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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

#371

Post by tekknik »

runarberg wrote: post #250
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…

People on HN tend to hide from and downvote the conversations they don’t want to have. Read into it as to why on your own.

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

#372

Post by tekknik »

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…

You need to define AGI.

https://www.acronymfinder.com/AGI.html

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

#373

Post by tekknik »

dvt wrote: post #103
reincarnate0x14 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The leviathan is loose and it's never going back in a pen until the whole thing collapses under the weight of the fraud. Even legal restrictions on it will only help a little bit as enough moneyed interests are invested in keeping the hype train rolling. I've consulted for several companies trying to do blockchain based non-money things and can't emphasize to them enough that no one outside computer science and math…

Anecdotal, but I hosted a friend and her husband at my place a few months ago (Facebook Product Manager). She was telling me that her team of brilliant engineers are all either leaving to go to TikTok or crypto startups. Don't kid yourself, people follow the money.

Following the money does not mean success. Without market adoption they may well be just destroying their careers.

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

#374

Post by tekknik »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #91
zozbot234 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> can't emphasize to them enough that no one outside computer science and math fields will ever associate them with anything but cryptocurrency (and thus scams) How so? "Private blockchains" (with no general access + cryptographic proof of commitment) are practically indistinguishable from plain old Merkle trees, and yet I don't see many people arguing that git is some sort of "scam" even outside the CS and math comm…

No one called git a “blockchain” until the cryptocurrency fad. The point is that the zero-trust aspect is useless if you can control the source of truth.

It’s it a blockchain one any definition. The current commit does not have a hash of the previous commit.

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

#375

Post by pollen23 »

dimgl wrote: post #237
ars wrote: post #80

I don't think you realize just how much these technologies benefit people in countries with poor currencies. You need to address this before painting with such a broad brush.

I love seeing this argument. You should really visit these countries. Crypto does not help these countries whatsoever.

It does. Source: me, living in one of these countries.

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

#376

Post by agilob »

dorgo wrote: post #360
agilob wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Tether is and then completely ignores USDC. He also claims that none of the popular blockchains can scale, but Solana is frequently in the top 5 most popular cryptocurrencies. This is very frequent tone on many subreddits, whether you used it intentionally or not, you became part of the problem: none blockchains can scale and all are bad for planet, but have you seen how good solana actually is? This week Solana had…

>none blockchains can scale and all are bad for planet >I didn't say anything bad about solana or PoS Isn't this a contradiction?

>none blockchains can scale and all are bad for planet, but have you seen how good solana actually is?

This is the opinion i started finding on subreddits more and more often, not my opinion.

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

#377

Post by nurettin »

sergnio wrote: post #256
dashwehacct wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there’s something to be said about this sort of approach on communication and the site guidelines, but I’m sure someone else would word it better than I.

Is blockchain inherently bad? Asking a tangential question, is a data store like Oracle DB, Postgres, or MongoDB inherently bad? If you answered yes to one and NOT the other, please rethink about how you view blockchain or any data store. Because perhaps your intention was to be extremely polarizing, which is fair, but I also think your wording is dishonest. > the entire scope of these technologies is promoting fraud…

Technically, Blockchain is an inefficient (bad) data structure that is supposed to control transfer of assets (an important infrastructure). So yes, it is objectively bad just like O(n) is objectively better than O(e^n).

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

#378

Post by kerryoco »

The problem is blockchain enables scams, but is not itself fundamentally "a scam". The culture is not the technology. "Line Goes Up" understably conflates the two, because right now 99% of what we see is the (generally terrible) culture surrounding blockchain.

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

#379

Post by philistine »

brian_cloutier wrote: post #304
philistine wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You both are talking from the unsaid point of view that an immutable public ledger is a good thing. The reality of our world disagrees with your unsaid compact. Nothing needs an immutable public ledger. Any fraud due to shipping, or banking, or taxes, is a problem of inaccurate entry of data into a ledger, not nefarious changes to what already exists.

Immutable ledgers are a godsend and are useful in many different contexts: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_Transparency - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lab_notebook - https://www.newamerica.org/digital-impact-governance-initiat... Adjustments needed for shipping, banking, or taxes are trivially accommodated; those are additional events which can be appended to the log.

None of your examples are all, at the same time, immutable, public, or ledgers. The Georgian land thingie is the most interesting, but a Georgian judge could definitely order a change in ownership due to incorrect data entered into the ledger, so it's not immutable.
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