Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi(capitalfm.co.ke)
capitalfm.co.ke
Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi
https://www.capitalfm.co.ke/news/2023/08/police-raid-worldcoin-cryptocurrency-warehouse-in-nairobi/
373 comments
This project builds a global identity database even if the crypto part disappears. Their tokenomics are a mess and their CEO openly admitted to market manipulation recently. Good on Kenya for shutting this down, I hope many more follow.
I've not been paying attention to altman - what did he say about market manipulation? Having trouble searching for it.
The other comment is right, that Sam Altman is not the CEO. The CEO is Alex Blania.
And he did say that they were dampening the volatility of the price for WLD (together with the help of market makers, etc. I would guess?).
And he did say that they were dampening the volatility of the price for WLD (together with the help of market makers, etc. I would guess?).
Thanks, that must be what the op was referencing; and also thanks for affirming the sibling comment. The tools for humanity and the worldcoin foundation sites don't have much info on them from what I can tell. I wonder at how they go about preventing volatility and how they eventually plan on doing that in US. Sounds dodgy if they are avoiding our jurisdiction.
Altman is not the ceo of worldcoin…
> Altman is not the ceo of worldcoin…
I'm just curious who you think the CEO is?
I'm just curious who you think the CEO is?
Altman and Blania started it together, and while Altman isn't uninvolved he has at minimum taken something of a step back AFAIK.
As the peer comment says, formally though, Alex Blania is their CEO.
As the peer comment says, formally though, Alex Blania is their CEO.
Alex Blania
It doesn't create or track identities. It creates a unique hash of your iris and can only use it to determine if your iris has been scanned before. Nothing else.
And Loopt was originally about just sharing your location privately and then oops that got sold for low income credit card targeting so that sama could cash out https://allthingsd.com/20120309/green-dot-buys-location-app-...
Orbs will be open sourced and audited. Long-term they aren't storing anything other than the iris hash.
You seem to have a lot of faith in the promises made by crypto bros. I don't have that faith.
You can opt in for storage of the iris image itself to ensure that further modification of the hash algorithm do not force you to re-scan you eye.
But then your actual biometrics can get taken by the government, as illustrated in OP raid on warehouses.
Or Worldcoin leadership could use your biometrics for whatever they want e.g. stalking as done at Uber or forking their coin to fund a new ICO.
Or Worldcoin leadership could use your biometrics for whatever they want e.g. stalking as done at Uber or forking their coin to fund a new ICO.
Oh absolutely. It sounds disingenuous from them to say they only store hash and also push to store the actual full capture.
Biometrics as private keys are an absolutely horrible idea as it is.
Proposing to use that private key as your one true interface to the digital financial world is ever more insane.
The idea that proprietary technology and information(the scanners, software and everything that the organization owns) can somehow make this safe and secure is evil.
Proposing to use that private key as your one true interface to the digital financial world is ever more insane.
The idea that proprietary technology and information(the scanners, software and everything that the organization owns) can somehow make this safe and secure is evil.
I really don't want to have anything to do with crypto, and the fact that Sam Altman is pushing it in 2023 makes both him and OpenAI look sketchy.
Especially crypto with a weird biometric eye scanner.
Especially crypto with a weird biometric eye scanner.
Yeah, if I talk to a 'normie' and explain that chatGPT and OpenAI are nefariously plotting regulatory capture most will roll their eyes at me.
If I say "The founder of OpenAI is scanning people's eyeballs to build a database" that sets off real alarm bells.
If I say "The founder of OpenAI is scanning people's eyeballs to build a database" that sets off real alarm bells.
> Yeah, if I talk to a 'normie' and explain that chatGPT and OpenAI are nefariously plotting regulatory capture most will roll their eyes at me.
You are supposed to preface it with how Altman is making AI services, selling them as AGI, and also painting AGI as a danger to the survival of humanity. Then, when they are baffled at why someone would sell something while describing it that way, you can walk them through regulatory capture and erecting barriers to competition.
You are supposed to preface it with how Altman is making AI services, selling them as AGI, and also painting AGI as a danger to the survival of humanity. Then, when they are baffled at why someone would sell something while describing it that way, you can walk them through regulatory capture and erecting barriers to competition.
Citation requested re: Altman saying current offerings are AGI. When I search, I see things like “there may be a path to AGI”.
Landing page of OpenAI website says:
> Creating safe AGI that benefits all of humanity
In big letters.
They are very clearly playing the game of positioning themselves as the AGI good guys, and at the same time Sam Altman has been encouraging the view that AGI is dangerous.
Regulatory capture.
> Creating safe AGI that benefits all of humanity
In big letters.
They are very clearly playing the game of positioning themselves as the AGI good guys, and at the same time Sam Altman has been encouraging the view that AGI is dangerous.
Regulatory capture.
[deleted]
the current 'normie' understanding of ChatGPT and other current LLMs like Bard is not that they are stochastic parrots that can complete sentences by probabilities, it's that they are 'stupid AGI.' And if we give them more funding and more training, eventually they will become 'smart AGI.'
OpenAI markets their product exactly this way, focusing on how ChatGPT can 'write code' (it cannot) or 'write poetry' (it cannot) or do any number of things that lean in hard on the 'stupid AGI' angle, never clarifying that their actual product is a spicy autocomplete. You'll never hear OpenAI say 'ChatGPT is a stupid AGI' out loud, but they'll never correct any mainstream misunderstandings that it is.
OpenAI markets their product exactly this way, focusing on how ChatGPT can 'write code' (it cannot) or 'write poetry' (it cannot) or do any number of things that lean in hard on the 'stupid AGI' angle, never clarifying that their actual product is a spicy autocomplete. You'll never hear OpenAI say 'ChatGPT is a stupid AGI' out loud, but they'll never correct any mainstream misunderstandings that it is.
The problem with saying an LLM is "just a parrot" is that we don't know how parrots work, so this doesn't mean anything.
You know a parrot isnt going to impart new knowledge to the world.
You can feed new data into it quite easily.
a lot of the dismissive takedown of LLM's intelligence uses their spurious knowledge of the world, but it is quite easy to have them 1. search the internet 2. search research articles 3. read books and have them work to iteratively improve something.
Right now they cannot do much reliably but calling them a parrot is miopic how little we understand how humans are intelligent and to how LLMs today are more intelligent than a non negligible chunk of the population.
a lot of the dismissive takedown of LLM's intelligence uses their spurious knowledge of the world, but it is quite easy to have them 1. search the internet 2. search research articles 3. read books and have them work to iteratively improve something.
Right now they cannot do much reliably but calling them a parrot is miopic how little we understand how humans are intelligent and to how LLMs today are more intelligent than a non negligible chunk of the population.
I don't know that. You can find new conclusions from existing data if nobody else has done it yet.
I'm not sure I get what you're saying here. ChatGPT and GPT-4 absolutely can write code and poetry. GPT-4 arguably does both better than I do.
Can you expand on your statement that ChatGPT cannot write code? That doesn't match my experience with it.
When you ask ChatGPT to write a piece of code that does a thing, it is not reasoning about what the code should do, modeling the problem in its head, figuring out how to translate that into code, then writing it. The neural weights are spitting up a piece of code it determines would probably come after your prompt, based on similarity to a kajillion StackOverflow answers, GitHub repos, textbooks, etc etc. It is not coming up with a solution, just giving you the average answer to the million most similar questions.
ChatGPT can “write code” in the most literal sense that it will give you code when given a prompt, but (unlike how OpenAI markets-by-omission) it does not reason about code like an AGI could.
ChatGPT can “write code” in the most literal sense that it will give you code when given a prompt, but (unlike how OpenAI markets-by-omission) it does not reason about code like an AGI could.
I'm not particularly interested in AGIs (I'm kind of hoping they don't happen) - but for my purposes the illusion of LLMs being able to code is now good enough that I'm using them to write good, working code for me on a daily basis.
Here's a recent example: https://simonwillison.net/2023/Aug/6/annotated-presentations...
Here's a recent example: https://simonwillison.net/2023/Aug/6/annotated-presentations...
gpt is clearly capable of constructing and interacting with a model of the world -- there was a famous example in the microsoft bing paper where they described a complex maze and had it reason its way out. 'predicting what it thinks is most similar to stackoverflow' etc does not explain any of its behavior in a meaningful way, unless you are willing to apply this description to human intellectual labor. gpt4 is clearly not sentient, but what is shocking about it is that it demonstrates that honest-to-god cognition can be decoupled from sentience.
btw, i think i have tended to see these pessimistic takes by people who have only used 3.5, which is impressive but not reliable -- i strongly recommend using 4 in the course of your job to see how useful it is. every day in the course of interacting with it, it produces novel lines of thought which shock me.
btw, i think i have tended to see these pessimistic takes by people who have only used 3.5, which is impressive but not reliable -- i strongly recommend using 4 in the course of your job to see how useful it is. every day in the course of interacting with it, it produces novel lines of thought which shock me.
you forgot the part about the shiny metal orb.
it really changes the flavor of it from cambridge analytica to dr evil.
it really changes the flavor of it from cambridge analytica to dr evil.
I'm starting to think Bond villains need to have a "satire" disclaimer to pre-empt future Stanford kids from thinking it's something to aspire to.
They'll still have Atlas Shrugged.
Alternative subtitle track that just displays "(this guy is the bad guy)" when the villain is visible on screen.
How can he be the villain, he has all the money so he must be the good guy!
Perhaps a health bar that depletes as the good guy chips away at his evil plans?
I would hope both would set off alarm bells but I guess at least one of them inducing trepidation is cause enough these days for guarded optimism.
One of them is easy to include in thrilling action movies that allows the idea and risk to enter public consciousness, and the other is something that economics wonks and people interested in how business works at high levels look at.
Protagonist 1: "I don't get it, why are they doing this? What do they have to gain?"
Protagonist 2: "I don't know, unless... oh my god, it's regulatory capture!"
Protagonist 1: "Shit, of course! What will we do?"
Audience: Laughs at this shit being played so straight it comes off as a farce.
Protagonist 1: "I don't get it, why are they doing this? What do they have to gain?"
Protagonist 2: "I don't know, unless... oh my god, it's regulatory capture!"
Protagonist 1: "Shit, of course! What will we do?"
Audience: Laughs at this shit being played so straight it comes off as a farce.
The problem with regulatory capture is it makes everybody look bad.
The usual morality play is either the evil business hurting people who has to be stopped by the benevolent government regulators, or the evil government regulators hurting innocent businesses who are just trying to make a living and keep prices down and keep jobs from moving offshore.
To which the traditional solutions are either more regulations that businesses don't like or fewer regulations that businesses don't like.
Regulatory capture is when the villains of both sides are working together, and the solution to it is fewer regulations that big businesses do like. But nobody wants to see their hero as a villain so anything that accurately portrays this is unpopular.
The usual morality play is either the evil business hurting people who has to be stopped by the benevolent government regulators, or the evil government regulators hurting innocent businesses who are just trying to make a living and keep prices down and keep jobs from moving offshore.
To which the traditional solutions are either more regulations that businesses don't like or fewer regulations that businesses don't like.
Regulatory capture is when the villains of both sides are working together, and the solution to it is fewer regulations that big businesses do like. But nobody wants to see their hero as a villain so anything that accurately portrays this is unpopular.
> The problem with regulatory capture is it makes everybody look bad
The other problem is this isn't how regulatory capture happens. OpenAI was flexing its badass credentials in the halls of Congress while it wrapped up a multibillion-dollar fundraise. There was no path from Altman's testimony to any sort of regulatory apparatus that wouldn't immediately constrain him.
The other problem is this isn't how regulatory capture happens. OpenAI was flexing its badass credentials in the halls of Congress while it wrapped up a multibillion-dollar fundraise. There was no path from Altman's testimony to any sort of regulatory apparatus that wouldn't immediately constrain him.
Isn't the usual theory for this that they're pulling up the ladder? They get billions in funding which they can use to absorb regulatory overhead, then the regulations come which price out early stage competitors and make it harder for anyone else to raise the kind of funding they've already secured.
> Isn't the usual theory for this that they're pulling up the ladder?
Actual capture involves industry coöpting existing regulators through revolving doors and burdensome rules that reduce the threat of new entrants. It happens quietly. The only times industry proposes new frameworks in public is when they're cornered.
The "regulatory capture" playbook OpenAI purported to follow has zero actual precedent. It is only rhetorically precedented in crypto, where the same nonsense about creating a new regulator that would simultaneously be less-burdensome than the status quo yet also cement incumbents' advantages was pitched to the naïve.
Actual capture involves industry coöpting existing regulators through revolving doors and burdensome rules that reduce the threat of new entrants. It happens quietly. The only times industry proposes new frameworks in public is when they're cornered.
The "regulatory capture" playbook OpenAI purported to follow has zero actual precedent. It is only rhetorically precedented in crypto, where the same nonsense about creating a new regulator that would simultaneously be less-burdensome than the status quo yet also cement incumbents' advantages was pitched to the naïve.
Isn't the lack of recent precedent because most industries already have existing regulators? A new industry coming into existence isn't that common, and when it does happen, I don't think this is actually unprecedented. AT&T was one of the big proponents of new regulation back when telephone companies were a recent development.
> that would simultaneously be less-burdensome than the status quo yet also cement incumbents' advantages
But that's classic regulatory capture. The industry gets the government to impose regulations that are wasteful and bureaucratic but can be navigated by a large organization with economies of scale, which allows regulators to appear as if they're doing something, but the rules don't prevent the incumbents from making a mint by consolidating the industry and charging monopoly rents or avoiding taxes paid by the middle class and smaller competitors etc.
> that would simultaneously be less-burdensome than the status quo yet also cement incumbents' advantages
But that's classic regulatory capture. The industry gets the government to impose regulations that are wasteful and bureaucratic but can be navigated by a large organization with economies of scale, which allows regulators to appear as if they're doing something, but the rules don't prevent the incumbents from making a mint by consolidating the industry and charging monopoly rents or avoiding taxes paid by the middle class and smaller competitors etc.
> AT&T was one of the big proponents of new regulation back when telephone companies were a recent development
AT&T wanted a regulator so it could scale like the railroads. The regulator wasn't to regulate AT&T, if I remember correctly, it was to regulate the states. (It backfired in the long run.)
