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You're wrong about "lacking initiative and the detailed procedures" - that's exactly what blockchains were created for: As a response to opaque and unreliable s

You're wrong about "lacking initiative and the detailed procedures" - that's exactly what blockchains were created for: As a response to opaque and unreliable systems. This is the solution to a systematic problem in governance. Blockchains simply add verifiability of claims. Yes, you could create a central system which flags "bad actions" or something, but it'd be difficult to prove someone scammed you without the cooperation of the central authority. Breaking the rules digitally shouldn't be possible in a properly designed system, which is what some blockchains can provide. Currently if someone says "no I didn't scam you", the truth of their statement is ambiguous without cooperative investigation. On a blockchain it's inherently unambiguous and the information is immediately available for all parties involved to know how to proceed. Obviously this has more applications than scammers/cheaters, which is why blockchain tech is so heavily experimented with and being integrated in so many other areas of tech.

gjulianm 5y ago
> You're wrong about "lacking initiative and the detailed procedures" - that's exactly what blockchains were created for: A response to opaque and unreliable systems. This is the solution to a systematic problem in governance. You can't solve non-tech problems with technical solutions. If the government doesn't bother to have accessible documentation about how to do X thing, why would they bother to make a blockchain about it? If the knowledge about how to do X thing is not written down but depends on how a bunch people end up implementing it and never cared about it, how are they going to put those procedures into code? > Yes, you could create a central system which flags "bad actions" or something, but it'd be difficult to prove someone scammed you without the cooperation of the central authority. Given that we rely on the central authority to enforce rules, it doesn't seem too weird to expect them to cooperate. > Currently if someone says "no I didn't scam you", the truth of their statement is ambiguous without cooperative investigation. On a blockchain it's inherently unambiguous and the information is immediately available for all parties involved to know how to proceed. That's a naive way to look at it. We don't live in the blockchain. You'd still need cooperative investigation to ensure that what ended up in the blockchain is what the parties agreed to. Unless you move absolutely everything to the blockchain, including personal understandings and expectations of contracts, you will still need out-of-chain investigations.
- prohobo 5y ago
  I don't think you quite grasp that people are already building blockchains for government use. You keep saying "why haven't they done it yet then?" while they are actively working on it. I don't know why it took so long, but it's happening now. Once you have verifiable "truth" in a system, it becomes a lot harder for it to become corrupt. "The emperor has no clothes" modality stops being profitable because there's a constant red blinking light re-assuring people that, in fact, he doesn't have any clothes on. If a central authority clearly goes against the protocols of the system, for a more realistic example: the police decide not to arrest someone who is proven to have stolen $10 million from someone, the system disintegrates due to it clearly and verifiably not being respected.
  - gjulianm 5y ago
    > You keep saying "why haven't they done it yet then?" while they are actively working on it. I don't know why it took so long, but it's happening now. Yep, and we have seen some government bodies using Github or other platforms to publish open data, or to be more transparent on procedures, and yet most of them still don't do it. Which is my point: the problem is not lack of technology, but lack of motivation/human capability/initiative to do it. > Once you have verifiable "truth" in a system, it becomes a lot harder for it to become corrupt. "The emperor has no clothes" modality stops being profitable. If a central authority clearly goes against the protocols of the system, for example: the police decide not to arrest someone who is proven to have stolen $10 million from someone, the system disintegrates. I'm sorry but this looks incredibly naive. I can tell you a very real example: in my country, Spain, we have papers proving that, among others, a certain M. Rajoy, of the PP party, received money that came from illegal donations. The prime minister at the time, Mariano Rajoy from the PP party, denied that it was him on the papers. He didn't face any legal consequence. There have been so many times that a central authority has clearly gone against the protocols of the system without it disintegrating... You can't apply tech solutions to a problem that's not at all about tech.
    - prohobo 5y ago
      I don't dispute that this is mostly theoretical. But I wouldn't say it's naive, because we know that when people buy into systems they follow the rules as best they can. The problem occurs when others take advantage of the system to game it with plausible deniability, within the confines of said system. That's the entire point of "the emperor has no clothes" allegory. When people buy in to a broken system, broken things happen. That's why you get papers "proving" someone's guilt, but no action taken because the handling of such situations lies outside of the common understanding of the system. I'm sure most people think to themselves "I'm sure if the papers were legitimate then that person would be in jail, there must be something else going on". When you codify the system entirely, and people buy into it, then someone submits papers recognized by the system to be authentic that prove someone is guilty of a crime, it's much more likely there will be enough pressure to take action in that case, because then people are thinking more along the lines of "those legitimate papers proved they're guilty, why are they still not in jail?" Obviously one major problem is how to build a system which handles all of the edge-cases that crop up? One possible answer is to use a DAO which can modify itself through whatever means (usually democratic).

