3 ms·

All of this stuff is built upon the premise that decentralization is a good thing, but I have yet to see much supporting evidence. I do however see a ton of evi

All of this stuff is built upon the premise that decentralization is a good thing, but I have yet to see much supporting evidence. I do however see a ton of evidence to the contrary. (I see centralization as more like clustering than a unifying of everything.) Decentralization happens in the real world out of necessity, not because it's preferred. In fact, we centralize everything that is convenient to centralize because of its efficiency. And decentralization tends to occur at the boundaries of cooperation, where the problems lie. So why would I want enforced decentralization when doing so would be inconvenient or inefficient?

michaelsbradley 4y ago
Centralization can lead to inefficiencies and ineffectiveness (and other problems) at large scales. It is possible to have hierarchical authority and decentralized decision-making work together over the long haul, to alleviate those obstacles, even if the two bump heads on occasion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity_(Catholicism) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity_(Catholicism)
axg11 4y ago
Agreed that the current (incorrect) web3 narrative is that all decentralization is good. There will be use cases where it’s good and use cases where it’s bad. The process to a valuable endpoint will involve a lot of duds and failed companies.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
doliveira 4y ago
My underdeveloped understanding is that the big problem is thinking you can build all of these tools ignoring the whole political aspect. And I don't even mean literal politicians, I mean the whole sociological landscape. I would like to see one of these projects actually involving political scientists, sociologists, etc
quickthrower2 4y ago
The problem with centralisation is privacy. Big tech is hostile to privacy. Both directly (Cambridge Analytica) and indirectly (Snowden) and accidentally (Staff abusing access to servers, exploits). Another concern is Google is well known for killing accounts because “computer says no”. Using their auth means risking losing all your accounts around the web. That said, username, password, password manager is an effective decentralised system for authentication and has been the way since the 90s. Make a standard for programmatically changing a pssword and have more foss password managers and that would be good enough.
- moron4hire 4y ago
  Blockchain decentralization combats this by... making all the activity public knowledge for everyone? I mean, I guess it "solves" a problem. No one company can gain an economic advantage via the dossiers they keep on people. At the expense of... nobody having any privacy ever again.
  - warkdarrior 4y ago
    Companies will move from "data as competitive advantage" to "analytics as competitive advantage." The compa ies with the most and best ML scientists will dominate, even if all the data is public.
    - moron4hire 4y ago
      I mean... that sounds worse. That sounds worse than what we have already. What we have is shit, and that sounds worse.
    - quickthrower2 4y ago
      People seem to conflate a whole bunch of things with decentralization. It is not a 'keep data secret', 'avoid centralization', pick one type of thing. Decentralization is not web3, it is not blockchain. It is: Avoid having a central point of control in the system. Facebook centralizes both the servers, and the corporatation that controls the systems, for example. 10,000 blogs run on different servers by different people are decentralized. Better example: email. Decentralized protocol and has the ability to keep information private for one person.
bombcar 4y ago
There is a middle ground - subsidiarity - the idea that things should be centralized "just enough and no more". How that would apply to computing issues and the web isn't entirely clear, but it's likely worth considering as we head into a brave new world of everything controlled by Apple, Microsoft, or Google.

michaelsbradley 4y ago

Centralization can lead to inefficiencies and ineffectiveness (and other problems) at large scales. It is possible to have hierarchical authority and decentralized decision-making work together over the long haul, to alleviate those obstacles, even if the two bump heads on occasion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity_(Catholicism) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity_(Catholicism)

axg11 4y ago

Agreed that the current (incorrect) web3 narrative is that all decentralization is good. There will be use cases where it’s good and use cases where it’s bad. The process to a valuable endpoint will involve a lot of duds and failed companies.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

doliveira 4y ago

My underdeveloped understanding is that the big problem is thinking you can build all of these tools ignoring the whole political aspect. And I don't even mean literal politicians, I mean the whole sociological landscape. I would like to see one of these projects actually involving political scientists, sociologists, etc

quickthrower2 4y ago

The problem with centralisation is privacy. Big tech is hostile to privacy. Both directly (Cambridge Analytica) and indirectly (Snowden) and accidentally (Staff abusing access to servers, exploits). Another concern is Google is well known for killing accounts because “computer says no”. Using their auth means risking losing all your accounts around the web. That said, username, password, password manager is an effective decentralised system for authentication and has been the way since the 90s. Make a standard for programmatically changing a pssword and have more foss password managers and that would be good enough.

moron4hire 4y ago
Blockchain decentralization combats this by... making all the activity public knowledge for everyone? I mean, I guess it "solves" a problem. No one company can gain an economic advantage via the dossiers they keep on people. At the expense of... nobody having any privacy ever again.
- warkdarrior 4y ago
  Companies will move from "data as competitive advantage" to "analytics as competitive advantage." The compa ies with the most and best ML scientists will dominate, even if all the data is public.
  - moron4hire 4y ago
    I mean... that sounds worse. That sounds worse than what we have already. What we have is shit, and that sounds worse.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    People seem to conflate a whole bunch of things with decentralization. It is not a 'keep data secret', 'avoid centralization', pick one type of thing. Decentralization is not web3, it is not blockchain. It is: Avoid having a central point of control in the system. Facebook centralizes both the servers, and the corporatation that controls the systems, for example. 10,000 blogs run on different servers by different people are decentralized. Better example: email. Decentralized protocol and has the ability to keep information private for one person.

bombcar 4y ago

There is a middle ground - subsidiarity - the idea that things should be centralized "just enough and no more". How that would apply to computing issues and the web isn't entirely clear, but it's likely worth considering as we head into a brave new world of everything controlled by Apple, Microsoft, or Google.