5 ms·

We really need proof of soul systems to exist, extended to also have a proof of citizenship. While the proof of soul systems can plausible be done in a decentra

We really need proof of soul systems to exist, extended to also have a proof of citizenship. While the proof of soul systems can plausible be done in a decentralized manner, proof of citizenship is much harder, and in my opinion this is one of (the few) things the government should really do.

Lerc 7mo ago
Either I'm not sure what you mean by soul, or you are all-in on dualism.
- acgourley 7mo ago
  Sorry the term of art is really soulbound identity right now, I use POS but it's less common. Definitions vary but I say a useful system must allow people to endorse statements with evidence they are a) alive b) not able to be represented by more than one identity (id is linked to your entire soul, not a persona or facet of your being) c) a kind of socially recognized person (human in the expected case) and then layer on citizenship on top if you want to use this for polling, voting, etc.
  - Lerc 7mo ago
    Do you believe you are capable of doing that yourself?
    - throwup238 7mo ago
      All you have to do is flip the tortoise back over. > You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, it’s crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t, not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that?
      - Lerc 7mo ago
        The point of the test is to see if the subject has had life experience enough that they could restrain their own empathy. Wanting to flip the tortoise back over was why he failed the test.
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
  - protocolture 7mo ago
    How would this work considering that the soul is an entirely fictional concept?
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
    - FunHearing3443 7mo ago
      “Empirically unprovable” and “fictional” are not synonymous.
- matltc 7mo ago
  Meaning you have specified a SOUL.md at user- or project-level
nerdsniper 7mo ago
Worldcoin tried to solve that. Any solution for this will be similarly creepy.
worldsayshi 7mo ago
What about Zero-Knowledge Identity? Use zero knowledge proofs to prove that I have an eID without actually providing my identity.
- frogperson 7mo ago
  Something like a cert chain, but it would need to be both simple to use and secure. Those two requirements are greatly at odds with each other.
  - acgourley 7mo ago
    Yeah one reason I think the government has to offer this is usability. While you can imagine a purely p2p protocol between cypherpunks, for everyone else there needs to be a way to social workers, DMV staff, etc can deal with edge cases (such as your id being stolen and needing a reset). Furthermore it helps if it's super illegal to tamper with this network (consider how rare check fraud is, despite being easy).
    - fc417fc802 7mo ago
      Check fraud is easy to commit but not easy to get away with while also benefiting financially. It's also illegal to steal things but that happens much more frequently because it's often fairly easy to get away with.
- acgourley 7mo ago
  Yes that's the idea, once you have the soul-bound eID the ZK part is trivial, but the eID with the guarantees I outlined is not at all trivial.
- samename 7mo ago
  EFF has a good write-up about zero-knowledge: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/zero-knowledge-proofs-alone-are-not-digital-id-solution-protecting-user-privacy https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/zero-knowledge-proofs-... > What ZKPs don’t do is mitigate verifier abuse or limit their requests, such as over-asking for information they don’t need or limiting the number of times they request your age over time. They don’t prevent websites or applications from collecting other kinds of observable personally identifiable information like your IP address or other device information while interacting with them.
observationist 7mo ago
The casual ginger hate is disgusting. smh. It's funny to think of how the US government is effectively a decentralized web of trust system. Building one that works, that has sufficient network effects, auditability, accountability, enforcability, so that when things are maliciously exploited, or people make mistakes, your system is robust and resilient - these are profound technically difficult challenges. The US government effectively has to operate IDs under a web of trust, with 50 units sitting at the top, and a around 3,000 county sub-units, each of which are handling anywhere from 0 to 88 sub-units of towns, cities, other community structures. Each community then deals with one or more hospitals, one or more doctors in each hospital, and every time a baby is born, they get some paperwork filled out, filed upward through the hierarchy of institutions, shared at the top level between the massive distributed database of social security numbers, and there are laws and regulations and officials in charge of making sure each link in the chain is where it needs to be and operates according to a standard protocol. At any rate - ID is hard. You've gotta have rules and enforcement, accountability and due process, transparency and auditing, and you end up with something that looks a bit like a ledger or a blockchain. Getting a working blockchain running is almost trivial at this point, or building on any of the myriad existing blockchains. The hard part is the network incentives. It can't be centralized - no signing up for an account on some website. Federated or domain based ID can be good, but they're too technical and dependent on other nations and states. The incentives have to line up, too; if it's too low friction and easy, it'll constantly get exploited and scammed at a low level. If it's too high friction and difficult, nobody will want to bother with it. Absent a compelling reason to participate, people need to be compelled into these ID schemes, and if they're used for important things, they need a corresponding level of enforcement, and force, backing them up, with due process. You can't run it like a gmail account, because then it's not reliable as a source of truth, and so on. I don't know if there's a singular, technological fix, short of incorruptible AGI that we can trust to run things for us following an explicit set of rules, with protocols that allow any arbitrary independent number of networks and nodes and individuals to participate.
- acgourley 7mo ago
  > they need a corresponding level of enforcement Yes 100%, that's why the government needs to offer it, make tampering a serious offense, and dynamically defend its integrity from attackers. > incorruptible AGI Not a lot of alpha in planning for scenarios where we get that

