Why I bring the sociopathic thing is because psychological profile of people who are into crypto to avoid government monitoring or censorship, with a sort of revolutionary mind set is not always that good. Not to make another godwin point, but it's kinda like stalin, building underground network to avoid government oppression, with all the secret and code and stuff, but in the end it turn them paranoiac and sociopathic, not good psychology to build healthy society  Stalin is a typical form of government, when you look through history and through different governments. However, he wasn't smart enough to optimize extortion from its people, and overplayed his hand. Take 5000 years of "government" and think of what they brought the people, and what they took from the people. Don't forget warfare, it is an important aspect of government. (and don't think our "democracies" are different, they are simply smarter in optimizing extortion: they replaced violence and brutality by propaganda and politically correct media and "education"). It's not so much about after he got in power, but how his personal history drove him paranoiac and sociopathic, wanting to hide from the previous government, with the revolutionary mindset and culture of underground and secrecy, with collusion with crime. |
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Politics can be self seeking too government is not garantee of absence of self seeking behavior. Uh. Government has only one reason of existence, and that IS selfishness. Since the first kings. What has evolved, is the way in which government convinces people that they are useful. The social lie is its cornerstone. There's no reason to be in government if it is not to be selfish. It is the violence monopolist that maximizes the profit it can take from that monopoly. Sometimes, however, you have idiots in power that don't estimate correctly the maximal burden a government can put on its people, and then you get revolutions or invasions. Ideally, a government squeezes out maximally its population without destroying the illusion of its necessity or its unavoidability, which is what keeps it in place. The ideal government is like the capable farmer that maximizes the profit he can take from his cattle (the governed people). And yes, for that, you don't have to be too mean with your cattle before slaughter, on the contrary, you have to "care" about it. Government can have positive role in economy. The pb with free market is it tend to leave poor and under developped area poor and under developped. But the idea that losers must be eliminated in a competitive system is not necessarily a bad one, if they cannot be put to good use. I consider life as a system that emerged as a competitive game to evolve towards something that will become a self-powerful system, ,that is, a self-concious universe, or will go down without reaching this final goal. I consider humanity to be a transitional species that allows life to "switch gear" and to go from the random Darwinian algorithm to self-constructing intelligence (machines). There's no room for "poor humans" in this transitional species, that is only here for the transition to self-designing machines, who will bring competition, improvement, warfare, joy and suffering to higher levels than was possible with biological systems. The thing is the crteria upon which you will determine if an economic system or philosophy is good or not. The pareton criteria seem to make sense to me, that at some point you need to see if the economic decision have a positive impact on society or not. For the people who end up at the bottom of the food chain in the free market, there are many examples where free market actually worsen situation of some people, because of predatory mind set in grained in free market culture. And this tendency of predatory free market to increase inequality always bring it to a point it's only benefitial to top 1%. And leave the bottom 60% without any developpement or resources. And it's the point where people are looking for other solution than rigged game organized by financial predators. After can say there is no room for the 60% of non predator, but it's the point where the whole food chain collapse. |
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The question is more how long the system will keep functiuning if everyone click this button. It cannot work for too long if everyone is 100% selfish motivated with no other motivation than making selfish profit. It just fall down after a while like a ponzi schemes.
