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

news.ycombinator.com

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

#241

Post by kkielhofner »

rschachte wrote: post #73
invaliduser wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

«We're in the early phases of it» I've been hearing this for years now. How long can something stay in early phases ?

Some things take time to develop, be adopted and optimized. Not everything in tech is a Javascript framework.

Not being snarky, but was anyone still saying this about the web in 2006 when it was 13 years old? Going from Mosaic to what we had in 2006 was quite a bit more effort than a JavaScript framework - multiple browser engines and JS frameworks themselves were created in that time. Not to mention JavaScript itself.

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

#242

Post by ModernMech »

prox wrote: post #147
valdiorn wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. Who is the arbitrator then? A centralised party? If not, then maybe people who stake the most? Because that way you can literally pay for the right to decide what is "truth".

It reminds me of the democratic bus analogy. A bus with no driver and everyone with a steering wheel. All the input gets averaged out. Such a bus would get nowhere.

Reminds me of this https://www.theverge.com/2014/2/17/5418690/play-this-twitch-...

They did manage to get through some of the game at least!

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

#244

Post by thisisbrians »

thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #132
thisisbrians wrote: post #117

Your assessment of affairs is drenched in obvious bias. The downsides of these new technologies get plenty of airtime (your post included), but completely fail to acknowledge the genuine and useful innovations that are now possible (yes, there are many). Why was there no similar outcry from the technology community over the invention and proliferation of machine learning? It can be used for good or evil (there are pl…

> the genuine and useful innovations that are now possible (yes, there are many) Not trying to troll, but can you explain some of them? Not in the abstract, but in end-user/product terms.

My favorite example of late is http://royal.io. You can purchase a token (NFT) that represents fractional ownership in the licensing rights of a musician's song or album, and also comes along with other perks (such as free or discounted merch and concert tickets). The proceeds from the NFT sales help fund the artist's project, and then you participate in the upside by receiving a share of royalties for holding the token.

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

#245

Post by epolanski »

emtel wrote: post #226

I dislike this kind of consensus-building rhetoric and I don't like seeing it on the front page of HN. By all means present critiques of crypto/web3, but don't make false claims along the lines of "all right-thinking people agree that X is a scourge upon the earth". It's equivalent to starting a conversation off with a loaded question - a useful tactic if you're trying to score points, but not likely to lead to anyon…

He's not talking to people that have to learn, but people that already made up their mind and share what he says.

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

#246

Post by thisisbrians »

scott_s wrote: post #133
thisisbrians wrote: post #117

Your assessment of affairs is drenched in obvious bias. The downsides of these new technologies get plenty of airtime (your post included), but completely fail to acknowledge the genuine and useful innovations that are now possible (yes, there are many). Why was there no similar outcry from the technology community over the invention and proliferation of machine learning? It can be used for good or evil (there are pl…

BitCoin is 13 years old. The blockchain is not a new technology, and it is not extremely early days. We have over a decade of people trying to use blockchain and cryptocurrencies to solve real problems - and not just from startups, but also from large, international tech companies with research divisions. They have tried to use blockchain to solve real problems, and they have failed.

The transistor is 13 years old. The transistor is not a new technology...

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

#247

Post by epolanski »

ohazi wrote: post #32

Like many people back then, I also found the whole proof-of-work / blockchain concept to be interesting from a theoretical computer science / distributed systems perspective. But these days, I can't help but think that we've inadvertently created a paperclip maximizer without even bothering to create an AGI first. Humans are the AGI, and we're going to happily use more and more energy to play this stupid game for as…

> If we want this mess to go away, we need to find a way to change the incentives globally.

I think there should be more political pressure behind banning crypto currencies and companies that deal with them should be cut out from banking system.

I would be even okay with just doing it for proof of work coins, if people want to keep doing their libertarian experiment it's okay for me, but at least remove this insane incentive to use more and more resources.

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

#248

Post by sudosysgen »

andrecarini wrote: post #235
sudosysgen wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capital in general is a paperclip maximizer, not just Bitcoin. All investors are slaves to their capital that takes a mind of its own, a sort of real-world Egregore. Bitcoin is a flagrant example of this property of capital.

People in general are paperclip maximizers, not just Capital. All people are slaves to their desires that takes a mind of its own, a sort of real-world Incentives System. Chasing power (be it financial, social, political) is a flagrant example of this property of People. TL;DR: The problem isn't capital. It's humanity as a whole.

I think that this is just devolving the concept of "paperclip maximizer" past the point of absurdity. As I understand it, a paperclip maximizer is a device which has some utility function that it maximizes to an extreme point that it actually ends up providing negative utility to whoever built it or society in general.

I don't see how humans doing what they want fits in there. People aren't slaves to their desires that have a mind of their own, people are the minds which make up desires and destroy them. On the other hand, a paperclip maximizer - or, I think, capital - has a singular desire, which is to make as many paperclips as possible or as much profit as possible, everything else be damned, forever.

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

#249

Post by thisisbrians »

thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #132
thisisbrians wrote: post #117

Your assessment of affairs is drenched in obvious bias. The downsides of these new technologies get plenty of airtime (your post included), but completely fail to acknowledge the genuine and useful innovations that are now possible (yes, there are many). Why was there no similar outcry from the technology community over the invention and proliferation of machine learning? It can be used for good or evil (there are pl…

> the genuine and useful innovations that are now possible (yes, there are many) Not trying to troll, but can you explain some of them? Not in the abstract, but in end-user/product terms.

Perhaps an even more germane example for the crowd would be the use of blockchain to manage cap tables: https://balajis.com/mirrortable/

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

#250

Post by runarberg »

emtel wrote: post #226

I dislike this kind of consensus-building rhetoric and I don't like seeing it on the front page of HN. By all means present critiques of crypto/web3, but don't make false claims along the lines of "all right-thinking people agree that X is a scourge upon the earth". It's equivalent to starting a conversation off with a loaded question - a useful tactic if you're trying to score points, but not likely to lead to anyon…

I think it is one of the undocumented features of HN that polarizing posts tend to be downvoted even though they are technologically interesting. I’m one of the people here on HN that actually enjoy political discussions on HN, particularly those that intersect with technology (like the case is with this post). Apparently there are enough of us here that occasionally a post like this is deemed interesting enough that the community votes to keep it on the front page for a little while.

There are views to be shared (as with pure technical posts) and I can learn where the community stands on these issues.

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