[scotchmi_st]

A lot of people always complain about how hard it is to figure out what Urbit is, but I'm pretty sure the obfuscation is part of the plan.

I've been following Urbit for a while now (maybe 6-7 years?), and over that time, it has gotten clearer about its goals and motives, I believe because initially they wanted to speak to a very small group of weirdos who saw what was on it and were intrigued to learn more. Starting from a small clique of like-minded people.

Now it's possible to understand what the idea is (some sort of VM running an esoteric set of languages to build an operating system that, among other things serves as a 'digital identity' of sorts). This is the point in time when they want people such as HN readers to understand it, so they make it so it can be understood (more or less). I also think the esotericism of the programming languages is also to prevent anyone from having a go, and to limit people who can program in these languages to just those who are heavily invested in them.

But as others have pointed out (including the author of the post), the idea is deeply terrible, and implements a sort of feudal network with kings, lords and peasants (galaxies, stars, planets), because Yarvin is a neo-reactionary who believes life was better when we had monarchies in charge of everything.

He does this at the same time as wanting a clean-slate programming environment, because computers these days are very complicated and buggy or something.

All of this speaks to a desire for things to be simple. Simple politics, simple computers. Democracy and computing these days are not simple, but that's because _humans_ are not simple, and if you want humans to have an equal voice and standing, then that's probably going to result in not-simple systems, in politics as in computing.

We should resist it, for the same reason we should resist anyone trying to agitate for feudal revolution.

[olah_1]

> the idea is deeply terrible, and implements a sort of feudal network with kings, lords and peasants (galaxies, stars, planets)

That’s what we have today, except it’s profoundly more disturbing.

Urbit would be like if you were under the care of Facebook, but you genuinely owned your data. Facebook just routed connections for you if you weren’t already connected to someone. And you retain the ability to move from Facebook to twitter for that service if you choose.

Meanwhile today you live on facebook’s land (you don’t own any of your data or identity), and you can’t leave unless you blow everything up.

> who believes life was better when we had monarchies in charge of everything.

Yarvin actually does not believe that. His whole project is more about not resisting the inevitable, which is that humans will organize in hierarchies no matter what. So it’s better to not pretend otherwise and just be honest.

Again, this is better than what we have today. Do you even know who your “lord” is today? Vaguely Zuckerberg. Who is under him? Do we know who to be upset with if a decision is made that we don’t like? No this is all a mystery because it’s anti-hierarchy theater. It’s there but they tell us it’s not.

Here is an article where Yarvin basically endorses Urbit without mentioning it by name: https://graymirror.substack.com/p/how-to-regulate-the-tech-p...

[cocktailpeanuts]

The point is, what Urbit is trying to do is create a new hierarchy while talking shit about the existing hierarchy. This is no different from how the French revolution participants overthrew the government, just to form their own toxic regime that was worse than before.

> Yarvin actually does not believe that. His whole project is more about not resisting the inevitable, which is that humans will organize in hierarchies no matter what. So it’s better to not pretend otherwise and just be honest.

This is exactly what bothers me the most. You say "just be honest", but are they? Like I mentioned, all they're trying to do is break down the existing hierarchy and create a new one, while being the aristocrats of the new order. If they were truly honest to themselves, they wouldn't sell the idea of sovereignty, because for the most people it would be no different. They would be ruled by these urbit real estate owners. In fact it's worse than Facebook because at least Facebook can be regulated by the government (as it's about to be done soon) if it abuses its power too much, whereas the whole premise of something like Urbit is that even the government cannot mess with the Urbit land owners. Talking about honesty and neglecting to address these issues is the ultimate dishonestly and hypocrisy. At the end of the day, what they and the urbit real estate owners want is for Urbit to go to moon and they make tons of easy money.

[olah_1]

You’re just mistaken about how the system works. That’s why you think it’s worse than Facebook.

A Star or Galaxy can’t delete your planet. Not like Facebook can. You are a true “land owner” on urbit.

There’s a lot of people that got unpersoned by Facebook and others today and the damage is done. Government regulation doesn’t undo that damage.

Planets will likely not increase in price, nor do they want them to. If any money is to be made, it’s through the sale of Stars. But even then, they seem pretty consistently priced, not fluctuating much.

Fair enough point about the French Revolution. Did you get that take from reading Yarvin? :P

Personally, I am on the fence about true decentralization. I support projects for these networks, but I also have in my mind that anarchy may not be desirable at all. But we just need to see different ideas and different projects play out and explore, in my opinion.

[ardy42]

> A lot of people always complain about how hard it is to figure out what Urbit is, but I'm pretty sure the obfuscation is part of the plan....

> But as others have pointed out (including the author of the post), the idea is deeply terrible, and implements a sort of feudal network with kings, lords and peasants (galaxies, stars, planets), because Yarvin is a neo-reactionary who believes life was better when we had monarchies in charge of everything.

> All of this speaks to a desire for things to be simple. Simple politics, simple computers.

I'm not sure if that's exactly true. If he really had a desire for things to be simple, then why the obfuscation? IIRC, his writing about his ideas is also highly obfuscated: extremely verbose and prone to unnecessary redefinition. The talk of simplification may be just a lure to hook some followers.

It all feels more like an attempt to bluff his way into some kind of elite status. There's at least two ways to be seen as brilliant: actually be brilliant or say impenetrable nonsense and hope people assume you're brilliant (because sometimes brilliance is impenetrable to the layman). I'm also sure some actual elites are tickled by the idea of feudalism and are willing to patronize him.

[varjag]

It sounds like Scientology but backwards.

[viraptor]

If there's a good idea hiding in urbit, someone will extract it one day into a sane and usable project. If not... we can treat it as an esoteric art project and/or ignore.

[NetOpWibby]

Thanks for the ELI5, I didn’t know these details.

[andkenneth]

Just from what I can pick up from this thread it seems like this project is only a few steps more sane than TempleOS and it's creator.

[bonchicbongenre]

My understanding is that TempleOS was/is regarded as a tremendous one-person achievement (although of course its author had some quite nonstandard beliefs). Whereas Urbit seems to be generally decried as fakery