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This is a feature, not a bug.

Healthy communities are comprised of people who are trusting and permissive by default. The cost is that on occasion these communities will be exploited.

Personally I think it's a very low price to pay for all its benefits.

Deimorz 2544 days ago

This is a great interactive demonstration of this - "The Evolution of Trust": https://ncase.me/trust/

It takes about 20 minutes or so to go through, but I highly, highly recommend it for anyone that hasn't already seen it.

gibolt 2544 days ago

This is a an amazing game theory simulation!

Thorrez 2544 days ago

Very nice page. Although it seems to be wrong about the golden rule, the golden rule is "treat others how you want to be treated" not "treat others as they have treated you in the past".

> This is a feature, not a bug....Healthy communities are comprised of people who are trusting and permissive by default.

It's entirely possible to find a happy medium. You can be trusting without being totally naive about individuals with bad intentions.

It really isn't, per what 'pdpi wrote. What we should do is being maximally trusting (to reap the efficiency benefits), and punish hard anyone trying to take advantage of it, way out of proportion compared to the magnitude of the violation, in order to discourage people from abusing the trust of others.

The goal really is to let everyone be safe in trusting others to the point of naivete, because trust is that huge of an efficiency hack.

(I mean, think of the ridiculous amounts of energy Bitcoin wastes with its proof-of-work scheme, precisely because it tries to replace trust with computation. This energy is what trust saves you.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_co... [1] https://business.utah.gov/news/utah-at-top-in-nation-for-upw... [3] https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900068203/does-utah-dese...

mrkstu 2544 days ago

I spent much of my youth in Utah, and it is probably the epitome of this.

Best state Gini coefficient [0]. Great income mobility (also best in US [1]).

It also has a rampant fraud/ponzi/mlm issue [3]. They come from the same source- There is a general level of trust that is much higher than anywhere else I've lived or experienced. Mostly rooted in a trust in others is part and parcel of the culture and dominant religion. I don't think the upsides would be achievable without the downsides that seem endemic to it.

darkteflon 2544 days ago

I’ve lived in Tokyo for 14 years and think that this characterisation also applies here. Comparatively low Gini coefficient, very high level of community trust and susceptibility to endemic fraud.

I have a great example from today of the efficiency of trust.

I went to a three storey old factory turned into an antiques store. 150 000 square feet. Three floors of booths of all kinds of stuff. Coins, cards, collectibles, toys, furniture, everything. The whole place had maybe five visible employees. It was all consignment. You'd pick up $300 worth of nicknacks from the top floor and walk it down to the first floor to buy. It's incredibly easy to steal from if you wanted.

So what I see are hundreds of individual vendors that don't need to be at their booth because of the trust between vendors, the managers, and the public.

If we were part of a culture where theft was all but guaranteed, that store just wouldn't be able to exist.

skybrian 2544 days ago

Very true, trust matters, but it might help a bit that many antiques aren't useful in themselves and aren't that easy to sell. If they were selling razors or baby formula, maybe things would be different?

Do you think they have cameras?

I don't want to get into the implementation details of this store as that's not the point of my anecdote. Either trust me that this place was an example of trust, or don't. ;)

codedokode 2544 days ago

Coins are easy to sell.

luckylion 2544 days ago

> What we should do is being maximally trusting (to reap the efficiency benefits), and punish hard anyone trying to take advantage of it, way out of proportion compared to the magnitude of the violation, in order to discourage people from abusing the trust of others.

Are we doing that, though? It feels like we're generally very trusting and, organized in society, very forgiving. Hell, in lots of business cases, cheating makes money, getting caught and paying a fine is just the cost of doing business - and it pays.

I understand the theory, and I agree. I don't see it being applied however.

We're not doing that, and that's why you see trust being continuously eroded. I'm of the belief that trust is the very fundamental building block of a society, and so crimes against public trust should be punished severely. Manslaughter-level severely, not with a slap on the wrist via a symbolic fine.

[1] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/652230

somebodythere 2544 days ago

> punish hard anyone trying to take advantage of it, way out of proportion compared to the magnitude of the violation, in order to discourage people from abusing the trust of others.

I strongly disagree. This would make sense if humans were all rational actors who only took an action after performing the risk calculus of expected reward vs. potential punishment. But that's not how humans work, and thinking this way only results in a justice system that is unnecessarily cruel, ignores rehabilitation, and doesn't actually work that well at preventing crime.

Relevant sources:

Sentence Severity and Crime: Accepting the Null Hypothesis "Most reviews conclude that there is little or no consistent evidence that harsher sanctions reduce crime rates in Western populations[1]."

Do Harsher Prison Conditions Reduce Recidivism? "Inmates housed in higher security levels are no less likely to recidivate than those housed in minimum security; if anything, our estimates suggest that harsher prison conditions lead to more post-release crime.[2]"

[2] http://www.antoniocasella.eu/nume/Chen_Shapiro_2007.pdf

I spent past 30 minutes skimming the first paper (available here[0]). Fine, so severity itself doesn't really work as a deterrent - with the caveat made by study, that it applies to "variation within the limits that are plausible in Western countries". I.e. changing the punishment of some crime from 2 years to 3 years does not create meaningful extra deterrence; changing it from 2 years to 25 years or capital punishment just might. I'd argue that changing the punishment from "a fine" to "prison sentence" may just do the trick too.

