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

blockworks.co

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

#81

Post by floydianspiral »

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.

It's weird how much of that wiki article (and others I just looked up) trends towards right/alt-right extremism as I have never thought of accelerationism as something fascists would take to. My original understanding of it was that ai/tech will become so advanced that it will take over a lot of the production and labor we currently do to feed, build, and supply the world with resources and when that part is automated, humans would hopefully be freed up to do more with their life. This would have to involve restructuring money, society and how governments and resources are allocated. Ties to UBI and how much people get will have to be solved in a different way since we no longer need to do all the menial work. The time span between ai starting to be able to do all of this (maybe starting soon) and when we finally figure out we don't need to work for money is the terrible part where loss of jobs would eventually cause an upheaval and rethinking of how society needs to be structured and the acceleration that people talk about is trying to speed through this bad part as fast as possible to get to the other side as possible. I guess my idea of it is not at all what others seem to think though? I'm pretty pessimistic the "other side" will actually be a utopia but that would be up to the collective to figure out but it seems like a worthwhile concept on the surface.

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

#82

Post by latchkey »

zer8k wrote: post #74
latchkey wrote: post #67

This is the Eye of Sauron. I'm very much into the crypto world and I'm so tired of all of these dumb scams. Even worse that it is backed by yet another scammer named 'Sam'. I really wish we could focus on things that actually provided value to people. What a waste of time/money/effort. I hope this one dies a quick death. So far, it looks like it will, which is great.

Honest question, is there any cryptocurrency that provides actual value to people? The blockchain can be trivially deanonymized from my understanding. It's difficult to get coins without at any point revealing your identity. So, if you're not in a circle of people who will physically trade coin for cash (or vis-versa) there seems to be no privacy argument. I just fail to see crypto as anything but a scam - period. It…

I made this comment the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36885902

If you want to go back a bit further in time, I'd like to point out someone else's comment that I thought was pretty spot on as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410

Hopefully that opens some discussion/thought points that we can focus on.

Update: thinking a bit further on your points. My personal concern isn't privacy, my concern is more with decentralization. I don't agree with other people telling me what I can and cannot do with my own funds. It is relatively simple things... If I travel to another country, being limited to carrying $10k cash on a plane, is absurd (why would I need to carry cash anyway?). If I'm in another country, getting access to my funds is often extremely difficult. These are the things that I'd like to see people work on.

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

#83

Post by amelius »

nkozyra wrote: post #37
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.

It's curious to frame this as an intentional act rather than an inevitable, natural stage of capitalism.

This is like saying that anything that can be hacked, should be hacked (instead of fixed).

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

#84

Post by foobiekr »

unboxingelf wrote: post #22

Worldcoin is simply another pre-mined, VC backed shitcoin - albeit worst because they’re building a biometrics database. - VCs dump money in (SBF, a16z, etc) - 25% of the coins are kept for the founders + investors How many times do people have to get burned on these scams? 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.

If they didn't seem so stupid, you'd think the biometrics collection thing was the point, but I actually think they're just so dumb it's not even that sophisticated a scam.

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

#85

Post by brian_cloutier »

highwaylights wrote: post #76
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…

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.

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

#86

Post by ineptech »

no_wizard wrote: post #71
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…

What’s the “Oracle Problem”? Google gives me conflicting results

The problem of moving information about the real world (stock prices, weather report, did the Knicks win last night) into a crypto ledger so that it can be speculated upon (e.g. a smart contract that only pays out if the Knicks win).

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

#87

Post by w4termelon »

gonehome wrote: post #7

[flagged]

> The goal is how do you verify humanity in a world where bots are indistinguishable from humans.

You don't. Crypto evangelists, as usual, are trying to put their square blockchain peg in a round hole. They need to stop and check their premises.

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

#88

Post by AndrewKemendo »

confoundcofound wrote: post #29
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.

Exactly, tech is hellbent on preserving our humanity while discarding the embodied world that makes us human. It's a schizoid's fantasy.

That’s because it’s mostly schizoids creating this stuff (myself included)

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

#89

Post by philwelch »

zer8k wrote: post #74
latchkey wrote: post #67

This is the Eye of Sauron. I'm very much into the crypto world and I'm so tired of all of these dumb scams. Even worse that it is backed by yet another scammer named 'Sam'. I really wish we could focus on things that actually provided value to people. What a waste of time/money/effort. I hope this one dies a quick death. So far, it looks like it will, which is great.

Honest question, is there any cryptocurrency that provides actual value to people? The blockchain can be trivially deanonymized from my understanding. It's difficult to get coins without at any point revealing your identity. So, if you're not in a circle of people who will physically trade coin for cash (or vis-versa) there seems to be no privacy argument. I just fail to see crypto as anything but a scam - period. It…

I’ve been told you can use Monero to buy drugs.

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

#90

Post by nonameiguess »

brian_cloutier wrote: post #69
PurpleRamen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, the biometric information are only used for the creation of the wallet, not the later usage? Then isn't this scam? What is the actual value of using biometric for this?

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 humans, but it doesn't actually guarantee the 1:1 mapping of wallet:human or an equal initial distribution of coin.

All it's doing is shifting the balance of power from people who command many machines to people who command many other people. It's like reverting industrialism back to feudalism, a digital replay of the same mistake made by every communist revolution of the 20th century.

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