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>The biggest problem in the world today is lack of trust and the failure of institutions. That's a pretty strong statement, one that I would disagree with, mos

>The biggest problem in the world today is lack of trust and the failure of institutions. That's a pretty strong statement, one that I would disagree with, mostly because it's so vague. How did you come to that conclusion?

nostrademons 8y ago
Because of what's happening in [government, media, science, public spaces, labor markets]. I view all of them as examples of the same underlying phenomena. In government, you have the UK voting to remove itself from the EU, and then when the referendum passed, the prime minister resigning, all of the major proponents of the referendum resigning, and Scotland threatening to secede from the UK (again). You have a U.S. president who starts his term with under 50% approval rates, the lowest since WW2 [1], to cries of "not my president", and Congressional approval ratings below 20%. You've got continued polarization - instead of converging on compromise candidates in the center, the Republicans has moved rightwards toward nominating actual Nazis (5 running in 2018) [2], and the Democrats have moved leftwards toward nominating actual socialists [3]. In the media, you've got an Overton Window that doesn't overlap - no matter where you are on the spectrum, there are publications with a large readership who are publishing what you perceive to be blatant falsehoods. Take a look at the comment sections of the same story on Breitbart [4] and News & Guts [5]. Could you imagine a reader of one reading the other with any sort of any open mind? Would you consider anything you read there an example of trust? In science, you have movements such as anti-vaxxers who would reject one of the most important health advances of the last century because they don't trust it. You have continued rejection of climate science, largely because it's inconvenient. You have a replication crisis in many social scientists. In public spaces - go to an airport and listen to the loudspeaker say "Please report any unattended baggage or suspicious persons to the nearest TSA agent" and think about what that's saying about the level of trust in society and the constant messages of fear. There was another recent story on HN about air marshals secretly tailing random civilians [6]; that's not exactly something that happens in a society that trusts its citizens. There's also continuing helicopter parenting [7] and the assumption that everything around you is dangerous, which tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And in labor markets - I did a bunch of market research on a startup to fix unemployment a couple years ago. My hypothesis was that with all the startups desperate for workers, and workers desperate for jobs, it was a simple information problem to match up supply to demand and make everything efficient. What I found was that hiring isn't really an information problem, it's a trust problem - employers are terrified of getting a bad hire and so reject a lot of candidates that with a little training could be great employees, and similarly employees are terrified of ending up in a career dead-end and so are unwilling to invest in significant self-study or commit to a career path or potential employer. End result - unemployment and underemployment even though there are both workers and jobs available. All of these are pretty far afield from cryptocurrencies, but you asked why I believe the #1 problem in the world is lack of trust, and that's why. A world where people trust each other is one where they're willing to take risks on the assumption that they won't be taken advantage of, and that is...very far from the state of the world right now. [1] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/ [2] https://www.vox.com/2018/7/9/17525860/nazis-russell-walker-arthur-jones-republicans-illinois-north-carolina-virginia https://www.vox.com/2018/7/9/17525860/nazis-russell-walker-a... [3] http://www.cc.com/video-clips/jzbxb9/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-alexandria-ocasio-cortez---bringing-moral-courage-to-american-politics---extended-interview http://www.cc.com/video-clips/jzbxb9/the-daily-show-with-tre... [4] https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/07/29/trump-wall-shut-down/ https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/07/29/trump-wa... [5] https://www.newsandguts.com/trump-will-shut-government-doesnt-get-wall/ https://www.newsandguts.com/trump-will-shut-government-doesn... [6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17635761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17635761 [7] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-lost-right-roam-generations.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-...
- zaphar 8y ago
  Trust has always been a problem. A trustless currency doesn't solve the problem any more than anything else has. Blockchains can't and won't solve the UK brexit problem. It won't solve the US politics problem. It won't solve the businesses too big to fail problem or the politics, power, and money corrupting people problem. I agree that trust in institutions is a problem but blockchain won't solve it. It will just displace it. In return if you aren't careful you'll lose the benefits of third party arbitrators. The very thing that in the current system gives you any hope of righting the wrongs that the systems you don't trust have inflicted on you. It's quite probable that rather than making things better cryptocoins will make them worse. It's also quite probably that they will devolve into the very thing they were trying to avoid becoming. As a case in point: Ethereum forked because of a bug in a smart contract. A central authority had to step in to right a wrong. (You can't trust people to write correct software). And that was early on in the cryptocurrency history. There will be more such occasions and each one will prove that not only can you not trust your bank to always get it right. You also can't trust the cryptocurrency developers or the smart contract developers.
  - ghthor 8y ago
    The difference here is that the source code for the EVM is open source and auditable. And I wouldn't use a smart contract that isn't the same, open source and auditable. This is my realm of expertise, this is how I think about systems and interactions, it's my turf so I have far higher levels of trust executing a smart contract then walking through the TSA scanners.
    - zaphar 8y ago
      Yes, but our demographic is a very small part of the wider target audience so what makes sense for us does not at all make sense for them. Any solution that requires the market as a whole to level up to our level of expertise has the same problem for them that we have when walking through TSA scanners. The only difference is that now you are the TSA which again only shifted the problem. It didn't solve it.

