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It's rare to find a technology that's so creepy & exploitative, yet also so fundamentally without utility.

by eli 3y ago

adastra22 3y ago
Not that rare in the crypto space.
AndrewKemendo 3y ago
It really checks every possible box for a list of “things that are terrible ideas for humanity to try”
- xvector 3y ago
  It's more private than literally any other existing form of proof-of-personhood. Why is it a terrible idea for humanity to try?
schaefer 3y ago
The technology isn’t creepy or exploitive. That’s us. Humans.
- turtles3 3y ago
  This is a 'guns don't kill people' argument, which historically has been a bit more complicated than that. Humans are not context-free actors independent of their environment - our environment shapes us. And the argument here is that this technology would create an environment that would have a tendency to bend us into a shape we may not like.
  - hinkley 3y ago
    If you'd like to ask anyone in the Human Factors space for literature on this topic they'd be happy to load you up with so many books it'll break your arms. Not to mention philosophers.
xvector 3y ago
Meh, it sounds creepy, but the article goes into detail on why the iris hashes are sufficiently private. I suspect the media and uninformed commenters will far overblow concerns about this, without actually learning how it works and why it's private enough.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  You can be informed on the subject and still think this is an awful idea. Even if I took their word that it’s “private enough”, it’s still a world-scale project to solve a vague problem with a broken-on-the-face-of-it-literally gimmick.
  - worksonmine 3y ago
    I'm not for biometrics and especially pre-mined tokens to the founders as the solution, but what about the problem is vague?
    - kstrauser 3y ago
      For me, the real-world need for such a thing in the first place. It's not often I dismiss something as a solution in search of a problem, but I think that's what this is.
      - worksonmine 3y ago
        I don't eat pork, I don't like the taste (except bacon but that's beside the point). That doesn't mean I think pig farmers are solving a vague problem. I hadn't heard of this coin before today, and as mentioned I don't like this specific solution but I don't think the problems are vague at all. You might trust your current bank, but are you confident that you can start any kind of legal business you want? Payment providers have shutdown completely legal customers for political reasons. Would it be nice to anonymously sign a vote? Or change it after the fact? Verify that a vote (as opposed to paper ballot) is valid? Absolutely. UBI shouldn't need an explanation for what problem it solves. I mention other problems something like this could solve in another comment[1] if you're interested. I think many people today are quick to dismiss good ideas just because it involves crypto, it's a shame. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36850769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36850769
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
It’s been good for consolidating votes around a crypto crackdown, engaging the evangelical right and privacy-sensitive left in a focussed manner.
- eli 3y ago
  This conspiracy theory presumes WorldCoin becomes a big enough deal for anyone to even care.
tomjen3 3y ago
Thats a bold claim, especially when TFA has this quote: >Proof of personhood is valuable because it solves a lot of anti-spam and anti-concentration-of-power problems that many people have, in a way that avoids dependence on centralized authorities and reveals the minimal information possible. >If proof of personhood is not solved, decentralized governance (including "micro-governance" like votes on social media posts) becomes much easier to capture by very wealthy actors, including hostile governments. Many services would only be able to prevent denial-of-service attacks by setting a price for access, and sometimes a price high enough to keep out attackers is also too high for many lower-income legitimate users. Now you could say and then what, but I remember about 10 years ago when all discussions about how to fix email got shutdown by counter posts with that form letter, nothing changed in the open source world and then Google went ahead and solved the problems by doing some of the things that went against the consensus of the letter and today its so hard to run your own email that most nerds don't. If we do not get a handle on the fake-person situation, how knows if it will even be possible to run your own Mastodon in 10 years? Now I really hope that it isn't the case that WorldCoin is going to solve this problem (personal preference: the govenments of the world solve this by signing keys of citizens, enabling key rotation and the ability to ban keys signed by countries that abuse your service), but don't kid yourself that there aren't people who would want to use such a service or that it doesn't solve an actual problem.

