While the calculation of $1,235 to save a life is very good, donating blood is arguably the most efficient way to save a life since it is free.
An NFT That Saves Lives
151–160 of 213 posts
Re: An NFT That Saves Lives
#152I'm not sure why this is an NFT other than trying to capitalize on the current craze. NFT or not, a charity should still "issue a public report tracking how this specific tranche of money is spent, and estimating the number of lives saved as a result". Having decent reporting on how efficient your charity is feels like it should be basic table-stakes in order to raise more money in the future. Is this really any diff…
This is a charity auction, a common way for charities to get donations. The purchase can make sense for the buyer because they get the good will of the donation, and they get an NFT potentially they could resell later that could be valuable because it is saving lives. The only thing the NFT directly does is mathematically prove to some future buyer that this NFT is the original and not a forgery. And it makes sense for Noora because of all the hype and money being spent on NFTs. If they were auctioning off a signed physical binder of the same report it would probably sell for a lot less even though it is effectively the same thing.
Re: An NFT That Saves Lives
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know what there is to explain, but I’m always open to the possibility that I’ve missed something. Ethereum, in particular, is at least capable of interesting things. That doesn’t mean it will change the world. But I’m always interested in hearing from intelligent people who differ on why they think it will.
I appreciate this as I'm also trying to keep an open mind and understand what this means for the future. So far there are only two arguments that I understand: 1. Libertarianism: The world will be better if we remove the government and other 3rd parties from interfering in transactions between individuals. 2. Decentralization of Money (Crypto), like the decentralization of information (The internet) will unlock techn…
Some degree of it has to just be the grown resentment of established banking. So this is a view of a certain cohort of sentiment, not necessarily exclusive to cryptocurrencies and all that.
These days a bank account will cost you money. Any savings account available to most people offers interest rates at or below inflation, if they're not 0% and charge fees (making those ones functionally offering negative interest). Even more glaring is being charged fees for not having a high enough balance in your account.
When you're young and poor and you look to a bank to help you grow out of that state, and you're offered the above, you can understand why it would appear the game is just plain broken. And that's just talking private bank accounts, not the larger economic sphere.
To me, it's no wonder that people are trying out different things, even if they don't work. It's better than just accepting the thing that's already not working for you.
Re: An NFT That Saves Lives
#154I had hoped PG would write an essay on crypto/NFTs, as he seems enthused by them and is good at explaining things. But he explains nothing here. Noora seems good, but that’s a feature of Noora, not NFTs. As for what is going on, I looked at Noora’s post, it seems PG has placed the sole bid on the NFT, valued at $2.6 million at current market prices of ETH. In return he will get a token that says he did it. One part I…
I mostly agree, but I don't think a PG post about him donating to Noora would make the front page of HN. In this case the NFT is providing value by bringing eyeballs due to how much hype NFTs have. I know I wouldn't have clicked through his post if he was just donating a bunch of money to them.
If that’s the only reason this is interesting, we’re talking about digital fashion. It’s isomorphic to a celebrity endorsing a product.
“Is this person an expert in using this product? No? But it’s selling like hotcakes because this person is a celebrity, and people find them interesting almost solely because other people find them interesting.”
So taking a donation and wrapping it in an NFT feels like taking a product and getting a celebrity to endorse it. The NFT itself really adds nothing to the idea of donating to this charity.
Re: An NFT That Saves Lives
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is generally the problem with idolizing people. PG is a human. Humans do stupid stuff.
Why do you think it's stupid? He is legitimizing blockchains with the hope that the price will grow (infinitely) and he will be at the top of this human pyramid. Ah, and what about saved lives? Pyramid supporters don't give a sh*t about lower levels of the pyramid. That's the main point of building it.
