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

Decentralized Woo Hoo

stephendiehl.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 295 posts

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#21

Post by kethinov »

capableweb wrote: post #10

Maybe the title should be updated. It doesn't have anything to do with decentralization per se, but about cryptocurrencies, which is just a technology that happens to use decentralization as a technology. I actually thought the article was gonna be about decentralization (as in P2P technology, like BitTorrent), but instead it's about the authors distaste for cryptocurrencies. Edit: Maybe it's just me, but the article…

The article is about how the term decentralization has become a generic buzzword for good and in fact could describe a range of technologies that are either good or bad, hence we should be immediately skeptical whenever we see the term decentralized used to describe something as good and innovative and look more closely at the details.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#22

Post by capableweb »

WJW wrote: post #15
whitepaint wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? You still earn way way more than what banks offer and you can withdraw at any point. It's been working very well for quite some time now.

You can withdraw at any point, until suddenly you can't anymore. That is the very core of investing: being rewarded for taking the risk of not receiving your money back at all. In particular, the mechanisms most DeFi tools use are vulnerable to the contract being hacked and/or the devs doing a rug-pull. This is clearly a risk that most investors deem quite likely, because if it was a very low risk then the interest r…

> the mechanisms most DeFi tools use are vulnerable to the contract being hacked and/or the devs doing a rug-pull

Wouldn't this mean that most DeFi would be hacked or rug-pulled by now? Seems the opposite is true, as only a small percentage of DeFi sees hacks and/or rug-pulls.

Could you make the same argument you generally make towards banks as well? Seems like you could, and in that case you're just making an argument against investing in general, not against cryptocurrencies.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#23

Post by oopsyDoodl »

capableweb wrote: post #10

Maybe the title should be updated. It doesn't have anything to do with decentralization per se, but about cryptocurrencies, which is just a technology that happens to use decentralization as a technology. I actually thought the article was gonna be about decentralization (as in P2P technology, like BitTorrent), but instead it's about the authors distaste for cryptocurrencies. Edit: Maybe it's just me, but the article…

It’s about the authors distaste for decentralized woo given human society literally falls apart without centralization.

Why do we need a literal Matrix running 24/7 when humans themselves can fill in the network gaps SMS doesn’t?

It’s about uneconomical, fantasy driven technology creation by a minority who seek to monopolize it for their social goals.

Shut the computers off and the power of the system is none. It’s not real unless we spend a lot of effort on it. Who is that empowering?

I’d like you to divulge any crypto holdings, crypto business associates, profits, you might have, since you seem to believe full disclosure is a requirement of every post online. I need to know if you have skin the game, leading you to question others motives.

Edit: to down voters; I don’t care. It’s such an impotent flex. “Oh look it me click button get dopamine carrot. I have stabilized reality!” Internet culture is sad af

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#24

Post by xipho »

Read the first paragraph, thought, interesting, I hear this type of thing in conversations with fellow scientists but instead it's "blockchain woo". Then read on...

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#25

Post by jrm4 »

Criticisms here are correct: Look, decentralized here doesn't mean "decentralized" in the slightest. I think for - not just the people he's critcizing, but ALSO FOR HIM, "decentralized" really means "centralized differently."

True "decentralization" means letting go of (at least some) exclusivity and ownership; and the current flavor of the crypto craze can't even conceive of it. Ironic, since a lot of it is built on free/open source (which is true decentralization).

(Which is to say, cryptocurrency isn't valueless, bills gotta get paid and I think fungible crypto can help. But trying to leverage to create new forms of ownership, which is centralization, is exactly backward.)

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#26

Post by gipp »

capableweb wrote: post #18
tantalor wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> clear conflict of interest That's not a conflict of interest.

The company (Adjoint, Inc) is described as "digitises cash and settlement processes", something that cryptocurrencies aim to do as well. His company clearly doesn't use decentralization (since why would he make a post against it?), which cryptocurrencies do. How is that not a conflict of interest in this specific blogpost? Reading the post it seems like he has no stake in the outcome of what people think about crypto…

"Conflict of interest" here would require that he's in a position that gives him some special power over whether people continue to invest in crypto (or "decentralization" generally). Writing a blog post is something anyone can do. The fact that he's put a financial stake in his views doesn't make it unethical to express them the same way as everyone else.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#27

Post by Xorlev »

capableweb wrote: post #11
krisrm wrote: post #7

Mirrors my feelings on the crypto-craze. As "decentralized" as some may want crypto currency to be, there are some inherently "central" activities (exchanges being one of them) that tend to be skirted around by proponents. Also, Decentralized Woo Hoo sounds like a great band name. Or something naughty from The Sims.

That centralized exchanges exists doesn't somehow make decentralized cryptocurrencies less decentralized. Just like how centralized social media doesn't make decentralized social media less decentralized.

Crytocurrencies are effectively useless without centralized exchanges. Change my mind.

Social media doesn't need to interop between centralized and decentralized, but currencies do if they want to be useable. At the end of the day, someone will want to actually _buy_ something, and unfortunately I can't go to Petco and use my Dogecoin to buy dogfood.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#29

Post by scyclow »

I think the best examples of Decentralized Woo Hoo is the phrase "ownership over your data". When most people hear this they think of facebook selling their data to third parties, using it for targeted advertising, etc. But in the context of blockchains, owning data only means that you own writes to the data. From a read standpoint, all data is essentially open source. I have sole discretion to send you an NFT, but facebook is still free to use that sale data to sell me things.

This distinction appears to be lost on a lot of people who are new to the space, and leads to a lot of marketing fluff around projects that make no sense.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#30

Post by lysecret »

foobarbecue wrote: post #12

The argument that "observer" as used in physics is misunderstood by laypeople makes sense. He then argues the same is happening with the word "decentralized" which makes no sense because laypeople don't know that word. I guess he's arguing that people see "decentralized" and read "democratized," but he fails to make that argument.

He makes more an analogy of quantum woo and decentralization woo, and i kind of agree with that. Honestly, this idea that you can pinpoint 1 similarity in a very humanly important thing and a technincal complicated, precise and solvable problem (like the consciousness and quantum or like social issues and decentralization (as he writes here) also, human intelligence and AI comes to mind) and then blow that similarity way out of proportion is a very interesting thing to think about and a thought this article presents quite well.
Post reply on HN