100 years of whatever this will be • Hacker News Board

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#231

Post by throw10920 » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:20 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #103

This essay seems deep and profoundly insightful but I don't think it actually is. Its ultimate call for "better designed regulation" is the no-true-scotsman fallacy in sheep's clothing. How do you know if your regulations are "properly designed?" If they produce good outcomes. But the problem is that there is no consensus about what a good outcome is. Some people are not happy, for example, unless women are quite lit…

Almost all of the stuff said in this comment ranges from misrepresentation ("A significant contingent -- significant enough to swing elections -- of one of the two major political parties in the most powerful nation on earth would prefer to literally deny the laws of physics than admit that anything said by a "liberal" might actually be true.", "Some people are not happy, for example, unless women are quite literally forced to bear children under threat of fine or imprisonment") to outright falsehoods (the challenge to Roe in the context of the above statement).

And it's not even on-topic. This is an off-topic tangent (there's no particular connection between the specific issues mentioned and the article - they were picked because they're partisan issues that the author wants to bring up, not because of any relevance) that looks like an attempt to start a political flamewar, and I don't believe that it belongs on HN.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#232

Post by zarzavat » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #157

_9omd wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a good point about software development in general, but I don't think it applies to things as fundamentally revolutionary as crypto. Sometimes system _do_ have to be completely re-thought from the ground up. I don't believe it's possible for our current financial systems to morph into an open network for storing and transmitting value (the internet of money as some call crypto).

Let’s assume (and that’s a big if) that crypto is a fundamentally better foundation to base finance on. Even if it is, we cannot presently know that it is, and we cannot predict what its unique failure scenarios will be and how to counter them. Therefore for me arguing a headlong dive into crypto is indeed like a junior developer arguing for the big rewrite. I also fail to see the fundamental difference between crypt…

The fundamental difference between cryptocurrency and gold is that cryptocurrency can be transmitted whereas gold can only be carried.

Try carrying a bar of gold across a border and you'll end up in an interrogation room.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#233

Post by bsagdiyev » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #223

dmitriid wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our broken institutions are fighting to protect their kingdom Three years ago I bought an apartment. I got a loan from a bank over internet and phone. The contract was three pages of clear Swedish that even I, with my rudimentary knowledge of i, could understand. The contract signing was intermediated by a person whose job is to make sure everything goes smoothly. In the end, all of the following was guaranteed : -…

It improves that process in a disintegrating third world country, which many of us may find ourselves in within our lifetimes.

No it doesn’t and no you won’t. Where is this fatalism coming from?

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#234

Post by GavinMcG » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #174

GavinMcG wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just not borne out in looking at the many markets already functioning under various regulatory schemes for decades now. Lots and lots of markets work as markets, and have fundamentally voluntary transactions, even though certain kinds of transactions are restricted. We've been living in that world for a long time now, and while there's room for debate about what's most functional, there's no credible way to cl…

> That's just not borne out in looking at the many markets already functioning under various regulatory schemes for decades now. If markets under all the regulatory schemes we have were actually "functioning", we would not have all the economic issues we have. For example, we would not have the supply chain issues that are currently making the news. We would not have had the crash of 2008, or the Great Depression for…

No, I'm attacking the logical implication of your statement. It's a reductio ad absurdum.

You said for a market to work "at all" as a market, it must have voluntary transactions, and people must be able to engage in the transactions of their choice. But nearly all markets do not have those features. Ergo, nearly all markets are not able to work at all, under your premise.

Accepting that most markets do work to a substantial degree, your premise must be wrong.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#235

Post by AnimalMuppet » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

tjr225 wrote: post #67

voakbasda wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-regulation != anti-government. I am okay with regulation and being regulated, but I absolutely am not okay with any of our existing governments having any part of that process. Revolution does not require anarchy as an outcome; indeed, my preference simply would be to install better governance. Turning the law into a set of constantly shift sands would make it impossible to do business, because that could end up…

> Risks can be taken only when the consequences can be predicted in advance. That sounds like the opposite of a risk to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk

Risks can only be intelligently taken when the odds of the different outcomes are at least approximately known in advance.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#236

Post by cblconfederate » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #228

cblconfederate wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> regulation by whom?

