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

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

#161

Post by spookthesunset »

vageli wrote: post #158
spookthesunset wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> digital property that cannot be reproduced for free. Sure, all through the magic of using a medium sized country's worth of electricity.... > Smart contracts add another new thing to the world: the ability to build immutable software that interacts directly with the financial system. "Immutable" as in "immutable up until the folks at the top decide to alter history to benefit themselves financially". See also - Eth…

> Bitcoin is more than 10 years old. It is a mature tech that is still in search of a problem. I don't understand how this can be said with a straight face. Aeronautics, ballistics, these are examples of mature tech. I can't think of a single example of technology that was considered mature after a mere ten years.

Bitcoin is a data structure. It isn't like the invention of flush toilets, the standardized shipping container, or sliced bread.

It's been on the market for 10 years and so far its only use seems to be a great way to run pump & dump penny stock scams....

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

#162

Post by simias »

gtrubetskoy wrote: post #154
simias wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well - the way you describe it is it's like Satoshi used a bread knife to cut something other than bread, but it's more like he used it as an antenna. He is exploiting a feature of HashCash that Adam Back (who invented it) didn't even know existed. It has to do with multiple participants solving the same timelock puzzle in parallel and some very interesting stuff happens then - you should read the link I posted (I ta…

But we're in complete agreement and that's my point, he took something (HashCash) and found out that it could be used for something it wasn't meant to. That's what's so clever about it. It's not like inventing elliptic curve cryptography designing the first internal combustion engine, it's taking something and realizing that it could be a lot more. It's not using a bread knife to cut something else, it's using a bread knife to create a more efficient battery. Or like using sleep as a sorting algorithm or figuring out that you could abuse the floating point representation to compute an inverse square root without actually having to compute a square root.

I'm not trying to diminish the discovery, it's quite the contrary, I think its simplicity and elegance is what makes it so impressive. It's a very elegant solution to a very complex problem and you could explain it in a few minute to somebody with the right technical background.

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

#163

Post by aalleavitch »

clarkmoody wrote: post #145
aalleavitch wrote: post #110

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 inher…

> We need to fix human beings. As a non-utopian, I understand that human beings cannot be "fixed." Thus, we must create systems that cannot be corrupted by humans. Creating a money outside of state control may be the smartest thing that humanity ever does. We'll need maybe a century to see how it plays out. That said, most of the blockchain projects out there are scams. If your project can run on a centralized databa…

And yet, as we've come to better understand ourselves, human behavior actually has become better. The statistics actually bear this out.

We need to stop thinking of "human nature" as some inviolable fundamental quality and start thinking of it as the behavior of an animal in an environment.

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

#165

Post by oaeide »

mkirklions wrote: post #138
mido22 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you are at it, you can also read up about "triple ledger accounting"

I looked this up, what is your point(if you dont mind)? It seems like a feature with ~0 benefits. Can you explain?

I think you should look it up again.

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

#166

Post by emodendroket »

golergka wrote: post #156
emodendroket wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the problem it solves is "I need a way to buy illegal drugs, weapons, and fake IDs while evading the police," I think you can see obvious problems to mass-market adoption. I also wonder whether a system with a permanent, publicly accessible ledger is truly ideal for this application.

It's already massively adopted in this field, like it or not. Buying drugs with bitcoin is mainstream; no drug dealer takes cash now.

Yes, but I don't think the Bitcoin pushers are telling us that it's going to revolutionize the world of buying heroin online.

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

#167

Post by ecocentrik »

Blockchains are accounting mechanisms. In their simplest form, blockchains are just a linked list of linked lists that that fulfill the requirements of an easily immutable, distributed and auditable system of accounts.

I'm not sure how the author is attributing so much doom and gloom to cryptographically secured accounting systems, some of which have survived for a decade without a major failure of their primary function (securing digital assets with enforceable contractual conditions and private keys).

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

#168

Post by slededit »

jeremyjh wrote: post #58
ty_a wrote: post #7

Blockchain is perfect for its original use case, a distributed trustless database. The tradeoffs don't make any sense for a trusted system, i.e. replacing SWIFT or storing titles to property.

All the evidence to date suggests that banks are much more capable of providing useful financial services than blockchains. Can you give a counter example of a real world use?

I moved from the US to Canada. Banks wanted to hold my transferred money for a month even though they got the cash within 3 days.

with cryptocoins I wouldn't have had to move the money at all.

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

#169

Post by clarkmoody »

tCfD wrote: post #157
clarkmoody wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to fix human beings. As a non-utopian, I understand that human beings cannot be "fixed." Thus, we must create systems that cannot be corrupted by humans. Creating a money outside of state control may be the smartest thing that humanity ever does. We'll need maybe a century to see how it plays out. That said, most of the blockchain projects out there are scams. If your project can run on a centralized databa…

> creating money outside state control Which if successful enough to constitute a counterweight with enough force to push back against "the state" will yield merely... another state, but conveniently one with "Our Guys" in control of all the economic leverage. You call yourself non utopian, yet Bitcoin - a tool to deleverage the state by sapping its power of taxation - is a nakedly self serving utopian project. And y…

Yet nothing those in power do will ever change the monetary base or inflation rate of Bitcoin.

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

#170

Post by wsy »

specialist wrote: post #125
spookthesunset wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

How are anti-counterfeiting efforts done today? Accounting. For this use case, think of blockchains as a shared ledger.

If you already trust the accountant, he can set up a conventional database, and you can look stuff up there. Much simpler and cheaper.

A blockchain-based shared ledger is only useful in case the participants don't trust each other. In which case you cannot do anything with it to help detecting counterfeits.

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