Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain • Hacker News Board

Re: Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain

#101

Post by simias » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

gtrubetskoy wrote: post #90

simias wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't call it crappy, it's actually quite brilliant. I agree with you, I always thought that the Bitcoin algorithm was very clever and "mind opening" in a way. It's one of these things I'd never have thought about but almost seems obvious in hindsight. What's even more interesting is that basically all of it is pre-existing technology: HashCash, ECC, Merkle trees etc... Just combined together in a clever way t…

> HashCash, ECC, Merkle trees etc... Just combined together in a clever way to create something that's more than the sum of their parts. No, not really. The way proof-of-work is used is nothing like in HashCash (more generally known as a time lock puzzle ), the solution to a decentralized clock is the one piece that is new. In the paper it is referred to as "Timestamp Server". Everything else is previously known tech…

What I meant is that this decentralized clock is an emergent property from the use of these various algorithms. The code is actually HashCash, just used in a way that creates a new side-effect. The Time Server is not an algorithm, it's a side effect. I agree that it's a bit subjective though.

Re: Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain

#102

Post by specialist » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

jeremyjh wrote: post #50

bllguo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's literally a link in the comment. Show some effort please..

Imagine a few different personas, such as investment banker, retail store owner, and soccer mom. Then complete the following sentence: I need a decentralized time ordered log so that I can ...

I know this Gucci handbang is not counterfeit.

My prescriptions are the real deal.

As a better escrow for exchanging goods, services.

I can verify if the trog on Fox News is just making shit up. (Verified sources, citations are baked into all content.)

Re: Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain

#103

Post by aianus » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

fhood wrote: post #87

phasnox wrote: post #59

Gotta love how he begins saying he was bashing the tech in December(when the market was on the rise) just so that no one can tell him "everyone bashes bitcoin when it's going down". Venmo is centralized. I cannot use it as I live in a third world county with no access to it. Paypal sucks. It takes 5% from the seller and it has power over your money, they can(AND HAVE IN THE PAST) seize it whenever they want. I had my…

You know, paypal may well suck. I have never used it as a developer or a seller, but I really, really, like to have it as an option when I am purchasing something from some rinky dink website that doesn't look like it has been updated int 10 years.

Sucks for the buyer too. Ever tried to use PayPal (or credit cards for that matter) to buy something from the US with a Canadian shipping address while you're living in Vietnam with a Vietnamese IP address? I did; I got fraud blocked.

Re: Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain

#104

Post by fhood » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 5:53 PM UTC

aianus wrote: post #103

fhood wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, paypal may well suck. I have never used it as a developer or a seller, but I really, really, like to have it as an option when I am purchasing something from some rinky dink website that doesn't look like it has been updated int 10 years.

Sucks for the buyer too. Ever tried to use PayPal (or credit cards for that matter) to buy something from the US with a Canadian shipping address while you're living in Vietnam with a Vietnamese IP address? I did; I got fraud blocked.

Haha, no, I am one of those annoyingly generic users. But honestly I kind of expect them to block that. That seems pretty suspicious at first glance.

Re: Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain

#105

Post by gshulegaard » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 5:53 PM UTC

landryraccoon wrote: post #89

cowpig wrote: post #68

> Venmo is a free service to transfer dollars, and bitcoin transfers are not free Venmo is not free. There's a cost, it's just hiding. > Blockchain-based trustworthiness falls apart in practice... The particular brand of trustworthiness the author is arguing against is indeed a myth, but that doesn't mean blockchain is "crappy technology" or "a bad vision for the future" Blockchain adds a new thing to the world: digi…

> Venmo is not free. There's a cost, it's just hiding. What's that now?

* 3% fee for processing credit cards

* Platform play where the first stage is to amass users and then use that audience to sell to businesses (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/venmo-m...)

And I always assumed that the short delay for transferring money out of Venmo allowed them to eek a small margin against the time value of money somewhat similar to Robinhood (https://www.investopedia.com/articles/active-trading/020515/...)...but I don't know for sure.

