this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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I keep saying: none of this will end until we get a clean, cryptographically secure, government-backed way to ID who is sending us something, and it becomes an expectation to use it all the time for anything important. Which is why I have conspiracy theories about the conspiracy theories about government ID.
sounds dystopian.
So does the total death of objective fact.
An end to internet anonymity isn't great, but given the alternative I'll take it.
That ship has sailed a long long time ago.
Truth was always subjective. Technology is just forcing us to face that reality.
Truth is never subjective. Truth is Truth. People have different opinions on where the truth lies but there's is an objective reality to anything.
I see you have never taken a Philosophy 101 course. "Truth" is a lot more complicated than you think.
https://old.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/478w0k/is_truth_subjective_or_is_there_objective_truth/
Here the more pragmatic use of truth is being used, which most of the people would agree in its objectiveness. Either the real person did the call or not.
Even in the philosophical concept of truth different schools of thoughts have different views on its objectiveness. Here is a better resource I think.
And I see you didn't understand your philosophy 101 course.
All the ideas we have about this stuff comes from a pre-science era and nothing we discovered backs up what they argued.
That is why Plato can make up another dimension and a psychic connection, that is why Hume could pretend to not know what cause and effect was, that is why Desecrates could think that if he has an idea it has to be true...
Something to consider for a moment. If you are really determined to maintain the stance that truth is subject that would mean this stance is subjective. Hence there must be exceptions, but your stance allows none. Any statement of the effect that statements are never fully true is going to produce contradictions.
That's not what Descartes said, by the way.
"I think therefore I am" was all about "I know I must exist, because I'm here to think about it". It wasn't about "if I think something it must be true".
In Discourse he sets about trying to establish what things you can know for sure, vs which things are subjective (and could just be a trick of the mind or an illusion). He establishes the first principle that the one thing he knows is definitely true is that he is an entity that is capable of thought (because otherwise, who else is doing all this thinking?) and therefore at the very least he must exist, even if nothing else does.
If you're of the position that truth isn't subjective, "Cartesian doubt" should be right up your alley. Trust nothing until you can prove it! Not a bad position for a philosopher to take.
I read his work thanks. He continues and "proves" god by mental inference.
The whole thing is backwards anyway. The physical world is the thing you should most be sure mental constructs the least. I am a lot more confident that if you light me on fire it will hurt than I am that there is no largest prime number.
Existence exists, and we can measure it. Theories are just models with explanations, laws are models without. Our thoughts are just as physical as anything else. Abstractions are symbols that sometimes match the real world. And I have no idea why nearly all of us fight so hard to not accept the universe as it presents itself to be.
Based, destroy the infantile mind of the materialist objectivist determinist this space is reserved for more future jargon tech-bro.
Truth is subjective precisely because I can say that the sky is red, and I will be correct. If you ever needed any help understanding that then you should've been paying attention to the difference in reporting between ukraine and gaza right now. It's not just "spin" either, I can plague you with misconceptions, turn you into a conspiracy theorist, warp what you think is really important in life. I can bullshit you, I can call a horse a chair, and I will be correct. Do you understand why there's no truth now?
Also fucking weird that the counterargument to "government issued crypto ID" is "well, we don't want the total death of objective fact, do we?". those two things definitely seem connected, those seem related. Definitely seems as though we couldn't just use another adversarial bot to run checks on whether or not any given thing is manufactured, entering into in a perpetual propaganda arms race that corporations and those with money and power are always going to win, in an unregulated and dystopian modern internet. All of which is what's already fucking happening. Seems like the solution to that would just be to double down on the police state tracking, which I would expect to be something that has concrete repercussions on the powerful, and never the common man, of course.
Why do we live in hell?
I already have to send photos of my id or passport for all kinds of services, so it wouldn't really be that different from doing that, just less inconvenient. Like, delivery services ask for a photo of your id.
I have never had them ask for one. I could see them doing that if I went to pick up a package they were holding but I haven't had to do that.
Maybe it's because I get alcohol delivered at some point. I think it's the same thing though, when something needs online verification the workaround right now is to just send a photo of id.
