Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible? • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by peoplefromibiza » Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 10:36 AM UTC

beebmam wrote: post #24

jstnwill wrote: post #21

Why is the techno-libertarian world so overwhelmingly obsessed with extreme individualism? We are social creatures. We sacrifice individual needs because we gain massive security and social value in return. We need a balance of the various ideologies, and not the extremism of any one ideology. Fifty years of narcissistic, anti-social, "Leave me the hell alone" libertarianism is at the heart of the culture-rot collaps…

What are the proposed alternatives to individualism? Collectivism? No thanks. I've seen what that does to the human spirit. I'd rather take an extremely individualist culture and then fill in the gaps with taxation and some level of wealth redistribution.

Individualism and collectivism are opposites, not simply alternatives.

Alternative to individualism is everything that is not based on individualism alone.

For example every social democracy out there the majority of which you can find in Europe.

We live in countries where we are individuals with rights but also we have to let go some of that individualism because the good of the many overrides the individual rights.

It's not very hard actually.

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

#112

Post by peoplefromibiza » Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 10:40 AM UTC

throwaway0x7E6 wrote: post #79

jstnwill wrote: post #21

Why is the techno-libertarian world so overwhelmingly obsessed with extreme individualism? We are social creatures. We sacrifice individual needs because we gain massive security and social value in return. We need a balance of the various ideologies, and not the extremism of any one ideology. Fifty years of narcissistic, anti-social, "Leave me the hell alone" libertarianism is at the heart of the culture-rot collaps…

individualism, liberty and self-reliance are pillars of the modern developed world, which is the best place to live in all the history of mankind. and we have plenty of examples from the last century of what do you get if you adopt the opposite values

> individualism, liberty and self-reliance are pillars of the modern developed world

Jean-Jacques Rousseau strongly disagrees with you.

I believe you confused individualism with autonomy and free will.

a society of individuals can easily become atomized and paradoxically uniform when “every citizen, being assimilated to all the rest, is lost in the crowd“.

-- Alexis de Tocqueville

a true pillar of modern developed World

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

#113

Post by strogonoff » Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 10:47 AM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #108

strogonoff wrote: post #82

The problem I have with blockchain enthusiasts, after talking with them about their philosophy, is that they seem to consider trust a bug, and believe that ideal world is achievable with straitjackets of technical solutions that eliminate trust. Trust is a feature, not a bug. If trust is violated by rogue agents, it is because they exist[0], not because trust itself is a folly. However, blockchain-adjacent initiative…

> The problem with blockchainers It's hard to take any of what you say seriously when you start a comment with such a blanket statement. Also, I think I've already seen your type of "argument" so many times, I think I am able to just play the whole tape by just pointing out to previous comments I've made: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31195939 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31545427 (trustlessness is…

Then fix your institutions. Do you believe you can solve a human problem by forcing a technical solution? Don’t you think you will have to end up duplicating the very same institutions (possibly with more friction, less oversight and ways to appeal)? And if you go full freedom and anarchy, then drop into chaos until command economy next door eats you for lunch?

Besides, we are talking about attitudes very much in countries with more or less functional institutions.

Also, edited first paragraph to be less dogmatic. This is my subjective opinion.

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

#114

Post by strogonoff » Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 10:47 AM UTC

hetspookjee wrote: post #109

rglullis wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with blockchainers It's hard to take any of what you say seriously when you start a comment with such a blanket statement. Also, I think I've already seen your type of "argument" so many times, I think I am able to just play the whole tape by just pointing out to previous comments I've made: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31195939 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31545427 (trustlessness is…

Sometimes I dream of a argument recogniser that just maps out an argument on an argument map and hashes it out more or less like you just did. With the goal of not endless rehashing of the same iteration like some stuck genetic algo in a local optima, but rather moving forward as some kind of warm start.

I made an argument and asked questions at the end, leaving it for someone objecting to provide a constructive answer.

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

#115

Post by llegard » Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 10:51 AM UTC

This is not quite true that "considerations of ethics, user safety, privacy, security, how can this be used for evil, and is this even good for society often come as a belated afterthought". Referencing only recent popular articles in mass media does not paint the whole picture.

The very concept of SSI was motivated by ethical concerns: https://www.moxytongue.com/2016/02/self-sovereign-identity.h...

There is a field of academic research on ethics of SSI: [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-020-09563-x [2] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.0001...

And there is a great deal of awareness regarding these issues in industry https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2021/04/26/self-sovereign-id... (yes including core Ethereum developers community).