Broadly speaking, if you’re weak enough to need a regulator to guard your moat, you’re weak enough to be overpowered by the regulator. Regulatory capture, successful examples, at least, begin from a position of strength. Altman pitched doom and gloom and then, when the EU began reacting, seemed surprised that they weren’t permissive.
AT&T wanted a regulator so it could scale like the railroads. The regulator wasn't to regulate AT&T, if I remember correctly, it was to regulate the states. (It backfired in the long run.)
Broadly speaking, if you’re weak enough to need a regulator to guard your moat, you’re weak enough to be overpowered by the regulator. Regulatory capture, successful examples, at least, begin from a position of strength. Altman pitched doom and gloom and then, when the EU began reacting, seemed surprised that they weren’t permissive.
> The regulator wasn't to regulate AT&T, if I remember correctly, it was to regulate the states.
It was to consolidate the regulation so they could focus on capturing the one federal regulator instead of 50 different state ones, sure. But you do that so that when the public starts clamoring for something to be done, you get to control what gets done, and do something that benefits the incumbents and not new entrants.
> (It backfired in the long run.)
It seems to me that it's still pretty hard to start a competing telephone company.
I might be able to get some open source VoIP software running on a VM in one day. Now I want to offer WiFi calling plans. There is some domain name in the public DNS where phone numbers are subdomains that resolve to the IP address of its associated phone company so I know where to route calls, and I just go to some free government website to have some numbers routed to me so I can assign them to customers, right? No?
> Broadly speaking, if you’re weak enough to need a regulator to guard your moat, you’re weak enough to be overpowered by the regulator.
But the strength comes from the moat protected by regulations. The law inhibits competition, so you extract lots of rents from customers, so you have lots of money to influence regulators with. The regulators are the source of your power, but you and the rents you extract are the source of campaign funding, and they don't want to cut that off. Or worse, have it directed to the other party, if they can't actually bankrupt you before the next election cycle.
It was to consolidate the regulation so they could focus on capturing the one federal regulator instead of 50 different state ones, sure. But you do that so that when the public starts clamoring for something to be done, you get to control what gets done, and do something that benefits the incumbents and not new entrants.
> (It backfired in the long run.)
It seems to me that it's still pretty hard to start a competing telephone company.
I might be able to get some open source VoIP software running on a VM in one day. Now I want to offer WiFi calling plans. There is some domain name in the public DNS where phone numbers are subdomains that resolve to the IP address of its associated phone company so I know where to route calls, and I just go to some free government website to have some numbers routed to me so I can assign them to customers, right? No?
> Broadly speaking, if you’re weak enough to need a regulator to guard your moat, you’re weak enough to be overpowered by the regulator.
But the strength comes from the moat protected by regulations. The law inhibits competition, so you extract lots of rents from customers, so you have lots of money to influence regulators with. The regulators are the source of your power, but you and the rents you extract are the source of campaign funding, and they don't want to cut that off. Or worse, have it directed to the other party, if they can't actually bankrupt you before the next election cycle.
Do you have a good source on the history of AT&T and the FCC?
"I bear urgent news! The king is planning to destroy the margrave, not by force of arms but by monopolizing the right of seigniorage!"
Regulatory capture becomes much easier to understand when you exaggerate it and say they’re trying to hijack and take over the government to make money. It isn’t that, but it’s close enough
The regulatory capture conspiracy is myopic, ignorant, and "cope" as the kids say these days. People act as if Altman had never said spoken about AI dangers until ChatGPT took off, when in reality Altman has written about the dangers of AI before OpenAI even existed. The US government already added GPU dual-use export control restrictions a year ago due to their potential for weaponization, so he is not alone in recognizing the inherent dangers.
Yeah but "scanning people's eyeballs to build a database" is untrue. You can scare a lot of people by telling them untrue stuff.
Yeah but "scanning people's eyeballs to build a database" is untrue.
That is literally what he is doing.
People walk up to an "orb," get their eyeballs scanned, and a unique key goes into a database.
What part of the parent's statement is untrue?
That is literally what he is doing.
People walk up to an "orb," get their eyeballs scanned, and a unique key goes into a database.
What part of the parent's statement is untrue?
The purpose is to build a financial system although data is involved. It's a bit like saying banking is a scheme to get your financial data. I mean banks have your data but it's not the purpose.
Pretty sad. They don't care about regulation that would potentially have a profound impact for everybody, but they care about people voluntarily doing something for a silly crypto token?
He was always sketchy, and the whole way he handles OpenAI is also extremely sketchy with pushing for regulation that in effect protects OpenAI's products against competition and forms a soft-to-hard government monopoly on AI (the exact opposite of OpenAI's initial mission).
And yet, they did bring us GPT, and inspired the world to go in this direction, including the open-source models by Meta.
History is always messy like this. And another proof of this will be if this tech becomes the beginning of the end of our civilization, but that's just me thinking out loud here.
And yet, they did bring us GPT, and inspired the world to go in this direction, including the open-source models by Meta.
History is always messy like this. And another proof of this will be if this tech becomes the beginning of the end of our civilization, but that's just me thinking out loud here.
Artificial fertilizer (which feeds billions of people worldwide) was invented by the same guy who ran the German chemical weapons program in WWI.
the whole way he handles OpenAI is also extremely sketchy with pushing for regulation that in effect protects OpenAI's products against competition and forms a soft-to-hard government monopoly on AI
To me, that's the least sketchy part of OpenAI.
The part that gets me is where one day it's promoted as the future, and will be integrated into every part of our lives. And the very next day, the same guy is telling newspapers that AI is so scary and potentially destructive that it absolutely must be regulated by governments.
It's like being so proud of continually building new and improved nuclear bombs, and then telling the government that it better build a bunch of nuclear bomb shelters for everyone.
To me, that's the least sketchy part of OpenAI.
The part that gets me is where one day it's promoted as the future, and will be integrated into every part of our lives. And the very next day, the same guy is telling newspapers that AI is so scary and potentially destructive that it absolutely must be regulated by governments.
It's like being so proud of continually building new and improved nuclear bombs, and then telling the government that it better build a bunch of nuclear bomb shelters for everyone.
> including the open-source models by Meta
"open-source"
"open-source"
Infinitely more open than the ones from "Open"-Ai
I don't think Open Source is a gradient, it's a boolean. Either something is Open Source or it's not. Neither Llama nor OpenAI is Open Source.
I disagree, it's functionally a gradient because the label encompasses different assumptions when different people say it. (It's even more vague than the US' "freedom of speech", since it lacks a bunch of case-law precedent.)
You're saying clear-cut objective lines exist--where exactly do you believe they are placed?
You're saying clear-cut objective lines exist--where exactly do you believe they are placed?
Not saying this is the "objective truth", but the OSD does a good job of helping you find a clear-cut line when something is "Open Source" (in common parlor) or not: https://opensource.org/osd/
Again, not everyone agrees with those of course, and I guess that's fine. But I think most software developers who are in the FOSS ecosystem could agree that Llama is not "Open Source" as most people understand the term.
Again, not everyone agrees with those of course, and I guess that's fine. But I think most software developers who are in the FOSS ecosystem could agree that Llama is not "Open Source" as most people understand the term.
Freely readable and mutable weights doesn’t have the same ring to it.
God forbid we could be accurate with the terms we use.
"Open access"?
I'm actually significantly more skeptical of OpenAI after discovering that one of their founders is behind this.
The tag line of universal basic income is so absurd for an iris scanner built on the blockchain.
Are we still in the world of 0% interest rates???
The tag line of universal basic income is so absurd for an iris scanner built on the blockchain.
Are we still in the world of 0% interest rates???
You can have UBI at a country level if you finance it with government budget (through taxes)[1], but as a for-profit enterprise, there's no that's a good idea (for it to work at all, it must have a monetization strategy, and they all look dystopian)
[1] it actually exist(ed) in France (see RMI/RSA, though the different governments recently added tons of bureaucracy to it as a way to deter people from getting it, ruining the point), but the political will that it requires (and whether this is a good idea at all, I don't have a strong opinion on that) is the limiting factor.
[1] it actually exist(ed) in France (see RMI/RSA, though the different governments recently added tons of bureaucracy to it as a way to deter people from getting it, ruining the point), but the political will that it requires (and whether this is a good idea at all, I don't have a strong opinion on that) is the limiting factor.
I took a look at RSA and 1) it's not technically UBI but a conditional welfare program (UBI is allocated to all adults, even wealthy ones) and 2) it's exceptionally low - just $514 a month. That's 30% minimum wage and a bit less than half the poverty threshold.
I don't think UBI will really work if it doesn't even have support at the poverty line. Part of the point of UBI is a segment of the population which can't find work due to obsolete skills can at least spend the energy to retrain, or perhaps pursue some endeavor that is difficult to monetize but provides some benefit to society. That's difficult to do when one is destitute. As well, it needs to be effective for large swaths of the population if we are indeed heading into a post-work society over the next 10-20 years.
I don't think UBI will really work if it doesn't even have support at the poverty line. Part of the point of UBI is a segment of the population which can't find work due to obsolete skills can at least spend the energy to retrain, or perhaps pursue some endeavor that is difficult to monetize but provides some benefit to society. That's difficult to do when one is destitute. As well, it needs to be effective for large swaths of the population if we are indeed heading into a post-work society over the next 10-20 years.
Is that the kind of UBI we want though? If it has a single issuer, like the government, then it has a single point of control which can be used to coerce people (i.e. by threatening to take it away).
The ideal UBI system would let you threaten to overthrow your government in a way that does not threaten the integrity of UBI. It ought to be a safety net that makes otherwise impractical growth possible.
As a crypto, CirclesUBI is a bit of a disaster (e.g. the hosted UI, and sensitivity to certain kinds of attack), but I think they got the tokenomics right: it encourages Sybil resistant behavior among the users without trying to bind an address to your body and without relying on an issuer's good behavior.
The ideal UBI system would let you threaten to overthrow your government in a way that does not threaten the integrity of UBI. It ought to be a safety net that makes otherwise impractical growth possible.
As a crypto, CirclesUBI is a bit of a disaster (e.g. the hosted UI, and sensitivity to certain kinds of attack), but I think they got the tokenomics right: it encourages Sybil resistant behavior among the users without trying to bind an address to your body and without relying on an issuer's good behavior.
> The ideal UBI system would let you threaten to overthrow your government...
Crypto Anarchism is not attractive the vast majority of people.
I'll argue the UBI people want involves their government sending them a check, direct deposit, or cash.
Crypto Anarchism is not attractive the vast majority of people.
I'll argue the UBI people want involves their government sending them a check, direct deposit, or cash.
Since USA still controls it's currency issuance (unlike EU members), why isn't this in place today? Rename food stamps and WIC into newUBI and start rolling it out.
Given that we'd have to all conspire to respect the UBI token while we replaced the government, I'd classify it as cryptocommunism, but I take your point.
I just have a hard time imagining a government that both:
- keeps the U in UBI
- is not under some kind if existential threat from its people
You need the latter to have the former. But if you're coordinated to achieve the latter then you don't really need the government to achieve the former anyway.
I just have a hard time imagining a government that both:
- keeps the U in UBI
- is not under some kind if existential threat from its people
You need the latter to have the former. But if you're coordinated to achieve the latter then you don't really need the government to achieve the former anyway.
> The ideal UBI system would let you threaten to overthrow your government in a way that does not threaten the integrity of UBI
If you can, categorically, overthrow it without threatening the integrity of UBI in its territory, it was never actually the government in the first place.
If you can, categorically, overthrow it without threatening the integrity of UBI in its territory, it was never actually the government in the first place.
> can, categorically, overthrow it without threatening the integrity of UBI in its territory, it was never actually the government in the first place
Which underlines the ridiculousness of the thought experiment. The solution to wars being destructive is...a blockchain?
Which underlines the ridiculousness of the thought experiment. The solution to wars being destructive is...a blockchain?
there's a civil war ongoing but your income is still at its pre-war level (without any devaluation, meaning you keep your pre-war purchasing power) thanks to the magic of the blockchain.
> without any devaluation, meaning you keep your pre-war purchasing power
That's not how economics works.
The purchasing power of any currency, for example USD, isn't the same everywhere even at a fixed point in time, because we don't have negligible-cost transportation in war zones (amongst other places).
That's not how economics works.
The purchasing power of any currency, for example USD, isn't the same everywhere even at a fixed point in time, because we don't have negligible-cost transportation in war zones (amongst other places).
It would come down to devaluation by whom right? If everybody wants the war to end and both sides see you as somebody that is working towards a reasonable plan of ending it, then I expect your tokens would go pretty far.
And even if you're not the magical mediator who ends the war, what matters is not some global market evaluation, what matters is your tokens' evaluation by the people who grow the food that you eat and your evaluation of their tokens as well. Reciprocal exchange and utility, not market value.
And even if you're not the magical mediator who ends the war, what matters is not some global market evaluation, what matters is your tokens' evaluation by the people who grow the food that you eat and your evaluation of their tokens as well. Reciprocal exchange and utility, not market value.
> devaluation by whom right
This isn't how currencies lose value in wars. If the amount of money doesn't change, but half the factories are bombed, the output of the remaining factories rises in value relative to that currency. (Ceteris paribus.) The only way around this is to backstop production with unbombed factories. Something a blockchain does jack squat about.
This isn't how currencies lose value in wars. If the amount of money doesn't change, but half the factories are bombed, the output of the remaining factories rises in value relative to that currency. (Ceteris paribus.) The only way around this is to backstop production with unbombed factories. Something a blockchain does jack squat about.
Sure, but that's somewhat orthogonal to the matter of how you does your accounting or who issues your tokens. That's just scarcity.
I suppose you could burn tokens when the factories are bombed (or you know, when whatever other resources that back them expire), but that seems like a lot of extra bookkeeping just to keep two numbers equal.
I suppose you could burn tokens when the factories are bombed (or you know, when whatever other resources that back them expire), but that seems like a lot of extra bookkeeping just to keep two numbers equal.
> that's somewhat orthogonal to the matter of how you does your accounting or who issues your tokens. That's just scarcity.
It's always scarcity. That's economics. The currency will fundamentally, potentially permanently, devalue in purchasing power in that context without external support.
