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Hi, excuse the delay. I was saying that blockchain might help address fraud, against untruth or deceit. For example I believe that yes, the American Indians wo
by malloryerik 8y ago
Hi, excuse the delay.
I was saying that blockchain might help address fraud, against untruth or deceit. For example I believe that yes, the American Indians would have been better off with unalterable titles to their lands. Would it have changed history? I don't know, but in other situations it might, and for that I point you to Hernando de Soto Polar's site. https://desoto.com https://desoto.com
I was also saying that the claim that "nobody cares about the 'truth'" (and so blockchain is not useful) is misplaced, and that in this case there's no good point for using the word truth in quotes as if it were something illusory. There are times when quotes around the word truth make sense, like in philosophy, but this is not one of them. An exception is if you are talking about the potential to use the blockchain to make lies permanent.
And third I was responding to your statement that people who support the blockchain are often hoping to be freed "from the constraints of governments and society", and that my comment was a good example of this. Your comment might be correct about others, but I'm not a libertarian or anarchist. Rather, I'm a bit worried that technology like machine learning and even just social media have the potential to weaken and even destroy our democracies by using lies (doctored video, for example) as political tools.
But you don't even need machine learning and social media. In Russia, lies have undermined what began as democracy under Yeltsin to such a degree that it is now for all intents and purposes a dictatorship. In Russia the playbook is basically as follows: an event occurs that makes the Kremlin look bad. The Kremlin uses its media outlets to make up alternative truths (lies), several versions, some more implausible than others. The person seeking the truth, what actually happened, is now looking into a hall of mirrors. Not being able to see anything clearly and having to spend their energy disproving several false versions, no meaningful discourse happens. The event, in this way, has been neutralized by lies.
If a blockchain can help with this kind of problem, then I'm interested.
Edit: Btw, I'm not like a cryptocurrency enthusiast, don't program Ethereum contracts, own no BTC or any other crypto, and believe and have argued here at HN that BTC is a bad currency because of volatility with makes credit and debt impossible. Additionally BTC is used for crime and as a way to cash in on fraud, malware, threats and so on, and I'm not interested in any of that.
- tekknik 8y agoSo specifically on addressing fraud, this only helps the merchant. You could make an argument that decreased fraud decreases costs but human greed overtakes that assumption. So then what’s left from the consumer side? What if the merchant send you a bad product? They have no incentive to make it right. You could argue that eventually it will put them out of business from bad reviews however this doesn’t always work in practice and you’re still out of your money for the original bad product. With a centralized system we can just reach in their account and take it, refunding you your money and costing the merchant more in the long run, further making them want to do legit business. This permanent contract you speak of is a double edged sword that cuts the consumer more than the merchant.