Ruby Protocol — Expediency, Trade-Off, And How We Failed Ourselves
How do we come to this point?
What is it about the tool that is so powerful that we give in?
Why do we wittingly help erect those digital giants that gradually turn against us?
Expediency And Natural Odds
Let’s tell the story from the very beginning.
Some of the most erudite scholars in the world argue that our human brains are adapted to respond instinctively to threats more than to others. For example, they say, we take alarm at terrorism, but much less to global warming issues, even though the possibility of a demented bomber attacking our city is way less than that of the ocean devouring parts of South Asia. Notwithstanding, they are only gradually victimized by deteriorating climate change-induced conditions.
The same goes for our perception of gratification. It says if you want the human brain to respond, you want to make sure the kick is sudden rather than gradual. And It is the uncertainty of future rewards that makes giving up quick prizes so tricky. That delicious treat and comfortable couch in front of you are sure things, but your goal of losing weight seems much further down the road and not so inevitable.
An article appearing in Cognition says that “Decision-makers routinely wait for buses, job offers, weight loss, and other outcomes characterized by significant temporal uncertainty.” In other words, we don’t know when these long-term rewards will arrive or even if they will ever arrive.
Be it fear or gratification, and the odds are stacked against you.
Amplified And Betrayed By The Tool
Fortunately, we have come this far because we possess the faculties to look ahead, plan, and delay gratification for future benefits. The odds are not 100% against us.
However, we have this innate weak point in our thinking pattern called “present bias,” which favors short-term payoffs over long-term rewards. For example, people tend to smoke cigarettes at the risk of a shortened life, and we like to spend on pleasures but not save for rainy days.
The problem is that they know it, and they design our favorite and the most powerful tool that way anyway.
“So we want to psychologically figure out how to manipulate you as fast as possible. Then give back to you the dopamine hit. And we did that brilliantly on Facebook. Instagram has done it. WhatsApp has done it. You know Snapchat has done it. Twitter has done it.”
The former Facebook executive — Chamath Palihapitiya
“I mean, that is exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with because you are exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. And… I just think…you know the inventors, creators, you know, it is me, it is Mark, it is the, you know, Kevin Systrom at Instagram. It is all of these people that understand it consciously, and we did it anyway.”
The former Facebook president — Sean Parker
All of the above push us to a world where the ‘now’ requires more attention. We are now saturated with knowledge and living standards that have mostly never been higher before any time, but today it is so hard for us moderns to look beyond the next cycle. If time can be sliced, it is only getting finer, with ever-shorter periods now shaping our world.
To paraphrase and quote the investor Esther Dyson: in politics, the dominant time frame is a term of office, in fashion and culture, it’s a season, for corporations, it’s a quarter, on the internet it’s minutes and on the financial markets mere milliseconds.
The trade-off we make
They did it anyway, and we use it anyway.
We’re now facing a privacy paradox. We, the public, are consciously or subconsciously aware that there is something amiss with using the ill-designed tools and sharing our data online, but we continue to share it regardless.
An Experian study from January revealed that 70 percent of consumers globally “are willing to share more personal data with the organizations they interact with online, particularly when they see a benefit such as greater online security and convenience.”
And a January survey conducted by the Center for Data Innovation came to a similar conclusion, finding that 58 percent of Americans are “willing to share their most sensitive personal data” (i.e., biometric, medical, and/or location data) in return for using apps and services.
The result is a dangerously vicious cycle because when it comes too easy, it gets trashed.
Indeed, of the 20 biggest data breaches of all time, all but two happened in the last decade, while 14 of them occurred in the previous five years. Clearly, the global economy’s addiction to data carries serious risks.
Then We Failed Ourselves
We failed ourselves in the sense that the original idea of the Internet, as described by its precursors, was something that would democratize the good and disrupt the bad. It would get rid of the obsolete gatekeepers and do away with rigid ideologies — and all this would radically change society for the better. But it did not.
We failed ourselves because we wittingly or unwittingly allowed this fantastic tool to be denigrated into neglected land. In it, warring factions are destroying the most fundamental of services. Security zones are reducing, eliminating free movement and speech, and the soaring costs make it prohibitive for anyone but only the most well-funded.
References:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5530483
https://www.verywellmind.com/delayed-gratification-why-wait-for-what-you-want-2795429
https://qz.com/1480809/the-biggest-data-breaches-of-all-time-ranked/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/27/has-internet-become-failed-state-crime-cyberspace
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2015/07/internet-failed-us/
About Us
Ruby Protocol is a cross-chain, privacy-first infrastructure, powered by Polkadot. Our layer-1 protocol utilizes Functional Encryption (FE) cryptography, which allows users to adopt a modular approach to data privacy and ownership. This novel solution will allow users to encrypt sensitive information on-chain, which can only be decrypted by holders of an approved private key.
Ruby’s FE Substrate-pallet will serve as the building blocks for privacy-first smart contract DApps building on the native Ruby Chain, while also acting as a privacy layer for Parachains and Web3 DApps across the Polkadot ecosystem.