nostrademons 8y ago

Because of what's happening in [government, media, science, public spaces, labor markets]. I view all of them as examples of the same underlying phenomena. In government, you have the UK voting to remove itself from the EU, and then when the referendum passed, the prime minister resigning, all of the major proponents of the referendum resigning, and Scotland threatening to secede from the UK (again). You have a U.S. president who starts his term with under 50% approval rates, the lowest since WW2 [1], to cries of "not my president", and Congressional approval ratings below 20%. You've got continued polarization - instead of converging on compromise candidates in the center, the Republicans has moved rightwards toward nominating actual Nazis (5 running in 2018) [2], and the Democrats have moved leftwards toward nominating actual socialists [3]. In the media, you've got an Overton Window that doesn't overlap - no matter where you are on the spectrum, there are publications with a large readership who are publishing what you perceive to be blatant falsehoods. Take a look at the comment sections of the same story on Breitbart [4] and News & Guts [5]. Could you imagine a reader of one reading the other with any sort of any open mind? Would you consider anything you read there an example of trust? In science, you have movements such as anti-vaxxers who would reject one of the most important health advances of the last century because they don't trust it. You have continued rejection of climate science, largely because it's inconvenient. You have a replication crisis in many social scientists. In public spaces - go to an airport and listen to the loudspeaker say "Please report any unattended baggage or suspicious persons to the nearest TSA agent" and think about what that's saying about the level of trust in society and the constant messages of fear. There was another recent story on HN about air marshals secretly tailing random civilians [6]; that's not exactly something that happens in a society that trusts its citizens. There's also continuing helicopter parenting [7] and the assumption that everything around you is dangerous, which tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And in labor markets - I did a bunch of market research on a startup to fix unemployment a couple years ago. My hypothesis was that with all the startups desperate for workers, and workers desperate for jobs, it was a simple information problem to match up supply to demand and make everything efficient. What I found was that hiring isn't really an information problem, it's a trust problem - employers are terrified of getting a bad hire and so reject a lot of candidates that with a little training could be great employees, and similarly employees are terrified of ending up in a career dead-end and so are unwilling to invest in significant self-study or commit to a career path or potential employer. End result - unemployment and underemployment even though there are both workers and jobs available. All of these are pretty far afield from cryptocurrencies, but you asked why I believe the #1 problem in the world is lack of trust, and that's why. A world where people trust each other is one where they're willing to take risks on the assumption that they won't be taken advantage of, and that is...very far from the state of the world right now. [1] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/ [2] https://www.vox.com/2018/7/9/17525860/nazis-russell-walker-arthur-jones-republicans-illinois-north-carolina-virginia https://www.vox.com/2018/7/9/17525860/nazis-russell-walker-a... [3] http://www.cc.com/video-clips/jzbxb9/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-alexandria-ocasio-cortez---bringing-moral-courage-to-american-politics---extended-interview http://www.cc.com/video-clips/jzbxb9/the-daily-show-with-tre... [4] https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/07/29/trump-wall-shut-down/ https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/07/29/trump-wa... [5] https://www.newsandguts.com/trump-will-shut-government-doesnt-get-wall/ https://www.newsandguts.com/trump-will-shut-government-doesn... [6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17635761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17635761 [7] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-lost-right-roam-generations.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-...

zaphar 8y ago
Trust has always been a problem. A trustless currency doesn't solve the problem any more than anything else has. Blockchains can't and won't solve the UK brexit problem. It won't solve the US politics problem. It won't solve the businesses too big to fail problem or the politics, power, and money corrupting people problem. I agree that trust in institutions is a problem but blockchain won't solve it. It will just displace it. In return if you aren't careful you'll lose the benefits of third party arbitrators. The very thing that in the current system gives you any hope of righting the wrongs that the systems you don't trust have inflicted on you. It's quite probable that rather than making things better cryptocoins will make them worse. It's also quite probably that they will devolve into the very thing they were trying to avoid becoming. As a case in point: Ethereum forked because of a bug in a smart contract. A central authority had to step in to right a wrong. (You can't trust people to write correct software). And that was early on in the cryptocurrency history. There will be more such occasions and each one will prove that not only can you not trust your bank to always get it right. You also can't trust the cryptocurrency developers or the smart contract developers.
- ghthor 8y ago
  The difference here is that the source code for the EVM is open source and auditable. And I wouldn't use a smart contract that isn't the same, open source and auditable. This is my realm of expertise, this is how I think about systems and interactions, it's my turf so I have far higher levels of trust executing a smart contract then walking through the TSA scanners.
  - zaphar 8y ago
    Yes, but our demographic is a very small part of the wider target audience so what makes sense for us does not at all make sense for them. Any solution that requires the market as a whole to level up to our level of expertise has the same problem for them that we have when walking through TSA scanners. The only difference is that now you are the TSA which again only shifted the problem. It didn't solve it.