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

Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 393 posts

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#171

Post by dnautics »

sudosysgen wrote: post #151
dnautics wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this statement trivially true for any sort of social system, where you can stand in social capital for Capital.

For social capital, the statement is tautological and has no meaning. Social capital is generally defined as the set of all interpersonal relationships and shared or individual ideas. This isn't a paperclip maximizer nor is it meaningful that groups of people are compelled to act in ways that follow what people in that group believe, do, and how they interact with each other; it's a tautology. I think that the fact t…

If you don't think that maximization of social capital doesnt lead people to do dumb shit things allow me to introduce you to real stuff with escalating degrees of real consequence over millennia like TikTok, eating competitions, luxury yachts, most of Hollywood, Jeffrey Epstein, various wars over the course of milennia like Assad murdering his citizens in Syria to dumb wars in Europe for centuries, crusades, pol pot, e.g.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#172

Post by adam_arthur »

RedBeetDeadpool wrote: post #167
johnday wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP doesn't say complain to crypto users. It says that we need to inform the general public so that they are immunised against the draw of these schemes.

Immunized against what exactly though? Is there even one thing about owning crypto that people need protection from? Its an asset class like any other and if you want an NFT buy an NFT. If you want to buy a pokemon card, buy a pokemon card. If you'd rather spend it on a car, buy a car. You're gonna get fraudsters with any asset. People will sell you houses that have bug problems hidden from you. Car dealerships will…

Crypto so far is largely a vast space with little intrinsic value.

The "technological veil" over it seems to confer more legitimacy to crypto projects than is really warranted.

E.g. people buying land in the "metaverse", which is really just some hastily implemented crap game/mmo.

Less technical people aren't going to understand that the perfectly legitimate technology is a ruse covering up illegitimate investment ideas.

But personally, Im not too worried. Fiscally irresponsible people will always find a way to throw away their money one way or another. It will seem quite obvious in hindsight, however.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#173

Post by sudosysgen »

dnautics wrote: post #166
tablespoon wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most exchanges of economic capital result in the betterment of both parties. 2) in order to get some, you usually provide a good or service to someone else. It's easy to misread that as something like everybody wins, but it's worth noting that such exchanges can still be extremely exploitative.

Exploitativeness is extremely ill-defined and often used to push an agenda that is not really aligned with the interest of the party "being exploited". In any case, acknowledging that exchanges can be "unfair" for some definition of "unfair", I did use the word "Most". Capitalism/free markets do not guarantee that humans are not shitty but I challenge you to find a social system that does.

Exploitativeness is not necessarily ill-defined. It's just that when you define it rigourously, it either never happens or happens too often for the definers' ideological persuasion.

And by the way, your statement is also extremely ill-defined. If you say that most transactions are not zero-sum, you are presupposing some kind of value system, which you didn't specify, and the value system for which that is true are also very ill-defined.

It's also true that a positive sum interaction could absolutely be exploitative. So the actual amount of exploitative interactions is strictly higher than the number of zero sum or negative sum interactions.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#174

Post by dvt »

arcticbull wrote: post #125
mib32 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also like to think of it as something analogous to drug addiction with the dopamine positive feedback loop.

Crypto is the crystal meth of finance. Capital completely divorced from labor.

In that sense, crypto is exactly the same as forex, money markets, equities markets, futures markets, derivatives markets, etc. We haven't been coupling markets with labor for like 300 years now.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#175

Post by RedBeetDeadpool »

adam_arthur wrote: post #172
RedBeetDeadpool wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immunized against what exactly though? Is there even one thing about owning crypto that people need protection from? Its an asset class like any other and if you want an NFT buy an NFT. If you want to buy a pokemon card, buy a pokemon card. If you'd rather spend it on a car, buy a car. You're gonna get fraudsters with any asset. People will sell you houses that have bug problems hidden from you. Car dealerships will…

Crypto so far is largely a vast space with little intrinsic value. The "technological veil" over it seems to confer more legitimacy to crypto projects than is really warranted. E.g. people buying land in the "metaverse", which is really just some hastily implemented crap game/mmo. Less technical people aren't going to understand that the perfectly legitimate technology is a ruse covering up illegitimate investment id…

> Crypto so far is largely a vast space with little intrinsic value.

So was pokemon. By my definition that's a crap game even without crypto. But millions of people have fun playing it and its a big part of their lives, so who am I to judge?

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#176

Post by adam_arthur »

RedBeetDeadpool wrote: post #175
adam_arthur wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto so far is largely a vast space with little intrinsic value. The "technological veil" over it seems to confer more legitimacy to crypto projects than is really warranted. E.g. people buying land in the "metaverse", which is really just some hastily implemented crap game/mmo. Less technical people aren't going to understand that the perfectly legitimate technology is a ruse covering up illegitimate investment id…

> Crypto so far is largely a vast space with little intrinsic value. So was pokemon. By my definition that's a crap game even without crypto. But millions of people have fun playing it and its a big part of their lives, so who am I to judge?

