Oddbean

Some great comments here. Allow me to blather a bit. "By only voicing your dissent anonymously you are reinforcing the frame of the censor" - by discouraging anonymity you reinforce the power of the censor, not just directly, but also indirectly by causing people to mindlessly self-censor and never realize they might actually believe the forbidden stance if they entertained it. "So what to make of the fact that the world's first decentralized, peer-to-peer content protocol is filled with anonymous handles? The optimistic view is it's just a remnant of centralized media where someone really could throttle your reach or de-platform you for wrong-think, and anonymity were more necessary." - Bitcoin is pseudonymous. Nostr is less so. I think humans have a flaw, and that is that we have a hard time loving people in the real world that we know think differently than us. Sometimes we kill them. Sometimes we simply don't hire them. That's why we have laws to protect freedom of speech. Laws that don't prevent people from being hired by a private company because of wrong think. A lawsuit is so much more messy than just being a nym and not having to deal with it at all. Anonymity tempers those weakness. "creativity-killing self-censorship resulting therefrom" - yeah once the net effect on creativity is 50/50 maybe we start discouraging nym use. For now, it doesn't even close. Anecdotally, a while ago I said something to a friend that could easily have gotten me cancelled in the recent environment. For 24 hours I stressed over whether he would go to the presses. I watch as my mind convinced myself I didn't mean it. No wait, i did! I couldn't have.. In the end I had no idea whether the gears of social pressure and possible exile had changed my mind, or whether I had actually discovered my error. What data could we use to inform whether we should be discouraging or encouraging nym use?

1. I disagree — the censor has no power because NOSTR exists. No one can cause you to self-censor once you realize your expression can’t be stopped. Only you are self-censoring. 2. Bitcoin is money so pseudonymity is a reasonable expectation. When I buy something I’m not intending to announce it to the world. Social media is the opposite — I am precisely announcing it to the world. And stop working for people who would fire you for dissent! 3. No one is saying your private communication with a friend should be public. I’m taling about things you are posting in the public square.

Lmk if you’d like a more detailed response, but pressed for time at the moment, it sounds like we are feeling out the tension between social regulation / correlation of thought as a good and a bad thing. I think both parts are there. I just think (maybe too optimistically given the number of Q followers) that we will get used to the fact that nyms haven’t supplied the proof of willingness to get negatively affected by their opinions and therefore should value them more when they say edgy stuff. 🫂 I do think the rise of LLMs wil bring this question to a head. I don’t want to talk to an LLM all day, my mind gradually bending to its hidden agenda. Only real humans please. Preferably respectable ones.