RE: HF21 - What the Fork?
Thanks! I wanted to reply to you earlier, but the weekend and some technical difficulties didn't let that happen.
I think that decentralisation has slightly different meanings for everybody. To me it basically means that there is not central authority, who controls everything and who can change the rules for participating in a network by the blink of an eye.
When you are talking about systemic consensus, are you talking about this, because I see some of those ideas realised here on Steem (some, not all though).
After taking a quick look at your blog, I have to say, that I think it qualifies as "quality content", because one can clearly tell that you put a lot of thought into it.
Having a special topic in mind, to blog about, certainly helps when trying to get an audience. Here on Steem an anywhere else. Even though I'm aware of this, it didn't stop me using this as my personal blog and publishing very random stuff. I've been thinking of focusing on one topic for a while now, but so far I couldn't motivate myself to do that. Maybe at one point in the future.
About paying for publishing: I'm not suggesting, that we need high fees here on Steem, but rather a symbolic one, maybe just 0.001 STEEM would prevent spam and all authors would have to put some "Skin in the Game"
Thank you so much!
The two links are gold. Yes, systemic consensus is well described there.
I find your skin in the game link especially inspiring.
For me personally this means: I haven't invested a single cent from Fiat currency here. I put two years of work as a blogger into it. I don't know if this counts as skin in the game. At the time I existed here with 10,000 monetary units in my wallet, I didn't power down. I simply didn't want this money, probably because I didn't consider it "honestly earned", just without skin in the game. I'm not even sure if I would find it wise to start with Fiat money when I don't have it to spare. To have invested with all my financial reserves, which I consider unwise.
Interesting that further down in the Wiki article Jesus is mentioned as the archetype of a risk taker. In fact, one could say that although Jesus risked and lost all his skin with his full conviction and existence, he did not lose because he knew that he would be in good hands in heaven. He was a free man without money, without wife and children, without permanent residence, always on mission. Basically he had nothing to lose except his life. This may sound strange, but none of us is like Jesus, because we all have something to lose, everything except our lives. Nobody puts his life at risk by investing in Steemit. Whoever has done this may judge for himself whether it was wise or not.
I see it this way: The diversity of those who live in such a system as Steemit is what makes it attractive. There are risky types, as well as cautious ones, spontaneous ones as well as deliberate ones, enthusiastic ones as well as quiet ones, sluggish ones as well as fast ones. It is irrelevant who of them risks their skin from my point of view, because there are always those who do and those who do not. Those who make up a minority or majority are also of no concern to me, because I am always interested in a good encounter and in the potential of people. Those who take risks are no more valuable than those who take little or no risk.
Outside the Steemit world, this is reflected in their social environment, it has effects. Those who like to risk high stakes should not complain about those who prefer to be cautious. The fact is that you are never one or the other, not for all time. What is a piece of cake for one person is a great achievement for another.
As charming and logical as the skin in the game argument is, it must not be transferred - by means of coercion - as a valid behaviour to everyone, because it would basically define a code of conduct that everyone would never want to live up to, because it would not be voluntary. So Steemit reflects just like the offline world - the voluntariness of those who risk their skin just like those who don't (both for probably good reasons). The roles may be divided from time to time, who knows anyway?
Spam, abuse, differentials are a normal part of humanity. A system can take care of those needy or greedy ones by it's mass. If the mass is not big enough it will not carry them. But people have to realize themselves when they should switch from need or greed to gratitude and grace. They usually do when they feel trusted and encouraged. It requires to be felt a voluntary act, not an ordered or demanded one.
Here is too much fuzz about control and demand.
What topic do you have in mind? Maybe I can encourage you? :-)
I have to read Skin in the Game at one point, just like all the other books by N.N. Taleb.
What I meant with putting "skin in the game" in this context is rather simply psychology: when people have to give something in order to get a good or service, their personal valuation of it drastically changes. Therefore I think that people will think twice before posting something (thus increasing the quality of the content) and spam wouldn't be as lucrative anymore, since you have to pay (e.g. 100000 * 0.001 STEEM = 100 STEEM, which is quite something).
I also made all of my rewards here just by blogging, therefore one can argue, that I don't put skin into the game, but instead of money I invested time to write posts, which is in my opinion also quite valuable.
Privacy preserving machine learning :D
I started a PhD a couple of months ago and as it looks now, this will be my specialisation. Right now, I'm in the process of learning about all these techonlogies and I was thinking that it would be good the share the progress of my learning with the world, because the best way to understand something is by explaining it to others.
Excellent. What a wise insight. In deed, learning is such a process as you describe it. Blogging certainly helps.
Oh, now I also know what you meant by skin in the game. I was taken in by the wiki article that used the word "idiots" too often.
That's right. People act strange when they get something for free. They seem to value it less or even treat it badly. Sometimes people come to my free social services that act as if I have to cover all areas of knowledge and are very impertinent. If they had to pay directly for my service, their behaviour might be more appropriate. But that is not a good comparison. The health insurance comparison is better. Statutorily insured people don't realize how expensive their treatments are because they never get a bill presented. They have no skin in the game. Only indirectly via the contributions on their pay slips. But the connection is no longer immediate. I got it.
But there are also people who do this well and behave as if they have skin in the game, because they know exactly that someone always pays something that they get for free.
Your thesis sounds very interesting. Do something on your blog in any case. I hope I will understand your content and answer you appropriately.
Continuing in English here, since we started it in English 😁
Taleb is someone who well, "er nimmt sich kein Blatt vor den Mund" (ok, it's best explained using a German idiom), just see what he writes on Twitter, to get an idea of what I mean: https://twitter.com/nntaleb
But at the same time, I have to say that I consider him to be a wise and honest man, probably also because he is confronting and therefore causing controversy.
I think (hope) that it is a topic, we are going to hear a lot more of, because it not only has potential to progress AI in sensitive, but important areas like medicine, it also has the potential to break the data monopolies of the big tech companies.
But for now, I have to make sense of it for myself first.
I am totally confused by that twitter thing. Never used it. Unfamiliar space. I left facebook quite a while ago. Here, the speed of back and forth communicating is much slower. I like that.
Controversy ... hm ... not sure if that is something to be pushed. It's a word used a lot.
Breaking the data monopolies sounds interesting. You think the forces will eventually even out a little more with the technology of AI? Let's hear more about that.
Right now we, the users, exchange all of our data for a "free" service. We get to use a platform and the company running that platform gets all of our data in exchange and uses this for analysing its users. Data is valuable and who controls it makes a lot of money. All those centralised platforms tend to acquire a lot of data, a lot of money and therefore a lot of power.
The domain I'm working on allows users to provide their data for training of machine-learning models, but while keeping their privacy. If you think this further along this line and add what blockchain technology can bring to the table, we could imagine a future where the people can not only chose which kind of personal data they are contributing (ideally while still maintaining their privacy), but also get financially compensated for contributing data. This would be a paradigm shift, since the big tech companies have to share the profits, they make from their users' data.
I talked about exactly this topic with my man. Right now I am too tired to remember what he said though :)