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‘Blockchain’ is meaningless

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Re: ‘Blockchain’ is meaningless

#61

Post by tomtheelder »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #30

git has been using a blockchain for the last 12 years, since long before Bitcoin: Each commit includes the hash of its parent commit. These commits form a chain. Changing the contents of any past commit would break the chain. Each user of the repository keeps a copy of the blockchain on their PC, and they can fetch new "blocks" from any other peer with `git fetch` or `git pull`. The consensus model is based on human…

Common usage of the term blockchain implies a trustless, distributed consensus model. Even the Wikipedia article on blockchain references this in it's opening blurb, and asserts that Satoshi invented the blockchain [1]. Google trends also shows that the term practically didn't exist prior to widespread recognition of Bitcoin (even if you adjust the window to hide the recent spike, it was virtually unused) [2].

It's not the best nomenclature in the world, but that's just what it has come to mean.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain [2] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=blockcha...

Re: ‘Blockchain’ is meaningless

#62

Post by kxyvr »

lev99 wrote: post #46
mayank wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brain networks and neural networks are not similar in structure or function, other than the superficial abstraction of “nodes and connections” (graphs). They’re about as related as genetic algorithms are to actual genetics.

Genetic Algorithms and Neural Networks are clearly inspired by the scientific fields of Genetics and Neuroscience.

I'll disagree with this. Cybenko's approximation for a multilayer perceptron is simply a concrete expression for Kolmogorov's representation of a continuous function, which was created in order to solve Hilbert's Thirteenth problem. This has absolutely nothing to do with the brain. Yes, Cybenko uses the word "neural network", but just look at expression (1) in his paper "Approximation by Superpositions of a Sigmoidal Function" and compare that to expression (1) in Kolmogorov's paper "On the Representation of Continuous Functions of Many Variables by Superposition of Continuous Functions of One Variable and Addition". The brain diagram used by most neural network books is really just a graph diagram of a matrix-vector multiplication used in the superposition. While I can't claim to know everyone's inspiration for their research, there really is a mundane explanation and history of these algorithms that has nothing to do with the brain.

Re: ‘Blockchain’ is meaningless

#63

Post by Ajedi32 »

tomtheelder wrote: post #61
Ajedi32 wrote: post #30

git has been using a blockchain for the last 12 years, since long before Bitcoin: Each commit includes the hash of its parent commit. These commits form a chain. Changing the contents of any past commit would break the chain. Each user of the repository keeps a copy of the blockchain on their PC, and they can fetch new "blocks" from any other peer with `git fetch` or `git pull`. The consensus model is based on human…

Common usage of the term blockchain implies a trustless, distributed consensus model. Even the Wikipedia article on blockchain references this in it's opening blurb, and asserts that Satoshi invented the blockchain [1]. Google trends also shows that the term practically didn't exist prior to widespread recognition of Bitcoin (even if you adjust the window to hide the recent spike, it was virtually unused) [2]. It's n…

> trustless, distributed consensus model

Still sounds like git to me. The main difference is that Bitcoin's consensus model is fully automated, whereas git's relies on humans making decisions on which commits to include in their copy of the repo. (Though I suppose "trust" can indeed be one factor humans use when making such a decision.)

Re: ‘Blockchain’ is meaningless

#64

Post by seanmcdirmid »

aje403 wrote: post #47
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI has had more than one winter, you know.

Yes, he's probably aware, but hopefully we're not coming to one. Machine learning was a lot less useful in the 1980s. There's still a lot of amazing (and unfortunate) uses for machine learning for government and business left to be plucked. The only thing that is going to die for now is any trace of the idea from non-technicals is that if we throw $10mm at it, it's going to come alive.

Big hype cycles typically have lower low point as well as higher high points. I don't know if another AI winter is around the corner, I hope not, but it is definitely a possibility. I am much more pessimistic about blockchains.

Re: ‘Blockchain’ is meaningless

#65

Post by zone411 »

wintom wrote: post #5

It’s not meaningless. Saying Blockchain is meaningless is like saying the web is meaningless or the internet is meaningless. Just because you either don’t understand it or you feel it’s too broad does not make it meaningless. Blockchain is a distributed ledger that guarantees consensus without any central party. It has many other properties, like making the transactions public in most cases, and many other important…

The issue is that you now have ICOs (including by public companies) that use the term "blockchain" just for the hype, even though the supposed "blockchains" they use don't fulfill your conditions.

