Spanking Survey Idea

Spanking is an important issue. I want to make sure that everyone I know knows my opinion on it and has an opportunity to learn about it, and I want to ask their opinions. I need a way to ask them, a way to show them evidence, a way to register their answer, and a way to encourage them to ask their friends. I'd like it to go viral without becoming spam, so it should be difficult to ask the same person twice, even if the askers are different. People should be able to see their own answers and the answers of their friends. Maybe they should be able to follow a chain of opinion. But spammers should not be able to harvest email addresses or other personal information en masse.

Here are notes on an idea for a survey.

Identity = email address, but don't reveal the email address. Keep a salted hash?

For each email address, who asked them? Who did they ask? What was their opinion?

Make a big graphic showing how people connect and what their opinions are.

Yelling is next, after spanking.  

Why libertarians should not spank, why liberals should not spank, why conservatives should not spank, why Christians, Muslims, Jews should not spank. What is the alternative to spanking?

The basic system is not specific to the issue of spanking and could be reused for other issues.

I could do this all manually with email, but it would not scale. Email, Facebook, g+, http link.

How can I be sure that an answer claiming an email actually owns that email? Verify like email list subscription.

How to prevent hackers from using bogus email to add idiotic arguments in favor of the opinion they oppose?

How can I limit damage from an email impersonating personal details of another person? What if xyzzy@blackhathacker.com answers the survey as Barack Obama? BO should be able to make it obvious ate not him, or remove the bogosity, but how? Xyzzy's fake answer will not have e right email address associated with it, but it will not display the actual address,, nor will I actually know it. Maybe I should just show when there are duplicate identifiers. Only allow search by email, not by name. One possible opinion is "refused to answer".
Rough plan: talk it over with knowledgeable people, set up generic survey system. Find links that discuss the issues. Get alpha in place. Think about Facebook and g+. Allow people to add arguments for and against, links and rate existing arguments.

Give a list of email addresses, it makes a page of mailto links. Addresses that answered already are grayed out.

Use a variant of listserv, is that scalable enough?

Web page sends email asking for opinion, reply gives opinion. How prevent multiple queries but allow them to change their opinions?

Email address Is all and only id, no names or other. If someone queries a broken email, treat it as new.

People don't want their email address to leak. Do they want their opinion public?

Dave's YQ test: They Never Taught Me this in School

I want to make a web page that quizzes web surfers about useful stuff I learned outside of school. After you answer, it provides links to info supporting various answers. Ideally, visitors to the site could contribute questions, answers, and "research material" of their own, and rate the most interesting threads.

what happened to the cypherpunks?

I hope they all went underground on a darknet, or something. Kinda boring if they just quit.

EFF is still plugging away.

The TOR project is trying to make it possible to browse the web without getting tracked.

In Europe you may be able to vote for one of the pirate parties. We need one in the US - does the LP count?

The crypto project seems to want to pick up the cypherpunk torch.

I2P is an anonymizing network.

News from Bruce Schneier.

crypto.is has an irc channel for discussion of crypto/privacy.

https://www.calyxinstitute.org/

Bitcoin may realize David Chaum's dream of digital cash, but that phenomenon deserves its own post.

Second Realm is an online mini book PDF inspired by TAZ, crypto-anarchy, and agorism, but trying hard to be more practical.

DIYISP

In my ideal internet, I would have my own server and provide email and web hosting services to my family and pals. This server would be connected to the net with a fast connection. I could use my server to encrypt and proxy my access so my ISP can't spy on me.  None of my traffic would be in the clear, with an obvious destination, and even traffic analysis would be difficult. Every person would control her/his own data. My identity would be associated with my home server, to assist in authentication. Lots of other nerds could do the same thing, and share expertise.

So what's stopping me? Cost. Cowardice. Distractions. Priorities.

web of trust instead of lastpass

Why can't/don't we use public key crypto for authenticating on google, facebook, etc., all the web 2.0 services? Instead of all the usual jazz, why don't I just hand out my public key to the various services? It would provide better authentication more securely.

It is inconvenient to have a separate username and password for every service I use. There are various security issues.

One strong implication of using public key crypto: I'd better never lose my private key.

What happened to the cipherpunks and their web of trust idea?
I could make it  so my wife can also unlock my stuff with her private key, or my lawyer, in case of my death.

It would be best if the services themselves accepted public keys for authentication. But we could create a web app or software like lastpass. It would maintain a database of my usernames and passwords with the URLs of the services they match, encrypted with my public key. It could automatically update/randomize my passwords. This sounds so simple, does it exist somewhere already and I don't know?

Belated introduction to comments on UPB

I want to understand Stefan Molyneux's UPB idea. His book defeated me on my first try. I do not yet fully understand it and so I don't know whether or not or to what degree I agree with him. I have decided to write a commentary as I go along in order to clarify things for myself, make note of problems I have, and suggest solutions. I make it my final goal to restate Molyneux's argument in a brief, simple outline form, one that Molyneux would not object to. When I can state his idea clearly, then I can decide whether or not I agree.

I am sometimes tempted to discuss peripheral issues, of which many exist, or to quibble or speculate. I will try to avoid this, or at least admit to it when I can't resist. I intend to restrict the commentary to discussion of Molyneux's central argument, what it means, whether or not it works, and what it might need added or subtracted to make it succeed.

