In 2019 I wrote this paper " #Epistemology in the Cloud"
https://medium.com/@bblfish/epistemology-in-the-cloud-472fad4c8282
which argued using a counterfactual analysis o f #knowled ge developed by Robert Nozick in "#Philosophical Explanations" t hat #central ized systems will lead to the inabili ty to # think.
We start with Nozick's thought experiment [1] of the possibility of Alpha Centaurians having conducted a raid at night on earth and captured you, dear reader, then brought you up and placed your brain in a vat, to make you think you were in front of the screen reading this. This possibility seemed to break down all possibilities of knowledge. Nozick [2] found an answer using counterfactual logic that depends on a distance relation between possible worlds. That world seemed far out in the 1980s and still does to most of us when we are sipping our morning cup of coffee. But what happens if similar problematic worlds become much closer to us? Well, consider this passage from DuskoPavlovic's 2012 paper [3] on the #ManInT he Midd le or #MiM attack:
"In the MM-attacks on authentication protocols, the intruder inserts himself1 between the honest parties, and impersonates them to each other. MM is the strategy used by the chess amateur who plays against two grandmasters in parallel, and either wins against one of them, or ties with both. MM is also used by the spammers, whose automated agents solve the automated Turing test by passing it to the human visitors of a free porn site, set up for that purpose [20]. MM is, in a sense, one of the dominant business model on the web, where the portals, search engines and social networks on one hand insert themselves between the producers and the consumers of information, and retrieve freely gathered information for free, but on the other hand use their position in the middle to insert themselves between the producers and the consumers of goods, and supply advertising for a fee."
How much can you know if all your messages go through a MiM who can alter them?
Have we not witnessed in the past 10 years people going crazier and crazier, from the ease with which such messages could be inserted by foreign entities and thought directed willy nilly towards whatever those who paid the most for wanted?
I will need to update my pap er now that #nostr is out since if you sign every note, that changes the argument...
[1] that's what we philosophers do! we sit in labs with large comfy chairs and build thought experiments!
[2] Also known as the author of "Anarchy, State and Utopia" which I have not read, but if you push me here, I could put some time aside for it... Leave a note :-)
[3] "Tracing the in the Middle Attack in Monoidal Categories" Dusko Pavlovic
https://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6324
bblfish /
npub1m0…nn0rv
2023-08-20 07:40:25
Author Public Key
npub1m0wym3srryqtkt9uuev43arglv4083p9redzep85ayurv53xsmas9nn0rvPublished at
2023-08-20 07:40:25Event JSON
{
"id": "3f674511ae23abdd6d5d6a2114134ae819b4f598debb830e5b730b1b75733340",
"pubkey": "dbdc4dc6031900bb2cbce65958f468fb2af3c4251e5a2c84f4e93836522686fb",
"created_at": 1692510025,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"t",
"Epistemology"
],
[
"t",
"knowled"
],
[
"t",
"Philosophical"
],
[
"t",
"central"
],
[
"t",
"ManInT"
],
[
"t",
"MiM"
],
[
"t",
"nostr"
]
],
"content": "In 2019 I wrote this paper \" #Epistemology in the Cloud\" \nhttps://medium.com/@bblfish/epistemology-in-the-cloud-472fad4c8282\nwhich argued using a counterfactual analysis o f #knowled ge developed by Robert Nozick in \"#Philosophical Explanations\" t hat #central ized systems will lead to the inabili ty to # think. \nWe start with Nozick's thought experiment [1] of the possibility of Alpha Centaurians having conducted a raid at night on earth and captured you, dear reader, then brought you up and placed your brain in a vat, to make you think you were in front of the screen reading this. This possibility seemed to break down all possibilities of knowledge. Nozick [2] found an answer using counterfactual logic that depends on a distance relation between possible worlds. That world seemed far out in the 1980s and still does to most of us when we are sipping our morning cup of coffee. But what happens if similar problematic worlds become much closer to us? Well, consider this passage from DuskoPavlovic's 2012 paper [3] on the #ManInT he Midd le or #MiM attack:\n\n\"In the MM-attacks on authentication protocols, the intruder inserts himself1 between the honest parties, and impersonates them to each other. MM is the strategy used by the chess amateur who plays against two grandmasters in parallel, and either wins against one of them, or ties with both. MM is also used by the spammers, whose automated agents solve the automated Turing test by passing it to the human visitors of a free porn site, set up for that purpose [20]. MM is, in a sense, one of the dominant business model on the web, where the portals, search engines and social networks on one hand insert themselves between the producers and the consumers of information, and retrieve freely gathered information for free, but on the other hand use their position in the middle to insert themselves between the producers and the consumers of goods, and supply advertising for a fee.\" \n\nHow much can you know if all your messages go through a MiM who can alter them? \nHave we not witnessed in the past 10 years people going crazier and crazier, from the ease with which such messages could be inserted by foreign entities and thought directed willy nilly towards whatever those who paid the most for wanted?\n\nI will need to update my pap er now that #nostr is out since if you sign every note, that changes the argument...\n\n[1] that's what we philosophers do! we sit in labs with large comfy chairs and build thought experiments! \n[2] Also known as the author of \"Anarchy, State and Utopia\" which I have not read, but if you push me here, I could put some time aside for it... Leave a note :-)\n[3] \"Tracing the in the Middle Attack in Monoidal Categories\" Dusko Pavlovic\n https://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6324",
"sig": "17919995e831bc07d8c7ca51f2ba027ecfdc1a9fcfc7a8be4b2a1330ff24009949bcb7355113054ec1b313968e2e2e62512b79d71c08556bc6027519172256b1"
}