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RE: Call for crabs / Where have all the minnows gone
The blockchain also gives stakeholders the ability to redistribute rewards using downvotes. If someone acts only in their own interest, and not that of the other stakeholders, we can use our stake to redistribute the rewards.
Everything they take out isn't available for others, who could become the hodlers of tomorrow.
What you say is true from a technical perspective. What disturbs me is that STINC added reward disputes to the GUI after they realized they couldn’t do anything about the misuse of the flag tool. It was kind of a catch-all reason which allowed them to wash their hands of abuse of the tool. Then, recently, there is this push to normalize the use of flags by changing the GUI again, calling them downvotes and encouraging a culture of negative curation.
This type of negative curation doesn’t exist anywhere in the real world outside of socialist/communist hellholes, and it’s extremely odd behavior to attach to something financial. The more I think about it, the nebulous language in the whitepaper which encourages crabs in a bucket mentality but also discourages it in the same breath; This entire machination seems like a pretty twisted and sick social psychology experiment, and we’re the rats in the cage or the crabs in a bucket if you will.
If you want real proof of brain, you’re going to have to equalize everyone’s vote by socializing the voting power, and I don’t think you’d want that because then you’d be screwed out of the value of your fairly large stake. I mean, you can’t have it both ways; you can’t have proof of brain and wallet disparity at the same time. Let’s say, for example, you hadn’t delegated most of your stake, and you have a 100% VP at 7.71. As far as I’m concerned, this is fine. I don’t know how you came about your SP, and to be quite frank, its none of my business. I have to respect your large stake and what you do with it, but when you do something harmful to me or someone else, that’s where things start to get murky.
The machine of the blockchain is amoral, and it pits people against each other. It didn’t start that way on the GUI level, and I think when investors realize what it’s become, they’re not going to want to invest anymore. There’s a reason why socialism and communism fail every time, and it’s because people start cannibalizing each other, this is both figurative and literal in the real world. How this is represented on the blockchain is with downvoting.
I like how Steem draws creativity out of people, this aspect is very cool. The NewSteem Culture, however, is drawing negativity and envy out of people. The shift which is promoted and pushed from the top down is disgusting. It doesn’t work in the real world, and it will not work in the cyber world. People should have the opportunity to be generous with their stake, but it shouldn’t be some kind of mandate. When you try to coerce investors to behave in a certain way, nobody will want to invest. Then, all you have left is a worthless token that fails to re-launch.
I think what you'll end up learning is that the blockchain is a safe place to prove yet again that socialism fails every single time. Imagine if we had these nebulous rules which seemingly contradict each other in real life. Sure, you can go out to start a business and do business things, become successful, yadda, yadda, yadda. But if somebody doesn't like what you're doing or becomes envious of you, they can steal your shit.
The reason this doesn't work in the real world is that people end up killing each other. Fortunately, none of this will happen in the blockchain world, but I think you will see this business model fail, and how much proof do people need that this communist utopia can and will never exist. Encouraging a culture of sharing, value exchange, content curation, and appreciation is one thing. But this klepto culture of downvoting and the like, that'll be the end of Steem.
Content curators and investors alike will read the writing on the wall, and they'll get out while the getting is good. Then all you'll have left is a bunch of ne'er-do-well reward poolice officers/witnesses that'll continue to run the blockchain at a net loss as they bicker endlessly about the inflation pool as they fight over Steem that's only worth a fraction of a cent. That's your HF21 future in a nutshell.
Negative curation is part of the whitepaper, and it's even quoted in this post. Steemit didn't have to add anything later, and it surely doesn't need to be justified.
Downvotes were called downvotes before they were flags, that was renamed because they were used for disagreement with opinions. Turned out flags was a bit too harsh, thus it was reverted again. If you tell history, make sure you know all of it.
Constant self upvoting is harmful to everyone else, as the pool is shared between all users. Downvotes are not harmful, as they don't take anything away, they just give it back to the pool to be distributed differently.
By what you write, you seem to be in favour of a pure PoS model. Why would we need content then? There's hundreds of coins where you get your share of the inflation based on your stake.
Proof of brain can work to a certain degree. If the community makes it so. If not, we can save a lot of overhead and just ditch the content and rewards.