gjulianm 5y ago

> You're wrong about "lacking initiative and the detailed procedures" - that's exactly what blockchains were created for: A response to opaque and unreliable systems. This is the solution to a systematic problem in governance. You can't solve non-tech problems with technical solutions. If the government doesn't bother to have accessible documentation about how to do X thing, why would they bother to make a blockchain about it? If the knowledge about how to do X thing is not written down but depends on how a bunch people end up implementing it and never cared about it, how are they going to put those procedures into code? > Yes, you could create a central system which flags "bad actions" or something, but it'd be difficult to prove someone scammed you without the cooperation of the central authority. Given that we rely on the central authority to enforce rules, it doesn't seem too weird to expect them to cooperate. > Currently if someone says "no I didn't scam you", the truth of their statement is ambiguous without cooperative investigation. On a blockchain it's inherently unambiguous and the information is immediately available for all parties involved to know how to proceed. That's a naive way to look at it. We don't live in the blockchain. You'd still need cooperative investigation to ensure that what ended up in the blockchain is what the parties agreed to. Unless you move absolutely everything to the blockchain, including personal understandings and expectations of contracts, you will still need out-of-chain investigations.

prohobo 5y ago
I don't think you quite grasp that people are already building blockchains for government use. You keep saying "why haven't they done it yet then?" while they are actively working on it. I don't know why it took so long, but it's happening now. Once you have verifiable "truth" in a system, it becomes a lot harder for it to become corrupt. "The emperor has no clothes" modality stops being profitable because there's a constant red blinking light re-assuring people that, in fact, he doesn't have any clothes on. If a central authority clearly goes against the protocols of the system, for a more realistic example: the police decide not to arrest someone who is proven to have stolen $10 million from someone, the system disintegrates due to it clearly and verifiably not being respected.
- gjulianm 5y ago
  > You keep saying "why haven't they done it yet then?" while they are actively working on it. I don't know why it took so long, but it's happening now. Yep, and we have seen some government bodies using Github or other platforms to publish open data, or to be more transparent on procedures, and yet most of them still don't do it. Which is my point: the problem is not lack of technology, but lack of motivation/human capability/initiative to do it. > Once you have verifiable "truth" in a system, it becomes a lot harder for it to become corrupt. "The emperor has no clothes" modality stops being profitable. If a central authority clearly goes against the protocols of the system, for example: the police decide not to arrest someone who is proven to have stolen $10 million from someone, the system disintegrates. I'm sorry but this looks incredibly naive. I can tell you a very real example: in my country, Spain, we have papers proving that, among others, a certain M. Rajoy, of the PP party, received money that came from illegal donations. The prime minister at the time, Mariano Rajoy from the PP party, denied that it was him on the papers. He didn't face any legal consequence. There have been so many times that a central authority has clearly gone against the protocols of the system without it disintegrating... You can't apply tech solutions to a problem that's not at all about tech.
  - prohobo 5y ago
    I don't dispute that this is mostly theoretical. But I wouldn't say it's naive, because we know that when people buy into systems they follow the rules as best they can. The problem occurs when others take advantage of the system to game it with plausible deniability, within the confines of said system. That's the entire point of "the emperor has no clothes" allegory. When people buy in to a broken system, broken things happen. That's why you get papers "proving" someone's guilt, but no action taken because the handling of such situations lies outside of the common understanding of the system. I'm sure most people think to themselves "I'm sure if the papers were legitimate then that person would be in jail, there must be something else going on". When you codify the system entirely, and people buy into it, then someone submits papers recognized by the system to be authentic that prove someone is guilty of a crime, it's much more likely there will be enough pressure to take action in that case, because then people are thinking more along the lines of "those legitimate papers proved they're guilty, why are they still not in jail?" Obviously one major problem is how to build a system which handles all of the edge-cases that crop up? One possible answer is to use a DAO which can modify itself through whatever means (usually democratic).