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‘Blockchain’ is meaningless

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Re: ‘Blockchain’ is meaningless

#11

Post by nixpulvis »

SeanLuke wrote: post #8

Cryptocurrency, welcome to AI's long nightmare. AI has forever had buzzword-complaint terms. Consider "Agent", which describes a very specific thing (namely autonomy), but that didn't stop everyone and their dog outside the field from calling their software a "database agent" or a "compiler agent" or whatnot, equating "agent" with "program". Indeed there's an entire non-AI field called "Agent Based Modeling" -- of wh…

And just as AI is being overused to solve problems, so too is the "blockchain", inevitably making users lives worse in the long run.

Re: ‘Blockchain’ is meaningless

#13

Post by jbob2000 »

It's about as meaningless as the word "communism". Tough to come up with a definition for that, but I still know what it "means".

I guess you just have to read a bunch of different sources to get the full picture of what a blockchain is. It's kind of hard to communicate abstract ideas, so you need a variety of sources to paint the picture in your head.

Re: ‘Blockchain’ is meaningless

#14

Post by sheepz »

The blockchain hype is crazy.

My favorite truism that I see people spouting is that Bitcoin (or cryptocurrencies are) is worthless, but blockchain is a huge innovation.

Little do these people understand that the true innovation is Bitcoin's proof of work as a consensus mechanism with the economic incentive of mining. Most of these "blockchains" are just distributed databases, which are not trustless, decentralized etc.

Re: ‘Blockchain’ is meaningless

#15

Post by kbwt »

nixpulvis wrote: post #11
SeanLuke wrote: post #8

Cryptocurrency, welcome to AI's long nightmare. AI has forever had buzzword-complaint terms. Consider "Agent", which describes a very specific thing (namely autonomy), but that didn't stop everyone and their dog outside the field from calling their software a "database agent" or a "compiler agent" or whatnot, equating "agent" with "program". Indeed there's an entire non-AI field called "Agent Based Modeling" -- of wh…

And just as AI is being overused to solve problems, so too is the "blockchain", inevitably making users lives worse in the long run.

> AI is being overused

double-checks URL bar to make sure he is still on HN

Downvote me all you want but I think the tech sector is currently suffering a veritable Machine Learning craze.

Re: ‘Blockchain’ is meaningless

#17

Post by camillomiller »

SeanLuke wrote: post #8

Cryptocurrency, welcome to AI's long nightmare. AI has forever had buzzword-complaint terms. Consider "Agent", which describes a very specific thing (namely autonomy), but that didn't stop everyone and their dog outside the field from calling their software a "database agent" or a "compiler agent" or whatnot, equating "agent" with "program". Indeed there's an entire non-AI field called "Agent Based Modeling" -- of wh…

I mean... "crypto" !!! Can you imagine what cryptographers had to witness every day for a couple of years now, while the term was increasingly skewing towards a completely misleading meaning?

Re: ‘Blockchain’ is meaningless

#18

Post by cornholio »

"Blockchain" has come to designate a very well defined concept: any technical and financial construction designed for speculative investment in unregulated securities out of reach of traditional authorities, usually having a very shady, deflationary or ponzi-like economic structure and strong money laundry potential.

There is nothing fundamentally novel in distributed databases or their application in finance, we knew how to build "blockchains" since the 70`s. Satoshi's proof of work chains were the first anonymous implementation and that's what started the "crypto revolution".

Re: ‘Blockchain’ is meaningless

#19

Post by AndrewDucker »

In general, if the transactions are gathered together in blocks, and it is blocks that are secured on the chain using cryptography, and it is designed to be tamper-resistant and produce immutable records, the system qualifies as a blockchain

That works for me.

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