121–130 of 140 posts
I don't understand the barbed wire metaphor. Couldn't crypto have the effect of putting content that would otherwise be freely available in the current internet behind monetary barriers? Couldn't cryptocurrencies enable further control by monopolizing media industries? The technology is powerful, whether or not it will be liberating is to be determined. Edit: didn't realize this was from 1993! Amazing to read that pe…
I don't understand the barbed wire metaphor. Couldn't crypto have the effect of putting content that would otherwise be freely available in the current internet behind monetary barriers? Couldn't cryptocurrencies enable further control by monopolizing media industries? The technology is powerful, whether or not it will be liberating is to be determined. Edit: didn't realize this was from 1993! Amazing to read that pe…
Bitcoin can enforce property rights, like barbed wire.
(Maybe HN should have 1 Mega-Thread for all this stuff, like many subreddits have?)
Information isn't sapient. People want information, which gives information value.
People want information. But the people who want the information want it to be free, so that they can get it for free. The people who create that information usually want it to be expensive, and also to be controlled (so that they can get paid). But all it takes is one person who paid for the information to decide to redistribute it for free, and the game is over for that bit of information. Thus "freeing" is a one-w…
Yes, and I also want every economic transaction in which I am demand side to be priced at zero. That doesn't mean that because I deign to buy something that I am unwilling to pay for it. Quite the opposite! I will pay for it up to what I value it.
> But all it takes is one person who paid for the information to decide to redistribute it for free, and the game is over for that bit of information.
Yes, and that is a problem with non-exhaustive consumption of a resource. This duplicatible nature of data is why data firms have contracts when they sell information. The information existing in their databases has no anthropomorphic yearning for liberty.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Crypto currency was created to be decentralized, requiring no state to back it.
bitcoin is not decentralized because all transactions are on a single public ledger. How the ledger is computed and verified is distributed however the product is a single central source of truth. There is nothing centralized about having a single objective "reality". Decentralized systems do not have a single source of truth and by their very nature are inconsistent. In other words, whether the blockchain was comput…
Every node keeps a copy of the blockchain and occasionally one node adds a block to the blockchain (upon successful mining), then notifies other networked nodes of the new block. As soon as a block is mined, the lucky miner has a different ledger than the rest of the network. It's not until that new block propagates across the entire Bitcoin network that the ledger is updated.
Because of differences in protocol implementations, not all nodes accept the new block (this happened at least once). With the new BTC fork, it will be obvious that any stragglers on the old fork (or the new fork, if the protocol change brings insufficient consensus) will have their own fork of the blockchain, which will mean the ledger is forked.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A currency and markets primary purpose is to provision the state. Not at all. "State" is a political constructions while currencies are a value transport mechanism and markets are a network of those, both of which, as "pure" concepts, arises pretty quickly when one starts to ponder how to model "actors in need to exchange and use scarce resources which have alternative uses". In that sense, saying that "currencies…
You are wrong, they are inventions used for a political purpose. Try making your own currency and markets if you want proof. Bitcoin is a perfect example. Required millions of dollars to get off the ground, provisioned early adopters like a ponzi scheme. Likely has state backing though I have no proof it's a honey pot. Just gut feeling.
I think you are conflating "fiat currencies" with "currencies". US Dollars are a currency. Gold is a "currency". Bitcoin is a currency. Calling card credits are a currency. Cigarettes in prison are a currency. Any store of value is a currency -- whether created / authorized by a state or not.
If anarchists go back to a barter system, there will always be asymmetric transactions that will require some sort of value store (basically an IOU for a transaction that already happened) or cause inefficiencies in the market (the buyer or seller would have to take a hit in order to complete a transaction). Currency always has been to fill this purpose.
> Required millions of dollars to get off the ground
I would argue that if you chose to try and replace the old Gold System with your Widgets System, you would also need lots of resources to convince others to buy into your new currency. It's not about state power as much as other people having faith in your currency keeping value, which is the only purpose of a currency.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are wrong, they are inventions used for a political purpose. Try making your own currency and markets if you want proof. Bitcoin is a perfect example. Required millions of dollars to get off the ground, provisioned early adopters like a ponzi scheme. Likely has state backing though I have no proof it's a honey pot. Just gut feeling.
> they are inventions used for a political purpose I think you are conflating "fiat currencies" with "currencies". US Dollars are a currency. Gold is a "currency". Bitcoin is a currency. Calling card credits are a currency. Cigarettes in prison are a currency. Any store of value is a currency -- whether created / authorized by a state or not. If anarchists go back to a barter system, there will always be asymmetric t…
No, any medium of exchange is a currency. (That and the unit of account function of money are deeply tied; while store of value is often cited as a function of money, it's not deeply tied to the other two, and lots of things that aren't money/currency fill it; the essential feature of currency is being a medium of exchange.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look, everyone knows that concepts have no intentionality. It was a figure of speech.
You're missing the joke. "Don't anthropomorphize abstractions; _they hate that_." He's saying not to anthropomorphize abstractions, then doing so himself in the same sentence. ;-)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As the saying goes: information wants to be free. Don't anthropomorphize abstractions; they hate that.
Sure. He should have said "tends to be" or "gets driven toward being" or whatever. But the key point is the tension, not his languaging.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> what better dream to plant in the slaves' minds but the idea that "a simple little computer program" can set you free? Yet when people overthrow tyrannical governments to then establish democracy the planning is done secretly. And when tyrannical governments come to power the first thing they do is monitor and restrict communication. This has been true many times in history in the last hundreds years.
I don't believe in encryption as a tool that can give any real asymmetry to an individual or conspiracy against the State. I get that you do believe it can. Another point is -- all governments monitor communications and we don't call them tyrannical. Take the Germans. They're notorious. But people consider the Germany government quite liberal. Restricting communications does not have to be a tool of "cruel, unreasona…
Lucky unhappy creature, you nailed it (at least if you ask me). Twice.
Circles of dreamers, merrily dancing around technodgod of their choice. Hail Crypto!
"Optimism is cowardice", Spengler.
I am afraid that most people only care about just one thing, and dreaming does not stand in a way of it, maybe even helps.
Feels terrible, to be shaken out of the dream, eh? OTOH, a real porridge, poor smell but what an honor!
Universe goes towards maximum entropy, so reason is, in fact, against the odds. Squared, if it happens on top of life.
It might be good nobody takes words too seriously. Blaming the messenger is not nice on the receiving end. The species is going to harvest all that it saws, both short and long term.