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

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

#111

Post by audunw »

wongarsu wrote: post #68
lerpgame wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> is removing the need for reputation and trust

Except it doesn’t. That’s exactly what we’ve learned over the last decade. It never did either of those things. What it did is that it clouded reputation and trust just about enough to trick people into the illusion of a “trustless” system. There is no such thing. In the end you trust the coders trusted by the people who use the apps implementing the blockchain. There’s no tangible difference to trusting the coders trusted by the banks you use. Yes, with some cryptocurrencies they’re not associated directly with a centralised organisation. But that will absolutely change over time if the cryptocurrency ever becomes relevant to the big corporations of the world. Just as the WWW in practice now is controlled by Google and Apple.

The point of selling the idea that a cryptocurrency is “trustless” is to trick you into trusting it just long enough to pull off a Ponzi-scheme or rug-pull. And yes, that goes for Bitcoin too.

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

#112

Post by brian_cloutier »

nonameiguess wrote: post #90
brian_cloutier wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 biometr…

Does it? What prevents a factory owner from having all of his employees grab an orb, scan their irises, claim their coin, and then hand over their wallets to him as a condition of employment? Assuming this thing actually works and won't accept irises grown in a vat or someone scanning a chimpanzee, it at least rate-limits you to creating new wallets with new coin at the rate at which you can find and coerce other hum…

I said and I meant "more fair". We both agree this will not be a perfectly fair airdrop. Anything not perfect is feudalism?

> What prevents a factory owner from having all of his employees grab an orb, scan their irises, claim their coin, and then hand over their wallets to him as a condition of employment?

The airdrop is gated in multiple places. Everybody needs to visit an orb to claim worldcoin but the set of active orbs is managed by worldcoin and when one of them acts suspiciously the orb can be deactivated, among other counter-measures. A set of wallets all owned by distinct people will act differently than a set of wallets controlled by one person.

This is obviously not perfect, some fraud will occur. It is still a more fair initial distribution than any other currency I know of.

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

#113

Post by jprete »

brian_cloutier wrote: post #85
highwaylights wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean technically the system is proof-of-eyeball rather than proof-of-identity, so you also need to trust any opportunistic criminals in your zip code that have access to spoons.

It looks like the airdrop gives you something like 25 WLD, or $50. I don't know what the actual numbers are but it seems to be around this order of magnitude. Your hypothetical spoon-wielding lunatic would be risking serious consequences in order to earn $50; that doesn't seem like a particularly strong incentive.

People have been murdered (in the US) for far less.

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

#114

Post by pcwelder »

arketyp wrote: post #21
arcticbull wrote: post #5

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…

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.

> The oracle problem is a problem because there are no oracles

To expand on this and correct your first statement, physical engagement can't be a proof of personhood either.

There can never be a proof of personhood, or if someone is a human or not, or if someone is conscious, etc.

It's more practically applicable than it sounds. Think conjoined twins (sharing a brain), disabled people, people in coma, long memory loss and all other edge cases.

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

#115

Post by latexr »

brnt wrote: post #26
arketyp wrote: 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.

People still don't understand the 'this is not a pipe' painting...

I keep coming back to Scott McCloud’s spread in Understanding Comics.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220819061912/https://i1.wp.com...

The whole book is fantastic. I recommend it even to people who are not into comics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Comics

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

#116

Post by mrguyorama »

JohnFen wrote: post #3
gumballindie wrote: post #2

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.

Interesting. I wonder how he would characterize his belief system. I personally have a very dim view of him, mostly because of Worldcoin (which is how he came onto my radar). His work with OpenAI confirms my unease with his efforts and makes me wonder what his goals actually are.

Altman's belief system is "I deserve more money and power", that simple. There's no generous interpretation of building a 25% pre-mine shitcoin, and hawking it to third world countries through sketchy contractors who are explicitly incentivized to collect biometrics from anyone they can, where the claimed purpose of said shitcoin isn't even a little bit implemented, especially all of this in light of your friend and business partner runs fucking Palentir

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

#117

Post by Raidion »

brian_cloutier wrote: post #85
highwaylights wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean technically the system is proof-of-eyeball rather than proof-of-identity, so you also need to trust any opportunistic criminals in your zip code that have access to spoons.

It looks like the airdrop gives you something like 25 WLD, or $50. I don't know what the actual numbers are but it seems to be around this order of magnitude. Your hypothetical spoon-wielding lunatic would be risking serious consequences in order to earn $50; that doesn't seem like a particularly strong incentive.

I think any system that wants to store assets would expect to store >$50 eventually and the incentives grow correspondingly.

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

#118

Post by ineptech »

yreg wrote: 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…

> The only idea I see is for some certificates handed out by government to citizens and I absolutely hate it even in a democracy.

I think this is the answer. Governments already have the infrastructure to verify identities in person, and no other organization is going to build it.

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

#119

Post by everybodyknows »

maxwell wrote: post #45
JohnFen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I have better luck, though, with "The map is not the territory".

https://generalsemantics.org/resources/documents/gsb-65-wils...

Can you provide a synopsis of this lecture transcript?

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

#120

Post by cwkoss »

Any decentralized system that uses biometrics for authentication rather than just identification is doomed to fail spectacularly.

Biometrics are like a username NOT like a password.

When a piece of wolrdcoin is inevitably compromised, people have no means of rolling a new iris. The whole thing will come crashing down.

There are so many stupid decisions this team is making. Like, users can opt into the orbs retaining their iris scan for network quality assurance purposes. Would any sane person ever opt into an ATM storing their PIN number for quality assurance? It is an implicit bounty for hacking the orb. And the fact that they seem to need further quality assurance points to the fact that they aren't confident people will have continuous access to their accounts. Best case, I'd imagine anyone who has a catastrophic eye injury would also permanently lose access to their accounts - but I suspect the reality is much worse.

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