People do this because of the economics of the system. We can't fix that by focusing on morals (because morals can be manipulated as @dinofelis and others have pointed out). We can only fix it (if at all) by embracing a holistic economic model change. I posit the gift culture coming in the post-scarcity knowledge age. See what I wrote about a deflationary currency and follow the links in that post as well. I don't think you are really getting it. I feel I write and people don't really get it. We can't fight with social justice activism (that is the mistake of the younger generation). My strong suggestion is to stop that (although you can do whatever you want of course). It makes you a pawn. Its okay to share that music as a motivation (or even at a rally just for the celebration or a party), but we have to actually accomplish a change in the economic model. If we just march on the street shouting morals, then we will be manipulated and defeated. Don't get me wrong. I love that song. I am all for a symbolic activism as a form of celebration or party but only if we know we are winning because of our economic model, not because of our activism. I don't like to lose.  Jam right! " What 'dem selling, we're not buyin'" Im not into social activism  For me i would be perfectly fine with having way to have proven identity on the network, and the system to be more legal friendly and have more connection with civil status and government. Optionally of course. But having a system where peer trust can be established, without necessarily having to rely all the time on 100% trustlessness, decentralized fongible node/users. Doesnt look too utopic to get there. And I still think the model of relying 100% on colluding reward and decision power with pow and currency emission will never be good way for the network to evolve in good direction. Im not necessarily against government by principle, and I avoid all form of indoctrination The concept of party activism  https://youtu.be/7r_YxQLzaWcYou can try all night to stop the noise https://youtu.be/GiMl_6EsVcg |
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If people are mostly dishonest, greedy idiots,the system wont go anywhere no matter the security model. The cost of security will out weight any potential benefits. Paranoia is never a good bet for economy.
This is why I claim that the burden of decentralized trustless systems is so big, that it only pays in those circumstances where the paranoia is justified: in unregulated finance, in illegal/criminal affairs, and other such endeavour, but will not go mainstream. There's, indeed, no point. This is the niche for crypto. It can be a big niche. But not mainstream. That's silly. Too much burden. It is like going to buy bread with a tank. Too much overhead, too much hassle. Unless you're in a war zone. In normal society, we hold one-another by fear of the consequences of being openly dishonest, even if we would like to be dishonest all the time, we're forced, in the same way, into honesty most of the time, unless we are in power - being in power is exactly what allows you to be dishonest without consequences, which is why power is wanted by most dishonest people, who get into power. But even there, they cannot be as dishonest as they would like and are afraid of the consequences of their dishonesty (to a lesser extend than normal people, but nevertheless). Why I bring the sociopathic thing is because psychological profile of people who are into crypto to avoid government monitoring or censorship, with a sort of revolutionary mind set is not always that good. Not to make another godwin point, but it's kinda like stalin, building underground network to avoid government oppression, with all the secret and code and stuff, but in the end it turn them paranoiac and sociopathic, not good psychology to build healthy society |
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Politics can be self seeking too government is not garantee of absence of self seeking behavior. Uh. Government has only one reason of existence, and that IS selfishness. Since the first kings. What has evolved, is the way in which government convinces people that they are useful. The social lie is its cornerstone. There's no reason to be in government if it is not to be selfish. It is the violence monopolist that maximizes the profit it can take from that monopoly. Sometimes, however, you have idiots in power that don't estimate correctly the maximal burden a government can put on its people, and then you get revolutions or invasions. Ideally, a government squeezes out maximally its population without destroying the illusion of its necessity or its unavoidability, which is what keeps it in place. The ideal government is like the capable farmer that maximizes the profit he can take from his cattle (the governed people). And yes, for that, you don't have to be too mean with your cattle before slaughter, on the contrary, you have to "care" about it. Government can have positive role in economy. The pb with free market is it tend to leave poor and under developped area poor and under developped. Can say it's also in their philosophy to invest in developping infrastructure etc but for some reason they never do. Probably because investor are too focused on short term profits. Modi in India can be good example of how government can have positive role in economic developpement and growth. |
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The question is more how long the system will keep functiuning if everyone click this button. It cannot work for too long if everyone is 100% selfish motivated with no other motivation than making selfish profit. It just fall down after a while like a ponzi schemes.
