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

Five Levels of Hype

johannesklingebiel.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 106 posts

Re: Five Levels of Hype

#91

Post by ismail »

jimkleiber wrote: post #62

I wish the chart had a negative dimension as well, or if not a negative one, then increase the number of levels of hype. I say this because as I read it, I think how little hype I put into some of my work, so little that it may not even register on the base level of hype. The downplaying, even discounting successes or achievements I've attained with products and such. Perhaps such things don't belong there as they're…

As someone who used to have a similar level of "humility", i always felt uncomfortable doing self-promotion. You will also notice that others are much more serious about self-promotion. To the level where there is not much substance when you investigate. I have resigned to the view that, this is the society we live in. Things may always not be as they seem, one has to look closer and recognize the diamonds in the rough.

Re: Five Levels of Hype

#92

Post by torginus »

dopidopHN wrote: post #50
mberning wrote: post #8

The worst offenders in recent memory are self driving cars, block chain, VR, and “the metaverse”.

What about 3D printing ? It’s tame now but I remember how it was supposed to change a lot of things in our every day life.

I know a few people who make movie props - for their use case, 3D printing has basically displaced other ways of making practical props.

I think it has also revolutionised the industrial/product design/small batch manufacturing processes.

Another huge potentiality is metal 3D printing. Many aerospace companies consider 3D printed parts the future of rocketry/aircrafts.

Re: Five Levels of Hype

#93

Post by alexb_ »

maxilevi wrote: post #72
notahacker wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I use crypto to protect against high inflation in my country and mantain the value of the fruits of my labour. Where does that fit in your categories? This is obviously speculative investment. (Even if your local currency is so horrendous it lost more value than Bitcoin this month, less volatile ways of hedging exist. Maybe you bought lower or changed cryptoassets so you've gained far more than BTC fell, but that's…

Its not. I am using stablecoins to hold currencies I wouldn't be able to hold because of capital controls.

How exactly is using stablecoin to hold money different than holding your wealth in USD? Is it an access thing?

In any case, many "stablecoins" are ponzi schemes waiting to burst. I would much rather use a government backed currency to hold wealth against inflation than something like Tether.

Re: Five Levels of Hype

#94

Post by alexb_ »

Animats wrote: post #67
tarsinge wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really did not like that video. There are some interesting ideas but the tone is insufferable for me, not a fan of superficial punchlines and logical fallacies wrapped as deep thoughts, no matter if I agree or not with the point.

I watched the whole thing, which is too long. He gets a bit carried away at some points, but he doesn't seem to be factually wrong. He makes a good point - cryptocurrencies are a transfer of money from late adopters to early adopters. That's implicit in anything where "line goes up" but there is no revenue, no dividends, it's zero sum, and there's no exit. The NFT thing seems to be on the way out. The NFT industry is…

At the end of the day, it is a video which serves to further actual discussion. There are going to be points where he gets "carried away" because that's the entire point - simply listing the facts doesn't really contribute much, the video uses the facts that we have and extrapolates a conclusion. Crypto currencies, in their current state, are just learning WHY centralized systems exist. While we all would love to be decentralized all the time (and some decentralization is a good idea!), these people end up just using centralized systems to more easily manage their "decentralized" systems.

And really, I don't think this should be surprising for most people. This is exactly what happened to Email - a decentralized system that also just happens to be 90% controlled by 1 company because people much prefer the benefits of centralization to the "freedoms" of decentralization.

Re: Five Levels of Hype

#95

Post by maxilevi »

alexb_ wrote: post #93
maxilevi wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not. I am using stablecoins to hold currencies I wouldn't be able to hold because of capital controls.

How exactly is using stablecoin to hold money different than holding your wealth in USD? Is it an access thing? In any case, many "stablecoins" are ponzi schemes waiting to burst. I would much rather use a government backed currency to hold wealth against inflation than something like Tether.

The difference is you can't buy USD digitally.

You say that but imo having a currency that loses 50% it's value every year is worse than holding Tether. I don't trust Tether either and thats why I am holding DAI.

Re: Five Levels of Hype

#96

Post by jollybean »

tripletao wrote: post #75
jollybean wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they need to update that list. Jamie Metzel [1] makes a very rational case that the Lab Leak theory is very likely. Check out is interview with Lex. It's more than 4 hours long (!), but worth a listen. [1] https://jamiemetzl.com/origins-of-sars-cov-2/

The creator of that graphic seems to have actually done so, at https://twitter.com/abbieasr/status/1462953203067240450 "COVID-19 made in lab" has been revised to the narrower "COVID is a bioweapon". The remainder of the original broader claim ("COVID arose from reckless but not malicious virological research") appears nowhere on the new chart. Of course the new chart then puts "Iran Contra" in the same category as "U…

The chart is a bit politicized and kind of rubbish.

There is absolutely such a thing as a 'Deep State' and a 'New World Order'.

For god's sake, the 'Project for a New American Century' think-tank published their vision for America in the 21st century and broadly used the term 'Pax Americana' and indicated a massive military buildup, specifically in the Middle East. The signatories: Cheney, Jeb Bush, Wolfowizth, Andy Card - and a handful of others, would occupy the White House a few years later and use 'Terrorism' as an excuse to invade Iraq. And of course the 'New World Order' term came out of Bush Sr's speech.

That 2000's neocon movement fits exactly into 'New World Order' concerns, among others.

