Why I can't sleep soundly with blockchain, being the cypherpunk

[Steven Schear]

I am not at all surprised that CPunks did not kick off the revolution many
of us desired.

One reason was that, despite Tim C May's mantra that, "cypherpunks write
code", not many of us were capable or did. Many who hung out on the list
and were technically competent weren't true believers and/or were still
more focused on their careers. When times were poor for our employment
there would be a significant surge in doing coding but as soon as the good
times returned these people were no where to be found.

Another reason is our lack of understanding of the importance of UIs and
network effects for widespread take-up (Why Johnny Still, Still Can't
Encrypt: Evaluating the Usability of a Modern PGP Client
<https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.08555>).

Steve

On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 6:16 AM, \0xDynamite <dreamingforward at gmail.com>
wrote:

> > On Wed, Aug 30, 2017 at 08:36:54AM +0300, Sergey Matveev wrote:
> >> Everything is right here. Anyway you *will* depend on people, society,
> >> its behaviour and huge quantity of empirical factors and assumptions. It
> >> is not cypherpunk's reliable and risks-predictable world -- it has
> >> nothing in common. Replacing the need to trust the human, with the need
> >> to trust the algorithm and technology -- that *is* the exact reason why
> >> I am interested in crypto. Requiring and depending on society again --
> >> that is the exact reason why I standing aside from blockchains. They do
> >> not offer any guarantees[4], but likelihoods, lottery.
> >
> > But this is the point - exchange of energy between humans, whether
> > money, voluntary labour, crypto money, barter of food or other goods,
> > these things ALWAYS depend on other humans - that is (how ever
> > unfortunate this might be) the nature of involvement with other
> > humans and with interacting with other humans.
>
> I am curious about Sergey's point.  While humanity is generally a
> piece of shit, they are akin to a cancer patient whose every cell has
> been infected -- they themselves are not guilty, they are product of
> external factors that are larger than them.  Ultimately, like all
> mammals, they are organized around the heart (that's what separates
> them from lizards), so that natural force can be harnessed.
>
> This is also why technological solutions have not been affective.  If
> you take my premise that humans are organized around the heart, then
> pure rationalism will fail to lead them because their minds are
> already infected and they distrust it.  So, in a way, the same forces
> of the heart are already working -- too block further memetic codons
> from creating more nucleic load.
>
> > So when it comes to exchange of energy of any form between humans,
> > you will always be involved with other humans, to a greater or lesser
> > degree :)
>
> Yeah, humans are both the cause and the cure.  The major source of
> inadequacy in THIS population (crypto-anarchists) is the failure to
> examine why the 60's failed to produce the revolution it desired.  It
> had love, peace, and an awesome soundtrack -- yet it failed.
>
> The only reason I've found in my analysis is that it was missing
> either truth or justice (in some way they HADN'T recognized) or both.
> Both of these are necessary for peace.  Without truth, people argue.
> Without justice. people continue fighting.
>
> \0xd
>



-- 
Creator of the Warrant Canary and the Street Performer Protocol. Wi-Fi
standard spec. creation participant and co-developer of eCache. Director at
MojoNation and Cylink. Founding member of IFCA and GNU Radio.

Shameless self-promoter :)
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