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Polis: Open-source platform for large-scale civic deliberation

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Re: Polis: Open-source platform for large-scale civic deliberation

#41

Post by fragmede »

reliabilityguy wrote: post #22
davidw wrote: post #3

Interesting, but how's it work out when people believe in "alternative facts"? That seems to be a pretty big problem in many places. I think I can find some common ground with people who have different views on corporate taxation if we both go over some data and economics and think about it and consider various tradeoffs. Especially if we chat face to face to avoid any 'keyboard warrior' effects. I probably can't fin…

> Interesting, but how's it work out when people believe in "alternative facts"? I think the first step is always to separate a fact (I.e., X happened), from why did X happen. Afterwards, you move towards the steps that could prevent X from happening, or reactive protocols to X that minimize the chance of conspiracy theories, etc. Of course it will not work with all, but, in my opinion, with enough of “alternative fa…

I go over the four ways to disagree with someone on my blog, but the question is, when is it material? If I think the sun revolves around the Earth, unless I'm the navigator of the ship you're on, and my wrong beliefs are going to ship wreck all of us, how does it affect you?

Re: Polis: Open-source platform for large-scale civic deliberation

#42

Post by movedx »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #32
gpm wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those people came to those views somehow. I'd hope that a less radicalizing social media platform might move them away from those views. Finding common ground isn't just about figuring out where people currently agree, it's also an act of persuasion convincing people to change views to then-mutually shared views. Wanting people dead or imprisoned simply for existing is the sort of inconsistent view that is likely eas…

Radicalized spaces are offline too. You can't cure anyone of being irrational while they still live in a cult.

So just throw away this solution then? Never use it because it can’t solve this one tiny issue you’re putting forward as an argument?

What’s your point? Everything you’re saying on this thread seems negative and puts the product (Polis) into a negative light as if somehow it’s trying to do more harm than good, or can never work because .

Re: Polis: Open-source platform for large-scale civic deliberation

#43

Post by kej »

amarant wrote: post #4

Man the name really threw me for a minute. Polis is the correct spelling for police in my native Swedish and I got through the first 2 paragraphs wondering what any of this has to do with law enforcement. Then it dawned on me. Edit to add: I think the white and blue theme helps. Those are police colours in Sweden...

(Jared) Polis is the current governor of Colorado, so I was also confused but in a different direction.

Re: Polis: Open-source platform for large-scale civic deliberation

#44

Post by observationist »

acgourley wrote: post #21
goda90 wrote: post #12

What are some strategies a platform like this can take against spam or influence bots? Tying real life identities to users would certainly limit that(though identity theft and account selling could still happen), but that adds friction to joining, poses security risks, and many people might feel less comfortable putting their opinions openly online where backlash could impact real life.

We really need proof of soul systems to exist, extended to also have a proof of citizenship. While the proof of soul systems can plausible be done in a decentralized manner, proof of citizenship is much harder, and in my opinion this is one of (the few) things the government should really do.

The casual ginger hate is disgusting. smh.

It's funny to think of how the US government is effectively a decentralized web of trust system. Building one that works, that has sufficient network effects, auditability, accountability, enforcability, so that when things are maliciously exploited, or people make mistakes, your system is robust and resilient - these are profound technically difficult challenges.

The US government effectively has to operate IDs under a web of trust, with 50 units sitting at the top, and a around 3,000 county sub-units, each of which are handling anywhere from 0 to 88 sub-units of towns, cities, other community structures.

Each community then deals with one or more hospitals, one or more doctors in each hospital, and every time a baby is born, they get some paperwork filled out, filed upward through the hierarchy of institutions, shared at the top level between the massive distributed database of social security numbers, and there are laws and regulations and officials in charge of making sure each link in the chain is where it needs to be and operates according to a standard protocol.

At any rate - ID is hard. You've gotta have rules and enforcement, accountability and due process, transparency and auditing, and you end up with something that looks a bit like a ledger or a blockchain. Getting a working blockchain running is almost trivial at this point, or building on any of the myriad existing blockchains. The hard part is the network incentives. It can't be centralized - no signing up for an account on some website. Federated or domain based ID can be good, but they're too technical and dependent on other nations and states. The incentives have to line up, too; if it's too low friction and easy, it'll constantly get exploited and scammed at a low level. If it's too high friction and difficult, nobody will want to bother with it.

Absent a compelling reason to participate, people need to be compelled into these ID schemes, and if they're used for important things, they need a corresponding level of enforcement, and force, backing them up, with due process. You can't run it like a gmail account, because then it's not reliable as a source of truth, and so on.

I don't know if there's a singular, technological fix, short of incorruptible AGI that we can trust to run things for us following an explicit set of rules, with protocols that allow any arbitrary independent number of networks and nodes and individuals to participate.