The local king / mayor

sure but what about inter-kingdom trade (and even, not all cities belonged to an empire)

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#237

Post by Joeri » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:26 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #103

This essay seems deep and profoundly insightful but I don't think it actually is. Its ultimate call for "better designed regulation" is the no-true-scotsman fallacy in sheep's clothing. How do you know if your regulations are "properly designed?" If they produce good outcomes. But the problem is that there is no consensus about what a good outcome is. Some people are not happy, for example, unless women are quite lit…

The call for better regulation is not inherently in conflict with this being a people / culture problem. There is no set of rules that cannot be subverted from within if those enforcing the rules wish to subvert them. Presently the U.S. is experiencing a culture war where a significant group of people are “the ends justify the means” types. No system can withstand that sort of attack indefinitely. On top of that, I notice a fatalism in U.S. politics which results in reasonable people bowing out of trying to make things better. You single out the conservatives, but I see plenty of reason as an outsider to also point fingers at the liberals.

Speaking specifically to pro choice vs pro life both of the viewpoints have merit, but because people in the culture war are so entrenched in their “side” this can no longer be admitted. Back in reality though everyone agrees there is a time past which the child has a right to exist that trumps the mother’s right to choose, even if for some that is at 8 months of pregnancy and for others it is at conception, and everyone agrees that it is wrong to force a woman to carry a child she does not want. So, in a sense, everyone is both pro choice and pro life. All we’re talking about is at what point in the pregnancy one gets priority over the other. This can be negotiated like anything else, and the usual principles of negotiation apply. But, because of the culture war, people have stopped negotiating and are trying to get the rules (supreme court) to protect their point of view, which as a rule cannot provide a lasting solution. People have got to learn again how to talk with each other.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#238

Post by samhw » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:26 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #197

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I think your comment clearly explains some ideas I've had for a while but have been struggling to elucidate. I think it's also why you see so much "pendulum-ism" in the tech world. Something about the current paradigm is difficult ("monoliths make it hard for large teams to release software quickly and independently!"), so then a new paradigm comes along which perhaps addresses some of the shortcomings of the…

I don't believe the broader financial system ever tried out making transactions impossible to reverse. They might not have ever had the power to do it. Another thing to bear in mind is that none of the participants in the financial system have ever been interested in designing a financial system. They have been interested in making money.

> none of the participants in the financial system have ever been interested in designing a financial system

I agree to some extent with the view that we should see systems as emergent phenomena arising from countless participants none of whom understands or intends the entire thing, but you can go overboard with that. There are clearly some participants who have taken a 'God's eye view' and tried to re/design an entire system (Bretton Woods, Dodd-Frank, Visa/Mastercard, &c).

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#239

Post by ausbah » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #200

You know what makes a distributed system work? Failure. Now and again, nature arranges for a catastrophe. An asteroid, too much oxygen, lignin building up, nature has cleaned up after and built on top of the rubble. Over the last 20-odd years, we didn't let a real economic catastrophe happen. There are millions of people working the wrong job. Loads of people have a made a ton of money providing nothing useful at all…

what about the costs to global economic catastrophes outside of money? the livelihoods of millions are ruined, families slip into needless poverty, and people die. if those are the costs, I don't think just letting things "work themselves out" is worth it

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#240

Post by generalizations » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

nouveaux wrote: post #80

pjkundert wrote: post #39

This article is profoundly insightful. I have been searching for patterns and insights in this field for 25 years. What apenwarr concludes is true: All we need is to build distributed systems that work. That means decentralized bulk activity, hierarchical regulation. The problem is, everyone wants distributed systems that require everyone else to agree (global consensus), which is literally impossible (see: CAP theor…

"There's another word for "require everyone else to agree": Tyranny." I think this is often thrown out there to push back on liberals and socialism but this is the wrong point. We as a global society _need_ to agree to be productive. We need to work together to find the best solutions for as many people as possible. Everyone needs to agree that starting a nuclear war is bad. You would likely want to stop China from s…

> Everyone needs to agree that starting a nuclear war is bad. You would likely want to stop China from shooting nuclear missiles at San Francisco. Yet I doubt that when you insist on this narrative, you would think of yourself as being tyrannical.

Extreme examples work, because you can actually count on the people reading your comment to agree with you. But you can't extrapolate towards less universally held examples that you happen to believe in; someone who requires everyone to agree about what's done with trees on your own property could well be considered tyrranical.

> One of the best observations about why people in urban areas are more liberal, and rural areas are more conservative, has to do with the idea that when you are around more people, you need more rules to guide how to interact with one another.

That's a cool observation that I'll keep in mind. However, in my experience, it's not been the primary reason. Rather, it has seemed to me that rural folks live closer to nature than urban folks, and have often had firsthand experience that mother nature tends to be nasty and brutish (or just check out r/natureismetal). That's an experience which tends to create what they would consider (IMHO) a much more pragmatic idea of what it takes to survive in the world.