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Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?

blog.mollywhite.net

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Re: Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?

#51

Post by nonrandomstring »

erik_seaberg wrote: post #36
nonrandomstring wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some good points. I think a major problem is with the word "identity", is that there are always (at least two) meanings that may or may not intersect. We have self-regarding identities and other-regarding identities. The set of things we define about ourselves that includes beliefs, intentions, secrets and so on may be (for secrets must be) disjoint from the set of things others attribute to us, reputation, observed…

> right to be forgotten 1984 had a pretty good argument why it’s dystopian to tell people they are not allowed to remember or continue believing something.

> 1984 had a pretty good argument why it’s dystopian to tell people they are not allowed to remember or continue believing something.

Its a good book. It should also be tempered with a little Jane Austen, about the tyranny of unshakable reputation. My take is it's the "telling people what they are allowed to do" part that is dystopian. To that extent all laws are dystopian. However we do it all the time and obtain great wider benefit. For example, bad money choices might lead someone into insoluble debt, they declare bankruptcy, and seven years later that is deleted from public records so they can make a fresh start. In reality a "right to be forgotten" is more of a right to be forgiven. Asking that people forgive and discount past wrongs is not the same as poisoning and torturing them in a basement until their minds are wiped, as in some demonic MK-UTLTRA shitshow.

Re: Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?

#52

Post by danuker »

imwillofficial wrote: post #45
erik_seaberg wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> right to be forgotten 1984 had a pretty good argument why it’s dystopian to tell people they are not allowed to remember or continue believing something.

I think the right to be forgotten applies to digital records, I might be missing the context here though.

Digital records are an extension of the mind.

Re: Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?

#53

Post by shapefrog »

dropnerd wrote: post #39
TheCowboy wrote: post #32

I feel like the "Anonymity [is] central to the crypto world." ship sailed a long time ago. It was one of the original promises of Bitcoin but it is literally a public database. It's also possible that a society with more transparency regarding financial transactions is the better option long-term, but surrendering the dream of anonymity is a tough one for proponents.

pseudonymity is a reasonable compromise.

Facebook also stores all your data with the index key being a 64 character string.

A reasonable compromise, protecting people indeed.

Re: Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?

#54

Post by nonrandomstring »

rglullis wrote: post #48

From a first read, the following problems I see in this critique: - The trilemmas do not need to be solved . They just need to be acknowledged when you are designing your application so that people can understand the types of trade-offs being made. In cases where sybil-resistance is not a requirement, you can build a system that gives you privacy and decentralization. When sybil-resistance is required, you just need…

Everything you say is very reasonable until:

> No one is being forced to adopt a system just because it is now possible to do it on a blockchain, and we do not need to destroy the current systems if they work well - or at least if they work better than any alternative. There will be even plenty of cases where the status quo is totally fine.

which is probably true in reality, but still something I'd like to challenge.

Every technology that ends up being totalitarian/expansive starts out with "Nobody is being forced to....". I am sure when automobiles first appeared it seemed obvious that "nobody is being forced to drive them", and yet the other day a poster here was absolutely indignant with me for suggesting it might be possible not to have one.

I read hundreds if student essays that literally begin with the line:

"Today, life without the internet would be impossible."

You're right, many (maybe most) technologies do reach a healthy balance with alternatives and legacy systems. But certain "infrastructural" technologies tend to expand aggressively. I think money systems are among them, at least if the number of times I have heard someone say "cashless society seems inevitable" is any guide.

(Though often, when one hears these little maxims repeated verbatim, over and over and over, I come to suspect they are not the authentic views of the speakers, but propaganda injected into public discourse.)

Re: Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?

#55

Post by disruptalot »

dmitriid wrote: post #38

Molly White consistently writes concise and precise essays about problems in the crypto space that the crypto "community" consistently fail to address or even respond to in as concise and precise a manner. Well, except "it's too early" and "these articles are wrong and a smear campaign".

