Nick Szabo  🔑

Don't confuse licenses and government cards with identity

Interestingly, while I think it's trivial to do almost anything (included law enforcement & courts) work (better!) without a violent illegitimate government, full identity is one of the things I have an hard time imagining as provided by free lawful societies/markets.

Specifically, while you can easily check that 2 ephemeral entities are representing the same continuous local Identity in a specific game (nyms), the opposite (globally proving you are NOT the same guy behind many sybils) is almost always impossible w/o violence.

Why do you need to prove this?

Voting once per person. Receiving subsidies once per person. Not being included into a sex offender registry. Basically just modern statist bullshit. That's why I don't think global identity is actually a good thing to save.

"Voting once per person" is often used as an excuse for the need for identity. Yet: a) It isn't actually a big problem in most elections b) Apathy and disenfranchisment are the big problems. c) Can be solved conclusively with simple tech (indelible ink on index finger)

People voting multiple times is arguably a form of serial disenfranchisement... The real question, however, is why people should have an equal say in the first place.

I moderately disagree on some of those aspects, and contend that self-owned identifiers + signed attestations will make this whole situation measurably better.

Identity does not matter. For all intents and purposes it's a misnomer. The reputation does. It's only the history of records that could be uniquely claimed that is valuable. It may be semantics, and identity is a better marketing term, but the endgame is records, methinks

I think you're assuming a reductive definition of identity that's different than the common one in our community. Your identity is the aggregate of all-things-you, including reputational imprints created when interacting with other entities in the world, both digital and physical

At its most literal extreme, identity is a physics construct: the total differential in state resulting from your existence in the universe, composed of all 1st + N Order effects produced by all your particle interactions, from conception beyond death (eg: body fertilizes plants)

I hear you. I am thinking of a practical use of identity. E.g. claiming that I am Bill Gates would be only practical if as a result I had access to his bank account. Claiming that I am @csuwildcat would be practical if I got access to your twitter, etc

1/ Identity is fundamentally based on trust. Identity is always issued by an authority, family, friends, employer and so on. A proof of identity (like a driver license) is only valid for people that trust the issuer of the proof.

What's worse is the fact that it's been 14 years of bringing the Real ID act into fruition. There was a reason most states disapproved of it for so long, as it basically is a Draconian 'show-your-papers', anti 4th amendment act.