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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

#281

Post by sebzim4500 »

omeid2 wrote: post #261
wmf wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If the idea is to make "World ID" universal, in that everyone is going to have one, what does attesting that someone has one means? Nothing. Virtually nothing. Everyone either has one or can get one, to attest that they do means nothing of value.

I think the idea is that if you make a botnet of a billion bots you will not have close to a billion "world id"s (is that really what they are called? lol).

Maybe you can find a few thousand on the black market, but that's going to add up fast.

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

#282

Post by beiller »

omeid2 wrote: post #261
wmf wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If the idea is to make "World ID" universal, in that everyone is going to have one, what does attesting that someone has one means? Nothing. Virtually nothing. Everyone either has one or can get one, to attest that they do means nothing of value.

I know nothing really of this worldcoin latest hype. I think that attesting that you have one, without revealing who you are, could maybe be used to attest that you are not a bot? Maybe I misunderstand. Sounds interesting if true tho.

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

#283

Post by sebzim4500 »

JohnFen wrote: post #25
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…

I haven't heard of, and can't think of, a solution to this problem that doesn't introduce much larger problems. Big picture, I don't think the problem of distinguishing humans from bots online is a big enough deal that we should take hits in other areas to solve it. The least-harm solution, as far as I can see right now, is to just accept that the internet cannot be made trustworthy in this way. The only way to know…

What if the person you are dealing with is on the other side of the world?

I don't think that really works, you need some kind of trust system. I hope it doesn't turn out that worldcoin is the best solution.

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

#284

Post by gonehome »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #229
gonehome wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are things you can do to verify humanity. Make a human go to a place for example (though even this has difficulties with fraud). I'm not making any specific claims about world coin other than the goal they're trying to solve makes sense as a goal in a world where bots are increasingly capable of mimicking humans successfully, we want to know when something is human and when it isn't. Attempting to solve that pr…

You must also prove it's you, not another person went to that place.

Yes, that's why I mentioned the difficulties with fraud. There are things you can do with that too (Iris scans are one example, but there are others).

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

#285

Post by dahateb »

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #46

[flagged]

In the end it comes down to the actual implementation. The article states that the data stored is just a hash of the iris scan. From that hash accounts can be created that can be used to verify against that hash to make sure your are an actual person. According to the twitter post multiple accounts can be created and and used for verification independently, so indeed providing some privacy. So the question that remains is can the world id be used to discover these accounts, which would be bad. That question remains unanswered. There is of course the point that you have to trust Sam Altman that the system works the way it is claimed and no actual biometric data is stored.

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

#286

Post by nemo44x »

Nursie wrote: post #268
nemo44x wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see that per-se. I think it's more likely that capitalism continues to rapidly advance technology to the point where we truly do evolve evolution. So a certain part of the global population will have access to DNA synthesizers and other biotech and AI and can reproduce a master race of post-humans that will dominate and eventually annihilate Homosapiens. After a few generations of rapid improvement (a singula…

Or capitalism will fuck the environment so thoroughly before we get there that the above can’t transpire.

Maybe, maybe not - but that's sort of the point. It doesn't really matter since there's no alternative. Accelerationism isn't even a conscience choice per-se - it's a phenomenon that is a product of technological advancement of which Capitalism is the vehicle for. If anything, the only conscious choice is to not resist it as that's ultimately futile since it can't be stopped. Well, unless we went full Teddy K, which I don't think is likely.

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

#287

Post by lern_too_spel »

jondwillis wrote: post #129
lern_too_spel wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obviously Sam has some street cred with the govt else they would have pulled him infront of congress like when zuck tried to launch Libre. He got around US regulations by not making it available in the US. No street cred required.

There are iris scanning stations across the US and there is no way to geographically limit who and what holds WLD. What does not available mean here? Not available on centralized US-based exchanges?

It means Tools for Humanity is neither based in the US nor offering the coin in the US. The US cannot control what that company does in other countries. The US can control what Meta does in the US.

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

#288

Post by gonehome »

gonehome wrote: post #200
meowface wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a kind of uncharitable article (surely Sam and the rest of the people involved have spent a ton of time thinking about the problem and the existence of black markets and possibilities for abuse), but >I don’t know if it’s the best attempt but I understand what it is and what the goals are. a bad solution can potentially be worse than no solution in this case. A false belief in identity guarantees can fac…

Agreed, I just have a hard time with articles I know to be uncharitable or written with an obvious bent against the subject. Maybe world coin has thought of these problems? Maybe not, but I wouldn’t trust the author to have done any due diligence. There’s an interesting article to be written here, but this isn’t it imo.

Also seems unfair that my root level comment was flagged, dang?

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

#289

Post by nathan_gold »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #283
JohnFen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't heard of, and can't think of, a solution to this problem that doesn't introduce much larger problems. Big picture, I don't think the problem of distinguishing humans from bots online is a big enough deal that we should take hits in other areas to solve it. The least-harm solution, as far as I can see right now, is to just accept that the internet cannot be made trustworthy in this way. The only way to know…

What if the person you are dealing with is on the other side of the world? I don't think that really works, you need some kind of trust system. I hope it doesn't turn out that worldcoin is the best solution.

Identity online should be optional. If you read comments on a news story about an upcoming election in your country, you should see some that are verifiably a human citizen from your country, separate from everything else. Pay attention to everything else at your discretion.

I think a web that is half identified and half anonymous would work well.

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

#290

Post by gochi »

EthanHeilman wrote: post #100
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.

> the ultimate and perhaps only proof of personhood is being a person, engaged in the world I buy this. Daniel Suarez had a very similar idea, although he referred to it as the bot problem[0]. I believe this approach of identities withstanding "the test of time" solves the oracle problem but at the cost of a delayed solution. Initially you have lots and lots of bots and Sybil attacks are common. Then after a while, i…

>My identity on hackernews is over 11 years old. Creating such an identity with the comment history, connection to a true name, and content over 11 years would be very expensive. Likely more expensive that a fake passport.

You can buy very old accounts on any platform for very cheap. Like under $100 for a 10 year account on a popular platform cheap. Most platforms offer comment editing, and most people don't archive everyone else's profiles nor do they have access to the database to check for consistent changes.

Meaning that if we use your account for example, if someone bought it from you (or it was hacked after inactivity and you don't care for it, etc), they could easily rewrite what they need to paint the picture that your user isn't actually about using your real name, but a pseudonym. Most aren't going to care about this that far anyways, as usernames are easily ignored on most sites, same with comment histories. Just indicating how easy it is to rewrite both of those aspects.

The only platforms where this would be difficult are platforms that already partake in substantial identity verification like Facebook.

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