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

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

#111

Post by erikpukinskis »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #109
erikpukinskis wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll know exactly how to start your business and you'll have lots of software around you that makes it very easy to not do things that will make nearby people want to kill you. You won't be able to just do things using your internal assumptions of "how normal people work". That way of thinking will end, outside of some traditionalist preserves. Social norms were necessary for basic economic and legal coordination b…

I think I prefer the alternative where a rule of law exists, and not everyone is presumed to be waiting to kill me when I fail to check their particular murder list on the blockchain.

The network of contingencies would be much richer than just a "murder list". For example, if anyone had a "murder list" with arbitrary people on it, and was killing people for no reason, then a whole body of people would step in and murder that person back in self defense.

You would be able to see at a glance the extent to which someone's values align or don't align with yours, so that you could decide how to act on them. If someone with a murder list started to approach you, you could very easily summon a mob of people to protect you.

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

#112

Post by erikpukinskis »

maxerickson wrote: post #85
erikpukinskis wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok! I thought you wanted to talk about it.

I do, but I'm interested in hearing about anything anybody thinks made an impact, not in arguing about what the rules are for making impact.

I think if one person was able to send money to another country without paying much of a fee, then it had an impact.

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

#113

Post by brilliantcode »

drcode wrote: post #88
brilliantcode wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This was an awful experience, but I learned a valuable lesson. When a group of people have exactly one answer to a problem, it's not even worth engaging with them. Even if they have learned to sound reasonable, their conclusion is predetermined. Evangelical fundamentalists of any sort are a waste of time. I think you've hit the nail on the head with this one. Cryptocoin communities have reached a religious cult sta…

> It's leaders are seen as infallible This line amuses me because I'm definitely a complete convert in the ethereum cult and I genuinely can't think of anything Vitalik has ever said that I don't agree with 100% [1]. but I can't help it, he's genuinely an insightful guy that happens to have sensible positions on most issues. [1] OK he said some dumb things about quantum computing in 2010 when he was like 16 years old…

Curious to know what aspect of ethereum are you excited about that current solutions aren't addressing?

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

#114

Post by heliumcraft »

acdha wrote: post #110
heliumcraft wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See zk-snarks, zcash, homomorphic encryption, etc.. Let's not make this an accidental strawman.. My second paragraph is referring to electronic and internet voting solutions vs decentralized/blockchain solutions and NOT traditional in person voting with independent observers, etc..

> See zk-snarks, zcash, homomorphic encryption, etc.. Can you specify precisely how those work to prevent this problem? Remember, this is harder than trying to prevent a third-party from identifying users because the system has to survive collusion by the user.

As in vote selling and coerced checking? probably can't, but then again, neither can centralized internet voting solutions. Even in normal voting, you can take a photo of the ballot to then prove who you voted for and get paid for it (and/or not get beaten).

Again this is not about perfect pie in the sky solution to all problems, just better digital voting solutions. As I said in the original comment, I don't think it will solve problems that have always been with us, but "It would certainly be nice to vote online yet anonymously, confident that I can see in a public secure ledger that my voted was counted as a intended and that no cheating or voting manipulation (==> ON THE LEDGER LEVEL <==) took place."

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

#115

Post by drcode »

brilliantcode wrote: post #113
drcode wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's leaders are seen as infallible This line amuses me because I'm definitely a complete convert in the ethereum cult and I genuinely can't think of anything Vitalik has ever said that I don't agree with 100% [1]. but I can't help it, he's genuinely an insightful guy that happens to have sensible positions on most issues. [1] OK he said some dumb things about quantum computing in 2010 when he was like 16 years old…

Curious to know what aspect of ethereum are you excited about that current solutions aren't addressing?

1. People being able to manage their own universal identity instead of using "Sign in with Facebook"

2. Transparent financial markets on arbitrary derivates (like etherdelta.com)

3. Eventually, people authoring and managing their own content, instead of acting as free labor to generate advertising revenue for Twitter/Facebook/etc

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

#116

Post by pavel_lishin »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #111
pavel_lishin wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I prefer the alternative where a rule of law exists, and not everyone is presumed to be waiting to kill me when I fail to check their particular murder list on the blockchain.

The network of contingencies would be much richer than just a "murder list". For example, if anyone had a "murder list" with arbitrary people on it, and was killing people for no reason, then a whole body of people would step in and murder that person back in self defense. You would be able to see at a glance the extent to which someone's values align or don't align with yours, so that you could decide how to act on…

> you could very easily summon a mob of people to protect you

That's a good idea.

