100 years of whatever this will be • Hacker News Board

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#491

Post by what_is_orcas » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

thurn wrote: post #214

what_is_orcas wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And BTW, the person making that argument before the Supreme Court yesterday was a woman, and one of the justices who is going to vote to eviscerate Roe is a woman, so this is not just the patriarchy at work. That conclusion doesn't necessarily follow the supporting statements, though I agree with your overall sentiment.

(also the person, Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart, does not to my knowledge identify as a woman)

I totally missed that! You're right, I was just more focused on the logic.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#492

Post by pavel_lishin » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #382

davidw wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's part of the point of the article. Those rules are not some kind of distributed system. They are centralized.

One person can hit another person over the head without any centralized authority being involved. So I don't think your claim is correct at all. Assuming if somebody breaks an agreement, you just hit them over the head with a stick.

> Assuming if somebody breaks an agreement, you just hit them over the head with a stick.

But that's not a society any of us want to live in.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#493

Post by ralston3 » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 7:43 PM UTC

To me, this reads as "If we, as a society become better people, we don't need other solutions to address how not great of people we are". In other news, water is wet.

I feel as if the author seems to somewhat misunderstand the relationship between those who have less and those who have more. There's a fundamental lack of trust (which really erupted in 2008) that kicked off this whole crypto/web3 thing.

We tried the "trusting people" route and it didn't work. The incentives are just too misaligned for "trust" to ever work (in my opinion). So, techies basically said "Fu$k it, I'll build my own system to do what you (those who have more) _should_ be doing".

This articles seems to say that we don't need all these complex solutions to problems that can fundamentally be solved by just...being better people? But that has never, and will never happen. We all wish we lived in a perfect world where everyone does the right thing - but that is just not the reality we live in. So these "decentralized/distributed systems" (e.g., Bitcoin) are our way of removing the human component from the equation.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#494

Post by wolverine876 » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 7:43 PM UTC

Like many people, much of the OP implicitly accepts as its premise the philosophies that create this problem. When you do that, the battle and debate are already over. The assumptions determine the outcome.

Many of those philosophies espouse hopelessness and despair. Making your enemy despair is a transparent and brazenly obvious tactic, and fundamental psyops. You are giving away your power, which is considerable, for nothing. The nutcases are vastly outnumbered. Why are people so stupid as to not see that, and to buy into it? Are you kidding me?

Another thing I've long believed is the disparagement of humanities and 'post-modernism' is disarmament. These are the tools that will win, not more algorithms. The bad guys embrace and use those tools, disparaging them all the while, and most people I know again implicitly accept that and unilaterally disarm themselves. Brilliant!

Why does everyone do this stupid sh-t? IMHO: The pressure of social norms. Look at the widespread use of contempt, for example - a great tool for enforcing social norms, and but which serves no rational, productive purpose. Open-mindedness, humility, respect, and reason are the productive tools - but I can sense the contempt coming for mentioning those things

Some examples:

> Or, people who are in it for society tend to lose or to get screwed until they give up.

We've made cowardice a social norm. If you think the situation is serious, 'giving up' because you are tired or due to social pressure is very weak. People regularly have risked their freedom, lives, fortunes, and honor (reputation) for to give us what we have, generation after generation. We are the stewards and leaders now; what will we give the next generation, or will we just be parasites and throw it all away. Nothing we face is worse than prior generations - if you think it's tough now, imagine advocating for women's rights, for example, facing millennia of history and widespread reactionary outrage; success didn't look assured at all.

> Big banks and big governments really do nonspecifically just suck a lot.

Democracy is the tool, the place everyone gets a vote regardless of their wealth, status, power. By despairing, you again abandon the field of battle to the other side, which certainly has not despaired. It's incredible to watch people surrender unilaterally, for no reason, other than telling each other to despair.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#495

Post by klabb3 » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #458

jspaetzel wrote: post #306

All of this is just pessimistic complaining. Flip this and be optimistic and you'll find life isn't all that bad. Think about the last hundred years... * Rich people are still rich and poor people have access to more food, medicine, and opportunity then any time in human history. * Families have and always should lookout for themselves first. That's the way things work and should work. * Society is able to support mo…

>> * Rich people are still rich and poor people have access to more food, medicine, and opportunity then any time in human history. Back in the day slaves had to transport ice from mountains so that the king could have his chilled wine every evening, whereas today most people in the West have fridges at home. This does not mean that those who have fridges should just put aside their feelings of malaise and adopt an o…

Yep, agreed. For instance, you have more bandwidth and CPU power today than in the 90s but the number of rent seekers you and walled gardens you have to use are much bigger. So the topology has changed.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#496

Post by ppqqrr » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

syndacks wrote: post #270

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.

I’m aware that it’s pretty whack, but my pet argument for reincarnation is this: you used not not exist. Then, at some point in time, you transitioned into existing. When you die, you’ll go back to not existing again (if that’s what you believe). If reincarnation is just a matter of coming into being from non-existence, then the fact that you exist is an evidence that it’s possible. Obviously there’s many holes in this argument (to start with, is every incarnation a probabilistically independent event?), but hey, what good’s freedom of religion if you can’t make up your own mind about things you can’t possibly know right?

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#497

Post by wyager » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

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…

The fact that holo introduces a shitcoin when any payment channel (lightning, some USD service, etc) would work means I'm not going to take it seriously.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#498

Post by munificent » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 7:45 PM UTC

I love this article so much.

> People like to use the term free market to describe the optimal market system, but that's pretty lousy terminology. The truth is, functioning markets are not "free" at all. They are regulated. Unregulated markets rapidly devolve into monopolies, oligopolies, monopsonies, and, if things get really bad, libertarianism.

Yes, yes, this 1000x yes. Every time someone on HN or Reddit blithely assumes deregulation will solve everything, I want to forcibly point out that the most important word in "free market", is not "free", it's "market". A free market operates within a structure that must be created and maintained not using the properties of the market itself. If you don't have anything with more power than the market maintaining the market, before long you don't have a market. And once you don't have a market, you don't have "free" either.

There's a reason professional sports matches have referees on the field. You need a structure more powerful than the game to preserve the game.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#499

Post by yao420 » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 7:45 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #471

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the analogy, but in many cases the societal ills that defi is trying to solve were caused by software in the first place (e.g. internet advertising as a democracy-eroder). Also, the protectors of the status-quo are putting a lot of software people to work in protecting that status quo, so tempting them to the other side means compatibility with their skillset. Lastly, anyone who would overturn the status quo m…

How would decentralized finance affect the advertising driven business model of web applications?

I quite liked the coinhive approach of having the user run a blockchain workload as an alternative to ads. The project and economics didn’t work out for them but it was an interesting approach.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#500

Post by joshgachnang » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 7:46 PM UTC

throwaway803453 wrote: post #430

* Everyone seems to increasingly be in it for themselves I was fortunate to have had a career with mild autonomy to help other team members even if it was slightly out of my job description. But this only happens in a shared office environment where you can see when someone is falling behind or overhear a problem. That physical presence also creates a bond with co-workers that's often more powerful than the corporate…

This sounds like a corporate/team culture issue with remote work, rather than remote work as a whole. I can still tell when my coworkers are falling behind and check if they need help, as well as building bonds. The bonds certainly aren't as strong as when we used to all go out for lunch or drinks every so often, but they're still there.