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> Economically it is infeasible to politically play, social engineer, or bribe thousands of reviewers in a publicly inspectable web of trust Elon Musk hyperloo

> Economically it is infeasible to politically play, social engineer, or bribe thousands of reviewers in a publicly inspectable web of trust Elon Musk hyperloop whitepaper pipedream...he made it in one night, probably on heavy drugs. It got press for 8 years, still getting press. A bastardised version of Hyperloop got hundreds of millions in public funding in Las Vegas and Los Angeles for what essentially amounts to a large underground car garage with skeets. The company selling this bastardised version just raised 700M in equity. "infeasible". When you open the floodgates of the court of public opinion...it becomes the game of the person who screams the loudest and is able to con people with the most confidence or has the loudest megaphone. History has shown us time and time again that the best governance system is a bunch of elder statesmen who are terrified of being judged harshly by their peers long after they are gone. For example people still say about Newton that his track record wasn't immaculate because he wasted time looking for hidden messages in the Bible or trying to turn bronze into gold. Same for Einstein, his track record isn't immaculate because he was wrong on quantum-mechanics. Elder statesmen who dream of having the track record of a Pythagoras, that's the perfect governance system, that just requires finding them, doesn't require crypto-tokens or blockchain or any other flavor du jour tech.

j-pb 4y ago
A public web of trust network based on asymetric crypto with weighted reputation scores between scientific entities, is an entirely different thing than trending on twitter. Besides, the "paper" you cite is not a paper at all, yet plenty of universities had their fun with the concept, so if anything it shows that it's possible to get people excited to do study reproducing work after all.
userulluipeste 4y ago
"History has shown us time and time again that the best governance system is a bunch of elder statesmen who are terrified of being judged harshly by their peers long after they are gone." Those elders have a hard time steering the ship in the storm of technological change. Faced with that, at best, they will most likely try avoid implementing anything radical (due to their bias for what's familiar to them) and will instead attempt to integrate the new with minimal change to existing system (which makes sense as a strategy, if that happens to work). At worst, they will ignore or actively resist change, betting on the likelihood that it's about some overhype at play and things needs to settle a bit before being taken seriously. As sound as this may be as a governing strategy (in general, not only for handling things in academia), it comes however with the inherent risk of inflicting debilitating effect to governed realm's progress. To avoid this, the governance has to include visionaries, and a governing body including only (although assumed visionary, yet just) elders, with a blindspot in judging much of what's new and unfamiliar, will not do.

j-pb 4y ago

A public web of trust network based on asymetric crypto with weighted reputation scores between scientific entities, is an entirely different thing than trending on twitter. Besides, the "paper" you cite is not a paper at all, yet plenty of universities had their fun with the concept, so if anything it shows that it's possible to get people excited to do study reproducing work after all.

userulluipeste 4y ago

"History has shown us time and time again that the best governance system is a bunch of elder statesmen who are terrified of being judged harshly by their peers long after they are gone." Those elders have a hard time steering the ship in the storm of technological change. Faced with that, at best, they will most likely try avoid implementing anything radical (due to their bias for what's familiar to them) and will instead attempt to integrate the new with minimal change to existing system (which makes sense as a strategy, if that happens to work). At worst, they will ignore or actively resist change, betting on the likelihood that it's about some overhype at play and things needs to settle a bit before being taken seriously. As sound as this may be as a governing strategy (in general, not only for handling things in academia), it comes however with the inherent risk of inflicting debilitating effect to governed realm's progress. To avoid this, the governance has to include visionaries, and a governing body including only (although assumed visionary, yet just) elders, with a blindspot in judging much of what's new and unfamiliar, will not do.