I can't resist making one gripe at this point, since it motivates the commentary. The text of Molyneux's book confuses to me with vagaries, digressions, distractions, and irrelevancies crowding out what seem to me to be the salient points. Perhaps if I continue in a reasonably fair spirit, I will find that these complaints exaggerate the case. I am not optimistic about this. Even if I end up in agreement with Molyneux, I suspect I will continue to think that he failed to express his idea well. Perhaps his long contemplation of this idea brought him too close to it, and he may be forgiven for losing the capability to assume the perspective of a newcomer.

On my own behalf, I apologize for my use of professor-speak. Somehow I can't resist. Perhaps it would amuse the reader to assume I do it with a touch of irony and self-mockery. Probably that is too generous and I am the cartoon rather than its author.

cult of rationality

I want to join an organization that is like AA for irrationality, to try to overcome, to the degree possible, my cognitive biases. Loose organization, no membership, no leaders, few rules, based on face to face meetings. The idea would be to figure out how to live smarter, try to adapt around my biases. Sponsors? 12 steps? Merit badges?

Initiation into this cult requires the candidate for initiation to show that she/he is immune to the manipulations cults use to recruit members and so will never join a cult.

Irrationality is more like an eating disorder than alcoholism. Can one forswear all forms of irrationality, even on a "one day at a time" basis? I suppose it's more reasonable (rational?) to take a "pick the low hanging fruit (if any)" approach.

arguepedia

Like wikipedia, only for arguments, especially political ones. Wild claims, documented claims, conspiracy theories, rebuttals, etc. Ideally, when you encounter the internetwit, you could tell him (usually) "Hey, you're spouting a weak version of , which has been thoroughly rebutted at . Do you have anything to add, something I haven't heard before?" Hard part is, how to prevent it from becoming the magic land of trolls. It would need a very serious reputation mechanism, to keep serious arguments at the top, wackyness off to the side. Do we want one emergent version, or might it show different stuff to you depending on who you trust? You could choose a popular curator, or a group, or curate yourself.

Or it could be a linking protocol. This sort of link implies agreement, that sort implies rebuttal. Maybe my universal web commenting idea will solve this without a specific wiki? Tunable search for comments on this page, supporters, likes, rebuttals, dislikes. What else?

Hackerville

I want to play a game that sharpens my understanding of computer security attacks and defenses and helps me to pick the low-hanging fruit with regard to keeping my data secure. Of course, the internet itself is just such a game. But the action variance is too high (too boring until it is too exciting, and not in a good way). I want to play a lower stakes game that teaches me how to play the real game (on defense) as safely as is reasonable.

Why aren't people trying to sell me more software for this purpose? The antivirus companies are there, but they hardly count. I saw a crazy commercial on TV a few weeks ago, I didn't actually feel tempted to buy, but I was pleased that there's at least a market for security for home PCs. I think their deal was they have you go to some web site, and it scans and does whatever. Not sure if/how it differs from antivirus.

universal web comment protocol needed for tunable search

Email and the web triumphed by defining open decentralized protocols that in principle anyone with a computer could use, and still can. Unfortunately, they are a bit high maintenance, so most people do not run their own server with a direct connection to the internet backbone. Most use an ISP. The ISP can spy on them.
Web 2.0 enabled crowdsourcing. We contributed to the construction wikipedia.
Web 2.0 deprecates protocols. Google, facebook, twitter etc. capture our comments and wall off our/their content from the rest. Every web site wants you to get a username and password to make content for them. AOL's walled garden strikes back from the grave! Governments like China love to target the centralized data vaults. Mark Zuckerberg is the devil. He wants to own our data. Faceless... bookless.
We need a truly decentered protocol for commenting and collaborating. I should be able to publish comments on anything, and find useful comments on anything, one system everywhere. Wikipedia should be like a torrent, a truly decentralized peer-to-peer document perpetuated by usage. Similarly with Google's web index. Facebook is just training wheels for the web.
If anyone came up with a better search paradigm than Google's could they resist becoming another Google? Can the web return to its internet roots, or is there no turning back?
Diaspora*, Identi.ca, Friendica, tent, and the open microblogging standard are Daviding against the web Goliaths. I guess there is still some hope.

Why did delicious fail? My comments should be on my server in a peer-to-peer network, and searchable from google or any search engine. I should be able to comment on any URL or URI. Authentication based on public key crypto web of trust.

I should be able to tune my searches on google depending on who I consider an expert. If you are my only expert, stuff you like would top my search results, stuff you ignore would be in the middle, and stuff you dislike would be at the bottom. Or I could mark you as an anti-expert - stuff you dislike goes to the top. Or I have multiple experts, and their attitudes vote on my search results.

Google had the right idea - people's use of the web should self-generate the rankings of pages. But because both humans and bots inhabit the webosphere, this didn't work out. Can we fix this with pubkey crypto/web of trust and tunable search? It doesn't matter if x is human or a bot if I can make x an expert or antiexpert. Otherwise we need a turing test or captchas.

Bots may end up with even better reputations than some humans, by aggregating humans, or by evaluating mechanically. Biz model for bloggers?

Reverse reputation lookup - who rated this page highly? Who uses this page a lot?