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Urbit: The good, the bad, and the insane

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Re: Urbit: The good, the bad, and the insane

#161
post #153
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think it is stupid nor self destructive to avoid enriching people who believe certain humans are more suited to being slaves than others, no. There is diversity of ideas and dissenting views, and he's free to blog about them, but I am also free to go work on other projects/communities that don't enrich landowners who I find morally repugnant. Not wishing to contribute work to directly financially enrich raci…

I do not think it is stupid nor self destructive to avoid enriching people who believe that Taiwan is a country, no. There is diversity of ideas and dissenting views, and he's free to blog about them, but I am also free to go work on other projects/communities that don't enrich landowners who I find morally repugnant. Not wishing to contribute work to directly financially enrich Taiwanese nationalists is very differe…

We don't agree. What is the best way to contact you so that you can start enriching me?

Re: Urbit: The good, the bad, and the insane

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individualism is a feature, too, but I think he really cared about trying to be more democratic than the alternatives. The core precept and summary of the whole paper is the phrase he used: "one-CPU-one-vote". (Not as good as "one-human-one-vote", but the idea is that that's the closest he could get to it while preventing Sybil attacks.) I believe he thought that even if powerful entities bought a lot of CPUs, the en…

CPUs are not people. CPUs voting for blocks of transactions is in no way people having political power over the system. Even at the time, systems with hundreds of thousands of CPUs were operating, so even if voting for transactions were something akin to deciding on how to organize society, which it isn't, letting IBM outvote whole states is not democracy, it's oligarchy. Again, I don't think we have even vaguely sim…

Right; he of course knew that. It's just the closest he could get to it that he could think of. I'm not saying it's a democracy; just that he thought it's the closest he could get to it while retaining the properties of decentralization, permissionless, and anonymity.

How would you theoretically create a decentralized, permissionless, pseudonymous/anonymous currency that's more democratic? (I'd argue PoS is more democratic, for example, so you could also think of one that's more democratic than PoS cryptocurrencies. Of course, PoS is still very oligarchical, but it's about relativity.)

I kind of feel like you're just reading a few words in my posts and then ignoring all of the subsequent words in the same sentence.

My post text:

>"one-CPU-one-vote". (Not as good as "one-human-one-vote"

Your reply:

>CPUs are not people.

---

My post text:

>My understanding is that most cryptocurrencies intend to be extremely democratic. More democratic than all previously existing currencies, even. (Whether those ideas are feasible or those goals are being achieved is another matter.)

Your reply:

>>My understanding is that most cryptocurrencies intend to be extremely democratic.

>Do they? They don't seem to be succeeding very well.

Re: Urbit: The good, the bad, and the insane

#163
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, the author's ultimate goal was libertarianism, but believed democracy was sub-optimal for achieving it. I suspect be saw in Urbit a non-political technological means of realizing his ultimate end, which was libertarianism, and not dictatorship. On the subject of his views, my opinion is that the only way to really secure liberty is to inform the whole public of its value, and have those ideas of lib…

> As far as I know, the author's ultimate goal was libertarianism, but believed democracy was sub-optimal for achieving it. That's a euphemistic way to say he thought his views should be forced upon other people rather than having to convince them of their correctness in the public sphere. > I suspect be saw in Urbit a non-political technological means of realizing his ultimate end, which was libertarianism, and not…

Citation needed on “unquestionably a racist”.

As far as I’ve gleaned, the assertions that he’s a racist are heavily based on an encyclopedic (surface-level) interpretation that essentially boils down to: evolutionary biology is inevitably racist and therefore anybody who entertains the study is associatively a racist, James Damore, Bret Weinstein, style. The assertion is based on postmodern axioms describing what a racist ideology makes, not a western rationalist position that allows complex topics to be, well, complex.

Re: Urbit: The good, the bad, and the insane

#164
post #157
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I even tried to read some of his blog posts under that name before I came across urbit. Didn’t bother finishing any because they were interminable and objectionable in about equal measure. I’m aware of the posited connection between his views (including the whole feudal thing) and urbit; I guess I just don’t see the need to be afraid of a shadowy presence behind the project, given what it is.

The mere fact that Urbit is still a thing, that it has not yet collapsed under the weight of its own intentionally induced baggage, is worrisome to me. Something is keeping that project alive, and it's not technical merit. I don't see a lot of viable options other than some kind of fanaticism.

I think it’s technically fascinating. Guess it’s just perception. People say the same about bitcoin.

Re: Urbit: The good, the bad, and the insane

#165
post #164
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mere fact that Urbit is still a thing, that it has not yet collapsed under the weight of its own intentionally induced baggage, is worrisome to me. Something is keeping that project alive, and it's not technical merit. I don't see a lot of viable options other than some kind of fanaticism.

I think it’s technically fascinating. Guess it’s just perception. People say the same about bitcoin.

[deleted]

Re: Urbit: The good, the bad, and the insane

#166
post #157
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I even tried to read some of his blog posts under that name before I came across urbit. Didn’t bother finishing any because they were interminable and objectionable in about equal measure. I’m aware of the posited connection between his views (including the whole feudal thing) and urbit; I guess I just don’t see the need to be afraid of a shadowy presence behind the project, given what it is.

The mere fact that Urbit is still a thing, that it has not yet collapsed under the weight of its own intentionally induced baggage, is worrisome to me. Something is keeping that project alive, and it's not technical merit. I don't see a lot of viable options other than some kind of fanaticism.

