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Fake Books

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Re: Fake Books

#291

Post by WalterBright »

maxbond wrote: post #279
WalterBright wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of something is simply what other people are willing to pay for it.

You're conflating price and value. I'm going to repost a comment I made a month ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32857769 > It's important to note that price, the last traded price, and value are all distinct concepts. The last traded price is the only one of these we can measure ahead of time, so we often use it as a metanym for these other concepts. ... > When the oil futures went negative, it wasn't the c…

> You're conflating price and value.

The negotiated final price is the value.

> When the oil futures went negative, it wasn't the case that the value of oil was negative

The value of the futures is different than the value of the oil itself. Besides, the end result of a future is taking delivery. Most futures contract buyers have no intention of taking delivery, and have no way to take delivery. That explains the negative value of those futures.

> I'd expand that you actually have to define what value means to you, relative to the context in which the discussion is taking place. You'll likely find yourself considering value from different perspectives in different situations

That doesn't change at all the fact that the value is determined by what someone is willing to pay for it. That value is different for different people, as you say.

Re: Fake Books

#292

Post by kibwen »

WalterBright wrote: post #237
jerf wrote: post #223

One of the things that has kept me out of the cryptocurrency space is that when their advocates discuss value, they speak in pure nonsense. A big part of that problem is that value is very difficult to discuss. On the one hand you have the classic goldbug that insists that gold has "intrinsic value", which is some sort of platonic ideal thing that gold simply ambiently has and defies any attempt to nail down what it…

The value of something is simply what other people are willing to pay for it.

By far the most valuable substance in the world is oxygen, without which everyone here would be dead within moments, and yet (nearly) nobody here has ever paid a single cent for it (apologies to scuba divers).

Re: Fake Books

#293

Post by maxbond »

WalterBright wrote: post #291
maxbond wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating price and value. I'm going to repost a comment I made a month ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32857769 > It's important to note that price, the last traded price, and value are all distinct concepts. The last traded price is the only one of these we can measure ahead of time, so we often use it as a metanym for these other concepts. ... > When the oil futures went negative, it wasn't the c…

> You're conflating price and value. The negotiated final price is the value. > When the oil futures went negative, it wasn't the case that the value of oil was negative The value of the futures is different than the value of the oil itself. Besides, the end result of a future is taking delivery. Most futures contract buyers have no intention of taking delivery, and have no way to take delivery. That explains the neg…

What I meant was, the definition of value is different for different people, as well as yourself in different situations. The magnitude of that value will also differ, of course.

You're free to define value to always be price, it's a matter of opinion and by my own logic it's a valid thing to do, but separating the two concepts makes things much clearer when market effects distort the price of something who's value doesn't seem to have changed.

Re: Fake Books

#294

Post by arbuge »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #16

I think there’s a good chance it was ghost written by a content farm for someone who wanted to publish a book in a popular category to make a quick buck. I recently learned that this is a soft-scam technique advocated for by a couple of guys called the Mikkelson Twins. They say you can make money by publishing audiobooks on audible by finding a popular topic on audible, then hiring a ghost writing service to write yo…

Homer Simpson's adage that "you're both right" might really apply in this case.

Outsourcing to a content farm might very well result in lots of the text being rendered by GPT-3 and similar generative AIs. The two are certainly not mutually exclusive.

Re: Fake Books

#295

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

mcguire wrote: post #281
WalterBright wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of something is simply what other people are willing to pay for it.

I have here a pencil. My buddy is willing to give me $100 for it, so its value is $100, right? But I'll sell it to you for only $50. Bargain!

Either you're being manipulative, or just don't get that there's a market for your pencil, and it's not just your buddy, so his role in establishing the price is much less important than you present.

Of course, all of this is about price, not value.

Re: Fake Books

#296

Post by hackernudes »

jerf wrote: post #223

One of the things that has kept me out of the cryptocurrency space is that when their advocates discuss value, they speak in pure nonsense. A big part of that problem is that value is very difficult to discuss. On the one hand you have the classic goldbug that insists that gold has "intrinsic value", which is some sort of platonic ideal thing that gold simply ambiently has and defies any attempt to nail down what it…

If you make up what people say and then argue with them it's pretty easy to win.

The "classic goldbug" insists that gold has properties that are good for a currency (does not degrade, can be divided, does not rely on a trusted third party, has scarcity) and it has been used as currency for a long time in civilisation. I take "intrinsic value" for commodities to mean "has use aside from being a currency", for example gold is used in jewelry (does not tarnish, is soft, is pretty?) and electronics. The non-intrinsic value would be its use as a currency. If a goldbug argues all the value of gold is intrinsic, they are confused because the price of gold would probably be much lower if it had no use as a currency.