> you could burn tokens when the factories are bombed
How many tokens do you burn for a textile versus semiconductor factory? Keep in mind, you are in a war zone, which means no guarantee of safe imports or exports. (Also, whose tokens?)
Managing an economy on a war footing is old business. There is nothing Worldcoin does to even remotely approach giving a semblance of an indication that anyone on their team has actually thought about this, like, once.
> that seems like a lot of extra bookkeeping just to keep two numbers equal
This is, in a nutshell, the problem with anything that purports to maintain its value over long durations of time. Value keeping takes work. We can't meaningfully convert ancient currencies to modern ones because it makes no sense to ask how many days' labour a Roman peasant would trade for an iPhone. These problems are fundamental to the notions of value. They don't have a technical solution. Value is inherently, fundamentally, subjective.
It's always scarcity. That's economics. The currency will fundamentally, potentially permanently, devalue in purchasing power in that context without external support.
> you could burn tokens when the factories are bombed
How many tokens do you burn for a textile versus semiconductor factory? Keep in mind, you are in a war zone, which means no guarantee of safe imports or exports. (Also, whose tokens?)
Managing an economy on a war footing is old business. There is nothing Worldcoin does to even remotely approach giving a semblance of an indication that anyone on their team has actually thought about this, like, once.
> that seems like a lot of extra bookkeeping just to keep two numbers equal
This is, in a nutshell, the problem with anything that purports to maintain its value over long durations of time. Value keeping takes work. We can't meaningfully convert ancient currencies to modern ones because it makes no sense to ask how many days' labour a Roman peasant would trade for an iPhone. These problems are fundamental to the notions of value. They don't have a technical solution. Value is inherently, fundamentally, subjective.
> The currency will fundamentally, potentially permanently, devalue in purchasing power in that context without external support.
Followed by
> Value is inherently, fundamentally, subjective.
Which is it? Does value exist in real terms or is it made up?
If I'll give you a beer for two of your UBI coins, and you'll give me a pound of barley for one of my UBI coins, then it really doesn't matter that there's a war on somewhere, nor does it matter what the "value" of our coins is in terms of some number, so long as they are issued to each of us at the same rate.
You only have to bother with establishing a correspondence with some allegedly valuable thing in the real world (gold, factories, whatever) if you want a globally consistent notion of value. A notion which, as you've explained, is a fiction, and which I'd argue, is a harmful one.
Followed by
> Value is inherently, fundamentally, subjective.
Which is it? Does value exist in real terms or is it made up?
If I'll give you a beer for two of your UBI coins, and you'll give me a pound of barley for one of my UBI coins, then it really doesn't matter that there's a war on somewhere, nor does it matter what the "value" of our coins is in terms of some number, so long as they are issued to each of us at the same rate.
You only have to bother with establishing a correspondence with some allegedly valuable thing in the real world (gold, factories, whatever) if you want a globally consistent notion of value. A notion which, as you've explained, is a fiction, and which I'd argue, is a harmful one.
Yes, and not only the factories, but the entierty of the supply chain, combined with war profiteers driving prices artificially even higher.
Contrary to the freshwater meme Inflation is rarely primarily a monetary phenomenon, but it's even less the case during a war.
Contrary to the freshwater meme Inflation is rarely primarily a monetary phenomenon, but it's even less the case during a war.
I'm not sure about that. There's more to being a government than preventing people from using media of exchange that you haven't blessed.
Besides, if borders had anything to do with it, it was never UBI in the first place.
Besides, if borders had anything to do with it, it was never UBI in the first place.
> Besides, if borders had anything to do with it, it was never UBI in the first place.
Yes, it would; neither form of the “U” in UBI includes free of borders in the sense used in the term, and reinterpreting that way and pretending its what the term means is just lazy equivocation.
Yes, it would; neither form of the “U” in UBI includes free of borders in the sense used in the term, and reinterpreting that way and pretending its what the term means is just lazy equivocation.
I don't know what you mean. If you're denying people access to the system based on where they happen to be, it's not universal.
> If you're denying people access to the system based on where they happen to be, it's not universal.
“Universal” seems to be a later construction, it was originally “unconditional”, and in both cases the writings on it for many years under either name made it clear that the reference was principally freedom from means- and behavior-testing, contrary to status-quo welfare programs, but that it would target a population based on (exact scope differs in particular proposals) residency, citizenship, and/or age. Not surprised that the “no borders” crowd has seen it differently, and their version certainly is a valid instance of the general idea, but they don’t get to rewrite history and narrow the scope of the broader concept to their new version.
“Universal” seems to be a later construction, it was originally “unconditional”, and in both cases the writings on it for many years under either name made it clear that the reference was principally freedom from means- and behavior-testing, contrary to status-quo welfare programs, but that it would target a population based on (exact scope differs in particular proposals) residency, citizenship, and/or age. Not surprised that the “no borders” crowd has seen it differently, and their version certainly is a valid instance of the general idea, but they don’t get to rewrite history and narrow the scope of the broader concept to their new version.
That's fair. The "no borders" crowd was my introduction to the topic, so I guess I'm ignorant of the other side.
Is there a book or something you'd recommend?
Is there a book or something you'd recommend?
[deleted]
And you don't need a magic orb to do it. You can do it in the US through the mysterious buildings referred to as "unemployment offices" by changing the signs and opening twice as many. It would also be amazing to use these buildings to match employers and the unemployed, but that's obviously asking far too much of government.
[deleted]
> And you don't need a magic orb to do it. You can do it in the US through the mysterious buildings referred to as "unemployment offices" by changing the signs and opening twice as many.
You could do it through the agency known as the IRS by adding a standard refundable credit, you might need a few more employees, but nothing like twice as many.
You could do it through the agency known as the IRS by adding a standard refundable credit, you might need a few more employees, but nothing like twice as many.
IRS already implements the child tax credit which pays, so a negative income tax should be straight-forward.
To add :
France minima sociaux are not enough to live on by themselves.
Last time I checked the RSA was around 400 euros / months.
The idea of UBI imply that you can live in a ok way with it.
I have friends who lives with the French RSA, they have previous stash of money to complete it.
One is close to spend only 400/month, but he lives on land he bought with his last job.
France minima sociaux are not enough to live on by themselves.
Last time I checked the RSA was around 400 euros / months.
The idea of UBI imply that you can live in a ok way with it.
I have friends who lives with the French RSA, they have previous stash of money to complete it.
One is close to spend only 400/month, but he lives on land he bought with his last job.
> The idea of UBI imply that you can live in a ok way with it
Not really, or rather it depends who you ask: on the left's perspective on UBI, you're right, but on the right side (Milton Friedman being the most prominent on that side having talked about UBI) then it should be barely enough to replace all other form of state wellfare without necessarily be enough to live from it.
Not really, or rather it depends who you ask: on the left's perspective on UBI, you're right, but on the right side (Milton Friedman being the most prominent on that side having talked about UBI) then it should be barely enough to replace all other form of state wellfare without necessarily be enough to live from it.
As soon as the money becomes conditional, it's not UBI. If you have to irrevokably sign up to an organ donor list, it's not UBI. UBI is inherently redistributive. Which I happen to think is immoral.
Almost every interaction between more than one human that involves resources is either abusive or positively redistributive to some degree. If intentional redistribution with the goal of increasing equality is immoral, that leaves abuse as the only moral choice in your worldview.
LOL so theft and coercion are in the redistributive category and barter and contracts are in the abuse category? If what you say is true, then I would choose abuse over theft.
Do you think that public roads and schools are also immoral?
In principle, yes. In practice, one occasionally has to choose the least immoral option. That does not invalidate the principle.
Do you think USA doing more deficit spending to redistribute USA's munitions to Ukraine is immoral?
Seems like the past 30 years have been ongoing interventionism to shovel money to war makers.
Seems like the past 30 years have been ongoing interventionism to shovel money to war makers.
Yes. We're borrowing money from China to fund salaries in the Ukrainian government. Let Europe do that. I don't mind sending old munitions that are set to be destroyed anyway, especially if we get some good data out of it.
Does anyone believe the UBI part is real? Or is it just part of the scam?
I used to defend crypto a lot (now just a little). Especially the UBI attempts. But no.
World coin has always looked like a thinly veiled attempt to generate a biometric dataset which would later be used against its users.
I just don't know who its audience was supposed to be. If you're suspicious enough of fiat to want this kind of escape hatch, how can you simultaneously be trusting enough to embrace a system that relies on biometrics and allegedly trustworthy hardware?
World coin has always looked like a thinly veiled attempt to generate a biometric dataset which would later be used against its users.
I just don't know who its audience was supposed to be. If you're suspicious enough of fiat to want this kind of escape hatch, how can you simultaneously be trusting enough to embrace a system that relies on biometrics and allegedly trustworthy hardware?
Because 90% of the people who got into crypto did not give a fuck about "trust" or any of the nonsense blockchains claim they do and only wanted to hit the lottery on the next coin going to the moon.
Oh it's totally in the 95% grift part of crypto. I'm just saying that it stands out from the rest because it targets a virtually non-existent demographic. Most scams try to cast a wide net.
It's pie in the sky. UBI could be worked towards today in many different ways without involving crypto. The idea of US tech people offering UBI to people in one of the most heavily exploited parts of the world as a way to get them to turn over biometric data is gross.
It is wild to me that Altman seems to really believe his company will have a God-On-Earth within the next decade and he still wants to put his name and time into some side hustle? I don't get it. (I think he or his supporters would say Worldcoin is something necessary for the future-AI world, but I don't buy it).
He believes proof of humanity is vital in a world where AI can convincingly pass as human
So, making a buck creating a huge problem, and then making another buck working on the solution to that problem as a side-hustle. Boy, I'm really proud to be working in Tech in 2023...
> making a buck creating a huge problem, and then making another buck working on the solution to that problem as a side-hustle
Except he's doing neither of these. He's just talking about them while raising money.
Except he's doing neither of these. He's just talking about them while raising money.
That's the beautiful part. No work necessary.
He's just talking about them while raising money.
He's not just talking about them. The whole reason this thread exists is because he is acting on the second one.
There was a more detailed article about the whole scheme, and how far it's gone in the New York Times yesterday.
He's not just talking about them. The whole reason this thread exists is because he is acting on the second one.
There was a more detailed article about the whole scheme, and how far it's gone in the New York Times yesterday.
Can an AI physically go to the DMV and get a REAL-ID? If we reach the point where this seriously is a concern, then we will have other, much larger problems to deal with. WorldCoin feel like a scam. The crypto aspect and then paying people in Africa to gaze into metal orbs and get their irises scanned (with funding from A-Z and Vinod Khosla), ... it's not exactly a confidence builder.
> Can an AI physically go to the DMV and get a REAL-ID?
AI can just run the DMV and issue itself a REAL-ID.
Worldcoin doesn’t solve the problem, though, especially with Sam Altman involved.
AI can just run the DMV and issue itself a REAL-ID.
Worldcoin doesn’t solve the problem, though, especially with Sam Altman involved.
I actually think his actual concern here is humans stealing identities and running bots in order to farm any sort of UBI mechanism that gets set up.
It's not about humans asserting their humanness over some evil AGI/ASI machine, it's about sybil resistance. Malicious humans pretending to be thousands or millions of other humans.
It's not about humans asserting their humanness over some evil AGI/ASI machine, it's about sybil resistance. Malicious humans pretending to be thousands or millions of other humans.
> his actual concern here is humans stealing identities and running bots in order to farm any sort of UBI mechanism that gets set up
So exactly what's happening with Worldcoin right now [1].
[1] https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/05/24/black-market-for-...
So exactly what's happening with Worldcoin right now [1].
[1] https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/05/24/black-market-for-...
People will soon be able to use their iriscodes to reclaim credentials that they sold, and once people start doing that, the market for re-sold credentials will drop to approximately zero.
> People will soon be able to use their iriscodes to reclaim credentials that they sold, and once people start doing that, the market for re-sold credentials will drop to approximately zero.
Is the obvious related problem this solution brings forth supposed to go unsaid? (Criminals don't buy something they can steal.)
Is the obvious related problem this solution brings forth supposed to go unsaid? (Criminals don't buy something they can steal.)
Okay, so what's the attack scenario here?
Imagine we live in a future where Worldcoin is ubiquitous, all the hardware/software is open source. Several orb operators exist in every city in the world, and operators have a non-trivial amount of WLD tokens staked to ensure good behavior. Misbehaving orbs have their keys and subkeys revoked at the first sign of illicit usage.
Maybe a criminal kidnaps 10 people, then steals an orb, and uses those 10 iriscodes to register 10 new credentials on the network. How much profit would you expect to come to the criminal before their credentials are revoked?
Is there another attack you're thinking of?
Imagine we live in a future where Worldcoin is ubiquitous, all the hardware/software is open source. Several orb operators exist in every city in the world, and operators have a non-trivial amount of WLD tokens staked to ensure good behavior. Misbehaving orbs have their keys and subkeys revoked at the first sign of illicit usage.
Maybe a criminal kidnaps 10 people, then steals an orb, and uses those 10 iriscodes to register 10 new credentials on the network. How much profit would you expect to come to the criminal before their credentials are revoked?
Is there another attack you're thinking of?
> a criminal kidnaps 10 people, then steals an orb, and uses those 10 iriscodes to register 10 new credentials on the network
This is a lot of work. Just steal the iriscodes. If they're used for re-issuance, they're being stored and transferred. If they are not directly used, there is a hash-like reduction that can be exploited.
For sake of argument, though, let's assume perfect security. Infallible security. All the way through. Congratulations, you've turned every pair of eyeballs into an oil spigot. When the Taliban or ISIS carves through a town, instead of beheading the leaders and taking their treasures, they take everyones' irises. Every authoritarian state would require scans of its citizens so payment could be routed through (read: stolen by) it, a requirement they would back up with violence.
This is a lot of work. Just steal the iriscodes. If they're used for re-issuance, they're being stored and transferred. If they are not directly used, there is a hash-like reduction that can be exploited.
For sake of argument, though, let's assume perfect security. Infallible security. All the way through. Congratulations, you've turned every pair of eyeballs into an oil spigot. When the Taliban or ISIS carves through a town, instead of beheading the leaders and taking their treasures, they take everyones' irises. Every authoritarian state would require scans of its citizens so payment could be routed through (read: stolen by) it, a requirement they would back up with violence.