Re: ‘Blockchain’ is meaningless

#66

Post by lostcolony »

camillomiller wrote: post #17
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?

It's still common to hear barely informed business stakeholders freely interchange hashing, encoding, and encryption. "Are passwords encrypted in the database?" "Uh...no?" "OMGWTF?!"

Re: ‘Blockchain’ is meaningless

#67

Post by owlninja »

nailer wrote: post #53
bdamm wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The meaning of words change when the rest of humanity takes it for their own. Claiming "crypto are not crypto" will just leave you behind as the guy with his fist in the air cursing the world. Nuclear. Hacker. Patriot. Rubber. The audience matters. Besides, I doubt that any cryptanalyst would mind writing out cryptography any more than they'd mind writing out TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256.

I'm stating crypto is cryptography. There's not multiple cryptographies as far as I'm aware so 'crypto are' doesn't make sense. And yes, words change over time, but in that case I can just refer to (all) cryptocurrency as 'Bitcoin' since that's the common definition. In fact it's far more popular to refer to cryptocurrency as Bitcoin than it is to call that 'crypto'. Short version: this one isn't settled yet. How did…

>this one isn't settled yet

I feel like it almost is. Now even the non-technical crowd is amped up for cryptocurrency, and could really not care less about cryptography.

Re: ‘Blockchain’ is meaningless

#68

Post by aje403 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #64
aje403 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, he's probably aware, but hopefully we're not coming to one. Machine learning was a lot less useful in the 1980s. There's still a lot of amazing (and unfortunate) uses for machine learning for government and business left to be plucked. The only thing that is going to die for now is any trace of the idea from non-technicals is that if we throw $10mm at it, it's going to come alive.

Big hype cycles typically have lower low point as well as higher high points. I don't know if another AI winter is around the corner, I hope not, but it is definitely a possibility. I am much more pessimistic about blockchains.

There won't be because it still actually is useful governments and businesses. They can tangibly use it to increase their functioning/profits - that was not the case during the AI winter. Computers sucked, data sucked, and there was no internet. I hope you're right in that the attention it is getting decreases. A reasonable limit of what we can actually do with what we currently have is probably within the next 15 years. Having 50 deep learning moocs that teach introductory matrix multiplication isn't really benefitting much either. Hopefully things come to a better equilibrium soon.

I'm very pessimistic about blockchains but I'm not sure if they're going away or not, either. Regardless of regulation, there's a lot of people screaming about blockchains and that doesn't seem to be changing: “I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.”

Re: ‘Blockchain’ is meaningless

#69

Post by seanalltogether »

jgh wrote: post #38
nailer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you're being downvoted. That seems a reasonable definition of blockchain, in much the same way one could give a reasonable definition of an array as a sequence of items. The article's premise that 'The term blockchain is misused and frequently misunderstood' (which is true) means 'Blockchain is meaningless' doesn't hold water and this is very typical for a Vox technology article.

I think gp's definition is still too broad. Consensus is not an inherent property of blockchains, for example. You can make blockchains without any consensus at all, or with some central authority prescribing reality. A blockchain is simply a kind of data structure, like a linked list or a hash map or an array.

Exactly. Is "blockchain" just the data structure, or is it the data structure + the protocol for communication + the software to validate it?

Another example might be bit torrent. I personally wouldn't classify bit torrent as just the data structure. I would say its the data structure, the protocol and the end clients. However if someone used these technologies to create a different format and a different protocol, I wouldn't think of it as bit torrent.

Re: ‘Blockchain’ is meaningless

#70

Post by tylersmith »

tomtheelder wrote: post #59
tylersmith wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's really weird to me because while you can do cool things with blockchains, on their own they're just a data structure. Without a trustless, decentralized, and permissionless consensus model it's basically just a big git repo. The blockcahin data structure, a tree of blocks of state changes, is not at all a recent innovation. And not something that would typically get hyped by the average non-programming rela…

When people use the term blockchain they don't just mean a chain of state changes, they mean one that is backed by the sort of decentralized consensus model you described. The nomenclature isn't ideal, but the convenience of having one word to describe a somewhat complex topic wins out. I mean even the Wikipedia article on blockchain treats it this way [1], mentioning the consensus model in the initial blurb, and ass…

"Distributed ledger" [1] is a far better term for here IMO. If there's quibbling about "distributed" or "decentralized" then just change those terms as appropriate for the system under discussion.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_ledger

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