Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

100 years of whatever this will be

apenwarr.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 924 posts

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#571

Post by amelius »

dmitriid wrote: post #187
moistrobot wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Code doesn't actively resist your attempts to improve it. Our broken institutions are fighting to protect their kingdom

> 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 doesn't always work out well for everybody. Check this out:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-essex-59069662

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#572

Post by Ensorceled »

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #540
watwut wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Assuming if somebody breaks an agreement, you just hit them over the head with a stick. If this is possible, then it is equally possible to just hit anyone you please with stick so that they are forced to do what you want. Which means, the most violent eager person gets to rule. Which is what people who prefer court system don't want.

If you just hit people with sticks, they are bound to hit back. I don't understand your example.

I know several people that it would be VERY unwise for almost anyone to attempt to hit them with sticks. Do they get to do larceny as much as they want in this system?

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#573

Post by Shorel »

munificent wrote: post #388
delusional wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the argument is that transferrable. As a developer you don't really live within the legacy systems. At most you're a politician negotiating between the different component parts. Society is different. I don't like DeFi, but I get what they're feeling. It feels like society has left us behind. Like anything we could ever hope to try is already accounted for and defeated before the effort even begins. You…

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…

Except: Law is code. And we run these programs. We are the processors.

And I mean real laws, the ones written in congress.

Whatever we are doing, in a sense, is trying to sidestep these laws.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#574

Post by georgewsinger »

Frondo wrote: post #528
generalizations wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it would far less tyrannical for the neighbor to force me to remove the tree through the government The neighbor wouldn't be the tyrannical one. And, there's better solutions - put the liability for the tree on the person whose property it's on. That's a fair assignment of responsibility. I do think it would be tyrannical for the government to declare that all trees must be removed if they meet certain criteria.

Why is liability -- which can only kick in after some damage has been done, possibly displacing someone from their home -- a better solution than a process by which dying/dead trees can be compelled to be removed? This sounds like the usual libertarian answer to things like "eliminate government food safety inspection"; the idea being that the market would eventually reflect that some restaurants regularly sicken peo…

> Why is it better to let people be sickened, even if they can later sue, than put some stops up on risky behavior in the first place?

Consequentialist reason: you don't put barriers and friction in front of (e.g.) biotech and drug innovation. See the pandemic for this (FDA has killed approximately a million people alone by preventing covid vaccines from being available in the market sooner).

Deontological reason: you don't have the right to tell people what they can and can't do with their own bodies (w.r.t. products they want to consume, at their own risk, etc).

There's also regulatory capture, which reliably and predictably occurs in mixed economies (see e.g. public choice economics).

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#575

Post by CTmystery »

tinco wrote: post #537
padobson wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science is the only and ultimate final authority. Indeed, praise be to science. It really is not a bad assumption. More like a leap of faith. There literally can not be a higher authority than it by definition. How [onto]logical. It is just that it is unethical to do so, so we refrain from it. Amen, brother. We've got to repress those urges of curiosity to appease glorious science. Praise be to science! Amen.

Happy you feel that way ;) > We've got to repress those urges of curiosity to appease glorious science No, it's to appease our desire to live in a society that aligns with our morality. If you'd read the religious books for what they are and respect them for their interpretation of what it means to be a kind and loving human being, instead of using them as tools to manipulate the minds of the unwashed masses into beh…

I believe the parent understood more than you are giving them credit for. You don't think you're being too dogmatic when you replace one authority (scripture) for another (science) while retaining the exact same language?

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#576

Post by edot »

asdfman123 wrote: post #480
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…

And you must ask: who is really driving the public debate to throw out centralized banks? I saw a Winklevoss on Twitter saying something along the lines of "cash is trash; crypto is the future." Makes sense that he wants to pump up crypto, because he has a large financial stake in it. There's always going to be someone on top of society making the rules. The question is this: who do we want it to be? How can we make…

I want to be ruled by people who bought into Bitcoin in 2012 or earlier. They know how to govern best.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#577

Post by lupire »

gumby wrote: post #320
maerF0x0 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood the reason we even have marriage defined in government at all, and thusly would include "gay" marriage (all marriage is marriage if it's undefined)... We don't have a government definition of prayer or baptism, but for some reason we have have codified that one religious practice into our government? Doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Also why do they get varyingly get tax incentives or disincen…

I mostly agree with you but there are certain useful functions. It’s an optional service the state provides to many many* people with negligible transaction fee, as with, for example, maintaining the roads, air traffic control, or food safety. Those things help you even if you never leave your home or never fly. First it’s a default mechanism for saying things like “if I get hurt this person can come see me in / ask…

You are describing civil unions. Legal marriage is just religous baggage.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#579

Post by asdfman123 »

edot wrote: post #576
asdfman123 wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you must ask: who is really driving the public debate to throw out centralized banks? I saw a Winklevoss on Twitter saying something along the lines of "cash is trash; crypto is the future." Makes sense that he wants to pump up crypto, because he has a large financial stake in it. There's always going to be someone on top of society making the rules. The question is this: who do we want it to be? How can we make…

I want to be ruled by people who bought into Bitcoin in 2012 or earlier. They know how to govern best.

Be warned: any bitcoin post is deep within Poe's Law territory

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#580

Post by CTmystery »

tinco wrote: post #531
CTmystery wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Science is the only and ultimate final authority Junk science led to the American eugenics movement that included forced sterilization of 64k Americans in the early 1900s. I love science, but calling it the only and ultimate authoritity leaves a lot of room to create a world we don't want to live in. This happens because scientists disagree themselves on almost everything. Recognizing the difference in science as a…

That it's the ultimate authority doesn't mean you should always believe it. It's just the best we've got. It's the best thing about science is that it's explicit about the bounds of what we know and don't know. You don't ask a scientist what you should do, you ask a scientist what they think is true, and what the options are and what their estimated outcomes are. It's always you yourself who make the decision. Regard…

Perhaps we disagree on the definition of 'the authority of science'. Also FWIW I am not at all religious, in case you think I'm trying to restore scripture to it's rightful place of authority over science. I am just intrigued by this statement that science is the ultimate authority by definition, and that nothing could ever supplant it.
Post reply on HN