Will Hardfork 21 Operant Conditioning Prepare You to Accept Social Credit?
Steem is (or was) cool for the most part. Many people who use the platform do so to find authors and content they like. They then read, watch, or listen to said content and enjoy it. It's very similar to the real world. We look for things that are interesting to us, and we pay our attention to it, subscribe, swipe right, or what have you. Arguably, the cultural norms on the "old steem" favored rewarding quality posts. Flagging for ideological reasons was generally frowned upon, and this is because flagging obstructs reward value that is allocated for a specific post.
Few real-world equivalents come close to flagging. In it's most basic form, flagging is an interception in the conveyance of value. In a sense, it is similar to sanctions. Sanctions are a hostile act used to interfere with trade. They are generally done by nation States who wish to act punitively towards others to coerce conformity. Depending on the effect, sanctions are almost always received poorly and sometimes will precipitate war. On a human scale, however, there are not many things that seem equivalent to flagging outside of petty theft.
What I just touched on is a very divisive point. Some of you will avidly agree, while others will passionately disagree, so I think we need to ask ourselves a very important question. Why is it that flagging seems like theft to so many people on the blockchain? I think it is because, in the absence of this hostile act, both patron and content creator can do business with each other. When someone interferes in "their" business, or value exchange, it is seen by many as meddlesome. Not only is it seen as meddlesome, but the recipient of the flag knows that absent the interference, they would've most likely received the value in question.
I know there are intricate philosophical arguments to be made for why flagging is "technically not theft," but it can be hard to take these arguments seriously, that'd be like saying an injured party cannot sue for lost wages because those wages weren't theirs until they got the check, and seeing as how they didn't get a check, there were no wages lost and that right there is circular reasoning. It is a carefully designed argument which is meant to distract from the fact that there is a financially injured party. In the case of flagging, it's the flagger who causes financial harm.
It wasn't your steem until it was your steem, never mind the fact that I was an integral factor in determining this. "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" - said the Wizard of Oz. Yes, this is word wizardry, mental magic, or psychological misdirection if you will. Right now there is a push for a "cultural shift" at Steem. They say that old Steem is going the way of the dinosaur, and the latest trend is "new Steem." Old Steem had flags that were used carefully by most, save for a handful of bad actors. Meanwhile, new Steem heavily promotes active flagging by all members of the community. I guess the line of thinking is that if we all flagged more, everyone's posts will be minutely boosted by some imperceptible fraction.
"Every citizen seems obsessed with engaging in shallow and superficial moral grandstanding so as to appear virtuous and self-righteous." — Dave Cullen in his review of majority rule.
Getting back to the title of this article, Steem has always been like a social credit score system, and this is because of the reputation indicator. However, with old Steem, most people only gave out carrots. They gave carrots to the posts they enjoyed and ignored the content they didn’t. This type of positive reinforcement is a very natural human behavior, and it’s beneficial to praise praiseworthy things. In this sense, old Steem brought the best out of most people. With the new Steem culture, however, flagging is rebranded to downvotes, and people are given access to free flags.
Because of the new tool, you can now either give out carrots to posts you enjoyed, or you can whack the post with a stick. Perhaps the author had a wrong opinion or said something you didn’t like. Maybe it’s your job to teach people what they can and cannot think or say or do. Does this sound at all healthy? If you think it’s healthy for the blockchain, I’d like to know to what degree? I ask because if the benefits are imperceptible, then is it worth doing? Should we try to influence what people say by flagging them because we disagree? I think these are some valid questions that we need to ask ourselves as individuals.
I'm sure some Steemians use the tool responsibly, and that's a slippery slope. I'm reminded of a Harvard Lecture given by Michael Sandel entitled: 'Justice: What's the right thing to do?' It's a simple-sounding question with a surprising amount of complexity. Look at the trolly problem as an example. Imagine a whale who upvotes the low-quality posts they publish, and you have steem power equivalent to theirs. Is it your responsibility to remove the value they assigned to their post? In doing so, is it protecting the blockchain, and if so to what degree? Or at what point are we doing more harm than good? Should we just live and let live?
