I ask because (yes as someone who has dabbled in crypto and also respects the generally valid views of the haters) this stuff isn't going away. For many use cases, love it or not, it works and will be used by some?
I think the generalized argument here is -- if you mange to secede from the state and become a sovereign, it's better to have a nuclear bomb to back it up. Or maybe not let too many people know you are one until you do.
> Another faction – the faction most associated with bitcoin and subsequent cryptocurrency projects – rejects the role of the state altogether, and seeks to replace states (and state-regulated institutions like courts and banks) with mathematics. Rather than asking courts to interpret contracts, we can put our trust in self-executing "smart contracts," and rather than asking banks to safeguard our financial integrity, we can use cryptographic software to ensure that money only moves when the person it belongs to tells it to.
So he's saying there is a split between those who believe the state and the rule of law are essential tools of freedom, and those who believe technology can provide its own law and guarantees without any need for the state. None of that is incompatible with the EFF being a libertarian project.
And your confusion derives from…what? When he explains this, you feel the correct response is basically "nuh-uh"?
> But what do you do if you already live under tyranny? The rule of law is a great defense, but cryptography alone can't bring about the rule of law. What is the role of technology in this foundational struggle?
My colleague Moti Yung has studied this and there are some surprising results
https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/639
> Anamorphic Encryption: Private Communication against a Dictator
...
> In this work, as a technical demonstration of the futility of the dictator’s demands, we invent the notion of “Anamorphic Encryption” which shows that even if the dictator gets the keys and the messages used in the system (before anything is sent) and no other system is allowed, there is a covert way within the context of well established public-key cryptosystems for an entity to immediately (with no latency) send piggybacked secure messages which are, in spite of the stringent dictator conditions, hidden from the dictator itself! We feel that this may be an important direct technical argument against the nature of governments’ attempts to police the use of strong cryptographic systems, and we hope to stimulate further works in this direction.
PaulHoule•1h ago
(1) Didn't all the people who were into crypto get into Claude Code instead?
or
(2) I tried to tell them. They didn't listen. Now they're going to die.
?