Sure, I should have said that humans fail to live up to the lofty standards that people expect of their idols. But "people are stupid" rolls off the toungue, as it were
Re: An NFT That Saves Lives
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Think about all the energy costs involved in everyone driving to the dinner, the air conditioning or heating for the venue, etc. It would depend on the number of guests which is more costly to the environment. For a dinner where you aim to raise 2.5 million, I think the dinner is going to have a bigger impact. But again, I want to reiterate that focusing on the environmental impact here is totally missing the point.…
this is a really disingenuous comparison. again you'd have to subtract the costs that would've already been incurred anyway. would someone invited to a fundraiser dinner not eat otherwise? or drive? or have AC? also, given that it's already very easy to send money to any non-profit talking about the potentially unnecessary environment costs doesn't seem unreasonable. the only reason people bring it up is because ther…
> this is a really disingenuous comparison.
Neither of us put up numbers, but I didn't call you disingenuous. I stand by what I said until I see math to the contrary.
Re: An NFT That Saves Lives
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
this is a really disingenuous comparison. again you'd have to subtract the costs that would've already been incurred anyway. would someone invited to a fundraiser dinner not eat otherwise? or drive? or have AC? also, given that it's already very easy to send money to any non-profit talking about the potentially unnecessary environment costs doesn't seem unreasonable. the only reason people bring it up is because ther…
> this is a really disingenuous comparison. Neither of us put up numbers, but I didn't call you disingenuous. I stand by what I said until I see math to the contrary.
You're the one who made the claim to begin with - so there's nothing to stand on, it's just a baseless claim since you didn't really provide any information on how much energy is required for a "fundraiser dinner" to begin with that wouldn't have been used anyway.
Re: An NFT That Saves Lives
#158Just put up a donation link, please.
Re: An NFT That Saves Lives
#159Charity = good
Cryptoscams = bad
Want to contribute money? Write a check. Don't sully charitable operations by trying to glue a cryptoscam onto them.
It seems rude to flag a link to paulgraham.com on Hacker News, but I'm going to do it anyway. Down with cryptoscams, even ones promoted by Graham.
Re: An NFT That Saves Lives
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
I appreciate this as I'm also trying to keep an open mind and understand what this means for the future. So far there are only two arguments that I understand: 1. Libertarianism: The world will be better if we remove the government and other 3rd parties from interfering in transactions between individuals. 2. Decentralization of Money (Crypto), like the decentralization of information (The internet) will unlock techn…
Some degree of it has to just be the grown resentment of established banking. So this is a view of a certain cohort of sentiment, not necessarily exclusive to cryptocurrencies and all that. These days a bank account will cost you money. Any savings account available to most people offers interest rates at or below inflation, if they're not 0% and charge fees (making those ones functionally offering negative interest)…
Well put, and another aspect beyond currency is a move against centralised control of enterprise. Centralised legal systems governing contracts, centralised ownership and rewards, centralised risk, etc. Some people looked at how the world is run and thought they could make a more efficient and secure way of doing things with more freedom for anyone that can swing an IDE to create fairer reward systems.
At least one of the implications of systems like ethereum is that they enable autonomous contracts that are decentralised and at least in theory don't require any separate and typically centralised governing body to execute and enforce, which could in turn lead to a range of new models of business and human interaction.
It remains to be seen what will happen, the technology is still young (the Web took about a decade to start catching on in the mainstream as perhaps being something more than a flash in the pan) and lofty ideas are being thrown at the wall as the new concepts are explored in both good and bad ways.
Having seen the ups and downs of the online revolution I have a hunch at least some of it will stick, and whether this moment goes down as some great proletarian revolution or becomes just another tool in the billionaires belt seems up in the air to me, but at the very least it is disruptive and we may be seeing the birth of the next generation of crypto barons.
Or anything could happen, like by some unlikely turn of events we solve prime factorisation and the whole thing fizzles into history as a big oops moment, or jackbooted forces raid homes and data centres to destroy all crypto-related hardware and knowledge.
I feel the outcome will be somewhere between the two extremes of utopia and dystopia, it just seems to be how things turn out, but as you say at least people are trying things. Disrupting the status quo is how society moves forward, humanity never seems too comfortable sitting on its haunches (for better or worse).