I think you’re implying that complexity somehow protects Nostr’s good qualities, and that’s where I disagree with you.
Why would flattening the learning curve require destroying what makes Nost...
-"I think you’re implying that complexity somehow protects Nostr’s good qualities, and that’s where I disagree with you."
Not complexity. Unneeded complexity is nearly always bad for nearly any system. I suppose what I said and how I said it wasn't clear enough to convey my thoughts. I will try to be more specific now.
Simpler systems are typically more versatile and robust. TNP itself is a very simple digital identity and transport protocol. The complexity of TNP comes from the myriad ways one can take the simple structure of signed JSON packages and use them to do nearly anything. Simpler systems are actually harder to control, as organic growth forms incomprehensibly complex systems that reach equilibrium in specific environments, much like how letters can form an infinitely vast array of words that attempt to convey meaning across time and space.
-"Why would flattening the learning curve require destroying what makes Nostr unique, flexible or powerful? You’re treating technical power and user-facing complexity as though they’re the same thing. They don’t have to be. You can have an extraordinarily sophisticated system underneath and an interface that exposes almost none of that sophistication unless or until the user wants it. That’s basically the history of consumer computing."
There is nearly no learning curve to using most of nostr. Being able to read a few prompts, click a few buttons and instantly have a new digital identity is about as low an amount of friction as there ever has been. This is not what I am referring to when I meantion flattening the curve.
What I am referring to is the fact that a current nostr user who sticks around must actually put in more work than just doomscrolling a feed generated by legitimately evil algorithms designed to enslave you and make you more manipulable. In order to discover more of what you want, *you* must seek it out actively or create what you want to see. It is flipping from passivity into participation. THAT is what is difficult and it is INSANELY hard to teach that after it has been beaten out of people for decades by school and other systems that are so baked into our existence that no one bothers to question them more than "Why are things so bad?" I can easily refer to Plato's Cave metaphor. Not very many people are going to venture out of the cave and face the bright, bold world, if they even get to that point.
-"And I’m not convinced that people willing to tolerate a steep learning curve are necessarily more capable. They may simply be unusually motivated to tolerate this particular learning curve. A brilliant novelist, surgeon, architect, entrepreneur, physicist, chef or filmmaker might encounter Nostr, decide it’s unnecessarily annoying, and leave. Their unwillingness to learn relay management tells us approximately nothing about their intelligence or what they might have contributed."
I will flat out disagree with you on that. If someone cannot overcome difficulty, then that someone cannot handle freedom constructively. The contradiction of that "discipline is freedom" is completely lost on most people, and without a base of strong character, one cannot withstand freedom as it will lead to self-destruction. I won't try to re-argue millennia of philosophy here.
I will push back and ask "What annoyances are there on nostr?" The usual answers are that the promised interoperability often times requires more work, and to learn how networking layers and the internet itself works. This is no small task, but most people can learn enough of that in time to overcome most of the issues. If there is a flaw or bug, in many cases reporting that to the person or person or bot/agent developing that misbehaving thing is really simple. Now there are some douchebags who want you to go through the hell of filing a formal bug report on github, but, that is something I refuse to do and then I just simply stop using whatever that thing is because I don't support douchebags.
Most people will need to learn to pick a non-free relay to have a better experience on the social side of nostr. That isn't hard at all. There are guides on that, and many clients are making it easier to understand right in the client settings pages. And, this HAS gotten easier. You've missed some of the biggest kerfuffles over finally switching to inbox/outbox topology. There was a period when nearly nothing was working at all, but time smoothed that out and things are better than they were before.
But again, if someone doesn't have the wherewithal to weather storms like that, or nostr doesn't provide enough value to them, these kinds of things will naturally drive them away, and that is, IMO, how things should be. No one should feel forced to stay here, unlike with other legacy platforms.
-"How much of Nostr’s complexity actually needs to be visible to the person using it?"
None. That's the beauty of it. TNP is still young. It is maturing at an alarming rate with the help of AI coding. (Some are better at this than others . . . But overall, I am happy to see more interesting projects being built by people with good ideas and less technical prowess.)
Do you think about the systems that go into building the road you drive on? Most of the time, no. And, not a wit of that is necessary to simply get on the road and end up where you want to go.
-"Also, let me make sure I understood the other part correctly. You’re saying getting through the door is easy, but what happens once you’re inside has been debated for years and nobody has really solved it yet."
No. I am saying that there is no door to get through. Nostr isn't the door. Nostr is the road that connects all the doors. You are thinking one layer up from that. The door and buildings in this analogy are the clients and eventually they will be the digital citadels of self-sovereign digital citizens.
To be fair, there are very few well-worn paths to follow, owing to the youth of TNP and how much everything is currently changing. So, getting to the right door (or, more correctly, what you *think* is the right door) is a bit of a faff at times, but usually, the best places to travel *are* off the beaten path, physically or digitally.
-"So you guys built this extraordinary building, opened the front door, and have spent the last few years standing in the hallway arguing about the floor plan?"
No. The thing that was built is a simple machine that lets you build your own paths to where you want to go. It is not the buildings. It isn't even the material that everything is built from. It is a very simple specification that makes nearly anything interoperable and attestable.
What most of the arguments are, in my experience, is how to use the simple bits to build digital citadels or resource pools and how to improve security for the various uses of nostr.
You are already in one of the buildings. You are already helping to build a better future. There is no real floorplan, yet. Some buildings are better designed than others. All of them are funky and strange and have unexpected corners here and there. Some people have designed structures that are like pop-up tents and can be deployed in mere minutes. Other buildings, like #Alexandria are cathedrals that will take many lifetimes to build out.