Bitcoin-bugs make similar claims to gold, plus it can be sent over the internet and is more scarce than gold. As for intrinsic value for Bitcoin, it doesn't really have one I guess. Or maybe you could make an argument about other things built on top of its blockchain like smart contracts or timestamping services?

In summary, I agree that an argument of value from "pure scarcity" is bad, but I don't think it is a common belief!

Re: Fake Books

#297

Post by garyrob »

garyrob wrote: post #206

I would like to mention the concept of "Soulbound Tokens" as a way of attacking this problem. This is the subject of a paper this year by Vitalik Buterin (founder of Ethereum), E. Glen Weyl (economist/researcher at Microsoft Research) and Puja Ohlhaver. Here's the abstract: """ Web3 today centers around expressing transferable, financialized assets, rather than encoding social relationships of trust. Yet many core ec…

I see a lot of reflexive negativity here. It reminds me of the kind of negativity I received on my blog when I said that eventually, music streaming would overtake music sales—including in a comment from Steve Jobs himself while Apple was still selling music. It also reminds me of the negativity I received from most people when, in (probably) year 2000, I was talking about the possibility that ads would be distributed to web sites through what I called "hubs" and by targeted by means of activity tracking through cookies, including from a VC who had recently been on the cover of Business 2.0 Magazine and called there the "top-performing U.S. venture capitalist for 1995-1999", who told me, "I don't see much money in that."

Trust me, you should take a serious look at this. A lot of what may sound like gobbledegook to you, such as "zero-knowledge proofs", is definitely not gobbledegook and is likely to be very important as time moves on. If you don't have the background to understand what the authors are talking about, it will sound like GPT-3 nonsense. Get the knowledge if you are in the internet industry.

[Update: I see that even this is being voted down. Well, I guess the downvoters just have more of a track record and more experience in the industry than me, and more knowledge about blockchain, zero-knowledge proofs, etc., so I should forget all about this stuff. Not. I'm trying to help out here. Don't downvote what you don't understand. If it isn't what you expect to hear, that's when you have a chance to learn something. If you understand it more than Buterin and Weyl do, well, tell us all about it, I'm all ears.]

Re: Fake Books

#298

Post by [deleted] »

derefr wrote: post #46
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #16

I think there’s a good chance it was ghost written by a content farm for someone who wanted to publish a book in a popular category to make a quick buck. I recently learned that this is a soft-scam technique advocated for by a couple of guys called the Mikkelson Twins. They say you can make money by publishing audiobooks on audible by finding a popular topic on audible, then hiring a ghost writing service to write yo…

> Except what the Mikkelson Twins actually make money on is selling you on a “money making course” where they tell you to do the above. So there’s all kinds of people trying to follow this method out there, it seems. How do people still become wealthy selling "money making courses", when enough people have created "money making courses" that they are, themselves, a commodity?

[deleted]

Re: Fake Books

#299

Post by Eisenstein »

bryananderson wrote: post #289
JamesSwift wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> observing that my kid's doodles are scarce but not valuable is not a cute tweet; it is a complete and utter demolishing of the argument. Scarcity is not quantity. Its the relationship between supply and demand. In your scenario, supply (1 kid doodling) meets demand (1 person wants them), so the value doesnt move from 0 (which is how much you would pay for the doodles).

That’s the previous commenter’s point, isn’t it? The crypto advocates claim that crypto has intrinsic value simply because of its scarcity (supply-side only). The commenter’s rebuttal is that if this were true, their kid’s doodles would be extremely valuable, yet they are not because only the parent treasures them (demand-side). With gold, one can come up with a plausible story for the demand side of the argument tha…

I have contended that the only use for cryptocurrency which provides value for people is for anonymous transactions for which cash is not an option or a poor option. The only cryptocurrency that can do this that I know of is Monero. Therefore Monero will have lasting value. Whether you can make money speculating on it is dubious, which is probably why not many people do.

* Note: I am speaking regarding the markets I know; I cannot say anything regarding economies suffering rapid inflation or which lack access to banking

Re: Fake Books

#300

Post by sam0x17 »

bluGill wrote: post #261
Aeolun wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I fully agree with your point, the next time I see some collective delusion of a pyramid scheme I’ll buy in early. It doesn’t matter that there’s no logic to it, as long as enough people share the same delusion it becomes self-propagating.

How do you know if things are early though? Some go longer than others, so you can see some quack getting attention and buy in - just in time to be the last fool as everyone else realizes it is garbage. Or it can continue to go up - you have no way to know.

If my grandparents know about it it's too late
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