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Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

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Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#451

Post by RhodesianHunter »

rglullis wrote: post #421
RhodesianHunter wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This thinking belies a very simplistic view of a very complex supply chain. Brands like Nike often don't touch their products after they produce the design. Manufacturing, distribution, shipping, warehousing, sales are all handled by a massive web of smaller entities with long term contracts. Most of these businesses use very very old tech, and will actively resist change. Its a chicken or egg problem too, since havi…

> I've studied this pretty extensively and honestly don't think it'll ever happen. At least unless the current paradigm of supply changes massively. "I don't think we will see any changes in the industry, unless the industry changes." Kind of tautological, no? > Most of these businesses use very very old tech, and will actively resist change. I don't think we are disagreeing. Maybe we are just thinking in different t…

> "I don't think we will see any changes in the industry, unless the industry changes." Kind of tautological, no?

Kind of not-at-all what I said no? Change is inevitable, blockchain is not the right tool for this job.

>adopting the technology will be such an obvious advantage for the large players

A centralized solution from a trusted third party has all of the benefits of blockchain with just about none of the downsides. Many institutions could fill this role from technology companies to major law firms in the supply chain space.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#452

Post by jessaustin »

rsync wrote: post #423
jessaustin wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the biggest flaw in 3BP was that none of the characters and none of the unknown assailants seemed to do any temporal discounting. A species that might be a threat in a billion years is not worth worrying about now. Resources should be used for immediate survival, not for eventually-it-might-be-nice extermination. It made the story seem more like a fantasy of contending royals than speculative fiction of sci…

"A species that might be a threat in a billion years is not worth worrying about now. Resources should be used for immediate survival, not for eventually-it-might-be-nice extermination." In the third book we are treated to some pseudo-dialog between an attacker and their supervisor(s) deciding whether to preemptively attack an area of space (trying not to spoil here) and the options on the table - a tiny kinetic stri…

We know from discussion elsewhere in the story that "photoids" are considered to use at least a solar system's worth of energy. In the passage you cite we learn the "two-vector foil" uses even more (which makes sense given the fantastical nature of this attack). ISTM the party who has "easy" access to an armory of these doomsday devices will have to wait a really long time for a good reason to fear the party who is still stuck in orbit around a single star.

Liu does lampshade the idea that performing such high-energy attacks should itself be a giant "here is a dangerous enemy" signal, but does so just to write it off as something that never happens. At the very least, frugal genocidal galactic civilizations should probably leave it to other genocidal galactic civilizations to actually do the tremendously expensive genociding. Given the eagerness we see in this passage, it can't be uncommon for multiple attacks to be launched by different parties simultaneously!

It's a great trilogy, and I'm glad Netflix are going to do something with it. (I really hope they don't whitewash the casting like many other productions. The fact that most characters are Chinese is important to the story.) This particular aspect just stood out to me.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#453

Post by rglullis »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #451
rglullis wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've studied this pretty extensively and honestly don't think it'll ever happen. At least unless the current paradigm of supply changes massively. "I don't think we will see any changes in the industry, unless the industry changes." Kind of tautological, no? > Most of these businesses use very very old tech, and will actively resist change. I don't think we are disagreeing. Maybe we are just thinking in different t…

> "I don't think we will see any changes in the industry, unless the industry changes." Kind of tautological, no? Kind of not-at-all what I said no? Change is inevitable, blockchain is not the right tool for this job. >adopting the technology will be such an obvious advantage for the large players A centralized solution from a trusted third party has all of the benefits of blockchain with just about none of the downs…

> A centralized solution from a trusted third party has all of the benefits of blockchain with just about none of the downsides.

So why hasn't it happened yet?

Also, who in their right mind would rely so much on a "trusted third party" to coordinate global supply chains?

What would be cost to have an organization that is able to maintain this level of trust?

What about the politics of it? Even if the entity were to be trusted, how can we be sure that there would be no countries forcing their political/economical might to bend this entity to do what they want? As an example, after the global pandemic, do you trust WHO more or less? Do you still believe that they are completely independent?