I only wanted to point out that the illusion that 51% of the nodes are "honest" and "willing guardians of the protocol" (of course including the emission model and the 21 million coins) is, well, totally deluded, and if you give the people the *technical means* to cheat, of course they will ! So the REAL reason that they *behaved* honestly was not that they had an intimate desire to be honest, but that they were *not capable to cheat profitably*. Illustrating the thesis that what keeps "honesty in place" is the impossibility or the lack of advantage to cheat, not the "will to be honest". Honest behaviour is hence an emergent property from the rules of the system that makes that individually one wouldn't know how to be dishonest in an efficient way, not because "people are honest". I think this is the case at large, in society, too, with honesty and "moral behaviour". It is the fact of not knowing how to be dishonest and immoral in a profitable way for most, that keeps them honest and morally correct. Not because of some intimate desire, but by the intelligent realisation that dishonest or immoral behaviour is most of the time, not profitable in the web of relationships. Government being about the only place (with its monopoly) where you have not these properties, and hence the place to be if you want to be immoral and dishonest. BTW, the system would keep on working perfectly, because this is just like "bitcoin with somewhat larger block reward and tail emission". If one single click in the mem pool is accepted randomly in every block (you'd need a protection so that miners don't systematically take THEIR click), then you just get higher block rewards, that's all. But of course, the monetary belief in bitcoin would crumble, because the ILLUSION that it was a fair distribution to "honest people" (Miners) and now an *arbitrary* distribution to "cheaters" would break down. While as a system, nothing really changed. The thing is the only button a smart person would click in this case is the "quit button" to avoid wasting time. Only an idiot would think he can make money clicking a button. If there is a notice next to the button to explain the consequences, you also rules out honest well intentioned persons. The thing is if people are honest, there is no real need for hard core security, decentralisation , trustlessness etc. Just enough to avoid mistake, and the system run well. If people are mostly dishonest, greedy idiots,the system wont go anywhere no matter the security model. The cost of security will out weight any potential benefits. Paranoia is never a good bet for economy. But it's like the plato teaching for idiots with white lie to get to their level, and higher level éducation for the future law maker who need to make real decision. I still think the competency and good will should be more reward than hiring amazon clouds to compute hashes without checking txs. And in the case, it's both reward and décision power on which the trust on the system rely. Bad plan imo lol |
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Politics can be self seeking too government is not garantee of absence of self seeking behavior. The main point is there cannot be healthy economy without benevolence. Trading is about producing valuable goods or service, and require good amount of knowledge of what kind of work or production will be valued, or useful to improve someone life. It's not that much a question of government even if armatya sen make good point in showing how government are still the best way to avoid the biggest pb in case of crash in free market that can leave millions people without resources. If the economy is only about cheating other and making profits on other, without any counter party, it's ponzi economy. The equation for this is like inner monarchy = outter anarchy, inner anarchy = outter monarchy. The more people are able of self discipline and consciousness of consequences on others , the less there is need for external government If people are unable of self discipline and just act as greedy pleasure seeking beast, the more there is need for government to avoid the world becoming too much cut throat. Mon eye is all about consciousness of how human mind assign highest value to something. It can never be a selfish game or it become purposeless. But government never really manage to reach the "tao point" where the best king is the one who does nothing and watch his kingdom prosperate. Never forget henry Ford was close friend of hitler. Doesnt need to dig very far to see how hypocrite this whole theory is. |
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No. If not 51% of nodes COLLUDE to be dishonest IN THE SAME WAY. As there is only one way to be honest, and there are 100 ways to be dishonest, the dispersion of the dishonest systems makes that they can only settle on being honest, after all, because otherwise, they get nowhere.
The point is if 100% of node are greedy cheating bastards as in sociopathic theory, the system doesnt work.
