Live data from Hacker News

100 years of whatever this will be

apenwarr.ca

901–910 of 924 posts

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#901
post #4

I strongly believe that money itself has been corrupted lately, this then causes all number of bad flow on effects to happen. A massive shift happened when central banks started getting involved in direct purchases of various asset types and we started to see a major distortion happen in monetary policy that which has distorted the functioning of money itself. For example who would care if their business is completel…

I really don’t get why so many smart people come up with every possible theoretical solution and yet they fail to observe that Bitcoin was engineered to solve this exact problem

Bitcoin had design goals in mind to avoid certain downsides of centralized currencies. The cryptocurrency space however lives inside the broader economy and questions about what money is and the regulations around it don't go away just because a specific cryptocurrency thought about some of these aspects in it's design. Even if bitcoin were to solve everyone's problems as some maximalists would claim how do we even implement this? Considering much of the world doesn't have holdings in bitcoin what are we to do? Similarly what do we do about people who don't have the infrastructure to run full nodes? What about dealing with interference with using the cryptocurrency imposed by external actors?

There's good reasons why people discuss these ideas, bitcoin, much like anything else is just part of the direction things can go in and it doesn't exist in isolation from the rest of the world.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#902
post #175
post #4

I strongly believe that money itself has been corrupted lately, this then causes all number of bad flow on effects to happen. A massive shift happened when central banks started getting involved in direct purchases of various asset types and we started to see a major distortion happen in monetary policy that which has distorted the functioning of money itself. For example who would care if their business is completel…

> A massive shift happened when central banks started getting involved in direct purchases of various asset types and we started to see a major distortion happen in monetary policy that which has distorted the functioning of money itself. Historically, Western democratic states owned a significant amount of assets as measured as a percent of national income - it was only in the period 1970-2008 that the value of tota…

I think there's a massive difference between the government owning things and the central bank owning things for the reasons you mention about accountability.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#903

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…

We humans are gene making machines. We like to pretend we are superior and full owners of our choices, that we are above animalistic tendencies, that we are special and not like the others, but... couldn't be further from the truth. We are different, but not that different. Gene making still drives our behavior, whether we see it or not. And in more ways than most people imagine. Why are people ok with being wealthy?…

Not the parent commenter, but Thank you fellow Internet stranger. With people speculating about re-incarnation and linking it with Quantum stuff (basically pulling things out of their cloaca), I had to scroll way far down to see your direct, logical and sensible reply.

Having lived (and born into) all my life amongst followers of an eastern religion, I've observed that religious texts in my region of the world that specifically talk about re-incarnation attempt to 'make us go against our own instincts' (somewhat analogous to Puritanism). It's a clever way to make you 'regret your misdeeds' in past lives and be 'hopeful' about future lives (assuming you perform good deeds and don't rock the boat)-- if you learn to believe it. Call it Chicken Soup for the Primitive Soul.

Has all that attempt to promote 'Love thy neighbor, selflessness and self-actualization' from these religious texts been successful ? Mostly No. If anything, humans have used these same religious texts to rationalize their agenda of 'Hate thy neighbor, selfishness and materialism' covertly - Who would've guessed a several millenia old human genes would handily defeat a few thousand year old advice+propaganda disseminated in the form of these religious texts.

Anyone reading this might think I'm only bashing religious texts but as long as someone who cares to casually read any of those texts would realize - If you ignore the miracles & non-tangible stuff (propaganda) like immortality, re-incarnation, teleportation et al, these religious texts does include several down-to-earth advice for humans living in those eras - simple things like - living in the present moment, keeping a calm mind and eating a nutritious diet - stuff that seems so obvious now but is perhaps more relevant in the 21st century

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#904
post #774

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…

I presume you’ve read The Egg. I work with some folks who, like me, love it and we have adopted an “Eggist” mindset. Do unto others as you would (and will!) do unto your future self ;)

Right - it's all about the mindset!

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#905
post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I just got more depressed every time.

How come?