If a wealthy steemian wants to sell their voting power to people for upvotes, is that the end of the world, or is it the free market at play? How is it any different if they used their voting power on themselves? There seems to be a concerted effort from people who code the blockchain to manipulate human behavior so that people act in the desired way, but is this possible? If so, what are the long-term consequences of these efforts? Is there any blowback, or does the will of the people prevail over the new code with clever workarounds? Whether or not we are aware, people are governed by self-interest. You can try to drum this trait out of people by changing the rules from the top down, however, these things seldom work out as planned. What it ends up doing is interfering with the market, and many times this will result in new and unexpected problems.
There is a maxim which says: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I will not say that steem is perfect, but that maybe it was a flawed system all along. It’s the maths in the coding which dictate the percentage of steem that any one individual can convey. If this number is too high or is incorrect, perhaps it needs tweaking? What I don’t understand is the unnatural behavior that this foreign system, which is three years old now, is bringing out of people. As an example, on the blockchain, we all have superpowers and can see into everyone's wallet. Not only are their wallets transparent but so is their activity on the chain, or what they do with their steem. Now we’ve got to ask ourselves, with these newfound powers are we exercising great responsibility?
There are two ways to look at and answer that question. Some of you think you've become spiderman overnight and have been tasked with punishing "financial evildoers." That is, those who would dare enrich themselves or capitalize off of their steem investment. So that is one way that some people are using their "great power" with "great responsibility." To be quite frank, these people annoy the fuck out of me. Don't get me wrong, I think that they mean well, but what these fellow Steemians need to ask themselves is would they be willing to subject themselves to the same type of scrutiny and nanny state tactics in real life as they do to others on the blockchain? Let he or she that is the paragon of financial morality cast the first stone. If by some black magic, I got queued into the fact that you shopped at Amazon, and that you got a spectacular deal on a new widget that would have otherwise cost you a fortune at the local Ma and Pa shop, is it then my responsibility to take umbrage with the fact that you didn't shop local? I guess what I'm trying to say is, when did it become cool to be that person?
The other way of looking at the great responsibility that x-ray vision affords us is, do we have the fortitude that it takes to treat people the same on the blockchain as we would in real life? If I learned that someone shopped at Amazon, and for whatever reason, I was rabidly against this, I might give them a piece of my mind. What I won’t do is cause them economic harm. I will not steal from them, slash their tires, punch them in the face, TP their house, or ding dong ditch at their front doorstep with a bag of flaming poo. This would be childish and silly, and it in no way respects the autonomy of the other person. Now if I saw this person breaking into someone’s home or assaulting someone, then all bets are off the table. Such a situation requires an intervention, especially if you need to come to the aid of someone in need of immediate help.
Getting back to "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." For some reason, people haven't been appreciating the blockchain, and I think this is because BTC's initial overvaluation created a lot of false expectations about what the value of steem is. After the BTC bubble burst steem was one of the very lucky few that didn't go into the red, and I think that's something special. It shows you that the blockchain has value and that people appreciate it's utility. But some see now as the time to start tinkering and to change the atmosphere a bit. So they drop the nitrogen down to 50% while bringing the oxygen up to 42% because that's a nice round number right? The fine coders decided to keep the argon where it's at because nobody knows what the fuck argon does, and then they take carbon dioxide down to zero, because who needs trees anyway? ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Ultimately, regardless of the will of the culture creators (those who write or promote the new code), we Steemians on an individual basis will decide what the new culture is.
Now If you want to have a nanny state on the blockchain, and get all up in people's business by rewarding demerits to people who don't do it as you do, well then may you live in interesting times.
As for myself, I'd rather pick the path of freedom as opposed to engaging in so-called blockchain environmentalism. I want to see people do what they will with their stake in the same way they might act in the real world. The maths have already been figured out. The reward pool isn't mine to police. "All the base are belong to the maths," and no matter what the coders set the percentages to, there will always be a type of person who will try and capitalize off this.