Of course it works. Because as a greedy bastard not finding enough others to collude, you end up behaving honestly, by lack of choice. Anything you try to do to be dishonest, is only in your disadvantage. So your "most egoist choice" is behaving honestly. In as much as that works, you have a truly decentralized system. It is almost the definition of a decentralized trustless system. I can easily prove in a Gedanken experiment that not 51% of the nodes are honest by intention but by lack of alternative. Suppose that there is a button on the bitcoin wallet that allows you to create extra coins for yourself, but you are not supposed to click on it. Suppose that it really works, that all wallets accept a specific extra coinbase transaction to your address if you click on that button, by a change in the protocol, and miners and most nodes have downloaded core to the latest versions including that protocol change. But the button says that if you are honest, you shouldn't click on the button and not get 200 BTC. How many people do you think are NOT going to click on the button ? Do you think that more than 50% of the nodes are not going to click ? The question is more how long the system will keep functiuning if everyone click this button. It cannot work for too long if everyone is 100% selfish motivated with no other motivation than making selfish profit. It just fall down after a while like a ponzi schemes. |
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I know ! But most people are simply *not capable* technically to cheat on that system, and are also kept in this mutual fear of cheating relationship. On the internet, nobody knowns you are a dog, but if you piss off one or other maffioso, he'll find you. So probably technically, most people don't know how ; and those that know how, mostly don't dare ; and those that know and dare, have stuff at stake.But it's not really what bitcoin claims as security model it's more the theory of security in open source software that everyone is supposed to be able to understand. It's the whole point of this kind of system that the security is not based on hiding or obfuscating how the system works and it's still secure even when everyone know how it works. But yeah ultimately it should be more the driving force that user want to keep the system functioning as a whole and cheating it will destroy it. But it require more than pure selfishness, and consciousness of the network as a whole. And willing to accept the compromise as opportunist predator that the system will become unstable if everyone is only selfishly motivated to cheat on others. But it require more consciousness than pure short term selfish benefits. Or the system collapse or become unstable. Empathy is too unclear term, but consciousness of the conséquences of actions on the other user is maybe more clear than empathy (which is different from sympathy). As you couldn't say you have sympathy for the mafioso, but still aware of the conséquences of actions on him. |
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No. If not 51% of nodes COLLUDE to be dishonest IN THE SAME WAY. As there is only one way to be honest, and there are 100 ways to be dishonest, the dispersion of the dishonest systems makes that they can only settle on being honest, after all, because otherwise, they get nowhere.
The point is if 100% of node are greedy cheating bastards as in sociopathic theory, the system doesnt work.
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Miners sell hash rate to pools against money. I don't think they care what the pool does with their hashes. They don't even need to be paid in the coin the pool makes with their hash power ; but usually the pool does this to hedge against coin value fluctuations. But miners could rent their hash computations for fiat to pools if that suited people, too. Miners play "amazon" for pools. They put computing hardware at disposal against a price.It's there that the whole idea of selfish seek for reward doesnt truly help to make the network more trustworthy, as they dont check tx and where this whole system of pow based trust is not really "it" Where to me decentralisation to selfish motivated person < centralisation to altruist well intentioned competent person. |
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http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2014/08/economics-as-a-moral-science.htmlOn questions of morality, contemporary economics stands mute. Writing about Adam Smith in the aftermath of the financial meltdown of 2008, Harvard's Amartya Sen put it bluntly— The nature of the present economic crisis illustrates very clearly the need for departures from unmitigated and unrestrained self-seeking in order to have a decent society This looks a bit like bitcoin today 2. In-Group + Self Interest — an individual who follows pure self-interest (in economic exchange) within the groups he belongs to will not be a member of those groups for very long. This space is "unstable" in this sense. This case comes closest to stating how morality and social control evolved in small hunter-gather bands. If you were banished from the group during the paleolithic, death was sure to follow. https://www.amazon.com/Amartya-Sen/e/B0024JEM5E/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1  More my kind of economic theories
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But if the network is entierely built upon selfish interest, you cant complain in the same breath that miner act selfish and steal your money because it's profitable to them, or miner empty block for the same raeson. Perfectly acceptable behavior then. Nothing more to expect from any conscious being.
That is exactly what I expect of a decentralized, trustless system: a web of greedy cheating bastards wanting to rip off one another so much that they can only come to the consensus of a working, fair system ; and in fact, of any form of society in general (which, at its most abstract level, IS a trustless, decentralized system, governed by the immutable and non-centralized laws of physics). I think any picturing of anything else but that is but delusion, with the purpose to misguide the preys at best, and based upon misunderstanding at worst. It's what I call the sociopathic/paranoiac theory, that no one can be trusted, everyone is the enmy, and you are on your own against everyone else. Trustless is to be taken in the context of cryptography, ultimately you still want to trust the network, even if not relying on the other party of transaction or a single third party, but there is still need to be trust in the network. And this idea that the network is populated only by greedy cheating bastards and that it's only the good cop software that keep everything in check, is really overrated. When you look at how pooled mining work, it's even very unlikely most miner even check the validity of transaction and merkkle root and that it actually match the block headers template. Where I want to get at is that the level of security that is actually provided by the network in term of trustlessness and decentralisation is very overrated. It's well known bitcoin works if 51% of node are honest. |
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And I still maintain that bitcoin is built upon sociopathic theories.