The intrinsic value of pokemon is the enjoyment you get out of playing. Thus people are willing to pay money to play it.

"Investments" in crypto tend to have value because you can sell it to somebody else for more, not because the intrinsic value increases over time. E.g. like a cashflowing business increasing their cashflow, or raising rents on a rental property.

This is self referential, people aren't paying more because it provides higher intrinsic value, but due to speculation.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#177

Post by dns_snek »

SCLeo wrote: post #163
dns_snek wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decentralization, privacy, and censorship resistance are indeed goals of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. In addition, they also serve as speculative assets. What's fraudulent about that? Cryptocurrencies do in fact provide all of that (not all of them provide all of these guarantees, but some do).

You completely missed my point. Simply put: People use cryptocurrencies as speculative asset while they claim they are using them for decentralization and other properties.

I still don't see the fraud? Just because your friends/associates aren't using cryptocurrencies for that purpose right now, doesn't mean that other people aren't, or that they won't be in the future.

This is akin to saying that seat belts are fraudulent because they aren't saving your life every single day. You might not need the properties of censorship resistance, privacy and so on right now, until one day you do.

I would much rather live in a world where such currencies are available in case I need to rely on them.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#178

Post by RedBeetDeadpool »

adam_arthur wrote: post #176
RedBeetDeadpool wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crypto so far is largely a vast space with little intrinsic value. So was pokemon. By my definition that's a crap game even without crypto. But millions of people have fun playing it and its a big part of their lives, so who am I to judge?

The intrinsic value of pokemon is the enjoyment you get out of playing. Thus people are willing to pay money to play it. "Investments" in crypto tend to have value because you can sell it to somebody else for more, not because the intrinsic value increases over time. E.g. like a cashflowing business increasing their cashflow, or raising rents on a rental property. This is self referential, people aren't paying more b…

People buy expensive art because its popular. They also do nothing but stare at it every once in a while. Is that intrinsic value? Because if that is, then so is crypto.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#179

Post by Comevius »

logicalmonster wrote: post #68

> what a nightmarish step backwards it is for developers concerned with cost, speed, privacy, safety, and ease. 1) There's a lot of research and development into blockchain technology by very smart people. The systems are improving. What technology we'll have 5, 10, or 25 years from now is going to be much different than what exists now. It's a lack of imagination to think that because crypto is "slow" now (and not a…

The entire crypto landscape is dirty tricks and frauds already. The blockchain is just an immutable data structure (a hash or vector commitment tree). It works like ink on a paper, but it's publicly verifiable. What happens on it, and how that's interpreted is a different question.

A blockchain is like having an append-only log in someone's house. Everyone can look at it, nobody can erase from it, and everyone can buy an expensive pen to create a new entry. The people who own the house can replace the log with an older copy if they wanted to, if they don't like the new entries for example, which is what happened to Ethereum, but the real opportunity is not compromising the blockchain, it's running scams with it and on it. With no oversight, no fraud detection, no customer protection anything goes. All the blockchain can do is setting the fraud in stone.

We already have better cryptographic tools for verifiability supporting transparency and censorship resistance, and they are much faster and more pratical.

You can't replace existing things with a Merkle tree and proof of whatever consensus, because the powerful will always have more of that whatever. Once they do you get a centralized system worst than any existing one.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#180

Post by tablespoon »

dnautics wrote: post #166
tablespoon wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most exchanges of economic capital result in the betterment of both parties. 2) in order to get some, you usually provide a good or service to someone else. It's easy to misread that as something like everybody wins, but it's worth noting that such exchanges can still be extremely exploitative.

Exploitativeness is extremely ill-defined and often used to push an agenda that is not really aligned with the interest of the party "being exploited". In any case, acknowledging that exchanges can be "unfair" for some definition of "unfair", I did use the word "Most". Capitalism/free markets do not guarantee that humans are not shitty but I challenge you to find a social system that does.

> Exploitativeness is extremely ill-defined and often used to push an agenda that is not really aligned with the interest of the party "being exploited".

One could say something similar about "betterment" in your original statement.

> Capitalism/free markets do not guarantee that humans are not shitty

Obviously.

> but I challenge you to find a social system that does.

We shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. It irks me when "capitalism/free markets" is presented as some kind of "best possible economic system," or that it cannot be challenged unless the challenger is perfect. It's a set of trade offs (advocated by people with their own agendas), and I see little reason why different people shouldn't advocate different sets of trade-offs.

Post reply on HN