Not the author - but I can relate - for me most depressing is the fact that most people that I will ever meet in my life will or have already choosen (or it was chooses for them by others) a random set o high level assumptions about the life, the universe and everthing and will treat them as revealed truth.

And they will never allow anyone to disect them because it will as per quote from my old friend "destroy the meaning of life".

And by all means - I sincerlly believe we should all set our own meaning for life, just never forget that every one of us is probably wrong.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#906

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Broaden your historical context, and Keynes becomes the junior developer who thinks he can elegantly fix everything.

Thinking deeply about the system and finding the changes you can apply with minimal disruption and maximal impact is the opposite of what the GP is talking about.

Money printer go brrrr

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#907

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inequality is something we can measure to some degree and it seems to be rising fast.

What is the rate of change?

In 2018, the 26 richest people in the world held as much wealth as half of the global population (the 3.8 billion poorest people), down from 43 people the year before.

https://www.un.org/en/un75/inequality-bridging-divide

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#908
post #847

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you didn't personally insult me here, but I hate this comment. I'm a remote worker and I spend a large chunk of my time every week helping other team members. I'm very, very good at it. From now on, I'm going to ask everyone about their attitude towards remote work during interviews, and I'll be a hard NO on anyone with the attitude displayed here. You can have employees who hate remote or you can have remote…

Lots of people have that attititude (80%?) - and it is not connected to remote work. They do just the absolute minimum. In some ways it is debatable if they arent right. Also: if you are the one who cares in a team of those who dont (which is the usual situation), then you are in a world of pain. Snafu.

[deleted]

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#909
post #801

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Attaching a solution to a cryptocurrency comes off as just wanting to sell tokens, not sell the solution. well yeah it's not ideal, yet the holochain foundation does all their work in the open and have to fund their development somehow ( https://github.com/holochain/holochain ). better doing an ethical ico-like crowdsourcing (based on a unit of computing power, like Airbnb but for processing power) than strapping i…

There's no such thing as an ethical ICO.

Raising funds for an interesting project, from free agents willing to fund the project, is never ethical?

Are you certain of this?

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#910
post #901

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don’t get why so many smart people come up with every possible theoretical solution and yet they fail to observe that Bitcoin was engineered to solve this exact problem

Bitcoin had design goals in mind to avoid certain downsides of centralized currencies. The cryptocurrency space however lives inside the broader economy and questions about what money is and the regulations around it don't go away just because a specific cryptocurrency thought about some of these aspects in it's design. Even if bitcoin were to solve everyone's problems as some maximalists would claim how do we even i…

Assuming bitcoin fixes this like the maximalists claim, the way forward is to continue educating people on bitcoin and more importantly what’s wrong with the current monetary system. Way too many people buy into the narrative of bitcoin being harmful for the environment and being an outdated technology (“Blockchain, not bitcoin!”).

Much of the world doesn’t own bitcoin but as long as you have a mobile phone and an internet connection, there’s a way to buy some. The technology’s been working for 12 years now and it can scale just fine, no need to tamper with anything. People don’t need to run full nodes, it’s already decentralized enough. I have one running off a raspberry pi and a 1TB hard drive, but it’s just because I want to and not because I think the additional node is needed for the network. Bitcoin is resilient against external actors by design, maximum decentralization and security. Remember when China finally cracked down on all bitcoin mining in May? The hashrate has recovered by now and China lost almost all of its 50% foothold on global bitcoin mining. The rest of the world’s bitcoin miners thanks China for its contribution.

It seems to me like Bitcoin is dismissed too easily by people who haven’t done enough unbiased research on it. For me, it’s not so much that Bitcoin is such an awesome invention and everyone should worship it like a cult. My question is what happens after fiat currencies collapse? Every single government backed currency has collapsed from hyperinflation in the past, and there’s still a good number of countries with hyper inflating currencies today. Historically, after chaos and war, some people’s debts are flushed away at the expense of everyone else and a new currency is issued by the affected jurisdiction. Do we just want to repeat that cycle when the USD collapses? I think that a free market currency that cannot be controlled by any organization (including governments) deserves more limelight.

Post reply on HN