100 years of whatever this will be • Hacker News Board

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#541

Post by ipaddr » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 8:19 PM UTC

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #429

munificent wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% sympathize with this feeling too. But the pattern I see over and over again is: 1. Society is getting worse. 2. I'm really good at writing software. 3. Therefore the solution is to write software to fix society. That chain of logic is simply the streetlight effect [1] writ large: A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys…

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…

Before internet advertising everyone was concerned with newspapers being all ads, subway ads, billboards, naming stadiums, ads on buses, flyers being put everywhere, mail advertising plus everything you see on tv.

Those things still exist. Focusing only on digital advertising when ads are being pushed everywhere is missing the point.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#542

Post by fragmede » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 8:19 PM UTC

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #429

munificent wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% sympathize with this feeling too. But the pattern I see over and over again is: 1. Society is getting worse. 2. I'm really good at writing software. 3. Therefore the solution is to write software to fix society. That chain of logic is simply the streetlight effect [1] writ large: A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys…

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…

I get where defi is coming from, and the regulations are onerous, but also those regulations were hard-fought for, and came about on the backs of real problems for real people, often by being exploited by people most accurately described as conmen. Caveat emptor, sure, but on the way from "investing your play money" to someone close to retirement's 401k, there's a much bigger pitfall.

The "battles" are shaping up to be fought the same way they were previously - regulations forcing big huge heavy disclaimers on financial products, cryptocoin-based or otherwise, that state that the returns stated are not actually guaranteed.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#543

Post by kkjjkgjjgg » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 8:20 PM UTC

crdrost wrote: post #442

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right but that gets into scaling problems and arguments... for a hundred people sticks might work, for a thousand it gets dicey, by 10,000 things start to break down as factionalism spontaneously emerges: within our tribe we handle things via social cohesion and weak displays of symbolic force, outside our tribe we handle things via stronger displays of retribution Point is that "hit with a stick" happens to also cen…

I guess you could argue the set of laws is the central authority that produces a two-party system, even though it may not have been intentional. Presumably you could adjust the laws so that other constellations would emerge.

Also why do people have to live in societies of millions of individuals? Perhaps smaller units would be better. To some degree that is already what happens, as for example villages can decide some things for themselves. The question is just who should get to decide what.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#544

Post by fragmede » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 8:20 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?

Micropayments have been suggested since Internet was young, but now that's available on top of the right cryptocurrent (eg SOL). Whether that's actually a model people want (vs saying they want) remains to be seen, but Substack seems to be doing well enough for their writers. 3 cents from each of 100,000 likes on Twitter/Insta/tt starts to add up for those with a large enough following to make several of those a month. If the transaction costs are close enough to nil to make that worthwhile for everyone involved, that's a different web than we've grown up with, with 30-cent per-transaction fees being the industry standard for credit cards.

If Web3 becomes popular, it frees the online tip jar from a particular platform (eg Patreon) and decentralizes it so anyone can set it up for themselves, with far lower network effects required.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#545

Post by dmitriid » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 8:21 PM UTC

_9omd wrote: post #304

dmitriid wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as fundamentally revolutionary as crypto. This is a huge claim, and needs to have just as huge of a proof. However, all cryptos can offer is poof (as in poof, and gone) than proof.

Well of course there's no way to prove it now. Could you have proved how revolutionary the internet would be in its early days? You have to be open minded and extrapolate from the principles of the new system and its interactions with society at large to _guess_ how impactful it may be. I believe the fundamental principles of crypto (open, permissionless, decentralized, global, neutral, etc.) make it highly likely to…

> Could you have proved how revolutionary the internet would be in its early days?

Yes. Yes, you could. 10 years after ARPANet was made public you already had things like France's Minitel.

Blockchains? They still have zero use cases: https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/ten-years-in-nobody-has-c...

> You have to be open minded and extrapolate

Ah yes. "Revolutionary tech", and all you have to do is blindly believe in it.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#546

Post by tabtab » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 8:21 PM UTC

The "network effect" seems to be affecting everything: The rich get richer, and everybody else fights for scraps. It's winner-take-all.

This applies to countries also, not just individuals. If your country can't quite keep up with cutting edge manufacturing and services, you lose in the global trade competition and can't afford to give your citizens up-to-date college education, exacerbating the slide.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#547

Post by dmitriid » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

fsflover wrote: post #292

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 : -…

Unfortunately very few people live in a democratic country with the rule of law like Sweden. For the rest, crypto can be a good place to keep their funds without the fear of losing.

> Unfortunately very few people live in a democratic country with the rule of law like Sweden.

You mean, the absolute vast majority of people in this world live in contries with more-or-less functioning governments. Not perfect, but functioning.

> or the rest, crypto can be a good place to keep their funds without the fear of losing.

Ah yes. The only use case is hoarding. Even though I specifically provided a different case that doesn't involve hoarding.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#548

Post by dmitriid » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

moistrobot wrote: post #274

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 : -…

I'm glad it went well for you :) All of those guarantees are under threat of legal punishment enforced through court systems. All of those guarantees are given to you based on good standing with various institutions. The bank, the intermediary, the seller. If you were a person who was not in good standing with a bank, but you still had the money, could you have completed the transaction? Technology has a trend of des…

> Technology has a trend of destroying middleman industries, as they don't provide value and take a portion of the proceeds for themselves.

So, these middlemen that "don't provide any value" guarantee that: my money isn't stolen, that I get the apartment I was shown etc.

So, you've removed these middlemen. How exactly is your technology going to solve this?

> DeFi, in this case, is targeting the financial institutions because we now have technological means to replace banks and lenders.

No, you don't. With banks I can revert a fraudulent transaction (I paid, but the goods never showed up). How is defi solving this simple case?

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#549

Post by nfw2 » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

I generally agree with this essay, but I think the listed problems with society misses the mark.

"Everyone seems to increasingly be in it for themselves, not for society." Is this really changing? I don't buy that people today have less empathy for each other than they did historically. The bulk of human history was cruel in ways that stagger the imagination.

"The gap between the haves and have-nots keeps widening." The gap between rich and poor is not the correct target to optimize. The only problem you can reasonably try to solve is improving the quality of life for the have-nots. World-changing innovation (steam engine, electricity, printing press) always makes a few individuals exorbitantly wealthy, and the world is better off because of it.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#550

Post by indigochill » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 8:25 PM UTC

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #429

munificent wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% sympathize with this feeling too. But the pattern I see over and over again is: 1. Society is getting worse. 2. I'm really good at writing software. 3. Therefore the solution is to write software to fix society. That chain of logic is simply the streetlight effect [1] writ large: A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys…

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…

> Lastly, anyone who would overturn the status quo must provide the people with an alternative that's at least as good

Depends what "good" means. Something interesting about disruption is it often starts out worse than the incumbent in every way except one key one which people see value in. The incumbent then doesn't see it as a threat because it's so much worse, until a critical mass of users who value the one better thing builds up and the incumbent is disrupted.

I'm a firm believer disruption of big tech will work that way. PeerTube is worse than YouTube in many ways, except that it's federated. Mastodon is harder to use than Twitter for the typical user. I believe in both of them because I believe the one thing they inarguably do better (putting power back in the hands of the people through federation) is sufficiently significant, especially as faith continues to erode in the status quo gatekeepers.