Decentralization is a fetish

This event took place on Sunday, November 20, 2022 at 2:30 PM UTC.

Stage Library (library room A) - Crypto-skeptics and crypto-fanatics tend to use an implicit assumption of maximal decentralization. Most people don’t actually want decentralization; their goals are prior to decentralization. Decentralization is therefore a helpful meme, but ultimately a fetish, born from confusing the ends with the means. Decentralization is a spectrum, not a binary; and a multidimensional spectrum at that. The network, computation, data, indexing, and the rest of the application layer can all be more or less decentralized. Not to say I’m completely against it: Decentralization at the network level is good. The fact of potential decentralization can be powerful too; counterfactual decentralization is an important property. Decentralization can therefore be a backstop against some of the larger problems with centralized systems, without forcing us to be centralized where it is unnecessary.