4 ms·

Any possible solution I can think of to this problem of trustworthiness relies on some notion of a trusted arbiter. As an example: We could replace e-mail with

Any possible solution I can think of to this problem of trustworthiness relies on some notion of a trusted arbiter. As an example: We could replace e-mail with an identity-verified communications platform. If we do that, you’re sacrificing your privacy AND placing your trust in whatever government or company manages that system. Likewise video. A government could realistically just release statements through their own websites (e.g. Gov.uk or whitehouse.gov) and make everyone take their news from there. In either case you have to place your trust in someone to tell you what’s true, and if you do that, the platform becomes a propaganda machine about 15 minutes after launching and we’re basically a communist state. Basically the solution to these problems is even worse than the already terrible status quo. This is real, and it’s here now, and Joe Public has no idea why everyone doesn’t love Trump/Bernie/Boris/Jeremy as much as he does. This doesn’t end at all well. I’m going home to hug my kids.

Jeff_Brown 7y ago
Before cryptocurrencies, we believed we needed a central authority to create money, too. We currently have to trust arbiters of fact because we have no systematic way of evaluating the work of journalists, nor of aggregating the distibuted verification efforts that millions of people perform daily. If that work were easily navigable, our collective intelligence might improve. In a previous comment[1] I suggest a software solution. I've already written part of it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21664084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21664084
- headmelted 7y ago
  I had a read at this but I’m not sure how reliable consensus is for something that is ultimately unprovable. With cryptocurrency I have mathematically provable truths to rely on. With consensus I’m relying on collective opinion. If something sounds believable to most people it would be accepted as true by any such mechanism. If the last four years have taught us anything, it’s that this is a terrifying prospect.
  - Jeff_Brown 7y ago
    I'm not proposing a consensus mechanism. Rather, a mechanism that allows anybody to encode anything, and anybody else to run searches over it, systematically. It would make it easier to inspect the data behind anybody's opinions, and thereby, I hope, make us collectively smarter. Yes, systems to encode and query data already exist, but what they can encode is limited, and the way to encode or search for it is difficult. It's hard to think of information that Hode cannot encode, and the way of getting data into or out of it is extremely close to ordinary natural language.
buboard 7y ago
> We could replace e-mail with an identity-verified communications platform. We already have that, it's what instant messengers do. Instead of accepting messages from everyone, approve each sender. Spam filters will adapt to reject the most-highly-rejected accounts. And there doesn't even need to be identity verification. > could realistically just release statements through their own websites Or they could verify the checksums of their videos in a public blockchain. no need for centralized media

Jeff_Brown 7y ago

Before cryptocurrencies, we believed we needed a central authority to create money, too. We currently have to trust arbiters of fact because we have no systematic way of evaluating the work of journalists, nor of aggregating the distibuted verification efforts that millions of people perform daily. If that work were easily navigable, our collective intelligence might improve. In a previous comment[1] I suggest a software solution. I've already written part of it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21664084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21664084

headmelted 7y ago
I had a read at this but I’m not sure how reliable consensus is for something that is ultimately unprovable. With cryptocurrency I have mathematically provable truths to rely on. With consensus I’m relying on collective opinion. If something sounds believable to most people it would be accepted as true by any such mechanism. If the last four years have taught us anything, it’s that this is a terrifying prospect.
- Jeff_Brown 7y ago
  I'm not proposing a consensus mechanism. Rather, a mechanism that allows anybody to encode anything, and anybody else to run searches over it, systematically. It would make it easier to inspect the data behind anybody's opinions, and thereby, I hope, make us collectively smarter. Yes, systems to encode and query data already exist, but what they can encode is limited, and the way to encode or search for it is difficult. It's hard to think of information that Hode cannot encode, and the way of getting data into or out of it is extremely close to ordinary natural language.

buboard 7y ago

> We could replace e-mail with an identity-verified communications platform. We already have that, it's what instant messengers do. Instead of accepting messages from everyone, approve each sender. Spam filters will adapt to reject the most-highly-rejected accounts. And there doesn't even need to be identity verification. > could realistically just release statements through their own websites Or they could verify the checksums of their videos in a public blockchain. no need for centralized media