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

#116

Post by tlarkworthy » Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 10:52 AM UTC

xorcist wrote: post #106

strogonoff wrote: post #82

The problem I have with blockchain enthusiasts, after talking with them about their philosophy, is that they seem to consider trust a bug, and believe that ideal world is achievable with straitjackets of technical solutions that eliminate trust. Trust is a feature, not a bug. If trust is violated by rogue agents, it is because they exist[0], not because trust itself is a folly. However, blockchain-adjacent initiative…

While certainly not wanting to ruing the humorous undertones here, just for the benefit of other readers it's important to point out that the lack of third party trust has a very specific meaning. Take for web for example. It is trustless in the same manner. There is no third party (apart from the web browser and the server) that you need to trust in order for you to view a web page. There is no International Web Org…

Web is not trustless

DNS is part of the web and it is a federated/heirarchical 3rd party trust model you need to route your named traffic to the right server, often managed by states. It's super important to understand, this is why authoritarian governments can still hide what citizens can experience on the internet

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

#117

Post by rglullis » Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 10:54 AM UTC

strogonoff wrote: post #113

rglullis wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with blockchainers It's hard to take any of what you say seriously when you start a comment with such a blanket statement. Also, I think I've already seen your type of "argument" so many times, I think I am able to just play the whole tape by just pointing out to previous comments I've made: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31195939 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31545427 (trustlessness is…

Then fix your institutions. Do you believe you can solve a human problem by forcing a technical solution? Don’t you think you will have to end up duplicating the very same institutions (possibly with more friction, less oversight and ways to appeal)? And if you go full freedom and anarchy, then drop into chaos until command economy next door eats you for lunch? Besides, we are talking about attitudes very much in cou…

See, I know that I can keep up this by simply linking to previous comments. This one is from one year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25906731 (Tell me how a dissenting Russian or Chinese would go around "fixing their institutions")

Edit: Though I do agree that BTC has failed and I now think that Ethereum (the blockchain, not saying anything about Ether as a "currency") is more suited to this, here is something from 8 years ago!! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8413908

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

#118

Post by MadeThisToReply » Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 11:05 AM UTC

> Jack Dorsey just launched “Web5”, a buzzwordy project focused on decentralized identity

Woah, hold on, I thought we were still on "Web3"? Actually I'm not convinced that we've even moved past Web 2.0, since Web3 is still mostly just bullshit, scams, vaporware and monkey jpegs.

Did "Web4" get swallowed up by the same beast that made us skip IPv5?

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

#119

Post by ookdatnog » Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 11:05 AM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #81

DanHulton wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the parent's objection, rather my own, but how many times has this been tried already, only to hit predictable and easily avoidable issues, if only you'd been using fiat? Like for example, the crypto kickstarter that tried to buy a copy of the constitution? Nevermind the fact that the geniuses in charge didn't realize this didn't give them merchandising rights, when the bid failed, returning the money was a legit…

It only works in places where the institutions are functional, which is something that you are taking from granted. But forget kickstarter. We are talking about identity. Tell me how you could implement, e.g, a twitter-like application where no single entity can kick you out. Assume that the data does not need to live in a blockchain, and each user's data is portable between different servers. The only thing a (willi…

> It only works in places where the institutions are functional, which is something that you are taking from granted.

I want to stick with the Kickstarter example a bit longer, as "banking the unbanked" is to me one of the few claims of potential crypto applications that I care about.

Blockchain technology is at this point well over a decade old, yet we can still only talk about its benefits in hypotheticals. You claim that a decentralized, crypto-based alternative to Kickstarter would be valuable in those places where institutions are not functional. This seems like something that could be tested today, as opposed to in some nebulous future. So where are all these applications that financially emancipate the proverbial Somalian farmer? I haven't really seen any concrete, significant success stories, much less any that justify the fossil fuels we're burning to maintain these systems.

I suspect this has to do with the strong correlation between corruption in general (which would drive one to adopt crypto alternatives) and poor or nonexistant education (which is needed for the tech literacy to use crypto and not be scammed at every turn). I don't know how to solve that problem.

> But forget kickstarter[...]

I don't know how to solve that problem without blockchain; I also don't know how to solve it with blockchain.

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

#120

Post by celdon25 » Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 11:06 AM UTC

forum_ghost wrote: post #43

hinkley wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could ask you the same. You responded to > in the end, it boils down to everyone just asking to see the passport or some other government ID, or a proxy for that (credit card, library card, with a standard on distributed identity. That doesn't answer the question. I doubled down on what OP said. So if you don't see how my response isn't a follow-up, then the three of us are talking past each other.

Correct. There is nothing "self" or "sovereign" about having your "government name" certified cryptographically by the state. Oh, you generated your own key material all by yourself, and THEN the government signed it? That's the innovation? Who cares. There is no value. The -only- reason anyone cares about your identity is because it's mandated to do some checks by the government. Also, to deter fraud, as mandated by…

> When was the last time you woke up and felt, damn, all I wanna do is identity, identity, identity?

As someone who went through the clown show gauntlet of crypto scammers and charlatans as a freelancer, I’m going to have to disagree. This is going to be most useful for the crypto community, not the brick and mortar world, nor Silicon Valley or the HN community.