I think calling the obvious, "sociopath theories" is exactly the social lie I was talking about. I'm not excluding empathy, btw. Empathy is included in joy and suffering, in the same way that eating chocolate is included in joy, and getting a hammer blow on your big toe is included in suffering. Block reward motivation is not based on empathy. Beyond empathy id say consciousness of the network at bigger scale. Of the network operation as a whole. But it's more involved than running an Asic to compute hashes for reward. |
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The whole theory that selfish material interest and selfish pleasure seeking is ( or should be) the main driving force behind economics and society rules is what make the world in bad situation today.
This is the essence of living, conscious beings. Consciousness defining pleasure and suffering, and life defining offspring preference, the obvious behaviour of any conscious, living being is what you just stated. The negation of this is what I call the social lie. It's one of the composent, but far to account of all aspect of human psychology. Aka plato myth of caverne or body as tomb of the soul. Reward based system is Pavlovian. It's good to train dogs and breed kapos in nazi camps. If that's your view of human psychology, and expect everyone to act upon such theory of mind ill let you at it I guess it become the norm now. But if the network is entierely built upon selfish interest, you cant complain in the same breath that miner act selfish and steal your money because it's profitable to them, or miner empty block for the same raeson. Perfectly acceptable behavior then. Nothing more to expect from any conscious being. And I still maintain that bitcoin is built upon sociopathic theories. https://youtu.be/ImbQwCu5GdM |
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I dont think Nash equilibrium is the same things than byzantine general problem.
Nash equilibrium idea emerge from cold war and reaching stability in bipolar world.
Equilibrium = equi + liber , which describe a system remaining stable by itself without external force applied to it.
In term of newtonian physics a system is at equilibrium when the sum of forces is equal zero and the system remain stable by itself
Like a scale with equal weight on both side remain immobile.
The byzantine general problem is another thing, it's a system to be able to reach a decision between several party to go forward all together in the same plan.
The goal of blockchain is not to reach an equilibrium or point of immobility, it's goal is to constantly make new decision that all participant agree on without requiring a single point of authority.
To me it seems to be a different pb.
In a world in perfect equilibrium, there is no trading or exchange at all.
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The thing is as far as i know, bitcoin is based from scratch on this idea of competing selfish interest, and not on idea of participant being incitated to think on the global network scale. To me seem satoshis swalloed the fallacy that lack of good intentioned leadership lead to fairness and equality. The current situation is another proof of this fallacy. Selfish driven motive never lead to ethics. Inherently it lead to collusion of interest and tyrany. Not to make godwin point, but it's how the democracy turned to Wehrmacht democracy then turned to full nazism with collusion of selfish interest from big groups. I would say bitcoin is coming not far to the Wehrmacht democracy point. If the main force driving the network is selfish interest, and the block validation is only based on selfish interest to win the reward, it cannot lead to a fair system. And the fact that 100% of new coin emission go through this doesnt improve the situation. But I dont come to blockchain from trading perspective, and many things in bitcoin philosophy and most alt coin doesnt totally click with my philosophy The whole theory that selfish material interest and selfish pleasure seeking is ( or should be) the main driving force behind economics and society rules is what make the world in bad situation today. It's this sort of stuff that make me think satoshi is far from being utopist idealistic hereoe to save the trouble of financial world. His core philosophy is the same, just like a sort of fresh start with a new system with the same core philosophy of selfish interest driven world. Where people are incitated to think only in term of their own selfish benefits. Which is all based on very truncated view of human relationship. Almost sociopathic. |