So if we start with your premise, the attack I can see being a concern is being able to deny people access to Worldcoin and burning their accounts/tokens by maliciously attacking an orb. If keys can be revoked because of illicit usage, someone could generate a key at the orb they wish to attack and act maliciously. Sybil attack, or attempt fraudulent transactions, or whatever behavior triggers burning all the keys tied to an orb. Do this before an election (if worldcoin is used for voting) or before the UBI is dispersed for the month and you could disrupt a lot.
How does Worldcoin provably know that an attacker is not using a dead person’s keys?
How does Worldcoin provably know that an attacker is not using a dead person’s keys?
That sounds like a automation problem. If you have an office dealing with UBI and unemployment in your neighborhood, the government can literally know their customer. The more people unemployed, the easier it will be to staff them.
These people are pretending they're fighting fraud, when instead they're trying to reinvent government responsibilities/campaigns as passive income sources for 3rd party rent-seekers. Uber for welfare.
These people are pretending they're fighting fraud, when instead they're trying to reinvent government responsibilities/campaigns as passive income sources for 3rd party rent-seekers. Uber for welfare.
That sounds neat. I like the ultra-local approach.
The important thing that I think your argument is missing is that everything here is additive. I'm sure the whole Worldcoin team would love it if governance organizations of all sizes, from tiny villages to billion+ population nation states would run UBI programs to take care of their people. The thing is, today, that's not really happening, so there are a number of people working to make it happen from different angles. Maybe all of them fail, maybe one succeeds, maybe a bunch succeed and any given citizen of the world might be entitled to payments from a handful of UBI sources.
Do you think there are better global scale UBI projects and ideas out there, or do you think we should just stop trying to solve this problem?
The important thing that I think your argument is missing is that everything here is additive. I'm sure the whole Worldcoin team would love it if governance organizations of all sizes, from tiny villages to billion+ population nation states would run UBI programs to take care of their people. The thing is, today, that's not really happening, so there are a number of people working to make it happen from different angles. Maybe all of them fail, maybe one succeeds, maybe a bunch succeed and any given citizen of the world might be entitled to payments from a handful of UBI sources.
Do you think there are better global scale UBI projects and ideas out there, or do you think we should just stop trying to solve this problem?
> Do you think there are better global scale UBI projects and ideas out there, or do you think we should just stop trying to solve this problem?
To the degree Worldcoin is doing anything to UBI, it's in tarnishing its brand. (Identity verification is not what's holding it back.)
If they were serious about this as anything but another crypto pump-and-dump, they'd focus on direct foreign aid.
To the degree Worldcoin is doing anything to UBI, it's in tarnishing its brand. (Identity verification is not what's holding it back.)
If they were serious about this as anything but another crypto pump-and-dump, they'd focus on direct foreign aid.
Sybil resistance is important in any sort of UBI system that preserves privacy, which may or may not be important. I like the idea of a privacy preserving UBI, and feel like it's definitely a lot more equitable than having it based on existing passports, or bank account numbers, or something like that.
> I like the idea of a privacy preserving UBI
This is valid. But even if we reduce scope to a privacy-preserving UBI, nothing Worldcoin solves the core hurdles thereto. It's solving a side problem tangentially related to those involved with a privacy-preserving UBI, but entirely germane to an a16z-style crypto pump-and-dump.
Adjunct: how is Worldcoin privacy preserving? At least with Bitcoin you can plausibly deny ownership of a wallet. In a world on Worldcoin, every traffic stop lets the cops inspect your bank account.
This is valid. But even if we reduce scope to a privacy-preserving UBI, nothing Worldcoin solves the core hurdles thereto. It's solving a side problem tangentially related to those involved with a privacy-preserving UBI, but entirely germane to an a16z-style crypto pump-and-dump.
Adjunct: how is Worldcoin privacy preserving? At least with Bitcoin you can plausibly deny ownership of a wallet. In a world on Worldcoin, every traffic stop lets the cops inspect your bank account.
> It is wild to me that Altman seems to really believe his company will have a God-On-Earth within the next decade and he still wants to put his name and time into some side hustle?
Promotional statements by corporate executives aren’t necessary reflective of their beliefs, but rather what they believe it is useful for other people to believe they believe, and Worldcoin isn’t a side hustle.
Promotional statements by corporate executives aren’t necessary reflective of their beliefs, but rather what they believe it is useful for other people to believe they believe, and Worldcoin isn’t a side hustle.
Its just a game to a lot of executives/investors. What they say publicly is curated and often reflects their best intentions or hopes, regardless of how far they are from reality or true intentions.
People often say one thing, but actually believe another.
Considering I've had a lot of laser treatments (micro-veins) and am getting eye (retina) surgery before long, it makes me wonder how reliable such a system is, and how well it will tollerate change/variance of one's eye-prints. I mean, theoretically, if you lose your eye in an accident, does that mean you lose your life savings in such a scheme?
It really has me concerned. As fallible as people and banking are already, I'm not sure I'm ready for that level of "secure" without such considerations.
It really has me concerned. As fallible as people and banking are already, I'm not sure I'm ready for that level of "secure" without such considerations.
iirc you go to a place that can verify your identity through other means, and they'll update your iris scan or give you a yubikey you can use instead or something.
Sadly, I liked the original idea behind this, and thought it was one of the few actually-interesting applications of crypto currency. If you can (somehow) solve the unique identity problem, you can design a Universal Basic Income using a crypto-currency as backing. The Unique ID problem isn't solved by the blockchain, though, so it ends up being a total mess.
Governments already exist. To try and upend them by replacing their system of personhood and currency is in effect the tech-bro version of a mutiny. It may seem ridiculous but that's precisely what crypto is. An attempt to replace central banks and governments. Tech companies have grown very powerful, and they see an opportunity to create a world-wide "private government" and they're going for it. This won't be the last attempt. Governments will eventually wake up. Or if not. That's it for them.
Neat, so are all world governments going to band together and implement UBI? Do you really think that waiting for all world governments to come together and figure this out is the right move here?
I admire the optimism (I think of myself as a pretty optimistic person too), but you've got to realize that there are reasonable people on this planet who think that waiting for governments to fix this is probably not going to turn out well. Some of those people are actually doing something about it, which is what we see here. Maybe Worldcoin works out, maybe it doesn't, but in my personal opinion, it's definitely an experiment worth running.
I admire the optimism (I think of myself as a pretty optimistic person too), but you've got to realize that there are reasonable people on this planet who think that waiting for governments to fix this is probably not going to turn out well. Some of those people are actually doing something about it, which is what we see here. Maybe Worldcoin works out, maybe it doesn't, but in my personal opinion, it's definitely an experiment worth running.
There won't be UBI. There's work and death. And if AI truly replaces us, it's the latter. I'm not trying to be cynical I'm simply being blunt about how systems work.
You and your environment have to "click together" so you live. In the wild, this means mostly surviving cold, hot, stay dry, find things to eat, and not be eaten.
In society, however, it means being useful to the system somehow, so you get access to other useful things the system makes, like air conditioners, housing, and food, ways to get around etc. If you're not useful to the system, the system may pretend it cares for you, but it doesn't really care for you. This is not up to the morality of the people in charge. It's up to the system. The system elects the people and tells them what to care about. The system is quite resilient. It can withstand certain amounts of welfare, corruption, crime, and so on. But only certain amounts. If you cross those certain amounts, what happened in 2020 with COVID handouts, and the subsequent doubling of prices of food, and so on, happens infinitely and suddenly money is worthless paper. Like Zimbabwe. So if you have somewhere else to run where they're not as stupid as Zimbabwe, you can be useful in that new place and live. If you have nowhere to run, as with a global UBI, you die.
Of course, people won't just lay down and die, they'll just have a revolution like the Bolsheviks did, and speak about how everything will belong to everyone, and of course resources will concentrate to those on top again, instead. With AI however, the overall trend would be you don't need the masses as much, so you don't need to placate most of them. They stop being useful. So revolution after revolution, new people will sit on top and promise it'll be different this time, in a smaller and smaller population.
You and your environment have to "click together" so you live. In the wild, this means mostly surviving cold, hot, stay dry, find things to eat, and not be eaten.
In society, however, it means being useful to the system somehow, so you get access to other useful things the system makes, like air conditioners, housing, and food, ways to get around etc. If you're not useful to the system, the system may pretend it cares for you, but it doesn't really care for you. This is not up to the morality of the people in charge. It's up to the system. The system elects the people and tells them what to care about. The system is quite resilient. It can withstand certain amounts of welfare, corruption, crime, and so on. But only certain amounts. If you cross those certain amounts, what happened in 2020 with COVID handouts, and the subsequent doubling of prices of food, and so on, happens infinitely and suddenly money is worthless paper. Like Zimbabwe. So if you have somewhere else to run where they're not as stupid as Zimbabwe, you can be useful in that new place and live. If you have nowhere to run, as with a global UBI, you die.
Of course, people won't just lay down and die, they'll just have a revolution like the Bolsheviks did, and speak about how everything will belong to everyone, and of course resources will concentrate to those on top again, instead. With AI however, the overall trend would be you don't need the masses as much, so you don't need to placate most of them. They stop being useful. So revolution after revolution, new people will sit on top and promise it'll be different this time, in a smaller and smaller population.
> With [_____] however, the overall trend would be you don't need the masses as much, so you don't need to placate most of them. They stop being useful.
{mechanical looms,mechanized farming,factory mass production,computerized tabulation,AI}
This has been the progression of economies since steam power after ~1720.
Automation replaces a category of work, everyone decrees the loss of jobs, workers reallocate into new jobs, everyone is the richer for the increased output, repeat.
The only version of this that is substantially different would be 'AI eliminates all jobs below an education threshold, while not creating sufficient surpluses via efficiency gains that they can be supported by welfare'.
Ultimately, I predict UBI is going to look a lot like more general food stamps: standardized basic goods are free, and sufficient for {food, shelter, entertainment}.
We have the industrial capability now, if we so chose.
{mechanical looms,mechanized farming,factory mass production,computerized tabulation,AI}
This has been the progression of economies since steam power after ~1720.
Automation replaces a category of work, everyone decrees the loss of jobs, workers reallocate into new jobs, everyone is the richer for the increased output, repeat.
The only version of this that is substantially different would be 'AI eliminates all jobs below an education threshold, while not creating sufficient surpluses via efficiency gains that they can be supported by welfare'.
Ultimately, I predict UBI is going to look a lot like more general food stamps: standardized basic goods are free, and sufficient for {food, shelter, entertainment}.
We have the industrial capability now, if we so chose.
Survivorship bias is an interesting thing "I keep living another day, therefore I'll always live another day, I'm immortal." The grave is full of these immortal people.
And we're not richer today. It used to be one person (usually the man) provided for the family and the other (typically the woman) took care of the home and children. One job per family was enough. You may consider it outdated, but think of why it is. It's suddenly not fashionable to take care of your home and children. It fashionable to have two jobs, and for your spouse to also need two jobs. And you're miserable.
No one "chose" this. If they were offered a choice, no one would pick it. The system picked it for us. And we're too myopic to understand what we're walking into. The current employment figures are a sham. The homeless and the unemployed are on the streets, crime is rampant, and this is still paradise compared to what it'll be in 5 years.
So the last refuge is our intelligence, like during the industrial revolution and computing yes? The good old times. "Machines will do the work, so we have more time to think." But this time, AI is coming for our intelligence. Thinking machines. Education won't save you because your education is outdated before they even give you the diploma. And AI doesn't really need you that much lately. You're just clicking a button. And then your boss notices that. And lays you off. Welcome to the singularity.
And we're not richer today. It used to be one person (usually the man) provided for the family and the other (typically the woman) took care of the home and children. One job per family was enough. You may consider it outdated, but think of why it is. It's suddenly not fashionable to take care of your home and children. It fashionable to have two jobs, and for your spouse to also need two jobs. And you're miserable.
No one "chose" this. If they were offered a choice, no one would pick it. The system picked it for us. And we're too myopic to understand what we're walking into. The current employment figures are a sham. The homeless and the unemployed are on the streets, crime is rampant, and this is still paradise compared to what it'll be in 5 years.
So the last refuge is our intelligence, like during the industrial revolution and computing yes? The good old times. "Machines will do the work, so we have more time to think." But this time, AI is coming for our intelligence. Thinking machines. Education won't save you because your education is outdated before they even give you the diploma. And AI doesn't really need you that much lately. You're just clicking a button. And then your boss notices that. And lays you off. Welcome to the singularity.
Look at the track record of the people involved, at the track record of crypto, do you think they are really going to give anyone money because of ethics?
LOL. "Sam Altman" is not trying to upend governments. It's the opposite. Him and his ilk are trying to interface with governments in such a way that they can use the legal violence of a government to streamline the integration of their systems (schemes) into the public's life. Sam Altman wants to use the same play book that pharmaceutical and defense industry's use (regulatory crony capitalist capture). This is not "tech bro" mutiny this is -- probably -- the first of many crony capitlist (BlackRock\Ratheon\Etc\Etc) attempts at duplicitous digital currency.
Governments exist, and the current standard of identity verification is a laminated piece of paper with a picture on it. If you're giving away free money you might want to have a standard slightly higher than that.
Sure, but maybe that payment power is going to have a lot of side effects that are worse than limiting/filtering gifts through potentially corrupt governments that can also prevent other situations.
For example, the resource curse implies there will be great reasons for companies to risk gifts of small amounts of money to lots of people in a country about to vote on whether to protect collective assets from corporate theft..
All the weird action committees of US corruption haven't even had the logistics to directly bribe voters of a low population state to piss in the pot. Should they get iris wallet addresses for everyone correlated to scan locations? Is anything the US would do about this beyond the capabilities of Kenya?
For example, the resource curse implies there will be great reasons for companies to risk gifts of small amounts of money to lots of people in a country about to vote on whether to protect collective assets from corporate theft..
All the weird action committees of US corruption haven't even had the logistics to directly bribe voters of a low population state to piss in the pot. Should they get iris wallet addresses for everyone correlated to scan locations? Is anything the US would do about this beyond the capabilities of Kenya?
