‘Blockchain’ is meaningless

Post by spookthesunset » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 8:50 PM UTC

Sargos wrote: post #88

spookthesunset wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blockchain is a distributed ledger that guarantees consensus without any central party Except not even Blockchain guarantees consensus. If that was true we wouldn't see the hundreds of bitcoin forks. Let's not even forget Ethereum and Ethereum Classic. The "consensus" for ethereum was provided largely a few whales. Blockchain doesn't guarantee consensus at all. > It has many other properties, like making the transa…

> Except not even Blockchain guarantees consensus. If that was true we wouldn't see the hundreds of bitcoin forks. Let's not even forget Ethereum and Ethereum Classic. You are deliberately torturing the word consensus just to make a straw man argument against crypto. The original Bitcoin block chain exists and everyone agrees where it is and how long it is. The fact that someone can create a copy and tinker with it w…

Post by Sargos » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 9:15 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #91

Sargos wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except not even Blockchain guarantees consensus. If that was true we wouldn't see the hundreds of bitcoin forks. Let's not even forget Ethereum and Ethereum Classic. You are deliberately torturing the word consensus just to make a straw man argument against crypto. The original Bitcoin block chain exists and everyone agrees where it is and how long it is. The fact that someone can create a copy and tinker with it w…

> You are deliberately torturing the word consensus just to make a straw man argument against crypto. It is hardly a straw man. Which Bitcoin blockchain fork is the "original" blockchain? Which one is the real Ethereum blockchain?

Post by SeanLuke » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 9:59 PM UTC

geezerjay wrote: post #90

SeanLuke wrote: post #8

Cryptocurrency, welcome to AI's long nightmare. AI has forever had buzzword-complaint terms. Consider "Agent", which describes a very specific thing (namely autonomy), but that didn't stop everyone and their dog outside the field from calling their software a "database agent" or a "compiler agent" or whatnot, equating "agent" with "program". Indeed there's an entire non-AI field called "Agent Based Modeling" -- of wh…

> Consider "Agent", which describes a very specific thing (namely autonomy), but that didn't stop everyone and their dog outside the field from calling their software a "database agent" or a "compiler agent" or whatnot, equating "agent" with "program". Actually, the only problem illustrated in your complaint is that you are unaware of the meaning of the word "agent". https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/agent…

Post by nailer » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 10:09 PM UTC

bdamm wrote: post #92

nailer wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm stating crypto is cryptography. There's not multiple cryptographies as far as I'm aware so 'crypto are' doesn't make sense. And yes, words change over time, but in that case I can just refer to (all) cryptocurrency as 'Bitcoin' since that's the common definition. In fact it's far more popular to refer to cryptocurrency as Bitcoin than it is to call that 'crypto'. Short version: this one isn't settled yet. How did…

Nuclear was a branch of physics, then became a weapon, then became a US senate procedural change "going nuclear". Patriot was an anti-government rebel, then a pro-government supporter, then a missile, then an act to boost government and corporate controls within digital content, and sometimes an American football player. Rubber was a tree, then a commodity, then a condom. "A rubber".

Post by flukus » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 11:55 PM UTC

arisAlexis wrote: post #98

Anyone remember newsweek title "Internet? bah" around 1995?