Re: Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain

#106

Post by spookthesunset » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 5:54 PM UTC

specialist wrote: post #102

jeremyjh wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a few different personas, such as investment banker, retail store owner, and soccer mom. Then complete the following sentence: I need a decentralized time ordered log so that I can ...

I know this Gucci handbang is not counterfeit. My prescriptions are the real deal. As a better escrow for exchanging goods, services. I can verify if the trog on Fox News is just making shit up. (Verified sources, citations are baked into all content.)

> I know this Gucci handbang is not counterfeit.

> My prescriptions are the real deal.

How does the blockchain solve any of this? You still need a human to say "this Gucci handbag is not counterfeit". A human still needs to type in "yup, this prescription is real".

Re: Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain

#107

Post by yk » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 5:55 PM UTC

A few month ago I clicked through quite a few youtube [0] lectures on "system dynamics," the 1960ies hype technology, and the people who did system dynamics back then are entirely reasonable, well aware of its limitations and the applications are very interesting, but their work got completely drowned in bullshit. Very similar to "the Internet" in the late 90ies, "web 2.0" in the early 2000nds and block chain today.

So block chain is a really cool algorithm, that under ideal conditions can solve the Byzantine Generals problem, but there is at the moment just so incredible much bullshit surrounding blockchains, that it is sometimes hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/lectures/comments/7jtg5e/dennis_mea...

r/lectures thread, see the videos linked in the comments.

Re: Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain

#108

Post by phasnox » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 5:56 PM UTC

nickpsecurity wrote: post #98

phasnox wrote: post #59

Gotta love how he begins saying he was bashing the tech in December(when the market was on the rise) just so that no one can tell him "everyone bashes bitcoin when it's going down". Venmo is centralized. I cannot use it as I live in a third world county with no access to it. Paypal sucks. It takes 5% from the seller and it has power over your money, they can(AND HAVE IN THE PAST) seize it whenever they want. I had my…

His point was these technologies solve people's problems very well. People doing blockchains could just work on improved versions of proven tech that have fewer problems. For Venmo, you might make changes to facilitate more access. He mentioned credit unions to point out different types of institutions can be more fair. A non-profit version of Paypal with chartered protections against high rates or unfair seizures mi…

Yes I agree. All those problems to the existing system can theoretically be fixed by this and many other approaches.

For how long has the current system existed again? Exactly.

Re: Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain

#109

Post by floatboth » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 5:56 PM UTC

45h34jh53k4j wrote: post #2

No coiners. Its fine, we will listen to them protest for years and years, telling us it cant work, it isn't a real solution, etc, while we invent the future. This internet thing will never take off, you need a box that screeches, connected to your phone all day long! I can't even get faxes while im 'online'. Pointless.

https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2018/04/05/debunking-bu...

Re: Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain

#110

Post by aalleavitch » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 5:56 PM UTC

In many ways, blockchain tech is the stupidest thing that has ever existed. It is a colossal monument to the inefficiency of human behavior. You are literally throwing energy and immensely valuable computation time out of a window simply because people can't trust each other. It is a massive sink for the destructively self-interested behavior of mankind. The problems that blockchains are trying to solve are not inherent difficulties involved in the tasks that they're being applied towards, they're problems with us. We can design an astronomically more efficient system for accounting, but it would be have to be one that is not being run by stupid, short-sighted apes. The entire overhead of the blockchain is devoted to dealing with a problem that we shouldn't even have, the whole thing is basically made of market failure. If there's any value in it, it's that we can use it to establish objective metrics for just how much value is destroyed by human irrationality and information deficits. We don't need to fix centralized accounting, centralized accounting works fine. We need to fix human beings.

Meanwhile, imagine if every GPU used for mining right now was being used for training neural nets instead. The value in that is nearly unimaginable; we could be making massive leaps in almost every field and industry, because the applications of deep learning to making tasks marginally more efficient are essentially endless.