political System: We Hope So

#43

Post by tmaly » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 4:59 PM UTC

I would like to see blochain or maybe just git replace the bill writing process. It would be nice to know who contributed what part to a 2000 page bill

Re: Is Blockchain Technology Going to Disrupt Our Political System: We Hope So

#44

Post by module0000 » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 5:02 PM UTC

Calls to use blockchain to solve every problem are comical. The people who make those calls have no concept of what a blockchain is, how it works, and will stare dumbfounded if asked "what exactly is a coprime number"?

Instead of quantum computing solving all our problems, the new shiny red ball is blockchain.

Re: Is Blockchain Technology Going to Disrupt Our Political System: We Hope So

#45

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 5:04 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #39

chrispeel wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counter example to your implication that blockchain enthusiasts are fanatics, I offer my opinion that centralized tech is the right choice in many cases. For context, I'm the organizer of the Silicon Valley Ethereum meetup[1] and am hopeful that blockchains and related distributed technology will have a big impact on society. Many compare the rise of blockchain tech to the rise of the Internet; I think blockchai…

Are there really any successes beyond Bitcoin? (which I would call a qualified success, I think it is handy for a small group of people more than it is really having any impact on society)

[deleted]

Re: Is Blockchain Technology Going to Disrupt Our Political System: We Hope So

#46

Post by nkkar » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 5:05 PM UTC

chrispeel wrote: post #32

wpietri wrote: post #22

For a period as a child, I was thrown in among the happy-clappy sort of evangelical Christian [1] whose answer to every problem was, "Jesus can help you with that!" No money? Pray to Jesus. Sick? Pray to Jesus. Husband beating you? Pray to Jesus. Not sure if Jesus is real or just Santa Claus for adults? Pray to Jesus! This was an awful experience, but I learned a valuable lesson. When a group of people have exactly o…

As a counter example to your implication that blockchain enthusiasts are fanatics, I offer my opinion that centralized tech is the right choice in many cases. For context, I'm the organizer of the Silicon Valley Ethereum meetup[1] and am hopeful that blockchains and related distributed technology will have a big impact on society. Many compare the rise of blockchain tech to the rise of the Internet; I think blockchai…

I see this timeline comparison very often and it seems to me very hand wavy. Sure, it's a nice narrative, but I don't see any real reasons why this 'pattern' from 70s to 00s should repeat itself. We're talking 30 odd years here. That we got here because of a series of logical steps is already quite a statement without extending it to the future! (I borrow Nassim's Black Swan perspective here) In hindsight it's easy to say that this happened because of that, and so on, and I'm not sure this automagically extends to blockchain related things. If we're set on talking about 5 to 25yrs, could you share your vision sans historical comparison? Otherwise, or additionally, could you share your opinion on what the more immediate potential wins of bitcoin/ethereum et al are?

Re: Is Blockchain Technology Going to Disrupt Our Political System: We Hope So

#47

Post by erikpukinskis » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 5:06 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #39

chrispeel wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counter example to your implication that blockchain enthusiasts are fanatics, I offer my opinion that centralized tech is the right choice in many cases. For context, I'm the organizer of the Silicon Valley Ethereum meetup[1] and am hopeful that blockchains and related distributed technology will have a big impact on society. Many compare the rise of blockchain tech to the rise of the Internet; I think blockchai…

Are there really any successes beyond Bitcoin? (which I would call a qualified success, I think it is handy for a small group of people more than it is really having any impact on society)

How do you measure impact on society?

Re: Is Blockchain Technology Going to Disrupt Our Political System: We Hope So

#48

Post by drcode » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 5:07 PM UTC

aaron-lebo wrote: post #6

I feel like the extreme decentralization people just ignore human nature which history has revealed time and time again. The wild west no existing power structure idea is great until some entity inevitably comes along and controls it and its not so decentralized anymore. Decentralization exists when a small enough community can be self-policing and actors have noble goals. That all changes when you get a single bad a…

> decentralization exists when a small enough community can be self-policing and actors have noble goals.

Well, the idea is to build decentralized systems that are self-policing in an automated fashion, such as with smart contracts. The thought is that previous efforts failed because the bookkeeping involved in decentralization is prohibitive without such automation.

Admittedly, a lot of work remains to prove this can work in practice.

Re: Is Blockchain Technology Going to Disrupt Our Political System: We Hope So

#49

Post by lkrubner » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 5:07 PM UTC

If people really want to see distributed tech, then shouldn't there be a world wide push for RINA, instead of the Internet? Many of the problems we struggle against are issues with IP/TCP or IP/UDP. If we could get rid of the Internet, and switch the world to RINA, then some of these arguments would disappear, as they would be assumed by the world wide communications infrastructure.

http://www.martingeddes.com/think-tank/network-architecture-...

Re: Is Blockchain Technology Going to Disrupt Our Political System: We Hope So

#50

Post by heliumcraft » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 5:08 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #39

chrispeel wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counter example to your implication that blockchain enthusiasts are fanatics, I offer my opinion that centralized tech is the right choice in many cases. For context, I'm the organizer of the Silicon Valley Ethereum meetup[1] and am hopeful that blockchains and related distributed technology will have a big impact on society. Many compare the rise of blockchain tech to the rise of the Internet; I think blockchai…

Are there really any successes beyond Bitcoin? (which I would call a qualified success, I think it is handy for a small group of people more than it is really having any impact on society)

IMO It's premature to look for successes at this stage (try 5 years from now), there is a lot that needs to be done in the space (namely in terms of scalability) before it can be ready for general use. Only recently the decentralized storage projects are coming into some sort of Beta (Ethereum's Swarm, Storj, Maidsafe, IPFS, etc..), distributed computing projects such as golem are just getting started, and more work is still in progress to make blockchains more practical, sharding, speed, etc..