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100 years of whatever this will be

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Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#261

Post by amelius »

notpachet wrote: post #49

All of the current histrionics that we hear from DeFi advocates regarding escaping the evil centralized Banks and Regulators and what not -- you know what they remind me of? They remind me of what I hear from junior developers when they're tasked with fixing an antiquated, broken software system. These developers typically lack the experience and the patience necessary to fix the system incrementally from within, so…

Your argument would make sense if the smartest people in the world were developing alternative, highly efficient systems to replace the current mess.

Alas. Our smartest people are working on making people click ads ...

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#262

Post by goodpoint »

CapmCrackaWaka wrote: post #180
gtsop wrote: post #57

Excuse me for the dismissive tone, but this looks a dog chasing his tail. Does anyone REALLY believe that "things don't work"™ because the systems put in place are flawed? No sir, the systems in place work flawlessly for those who put them there, enjoy the benefits of those systems and make damn sure these systems keep benefiting them no matter what. As long as one doesn't acknowledge this very simple fact, they have…

> No sir, the systems in place work flawlessly for those who put them there Well, if you define "work" as benefiting as many people as possible, then no they don't work. That's obviously the point the author was making.

Phrasing it as "things don't work" misleads people into thinking that it's just a matter of reforming a couple of regulations.

Instead this a world-wide, centuries-old conflict for power and wealth. The kind of thing that people live and die for.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#263

Post by lordnacho »

ausbah wrote: post #239
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

Catastrophes are smaller if you let them happen now and again. And localized. And you will have planned for them, because the population isn't conditioned to think the government will bail them out.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#264

Post by WJW »

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.

That's nice and I hope it works out for them, given how difficult it can be to get physical objects properly tracked in a digital system when the people responsible for entering data into the system can be corrupt. But getting the third world digitized is the very opposite of the "very interesting innovation" that everyone else in this thread keeps referring to; it is just making some thing that already exists again. That is not innovation, that is an incremental improvement at best.

For those of us living in prosperous Western countries (and let's not kid ourselves, that is at least 90% of HN), the biggest attraction of cryptocurrencies seems to be "if you buy this, it might be worth more in the future". Which is nice, but hardly innovative.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#265

Post by k__ »

zackmorris wrote: post #218

I've been thinking a lot lately about first principles. For example, the Golden Rule is great, but the concept of reincarnation transcends it, making it self-evident. The Book of Genesis probably started "in a beginning", not "in the beginning". And so on. When I look around at the state of the world today, it just makes me so tired. Everyone's running around on autopilot and not questioning the basic assumptions. It…

Every time I questioned basic assumptions, my life got better. Not suddendly, but in the long run.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#266

Post by _greim_ »

I immediately thought of Scott Alexander's "Meditations on Moloch".

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

His conclusion is that the only thing that could ultimately defeat the god Moloch (basically a personification of the problems described in the OP) is if we install a different god Elua (basically the personification of a human-friendly machine intelligence) to do the job. And if that sounds like hubris, the notion that we could overcome these problems ourselves is an even bigger form of hubris.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#268

Post by MrStonedOne »

notpachet wrote: post #49

All of the current histrionics that we hear from DeFi advocates regarding escaping the evil centralized Banks and Regulators and what not -- you know what they remind me of? They remind me of what I hear from junior developers when they're tasked with fixing an antiquated, broken software system. These developers typically lack the experience and the patience necessary to fix the system incrementally from within, so…

People don't want to break free of regulators, they want to break free of visa and mastercard playing moral judge on who you can send money too.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#269

Post by practice9 »

gtsop wrote: post #57

Excuse me for the dismissive tone, but this looks a dog chasing his tail. Does anyone REALLY believe that "things don't work"™ because the systems put in place are flawed? No sir, the systems in place work flawlessly for those who put them there, enjoy the benefits of those systems and make damn sure these systems keep benefiting them no matter what. As long as one doesn't acknowledge this very simple fact, they have…

I agree with your point. Systems like governments get "too fat" and there are many issues with holding them accountable or at least creating more transparency around their actions.

Calling for more regulation by an entity that needs to be regulated itself is a modern paradox.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#270

Post by syndacks »

zackmorris wrote: post #218

I've been thinking a lot lately about first principles. For example, the Golden Rule is great, but the concept of reincarnation transcends it, making it self-evident. The Book of Genesis probably started "in a beginning", not "in the beginning". And so on. When I look around at the state of the world today, it just makes me so tired. Everyone's running around on autopilot and not questioning the basic assumptions. It…

You had me except for the reincarnation/another life bit. Bedsides scripture, is there any evidence of this in science? I'm asking genuinely here.
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