> This would make sense if humans were all rational actors who only took an action after performing the risk calculus of expected reward vs. potential punishment. But that's not how humans work

This is indeed how humans work sometimes. Not in the heat of the moment, but when coldly calculating how to make more money with less effort. Fraud is not a crime of passion, it's premeditated, evaluated in advance. More certainty of consequences, and perhaps the severity of them, may be what's needed to further reduce it.

[0] - http://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1086/652230

skybrian 2544 days ago

There are situations when living in a trusting society can be helpful, but on the other hand, predictable consequences are probably a better idea when raising children, and also for encouraging people to trust that the system itself is fair. Rare, severe, apparently random punishment tends not to be associated with justice.

> Rare, severe, apparently random punishment tends not to be associated with justice.

In the dream/goal I presented I was hoping for swift, indiscriminate and - yes - severe justice. The lack of all three wrt. crimes against public or even individual trust is a problem for contemporary societies.

jlokier 2544 days ago

In your presentation, the severe justice was to discourage breaches of trust.

But that doesn't work if the justice is "apparently random".

If that is how it's perceived, then trust violators will have no incentive to avoid violation. They, and everyone else, will believe that it doesn't matter whether they violate trust or not, since justice is a lottery ticket given to everyone, where the prize is punishment, and it doesn't matter what you do.

pdpi 2544 days ago

Anywhere you fall on this naivety/acceptance continuum, I can both show you a fraudster you didn’t detect that you should have, and a serious speaker you blocked but shouldn’t.

In hindsight it’s always easy to say what the right outcome should have been, but, in Wright’s case, he has enough legitimate credentials that it’s hard to argue that we shouldn’t at least hear him out.

Kaveren 2544 days ago

wright is a complete con man with absolutely no credibility. someone like satoshi would never, ever, ever reveal their identity publicly. this is the most obvious thing, and anyone who thinks this is up for debate is gullible.

his credentials are lacking and also completely irrelevant.

inimino 2544 days ago

It's not just a continuum, because in addition to being more or less trusting you also always have the option to do just a little more work to be sure. Trust, but verify.

It's only that your community evolves to be less trusting because unfortunately it has to. So the happy medium is really just a sacrifice of a good trait for a less good one only because you have to.

api 2544 days ago

I am fond of a saying that apparently comes from the intelligence world: "trust, but verify." It never hurts to check. If you are dealing with a big liar you can usually catch them quickly enough, sometimes by just verifying small things like work or school history.

inimino 2544 days ago

This is a false dichotomy. Yes, in general we benefit from being trusting. We also benefit from verifying extraordinary claims. In this particular case it's not hard to find which side the evidence is on, and it's indeed a bug that entire groups of people (not just individuals!) fail to do so.

dunkelheit 2544 days ago

One of the commandments of this particular community is Doing Your Own Research. Of course saying that you did your research is much easier than actually doing it so here goes.

ItsMattyG 2544 days ago

I think the healthiest communities have norms of openness and common knowledge that make fraud very difficult.

nostrademons 2544 days ago

It's also possible that the organizers of the conference know (or suspect) that he's a fraud, but invite him anyway because they know the controversy will generate buzz and attention around their conference, increasing its attendance.

That's entirely possible, and such an approach makes me despair even more of the Bitcoin community (and why I left it long ago).

nordsieck 2544 days ago

> It always stuns me how relatively few people are able to spot frauds (although it explains a lot about our current political situation). I'm guessing 40-50% of the population is susceptible to this kind of trickery.

It seems very likely to me that frauds and those who can detect them are locked in an evolutionary arms race. If that is the case, it would have to be true that there is a substantial number of people who can't detect frauds.

BubRoss 2544 days ago

Part of it has been the tribalism of him going against the obvious weasels that ousted the original Bitcoin team to keep the blocksize low, the transaction fees high and get VC funding for their company that they would market by saying it was the 'people that were in charge of bitcoin'

Some of the people who hated those weasels decided that Craig Wright must be great since he says he is against the same people. Instead of everyone rolling their eyes and fighting an OBVIOUS con man interested in VC funding and patents some people thought everyone calling him a con man must be on the 'other side'.

Edit: If you think something is off, use your words. I can back up everything I've said here.

> Some of the people who hated those weasels decided that Craig Wright must be great since he says he is against the same people. Instead of everyone rolling their eyes and fighting an OBVIOUS con man interested in VC funding and patents some people thought everyone calling him a con man must be on the 'other side'.

That's an interesting summary of the situation, with parallels again to our current political situation.

From: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9weLK2AJ9JEt2Tt8f/politics-i....