You are never going to hear from me that blockchain is a perfect solution for all problems, but a "centralized solution with a trusted third-party" is quite a spherical cow in comparison.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#454

Post by RhodesianHunter »

rglullis wrote: post #453
RhodesianHunter wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I don't think we will see any changes in the industry, unless the industry changes." Kind of tautological, no? Kind of not-at-all what I said no? Change is inevitable, blockchain is not the right tool for this job. >adopting the technology will be such an obvious advantage for the large players A centralized solution from a trusted third party has all of the benefits of blockchain with just about none of the downs…

> A centralized solution from a trusted third party has all of the benefits of blockchain with just about none of the downsides. So why hasn't it happened yet? Also, who in their right mind would rely so much on a "trusted third party" to coordinate global supply chains? What would be cost to have an organization that is able to maintain this level of trust? What about the politics of it? Even if the entity were to b…

> Also, who in their right mind would rely so much on a "trusted third party" to coordinate global supply chains?

Just about every major brand.

You can think it's absurd all you want, but it's already a major industry.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#455

Post by RhodesianHunter »

sukilot wrote: post #403
RhodesianHunter wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone interested, a friend of mine works on a technical solution to this exact scam. https://certifid.com/ No affiliation besides having a friend who works there.

That doesn't help. The scammer will just imitate certified instead of the escrow company. And it's yet another party that can get hacked. The solution is for the parties to talk too each other to verify their relationships, instead of replacing all the trusted people by random websites.

It's generally considered useful to actually look at how a thing works before disparaging it counter-factually.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#456

Post by rglullis »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #454
rglullis wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A centralized solution from a trusted third party has all of the benefits of blockchain with just about none of the downsides. So why hasn't it happened yet? Also, who in their right mind would rely so much on a "trusted third party" to coordinate global supply chains? What would be cost to have an organization that is able to maintain this level of trust? What about the politics of it? Even if the entity were to b…

> Also, who in their right mind would rely so much on a "trusted third party" to coordinate global supply chains? Just about every major brand. You can think it's absurd all you want, but it's already a major industry.

Back to the main question, then: why hasn't it happened yet?

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#457

Post by RhodesianHunter »

rglullis wrote: post #456
RhodesianHunter wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, who in their right mind would rely so much on a "trusted third party" to coordinate global supply chains? Just about every major brand. You can think it's absurd all you want, but it's already a major industry.

Back to the main question, then: why hasn't it happened yet?

As I said in my previous comment, it is happening in a major way across industries. There just aren't any clear market leaders because as previously discussed, different brands have different ideas on who a trusted third party is.

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#458

Post by max_ »

Taek wrote: post #187
josh2600 wrote: post #10

I really think that all of this DeFi stuff is playing with fire. If these tools scale large enough, it's easy to imagine breaking the right link in the system at the right time to cause catastrophic failures. Remember that all complex systems operate in a degraded state. If there's ever a way that only part of a complicated swap executes correctly the trade can get really far out of position. People in Ethereum land…

This DeFi stuff is playing with fire because the products being released have significantly outpaced the state of the art in building safe smart contracts. To make an analogy, imagine that instead of DeFi, we were talking about skyscrapers. Imagine that thousands of engineers funded by millions of people who believed in them were building 25 kilometer tall towers using technology that they discovered in Isaac Arthur…

https://scilla-lang.org/

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#459

Post by rglullis »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #457
rglullis wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back to the main question, then: why hasn't it happened yet?

As I said in my previous comment, it is happening in a major way across industries. There just aren't any clear market leaders because as previously discussed, different brands have different ideas on who a trusted third party is.

> different brands have different ideas on who a trusted third party is

If different entities do not all trust the same centralized party, then it is not happening. You are pulling a spherical cow again as an answer. What is so hard to understand about that?

Re: Ethereum Is a Dark Forest

#460

Post by RhodesianHunter »

rglullis wrote: post #459
RhodesianHunter wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said in my previous comment, it is happening in a major way across industries. There just aren't any clear market leaders because as previously discussed, different brands have different ideas on who a trusted third party is.

> different brands have different ideas on who a trusted third party is If different entities do not all trust the same centralized party, then it is not happening. You are pulling a spherical cow again as an answer. What is so hard to understand about that?

That is nonsense, why do all brands have to use the same solution for one brand to have something that works?

Why do you keep arguing about a space you're clearly unfamiliar with?

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