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Centralization is inevitable, but decentralization is right behind it

subconscious.substack.com

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Re: Centralization is inevitable, but decentralization is right behind it

#131

Post by bombcar »

YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #104
bombcar wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "Visa" do you mean "all payment clearing houses" and by Meta do you mean "all social media"? Because if Visa shits itself (it has) I use Amex, Mastercard, cash, debit, or even checks. And if Meta shits itself I don't even notice except to make fun of it.

Think about the situation for a second. You'll be switching to other methods, and so will everyone else, all at once. Do Amex and Mastercard even have the capacity to take up the slack with no notice? Do you really think that every critical component of a cost-optimised system will have been over-provisioned to be able to take on hundreds of millions of additional customers in a single day? And if one fails, the dema…

I suspect it would take up the slack - depending on how the failure happened and when it happened.

I don't believe payment processors have the same number of payments every second, so Amex and MC have to be sized for the largest spike (+ some) that they can endure, and so unless Visa fell right when they were already maxed out, they'd likely continue.

And Visa has fallen before; if it was anything like a long-term failure, you know all the other processors would be spinning up as much extra capacity as they could. And many stores still have the paper machines for credit slips.

https://www.wired.com/story/visa-outage-shows-the-fragility-...

Re: Centralization is inevitable, but decentralization is right behind it

#132

Post by cdata »

beefman wrote: post #129
cdata wrote: post #62

Plug: I'm working with the author on a decentralized protocol for networked thought and a companion browser called Subconscious. We're a very young project and just getting off the ground. If you're interested in topics like the one in the article, all our work is open source and we love getting into it with folks on Github or our Discord (link in the README): https://github.com/subconsciousnetwork/noosphere

Have you considered not asking people to agree to rules before joining your Discord?

Yes, we have considered the likely social dynamics of a discussion space with and without a code of conduct.

The discussion space is for our project which we are inviting other humans to contribute to. We are open and welcoming to all, but it's not the town square. We strongly prefer to work in a social context where every participant has explicitly agreed to be kind and respectful of each other, to recognize each other's humanity and to abstain from violence of any kind towards others.

Folks who won't agree to such terms may still fork our work or contribute on Github if they are so inclined.

Re: Centralization is inevitable, but decentralization is right behind it

#133

Post by aidenn0 »

I'm beginning to suspect that we will not see a federated protocol as successful as e-mail in my lifetime. I would, in fact, be only mildly surprised to see e-mail become much less federated than it is today (which is much less federated than it was 20 years ago).

Spam (and other bad actors) is one huge, and obvious, reason why; it's led to a significant consolidation in e-mail as well; SMTP delivery is hit-or-miss these days, and you can get ahold of a person to fix it only if you are "big enough"

The web plays a big part in this too. You can continuously deliver a client that updates its protocol in lock-step with the backend. This makes alternative clients something hard to do, and if you can't separate the client from the service, then it significantly increases the friction to change. Eudora didn't care which e-mail server it connected to, and you could take Eudora with you when you got a new ISP and lost your old e-mail address.

How much of my monthly fees to fastmail is spent on delivering e-mail, and how much of it is "keeping up with the gmail webclient"? I suspect it's more on the latter than the former.

Re: Centralization is inevitable, but decentralization is right behind it

#134

Post by beefman »

cdata wrote: post #132
beefman wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered not asking people to agree to rules before joining your Discord?

Yes, we have considered the likely social dynamics of a discussion space with and without a code of conduct. The discussion space is for our project which we are inviting other humans to contribute to. We are open and welcoming to all, but it's not the town square. We strongly prefer to work in a social context where every participant has explicitly agreed to be kind and respectful of each other, to recognize each ot…

Isn't such a code of conduct generally implied? And isn't it more generous to wait until it is broken to bring it up?

Also, the rules are not so general or unambiguous as you've described them here. They mention speech patterns and topics that are highly loaded on contemporary politics.