As 'Eliezer summed it up perfectly:

"Politics is an extension of war by other means. Arguments are soldiers. Once you know which side you’re on, you must support all arguments of that side, and attack all arguments that appear to favor the enemy side; otherwise it’s like stabbing your soldiers in the back—providing aid and comfort to the enemy. People who would be level-headed about evenhandedly weighing all sides of an issue in their professional life as scientists, can suddenly turn into slogan-chanting zombies when there’s a Blue or Green position on an issue."

RustyRussell 2544 days ago

> Part of it has been the tribalism of him going against the obvious weasels that ousted the original Bitcoin team to keep the blocksize low, the transaction fees high and get VC funding for their company that they would market by saying it was the 'people that were in charge of bitcoin'

There are solid technical reasons to keep the block size low. The current developers were active almost from the beginning, you should take a look. And while Blockstream was founded by Bitcoin developers and sponsors development, it's a small part of the total development effort.

As an early Blockstream employee, I'd love to see some source to your claim that we "get VC funding for their company that they would market by saying it was the 'people that were in charge of bitcoin'"

sct202 2544 days ago

Some of his supporters might just find him convenient for now. Like at work, sometimes I back people up who I don't really like or trust because at this moment they are doing something that is aligned with me, and it really isn't worth the effort to try to tear them down versus just going with it and dealing with them later if I have to.

ChainOfFools 2544 days ago

is this the purportedly decentralized group that refers to itself, with no sense of irony, as Bitcoin Core?

RustyRussell 2544 days ago

To clarify: the bitcoin open source project was renamed "Bitcoin Core" to avoid confusion with Bitcoin the currency and protocol (it didn't help).

It does seem to follow Open Source best practice: but I'm not even sure what "decentralized" development would look like?

CydeWeys 2544 days ago

Bitcoin Core is the name of the software that was originally released by Satoshi Nakamoto and has been continuously been developed ever since. It is the most widely used software to interact with the Bitcoin blockchain, which makes sense, since at the beginning it was the only client and essentially the reference implementation.

The confusion stems from the fact that it was renamed at one point to make it clear that "Bitcoin Core" refers to this specific software whereas "Bitcoin" refers to the protocol and blockchain more generally. This distinction wasn't originally needed, as there were no other clients.

Lucadg 2544 days ago

I guess it has to do with the fact that when organizing a conference many optimize for speakers attracting crowds rather than content.

garmaine 2544 days ago

On the other hand, most bitcoin devs I know would specifically avoid a conference that made that mistake.

Lucadg 2544 days ago

True. And that's about attendees quality which is another metric I don't think they optimize for in general. They need to fill the halls first of all.

DonHopkins 2544 days ago

People relate to BitCoin conferences more like ComicCon.

revscat 2544 days ago

It amazes me that a percentage of your percentage does so because to call out liars would be impolite and lead to discomfort.

nullc 2544 days ago

Calling out fraudsters also gets you attacked and harassed and there is essentially nothing you can do to stop it.

[1] https://decrypt.co/6520/peter-mccormack

gerikson 2544 days ago

Craig Wright in particular is suing people in the UK for libel for stating that he is not Satoshi.[1]

Being sued for libel in the UK is no joke.

BubRoss 2544 days ago

Generally you only get attacked by those fraudsters.

dboreham 2544 days ago

Hmm...go back and look at how the Theranos debacle played out.

Ididntdothis 2544 days ago

Be careful. The people who called out Enron, Theranos, the NSA before Snowden or the rationale for the Iraq invasion often paid a big price.

astronautjones 2544 days ago

or their entire personality cult/political party

I don't even expect people to call out fraudsters. But I do wish they would quit promoting them, or minimizing how much they are indeed fraudsters ("well, maybe he's not been totally honest about that, but what about...").

api 2544 days ago

Most people are mostly honest and assume others are the same. They are not really expecting someone who is radically and baldly dishonest and so they get taken aback.

I remember my first encounter with a group of really dishonest people. It was deeply shocking. When I grasped just how much lying was happening and the magnitude of it it took me a while to wrap my mind around it. The folks I encountered had built entire webs of massive lies. I now realize they were small time hucksters compared with some of the cons that are out there.

spilk 2544 days ago

especially when proving authorship of bitcoin would be a simple matter for the actual Satoshi - just sign a message with the same key as the recipient of the genesis block. He attempted to do this and failed in a stunningly obvious way.

tim333 2544 days ago

I listened to him at a blockchain conference and there is a certain freak show curiosity to it as there is to much in the blockchain space.

CogitoCogito 2544 days ago

I would say that 100% of people are susceptible 40-50% of the time. Okay some more than others, but for no one the number is 0. It's easier to understand the phenomenon after we accept it affects us all to some degree.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/09/bitcoin-f...

danaos 2544 days ago

His home was actually raided by Australian police right after news[1] broke that he may be Satoshi Nakamoto.

geekpowa 2544 days ago

You trying to link his claim to being raided?

He was raided because he is a tax cheat who has been under investigation for years for multiple unrelated tax compliance events.

* edit. Typo/grammar.

threwawasy1228 2544 days ago

This says more about the stupidity and uselessness of the police than it says about whether he is Nakamoto or not.