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This issues of seniorage is much more fundemental pb than this. It's at the hearth of any philosophy or science that knowledge of a system give more power on this system. Thinking that anyone can be equally qualified to operate a system is silly. It's animal farms syndrome. But seniorage in the context of bitcoin doesnt necessarily equate with comptency to operate the network if senior are mostly whales holding bitcoins, it doesnt necessarily mean they have competence as network operator. If all whales were actual bitcoin geeks who are really deeply involve within theorical reasearch and dev, and could form as competent leadership that wouldnt look that bad to me. But it doesnt seem to be too much the case. Bitcoin I think is still made to favor computer geeks, and I think most alt coin play ponzi game where the commodity is knowledge of the network and ability to get and use the software in early stage. But seniorage can also have positive attribute when it equate with knowledge and experience required to operate the network smoothly and it's not based on tech ponzi. The thing to have bitcoin stack as metric for seniorage and competent leadership smell ponzi. Hashing power have same pb. They are still not good measure to determine the legitimity of decision taking for the rest of the network. It's the same pb with plato and athenian liberal democracy vs republic. The former always lead to collusion of interest and the second lead to ethics and putting wisedom and competency at the center of the game. The two are always in opposition. Bitcoin is like athenian democracy where selfish material gain prevail and cant lead to ethical fair system. except for burning seigniorage where it is brilliant
Again, PoW is great for coin creation. But that's it.
Burning seigniorage (i.e. sending the capital to the electricity costs instead of to any entity involved with the token) doesn't prevent whales from taking a power-law distribution of the money supply. So I fail to see the advantage of having one set of whales or another set of whales. If the people who take the seigniorage are evangelists and developers of the ecosystem, and if they are sufficient in number, then at least some of your whales are hopefully ardent supporters and not some venomous snakes that appear from the dark shadows of high finance. OTOH, if the venomous snakes don't want to share the stage with whales who they think are undeserving, they make take their capital else where. So once again whales are back to competing for the other 50% of the wealth which isn't concentrated. I think it is true though that if the money supply can be distributed competitively then more whales and talented will see it as a level playing field to compete in. So I think any competitive distribution which doesn't give privilege to any group is acceptable. But even with PoW, it isn't truly competitive because so many people do not know how to mine. So in effect your distribution paradigm is filtering the type of people you want in your ecosystem. So if you want only geeks, then do a PoW distribution. Maybe geeks are all that matters now and the rest of the world are fodder? |
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For me already the one thing I find bulky with bitcoin is to merge the question of coin emission and block reward with pow. It's cheap trick and still works, but still bulky.
For me most pb of scaling and centralisation come from this. If the coin emission would be independent or at least not completely merged with reward for block emission it can open other paradigm for security.
As coins émission logic is rather simple ans non ambiguous ans 100% deterministic , I dont see why the need to tie it to reward for block emission and the incencitive can be rethought in completely different way.
Id add that the pb with centralisation is not necessarily centralisation itself, but the crteria on which the délégation of authority happen. If the centralisation is based on either ponzi like things that favoris first comers, or decided arbitrary by network operators it's bad. If central node can be selected on more objective crteria within game theory , it's much less of a pb. The only question is to define what are good quality for central node within game theory. Provided the game theory lead to need for central node for better network performance. Like game theory lead to need arbitrer to have fair game. Having game where all player and competitors are also arbirtrer is complex problem. Game theory never evolve to this naturally. Especially when rules are too complex to be fully understood by all player.
Having a single arbitrer for huge network like bitcoin is not viable, which is why id lean toward a system of subnetwork with locally selected arbitrer. Divide to reign always crush all game theories. And in the end for most use case not all nodes have to know the status of all other nodes for things to keep functiuning well. As long as what node need to know to validate an operation is well defined , there no real need for total decentralisation & fungibility.
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Maybe also need to remind decentralisation via pow is a mean to and end, not a finality in itself, unless being into ideology, maybe need to focus more on the actual finality to find another paradigm to get the same finality than trying to be into 100% decentralisation by principle, as it might as well take another 200 year to find a new solution to byzantine general problem. And pow showed is limit for this already.
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