If by some magic coders can make it impossible to capitalize off of the blockchain, that'd be the day that the investors' bail. I think we all need to be very careful what we wish for because if we get this utopia that some want and are trying to create, then all the smart money is gonna be off the chain, and I don't mean that in a good way. So if you can't default to freedom naturally, and you want to volunteer to be a steem blockchain environmentalist, this is something worthy of your consideration.
There is a symbiotic ecosystem on steem of stakeholders and content creators, they both rely upon each other and this is what made steem. Scare either party off en masse, and the market value will collapse.
Well, I'm still waiting for the community fork.. We dont need any centralized entity to tell us where to go and what to implement..
Most work is already done by the community and as far as I see it on github, in Stinc there is only 1 real / hardcore coder, who does most.. ^^
Also be sure to check out @steemflagrewards @flagtrail and also @freezepeach to neutralize bully flags! :]
Jan
Thanks for the feedback @lugenbaron!
I trust the maths, and am not a reward
poolice officer. So flag rewards isn't 4
me. I do however like the freezepeach
mission and delegate to the project. I
think anyone who is against abusive
flagging should consider doing that.
What investors?
Capital is not only attainable via one particular mechanism. Profiteering and investment are both productive of ROI, but the former does so by destroying a business enterprise, and the latter does so by building a business up in value. Steem has no investors, because extracting value from content via stake weighting is profiteering, and capital gains aren't forthcoming on the platform as a result.
There is no endeavor that isn't constrained by the laws of physics. Code is infinitely mutable, and can be deployed so as to encourage such a variety of behaviour. This is trivially understood. What is not trivial is to ascertain how code will be successful at encouraging or discouraging particular behaviours when a limited number of devs deploy code per their limited understanding in an environment that is comprised of a relatively unlimited number of actors, with relatively unlimited understanding.
Clearly, perfection isn't possible, but that doesn't excuse obvious mistakes. Neither does it encourage physics to forgive failure to rectify error. Physics doesn't forgive.
People, OTOH, all too readily forgive and forget, unless physics makes it impossible.
We'll see tomorrow.
Thanks!
By investors I was referencing people who exchanged
dollars for Steem with the the express purpose to profit.
Yeah, it will be interesting to see how the experiment goes.
This was always a choice. Everyone keeps talking about the modifications they will need to make after the fork, yet everyone will have and always has had the ability to
It is undeniable that the current path is not working, based on the fall of relevance in market cap. I'm not arguing that these changes are what will fix it, but it is obvious those catered to under the outgoing system doesn't appear sustainable.
If some stop posting what some deem quality posts, others will probably step up and fill their shoes. I know for myself I stopped posting about 4 or 5 months ago because it had become like a second job doing the research and such and was not in my best interests. The chain survived. Others are chased off or stop for the same reason I did. The chain survived.
If a way to create a demand greater than supply is found, the chain will stop losing value and probably grow. Maybe to its former level of glory. That demand has been proven to not be achievable catering to authors. More authors are cashing out, not buying in.
I am guessing the flags are an attempt to stop some of that cashing out, especially by authors who post drivel and then bot it up.
Hello, @practicalthought!
You abbreviated my second quote a bit, I said:
I come from a type of freedom-loving people who; just so long as your neighbor isn't violating the liberty of someone else, then you really ought not to nose into their affairs, or try and force them to act in a certain way. It's one thing to express yourself with words, but then it's another thing entirely when actions are taken to influence behavior. This is when things move beyond decorum and into the realm of hostility.
After the first condenser started, there was an unforeseen glitch in the matrix which was quickly discovered by STINC. They learned that abusive flagging will occur and that there is nothing they could do to stop it. For good or worse, that was the nature in the design of the strange new creation they made. After this discovery, they added for a flag reason 'reward disputes' as a catch-all to get everyone to shut up and stop bitching about abusive flagging. It was a clever way to "end the conversation," but it didn't quite solve the problem of abusive flagging.
