--- Log opened Sat Mar 16 00:00:26 2013 04:46 < cads> has any thought been given to using techniques from crypto-currencies to device a decentralized education and accreditation system? 04:47 < cads> they say that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like nails 04:48 < cads> I've been learning a lot about BTC lately, and I had a silly idea about how something like it might be used as a form of social currency, and in particular to help drive online education communities 04:49 < cads> in these communities, education is cheap or free, but the problem, as I see it, is that they do not offer and real world incentive to study hard enough to really grasp the material. 04:49 < cads> The student has to be a self motivated learner and provide the incentive via his own love of pure learning 04:50 < cads> there is secondary incentive - skills learned in free online classes transfer to employable skills. 04:52 < cads> however this is hard to accept for many learners, who might ask "how do I prove what I know without a degree" 04:52 < cads> online classes like coursera offer the coursera badge of completion for any class that a student completes with a passing grade, and eventually this may be recognized by universities and businesses 04:53 < cads> but coursera is just one centralized authority 04:53 < cads> I'd like to propose a system in which online classes award a decentralized learning currency to students that complete the class 04:54 < cads> the value of currency awarded is determined by the network in some way I only speculate on so far 04:55 < cads> for example, students could bid a certain number of their current education coins on a class. This determines the desirability and hence market value of the class, and determines how many coins are awarded to students. 04:56 < cads> That already has a bunch of vague spots and even a couple flaws I can think of, and I won't speculate on how the payoff per class should be determined, for now 04:57 < cads> my idea is that students will be able to use the education coins to register themselves in free online classes. 04:57 < cads> they do not need coins to join - the classes are free 04:58 < cads> the classes are taught with a combination of pre-recorded lectures, free digital copies of reading materials, and volunteer tutors/study group leaders. 04:59 < cads> and the coins you submit to the class just tell the professors that you have already learned the pre-requisite material 05:00 < cads> if you just want to dive into a high level class without coins, you are welcome to, and you will still earn coins at the end of the class - if you succeed 05:00 < cads> but professors might be discouraged from helping you unless you can prove your level of preparedness in other ways 05:01 < cads> I don't see that these coins would be spent, as such 05:02 < cads> the professors could win a certain part of the purse put up by the students of the class, to signify that they too learned something in the process 05:03 < cads> but the students would also get the coins credited back to them. in essence, the learning transaction would mint coins from nowhere, to signify that the increase in learning wealth came from nowhere but the students and teachers working together 05:04 < cads> if you have enough coins of the right type to qualify as being an expert in a field, you can translate them to a degree 05:04 < cads> or transfer them to a traditional university 05:05 < cads> this is all that I have so far 05:10 < cads> one objection that I have is that it might not be right to try to stretch the currency analogy to education systems. But to that objection, I agree it's easy to see that diplomas _are_ a form of good with a steady value, but they are not a medium of exchange, as they are not transferrable. 05:11 < cads> Here, education coins would not be transferrable as such: when you transfer a unit, you still keep the unit you had. 05:12 < cads> so it's certainly an interesting stretching of the concept, and maybe it's not too much of a stretch 05:13 < cads> I have plenty of other objections, including how could we make this system fair, could the system account for the fact that people forget things they learned (should education coins have built in demmurage that kicks in if you're not teaching or otherwise applying your knowledge?) 05:14 < cads> and who decides what constitutes a degree 05:14 < cads> any other questions or objections would be welcome 05:15 < cads> and I trust that my rant finds a good place here here in -wizards :) 06:44 < amiller> -wizards is a safe place for such rants :] 06:44 < amiller> at first i was gonna say that's a good idea but i don't think that has much to do with bitcoin 06:45 < amiller> but actually it kinda reminds me of something like Mozilla badges 06:45 < amiller> https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges 06:45 < amiller> it's commonly understood that things like education degrees are a kind of "currency", not inherently a transferable one 06:49 < cads> certainly 06:52 < cads> there is a knowledge component and a related but partially independent social credential aspect, which allows you bank on that knowledge relative to some job market. 06:54 < cads> The knowledge (which we may take to encompass experience) required to do the work in that market is, as it were, just part of the market's entry cost. The other part is whatever means that workers use to signal that their knowledge is authentic. 06:55 < cads> Still a third cost is the investment into the social connections needed to provide an endpoint to receive your knowledge and knowledge credentials. 06:57 < cads> the 'education system' consists mostly of the means to acquire the first two aspects. It's reasonable that any theoretical distributed education system will fulfill those two criteria. 06:57 < cads> reasonable to assume* 06:58 < cads> At least I think so. 06:59 < cads> Most education systems also fulfill the third criterion - they teach which job markets exist, how much each one might profit you, and while you're learning they connect you to people who will support your search for an outlet for your new skills. 07:01 < cads> but I would point out that the best of the systems do a much better job at this last criterion than the lower quality education system. 07:01 < amiller> a cryptocurrency's role in this is pretty small then 07:01 < amiller> just a place where a degree issuer can register the credentials 07:02 < amiller> so for example if i want to convince someone i have a degree, 07:02 < amiller> i have to give them contact info to a university administration 07:02 < amiller> and they have to do things like send Official Transcripts and they're expensive and i'm worried that in 20 years the administration will deteriorate so much they'll fail to do that on demand or something 07:03 < amiller> so it would be simpler if that whole process just consisted of a credential being etched into a blockchain and kept queryable 07:03 < amiller> and by making it simpler like that it can lower the bar to entry so that other issuers could provide just as usable credentials (like badges) without needing that full overhead to be official 07:05 < cads> hmm, I agree 07:07 < cads> by making them like badges you might get higher granularity in the credential's ability to describe your skill set 07:08 < cads> by making them queryable you may also reduce the job search and hiring overhead 07:11 < cads> it's interesting to think that the actual knowledge transfer part may be the cheapest of the three aspects, in some sense 07:12 < cads> MIT has no problem, for example, exposing its courseware for free. But its tuition is higher than ever. 07:13 < cads> of course, the return on investment on a MIT education is the highest of any university in the USA 07:14 < cads> while the return on investing (your time) into the open courseware is "whatever you can make of it" 07:16 < cads> I think this is perhaps an unrealistic comparison, because being on campus, talking to peers, professors, all that contributes to a different and more complete experience than the online classes 07:16 < cads> finally, it builds your network 07:20 < cads> I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I'm free associating, by now :) 07:21 < cads> At some level the market must reward the MIT students the most because those students have been proven to be the most profitable, in the past. 07:24 < cads> But another factor is bound to be this : MIT is a trusted source of knowledge workers, and so hiring from their ranks poses a risk. Employers are willing to pay MIT grads more because they see it as hedge against the risk of hiring an incompetent worker 07:24 < cads> err 07:25 < cads> hiring from their ranks poses a _lower_ risk, I meant to say. 07:25 < cads> heh, that's all I have, for now :) 07:27 < cads> (but now I'm really far away from cryptocurrencies) 21:02 < jgarzik> [ANNOUNCE] OnionBC Escrow launched! - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=153967.0 21:02 < jgarzik> (as a responder implied, it might very well be a TorWallet-like scam; just noting its presence) --- Log closed Sun Mar 17 00:00:28 2013