RE: Will Hardfork 21 Operant Conditioning Prepare You to Accept Social Credit?
I tend to believe they knew upfront the pitfalls of the stake based system. The mining thread (imo) seems to bear out that they wanted the most stake so they could control the system they were creating. Enough that they had a second mining event, cancelling the first as they found themselves not coming into first due to technical difficulties. It isn't difficult to foresee that those with the largest stake could do whatever they wanted within the system parameters to those with lesser stake.
I abbreviated the second quote, as it addressed not only your points, but others who may come here with bad feelings on the upcoming changes. It can all be boiled down to we have the freedom to conduct ourselves how we wish, pre hardfork and post. It is a matter of choice if one allows such things to dictate their behavior.
I do believe that it is possible that this will chase off yet more of the user base, but financially I am not sure it will be harmful to the ecosystem here, and can even envision scenarios where it could be beneficial.
I can appreciate that you (and others) are not fans of the changes. I too am not a fan, despite the affect for me being lessened due to no longer blogging. I will be curious to see if enough leave due to what they believe censorship from flags if they would start their own site of freedom. I have wondered for years now as the complaints of censorship have grown why such a place has not already been put in place, although I suspect in its own way it would resemble an echo chamber too.
Just how much influence does hostile flagging have, and who's done the cost/benefit analysis on it.
This is a good question, however it comes back to the stake based system. If those with the most stake don't want a cost/benefit analysis on it, or have done one and even see that lower ranks will be casualties and are ok with that, then it will be so. In a stake based system, freedom is based on your stake.
The awkward part about the stake based voting system is that it was married up with social media which was something no one else had ever done at the time. It caused the two to become indelibly linked, and resulted in unnatural behavior, i.e., the ability to prevent a perceived incoming value from rewarding a post.
So you can look at freedom in that way if you choose to but then you're overlooking the social media aspect and what freedom is in that regard. At this point, I wonder if mixing the two was smart at all? I know WeKu has a very similar system, but they only have one condenser. Their system has only the upvote button. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if Steem came out with that model.
I think it may have set a better example for the others to follow. I'm not sure how many out there have created similar models so it's difficult to ascertain whether or not it's realistic. One thing is for certain, I wouldn't run around in life, like I'm Caesar and thumbs up or thumbs down stuff. It seems far to simple a way to think and rather bipolar too. Translate the up/down system into an adage from a parallel universe and it would sound a little something like this.
"If you don't have something nice to say, do something mean."
That sort of black and white binary thinking seems destructive at best, and the idea that people might be programmed or encouraged to act in this way; similar to the episode from Orville or Black Mirror's 'Nose Dive', is super disturbing. It wouldn't take long and you could train a whole generation to think this is a completely normal thing to do. People who didn't thumbs up or thumbs down would become heretical weirdos, and like the unscannable persons in idocracy, they'd be feared and loathed.