With a post like this, I'm trying to communicate with Steemians on an individual level to let them know where the culture seems to be going, and allow them to realize they have a choice in how they behave. Just because someone gives you a hammer, and you're bored, or you think you can change the world, doesn't make everything a nail. IMO the expectations that some Steemians have for "saving the blockchain" might be on par with saving earth from global warming.
Just how much influence does hostile flagging have, and who's done the cost/benefit analysis on it. For example with global warming, even if we did destroy all industry (carbon output) in the name of saving a few degrees in temperature is it worth sacrificing the human race for?
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.
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.
This is not true. Stake weighting has been used to extract rewards such that whales received ~90% of rewards. How is that 'catering to authors'?
@freebornangel often refers to the whale experiment, and you can ask him how reducing stake weighted extraction of the vast majority of rewards impacted creators.
You seem to not be aware of the impact of flags on the rewards pool, and how the rewards that have escaped whales' clutches are thereby made available to them for a second try. The most prolific flaggot has been Bernie, whose socks flew more flags than any other group of accounts to date. Have a look at how he profits thereby, self-voting his bots. None of the flags on my account met your speculation as to purpose, since I have never cashed out.
Demand is directly driven on Steem by users, and authors cashing out is not why user retention is below 5% today. It's due to profiteers extracting almost all rewards, and is exacerbated by the ability of flags to censor and demonetize accounts with less substantial stake. It's of note that the vast majority of Steem remains the stake of ninjaminers today, and only the expenditure of huge amounts of fiat to purchase those stakes could prevent that, which very few people could do, and fewer yet (apparently none) would find reasonable.
User retention is key to Steem price, and Steem price is reflecting the dismal retention rate. How halving author rewards, increasing flags by 25% of SP that is extracted from inflation - essentially a tax on rewards, adding a 10% tax for SPS, and decreasing the value of votes potential to the vast majority of users is going to improve retention is not clear.
In fact, it's ridiculously impossible.
We'll see that proved in the next week or two. During the coming crash, please consider how to actually cater to authors, because that's how to increase the price of Steem. If you want some examples, I have posted how this can be done before, and will be glad to reiterate how to do so.
We disagree on this. If it weren't true then there would be much less Steem sitting on exchanges because authors would be buying in creating a demand. Looking not only at current users, but the many who came and left, I feel confident in my belief most never bought one Steem and cashed out whatever they received. I imagine how different things could have been here if the majority that came would have bought in. Looking at some of the more popular bloggers here, several have large stakes (not whale size but decent) and some of them mention it was all earned, none bought. How different the picture would look here if the masses had decided to buy their way into a middle class here.
I fully understand how the flag impacts the reward pool, and how those with the most stake benefit the most from the rewards being returned to that pool. While I would never assert that malicious destruction of lower staked accounts is beneficial in many cases to the growth of the system here, I am not so quick to let the common users off the hook. I interacted with many here that have been of the mindset they would vote others at dust level despite not having to, under the assumption others should pay for dust sweepers if they wanted anything from the vote.
I agree with your assessment this fork will shake up the community, and that many will probably leave. Some will leave that are important to me, and that sucks. But I imagine those who come to milk will outnumber them.
Steem is having a crises in identity. The majority of users here came with no intent on investing in the project, only extracting from it. That is evident by how few are even minnows, how many aren't even close to it. It's easy to point at whales and blame them, but if the masses had come and bought into the system they wouldn't be searching for a community that wants to support the project enough to keep it from falling. They would already be here and it would be reflected in market ranking and price.
My cynicism in the project grew many months ago, and it was the gib me mines now mentality of the masses that hammered it home for me the current structure was unsustainable.
We point to the whales because they have the stake to let steem reward 'good' content as it was designed, but choose not to do so, for whatever myriad reasons.
I'm in favor of the flags because of how they negate abuse.
You do know that the top 10 votes, not voters, votes, takes ~30% of the pool, each and every day?
Very little of the inflation makes it out of the largest hands.
Flags are our defence in the crab bucket of steem.
We can let them sink themselves having 100% of nothing, or we can use our stake to voice our dissent to that plan.
Sad that you would join with the malignant actors, but you gotta do what you do.
