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I agree with this critique, but I think it fails to get at the heart of the Web3 problem, which is that blockchains use a protocol to enforce consensus, but po

I agree with this critique, but I think it fails to get at the heart of the Web3 problem, which is that blockchains use a protocol to enforce consensus, but politically speaking, a forced consensus is no consensus at all. We do desperately need a big rethink of our incentives, by all means invite the game theorists--lets get nerdy about it--but if we then enshrine the results of that analysis into a protocol that makes it so (thus creating a network state) it's doomed to fail due to a lack of legitimacy. Whatever we build has to let people disagree, but amplify the cases where they agree so that we can find what's actionable, not what's engaging. Web 2 and 3 have failed so far to get that right. C'mon 4 we're rooting for you.

XorNot 2y ago
I would hardly even go that far: blockchains can only enforce parameters of the blockchain. The physical world is under no obligation to respect that. That's always been the core issue.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  If we wanted to, we could "fix" that. We let fictions like money rule the real world as it is, and we could easily take it further by replacing all of our locks with ones that only open for you if the chain says they should and other such ill advised automations. But lets not, because partition tolerance, not consistency, has the superior political implications. Blockchains are just on the wrong side of the CAP theorem. It's a place for authoritarians and willful ignorance of important truths.
  - XorNot 2y ago
    That's just building a new, worse legal system though, the blockchain ensures nothing. It has no additional force or protections then the current one.
    - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
      Well I'm proposing that we not do that, but just to play devil's advocate, one protection it would have is that a large unruly mob couldn't gather at one building in particular and prevent the business of government from proceeding--like they did on Jan 6.
      - XorNot 2y ago
        January 6 could not have stopped the swearing in of a new president even if the rioters had burned the capitol building to the ground. The same organization could've convened virtually, or by mail, or simply at another location if it became necessary. There is no requirement that Jan 6 even reach a conclusion that day - the issue was that it was unprecedented that people believed they would change the result by violence.
        __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
        I don't know what other data might be stored on this chain, could be all kinds of stuff will all kinds of constraints about how it gets updated, but presumably a transaction which changes the state of a presidential candidate to "certified" would not be accepted unless it had signatures from congress. So it would be authorized by PKI. And yes anyone could connect, that would be the whole point--to make it totally unambiguous to any interested party whether or not a given state change re: the machinery of government had occurred. Laws going on and off the books, being renewed or expiring on their own, gps coordinates of national and state borders and updates thereto, that sort of thing. As it is, a sufficiently coordinated cabal of media people could just lie to the rest of us about the election result and we would have no source of truth to compare their lies to. Cutting out those intermediaries (or at least providing something definitive to check them against) would be a good thing. > The same organization could've convened virtually, or by mail, or simply at another location if it became necessary. And in that case, where presumably our leadership is so under threat that they can't safely assemble and have a press conference or whatever, how does the message get out to the rest of us, and how do we authenticate it when it does? I realize that the threat on Jan 6 was not so great, but suppose it was much greater, a permissioned block chain which both leadership and citizens knew how to use would be a helpful thing. Most other technology that you might reach for can only be as trustworthy as its least trustworthy admin, and as we're seeing right now, that admin might be quite untrustworthy indeed.

XorNot 2y ago

I would hardly even go that far: blockchains can only enforce parameters of the blockchain. The physical world is under no obligation to respect that. That's always been the core issue.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
If we wanted to, we could "fix" that. We let fictions like money rule the real world as it is, and we could easily take it further by replacing all of our locks with ones that only open for you if the chain says they should and other such ill advised automations. But lets not, because partition tolerance, not consistency, has the superior political implications. Blockchains are just on the wrong side of the CAP theorem. It's a place for authoritarians and willful ignorance of important truths.
- XorNot 2y ago
  That's just building a new, worse legal system though, the blockchain ensures nothing. It has no additional force or protections then the current one.
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    Well I'm proposing that we not do that, but just to play devil's advocate, one protection it would have is that a large unruly mob couldn't gather at one building in particular and prevent the business of government from proceeding--like they did on Jan 6.
    - XorNot 2y ago
      January 6 could not have stopped the swearing in of a new president even if the rioters had burned the capitol building to the ground. The same organization could've convened virtually, or by mail, or simply at another location if it became necessary. There is no requirement that Jan 6 even reach a conclusion that day - the issue was that it was unprecedented that people believed they would change the result by violence.
      - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
        I don't know what other data might be stored on this chain, could be all kinds of stuff will all kinds of constraints about how it gets updated, but presumably a transaction which changes the state of a presidential candidate to "certified" would not be accepted unless it had signatures from congress. So it would be authorized by PKI. And yes anyone could connect, that would be the whole point--to make it totally unambiguous to any interested party whether or not a given state change re: the machinery of government had occurred. Laws going on and off the books, being renewed or expiring on their own, gps coordinates of national and state borders and updates thereto, that sort of thing. As it is, a sufficiently coordinated cabal of media people could just lie to the rest of us about the election result and we would have no source of truth to compare their lies to. Cutting out those intermediaries (or at least providing something definitive to check them against) would be a good thing. > The same organization could've convened virtually, or by mail, or simply at another location if it became necessary. And in that case, where presumably our leadership is so under threat that they can't safely assemble and have a press conference or whatever, how does the message get out to the rest of us, and how do we authenticate it when it does? I realize that the threat on Jan 6 was not so great, but suppose it was much greater, a permissioned block chain which both leadership and citizens knew how to use would be a helpful thing. Most other technology that you might reach for can only be as trustworthy as its least trustworthy admin, and as we're seeing right now, that admin might be quite untrustworthy indeed.