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Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

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Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#161

Post by kstrauser »

px43 wrote: post #156
kstrauser wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the best of my knowledge, the IRS has never scanned my eyeball, and yet I'm still able to send and receive money with them. I'm not getting the UBI angle at all. What part of UBI requires new technology?

You realize that the IRS deals with rampant fraud right? And with emerging technology, the capabilities of criminals to steal identities is only increasing. People file taxes for dead people or people whose identities have been stolen all the time. Recently, to deal with this, the IRS has outsourced their identity verification to a third party company, id.me, who gathers way WAY more information than Worldcoin does,…

What are the official numbers for that, compared to the legitimate traffic the IRS handles?

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#162

Post by Ataraxic »

__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...

Crypto Anarchism is not attractive the vast majority of people.

I'll argue the UBI people want involves their government sending them a check, direct deposit, or cash.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#163

Post by JaggerFoo »

Well, another ideas used for identity in the crypto world was having a twitter account for more than a specific time period, and a number of followers. So I was considered unidentifiable as a person because I had a Twitter account that did not have the requisite number of followers - so I couldn't get test network tokens for development work. SMH.

Limited partners (pension funds) are paying for this aspirational idea (less any funds from selling tokens perhaps) while a16z will pocket a Venture Capital fee.

Lots of money sitting around might as well roll the dice.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#164

Post by pessimizer »

littlestymaar wrote: post #77
Ataraxic wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually significantly more skeptical of OpenAI after discovering that one of their founders is behind this. The tag line of universal basic income is so absurd for an iris scanner built on the blockchain. Are we still in the world of 0% interest rates???

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.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#165

Post by mistercheph »

ramesh31 wrote: post #42

Taxation and control of the money supply is the single most powerful and fundamental right reserved by a government, and it's backed up by lots and lots of guns. Godspeed with changing that, crypto bros.

Those guns require ammo, toilet paper and food for the men holding them. Modern governments would be wise to study the situation the European aristocracies found themselves in wrt their merchant class financiers 300 years ago.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#166

Post by AnthonyMouse »

kbenson wrote: post #103
scrps wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would hope both would set off alarm bells but I guess at least one of them inducing trepidation is cause enough these days for guarded optimism.

One of them is easy to include in thrilling action movies that allows the idea and risk to enter public consciousness, and the other is something that economics wonks and people interested in how business works at high levels look at. Protagonist 1: "I don't get it, why are they doing this? What do they have to gain?" Protagonist 2: "I don't know, unless... oh my god, it's regulatory capture!" Protagonist 1: "Shit, o…

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 that businesses don't like or fewer regulations that businesses don't like.

Regulatory capture is when the villains of both sides are working together, and the solution to it is fewer regulations that big businesses do like. But nobody wants to see their hero as a villain so anything that accurately portrays this is unpopular.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#167

Post by redler »

rchaud wrote: post #155
catchnear4321 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you forgot the part about the shiny metal orb. it really changes the flavor of it from cambridge analytica to dr evil.

I'm starting to think Bond villains need to have a "satire" disclaimer to pre-empt future Stanford kids from thinking it's something to aspire to.

They'll still have Atlas Shrugged.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#168

Post by pessimizer »

px43 wrote: post #143
modo_ wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He believes proof of humanity is vital in a world where AI can convincingly pass as human

I actually think his actual concern here is humans stealing identities and running bots in order to farm any sort of UBI mechanism that gets set up. It's not about humans asserting their humanness over some evil AGI/ASI machine, it's about sybil resistance. Malicious humans pretending to be thousands or millions of other humans.

That sounds like a automation problem. If you have an office dealing with UBI and unemployment in your neighborhood, the government can literally know their customer. The more people unemployed, the easier it will be to staff them.

These people are pretending they're fighting fraud, when instead they're trying to reinvent government responsibilities/campaigns as passive income sources for 3rd party rent-seekers. Uber for welfare.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#169

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #136
Ataraxic wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually significantly more skeptical of OpenAI after discovering that one of their founders is behind this. The tag line of universal basic income is so absurd for an iris scanner built on the blockchain. Are we still in the world of 0% interest rates???

Does anyone believe the UBI part is real? Or is it just part of the scam?

I used to defend crypto a lot (now just a little). Especially the UBI attempts. But no.

World coin has always looked like a thinly veiled attempt to generate a biometric dataset which would later be used against its users.

I just don't know who its audience was supposed to be. If you're suspicious enough of fiat to want this kind of escape hatch, how can you simultaneously be trusting enough to embrace a system that relies on biometrics and allegedly trustworthy hardware?

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