But what if the mob is busy? We should probably have some people on stand-by all the time, like a rotating watch system. Or, better yet, we could just pay some people to be on watch all the time. Empower them to protect us. We could train them, too, and equip them.

Maybe there could be a telephone number to summon them, too. Something short and easy to remember. Maybe with three digits?

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

#117

Post by acdha »

heliumcraft wrote: post #114
acdha wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> See zk-snarks, zcash, homomorphic encryption, etc.. Can you specify precisely how those work to prevent this problem? Remember, this is harder than trying to prevent a third-party from identifying users because the system has to survive collusion by the user.

As in vote selling and coerced checking? probably can't, but then again, neither can centralized internet voting solutions. Even in normal voting, you can take a photo of the ballot to then prove who you voted for and get paid for it (and/or not get beaten). Again this is not about perfect pie in the sky solution to all problems, just better digital voting solutions. As I said in the original comment, I don't think i…

> As in vote selling and coerced checking? probably can't, but then again, neither can centralized internet voting solutions.

This is one of the reasons why we don't have internet voting: it's inferior to the status quo in critical areas. “blockchain” is not magic pixie dust which fixes that problem and the people backing it don't seem to have studied the problem very deeply, as evidenced by your repeated assertions that “the voting would using a cryptographic system to ensure confidentiality” before finally admitting that nobody has proposed a system resistant to a key class of attacks.

> Even in normal voting, you can take a photo of the ballot to then prove who you voted for and get paid for it (and/or not get beaten).

The difference is that it's harder to do that – or even illegal, see http://bigstory.ap.org/article/709338e5557a49e7ad5c68109ffec... – and it's not foolproof since you could take a picture of a ballot but void it and cast a different one, both of which make widespread coercion or selling unreliable.

> As I said in the original comment, I don't think it will solve problems that have always been with us

Simply asserting that it's always been with us doesn't change the fact that this is a problem which the current status quo was actively designed to prevent and that the proposed system makes that problem far worse.

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

#118

Post by heliumcraft »

acdha wrote: post #117
heliumcraft wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As in vote selling and coerced checking? probably can't, but then again, neither can centralized internet voting solutions. Even in normal voting, you can take a photo of the ballot to then prove who you voted for and get paid for it (and/or not get beaten). Again this is not about perfect pie in the sky solution to all problems, just better digital voting solutions. As I said in the original comment, I don't think i…

> As in vote selling and coerced checking? probably can't, but then again, neither can centralized internet voting solutions. This is one of the reasons why we don't have internet voting: it's inferior to the status quo in critical areas. “blockchain” is not magic pixie dust which fixes that problem and the people backing it don't seem to have studied the problem very deeply, as evidenced by your repeated assertions…

The whole discussion was NOT about the status quo traditional voting vs blockchain, It was about Internet voting in regards to centralized solutions vs decentralized/blockchain solutions. They both share SOME similar problems, but the blockchain is a improvement in many regards albeit not a perfect one. There is still a lot of open problems in regards to this. For the moment though, in person voting it's still better.

The day might come though that internet voting will be widespread. When that day comes I rather have a decentralized solution solution than a centralized one that can be easily manipulated.

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

#119

Post by sctb »

harryh wrote: post #64
olalonde wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A pretty big percentage of atheists have replaced religion with environmentalism. The narrative is basically the same: We used to live in paradise but then man was corrupted and if we don't repent fast enough we'll be doomed to eternal damnation.

Arguments are easy when you can place whatever concepts you like in another's head, but we ask that comments stay civil and substantive on Hacker News.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#120

Post by Crespyl »

visarga wrote: post #96
bbctol wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the weakness that causes people to take control of the Wild West isn't counterfeiting, it's just the inevitable end result of the chaos. The issue isn't fraud, it's that even people accumulating money honestly turns harmful over time; you acquire money because you're good at business, you use that money to buy out competitors, you pass that money on to your children as is your right, your children use it to conso…

So redistribution of money is necessary to prevent the accumulation of power. Blockchain is trying to do the same thing essentially - not allowing a single actor to operate more than 50% of the computing power. When power concentrates too much, the system breaks down.

And we already can seen bitcoin mining pools in China that collectively approach or exceed 50%. It's almost impossible to avoid concentration of power in any system that provides value to power-holders.
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