Re: Polis: Open-source platform for large-scale civic deliberation

#45

Post by Zaskoda »

worldsayshi wrote: post #37
ninjagoo wrote: post #35

Society is not ready for an AI world: any platform that does not guarantee anonymity will be of limited utility for social discourse in a world lurching towards authoritarianism, and any platform that does guarantee anonymity can no longer reliably distinguish human from ai; not that that should matter when it's ideas that are being debated. But the bigger issue is the control of money: hierarchical institutions disi…

I believe we can solve both anonymity + proof-of-humanity using zero-knowledge proofs that act as intermediary between a trusted identity provider and the service provider. I.e. you get a digital id but you use it to generate proofs rather than handing out your identity. Right?

Related: https://www.proofofpersonhood.how/

Re: Polis: Open-source platform for large-scale civic deliberation

#46

Post by gpm »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #32
gpm wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those people came to those views somehow. I'd hope that a less radicalizing social media platform might move them away from those views. Finding common ground isn't just about figuring out where people currently agree, it's also an act of persuasion convincing people to change views to then-mutually shared views. Wanting people dead or imprisoned simply for existing is the sort of inconsistent view that is likely eas…

Radicalized spaces are offline too. You can't cure anyone of being irrational while they still live in a cult.

People leave cults all the time - sometimes directly because of the online information environment where they find space to think thoughts against the cult's party line...

Re: Polis: Open-source platform for large-scale civic deliberation

#47

Post by reliabilityguy »

Lerc wrote: post #25
reliabilityguy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Interesting, but how's it work out when people believe in "alternative facts"? I think the first step is always to separate a fact (I.e., X happened), from why did X happen. Afterwards, you move towards the steps that could prevent X from happening, or reactive protocols to X that minimize the chance of conspiracy theories, etc. Of course it will not work with all, but, in my opinion, with enough of “alternative fa…

I don't understand "why did X happen?" presupposes X happened. We seem to be at the level of X pretty obviously did not happen but people believe it did.

Ah, I see what you mean. I my personal experience, those that believe in “alternative facts” typically believe in different narratives around the same thing and confuse the narrative with the fact.

For things that did not happen? Yeah. I am not sure there is something that can be done beyond pointing out inconsistencies in their reasoning and proves. However, typically, those things are about believes that mascaras as rational reasoning, and there is nothing you can do about beliefs.

Remember, after WW2 there were people in Germany who did not believe the Allies that Hitler and Co did terrible things.

Re: Polis: Open-source platform for large-scale civic deliberation

#48

Post by warkdarrior »

worldsayshi wrote: post #37
ninjagoo wrote: post #35

Society is not ready for an AI world: any platform that does not guarantee anonymity will be of limited utility for social discourse in a world lurching towards authoritarianism, and any platform that does guarantee anonymity can no longer reliably distinguish human from ai; not that that should matter when it's ideas that are being debated. But the bigger issue is the control of money: hierarchical institutions disi…

I believe we can solve both anonymity + proof-of-humanity using zero-knowledge proofs that act as intermediary between a trusted identity provider and the service provider. I.e. you get a digital id but you use it to generate proofs rather than handing out your identity. Right?

And who is going to be a trusted identity provider in authoritarian regimes?

Re: Polis: Open-source platform for large-scale civic deliberation

#49

Post by frogperson »

worldsayshi wrote: post #38
acgourley wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We really need proof of soul systems to exist, extended to also have a proof of citizenship. While the proof of soul systems can plausible be done in a decentralized manner, proof of citizenship is much harder, and in my opinion this is one of (the few) things the government should really do.

What about Zero-Knowledge Identity? Use zero knowledge proofs to prove that I have an eID without actually providing my identity.

Something like a cert chain, but it would need to be both simple to use and secure. Those two requirements are greatly at odds with each other.

Re: Polis: Open-source platform for large-scale civic deliberation

#50

Post by worldsayshi »

warkdarrior wrote: post #48
worldsayshi wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe we can solve both anonymity + proof-of-humanity using zero-knowledge proofs that act as intermediary between a trusted identity provider and the service provider. I.e. you get a digital id but you use it to generate proofs rather than handing out your identity. Right?

And who is going to be a trusted identity provider in authoritarian regimes?

Yeah, I mean that is definitely an additional hard nut to crack.

I also think it has potential (partial) solutions. I'm thinking that there are many ways to prove identity information. You could use something like tlsnotary to prove that you can log in to a certain web page (i.e. you are an employee of corp X). You can prove that you know someone that know person Y given certain encrypted data.

I just think that Zero-knowledge-proofs are very under explored. As I understand it, and I am not an expert - more or less anything that can be proven algorithmically can be turned into a zkp. Any question that algorithmically can have a yes or no answer can also avoid leaking further information if handled in a zkp way.

I just learned like a few basic examples of zkp and I realized that so many proofs can be made this way.

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