The laminated "paper" has microchip in it in most places and codes which can be checked against a central database. It's a good enough standard. In fact better than crypto-chaos.
Um, "personhood" and currency aren't anything like the main functions of a government. If you had everything Worldcoin wants to do, it still wouldn't replace any governments.
Try and think what else the government has. Police, military? All those are second order effects. Think how the government controls those institutions. Money & the ability to spend it as a person or an organization. If you control people's legal existence in your own monetary system without alternatives, means all the government has will become yours.
This is how the USD works by the way (in systems like the petro-dollar), and why so many are trying to replace it. It's not easy. But they'll keep trying. And when they succeed, the American hegemony is over.
In Mexico there's technically a government. But really there are the vast networks of drug cartels. They have their own military, they control politicians, they choose who is and who isn't. It all started by them making a ton of money. The rest followed. If you control the money and who can spend it, you control the economy. If you control the economy, you control everything.
This is how the USD works by the way (in systems like the petro-dollar), and why so many are trying to replace it. It's not easy. But they'll keep trying. And when they succeed, the American hegemony is over.
In Mexico there's technically a government. But really there are the vast networks of drug cartels. They have their own military, they control politicians, they choose who is and who isn't. It all started by them making a ton of money. The rest followed. If you control the money and who can spend it, you control the economy. If you control the economy, you control everything.
Money is also a second order effect.
It stems from human tax base (after we mostly eliminated direct government capital ownership when we did away with monarchies).
And human tax base ultimately stems from... the ability to count. Which is the identity question.
People. Assets. Productivity. Profit.
A government which lacks the ability to count cannot have a stable tax base, which increases stability risk and therefore decreases the value of their money.
It stems from human tax base (after we mostly eliminated direct government capital ownership when we did away with monarchies).
And human tax base ultimately stems from... the ability to count. Which is the identity question.
People. Assets. Productivity. Profit.
A government which lacks the ability to count cannot have a stable tax base, which increases stability risk and therefore decreases the value of their money.
What does this mean? You already have a unique identity as far as the government are concerned, and who would pay UBI if not the government.
Crypto schemes allow a lot of experimentation with the structure of money that no sane government would ever try for fear of crashing their economy in one way or another.
Meanwhile, we /should/ be experimenting a lot more with the structure of economics and society, because the current super-structures have created massive concentrations of power and seemingly-insurmountable collective action problems that threaten the biosphere...
Bitcoin was designed to act like gold, but this was a series of design choices. (as someone, maybe foldingideas, put it: the crypto bros looked at the concentration of wealth in society and decided that the problem was that /they/ weren't the ones with all the wealth.)
You can just as easily design a crypto scheme to generate tokens and distribute them to everyone with an ID regularly: this is UBI, so long as the tokens have recognized value. The problem is that you need to prevent people from registering a million accounts to get a million UBI credits, deflating the value of tokens held by honest folks. Thus the unique identifier problem.
Meanwhile, we /should/ be experimenting a lot more with the structure of economics and society, because the current super-structures have created massive concentrations of power and seemingly-insurmountable collective action problems that threaten the biosphere...
Bitcoin was designed to act like gold, but this was a series of design choices. (as someone, maybe foldingideas, put it: the crypto bros looked at the concentration of wealth in society and decided that the problem was that /they/ weren't the ones with all the wealth.)
You can just as easily design a crypto scheme to generate tokens and distribute them to everyone with an ID regularly: this is UBI, so long as the tokens have recognized value. The problem is that you need to prevent people from registering a million accounts to get a million UBI credits, deflating the value of tokens held by honest folks. Thus the unique identifier problem.
> Bitcoin was designed to act like gold
Bitcoin's emission is quite unlike that of gold. Every next generation gets to mine 32x less bitcoin. Over gold's millennia long history, every generation mines a roughly similar amount of gold as the next.
Bitcoin's emission is quite unlike that of gold. Every next generation gets to mine 32x less bitcoin. Over gold's millennia long history, every generation mines a roughly similar amount of gold as the next.
KYC is a thing and apparently crypto exchanges can implement it when asked nicely.
But I think grand parent poster is right on the money, it’s a attempts to take governments roles.
After all nation states are not that old of a concept. Basically Napoleonic wars. Some type of distopian corporate nationality might come to fruition to replace them.
But I think grand parent poster is right on the money, it’s a attempts to take governments roles.
After all nation states are not that old of a concept. Basically Napoleonic wars. Some type of distopian corporate nationality might come to fruition to replace them.
There's the possibility of utopian corporate nationality too.
Being an employee at a lot of corporations is nicer than being a citizen of a lot of counties.
But corporate benevolence mostly demands on human capital supply and demand balances.
Being an employee at a lot of corporations is nicer than being a citizen of a lot of counties.
But corporate benevolence mostly demands on human capital supply and demand balances.
But again, as GP noted, isn't that a problem governments have already solved? If you want UBI it's going to be through the government, as that's the entity collecting the funds through taxes that would be distributed, and they already have a unique identifier for people. In the U.S. it's your SSN, which is conveniently also how they track you for income taxes (again, where a large portion of the funds for distribution are gathered)
If the government wants to link a retinal scan to a SSN, that might make sense with regard to UBI, but how does it make any sense for some random blockchain? Are we expected to think that even if a government wanted to use a blockchain they would use some third party blockchain and not roll their own? I find that highly unlikely.
If the government wants to link a retinal scan to a SSN, that might make sense with regard to UBI, but how does it make any sense for some random blockchain? Are we expected to think that even if a government wanted to use a blockchain they would use some third party blockchain and not roll their own? I find that highly unlikely.
It's 'solved' in the sense that there's a lot of machinery to deal with and remediate fraud and abuse. It's definitely not solved in a technical sense.
It might be helpful to stop and think for a moment about all the cool stuff one could do with a reliable way to link people to accounts uniquely, without fraud. If the government has 'solved' this, why not sell the solution to companies?
It might be helpful to stop and think for a moment about all the cool stuff one could do with a reliable way to link people to accounts uniquely, without fraud. If the government has 'solved' this, why not sell the solution to companies?
You're talking about the market in general, and I'm talking about with respect to UBI. My thought process is:
* Any UBI is going to be government based, as there needs to be a way to collect (tax) and redistribute (UBI) money between all people, whether or not the amount collected and distributed is the same relatively for each or not.
* Governments already have (in most cases, if not all. I can't speak for every country definitively) ways to uniquely identify their populace. They don't need some external service to do such.
* Given that UBI will be government based, and the government already has a way to uniquely identify people they govern, what purpose does a third party blockchain to uniquely identify people service with respect to UBI?
> It might be helpful to stop and think for a moment about all the cool stuff one could do with a reliable way to link people to accounts uniquely, without fraud.
There are plenty of benefits to that. That has nothing to do with UBI. I'm not making a case that there's no benefit to identity verification, just that I'm not sure how some third party is supposed to help with UBI by providing it.
> If the government has 'solved' this, why not sell the solution to companies?
In some small ways (at least for the U.S.) they do. For example, with Tax services to look up people. Additionally, while not provided as a service to companies, SSNs are routinely used to uniquely identify U.S. citizens for financial reasons.
The Government could offer more services to companies for this, but there might be perverse incentives involved. Again, none of this has anything to do with UBI from what I can see. Once someone gets money, who cares how it's spent? Let it be deposited in the financial institution or asset of their choice. Again, no third party arbiter needs to be present for this, we do this today with tax returns and while different services often help with this, they are both not requires and there's multiple to choose from, not one external trusted entity that must be used.
* Any UBI is going to be government based, as there needs to be a way to collect (tax) and redistribute (UBI) money between all people, whether or not the amount collected and distributed is the same relatively for each or not.
* Governments already have (in most cases, if not all. I can't speak for every country definitively) ways to uniquely identify their populace. They don't need some external service to do such.
* Given that UBI will be government based, and the government already has a way to uniquely identify people they govern, what purpose does a third party blockchain to uniquely identify people service with respect to UBI?
> It might be helpful to stop and think for a moment about all the cool stuff one could do with a reliable way to link people to accounts uniquely, without fraud.
There are plenty of benefits to that. That has nothing to do with UBI. I'm not making a case that there's no benefit to identity verification, just that I'm not sure how some third party is supposed to help with UBI by providing it.
> If the government has 'solved' this, why not sell the solution to companies?
In some small ways (at least for the U.S.) they do. For example, with Tax services to look up people. Additionally, while not provided as a service to companies, SSNs are routinely used to uniquely identify U.S. citizens for financial reasons.
The Government could offer more services to companies for this, but there might be perverse incentives involved. Again, none of this has anything to do with UBI from what I can see. Once someone gets money, who cares how it's spent? Let it be deposited in the financial institution or asset of their choice. Again, no third party arbiter needs to be present for this, we do this today with tax returns and while different services often help with this, they are both not requires and there's multiple to choose from, not one external trusted entity that must be used.
I wasn't starting from the assumption that UBI /has/ to be government-based, and was discussing a core problem (identifiability) that arises when a non-government entity tries to implement UBI. You've just got a different set of assumptions.
Okay, but I'm not sure they're wrong assumptions, because I don't know how UBI could not be government based, and I haven't seen any explanations challenging it.
Either it needs to be government based, in which case I think some third party service explaining how they are helping to enable it by providing identifiability is subject to the criticisms I've laid out, or it doesn't need to be through the government, in which case I'm honestly curious as to any explanations from anyone of how that works.
Either it needs to be government based, in which case I think some third party service explaining how they are helping to enable it by providing identifiability is subject to the criticisms I've laid out, or it doesn't need to be through the government, in which case I'm honestly curious as to any explanations from anyone of how that works.
Expanding the comment here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37037606
Cryptocurrency systems proposed ways to handle the creation and management of monetary systems without government involvement. The implementation of such systems is open to definition by the designers of the system, and is extremely fluid. Most cryptocurrencies chose to go with the bitcoin model, which encouraged speculation and early buy-in, but fails like ~waves at the cryptocurrency space in 2023~.
So, here you go:
Set up a system which creates and destroys tokens programatically. Tokens are created uniformly over all user accounts, and destroyed in each account proportional to the amount already in the account.
This handles the wealth-redistribution function of taxation, and allows control of the total number of tokens to prevent inflationary spiraling over time. A prime difficulty is assigning accounts.
FWIW, AuroraCoin did /something/ like this in Iceland, using Icelandic identity cards for identifiability, but didn't destroy tokens: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/auroracoin.asp#toc-hist...
Cryptocurrency systems proposed ways to handle the creation and management of monetary systems without government involvement. The implementation of such systems is open to definition by the designers of the system, and is extremely fluid. Most cryptocurrencies chose to go with the bitcoin model, which encouraged speculation and early buy-in, but fails like ~waves at the cryptocurrency space in 2023~.
So, here you go:
Set up a system which creates and destroys tokens programatically. Tokens are created uniformly over all user accounts, and destroyed in each account proportional to the amount already in the account.
This handles the wealth-redistribution function of taxation, and allows control of the total number of tokens to prevent inflationary spiraling over time. A prime difficulty is assigning accounts.
FWIW, AuroraCoin did /something/ like this in Iceland, using Icelandic identity cards for identifiability, but didn't destroy tokens: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/auroracoin.asp#toc-hist...
The distribution portion of UBI is the least interesting from a theoretical and technical standpoint. Giving money to people is easy, and a solved problem, which is basically what I've been saying. Funding that money is the hard part, and the portion that basically requires a government because it's likely to be taxation that does it.
Some crypto company trying to help enable UBI by solving the identifiability and distribution problem is like some artist trying to help build a car by offering to find the right shape for the wheels, and then using the fact they offered in promoting themselves. Thanks, but really, you aren't offering much, pretty sure we're already going with "round".
That, in a nutshell, is what I've been trying to express. I think they just attached themselves to UBI as a buzzword to sound better, when really their change of usefully being involved in a real UBI implementation is likely close to zero because it makes no sense for them to be involved in any feasible plan that could move forward.
It's no different than if they said they were going to help enable people to pay taxes (except in negative connotation instead of a positive one). The portion of the problem they'd be helping with is a mostly solved problem, so what are they really offering that's likely to be of use? If it's extremely unlikely they'll be used for whatever reason in the problem space they're advertising themselves in, what's their reason for doing so, to actually advertise their intent or to associate themselves with something?
> This handles the wealth-redistribution function of taxation, and allows control of the total number of tokens to prevent inflationary spiraling over time. A prime difficulty is assigning accounts.
That's a prime difficulty of a cryptocoin, not of a government entity dealing with its citizens. Again, I'll note, in UBI the actual distribution of funds is so simple and solved as to be inconsequential. Who to give money to and how much are the main things to work out on the distribution side, and are entirely policy based, and thus no blockchain product is going to help.
Some crypto company trying to help enable UBI by solving the identifiability and distribution problem is like some artist trying to help build a car by offering to find the right shape for the wheels, and then using the fact they offered in promoting themselves. Thanks, but really, you aren't offering much, pretty sure we're already going with "round".
That, in a nutshell, is what I've been trying to express. I think they just attached themselves to UBI as a buzzword to sound better, when really their change of usefully being involved in a real UBI implementation is likely close to zero because it makes no sense for them to be involved in any feasible plan that could move forward.
It's no different than if they said they were going to help enable people to pay taxes (except in negative connotation instead of a positive one). The portion of the problem they'd be helping with is a mostly solved problem, so what are they really offering that's likely to be of use? If it's extremely unlikely they'll be used for whatever reason in the problem space they're advertising themselves in, what's their reason for doing so, to actually advertise their intent or to associate themselves with something?
> This handles the wealth-redistribution function of taxation, and allows control of the total number of tokens to prevent inflationary spiraling over time. A prime difficulty is assigning accounts.
That's a prime difficulty of a cryptocoin, not of a government entity dealing with its citizens. Again, I'll note, in UBI the actual distribution of funds is so simple and solved as to be inconsequential. Who to give money to and how much are the main things to work out on the distribution side, and are entirely policy based, and thus no blockchain product is going to help.
OTOH, the impossibility of getting UBI on the government side is actually motivating adoption: sure, you've got a central identity repository, etc, but it will never happen in our lifetime (in the US) if you need 60 senators to vote for it... This is, IMO, basically insurmountable - we've seen governments toying with UBI but I seriously doubt we'll see any government pull the trigger in any reasonable timeframe.