Re: Centralization is inevitable, but decentralization is right behind it

#135

Post by aidenn0 »

PontifexMinimus wrote: post #55
somenameforme wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since somebody chose to downvote the above comment, I think it bears elaboration for those who might not understand. A contemporary example is domain names. The current domain system is a monopoly, and it sucks. You pay companies a never-ending and ever-increasing rent to do literally less than nothing. A domain isn't much more than a key/value pair in a small database. You're paying never-ending rent to them for the…

> A contemporary example is domain names. The current domain system is a monopoly, and it sucks. You pay companies a never-ending and ever-increasing rent to do literally less than nothing. A domain isn't much more than a key/value pair in a small database. Is there any legal or technical reason why someone can't set up a DNS server that resolves domain names to different IP addresses than those traditionally used?

There are no legal nor technical reason why someone can't do that. There's also no reason why the TLD can't be a number[1]

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2179216

Re: Centralization is inevitable, but decentralization is right behind it

#136

Post by cdata »

beefman wrote: post #134
cdata wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we have considered the likely social dynamics of a discussion space with and without a code of conduct. The discussion space is for our project which we are inviting other humans to contribute to. We are open and welcoming to all, but it's not the town square. We strongly prefer to work in a social context where every participant has explicitly agreed to be kind and respectful of each other, to recognize each ot…

Isn't such a code of conduct generally implied? And isn't it more generous to wait until it is broken to bring it up? Also, the rules are not so general or unambiguous as you've described them here. They mention speech patterns and topics that are highly loaded on contemporary politics.

To head off any uncertainty, the code of conduct we ask participants to agree to is nearly identical to the Rust Code of Conduct: https://www.rust-lang.org/policies/code-of-conduct

I have found that all it takes for one remain on the right side of such a code is to have good will in one's heart towards other humans. We have hundreds of participants, a lot of lively and thoughtful discussion on a range of topics, and not a single user has been found in violation of the code of conduct to date.

Re: Centralization is inevitable, but decentralization is right behind it

#137

Post by mkmk3 »

thrown_22 wrote: post #114
mkmk3 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A popular open source protocol is actually the perfect playing field for a would-be monopolist. Whereas when there's no popular open source protocol, the OSS ecosystem upgrades itself fast, like a cheetah? :P Whatever mental model you're using here might just be going over my head and I'd appreciate you being more explicit about it

Microsoft: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

Riiigght, that makes some sense, thank you! Need to consider to understand if open source is really advantageous, but you've pointed out how it might be

Re: Centralization is inevitable, but decentralization is right behind it

#138

Post by holler »

munificent wrote: post #50
nicopappl wrote: post #24

It is true that power laws are seen everywhere, and that there are reason for those. I like the article, because it exposes very quickly a very powerful idea, but I disagree with the conclusion. Information networks are built by humans, they are designed, they are not necessarily bound by the rules of evolution. Which means we may yet be able to find a system that is not afflicted by the curse of perpetual destructio…

It's very easy to design a system not afflicted by the curse of perpetual destruction and reconstruction. The key challenge is that that system, by design, will be less efficient than other competing systems. So if there is a surrounding meta-system that allows it to compete with others, the other systems that tend towards consolidation will drive out your system. It's essentially the same problem we see in economics…

> Companies that optimized their supply chains to have more margin made more money and won... as long as the supply chains were all running perfectly. But once COVID happened, it became clear that those businesses had no resilience.

Good analogy thank you.

Re: Centralization is inevitable, but decentralization is right behind it

#139

Post by beefman »

cdata wrote: post #136
beefman wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't such a code of conduct generally implied? And isn't it more generous to wait until it is broken to bring it up? Also, the rules are not so general or unambiguous as you've described them here. They mention speech patterns and topics that are highly loaded on contemporary politics.

To head off any uncertainty, the code of conduct we ask participants to agree to is nearly identical to the Rust Code of Conduct: https://www.rust-lang.org/policies/code-of-conduct I have found that all it takes for one remain on the right side of such a code is to have good will in one's heart towards other humans. We have hundreds of participants, a lot of lively and thoughtful discussion on a range of topics, and…

You say you're welcoming to all. But that isn't true, because you refuse access to anyone who doesn't agree to these rules. And a subtantial fraction of people would not agree to them, as you well know, regardless of whether they would ever break them.

That you got them from somewhere else doesn't head off uncertainty in their interpretation. It does raise the possibility that they're a bit of groupthink spreading through the open source software scene, versus something your group believes in enough to have indpendently developed. Historically such things tend to function more as shibboleths than meaningful exercises and I suspect that's the case here.

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