[brian_cloutier]

It is literally impossible for a simple deadbolt to keep intruders from entering your house. Are locks scams?

Separately, I strongly suspect that your idea of worldcoin's "stated purpose" is not something they have ever stated.

[tredre3]

> Separately, I strongly suspect that your idea of worldcoin's "stated purpose" is not something they have ever stated.

I encourage you to read their whitepaper, where they state that world id is indeed a proof of personhood. The allegation in this thread is that it fails at proving that someone is a unique person, and it cannot possibly due so because of the oracle problem. Therefore it is a scam.

https://whitepaper.worldcoin.org/

[brian_cloutier]

Oh, I think I see the confusion.

"proof of personhood" is something of a term of art which worldcoin did not invent. They are not literally claiming they can prove, in a mathematical sense, personhood. What would that even mean? See for example this, which seems to have originated the term in 2017: https://berkeley-defi.github.io/assets/material/Proof%20of%2...

"proof of personhood" was created in contrast to "proof of work" and "proof of stake". If you want to get technical "proof of work" is also not a mathematical proof, it is more of an argument of work, since it's possible to get lucky and find a low hash without doing all the work. The word "proof" is not doing what you think it is doing.

There are a couple other "proof of personhood" protocols and none of them mathematically prove personhood, because that is obviously impossible, some of them are listed at the beginning of this post: https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html

[JohnFen]

> It is literally impossible for a simple deadbolt to keep intruders from entering your house. Are locks scams?

If the lock manufacturer asserts or implies greater protection than the product offers (which is actually quite common), then yes, it's a scam.