I’m all in favour of this, and I try to do keep people accountable for what they say, even though I often end up getting insults for it.
But to judge in court someone for spreading lies you would need to know the objective truth, and setting truth into stone would compromise science’a ability to propose radical new ideas.
I think there are ways to do this without compromising science, though. But they are all susceptible to the 50% attack, made famous by cryptocurrencies. If you rely on a community to certify what truth is, you are exposed to a potential attack where a powerful enemy buys more than 50% of the network to make them say their lie is true and the actual truth is a lie.
I don’t have a solution for that yet.
I’m not saying that the idea is perfect by any stretch, but we also can’t be beholden to what ifs. If we give up before we try because we might see failure down the line, then we might as well just start drinking bleach to cure our illnesses. Science can be proven. Mask mandates weren’t a hypothesis. Vaccine efficacy isn’t a hypothesis. If we get to where people in power are buying facts and we can no longer prove a truth in court, then we are beyond “mis-information” already.
I’m all in favour of this, and I try to do keep people accountable for what they say, even though I often end up getting insults for it. But to judge in court someone for spreading lies you would need to know the objective truth, and setting truth into stone would compromise science’a ability to propose radical new ideas.
I think there are ways to do this without compromising science, though. But they are all susceptible to the 50% attack, made famous by cryptocurrencies. If you rely on a community to certify what truth is, you are exposed to a potential attack where a powerful enemy buys more than 50% of the network to make them say their lie is true and the actual truth is a lie. I don’t have a solution for that yet.
I’m not saying that the idea is perfect by any stretch, but we also can’t be beholden to what ifs. If we give up before we try because we might see failure down the line, then we might as well just start drinking bleach to cure our illnesses. Science can be proven. Mask mandates weren’t a hypothesis. Vaccine efficacy isn’t a hypothesis. If we get to where people in power are buying facts and we can no longer prove a truth in court, then we are beyond “mis-information” already.