Why Decentralization Looks Like Idiot-Proof System For Humans?
By Illia Otychenko on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE
“The bigger a crowd, the faster logic melts in it.”
I don’t remember when and why I heard this phrase, but it stuck in my head at a young age. After asking my grandfather what it meant, he smiled and said that I would understand it when I went to school.
Over time, it became obvious that this phrase was a reference to the herd instinct and the statement that masses mostly use patterns and stereotypes. They use them to simplify perception and not to spend extra energy on things that don’t take much interest.
Human competence in the subject under study also plays a large role. We most often use a ready-made pattern of behavior or act by inertia with accordance in our surroundings because of lack of knowledge or unwillingness to ask questions. As a result, we become adepts of existing traditions or adapt them.
Patterns and stereotypes are generally accepted which means that they are unified in a certain sense. And what is unified is logically centralized.
What does this give us in the end? The crowd is a formation that can consist of many clever participants but often acts as a single stupid organism since it is guided by general principles.
Does it mean that centralization makes us stupid?
Let’s try to answer this question and understand why decentralization is so important for people.
What Did Centralization Give Us?
Centralization gave us power, but some people don’t like it, as it is often used for own interests. Centralization gave us a shift of responsibility to others, but some people don’t like it, because it allows someone to impose their services. Centralization gave us quick decision-making, but we’re afraid that because of this, other people’s opinions will not be taken into account.
It seems that the problem is not only in centralization but also in how we use it.
Unfortunately, there is no book “Centralization for Dummies” that could help us curb the power received. People who have been entrusted with big responsibility often make mistakes or consider themselves as overlords.
Thus, the most important thing that centralization has given us is human mistakes. Of course, people make mistakes by themselves but centralization increased the price of these mistakes.
Centralization can be effective when many parts of the system are working properly, but the basic flaws of this concept often manifest during times of crisis. And the problem is that humans really like bringing everything to a crisis situation and provoke them.
When everything works well, centralization doesn’t seem bad to us, but rather convenient. It is convenient to store all the information about ourselves on some kind of Google Drive — our photos, our portfolio, articles, tables; it is convenient to sign up with Google or Facebook and allow the browser to remember the passwords. The more we immerse ourselves in this ecosystem, the harder it is for us to get out of there, because we are shifting more and more responsibility for all this information on other people’s shoulders. This is no longer our concern.
When everything looks fine, it seems to us that this will continue forever. As a result, we begin to shut off bad thoughts and they turn into ghostly nonsense. But when a crisis does happen, we don’t want all our information to be in one place and disappear like a house after a fire.
Especially after the crisis, we most often recall about centralization. Some people start writing articles about it as a problem, start finding analogs that not differ so much. People begin to talk about prevention methods that hardly anyone would use, because they can be inconvenient, unusual, or forced to make a lot of extra movements.
But you shouldn’t imagine centralization as a monster who lures humans with sweet speeches and then slams a trap from which we cannot get out. If you look at it from a different angle, you would say that centralization is funny or even stupid.
Moments When Unity Can Be A Problem
The simplest example of funny and stupid centralization is a film about “universal threat”, for example, aliens. Sometimes you can find a plot where developed alien race arrives on Earth to destroy humanity or for some other reason, but people still come out victorious. And you know what helps us win? Centralization.
Most often, aliens have some kind of mothership or supercomputer that can affect on the entire alien fleet; a superweapon that can be used against aliens; or you just need to kill a leader and whole alien army will die.
I don’t know whether this is the problem that a film lasts only 2–3 hours, or something else, but basically, the protagonists need to make “just one last turn on which the survival of mankind depends”, and that’s all… victory.
And a small pinch of centralization — the most insightful and heroic in these films are most often the inhabitants of the country that produced this film.
The end.
Mostly, you can hear from the others that such kind of films are “pretty interesting but the plot is quite simple, not original, or even stupid”. Anyway, such films seem funny to me, because it is a wonderful allusion to the world in which we live.
I think no one would want to be in aliens’ place. Why did they create a single point of failure like supercomputer? Didn’t they understand that this was a bad idea and everything could go to hell? I think that this idea simply seemed cool and convenient for them. And, of course, no one wanted to believe that a crisis could happen. These aliens are so human, right?
Even if there was no supercomputer, a unified network would still remain. Don’t forget, even things that are considered decentralized can have a certain amount of logical centralization.
Let’s take football as an example. Football is played all over the world, there are many leagues in different countries, independent from each other, but all plays by the same rules (maybe, with negligible differences). You are unlikely to play football against another team if you are not sure that they will play by the same rules as you. You can say, “But football has FIFA that makes changes to the rules.”