Also wanted to mention that the reputation system is broke since the beginning.. and people from everywhere are conditionized into these fake worldviews.
As youve mentioned, for example, the worldview that people need some kinda boss or nanny or idc - or the worldviews of "making business" where it's just about being fooled, realize how much you get fucked and fool others as much as you can (=profit).
Especially (in my opinion) americans are very deep into these worldviews and I also think women are now being manipulated very easily, cuz they wanna be the new businessmans, even though they dont know what real economy would look like..
Superb article, my only question is, who profits from downvotes, and I think we all know who "they" are, greed knows no bounds, so to speak, hence why I withdrew my stake here, whilst it was still worth more than dirt.
Thanks @shepz1! You know, I had that very same thought and assumed that some entity or group might be profiting from that, but I've been told it goes back to the reward pool. I'm not learned enough to understand some of these things on a technical level, but I definitely want to try and research it more before coming to any solid conclusions that something nefarious is afoot. It might just be an attempt to try and shake up the system, I still cannot comprehend how the posts above 20 are now going to be able to earn more, or which part of the maths is funding that aspect.
a friend of mine expained downvoting to me in a way that made a lot of sense. I'm gonna paraphrase what she said and apply it to this post.
when we express our lack of support for a post, it's usually about the information (content) the post contains, the reward the author is getting, or the wording, if it happens to be contrary to the beliefs of a community. for an example, hate speech.
we are engaging in what the free-market calls market forces - how society self-regulates, as opposed to relying on centralized governments to regulate our behavior for us. We regulate each other, and that's how societies and markets work when left alone.
I think the downside to this is social mores and popularity; the prepensity of a society to judge based on personal ethics, likes or dislikes, rather than by unbiased rules of conduct. We are trusting individuals in the community to be fair, which is a hit or miss proposition.
When enough people express their opinion on something in a similar manner, it becomes in affect the "ruling". society will continually respond to this self-regulation -- not all at once, but person by person.
The other downside to this is power, which in the hands of the wrong person is detrimental, especially if they are unstable or hold a grudge.
I think that language is a smooth way to sell downvotes. However, at the same time when someone initiates a market force against a post because they don't like what is said in it, it's hard to not see that as a hostile action. Kind of like, if you got a nice upvote from someone. You might be oh cool so-and-so just gave me a nice upvote. What you're not going to say is, oh cool the market forces smile down upon me. I understand that downvotes are a reality, I just don't want to see people programmed in such a way where they start to act as they did in Black Mirror's nose dive episode, or Orville's Majority rule episode. That would be a very ugly world indeed.
i agree theres a fine line between market force and hostility. its a matter of opinion and ethics. for example someone pasted vitriolic comments in my last post. he got downvoted. is that hostility against him? it sure is. the action said to him, we don't approve of this behavior.
there's also the hostility of someone like coininstant to anything that gets his panties in a twist. is that hostility deserved? not so much. its a very much case by case issue.
i think the uses for downvoting as a market force are needed given the issue with whale circle jerk and bidbot abuse. imho if we dont control corruption, it will eventually ruin the viability of the platform.
I think they should just make a platform, and they probably already have, where the content creator can moderate comments on their posts without involving market forces. This way they kind of have ownership over their respective posts within the realm of that particular condenser. I'm sure at some point someone will make the perfect condenser the will end up drawing in the majority of people. A lot of people seem to like steempeek, but I haven't tried it out too much yet.
its a good idea, but also not. think of this: if the media could just erase any opinion presented that disagrees with the author, how would we have any meaniongful discourse? it would leave it up to the author to accept the challenge. so miced feelings.
i love steempeak because they are constantly bringing in new features and trying to listen to the users. i highly recommend it, not only for the ability to see multiple token payout, but for the ability to use ten tags instead of five
What it would do is create an illusion of ownership which only works on the condenser who implements it. I say illusion because these comments could be viewed on any other condenser.
ya well basically that already exists in some platforms. basically if you want to be contentious or have enemies, you need a pretty thick skin.
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