6 ms·

Actually, I disagree. People have said the same about paper voting systems, that the inefficiency is a feature not a bug… yet they have major downsides eg to t

by EGreg 5y ago

Actually, I disagree. People have said the same about paper voting systems, that the inefficiency is a feature not a bug… yet they have major downsides eg to take the highest profile example with the most consequences, George W Bush got elected because people were confused with butterfly ballots and then it took too long to do a recount in Florida so the Supreme Court had to step in and stop the recount … as a result we got 9/11 (negligence) the invasion of Iraq (lots of excess deaths and destruction of large swaths of the middle east) the PATRIOT Act (erosion of civil liberties) and much more. Imagine if we had a secure system alongside the paper ballots that involved Merkle Trees and multi-factor verification for voting, so everyone could verify theirvote and participation would be higher. Banking apps are secure enough for people, why not this… I wrote an article on CoinDesk about this very thing two years ago: https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2020/03/12/in-defense-of-blockchain-voting/ https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2020/03/12/in-defense-of-block... Anyway, going back to “feature not a bug”. The real problem is Blockchain. It uses the full power of the network on every transaction, so it costs just as much to transfer $500 million in one shot as it does $0.50 — that is the wrong pricing structure. It is too cheap to transfer huge amounts and circumvent capital controls, do money laundering etc. The “world computer” is a glorified mainframe with “gas” playing the role of renting time on the mainframe. “Flash loans” shouldn’t be possible, they only are because one transaction in the world can happen at a time. When we move past blockchains, we will have proper pricing of securing transactions (in % of the amount being managed). And then we can build reversibility ON TOP OF the non-reversible architecture. The non-reversible architecture and finality in the vast majority of transactions is a GOOD thing just as it is in most databases. Reversibility should be explicitly built on top of it. Smart contracts and other things are great and we have only scratched the surface because Blockchain holds them back. Having the rules stated upfront and enforced without government violence is great. For example copyright and DRM is being replaced with NFTs and POAPs. Old boys clubs are being replaced with DAOs. New non-coercive business models are emerging. Open source and journalism and other digital content can be monetized without SWAT teams raiding grandmas. Just one of hundreds of innovations. People just cling to the old ways because the technology is not mature yet.

cletus 5y ago
Paper ballots are better than any purely electronic form. Like that's not even a debate except by people who are trying to sell electronic voting machines. The gold standard is either print outs from a voting machine or a ballot you fill in with circles with a pencil that a machine can verify. Counting these ballots is nondestructive (unlike punch cards) and highly accurate. Audits of elections involving these can be done easily by hand. As for the 2000 election, this is a whole rabbit hole. You're right the butterfly ballot probably caused miscast votes. But that's user error. Punch cards are a ridiculous form of voting technology. All the recounts weren't about being more accurate. They were about passing punch cards through counting machines that would knock out chads every run through and changing voting standards after the fact (eg pregnant and dimpled chads). Blaming 9/11 and the grand misadventure of the Iraq war on paper ballots is... a stretch. I mean, 9/11 had been in planning for years and probably would've happened anyway. I suspect a war in Iraq would've happened anyway with Gore in office. I mean a good chunk of Democrats (including Hilary Clinton) voted for the Iraqi war resolution. Many of these same people (including Biden) are now threatening to start a war with Russia over Ukraine. > Just one of hundreds of innovations. I disagree. Contracts enforced by the blockchain only have value when the entire context of that contract is on the blockchain. As soon as you leave that system you need traditional infrastructure and systems to enforce contracts and handle disputes.
- EGreg 5y ago
  Ha ha ha. Not even a debate? Why would something so non-obvious not be up for debate? Are you afraid to lose the debate? What's next, telephone switchboard operators are better than VOIP? We went from paying $3 a minute for long distance audio calls to nearly free calls with multi-way high res video broadband, simply by automating away the infrastructure to get things done. Why can't the same be done with voting? Today we spend 16 billion dollars on a national election with shitty turnout, tomorrow any small organization can have a poll and vote about anything, in any number of ways, and turnout will be much better too. There was a time that chess playing programs were laughably bad. And within a couple decades they are able to beat any grandmaster. Give it time. About the 2000 election: I regret even mentioning the butterfly ballots, because the real point is that it took TOO LONG to recount the votes, BECAUSE it was paper ballots, and thus GWB was elected because the Supreme Court stepped in. Paper ballots and their inefficiency have consequences and downsides, you just might choose to ignore them in order to not have the debate of pros and cons vs electronic form. (9/11 may not have happened if Bush had acted on intelligence like "Osama Bin Laden Determined to Attack in the United States. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L2513JFJsY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L2513JFJsY) Agreed about the war with Russia over Ukraine, Democrats have their own issues, absolutely. (As do leaders of other countries). > I disagree. Contracts enforced by the blockchain only have value when the entire context of that contract is on the blockchain. As soon as you leave that system you need traditional infrastructure and systems to enforce contracts and handle disputes Even if that were strictly true, we can have all these applications on the blockchain today: https://intercoin.org/applications https://intercoin.org/applications But it's not even true. People don't need the entire source of truth in a byzantine fault tolerant network. They just need to secure that it wasn't tampered with. The key is that you can turn over control to a computer program + protocol rather than elected representatives, magazine publishers, librarians or telephone switchboard operators. And we have been increasingly doing that.

