Earlier quoted context omitted.
Getting out of Russia.
Good for you. But it seems that cryto is a zero sum game. Every dollar one person makes, another person loses.
[dead]
Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
341–350 of 377 posts
Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Oh yeah, and those same people later cry foul when they get robbed of their money because it was not protected in any way. Can you give an example? Do you actually know any of these people? > Suddenly everybody wants crypto but with protections Not me, So not everybody. > There is a reason why money and banking is regulated -- to protect little guys from getting scammed right and left. The reason is that their prot…
> The video game?? I can't prove it, but I strongly suspect our pop culture is being intentionally Marvel-ized to keep full-grown adults' mental models of the world at a grade school level. (We have to stop Voldemort!! Captain Gandalf needs our support, and people who question him are traitors!!) > Speak for yourself. Not everyone is safe. That's an increasingly rare privilege as the wealth divide grows, and many peo…
(twawaaay) > > > Take a look at The Last of Us if you want to know what happens
(mike741) > > The video game??
(JPws_Prntr_Fngr) > I can't prove it, but I strongly suspect our pop culture is being intentionally Marvel-ized to keep full-grown adults' mental models of the world at a grade school level. (We have to stop Voldemort!! Captain Gandalf needs our support, and people who question him are traitors!!)
This article sums it up:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210122122555/https://waitbutwh....
Essentially, what has happened is the application of Disney movie/show narratives taken outside of their intended context: What was meant as the starting point for guiding children on morality has instead been used as the ultimate end-goal & a shining beacon of what is considered to be moral or immoral.
In simpler terms, this is the "Disney-ification" of the political world: We're the good ones, they're the enemy, they must be opposed/defeated/unalived.
From the article:
> In high-rung politics, it’s understood that people aren’t 1s and 0s—they’re all 0.5s, each in their own messy, complicated, unique way. And to people who see people as 0.5s, it’s clear that PDW narratives not only dehumanize their opponents, they dehumanize everybody into fake cartoon people.
> https://web.archive.org/web/20210122122555im_/https://28oa9i...
Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Yes, crypto's main use is crime. It is quite a very poor use with such "crime" happening all on a public and transparent blockchain, making it very easy to trace all of that (even if they use a tumbler / mixer) with the funds certainly seized and frozen as soon as it hits the exchange. In fact criminals and scammers still use banks and Zelle to facilitate their criminal enterprise - [0] [1] in the trillions of doll…
So why do so many ransomware gangs want payment in Bitcoin?
Perhaps they want to get themselves traced on a public ledger and to join the long list of gangs caught and arrested by the authorities each week?
Once again, Bitcoin is worse for scammers, criminals and ransomware than using Zelle and the banks for fraud.
You should be asking why the banks continue to move trillions of dollars of illicit funds for criminals for years without them doing anything. Same with Zelle.
Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I've thrown into the mix is a suspension of human rights that was claimed to be for the purpose of protection but in reality caused harm. It wasn't simply "unethical research." If HIV and Syphilis are the best examples of reasons to suspend human rights then we are lacking in good examples. Far more often than not, human rights are a form of protection and their suspension is a guise for causing harm.
This is the problem with people who think like you. You see someone say "there can be good reasons to suspend rights in exceptional circumstances" and you just go and find an example of a terrible justification to suspend rights (sometimes with an outright evil or cruel motivation), as if it was the same thing. When I used the example of STIs, I was alluding to things like how the "duty to report" [1] and the crimina…
I recognize that you were not trying to allude to the countless times where the limitation of rights were used to cause harm. I also recognize that good and bad justifications are not the same thing. My thinking is simply that there are better examples than Syphilis and HIV, such as seat belts or speed limits. What I saw you say was "You live in a society that actively limits the spread of these diseases" and I'm saying that is a poor example of justification for such limitations because:
1) The listener might be disease-free regardless of society's efforts (the limitation's benefit might not be relatable)
2) We live in a society that actively spreads diseases in the name of protection and profit (the justification behind limitations might be engineered)
3) These diseases still exist in unknown quantities (the limitations might be ineffective)
A better example would be something like seat belts or speed limits because:
1) The listener is far more likely to have been in or around a vehicle than they are to have contracted syphilis. (the limitation's benefit is relatable)
2) There are no instances of seat belts or speed limits having been used to justify excessive harm. (the limitation's benefit cannot be argued as having been engineered)
3) The impact on safety is far easier to measure and compare. (the limitation's effectiveness can be measured immediately)
But if you don't believe any of this to be relevant, then I must accept that. Thank you for your time.
Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
#345He is right. Bitcoin, however, does add something invaluable to society.
Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the problem with people who think like you. You see someone say "there can be good reasons to suspend rights in exceptional circumstances" and you just go and find an example of a terrible justification to suspend rights (sometimes with an outright evil or cruel motivation), as if it was the same thing. When I used the example of STIs, I was alluding to things like how the "duty to report" [1] and the crimina…
I recognize that you were not trying to allude to the countless times where the limitation of rights were used to cause harm. I also recognize that good and bad justifications are not the same thing. My thinking is simply that there are better examples than Syphilis and HIV, such as seat belts or speed limits. What I saw you say was "You live in a society that actively limits the spread of these diseases" and I'm say…
The example was very well chosen, because:
1) it's exactly the type of infectious disease that public health experts deal with routinely. See the first link I provided for a long list of others.
2) it's not an "extreme" concern in the sense that there's no real danger of syphillis posing an immediate existential threat: it's a very mundane example
3) there are limitations on rights today, in most developed countries, centred around the chosen example. There are tradeoffs in place today which, similarly to seatbelts, are generally well tolerated by society.
4) it is in some sense better than the seatbelt example because it involves population dynamics (exponential growth and all the models we must make use of to make well-informed policy decisions), which are a different beast. Seatbelt behaviour is linear and has an individual blast radius. Infectious diseases are non-linear and have a collective blast radius.
There's a reason there was no trucker convoy protest over seatbelt laws: people were panicking because they didn't know anything about infectious diseases and didn't understand the motivation for taking public health action. It's an almost-classic case of fear of the unknown, and yet there were always similar types of measures in plain sight.
Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't recall Vietnam or Laos trading much of anything before USA invaded. How about militarydollar or imperialismdollar or neocondollar.
Check you timelines. Per Investopedia the petrodollar system was established in the mid-1970’s [0] Per Wikipedia, the Vietnam war lasted from 1951-1975 and Laos from 1959-1975 [1] In any case the argument wasn’t that the US only invades countries that try to sell oil in currencies other than USD. It was that anytime a country tries to sell oil in a currency other than USD they automatically become enemies of the US a…
> anytime a country tries to sell oil in a currency other than USD they automatically become enemies of the US and get invaded.
I agree. It's not a good look for self-proclaimed democracy heroes. Saddam was our friend, until he wasn't.
Current batch of neocons are splitting the world for endless cold war spending.
Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
#348> “All this crypto stuff, it needed parallel processing, and [Nvidia] is the best, so people just programmed it to use for this purpose. They bought a lot of stuff, and then eventually it collapsed, because it doesn’t bring anything useful for society. AI does,” Kagan told the Guardian. No, the crypto mining industry collapsed because the largest GPU-mined cryptocurrency (Ethereum) removed the ability for people to m…
It's entirely possible for nvidia to be sour and also correct. Crypto currencies have done nothing for society but to introduce scam and money laundering vectors.
As part of the society being referenced, I find it very upsetting that you think yourselves in a position to judge this on my behalf.
Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
#349Who is "society"? Users of cryptocurrencies obviously find them useful, or hope they will be in future. The alternative to cryptocurrency and blockchain contracts are global alliances that make trading in dollars easy in all important markets and enforce contracts across jurisdictions. Billions of people who are not part of these alliances are left out and the rest are reliant on US/Europe remaining leading superpowe…
>Billions of people who are not part of these alliances are left out and the rest are reliant on US/Europe remaining leading superpowers forever, those in power not developing a grudge against one's business and status quo enforced through military violence. The claim that the only reason the US dollar is the reserve currency of the world is because the US military would invade anyone who uses something else is so of…
US military would move against agents who disturbs free trade between willing participants, in circumstances where US itself is not trying to restrict free trade with sanctions. More or less, also not saying it's always a negative, just that it doesn't cover everyone's needs and is not guaranteed to do so for eternity.
Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, crypto's main use is crime. Its supporters have various arguments for why crime is actually good.
What a childish argument
Sadly there are many more simple minded people like this than people who understand nuance and know that legal doesn't always equal right. Even more terrifying, people like this can vote.