ricksharp

(I apologize for the long post. I hope it is thought provoking nonetheless.)

I think it is useful to consider the difference between "Who made this?" and "How was this made?"

As a coder, when I see a program that achieves something I didn't know was possible, it makes me very interested in how it was accomplished. I say, "Great job, that is awesome. How did you do that? Where is the source code?"

In the same way, I see the complexity of life: the required components and all the intricate processes (Search for ""Inner Life of a Cell" on Youtube, it's really amazing).

I try to comprehend the level of complexity and I quickly realize that even Scientific Notation cannot express it appropriately.

So, when I appreciate the Creator and say, "Well done, that is insanely awesome!" I also say, "How did you do that?" "How was that made?" "How does this work?" "What can I do with it?" "Can I hack it to do something else?"

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As far as complexity of faith, the difference is a matter of simple set theory:

Define 2 Sets:

- All things that are made (the Universe) (U)

- All things that are not made (the Eternal) (E)

You have stated that it requires more faith to believe that there are 2 sets (U,E). However, it could be argued that absolutely denying the possibility of the existence of one set (E) requires a stronger choice of faith.

Also, the 2 sets (U,E) makes sense to me, but I see a contradiction in the single set (U only).

It's simple logic:

If (U only) is the set of all things that are made, then the question begs to be answered: "Where did it come from?"

If (U,E), then the answer is obvious: The set of all things that was made (U), came from the set of things that were never made (E).

I often hear: "Ok, where did E come from then?" Well, by definition E was not made. E is not U.

Also, beyond basic logic, if we consider the theory of the big bang which fits with out measurements of an infinitely accelerating expanding universe: The big bang itself points to a specific point in time where the Universe began (or at least was transformed from a singleton to an accelerating expansion).

So if you limit the choice to only (U), again you are faced with a question, "What prompted the initial bang?"

One possibility is that (U=E). Another words, the universe itself must be eternal.

In that case, we would expect an eternal cycle to be observed (something like the Bang-Bang Theory). However, our best measurements indicate an expanding universe that will never collapse and bang again. There is no support for a Bang-Bang theory which would indicate an eternally cyclic universe.

Everything we can measure indicates the universe had a beginning and that it will continue to accelerate it's expansion infinitely.

So the most logical explanation I see is (U,E): that the universe was created (by something that was not created i.e. The Eternal One - aka God).

And that makes me even more curious: I want to explore all the beauty inside the box because now I have someone to direct my appreciation to say, "Well done! That's amazing!".

The public/private keys could be changed periodically. Old private keys could be deleted. Once lost, access to the messages they decrypt would be permanently lost (no searching of message history).

Yes, if you lose your private key, it is gone forever. Otherwise there is no security. (Backup options would depend on the use case.)

Yes, payment is a separate issue. It would be assumed that there is value in having this system available to the users that would be outside their messaging needs.

Thanks!

This is an excellent list of potential issues.

"What are you going to use to actually encrypt messages? You don't want to directly use the public key primitives to do this."

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

Could you explain why there is a need for another encryption protocol beyond a public/private key encryption?

If the protocol is secure against brute force attack, both the public key and the encrypted messages could be open and would not create a vulnerability to the private key.

What am I missing?

Public keys are open, they can be distributed any way (they could be published to a hosted directory a shared wherever). Only the device that owns the private key could decrypt the message.

In fact encrypted messages could be stored publically anywhere and only the intended recipient could read them.

The flow of messages is not encrypted, the system only encrypts message contents. (However, there are options to make it very difficult to trace, but that is a different issue.)

Trust is up to the user to decide and is always necessary.

Multiple devices is easy enough, a device can encrypt its own private key and send it to another device (using the target devices public key). The target device would now have 2 private keys for decryption.

Can someone correct me if I am wrong, but it seems relatively easy to make an encrypted peer-to-peer messaging system.

I mean, simply use a public/private encryption algorithm that has proven to be highly secure:

- Share your public key openly

- Anyone can send a message to you using your public key to encrypt the message

- You decrypt with your private key on device

Do all the encryption/decryption on device and viola, secure messaging. (This is basically how https works.)

Of course this only allows a single device the ability to decrypt the message.

However, if you want to allow multiple devices to share a private key, they can simple send each other their own private keys using the same encrypted protocol.

In addition, for super paranoid use, a master password could be used to salt the private key so that would be required with the private key to enable decryption. (Which is similar to how password keepers basically work.)

What am I missing?