Earlier quoted context omitted.
I want to be ruled by people who bought into Bitcoin in 2012 or earlier. They know how to govern best.
Be warned: any bitcoin post is deep within Poe's Law territory
Haha, I sure hope no one takes my post seriously.
100 years of whatever this will be
591–600 of 924 posts
Re: 100 years of whatever this will be
#592Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think the argument is that transferrable. As a developer you don't really live within the legacy systems. At most you're a politician negotiating between the different component parts. Society is different. I don't like DeFi, but I get what they're feeling. It feels like society has left us behind. Like anything we could ever hope to try is already accounted for and defeated before the effort even begins. You…
I 100% sympathize with this feeling too. But the pattern I see over and over again is: 1. Society is getting worse. 2. I'm really good at writing software. 3. Therefore the solution is to write software to fix society. That chain of logic is simply the streetlight effect [1] writ large: A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys…
I think a better framing would be that the way to force society to fix itself is to use software to demonstrate how things could be different.
DeFi and crypto have already forced major changes to TradFi by exactly this mechanism, and they will continue to do so, even if DeFi doesn't succeed on its own terms.
Re: 100 years of whatever this will be
#593Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like the analogy, but in many cases the societal ills that defi is trying to solve were caused by software in the first place (e.g. internet advertising as a democracy-eroder). Also, the protectors of the status-quo are putting a lot of software people to work in protecting that status quo, so tempting them to the other side means compatibility with their skillset. Lastly, anyone who would overturn the status quo m…
> the societal ills that defi is trying to solve were caused by software in the first place (e.g. internet advertising as a democracy-eroder). How in the world is DeFi supposed to help this? From my POV DeFi makes it worse (advertising funding can now be untraceable/unauditable).
If the entire platform (gmail, etc) is funded by ads, then removing the ads destroys the platform. In that space, advertising is a necessary evil, and the best we can do it try to make it less onerous.
But if you're supporting your platform by any other means, you can just go without ads entirely. And DeFi is all about finding ways to support things that you like without giving untrustworthy middle men like Google or a bank custody over it.
When a server gives you something other than what you asked it for with the aim of altering your behavior, that's called malware. We tolerate it in the form of ads because there aren't good alternatives available. If DeFi can fund an alternative, internet advertising can go die in a fire.
Re: 100 years of whatever this will be
#594Earlier quoted context omitted.
presuming from the domain the author is Canadian and so likely this is more a proximal/recency comment on Canadian society, to which I actually do agree it is really changing.
That's fair, but I think focusing on one region over a limited time period can lead to incorrect conclusions. A single country is not a closed system. The working class in the US has certainly suffered a regression over the past several decades, while the upper class gained tremendous amounts of wealth. One might assume the wealthy seized their gains from the middle class, and this may be true, to some extent. Howeve…
> the working class in the US has certainly suffered a regression over the past several decades,
Do you define regression as absolute position or relative position? For example does it matter if Jeff Bezos has 100 Ferraris if the middle class, on average, have .25 more cars per capital than 50 yrs ago?
I would love to put some data behind this discussion because it's long been mixed up as to which case is the ethical one (absolute vs relative growth).
Re: 100 years of whatever this will be
#595Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps the continual raising awareness of problems is a key part of progress.
No, technical progress is key part of progress. Most innovators are not driven by the constant complaints of other people.
A lot of (most?) innovation is driven by problems that need solving. It's a lot easier to start a company if there is already a large audience that really wants a problem solved and are willing to pay for the solution.
Having an amazing novel idea and then convincing people not having it in their life is a problem is way harder
Re: 100 years of whatever this will be
#596Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps the continual raising awareness of problems is a key part of progress.
No, technical progress is key part of progress. Most innovators are not driven by the constant complaints of other people.
> No, technical progress is key part of progress.
If nothing is rooted in people's / society's / community's / government's wants and needs, then what incentives are left for progress?
> Most innovators are not driven by the constant complaints of other people.
I think you may be conflating inventors with innovators. Inventors, like innovators, are a product of their time. The leaps and bounds come from invention. And invention follows necessity, as an old saying goes.
Re: 100 years of whatever this will be
#597Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, technical progress is key part of progress. Most innovators are not driven by the constant complaints of other people.
> No, technical progress is key part of progress. If nothing is rooted in people's / society's / community's / government's wants and needs, then what incentives are left for progress? > Most innovators are not driven by the constant complaints of other people. I think you may be conflating inventors with innovators. Inventors, like innovators, are a product of their time. The leaps and bounds come from invention. An…
I wasn't talking about needs, I was talking about complaints.
Innovators/Inventors are driven by their needs, not by other people's complaints. Unless they need to stop their spouses complaining or something like that.
Re: 100 years of whatever this will be
#598Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Marriage is not a religious practice. I, of course, agree with you in principle. However much of the controversy is around the religious aspect -- ie some religions have a narrow definition of marriage which we've codified into law. part of me wonders if it would be smarter for us to cede the terminology to the religious and just remove "marriage" as a term from the government and instead normalize another term, pe…
That sounds politically dumber. "Marriage" has been normalized for centuries/millennia but now you think you can just quickly normalize another term before we solve this equal rights thing? You know, just a quick errand before we restore equal rights: change the prevailing culture and change definitions throughout a complex set of laws. This is exactly the junior developer mindset described in the thread parent: rest…
I'm just trying to be pragmatic that one side doesnt seem to be willing to cede any ground, we could just simply move the fight elsewhere.
it is both equal rights if "everyone/anyone can get married" or "no one can because it's not defined" (in the eyes of the government).
If people aren't willing to accept the 2nd case then I'm guessing they dont actually want equal rights so much as public(governmental) recognition of their status.
Re: 100 years of whatever this will be
#599Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, technical progress is key part of progress. Most innovators are not driven by the constant complaints of other people.
A lot of (most?) innovation is driven by problems that need solving. It's a lot easier to start a company if there is already a large audience that really wants a problem solved and are willing to pay for the solution. Having an amazing novel idea and then convincing people not having it in their life is a problem is way harder
Yes of course - problems, needs, not complaints.
Re: 100 years of whatever this will be
#600Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, if you collect money to pay for it it will be built. Or if the inventors themselves want the water and build it for themselves.
If you don't recognize the problem i doubt you ll collect any money for it
I didn't say anything about not recognizing problems.