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Comment by p1necone | Hacker News Reader

This seems like a hilariously bad idea. You're basically building a system where whichever group has the most money to burn gets to decide the "truth". I would love you to change my mind though.

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Whoever stakes the most tokens also has the most to lose. There is other side of the moderation - anyone can challenge incorrect data and earn tokens for their work.

Currently, there is no support for moderation at scale. Projects like OpenStreetMap offer a valuable resource, but struggle to maintain quality at scale. This is a relevant article: https://blog.emacsen.net/blog/2018/02/16/osm-is-in-trouble/.

With DIRT's model, we want to create a way to build data sets with a focus on accuracy that can scale.

Climate change will quickly be proven as completely fake

…by big oil's dollars.

Climate change is an interesting example. An example of a DIRT registry, would not be the question of "is climate change real". It's unclear what defines "real". Rather a registry could be a list of the average air temperature in a city over time.

Average air temperature according to whom? How do you verify the values, recorded ostensibly from sensors, were ever measured? How do you verify historical data for everything pre-2018?

Ground truth can be constrained statistically.

Don't take me wrong. I don't really see the value in inventing a truth bureaucracy that rewards participants in fake money. This dirt system is just silicon valley, in it's typical naivety, trying to reinvent propaganda.

Maybe if there was also very aggressive human moderation to remove anything that was even remotely emotionally/economically charged. Basically just stick to information about math and science (and even then you'd have to avoid political bugbears like global warming or anything to do with economics).

Avoiding politics is basically impossible, everything is political to some degree. For example, even if you just focus on the most boring maths, is it overwhelmingly just male mathematicians' work cited? That's political.

> For example, even if you just focus on the most boring maths, is it overwhelmingly just male mathematicians' work cited? That's political.

No, it's not. (One might either attribute a political cause to it or seek a political correction for it, but inherently it's social but not directly “associated with the governance of a country or other area”.)

If we're actually resorting to quoting dictionary definitions then you missed ~80% of the page you copy pasted that from.

Try "The principles relating to or inherent in a sphere or activity, especially when concerned with power and status."

Regardless, I'm sure you understood perfectly well what the other commenters were meaning by "political", you're just arguing semantics.

(edit: sorry for the snark, but this is such a common, easy way to derail discussion without really adding any substance so I try to call out stuff like this when I can.)

> Try "The principles relating to or inherent in a sphere or activity, especially when concerned with power and status."

The definition I cited is the one that fit the clear upthread use; yes, the are other senses of “political”, but to configure them is equivocation.

Truth is genderless. Historic gender imbalance in scientific work is only political if you have an axe to grind.

Even the Nazi and Japanese experiments revealed biological truths. But I abhor the source and methods and it is a cardinal sin that many of these scientists were granted amnesty in exchange for full cooperation. Some truths become worth nothing when you know thst they were paved with lies. I don't think there is an easy way to act like truths don't have an associated social and cosmic cost.

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