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> Your Whig history As this point you've already lost everyone who doesn't already ready the same pamphlets you read and agree. Either because they have read t

> Your Whig history As this point you've already lost everyone who doesn't already ready the same pamphlets you read and agree. Either because they have read those pamphlets and eye-roll, or because they haven't and figure you're a rambling extremist. It's literally equivalent to communists beginning propaganda pieces with "Attention all Comrades!" That said, I disagree with you, so feel free to keep talking this way. > ever progressing political system Literally no one claims politics is monotonically improving. Unless Clinton has been singing Trump's praises recently, you're attacking a straw-man. > the average voter has an extremely limited understanding of what their government is doing Appealing to this fact in a thread about cryptocurrency is beyond ironic. Seriously, even most early adopters don't understand what their crypto currency is doing. And certainly don't have any hope of understanding even a mildly complex contract. Code comprehension is difficult for trained software engineers!. All of the serious proposals in this thread call for some sort of formal verification, which even most trained software engineers aren't currently capable of using. And hell, if we learned anything form this, it's that even the ostensible experts don't have an air-tight understanding! So, what? Instead of teaching every citizen how to read and interpret legislation and regulation, we'll just train them all as professional software engineers with formal methods expertise?!?! And even that's no silver bullet. Contracts can and will grow just as complex as e.g., current tax law. Because the underlying humans won't have changed! In the long run, you're merely adding complexity. Now I have to understand software and also tax policy. Things get strictly worse. > This opens the door to manipulation by demagogues and special interests As opposed to manipulation by "whichever guy finds a bug in the cryptocurrency". You can argue that these are equivalently bad things (I'd disagree), but you'll be hard-pressed to convince most rational folks that "rando dude" is better. Stick to the devils you know and all that. > limits the Kafkaesque tendencies of collective society. I'll end my comment in the same way I started it: you're preaching to the choir. Besides which, what're you going to do when it turns out the majority of people still don't agree with you about how society should be, and still control all the guns and natural resources? Because that's what will happen. Political power will flow from the arrangement of bits only when the arrangement of bits determines who controls overwhelming military force. And not a moment before.

Jabanga 9y ago
>As this point you've already lost everyone who doesn't already ready the same pamphlets you read and agree. Usage of the term "Whig history" is not confined adherents of a particular ideology, and does not require one to have/not-have any particular set of beliefs to use it (other than believing that the history of some institution is not a story of progress).. In other words, it's not comparable to "comrade". >Appealing to this fact in a thread about cryptocurrency is beyond ironic. There's a subtext that you're missing here, which is that the political system doesn't work when voters don't understand the system, which is unlike most domains, which manage complexity effectively. For example, most people don't understand how microprocessors work. But this is addressed through an effective and spontaneous process of delegating responsibility. The political process differs in this respect. The delegation process is baked in, as a result of built-in mechanisms that actively resist change. This prevents the kind of readjustment that occurs in other institutions. Meanwhile, those affected by policy are a captive audience, which eliminates a major feedback mechanism that exists in market-based systems. These two factors result in the system as a whole not evolving toward greater efficacy. On the contrary, it has the potential to evolve toward greater exploitation. >Political power will flow from the arrangement of bits only when the arrangement of bits determines who controls overwhelming military force. And not a moment before. We'll see.
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  Like I said, feel free to keep talking like this. In fact, I encourage you to do so. > The political process differs in this respect. On this we agree. I don't see how layering software engineering on top of politics will ever simplify politics.
  - Jabanga 9y ago
    I am referring to the state-backed political process, not the general variety of politics one sees in private institutions. The former is qualitatively different from other institutions in our society.
    - 9y ago

Jabanga 9y ago

>As this point you've already lost everyone who doesn't already ready the same pamphlets you read and agree. Usage of the term "Whig history" is not confined adherents of a particular ideology, and does not require one to have/not-have any particular set of beliefs to use it (other than believing that the history of some institution is not a story of progress).. In other words, it's not comparable to "comrade". >Appealing to this fact in a thread about cryptocurrency is beyond ironic. There's a subtext that you're missing here, which is that the political system doesn't work when voters don't understand the system, which is unlike most domains, which manage complexity effectively. For example, most people don't understand how microprocessors work. But this is addressed through an effective and spontaneous process of delegating responsibility. The political process differs in this respect. The delegation process is baked in, as a result of built-in mechanisms that actively resist change. This prevents the kind of readjustment that occurs in other institutions. Meanwhile, those affected by policy are a captive audience, which eliminates a major feedback mechanism that exists in market-based systems. These two factors result in the system as a whole not evolving toward greater efficacy. On the contrary, it has the potential to evolve toward greater exploitation. >Political power will flow from the arrangement of bits only when the arrangement of bits determines who controls overwhelming military force. And not a moment before. We'll see.

throwawayjava 9y ago
Like I said, feel free to keep talking like this. In fact, I encourage you to do so. > The political process differs in this respect. On this we agree. I don't see how layering software engineering on top of politics will ever simplify politics.
- Jabanga 9y ago
  I am referring to the state-backed political process, not the general variety of politics one sees in private institutions. The former is qualitatively different from other institutions in our society.
  - 9y ago