Unstoppable Code: The Difference Between Can't and Won't

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Can you give some explanation of the video and why you have posted it. Thanks.

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I’ve seen it.

He’s describing the tension between Governance and Unstoppable Code. It’s from the perspective of Ethereum smart contracts, but can be applied to DApps in general. He asks of developers to not build in fine grained specific exlusion/moderation in the apps (i.e. enable governance). If anything only like a total destruction of the app, to let you implement it again with fewer such modification possibilities.

Summary:

  • ‘Unstoppable code’ is only relevant if there is an actual pressure from somewhere to stop it.
  • What ever is important will be considered bad somewhere.
  • For what ever reason it is actually considered bad, the main arguments put forth to needing to close it down will most likely be: Drugs, Child porn, T3rr0rist funding - varying order of precedence for the needs of the day.
  • When considering Governance for a DApp, it implies a set of rules and laws, and they are always relative. The rules and laws of our society / group, is not the same as that of some other. He exemplifies this by stating that his mere existence is illegal in 4 countries. Our perception of moral is not necessarily the majorities’ perception. A DApp is global from day one.
  • This results in that you either must include all laws or no laws. All laws is not possible since there will be many contradictory ones. So, there’s really only the No law option left.
  • Don’t write the DApps so that you have any possibility to modify it, because Unstoppable code is written because someone wants it stopped.
  • Governance changes Can’t to Won’t. What was once an ability, becomes a responsibility, and when you claim you don’t have that responsibility, it becomes negligence. Criminal negligence.
  • The difference between Won’t and Can’t is 2 life sentences + 40 years in jail.
  • We don’t need Stoppable code, that’s called the Cloud, it’s an international surveillance engine, where you put your data on other peoples computers, so they can rape your privacy every day and make billions, please don’t write that again, and if you do, certainly don’t use this immensely impractical, unscalable and complex thing called blockchain (and the likes), there’s already Microsoft SQL Server to do that.

So, that’s basically the talk. It was good.

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Thanks @oetyng, really helpful.

How does the above square with ‘don’t use blockchain’ at the end?

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I got formatting problems, and gave up on fixing it :slight_smile: . I tried to include a quote in a bullet and got 2 bullets with a quote between.
It’s meant to say: please don’t write stoppable code, we already have that, but if you are you don’t need Blockchain (and similar), we already have simple to use stuff for it. So, the right tools for the job.

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