Re: [GNU/consensus] Liquid democracy vs blockchain anarchy

[carlo von lynX]

On Tue, Sep 06, 2016 at 05:50:52AM +0000, hellekin wrote:
> On 09/05/2016 05:18 PM, carlo von lynX wrote:
> > vs. taler/gnunet/secushare/liquiddemocracy technology
> 
> You shouldn't put them all in the same bag: liquiddemocracy is a time
> sync that requires professional users to keep an eye on things for

That has not been the case in the past, why should it be a precondition
in the future?

> others. I can't imagine one second such an approach will work that
> promotes a unique ('rational'?) interface to political issues through
> written language with no human interaction. It's the kind of technology

Who impedes human interaction?

> that takes the problem on its head, requiring more human attention and
> less live interaction. I'd rather not use any technology at all than

It's just more screen work than paperwork, more transparency by
documentation instead of getting convinced by a lobbyist over a beer.

> waste my time on such a system. Requiring it to participate in
> legislation sounds exclusive to me. Politics can and should be made
> human-to-human, not running away with the machine. There's a huge

We can see how successful human-to-human politics has been in the past.

> non-verbal dimension in human communication that is not captured by this
> system. We already know what a statistical perspective on politics is
> able to bring to the world. We don't need more autistic politicians.

Do you have any papers backing your position or are you just opinating?

Too late to save the Pirate movement, only in 2015 scientists made a
profound analysis of the effects of liquid delegation on the democratic 
intentions. The paper that you should absolutely be aware of resides at

         http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.07723

What those non-pirate people found was that the promise of liquid
democracy actually proved true: delegations were "stabilizing" the
political outcome of liquid feedback even in the face of majorities 
of participants being distracted by other political issues or simply
being busy watching soccer on TV.

What we know now is that the liquid modeling of a representative
approach actually works and actually reduces the risks of demagogy
that come with direct democracy. Still, there are reasonable and
unreasonable ways of setting up a liquid democratic platform.
Depending on the legal architecture around it you can either reap
the best of both direct and representative democracy or earn the
worst of both worlds.

Let's understand: electronic democracy has many enemies - anyone who
would prefer to have things done their way rather than having to
listen to some thousand strangers clicking their vote from their sofas.
And being against something is usually much easier than being for it.
Demagogy and populism does the rest. As frequently in politics, if
we're not going to be scientific about this, we will succumb.

> > Blockchain people
> 
> Not the same bag either. Some blockchains can be useful in some contexts.

Consensus protocols may be. I still haven't seen a scientifically
convincing use of blockchains that I couldn't have done with
secushare pubsubs over gnunet without damaging the environment.

> Since we know about the quantum, we don't live anymore in an either/or
> world. Sustaining that vision is retrograde and harmful.

What does the quantum have to do with that?

> > Developing an ethical consciousness of technology can be a
> > part of growing up, unless you are already enjoying the 
> > forbidden fruit of Ayn Rand's fallacious ideology and now
> > need an excuse to legitimize your egocentricity.
> 
> Indeed.

I like that you agree on the most radical thing I said.  :)


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