I can't help but think you give Yarvin too much credit.

Re: Urbit: The good, the bad, and the insane

#167
post #163
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As far as I know, the author's ultimate goal was libertarianism, but believed democracy was sub-optimal for achieving it. That's a euphemistic way to say he thought his views should be forced upon other people rather than having to convince them of their correctness in the public sphere. > I suspect be saw in Urbit a non-political technological means of realizing his ultimate end, which was libertarianism, and not…

Citation needed on “unquestionably a racist”. As far as I’ve gleaned, the assertions that he’s a racist are heavily based on an encyclopedic (surface-level) interpretation that essentially boils down to: evolutionary biology is inevitably racist and therefore anybody who entertains the study is associatively a racist, James Damore, Bret Weinstein, style. The assertion is based on postmodern axioms describing what a r…

> evolutionary biology is inevitably racist

In the current historical context, yes, it is. If you could somehow neutrally float outside context (you can't), or we lived in a different world, then maybe it wouldn't be.

Re: Urbit: The good, the bad, and the insane

#168
post #167
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed on “unquestionably a racist”. As far as I’ve gleaned, the assertions that he’s a racist are heavily based on an encyclopedic (surface-level) interpretation that essentially boils down to: evolutionary biology is inevitably racist and therefore anybody who entertains the study is associatively a racist, James Damore, Bret Weinstein, style. The assertion is based on postmodern axioms describing what a r…

> evolutionary biology is inevitably racist In the current historical context, yes, it is. If you could somehow neutrally float outside context (you can't), or we lived in a different world, then maybe it wouldn't be.

That's not even close to wholesale truth at any meaningful or useful level. To a very specific subset of loud people the idea that biology may play some role in expressed traits is problematic only because those traits have been deemed by some other portion of society to be a proxy for either the capacity or quality of some human or possibly also because the notion violates some axiomatic belief that heredity can't possibly play any role in any difference you can measure when there also exists a "racial" or "gender" associated partitioning of the data set.

The problem is not that studies and results themselves are racist (data can't be racist). The problem is that parts of society (across the board) want to find racism in the data and draw problematic conclusions, even when the practitioners who just want to explore the data avoid any such narrative conclusion, so they will. They'll even brand the practitioners as racist for engaging in the pursuit of a scientific understanding of the world and generating the data in the first place.

Rather than throw out an entire field of study that's relevant and important in medicine, psychology, biology, real sociology, education, politics, etc. a much more honest/level approach would be to attack the meta-level discussion around how we apply the results even when they might be problematic instead of branding anybody who references the data a racist. For example, if studies show that IQ can be associated at least at some level with gene expression (the reality is it's a complex mix of both biological lottery and social nurturing) then perhaps question the validity of applying IQ tests as gating functions in areas where they may be miss applied. Question whether the traits that IQ tests end up fuzzily measuring are in fact necessary, important, relevant, whatever. Perform your own studies to shed more light on the topic and evolve our understanding. And if the answer is still, "there seems to be a measurable, relevant, practical genetic difference" the fix your fucked up society (if that requires active political patches, so be it) and figure out how to incorporate the reality into your narrative, don't brand the data and anybody adjacent to it as deplorable.

The idea that you can dismiss an entire field of rational study because it yields uncomfortable data or even just asks uncomfortable questions is immensely reductive and frankly harmful to a healthy society. Traditional religious institutions learned how to incorporate science but not before bloody fights and unhealthy/illiberal attempts to brand and silence practitioners, heretics. Regardless, the cults lost and rationalism prevailed. Historical context is dynamic, not static, and attempts to apply anecdotal interpretations based on a first order derivative of the current context really miss a lot of the picture.

Re: Urbit: The good, the bad, and the insane

#169
post #163
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As far as I know, the author's ultimate goal was libertarianism, but believed democracy was sub-optimal for achieving it. That's a euphemistic way to say he thought his views should be forced upon other people rather than having to convince them of their correctness in the public sphere. > I suspect be saw in Urbit a non-political technological means of realizing his ultimate end, which was libertarianism, and not…

Citation needed on “unquestionably a racist”. As far as I’ve gleaned, the assertions that he’s a racist are heavily based on an encyclopedic (surface-level) interpretation that essentially boils down to: evolutionary biology is inevitably racist and therefore anybody who entertains the study is associatively a racist, James Damore, Bret Weinstein, style. The assertion is based on postmodern axioms describing what a r…

> Citation needed on “unquestionably a racist”.

Race is a social category, not a genetic one, so his claim is ill-founded from the start. It is scientific consensus that genetics does not explain variations in IQ between racial groups. I don't think evolutionary biology is racist, I think people who believe it supports racism are hiding their basic racism behind scientists who don't agree with them about the nature of race.

Re: Urbit: The good, the bad, and the insane

#170
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that is correct, there are plenty of Mastodon instances with a very low number of users (1-5 users).

I already spelled out the difference, and even highlighted it in the hope that people would notice, but I don't mind doing it one more time: in urbit, there is no difference between an instance and a user. If everyone in Mastodon ran an instance with exactly one user, then sure, it would be possible to ban a user, but not strip the database of all their posts and take their identity away, because both of those things…

I still don't really understand the difference, is it not possible to host a service on your planet, and then have people make accounts on it and log into it with some other means? If so, that would seem to make it identical to mastodon, or any other internet service really. There doesn't seem to be any reason you can't bridge it with random HTTP services. I mean, in theory you could even run a mastodon-like service inside a planet?
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