To the best of my knowledge, the IRS has never scanned my eyeball, and yet I'm still able to send and receive money with them. I'm not getting the UBI angle at all. What part of UBI requires new technology?
The problem it's solving or attempting to solve is "how do I create demand for a token that isn't redeemable for anything (generated by a private organization which intends to profit from exchanging tokens it generates for money)", and the only people that want those are cryptobros. Throw in the eyeball trackers as a "Proof of Personhood" twist on the "restricted supply" story, to go with the usual "future world currency, unlimited demand" spiel
I think you're exactly right. A lot of its talk presumes that its goals can't be met with, say, a government issued debit card.
> What part of UBI requires new technology?
None of it, of course. The things that makes implementing UBI difficult to implement are socioeconomic, not technological, in nature.
But I think WorldCoin is cynically hoping that invoking "UBI" will trick people into thinking that WC's efforts will be of benefit to everyone.
None of it, of course. The things that makes implementing UBI difficult to implement are socioeconomic, not technological, in nature.
But I think WorldCoin is cynically hoping that invoking "UBI" will trick people into thinking that WC's efforts will be of benefit to everyone.
Nailed it.
You realize that the IRS deals with rampant fraud right? And with emerging technology, the capabilities of criminals to steal identities is only increasing. People file taxes for dead people or people whose identities have been stolen all the time. Recently, to deal with this, the IRS has outsourced their identity verification to a third party company, id.me, who gathers way WAY more information than Worldcoin does, and it's barely making a dent in the fraud.
It's very obvious that the vast majority of people hating on Worldcoin have never taken a moment to consider the actual problems being solved here, and especially the critical importance of solving them now.
It's very obvious that the vast majority of people hating on Worldcoin have never taken a moment to consider the actual problems being solved here, and especially the critical importance of solving them now.
Because everyone knows that the trouble with people pretending dead people are still alive to collect their entitlements or obtaining access to other peoples accounts is lack of a VC backed startup that prints its own crypto tokens and scans people's eyeballs...
The actual problems here are both hard and not being solved by WorldCoin
The actual problems here are both hard and not being solved by WorldCoin
What are the official numbers for that, compared to the legitimate traffic the IRS handles?
https://www.allstatenewsroom.com/news/tax-and-government-fra...
> Tax and Government Fraud Cases Spiked 68% in 2022
> The IRS flagged $5.7 billion in tax fraud in 2022, and there were nearly 8 million reports of suspicious tax-season activities.
> Tax and Government Fraud Cases Spiked 68% in 2022
> The IRS flagged $5.7 billion in tax fraud in 2022, and there were nearly 8 million reports of suspicious tax-season activities.
From https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-irs-data-book:
"During Fiscal Year (FY) 2022, the IRS collected more than $4.9 trillion in gross taxes, processed more than 262.8 million tax returns and other forms, and issued more than $641.7 billion in tax refunds."
So 5.7B is about .1% of the IRS's transactions that year.
That's also less than it could possibly cost to deploy and maintain Worldcoin.
"During Fiscal Year (FY) 2022, the IRS collected more than $4.9 trillion in gross taxes, processed more than 262.8 million tax returns and other forms, and issued more than $641.7 billion in tax refunds."
So 5.7B is about .1% of the IRS's transactions that year.
That's also less than it could possibly cost to deploy and maintain Worldcoin.
The IRS is better at preventing fraudulent transactions than most credit card processors and fraud prevention providers. I know they have a more restricted system so it's probably easier than credit card fraud, but it's still at least an order of magnitude.
That figure covers a lot of tax fraud identity verification doesn't solve. The actual figures are around $25bn a year of stopped fraudulent refunds, at a cost of a few thousand employees [1].
[1] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-news/FS-14-01.pdf
[1] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-news/FS-14-01.pdf
> Recently, to deal with this, the IRS has ...
Recently, to deal with this foot gun, Congress repealed the personal income tax. President Biden signed this bill into law and said it is a tremendous step toward civil rights and equality.
Oh, wait, .
Recently, to deal with this foot gun, Congress repealed the personal income tax. President Biden signed this bill into law and said it is a tremendous step toward civil rights and equality.
Oh, wait, .
[deleted]
As with all crypto ideas, I believe this starts with "If we wanted to take government out of the picture..."
Here is one answer:
> How Altman plans to pay for Worldcoin’s UBI, however, remains murky. “The hope is that as people want to buy this token, because they believe this is the future, there will be inflows into this economy. New token-buyers is how it gets paid for, effectively,” Altman told Coindesk recently.
> How Altman plans to pay for Worldcoin’s UBI, however, remains murky. “The hope is that as people want to buy this token, because they believe this is the future, there will be inflows into this economy. New token-buyers is how it gets paid for, effectively,” Altman told Coindesk recently.
I know a lot of people will use this to say that blockchain bad, and that is up to you. But really biometrics collection has little to do with blockchain. Worldcoin is firstly a company that collects biometrics and secondly they decided to use an immutable ledger to record the data (although they claim that it is only hashes).
That aside if I wanted to record a bunch of hashes for perpetuity blockchain would actually be the right technology - does not go out of business and take down the servers with it.
The article makes me laugh and sad at the same time though. This Altman guy...
That aside if I wanted to record a bunch of hashes for perpetuity blockchain would actually be the right technology - does not go out of business and take down the servers with it.
The article makes me laugh and sad at the same time though. This Altman guy...
Blockchain would not be the right tech if you don't need decentralised trust.
Write once media on a server is what you want.
Write once media on a server is what you want.
Or even a signed hash against a confirmed/known/distributed public key.
Blockchain is only useful in a decentralized + adversarial context where there is a need to remove one-another's ability to game a given system. And even then, it doesn't imply a perfect security around it. Since it won't stop theft, breach, scams or other vectors.
Blockchain is only useful in a decentralized + adversarial context where there is a need to remove one-another's ability to game a given system. And even then, it doesn't imply a perfect security around it. Since it won't stop theft, breach, scams or other vectors.
>Write once media on a server is what you want
How does that solve this problem:
>[company will] go out of business and take down the servers with it
How does that solve this problem:
>[company will] go out of business and take down the servers with it
Open-source it, publish it somewhere or make it a bittorrent. Using blockchain as a hosting solution feels like a misuse.
distributed public key, and a private-signed hash of the dataset.
How do you know that the dataset is the most up to date version?
Maybe some sort of globally distributed time-stamping mechanism? Oh hey look, it's a blockchain.
Maybe some sort of globally distributed time-stamping mechanism? Oh hey look, it's a blockchain.
Or... the source of record can publish an xml file or something when there's updates to the signed diff... rss. No slow consensus model needed.
If you aren't in an adversarial context with multiple publishers, you don't need blockchain.
If you aren't in an adversarial context with multiple publishers, you don't need blockchain.
> source of record
How is this published? On a single server somewhere? What country would you put it in? A friendly one I hope. Also one that won't block access to other countries that it might have petty disagreements with in the future. It might be a good idea for it to be replicated across a number of servers across the internet. We call those "nodes" in the blockchain space.
How is this published? On a single server somewhere? What country would you put it in? A friendly one I hope. Also one that won't block access to other countries that it might have petty disagreements with in the future. It might be a good idea for it to be replicated across a number of servers across the internet. We call those "nodes" in the blockchain space.
> Write once media ...
Like publishing merkle tree hash in a few daily newspapers.
Like publishing merkle tree hash in a few daily newspapers.
Are there any frameworks/platforms for this?
have you heard of txt files?
If you want to proof you didn't temper with the historic data, publish a daily hash in some newspapers.
If you want to proof you didn't temper with the historic data, publish a daily hash in some newspapers.
So you're suggesting that publishing a hash in a newspaper every day is a better solution than a digital ledger? This is peak buttcoiner logic. That actually used to be done [1], because Blockchain are valuable, but not anymore because digital versions are more scalable, efficient, reliable, global, trustless etc. Etc.
1. https://www.newsbtc.com/news/bitcoin/first-instance-of-block...
1. https://www.newsbtc.com/news/bitcoin/first-instance-of-block...
Actually I would say that that is exactly what blockchain does, except as a protocol and relying on a network rather than a newspaper. Actually I might use this to explain blockchain to people on a base level.
Git?
you forgot the shitcoinery - there is a token, with a premine, unfairly distributed. the VCs that invested (SBF, a16z,etc) will benefit disproportionately.
it’s a scam.
it’s a scam.
I cannot argue with bad token, premine - I have not researched but I believe it. "VC coins" in general have these issues it seems. Just trying to say that not every shitcoin is trying to get people to give them their biometrics, that is a separate issue in my opinion.
it’s the worst of both worlds.
There are legitimate reasons to premine, and creating a token with the intention of using it as a channel for UBI (literally giving money away) doesn't really scream "scam" to me considering the people backing it
Backers [0] like a16z [1], Coinbase [2], Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) [3], Three Arrows Capital (3AC) [4], Digital Currency Group (DCG) [5]?
[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20211021160923/https://worldcoin...
[1]: https://twitter.com/KyleSGibson/status/1511065326624063501
[2]: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-102
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Bankman-Fried#Arrest_and_c...
[4]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-11/three-arr...
[5]: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/crypto-g...
much wow, very legit
[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20211021160923/https://worldcoin...
[1]: https://twitter.com/KyleSGibson/status/1511065326624063501
[2]: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-102
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Bankman-Fried#Arrest_and_c...
[4]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-11/three-arr...
[5]: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/crypto-g...
much wow, very legit
maybe worldcoin is just another unregistered security offering, launched on dubious exchanges like Binance, to ensure the backers can pump and dump their shitcoins on retail to meet liquidity issues elsewhere?
shhhhhhh
why should Scam Altcoin control a centralized UBI system?
sounds like a scam to me.
sounds like a scam to me.
I'm actually surprised how rapidly this went downhill exactly how people were warning it would.
Yeah, my take is that during the rise of the internet and mobile, tech earned a lot of social credit. But since then tech companies both large and small have been burning through that at a prodigious rate, especially social media, monopoly-seekers, and the trash fire that is crypto. If I had to sum up the new attitude of European regulators toward tech, it would be, "We're tired of your bullshit."
I'm glad to see it. Maybe with some better policing, the tech sector will again turn into something I can be unambiguously proud about working in.
I'm glad to see it. Maybe with some better policing, the tech sector will again turn into something I can be unambiguously proud about working in.
Tech hasn’t “burned through social capital”. The media has shifted from being positive/neutral regarding tech to actively hostile, mainly because tech has been increasingly approaching their turf.
Regulators follow public opinion, public opinion follows the media.
Regulators follow public opinion, public opinion follows the media.
Sorry, if you want to claim that tech hasn't burned through social capital, you'll have to make that claim separately from anything about the media. But you'll have a hard time making the case. Look at how much HN commenters have to say about issues with privacy for example. Or we just had an energetic conversation about Google's stewardship of Chrome.
I also think that tech is not "increasingly approaching [media's] turf". Tech absolutely destroyed the funding model for newspapers, but that started in the Craigslist era. The fraction of journalism that survived has successfully made the leap to an online era.
I also think that tech is not "increasingly approaching [media's] turf". Tech absolutely destroyed the funding model for newspapers, but that started in the Craigslist era. The fraction of journalism that survived has successfully made the leap to an online era.
We are still going to have to work with people who had no qualms about working for five different breeds of charlatan. Some of them two or three breeds at once.
I once was contract to hire at a place that was skeevy. The management team was horrible and abusive, the most senior developer was defensive and cagey.
I said no because of the management situation, but I also wasn't happy that the putative lead had a side hustle that involved driving around the city looking for cell towers that would let him get away with sending spam SMS messages.
My current job, he and another person from that company were working for someone in the same building as us. They didn't seem to recognize me, and I wasn't going to remind them who I was.
What hurt the worst though was that I was replacing someone from the local community who I had a lot of respect for who recommended me for this role. He basically created a giant goodwill bonfire and lit up the night sky.
I once was contract to hire at a place that was skeevy. The management team was horrible and abusive, the most senior developer was defensive and cagey.
I said no because of the management situation, but I also wasn't happy that the putative lead had a side hustle that involved driving around the city looking for cell towers that would let him get away with sending spam SMS messages.
My current job, he and another person from that company were working for someone in the same building as us. They didn't seem to recognize me, and I wasn't going to remind them who I was.
What hurt the worst though was that I was replacing someone from the local community who I had a lot of respect for who recommended me for this role. He basically created a giant goodwill bonfire and lit up the night sky.
Yeah, to me that's one of the most poisonous things about bubbles and gold rushes. A bunch of people make good money doing things that are terrible, ridiculous, or both. They don't learn the lessons they would in a normal environment, and so they may be like that forever, and may continue to do terrible/ridiculous things as long as the money holds out.
2 weeks after launch and a government is already able to disrupt their operations? Liz Truss lasted as Prime Minister for longer than that.
They've been deploying orbs and scanning for more than half a year.
Officially they launched 2 weeks ago. You wouldn’t count the time from 2010 to 2022 where Liz Truss was in Parliament as part of her premiership.
From what I understand, until the end of July when they launched, WLD was not yet available to people.
From what I understand, until the end of July when they launched, WLD was not yet available to people.
the token itself had not launched, but basically everything else was in place
> surprised how rapidly this went downhill
“The aforesaid entity is not registered as a legal entity in Kenya.” Even for crypto, this is a particularly stupid fuckup.
“The aforesaid entity is not registered as a legal entity in Kenya.” Even for crypto, this is a particularly stupid fuckup.
Their mistake was trying to cash in on a crypto bubble based on hardware development timelines.
Related: Sam Altman saying himself that users who are concerned about privacy should not sign up:
https://youtu.be/4HFyXYvMwFc?t=3186
https://youtu.be/4HFyXYvMwFc?t=3186
That's not what he said. He said people that won't trust any platform [regardless of the reassurances, auditing, open source nature, etc] are welcome to not sign up. I assume the somewhat pointed subtext of what Sam said is also that if you're going to be a hater no matter what, he doesn't seem the point in engaging with you.