Speaking personally, they might be concise and precise but the arguments are nothing new and too often have simple counter arguments. That's the reason they're not addressed, there really is no reason to except to directly address the Molly white audience.

Re: Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?

#56

Post by atoav »

rglullis wrote: post #48

From a first read, the following problems I see in this critique: - The trilemmas do not need to be solved . They just need to be acknowledged when you are designing your application so that people can understand the types of trade-offs being made. In cases where sybil-resistance is not a requirement, you can build a system that gives you privacy and decentralization. When sybil-resistance is required, you just need…

As a web3 critic, my criticism is not that there can be only one, it is that all the proposed web3 stuff that I read about is just an existing thing with extra steps.

If I were to build a blog system I would not store the blog posts in a local merkle tree. Why not? Because a regular database has more benefits. Now why would I want to store the data on a decentralized public merkle tree (blockchain)? I don't want my blogs data to be public, I want *an adjustable view" into non-public, editable and deletable data, which is what we have now. This is one case where the status quo is not only totally fine as you phrased it, but it is superior (to me at least).

The issue I have with web3 is not that it is a new idea, it is that to me it sounds like yet another solution in search of a problem. People who have/are invested in crypto-tokens have a huge incentives to fool themselves into believing you actually can/should solve every problem using the technology of the blockchain.

If it is an problem that people can delete things use an append-only-log/merkle tree. If it is an problem that you want to have a centrally agreed upon public state, open a public API to that append-only-log. If it is a problem that people can neither trust you, nor each other to be a faithful keeper of logs, decentralize it wit consesus algorithms and end up with something like a block chain.

Now this chain of problems is something that fails at the first step for many things. There is not a lot of things that you want to be append-only, typically for very good reasons.

But let's say I want my blog append-only for some reason. One solution would be to just do it instead of forcing myself technically. But lets say I want to force others, then it would make sense.

Now it does not make a lot of sense to make that literal log public, but let's say I also offer an API to it and ignore all the real world problems it would bring (illegal content that needs to be deleted which I could do by rolling the merkle tree back to the latest non-illegal version.

Now I run that sote, why would I like to decentralize that data? So I can claim I don't need to delete anything?

Re: Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?

#58

Post by meheleventyone »

georgelyon wrote: post #42

This is an excellent write-up, and I genuinely hope that the brain-cycles the web3 world is spending on this eventually benefit the rest of society. I’ve been musing about a similar but more simple problem: how can we prove we are an individual human in the context of a web service. Think of this like the ultimate CAPTCHA where not only can you prove you are human but every person can do so at most once or, more prag…

In Iceland we already have digital identity from a centralised authority. I log into my bank, health service, sign papers (including loans) and so on with a government managed digital ID. So this isn’t even something that needs invention let alone by web3.

Re: Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?

#59

Post by nonrandomstring »

danuker wrote: post #52
imwillofficial wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the right to be forgotten applies to digital records, I might be missing the context here though.

Digital records are an extension of the mind.

Your liberty to extend your mind ends where my dignity begins.

Re: Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?

#60

Post by oblio »

meheleventyone wrote: post #58
georgelyon wrote: post #42

This is an excellent write-up, and I genuinely hope that the brain-cycles the web3 world is spending on this eventually benefit the rest of society. I’ve been musing about a similar but more simple problem: how can we prove we are an individual human in the context of a web service. Think of this like the ultimate CAPTCHA where not only can you prove you are human but every person can do so at most once or, more prag…

In Iceland we already have digital identity from a centralised authority. I log into my bank, health service, sign papers (including loans) and so on with a government managed digital ID. So this isn’t even something that needs invention let alone by web3.

The tech world will start making more sense when you realize that a large chunk of tech is created because of US hyperindividualism and lack of trust in other people so folks keep trying to create tech solutions for social problems they consider intractable (several of which don't even exist in other developed countries).

Purely tech solutions for social problems generally don't work and frequently create more social problems.

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