Well, here is another example — the Internet. There is no FIFA here, but there are common rules such as Internet protocols. In turn, the Internet is a unified network that is highly interconnected, despite some features in each country and company.
Probably people who were attacked by WannaCry and realized the essence of unity felt like aliens from the film “Independence Day” (1996) after virus uploading and disabling the shields.
I wonder what people would feel if AWS repeats Lehman Brothers’ fate?
So, yeah… if we take into account the human tendency to bring the situation to a crisis, we can only wish good luck with a unified currency, unified government, and other unified things. The main thing is not to forget then to blame evil centralization for everything.
Poka-yoke For Human Nature
Although the masses can be stupid and easy to manipulate due to the impact on unified patterns of the behavior, they still have tremendous power. If you combine this power with amazing technological capabilities of the 21st century, it could be a recipe for disaster. How can we protect ourselves from our own mistakes?
Perhaps the creation of various decentralized systems can help us. They are less likely to indulge human nature than centralized systems; they may be less convenient; they minimize the possibility of shifting responsibility to other participants in the system; they are more resistant to hasty decisions. It’s some kind of limiter in a paper cutting machine which is created for not allowing to cut off a finger accidentally. It was designed to prevent such an outcome.
However, Murphy’s law claims that “nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool”. And we are very talented in this.
As Robert Heinlein said:
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
Therefore, it is quite difficult for us to artificially create a truly decentralized system with idiot-proof design.
Maybe cryptocurrencies can be called as one of these attempts because they had or still have high barriers to entry. This decentralized idea with logical centralization (consensus) is increasingly surrounded by centralized elements: exchanges, wallets, regulators, mining pools, companies, and others. This development is logical and convenient, but as the above-mentioned film lovers would say, “This plot is quite simple, not original, or even stupid.”
Everything looks like cryptocurrencies want to repeat the success of the Internet because they are moving in a similar direction. Seriously? Is that the point? The Internet has partly become something it was initially struggled because of our centralized thinking and desire for convenience.
Are you sure you want the same outcome for cryptocurrencies? Maybe we should also look for a more original way, even though it will take some time? If the repetition of the Internet’s success is not the ending station but only a temporary transitional stop before creating a truly decentralized system, then this already sounds more intriguing.
But how do we get such ending of the story? Probably in order to create a decentralized network for people, it shouldn’t have people at intermediate stages during interaction with the network. After all, as history shows — where people are, there is centralization. The designer of such a system may also not be a human.
Price of Idiot-Proof Design
I’m not sure that creating a truly decentralized idiot-proof system is feasible. I only know that if you want to create a centralized idiot-proof system, it should be clear who manage the decision-making process — a person or a system.
One of the most popular centralized idiot-proof designs is that people will have to abandon decision-making altogether to implement this idea. The designer will create the conditions for preventing what is considered an idiotic mistake.
For example, when parents buy plug socket covers they want to protect their curious children. They are afraid because babies can act without realizing the consequences. Parents just don’t want their children to be killed by electrical outlets. Someone would even call it care. I’ve met such parents.
There is one ordinary thing that can be scary — parents decided for the children what is best for them. And children may not aware that there is something outside the plug socket covers.
Of course, children grow up and guess about everything, but imagine that this is an invariable process — babies remain, babies, parents don’t tell them about sockets and use plug socket covers. Imagine a system that knows you better than you do. The system that knows which sockets you want to put your fingers in. The system that makes decisions for you. Care, right?
No ability to make “independent” decisions, no serendipity, conformity to certain designs — this is the price we can pay for reducing human mistakes that can hurt millions of people. Is this an equivalent exchange? Are we ready to make this sacrifice? I think this is one of the most important questions that we will ask in the next few decades.
A lot of people would say that this is similar to dystopia. Because making decisions is what human do all the time. Constantly. Having taken away this, will we be less human?
On the other hand, everything can come down to domestic cat life. You are looked after and your toilet is always cleaned; you are fed, bathed, petted. And you have all of that just for not biting the wires and not dropping flowers from the windowsill. You don’t need to decide anything, just live. Someone can say that it’s a dream.
Perhaps decentralized idiot-proof system would also have a decision-making dilemma. Sometimes the existence of a choice is more important for human, rather than a chosen option. We don’t like invisible walls even when their presence is justified.
One way or another, the most important is who will design such systems (no matter centralized or decentralized) and for what purpose they will use available technologies. After all, technology is a knife, and only you decide how to use it — cut a tomato for a salad, or “deal with” another person.
Any utopia can turn into dystopia if the creature who holds the knife has a different perception than yours.