Has any of this been helpful?
Not complexity. Unneeded complexity is nearly always bad for nearly any system. I suppose what I said and how I said it wasn't clear enough to convey my thoughts. I will try to be more specific now.
Simpler systems are typically more versatile and robust. TNP itself is a very simple digital identity and transport protocol. The complexity of TNP comes from the myriad ways one can take the simple structure of signed JSON packages and use them to do nearly anything. Simpler systems are actually harder to control, as organic growth forms incomprehensibly complex systems that reach equilibrium in specific environments, much like how letters can form an infinitely vast array of words that attempt to convey meaning across time and space.
-"Why would flattening the learning curve require destroying what makes Nostr unique, flexible or powerful? You’re treating technical power and user-facing complexity as though they’re the same thing. They don’t have to be. You can have an extraordinarily sophisticated system underneath and an interface that exposes almost none of that sophistication unless or until the user wants it. That’s basically the history of consumer computing."
There is nearly no learning curve to using most of nostr. Being able to read a few prompts, click a few buttons and instantly have a new digital identity is about as low an amount of friction as there ever has been. This is not what I am referring to when I meantion flattening the curve.
What I am referring to is the fact that a current nostr user who sticks around must actually put in more work than just doomscrolling a feed generated by legitimately evil algorithms designed to enslave you and make you more manipulable. In order to discover more of what you want, *you* must seek it out actively or create what you want to see. It is flipping from passivity into participation. THAT is what is difficult and it is INSANELY hard to teach that after it has been beaten out of people for decades by school and other systems that are so baked into our existence that no one bothers to question them more than "Why are things so bad?" I can easily refer to Plato's Cave metaphor. Not very many people are going to venture out of the cave and face the bright, bold world, if they even get to that point.
-"And I’m not convinced that people willing to tolerate a steep learning curve are necessarily more capable. They may simply be unusually motivated to tolerate this particular learning curve. A brilliant novelist, surgeon, architect, entrepreneur, physicist, chef or filmmaker might encounter Nostr, decide it’s unnecessarily annoying, and leave. Their unwillingness to learn relay management tells us approximately nothing about their intelligence or what they might have contributed."
I will flat out disagree with you on that. If someone cannot overcome difficulty, then that someone cannot handle freedom constructively. The contradiction of that "discipline is freedom" is completely lost on most people, and without a base of strong character, one cannot withstand freedom as it will lead to self-destruction. I won't try to re-argue millennia of philosophy here.
I will push back and ask "What annoyances are there on nostr?" The usual answers are that the promised interoperability often times requires more work, and to learn how networking layers and the internet itself works. This is no small task, but most people can learn enough of that in time to overcome most of the issues. If there is a flaw or bug, in many cases reporting that to the person or person or bot/agent developing that misbehaving thing is really simple. Now there are some douchebags who want you to go through the hell of filing a formal bug report on github, but, that is something I refuse to do and then I just simply stop using whatever that thing is because I don't support douchebags.
Most people will need to learn to pick a non-free relay to have a better experience on the social side of nostr. That isn't hard at all. There are guides on that, and many clients are making it easier to understand right in the client settings pages. And, this HAS gotten easier. You've missed some of the biggest kerfuffles over finally switching to inbox/outbox topology. There was a period when nearly nothing was working at all, but time smoothed that out and things are better than they were before.
But again, if someone doesn't have the wherewithal to weather storms like that, or nostr doesn't provide enough value to them, these kinds of things will naturally drive them away, and that is, IMO, how things should be. No one should feel forced to stay here, unlike with other legacy platforms.
-"How much of Nostr’s complexity actually needs to be visible to the person using it?"
None. That's the beauty of it. TNP is still young. It is maturing at an alarming rate with the help of AI coding. (Some are better at this than others . . . But overall, I am happy to see more interesting projects being built by people with good ideas and less technical prowess.)
Do you think about the systems that go into building the road you drive on? Most of the time, no. And, not a wit of that is necessary to simply get on the road and end up where you want to go.
-"Also, let me make sure I understood the other part correctly. You’re saying getting through the door is easy, but what happens once you’re inside has been debated for years and nobody has really solved it yet."
No. I am saying that there is no door to get through. Nostr isn't the door. Nostr is the road that connects all the doors. You are thinking one layer up from that. The door and buildings in this analogy are the clients and eventually they will be the digital citadels of self-sovereign digital citizens.
To be fair, there are very few well-worn paths to follow, owing to the youth of TNP and how much everything is currently changing. So, getting to the right door (or, more correctly, what you *think* is the right door) is a bit of a faff at times, but usually, the best places to travel *are* off the beaten path, physically or digitally.
-"So you guys built this extraordinary building, opened the front door, and have spent the last few years standing in the hallway arguing about the floor plan?"
No. The thing that was built is a simple machine that lets you build your own paths to where you want to go. It is not the buildings. It isn't even the material that everything is built from. It is a very simple specification that makes nearly anything interoperable and attestable.
What most of the arguments are, in my experience, is how to use the simple bits to build digital citadels or resource pools and how to improve security for the various uses of nostr.
You are already in one of the buildings. You are already helping to build a better future. There is no real floorplan, yet. Some buildings are better designed than others. All of them are funky and strange and have unexpected corners here and there. Some people have designed structures that are like pop-up tents and can be deployed in mere minutes. Other buildings, like #Alexandria are cathedrals that will take many lifetimes to build out.
Has any of this been helpful?
1