That'd surely help with attracting more people, look how all the PoS coins are thriving, especially those with a high inflation! /s
(ps screw autocorrect)
Yes, you are correct, this is why I said:
Page 14 of 32 starting at the VOTING ABUSE header directly contradicts page 15 of 32 which in summary says:
Pages 14 through 15 and the beginning of page 16 are written in such a way where the language can be interpreted in two different ways. One which highlights negative curation and the other which says; Eliminating "abuse" is not possible. So what you end up with is almost a psychological optical illusion where you see either a young woman or an old witch, and so you're given a choice. You can do normal human behavior, live and let live and accept the fact that eliminating abuse is not possible and shouldn't be the goal. Or you can act like a crustation whose about to be boiled alive and try and make sure that everyone goes down with you.
Steem's a pretty impressive weird fucking thing, whatever it is. But I'll be damned if I'm going to adjust my behavior to act accordingly to an analogy that is historically used to illustrate one of the most negative traits in human psychology, and crustaceans alike, that being crab mentality. Just imagine, this weird and strange new invention which combines social media with blockchain tech has convinced you that for the greater good of itself, you should act like a desperate creature whose about to be boiled alive and ensure that harm comes to others. That is some trick, and it's probably on a par with what cordyceps fungi does to ants, or what the ministry of love did to Winston Smith.
If steem is the bucket and we are the crabs, and people are trying to recoup what they lost in what may arguably be at this point considered a shit coin. Why not just let them do what they need to do? Not everyone is going to come here for the same reasons. Maybe I do lean a little towards proof of stake, but steem allocates power based on stake, but I can't imagine that anyone bought in just for the power to hold others down. Can you? So there is a proof of stake element baked into this, let's call it power of stake. You can be a Mother Teresa or a Hitler with your stake power, or a schizophrenic cross between the two. One thing is for certain.
You seem to be doing this because people aren't subscribing to proof of brain "as they should be," but we've just determined that proof of brain is impossible. In a world of sock puppets and stake disparity, proof of wallet remains king. I think they need to rewrite the whole whitepaper, or possibly rewrite the code into something that's a little bit more harmonious.
But it's true, it's not possible to fully eliminate it. It can be minimized though. Why is this nebulous?
And yes, of course it is a (social) experiment. That's part of what makes it interesting :)
I don't see it as the negative as which crab mentality is seen usually, but a positive spin to it. It's nice in the bucket :P
I still believe in the potential of rewarding good content. That hasn't worked well with the system we had, so it has to be improved. If someone doesn't think that's possible, they should just accept that they made a bad investment and cut their losses, instead of making sure that those who try steering the ship around will fail.
I suggested to give those who prefer PoS the possibility to opt out of the reward pool. That didn't gain much traction, instead we have the EIP. So I support that.
If you invest in stocks and the company goes a direction you don't like, do you get out or try to sabotage the company?
Nebulous because it seems hazy, vague, indistinct, or confused. The whitepaper appears to suggest two different paths in the same breath. When I say social experiment, I mean on par with Milgram’s experiment. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if this isn’t someone’s long-term design to study mob psychology and how it relates to those that do not participate. What makes people adopt one behavior over another, or which percent of people will choose the right path over the left? I’m sure there are lots of invaluable data that can be gleaned, and perhaps one day and AI will read the chain, derive insight, and get an AI equivalent to a chuckle from it. As for now, the joke is on us, unless or until someone can make a video selling the product honestly and in a way that makes it an appealing investment. As for your last question, you’d try to get out before getting boiled alive, just like any crab in a bucket would. But then again, everyone is doing that, and most people are kicking themselves for not bailing at 12 USD. In the end, if Steem does not shape itself up into an appealing product, I see it as a game of musical chairs.
Calling it a mob is a nice way to discredit people exercising their given rights. It doesn't have any substance in my eyes, as a mob for me implies that they exceed their rights.
That's valid for 99% of crypto "investors"
I see we won't find a common ground. All that's left for me is wonder why people who fundamentally disagree with the ideas written out in the whitepaper invested in the first place, or didn't get out when they had the chance at a profit of several hundred percent.
Blaming those who want to improve the system to work closer to the initial idea, because they want to recoup losses/have additional gains on the backs of current and future investors is nothing I would feel sympathy with.