It's rare to find a technology that's so creepy & exploitative, yet also so fundamentally without utility.

by eli 3y ago

It's rare to find a technology that's so creepy & exploitative, yet also so fundamentally without utility.

adastra22 3y ago

Not that rare in the crypto space.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

It really checks every possible box for a list of “things that are terrible ideas for humanity to try”

xvector 3y ago
It's more private than literally any other existing form of proof-of-personhood. Why is it a terrible idea for humanity to try?

schaefer 3y ago

The technology isn’t creepy or exploitive. That’s us. Humans.

turtles3 3y ago
This is a 'guns don't kill people' argument, which historically has been a bit more complicated than that. Humans are not context-free actors independent of their environment - our environment shapes us. And the argument here is that this technology would create an environment that would have a tendency to bend us into a shape we may not like.
- hinkley 3y ago
  If you'd like to ask anyone in the Human Factors space for literature on this topic they'd be happy to load you up with so many books it'll break your arms. Not to mention philosophers.

xvector 3y ago

Meh, it sounds creepy, but the article goes into detail on why the iris hashes are sufficiently private. I suspect the media and uninformed commenters will far overblow concerns about this, without actually learning how it works and why it's private enough.

kstrauser 3y ago
You can be informed on the subject and still think this is an awful idea. Even if I took their word that it’s “private enough”, it’s still a world-scale project to solve a vague problem with a broken-on-the-face-of-it-literally gimmick.
- worksonmine 3y ago
  I'm not for biometrics and especially pre-mined tokens to the founders as the solution, but what about the problem is vague?
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    For me, the real-world need for such a thing in the first place. It's not often I dismiss something as a solution in search of a problem, but I think that's what this is.
    - worksonmine 3y ago
      I don't eat pork, I don't like the taste (except bacon but that's beside the point). That doesn't mean I think pig farmers are solving a vague problem. I hadn't heard of this coin before today, and as mentioned I don't like this specific solution but I don't think the problems are vague at all. You might trust your current bank, but are you confident that you can start any kind of legal business you want? Payment providers have shutdown completely legal customers for political reasons. Would it be nice to anonymously sign a vote? Or change it after the fact? Verify that a vote (as opposed to paper ballot) is valid? Absolutely. UBI shouldn't need an explanation for what problem it solves. I mention other problems something like this could solve in another comment[1] if you're interested. I think many people today are quick to dismiss good ideas just because it involves crypto, it's a shame. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36850769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36850769

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

It’s been good for consolidating votes around a crypto crackdown, engaging the evangelical right and privacy-sensitive left in a focussed manner.

eli 3y ago
This conspiracy theory presumes WorldCoin becomes a big enough deal for anyone to even care.

tomjen3 3y ago

Thats a bold claim, especially when TFA has this quote: >Proof of personhood is valuable because it solves a lot of anti-spam and anti-concentration-of-power problems that many people have, in a way that avoids dependence on centralized authorities and reveals the minimal information possible. >If proof of personhood is not solved, decentralized governance (including "micro-governance" like votes on social media posts) becomes much easier to capture by very wealthy actors, including hostile governments. Many services would only be able to prevent denial-of-service attacks by setting a price for access, and sometimes a price high enough to keep out attackers is also too high for many lower-income legitimate users. Now you could say and then what, but I remember about 10 years ago when all discussions about how to fix email got shutdown by counter posts with that form letter, nothing changed in the open source world and then Google went ahead and solved the problems by doing some of the things that went against the consensus of the letter and today its so hard to run your own email that most nerds don't. If we do not get a handle on the fake-person situation, how knows if it will even be possible to run your own Mastodon in 10 years? Now I really hope that it isn't the case that WorldCoin is going to solve this problem (personal preference: the govenments of the world solve this by signing keys of citizens, enabling key rotation and the ability to ban keys signed by countries that abuse your service), but don't kid yourself that there aren't people who would want to use such a service or that it doesn't solve an actual problem.