The "government backed" part is ostensibly about a government setting up the framework and like, requiring it be used for official documents.
It wouldn't be too hard to stick a private signing key on say, your driver's license / ID / passport, for instance.
It's a complex issue, though, that sits on how much you trust whoever runs the system at some point.
Didn't know where in the tread to reply.
This is being worked on from multiple angles.
In the us apple, Google, Microsoft ++ are working on a common framework for this. (Shocking who are working on this in the us)
The EU has a citizens digital wallet program for the same purpose. These programs are also collaborating so that certificates and proof of personhood/citizenship etc can be exchanged between various actors.
The EU model leans heavily into privacy and user control of data, where you as an individual decides with whom to share your credentials, proof of personhood, etc.
This would lead to many possibilities, like for instance being able to confirm digitally prescriptions for medicine across borders, so you can easily get your medication even if you are traveling in another country, without having to spend time and energy getting signed paperwork send back and forth.
The most simple form of this would be that the system simply verifies that yes, you are indeed a human individual. But can be expanded to confirm citizenship, allow you to share your medical data with institutions, confirm diplomas and professional certification etc.
PGP already exists 🤷♂️
PGP isn't tied to a specific person though.
I'm starting to come around to the idea of gov't backed crypto ID, but I am very worried about the potential abuse of that system
I am fine thanks.
It’s tied to an identity. You can sign your message with your PGP key.
Yes, but it's not Sybil resistant. Anyone can make as many PGP Keys as they want.
What is really needed is the ability to sign messages proving:
This is all possible with ZK cryptography today if you have a trusted data source for the key storage. Governments might be able to set something like this up, but that comes with a lot of privacy concerns. There are other projects like WorldCoin, Idena, and Proof of Humanity that attempt to do this in a decentralized way, but they've all had issues with adoption
How about we find whoever did this and throw them in jail for fraud? You know, deterring crime like the law is supposed to do?
Laws do next to nothing to deter crime
So that means we shouldn't have any?
What a leap, Batman!
Dunno if this is domestic or not. Would be hard to do anything if it's a foreign attack.
Yeah, we have all the tech already. PKI exists. Just issue a white house certificate and use that to sign official stuff - documents, press releases, videos. They CAN control their narrative if they wanted to. It just takes someone near the top who understands technology.
Wouldn't have stopped the fake phone call, though...
There's already a system for it. But to roll that out to everyone would be an administrative nightmare. And tbf, the system of digital certificates is not exactly "clean." There are always issues.
I agree that it would be great to have that, but it just doesn't seem feasible. Perhaps a different system needs to be created.
The people who fall for shit like this don't know what any of that means or would understand it if you tried to explain it to them
Sure, that works.. If you either change the entire american telecommunication system, and cut it off from the rest of the world.. or change the entire worlds telecommunication system.
But you're not going to get any of those, Which means your cryptographic phone system will have to be backwards compatible, which means skeevy fucks can continue to do this shit.
Isn't this the only part of this that's really important? If you can see me in real life, if I can give you a cryptographically secure way to check whatever I'm sending you in the future, badda bing, mission success. It's only a problem if my code becomes compromised on my end, leaked or something. It requires faith that your friends won't get compromised, but that's pretty much going to be true of any system you might devise there. That's not the job of cryptography, or some document the government has, that's just the job of your own personal security practices to make sure you're not giving around codes and passwords willy nilly. I don't understand why this really needs to be tied to the government or to specific people at all.
Doesn't MFA already work? Don't we have a shared code system?
Well then you will have conspiracy theorists to tell you that government backed IDs are fake cause reptilians are controlling them...
Newspapers l, specially tabloids feeds on sensational crap like this
You don’t even need to ID who is sending it, just that the content itself can provide some grounding in an authentic source.
Like if a picture can say that it derives from an original photo captured by a camera signed with Canon’s credentials, and was changed in Photoshop in these specific ways and signed by Adobe…
There is a group working on exactly this. It’s called C2PA.