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Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

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Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#191

Post by dragonwriter »

pessimizer wrote: post #164
littlestymaar wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have UBI at a country level if you finance it with government budget (through taxes)[1], but as a for-profit enterprise, there's no that's a good idea (for it to work at all, it must have a monetization strategy, and they all look dystopian) [1] it actually exist(ed) in France (see RMI/RSA, though the different governments recently added tons of bureaucracy to it as a way to deter people from getting it, ruin…

And you don't need a magic orb to do it. You can do it in the US through the mysterious buildings referred to as "unemployment offices" by changing the signs and opening twice as many. It would also be amazing to use these buildings to match employers and the unemployed, but that's obviously asking far too much of government.

> And you don't need a magic orb to do it. You can do it in the US through the mysterious buildings referred to as "unemployment offices" by changing the signs and opening twice as many.

You could do it through the agency known as the IRS by adding a standard refundable credit, you might need a few more employees, but nothing like twice as many.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#192

Post by dumbfounder »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #64
justrealist wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but you shouldn't underestimate the popularity of mobile banking/money transfer apps in East Africa. If it's easier and more secure (against literal telecom hacks, we don't need to get into crypto debates) than the alternative it very plausibly can get users.

That is an argument against it. If they already solved the problem with mobile payments adding blockchain to the mix doesnt add any value.

The fact that they are popular means it's an argument against making a more secure version? You are implying the problem is solved perfectly already. They are popular because they are needed, not because they cannot be advanced.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#193

Post by shwaj »

dragonwriter wrote: post #175
boppo1 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if I talk to a 'normie' and explain that chatGPT and OpenAI are nefariously plotting regulatory capture most will roll their eyes at me. If I say "The founder of OpenAI is scanning people's eyeballs to build a database" that sets off real alarm bells.

> Yeah, if I talk to a 'normie' and explain that chatGPT and OpenAI are nefariously plotting regulatory capture most will roll their eyes at me. You are supposed to preface it with how Altman is making AI services, selling them as AGI, and also painting AGI as a danger to the survival of humanity. Then, when they are baffled at why someone would sell something while describing it that way, you can walk them through r…

Citation requested re: Altman saying current offerings are AGI. When I search, I see things like “there may be a path to AGI”.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#194

Post by JumpCrisscross »

px43 wrote: post #188
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> his actual concern here is humans stealing identities and running bots in order to farm any sort of UBI mechanism that gets set up So exactly what's happening with Worldcoin right now [1]. [1] https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/05/24/black-market-for-...

People will soon be able to use their iriscodes to reclaim credentials that they sold, and once people start doing that, the market for re-sold credentials will drop to approximately zero.

> People will soon be able to use their iriscodes to reclaim credentials that they sold, and once people start doing that, the market for re-sold credentials will drop to approximately zero.

Is the obvious related problem this solution brings forth supposed to go unsaid? (Criminals don't buy something they can steal.)

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#195

Post by pessimizer »

alangibson wrote: post #46

I'm waiting for religious zealots to start smashing those Orbs. Looking at long lines of people waiting to stare into one is enough to make me (very briefly) wonder if my crazy uncle might have had a point with his take on Revelations.

Direct action is infinitely more effective than tweeting.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#196

Post by dragonwriter »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #150
littlestymaar wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have UBI at a country level if you finance it with government budget (through taxes)[1], but as a for-profit enterprise, there's no that's a good idea (for it to work at all, it must have a monetization strategy, and they all look dystopian) [1] it actually exist(ed) in France (see RMI/RSA, though the different governments recently added tons of bureaucracy to it as a way to deter people from getting it, ruin…

Is that the kind of UBI we want though? If it has a single issuer, like the government, then it has a single point of control which can be used to coerce people (i.e. by threatening to take it away). The ideal UBI system would let you threaten to overthrow your government in a way that does not threaten the integrity of UBI. It ought to be a safety net that makes otherwise impractical growth possible. As a crypto, Ci…

> The ideal UBI system would let you threaten to overthrow your government in a way that does not threaten the integrity of UBI

If you can, categorically, overthrow it without threatening the integrity of UBI in its territory, it was never actually the government in the first place.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#197

Post by rgrieselhuber »

Alex3917 wrote: post #176
rgrieselhuber wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You probably use it every time you get on an airplane already. False. More importantly, however, this is an example of the "you're already doing it so it's not a big deal" fallacy.

> More importantly, however, this is an example of the "you're already doing it so it's not a big deal" fallacy I'm not saying it's not a big deal, I'm saying it hasn't gotten much scrutiny, at least relative to comparable innovations in the past. E.g. when airports introduced body scanners, Jeffrey Rosen wrote an entire book about this called The Naked Crowd. Where's the equivalent scrutiny for iris scanners?

Good question. Probably because they aren’t as widely deployed (yet) but there should be just as much and more scrutiny on these as well. They also seem pointless given ambient facial / gait / body morphology recognition (which I am also against).

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#198

Post by JumpCrisscross »

dragonwriter wrote: post #196
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that the kind of UBI we want though? If it has a single issuer, like the government, then it has a single point of control which can be used to coerce people (i.e. by threatening to take it away). The ideal UBI system would let you threaten to overthrow your government in a way that does not threaten the integrity of UBI. It ought to be a safety net that makes otherwise impractical growth possible. As a crypto, Ci…

> The ideal UBI system would let you threaten to overthrow your government in a way that does not threaten the integrity of UBI If you can, categorically, overthrow it without threatening the integrity of UBI in its territory, it was never actually the government in the first place.

> can, categorically, overthrow it without threatening the integrity of UBI in its territory, it was never actually the government in the first place

Which underlines the ridiculousness of the thought experiment. The solution to wars being destructive is...a blockchain?

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#199

Post by AnthonyMouse »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #189
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with regulatory capture is it makes everybody look bad. The usual morality play is either the evil business hurting people who has to be stopped by the benevolent government regulators, or the evil government regulators hurting innocent businesses who are just trying to make a living and keep prices down and keep jobs from moving offshore. To which the traditional solutions are either more regulations tha…

> The problem with regulatory capture is it makes everybody look bad The other problem is this isn't how regulatory capture happens. OpenAI was flexing its badass credentials in the halls of Congress while it wrapped up a multibillion-dollar fundraise. There was no path from Altman's testimony to any sort of regulatory apparatus that wouldn't immediately constrain him.

Isn't the usual theory for this that they're pulling up the ladder? They get billions in funding which they can use to absorb regulatory overhead, then the regulations come which price out early stage competitors and make it harder for anyone else to raise the kind of funding they've already secured.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#200

Post by pessimizer »

gowld wrote: post #18
danpalmer wrote: post #6

Why would Worldcoin beta-test in Kenya vs SV if not in an attempt to fly under the radar of scrutiny – whether that's market scrutiny from the SEC/etc or privacy scrutiny under GDPR and other legislation well understood by SV lawyers. Good on Kenya for holding Worldcoin to account. It'll be interesting to see what they do as they enter the "and find out" phase.

Kenya is a reasonable choice to launch a project like this. Among African nations, Kenya is very connected to USA and UBI. Altman already had OpenAI work in Kenya. It has both a stable government/economy and also high poverty and rural population. It has ~5% of Africa's population, so if you just picked a random place with a lot of people to operate, it's unsurprising to land in Kenya. https://www.givedirectly.org st…

Extreme wealth distributions also indicate a tiny, extremely wealthy elite who, from their multi-million pound London flats, are happy to sell everything about their home countries to anyone who will pay.
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