As much as the whole worldcoin thing is bizarre and dystopian, I do sort of enjoy the nouveau nihilistic take that you can’t trust or believe anything anyone says anyways, so if trust matters to you, you might want to stay away from the digital future.
[deleted]
> On Thursday, Worldcoin said it is planning to implement crowd-control measures and collaborate with the government before resuming work.
What does this even mean?
What does this even mean?
It means too many people were queueing to have their biometrics taken.
More likely to get the $50 for doing so, then never use it
Maybe, but you shouldn't underestimate the popularity of mobile banking/money transfer apps in East Africa.
If it's easier and more secure (against literal telecom hacks, we don't need to get into crypto debates) than the alternative it very plausibly can get users.
If it's easier and more secure (against literal telecom hacks, we don't need to get into crypto debates) than the alternative it very plausibly can get users.
That is an argument against it. If they already solved the problem with mobile payments adding blockchain to the mix doesnt add any value.
The fact that they are popular means it's an argument against making a more secure version? You are implying the problem is solved perfectly already. They are popular because they are needed, not because they cannot be advanced.
That's up to users to decide, isn't it?
Many people appreciate payments the state cannot arbitrarily censor. Blockchains are good at this.
Many people appreciate payments the state cannot arbitrarily censor. Blockchains are good at this.
Most people don't care what technology is used.
"many" people in your argument is more likely a "minority"
Most people care about the rule of law, payment systems that subvert this possibility are not desired by "many" people
"many" people in your argument is more likely a "minority"
Most people care about the rule of law, payment systems that subvert this possibility are not desired by "many" people
Any good way to implement global payment network (mobile or not) that is not subject to government whims?
No, because money transfers are such a central locus of government interest everywhere in the world.
It’s like asking “any good way to avoid paying taxes?” You’ll definitely get lots of opinions, but you should also be cautious about taking the advice.
It’s like asking “any good way to avoid paying taxes?” You’ll definitely get lots of opinions, but you should also be cautious about taking the advice.
In essence, they aspire to be a Palantir competitor.
CIA as a Service
CIA as a Service
I don't think so.
It seems more about having the world's largest financial network.
It seems more about having the world's largest financial network.
A huge amount of the value of big tech companies comes from outrunning regulators (AirBnB, Uber) and/or existing in a state of exception (section 230). Congrats to Kenya for calling BS in short order.
I think people also forget that Amazon was in this game too, refusing to collect and pay state sales tax to undercut brick-and-mortar.
Will the Kenyan government now have access to the biometric data collected by Worldcoin?
Just how bad this is would depend on how they stored the data, I guess.
Why does it feel like they probably keep WAY more data than they need instead of just the hash?
Glad they’ve been shut down at least.
Why does it feel like they probably keep WAY more data than they need instead of just the hash?
Glad they’ve been shut down at least.
I bet there's a really well understood data store that contains minimal data and meets various anonymity proofs.
And then a tag-manager implementation with MixPanel, Intercom, Amplitude, Heap, FullStory, and Segment, all receiving every interaction with a full JSON object describing the current state of the application and user.
And then a tag-manager implementation with MixPanel, Intercom, Amplitude, Heap, FullStory, and Segment, all receiving every interaction with a full JSON object describing the current state of the application and user.
Ugh. This is probably the true nature of the thing, it's shocking how this happens at nearly every company I've been at. Eng is super concerned with privacy and security, and then as soon as Marketing gets a hold of it, it's all coated in 6 layers of analytics for funnel tracking leads.
I need to write a blog post about the time an ad network told me that their required integration was to integrate their JS bundle that would send all text input to their servers.
When I told them No Fucking Way (in not that many more words), they said they would need to get executive sign-off on a "custom" integration. The "custom" bit being us doing everything ourselves server-side and sending them a single opaque identifier for conversions.
When I told them No Fucking Way (in not that many more words), they said they would need to get executive sign-off on a "custom" integration. The "custom" bit being us doing everything ourselves server-side and sending them a single opaque identifier for conversions.
Molly White points out [0] that they seem to have gotten awfully vague about what they store, emphasizing in some contexts that the hashes on the chain are all that technically HAVE to be retained (and encouraging the assumption that those themselves are rigorously impossible to extrapolate personal information from)— but also insinuating to people at en-Orb-ment that they need to opt in to letting the company store full imagery of their iris scans in case the company decides to change the hash algorithm someday.
[0] https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/worldcoin-a-solution-in-...
[0] https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/worldcoin-a-solution-in-...
> emphasizing in some contexts that the hashes on the chain are all that technically HAVE to be retained
Even the context of the primary reason they cite for collecting retinal data (to prevent the same person from getting $50 multiple times) requires they keep this data for at least as long as they're paying people to scan their eyeballs.
Even the context of the primary reason they cite for collecting retinal data (to prevent the same person from getting $50 multiple times) requires they keep this data for at least as long as they're paying people to scan their eyeballs.
Why do they need the original to prevent people to get paid multiple times? What good is the hash they're storing if the same person's retinas don't reliably produce the same hash?
I'm talking about retaining the hash, not the original eyeball data. Retaining the hash is nearly as bad as retaining the original data, so I consider them both to be roughly equivalent for this use case.
Full iris images is exactly what I expect/am afraid of.
They "securely" store the iris codes so that their machines can check for duplicates. They have the database even if the crypto crashes.
Well, Worldcoin claims the data captured by the orb (face & iris scan) is deleted after the corresponding ID is generated from it.
https://worldcoin.org/blog/worldcoin/orb-faqs
https://worldcoin.org/blog/worldcoin/orb-faqs
i assumed that was the point
> It has also launched in various countries including Indonesia, France Japan, Germany, Spain and the UK. Data watchdogs in some countries have already said they are examining Worldcoin.
I don't know about Indonesia but that's not going to fly in the other countries of this list either.
Especially not in very privacy-oriented EU members.
I don't know about Indonesia but that's not going to fly in the other countries of this list either.
Especially not in very privacy-oriented EU members.
There are huge queues at their two UK scanners (both in London).
I wouldn't put too much faith in them. The cookie law is a joke and the UK government is trying to get access to everyone's encrypted messages.
Interesting, especially in conjunction with an apparent global outage: https://www.forbes.com/sites/segunolakoyenikan/2023/08/07/sa...
The outage was only specific information in the app, and only for the first 24 hours after launch. Everything else operated fine.
charitable interpretation: this project is trying to address the problem of distributed and anonymized KYC. Because the current setup where you upload your passport to Coinbase turned out to be a cruel joke on the original idea of a cryptocurrency: it's the exact opposite of anonymous/pseudonymous, and the exact opposite of distributed. By this point Coinbase is really no different than a bank (with one "improvement" that it also tries to entice you to play lottery with shitcoins). Whether it will succeed or has any additional agenda i have no idea.
This is pretty off based on my understanding of Worldcoin. They want the opposite: they don't want to know who you are. They only thing they are interested in is are you a verified unique human, or operating the account of someone is a verified unique human (less than ideal but will happen).
The biggest use cases for this are to establish a finite limit of online accounts to combat inauthentic online behavior, to provide a robust way to vote, and to provide robust way to evenly distribute UBI.
The biggest use cases for this are to establish a finite limit of online accounts to combat inauthentic online behavior, to provide a robust way to vote, and to provide robust way to evenly distribute UBI.
> In Transparency International's 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index, Kenya scored 32 on a scale from 0 ("highly corrupt") to 100 ("very clean"). When ranked by score, Kenya ranked 123rd among the 180 countries in the Index, where the country ranked first is perceived to have the most honest public sector.
> Despite market reforms, several business surveys reveal that business corruption is still widespread and that companies frequently encounter demands for bribes and informal payments to 'get things done' in Kenya, a trend that has contributed to an increased cost of doing business in Kenya. The country ranks 56 among 190 economies globally on World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index 2019.
> The public procurement sector in Kenya suffers widespread corruption and is the leading form of graft in the public service and always at the centre of all major corruption scandals. The use of agents to facilitate business operations and transactions in Kenya is widespread and poses a risk for companies, particularly at the market entry and business start-up stage.
It's cute on HN everyone is bashing Worldcoin while there is not a single discourse in regards to gov regulation and the business environment in Kenya and how it may (or may not) be relevant in this case(?)
I knew a few kenyans personally many years back (who were working in Mainland China and Hong Kong) and they were clearly not big fans of the kenyan gov. I wonder if there are improvement in the recent years.
> Despite market reforms, several business surveys reveal that business corruption is still widespread and that companies frequently encounter demands for bribes and informal payments to 'get things done' in Kenya, a trend that has contributed to an increased cost of doing business in Kenya. The country ranks 56 among 190 economies globally on World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index 2019.
> The public procurement sector in Kenya suffers widespread corruption and is the leading form of graft in the public service and always at the centre of all major corruption scandals. The use of agents to facilitate business operations and transactions in Kenya is widespread and poses a risk for companies, particularly at the market entry and business start-up stage.
It's cute on HN everyone is bashing Worldcoin while there is not a single discourse in regards to gov regulation and the business environment in Kenya and how it may (or may not) be relevant in this case(?)
I knew a few kenyans personally many years back (who were working in Mainland China and Hong Kong) and they were clearly not big fans of the kenyan gov. I wonder if there are improvement in the recent years.
A lot of shops have popped up recently in the city purporting to sell high-res prints of your iris. I thought it was pretty weird, in the same level as mattress stores suddenly appearing everywhere. Now I wonder if there isn't some iris-scanning crypto scam underneath.
"Worldcoin, founded by US tech entrepreneur Sam Altman, offers free crypto tokens to people who agree to have their eyeballs scanned."
Can anyone say how much each of those crypto tokens are worth in $USD?
Can anyone say how much each of those crypto tokens are worth in $USD?
$2.04 per token at the moment: https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/worldcoin/usd
You get 25 WLD for getting scanned, hence the huge queue in a developing country.
You get 25 WLD for getting scanned, hence the huge queue in a developing country.
Is it easy to cash out once you have your WLD?
Seems there is a bunch of different markets for it: https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/worldcoin#markets
Worst case scenario, WLD seems to be a Ethereum token, so you can the very least trade it for Ether, which is accepted pretty much anywhere cryptocurrency at all is accepted.
Worst case scenario, WLD seems to be a Ethereum token, so you can the very least trade it for Ether, which is accepted pretty much anywhere cryptocurrency at all is accepted.
Yes but there are incentives to not do so
The interesting thing is, now that they’re bringing the orb to the United States, they can’t give out their coin to Americans.
No, because they'll fluctuate wildly.
But you can generally bet on a trend towards zero.
But you can generally bet on a trend towards zero.
> Can anyone say how much each of those crypto tokens are worth in $USD?
https://coinmill.com/WDC_calculator.html
https://coinmill.com/WDC_calculator.html
> The exchange rate for the WorldCoin was last updated on October 21, 2019.
This is a different token. And I wouldn't trust a site with such outdated rates.
This is a different token. And I wouldn't trust a site with such outdated rates.
[deleted]
IIRC from reading a few days ago it was worth ~$60 USD.
Half-baked effort to hypnotize the global south. A GPT would be presented as the totalitarian “superintelligence”, and non-native speakers would have a hard time challenging any of it.
This comment confuses me. What exactly was the half baked effort to hypnotize the global south? Raiding Worldcoin?
Worldcoin/OpenAI
I would bet sama is just an asset, and is not literally planning (or perhaps even aware of) this.
I would bet sama is just an asset, and is not literally planning (or perhaps even aware of) this.
The person involved in starting both of these companies that were transparently doing these bad things didn't know or plan it?
Stop bending over backwards to excuse bad behavior from bad people.
Stop bending over backwards to excuse bad behavior from bad people.
I think people like sama are very easy to manipulate. I don’t know what else to tell you.
> the global south
Care to elaborate what you mean by "the global south"?
EDIT: Downvoted for asking a question? Did all the StackOverflow mods come to HN?
Care to elaborate what you mean by "the global south"?
EDIT: Downvoted for asking a question? Did all the StackOverflow mods come to HN?
It's a reasonably common concept: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_North_and_Global_Sout...
You were downvoted for not googling "the global south" before asking. It means you think that the time of others is less valuable than your own.
Yea, it was a rhetorical question.
As the other commenter linked, it generally refers to "developing"/underdeveloped countries. Aka, countries with lower per capita GDP.
[deleted]
global north = anglo/scandi nations and the honorary westerners (israel, japan, s-korea, singapore)
global south is everyone else.
global south is everyone else.
[deleted]
[deleted]
(Note that it's the StackOverflow users voting on questions - the same ones that you are soliciting answers from. Mods have actual moderation tasks to deal with.)
Learn history as it tells you or be banned from all primary services.
GitaGPT, coming soon to an Indian mobile device near you.
A lot of people are still not ready to accept the ugly truth.
Interesting interview with Peter Thiel walking alone with Sam Altman in 2015. Wondering if anyone here can shed some light on what this is
https://youtu.be/iPis68U7bdo
https://youtu.be/iPis68U7bdo
seems like several african countries are getting fed up with post- and neo-colonialism especially with regard to attemps of the west to control their economy by parasitic currencies like the cfa tethered to the franc guaranteeing cheap French access to their natural resources while at the same time handicapping the competitiveness of their economy.
Using developing countries to build “social proof” in terms of user numbers while not even registering a company and surely not paying taxes. What do we call this, dystopian tech neo-colonialism?
I know and can recommend a very
efficient and trustworthy hacker. I got his
email address on Quora, he is very nice
and he has helped me a couple of times
even helped clear some discrepancies in
my account at a very affordable price. he
offers a top notch service and I am really
glad I contacted him. He's the right
person you need to talk to if you want to
retrieve your deleted/old texts, call
logs, emails, photos and also hack any of
your spouse's social network account
facebook,instagram, telegram,
tiktok,messenger chat, snapchat and
whatsapp, He offers a legit and wide
range of hacking services. His charges
are affordable and reliable, This is my way
of showing appreciation for a job well
done. contact him for help via address
below..
Email : Omegahackman @ gmail com
I was just traveling recently and found a number of iris art shops set up in high traffic tourist areas. These IRis Art shops (places that scan your iris and enlarge it into a picture for you) seem to me to be capable of the same aim as world coin.
