Live data from Hacker News

Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

blockworks.co

61–70 of 370 posts

Re: Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

#61
post #37

I am seeing a pattern here and I am starting to believe that Sam Altman is an Accelerationist: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism A lot of his actions, investments and marketing strategy seem to point in that direction.

It's curious to frame this as an intentional act rather than an inevitable, natural stage of capitalism.

I get that, but it’s almost if someone’s trying to prove the point you just made.

Re: Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

#62
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how, in the end, the ultimate and perhaps only proof of personhood is being a person, engaged in the world. Sort of how the ultimate decentralized currency is encompassed in the global market of rising and falling economic powers. The oracle problem is a problem because there are no oracles. There is only the test of time. Or something along that line.

Exactly, tech is hellbent on preserving our humanity while discarding the embodied world that makes us human. It's a schizoid's fantasy.

Interesting that you raise the connection to schizotypal thinking. I recently learned there is a quite explicit connection between excessively instrumental, abstraction-obsessed thinking and schizophrenia. I recommend looking into the work of Iain McGilchrist if you want to learn more. A brief sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfMnaLpU7s

Re: Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

#63

I think you should instead just read what Worldcoin wrote. It's quite short, and I think easy to consider false. https://worldcoin.org/cofounder-letter There are a few words about economic opportunity but little explanation, so you can discount that part. They don't seem to believe it beyond UBI distribution, which has the same problems as any distribution today[1] Their main sell: > scale a reliable solution for dis…

If you can identify a person, in any way, they are no longer private.

This is not necessarily applicable. There's cryptography from 20 years ago (e.g. the work of Stefan Brands) that can show that someone has a World ID without revealing which ID it is. If no "username" is ever revealed then it can't be linked to anything.

Re: Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

#64

[flagged]

Any substantial comment or profound insight? Otherwise you’re ranting in the wind. We’ve seen these things regularly enough. If you think a good argument needs to be made, then make it. Just dropping 2 links without any form of context just makes you look like a shill or a crank; most people are simply going to ignore them. Particularly if one of them is a tweet, or whatever they are called today.

Re: Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

#65
post #15

I don't think Worldcoin is the solution, but I'm interested in hearing what the rest of you think the solution to the bots-indistiguishable-to-humans problem could look like? Or should we just accept that the times of interacting over internet with strangers you can believe to be humans is over? The only idea I see is for some certificates handed out by government to citizens and I absolutely hate it even in a democr…

Why did we believe that we could build an algorithm that provided trust? We can provide "trust", which is when we narrow the definition to verifying whether mathematical objects have been tampered with, or whether they can be observed without secret keys, but we could always make safes. Trusting a safe isn't like trusting a person.

I don't find this helpful.

Captchas have solved a real problem. They did work.

Re: Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

#66

A critical part of Worldcoin is its association with AI hype: https://news.google.com/search?q=Worldcoin%20ai&hl=en-US&gl=... > Investors are recognizing the opportunities presented by AI-based projects that leverage blockchain technology. ...Of course, this is total nonsense. But perception is everything for crypto IPOs.

It's worse than that: Sam Altman is selling a solution to a problem he created.

Re: Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

#67
This is the Eye of Sauron.

I'm very much into the crypto world and I'm so tired of all of these dumb scams. Even worse that it is backed by yet another scammer named 'Sam'.

I really wish we could focus on things that actually provided value to people. What a waste of time/money/effort. I hope this one dies a quick death. So far, it looks like it will, which is great.

Re: Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

#68
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how, in the end, the ultimate and perhaps only proof of personhood is being a person, engaged in the world. Sort of how the ultimate decentralized currency is encompassed in the global market of rising and falling economic powers. The oracle problem is a problem because there are no oracles. There is only the test of time. Or something along that line.

reputation based

The existing finance system is largely reputation based, with a light side of contract enforcement and a heavy dose of middlemen. It mostly works, but one of the biggest advantage of crypto stuff is removing the need for reputation and trust.

Re: Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

#69

Like any other non-coin crypto tech, Worldcoin doesn't do what it set out to do because it doesn't solve the oracle problem. If you trust their orb, it generates a wallet for you - but anyone, human or otherwise - can use that wallet. There's a black market in China for these identities already [1] and of course the response from Worldcoin was there's nothing they can do - because there's nothing they can do. So this…

Wait, the biometric information are only used for the creation of the wallet, not the later usage? Then isn't this scam? What is the actual value of using biometric for this?

Why does that make it a scam? "Scam" implies some kind of fraud or lie, I don't believe worldcoin has ever claimed biometrics were required for later usage.

The value of the biometric is in ensuring a ~ more fair ~ airdrop. With bitcoin the people who discovered it first and who were able to run miners received an outsized reward, and consequently the distribution of bitcoin is extremely unequal. The usage of biometrics doesn't _completely_ solve this problem, there is still a pool of insiders who have an outsized amount of wld, but a very large number of people will be able to walk up to an orb to claim some wld and they will all receive roughly equal amounts. The initial distribution of wld will be much more fair than the initial distribution of any other token or currency I know of. That is the value of the biometric.

Post reply on HN