[openpgp] Re: Splitting replacement keys subpacket into related keys and trust equivalence?

[iang <[e-mail]>]

On 12/09/2024 16:51, Justus Winter wrote:
> Further, I have a rule of thumb when discussing OpenPGP: any person
> saying the word "trust" is likely confused and most certainly wrong.


Hear hear! Indeed I'd expand it to the entire IT world. It's so 
vexatious that I even wrote a book about it: 
https://iang.org/identity_cycle/ which you shouldn't trust at all!

Shilling aside, it turns out that our collective technical use of the 
word trust is probably based on the fantasy that we can provide a 
technocratic solution for one of the deepest human emotions.


> I realize that I'm being pedantic here, but people get this wrong all
> the time, and if we don't get it right (because we're using sloppy
> language), how can we expect our downstream developers or users to get
> it right?


I find it welcome - it's why the so-called Web of Trust failed - it 
failed to have any understanding of the meaning of trust. I'm not 
blaming anyone for that - I also swallowed the kool-aid in the 90s. In 
the late 00's I took a deep dive into CAs which do have an understanding 
of the meaning of trust, that just happens to be even wronger than PGP's 
absence of understanding...

That was followed by time outside the West during which I was able to 
develop an alternate theory that actually hangs together, and is to some 
large extent locked out of the Western consciousness. If anyone wants a 
quick starter on this, there's a fabulous article:

https://aeon.co/ideas/descartes-was-wrong-a-person-is-a-person-through-other-persons

iang