Lerc 7mo ago

Either I'm not sure what you mean by soul, or you are all-in on dualism.

acgourley 7mo ago
Sorry the term of art is really soulbound identity right now, I use POS but it's less common. Definitions vary but I say a useful system must allow people to endorse statements with evidence they are a) alive b) not able to be represented by more than one identity (id is linked to your entire soul, not a persona or facet of your being) c) a kind of socially recognized person (human in the expected case) and then layer on citizenship on top if you want to use this for polling, voting, etc.
- Lerc 7mo ago
  Do you believe you are capable of doing that yourself?
  - throwup238 7mo ago
    All you have to do is flip the tortoise back over. > You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, it’s crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t, not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that?
    - Lerc 7mo ago
      The point of the test is to see if the subject has had life experience enough that they could restrain their own empathy. Wanting to flip the tortoise back over was why he failed the test.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
- protocolture 7mo ago
  How would this work considering that the soul is an entirely fictional concept?
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - FunHearing3443 7mo ago
    “Empirically unprovable” and “fictional” are not synonymous.
matltc 7mo ago
Meaning you have specified a SOUL.md at user- or project-level

nerdsniper 7mo ago

Worldcoin tried to solve that. Any solution for this will be similarly creepy.

worldsayshi 7mo ago

What about Zero-Knowledge Identity? Use zero knowledge proofs to prove that I have an eID without actually providing my identity.

frogperson 7mo ago
Something like a cert chain, but it would need to be both simple to use and secure. Those two requirements are greatly at odds with each other.
- acgourley 7mo ago
  Yeah one reason I think the government has to offer this is usability. While you can imagine a purely p2p protocol between cypherpunks, for everyone else there needs to be a way to social workers, DMV staff, etc can deal with edge cases (such as your id being stolen and needing a reset). Furthermore it helps if it's super illegal to tamper with this network (consider how rare check fraud is, despite being easy).
  - fc417fc802 7mo ago
    Check fraud is easy to commit but not easy to get away with while also benefiting financially. It's also illegal to steal things but that happens much more frequently because it's often fairly easy to get away with.
acgourley 7mo ago
Yes that's the idea, once you have the soul-bound eID the ZK part is trivial, but the eID with the guarantees I outlined is not at all trivial.
samename 7mo ago
EFF has a good write-up about zero-knowledge: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/zero-knowledge-proofs-alone-are-not-digital-id-solution-protecting-user-privacy https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/zero-knowledge-proofs-... > What ZKPs don’t do is mitigate verifier abuse or limit their requests, such as over-asking for information they don’t need or limiting the number of times they request your age over time. They don’t prevent websites or applications from collecting other kinds of observable personally identifiable information like your IP address or other device information while interacting with them.

observationist 7mo ago

The casual ginger hate is disgusting. smh. It's funny to think of how the US government is effectively a decentralized web of trust system. Building one that works, that has sufficient network effects, auditability, accountability, enforcability, so that when things are maliciously exploited, or people make mistakes, your system is robust and resilient - these are profound technically difficult challenges. The US government effectively has to operate IDs under a web of trust, with 50 units sitting at the top, and a around 3,000 county sub-units, each of which are handling anywhere from 0 to 88 sub-units of towns, cities, other community structures. Each community then deals with one or more hospitals, one or more doctors in each hospital, and every time a baby is born, they get some paperwork filled out, filed upward through the hierarchy of institutions, shared at the top level between the massive distributed database of social security numbers, and there are laws and regulations and officials in charge of making sure each link in the chain is where it needs to be and operates according to a standard protocol. At any rate - ID is hard. You've gotta have rules and enforcement, accountability and due process, transparency and auditing, and you end up with something that looks a bit like a ledger or a blockchain. Getting a working blockchain running is almost trivial at this point, or building on any of the myriad existing blockchains. The hard part is the network incentives. It can't be centralized - no signing up for an account on some website. Federated or domain based ID can be good, but they're too technical and dependent on other nations and states. The incentives have to line up, too; if it's too low friction and easy, it'll constantly get exploited and scammed at a low level. If it's too high friction and difficult, nobody will want to bother with it. Absent a compelling reason to participate, people need to be compelled into these ID schemes, and if they're used for important things, they need a corresponding level of enforcement, and force, backing them up, with due process. You can't run it like a gmail account, because then it's not reliable as a source of truth, and so on. I don't know if there's a singular, technological fix, short of incorruptible AGI that we can trust to run things for us following an explicit set of rules, with protocols that allow any arbitrary independent number of networks and nodes and individuals to participate.

acgourley 7mo ago
> they need a corresponding level of enforcement Yes 100%, that's why the government needs to offer it, make tampering a serious offense, and dynamically defend its integrity from attackers. > incorruptible AGI Not a lot of alpha in planning for scenarios where we get that