by EGreg 5y ago

cletus 5y ago

Paper ballots are better than any purely electronic form. Like that's not even a debate except by people who are trying to sell electronic voting machines. The gold standard is either print outs from a voting machine or a ballot you fill in with circles with a pencil that a machine can verify. Counting these ballots is nondestructive (unlike punch cards) and highly accurate. Audits of elections involving these can be done easily by hand. As for the 2000 election, this is a whole rabbit hole. You're right the butterfly ballot probably caused miscast votes. But that's user error. Punch cards are a ridiculous form of voting technology. All the recounts weren't about being more accurate. They were about passing punch cards through counting machines that would knock out chads every run through and changing voting standards after the fact (eg pregnant and dimpled chads). Blaming 9/11 and the grand misadventure of the Iraq war on paper ballots is... a stretch. I mean, 9/11 had been in planning for years and probably would've happened anyway. I suspect a war in Iraq would've happened anyway with Gore in office. I mean a good chunk of Democrats (including Hilary Clinton) voted for the Iraqi war resolution. Many of these same people (including Biden) are now threatening to start a war with Russia over Ukraine. > Just one of hundreds of innovations. I disagree. Contracts enforced by the blockchain only have value when the entire context of that contract is on the blockchain. As soon as you leave that system you need traditional infrastructure and systems to enforce contracts and handle disputes.

EGreg 5y ago
Ha ha ha. Not even a debate? Why would something so non-obvious not be up for debate? Are you afraid to lose the debate? What's next, telephone switchboard operators are better than VOIP? We went from paying $3 a minute for long distance audio calls to nearly free calls with multi-way high res video broadband, simply by automating away the infrastructure to get things done. Why can't the same be done with voting? Today we spend 16 billion dollars on a national election with shitty turnout, tomorrow any small organization can have a poll and vote about anything, in any number of ways, and turnout will be much better too. There was a time that chess playing programs were laughably bad. And within a couple decades they are able to beat any grandmaster. Give it time. About the 2000 election: I regret even mentioning the butterfly ballots, because the real point is that it took TOO LONG to recount the votes, BECAUSE it was paper ballots, and thus GWB was elected because the Supreme Court stepped in. Paper ballots and their inefficiency have consequences and downsides, you just might choose to ignore them in order to not have the debate of pros and cons vs electronic form. (9/11 may not have happened if Bush had acted on intelligence like "Osama Bin Laden Determined to Attack in the United States. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L2513JFJsY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L2513JFJsY) Agreed about the war with Russia over Ukraine, Democrats have their own issues, absolutely. (As do leaders of other countries). > I disagree. Contracts enforced by the blockchain only have value when the entire context of that contract is on the blockchain. As soon as you leave that system you need traditional infrastructure and systems to enforce contracts and handle disputes Even if that were strictly true, we can have all these applications on the blockchain today: https://intercoin.org/applications https://intercoin.org/applications But it's not even true. People don't need the entire source of truth in a byzantine fault tolerant network. They just need to secure that it wasn't tampered with. The key is that you can turn over control to a computer program + protocol rather than elected representatives, magazine publishers, librarians or telephone switchboard operators. And we have been increasingly doing that.