I can't believe people willingly sign up for what is clearly a fascists/totalitarians wet dream....
You could offer me a million dollars and I wouldn't hesitate sith my "no", and I'm far from wealthy.
You could offer me a million dollars and I wouldn't hesitate sith my "no", and I'm far from wealthy.
World-where-we-haven't-been-regulated-yet-coin
My last trip to Kenya I got stopped by the police at the airport for a bribe for some stupid made up stuff. I expect this is mostly a shake down for bribe money.
I'm also a happy WorldCoin user. I think a lot of people who want it shut down are kind of miseries that don't like seeing other stuff being successful.
I'm also a happy WorldCoin user. I think a lot of people who want it shut down are kind of miseries that don't like seeing other stuff being successful.
Worldcoin does the whole thing wrong.
What they SHOULD do is to--
1. Scan biometrics. They should not restrict themselves to just irises, because not everybody has irises or eyes. But they should only scan things that you can get surreptitiously without too much work... meaning things that everybody gives away anyway just by walking down the street.
2. Bind the biometrics to keys generated only for that purpose, and never used for anything but attesting to other keys... in zero-knowledge so that you can't associate different sub-keys attested by a given master key.
3. NOT bind the biometrics to names or any other information about the person.
4. Go right ahead and publish the biometrics themselves, together with the associated public master keys. Because again, they are not things anybody should be thinking of as secret... and pretending you can keep them secret is foolish even if you don't put them in a database.
5. Stop centralizing the system that attests to the bindings given in (4); do the work to eliminate trust from that. Or at LEAST don't go out of your way to RELY on a centtral authority.
Once you have that, you have all you need for Sybil resistance, which gives you the global uniqueness they need. Then go build your crypto system on top of it.
What they SHOULD do is to--
1. Scan biometrics. They should not restrict themselves to just irises, because not everybody has irises or eyes. But they should only scan things that you can get surreptitiously without too much work... meaning things that everybody gives away anyway just by walking down the street.
2. Bind the biometrics to keys generated only for that purpose, and never used for anything but attesting to other keys... in zero-knowledge so that you can't associate different sub-keys attested by a given master key.
3. NOT bind the biometrics to names or any other information about the person.
4. Go right ahead and publish the biometrics themselves, together with the associated public master keys. Because again, they are not things anybody should be thinking of as secret... and pretending you can keep them secret is foolish even if you don't put them in a database.
5. Stop centralizing the system that attests to the bindings given in (4); do the work to eliminate trust from that. Or at LEAST don't go out of your way to RELY on a centtral authority.
Once you have that, you have all you need for Sybil resistance, which gives you the global uniqueness they need. Then go build your crypto system on top of it.
1. For now they do collect biometrics with opt-in, because it's valuable data for refining the ability to scan only irises and determine if they're legitimate
2. I can see this being a good idea
3. They don't
2. I can see this being a good idea
3. They don't
This is actually what they're building. They publish ZK proofs over the biometric data instead of publishing the biometric data itself.
Their critical error is that there's a single, central authority that certifies that a person with a given set of biometrics exists. They didn't bite off the hard, but necessary, part where you figure out how walk an attestation graph and come up with a confidence level.
And they only do irisis.
And they're doing the ZK at the wrong point in the chain. Publishing the actual, raw, unhashed biometrics wouldn't be a problem as long as they didn't tie them to anything but a key. And that future-proofs you.
And they only do irisis.
And they're doing the ZK at the wrong point in the chain. Publishing the actual, raw, unhashed biometrics wouldn't be a problem as long as they didn't tie them to anything but a key. And that future-proofs you.
I wonder what proportion of people in the comments section here use Clear, which stores biometric data in a centralized database (unlike Worldcoin, which instead uses cryptography to avoid storing anything unnecessary, and never stores biometric data).
Why does this have to be a crypto currency? My ssn is not a currency and it is used for id. Why can't it be like that, a database of id's? Should we make our drivers licenses or passports into crypto currencies? What is the advantage?
It’s literally a solution in search of a problem.
They’d say it proves you’re an actual human and not a fake profile, but there are existing solutions to that, and it doesn’t solve identity theft at all.
They’d say it proves you’re an actual human and not a fake profile, but there are existing solutions to that, and it doesn’t solve identity theft at all.
The "existing solutions" all rely on tying every single thing you do to every single other thing you do, which is a very nasty constraint.
PG: Make something people want.
No Kenyan ever: Yeah I want a crypto currency that scans my eyeball, that'd sure make my life better!
No Kenyan ever: Yeah I want a crypto currency that scans my eyeball, that'd sure make my life better!
Same as every project that involves cryptocurrency - the advantage is that the scammers who promote it can make money from badly reinventing an existing system.
Well you see, me and my SV rich buddies can't pre-mine and then sell a driver's license.
I'm waiting for religious zealots to start smashing those Orbs. Looking at long lines of people waiting to stare into one is enough to make me (very briefly) wonder if my crazy uncle might have had a point with his take on Revelations.
If they can put bounties on eyes, orb bounties are fair game?
Direct action is infinitely more effective than tweeting.
> Revelations
It was rather prescient on this point
It was rather prescient on this point
Did Sam Altman forget to bribe the right people? Because if he would bribe I would understand why governments would allow a private entity to steal data, content, ip, and identities en masse, as it currently happens in some jurisdictions.
Even if they have a database, what can they use it for? scanning eyes isn't a simple operation, you can't scan with a smartphone etc. How can it possibly be used or sold to?
Why would Worldcoin beta-test in Kenya vs SV if not in an attempt to fly under the radar of scrutiny – whether that's market scrutiny from the SEC/etc or privacy scrutiny under GDPR and other legislation well understood by SV lawyers.
Good on Kenya for holding Worldcoin to account. It'll be interesting to see what they do as they enter the "and find out" phase.
Good on Kenya for holding Worldcoin to account. It'll be interesting to see what they do as they enter the "and find out" phase.
Worldcoin specifically excludes US citizens from holding the token, presumably to escape some legal or regulatory issues.
https://blockworks.co/news/worldcoin-not-in-us#
https://blockworks.co/news/worldcoin-not-in-us#
They're not escaping, it's just poorly defined in the US. So they're waiting for clarification.
I think most of SV is pretty crypto disillusioned at this point.
It feels as though the only people into it in SV in 2023 are the people shilling it, which are not that profitable of a cohort after all.
It feels as though the only people into it in SV in 2023 are the people shilling it, which are not that profitable of a cohort after all.
Kenya is a reasonable choice to launch a project like this. Among African nations, Kenya is very connected to USA and UBI. Altman already had OpenAI work in Kenya. It has both a stable government/economy and also high poverty and rural population. It has ~5% of Africa's population, so if you just picked a random place with a lot of people to operate, it's unsurprising to land in Kenya.
https://www.givedirectly.org started there.
https://www.givedirectly.org started there.
OpenAI work there because labour is really cheap.
I don't think this is at all about UBI, if anything "competing" with Give Directly (who are doing truly excellent) would require more work and justification of Worldcoin's approach.
I do suspect the real reason is much more exploitative.
I don't think this is at all about UBI, if anything "competing" with Give Directly (who are doing truly excellent) would require more work and justification of Worldcoin's approach.
I do suspect the real reason is much more exploitative.
There is a lot of fraud with current methods of charity in developing countries. Worldcoin is working to address that.
why are you shilling worldcoin on this website?
why are you baselessly attacking worldcoin on this website?
Extreme wealth distributions also indicate a tiny, extremely wealthy elite who, from their multi-million pound London flats, are happy to sell everything about their home countries to anyone who will pay.
Also a bribe. I could imagine the poor would be more willing to waste their time getting their eyes scanned.
There was a worldcoin scanner/orb in SF a week ago, and there is one in Mountain View now.
> Why would Worldcoin beta-test in Kenya vs SV if not in an attempt to fly under the radar of scrutiny
Iris scanning is already widely used in the U.S. and hasn't received much scrutiny. It's in the news all the time, e.g. with the owners of Madison Square Garden using it to keep their political enemies from going to concerts. You probably use it every time you get on an airplane already. Even LinkedIn uses CLEAR to power their verified profiles.
Iris scanning is already widely used in the U.S. and hasn't received much scrutiny. It's in the news all the time, e.g. with the owners of Madison Square Garden using it to keep their political enemies from going to concerts. You probably use it every time you get on an airplane already. Even LinkedIn uses CLEAR to power their verified profiles.
> You probably use it every time you get on an airplane already.
False. More importantly, however, this is an example of the "you're already doing it so it's not a big deal" fallacy.
False. More importantly, however, this is an example of the "you're already doing it so it's not a big deal" fallacy.
> More importantly, however, this is an example of the "you're already doing it so it's not a big deal" fallacy
I'm not saying it's not a big deal, I'm saying it hasn't gotten much scrutiny, at least relative to comparable innovations in the past. E.g. when airports introduced body scanners, Jeffrey Rosen wrote an entire book about this called The Naked Crowd. Where's the equivalent scrutiny for iris scanners?
I'm not saying it's not a big deal, I'm saying it hasn't gotten much scrutiny, at least relative to comparable innovations in the past. E.g. when airports introduced body scanners, Jeffrey Rosen wrote an entire book about this called The Naked Crowd. Where's the equivalent scrutiny for iris scanners?
Good question. Probably because they aren’t as widely deployed (yet) but there should be just as much and more scrutiny on these as well. They also seem pointless given ambient facial / gait / body morphology recognition (which I am also against).
My iris is scanned on an airplane? If so, it's not being disclosed to me.
They're probably referring to the optional facial recognition based boarding systems that many airports in the US are rolling out, primarily for international flights. It uses facial recognition to match you to your passport photo based on the documents verified during check-in, to ensure the person boarding the flight is the same person who checked-in when their documents were manually verified and recorded in the computer system.
You can still hand your passport and boarding pass to the gate agent, it's not required to do facial recognition boarding if you don't want to, and at any rate it's not doing an iris scan, it's using a standard facial dotmap to match to a photo. It's not even doing 3D mapping, because it's source material is a standard passport photo.
You can still hand your passport and boarding pass to the gate agent, it's not required to do facial recognition boarding if you don't want to, and at any rate it's not doing an iris scan, it's using a standard facial dotmap to match to a photo. It's not even doing 3D mapping, because it's source material is a standard passport photo.
Last time I flew into the US, if I remember correctly, I was required to submit to a facial scan to through customs. I am American.
You are not. There are three different programs by which you can accelerate entry/re-entry to the US and all three rely on facial recognition. All are optional.
There is no facial recognition in the normal re-entry line (and all these processes are before customs as part of border control). Foreigner entry may now require facial recognition, I’m a US citizen so don’t experience the process foreigners go through.
There is no facial recognition in the normal re-entry line (and all these processes are before customs as part of border control). Foreigner entry may now require facial recognition, I’m a US citizen so don’t experience the process foreigners go through.
Fair - I don't have the best memory. Thanks!
Taxation and control of the money supply is the single most powerful and fundamental right reserved by a government, and it's backed up by lots and lots of guns.
Godspeed with changing that, crypto bros.
Godspeed with changing that, crypto bros.
Those guns require ammo, toilet paper and food for the men holding them. Modern governments would be wise to study the situation the European aristocracies found themselves in wrt their merchant class financiers 300 years ago.
Governments are not worried about cryptocurrencies inhibiting their ability to procure weapons, because they are not insane.
Do you solve all your problems by shooting people?
> Do you solve all your problems by shooting people?
All power on earth emanates from the barrel of a gun. We abstract that fact away in modern polite society, but it is the base level truth of our existence.
So yes, when it comes down to it, governments can, will, (and have) used guns to solve this.
All power on earth emanates from the barrel of a gun. We abstract that fact away in modern polite society, but it is the base level truth of our existence.
So yes, when it comes down to it, governments can, will, (and have) used guns to solve this.
Glad you're not in the government. Some people know how to wield power without hurting people.
Governments tend to
Do you have reference to a nation state in history that warred their way out of a debt spiral?
Countries don't need wars to shoot people. You make laws and issue executive orders, and when they are violated, you send people to hit the violators with sticks until they comply, and if that doesn't work, to shoot them until they stop moving.
Any and all economic policy is ultimately backed by violence. That's what governments are for.
Any and all economic policy is ultimately backed by violence. That's what governments are for.
Great Britain actually did this regularly. For hundreds of years they would war all over europe until they ran out of money, make up some scheme to refill the coffers (including eventually inventing the central bank and other shenanigans with the "South Sea" bubble), and then go back to war in europe.
>Do you have reference to a nation state in history that warred their way out of a debt spiral?
See: 600 years of Roman history.
But for a modern example, just look at Bretton-Woods.
See: 600 years of Roman history.
But for a modern example, just look at Bretton-Woods.
WorldCoin is a stupid idea and the entire crypto thing is a scam but these things are not as bad as MLM, lotteries and gambling. Everytime some country tries to ban them they will come under heavy US & WTO pressure.
Why do you think it's like that?
Why do you think it's like that?
Because they're not as bad as crypto.
You can find all three of those in much worse forms embedded within crypto.
There's this recurring refrain that the US is threatened by losing its reserve currency powers to bitcoin, Bitcoin can't be a reserve currency. The great depression was caused by double digit deflation, Bitcoin experiences double digit deflation and inflation every few months.
You can find all three of those in much worse forms embedded within crypto.
There's this recurring refrain that the US is threatened by losing its reserve currency powers to bitcoin, Bitcoin can't be a reserve currency. The great depression was caused by double digit deflation, Bitcoin experiences double digit deflation and inflation every few months.
But crypto is not the thing that ruining ordinary people lives
[deleted]
Well, another ideas used for identity in the crypto world was having a twitter account for more than a specific time period, and a number of followers. So I was considered unidentifiable as a person because I had a Twitter account that did not have the requisite number of followers - so I couldn't get test network tokens for development work. SMH.
Limited partners (pension funds) are paying for this aspirational idea (less any funds from selling tokens perhaps) while a16z will pocket a Venture Capital fee.
Lots of money sitting around might as well roll the dice.
Limited partners (pension funds) are paying for this aspirational idea (less any funds from selling tokens perhaps) while a16z will pocket a Venture Capital fee.
Lots of money sitting around might as well roll the dice.