The 'Deep State' is absolutely real. The Pentagon, CIA and NSA have massive parts of their budgets detailed as 'Black Budgets' with limited Congressional oversight. There's ample evidence of problems there, that's not controversial. But even in the public bureaucracy, there are power centres that have ideological and political motivations. Sometimes organically developed, sometimes because a particular administration 'stacked' an agency.

While terms such as 'New World Order' and 'Deep State' are used as lightning rods for huge conspiracies and misinformation, there's considerable legitimacy about the issues more broadly.

It's actually a social problem, because such terms are picked up by the 'Alt Right' and others, they can hardly be used in polite conversation for fear of being misunderstood, but they are real problems.

Finally - 'COVID as a Bioweapon' shouldn't be in that category. It absolutely could have been developed as part of a bio-weapons program, that's not likely, but it's not conspiracy theory either.

Those advanced labs are absolutely being used for military purposes of some kinds, and given the information made available by Metzel and others, there's reason to consider (though not likely) that the research would have been part of a broader strategy of the CCP, which includes bioweapons research.

Bioweapons are real, they are developed and contemplated for use by various powers. That is not a conspiracy theory.

The chart illustrates a few other points which are politicized - moreover, I wouldn't agree at all with the layering/characterizations to begin with.

It's just not a good chart.

Re: Five Levels of Hype

#97

Post by tarsinge »

officialchicken wrote: post #63
tarsinge wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really did not like that video. There are some interesting ideas but the tone is insufferable for me, not a fan of superficial punchlines and logical fallacies wrapped as deep thoughts, no matter if I agree or not with the point.

>superficial punchlines and logical fallacies I thought the writing and editing were excellent and well thought out. Can you give a specific example of when a logical fallacy was employed in the video?

Take the part 2: Personal comments on Vitalik, an history of scams during the period Ethereum was created but not directly related, a 100k grant Vitalik got which I fails to see the relevance too, a broad critic that can apply to any entrepreneur/programmer having a dunning kruger thinking they can easily disrupt an industry with software. Conclusion:

> In terms of improvment over Bitcoin, Ethereum has many. It's not hard. Bitcoin sucks. Ethereum solves none of them and introduce a whole new suite of problems driven by technofetishistic egotism of assuming that programmers are uniquely suited to solve society's problem.

It's nice prose but for me that part was really mostly appeal to emotions/ridicule and association/composition fallacies. To clarify the latter: scams and ridiculous marketing are a problem, but unfortunately that's not enough to make a logical point. Their proportion neither.

Again there are good points, but it's weirdly positioned. For me it's a rant, but instead it's presented as a calm scientific/neutral content which I don't find very honest (and quite ironic given the subject). But I'm not a native english speaker, so maybe it's just me misinterpreting the tone.

Re: Five Levels of Hype

#98

Post by Animats »

Retric wrote: post #36
Wronnay wrote: post #16

I don't agree with the categorization of “full self-driving” as "LEVEL 2: EXAGGERATED CLAIMS". There is no proof that self driving cars will ever be able to navigate in e.g. European cities with narrow streets and without lines on them. Full driving would mean driving autonomous everywhere and between a highway with visible signs and lines and streets without any markings is a big difference. its more like "LEVEL 3:…

> There is no proof That’s an odd requirement. There is no proof Intel will ever put out a faster chip. There is in general no proof for any new technology because it hasn’t been built yet. Narrow city streets aren’t vastly different than normal city streets, and people used to constantly say sure operating on highways is easy, show me self driving cars inside cities. I think people underestimate how long self drivin…

Here's WeRide testing in an urban village area of China.[1] The system is being very cautious, but is doing fine.

Here's Waymo, dealing with San Francisco streets.[2] Right now, Waymo is offering some rides in SF on a trial basis. Fully autonomous. No safety driver. 29 cameras, some radars, multiple LIDAR units. Full hemisphere coverage for each sensor.

It's getting steadily closer.

[1] https://twitter.com/i/status/1400772458991407113

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CVInKMz9cA

Re: Five Levels of Hype

#99

Post by alexb_ »

maxilevi wrote: post #95
alexb_ wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly is using stablecoin to hold money different than holding your wealth in USD? Is it an access thing? In any case, many "stablecoins" are ponzi schemes waiting to burst. I would much rather use a government backed currency to hold wealth against inflation than something like Tether.

The difference is you can't buy USD digitally. You say that but imo having a currency that loses 50% it's value every year is worse than holding Tether. I don't trust Tether either and thats why I am holding DAI.

>having a currency that loses 50% of it's value every year is worse than holding Tether

What are you talking about? Tether (and many "stablecoins" like it, including DAI) are entirely based around the idea that they are pegged to the US dollar. If USD has inflation or deflation, so does the coin. The "50%" figure is just completely made up, and you know it - inflation right now is pretty bad, but saying USD lost 50% of its value is just completely and utterly wrong.

>you can't buy USD digitally

...again, this is just blatantly untrue on every level. You can use almost any bank and they will convert it for you. Of course, they will take a fee, but that's much preferable than having to involve yourself with cryptocurrencies backed by cryptocurrencies backed by thin air. Tether is especially egregious with this, and I assume that's why you don't trust it - but from what I'm looking at, DAI is backed by USDC and ETH. MAYBE USDC is being honest with how much money they have, maybe they aren't, and ETH has some very obvious awful problems (e.g. the insane instability).

Overall, you haven't given me literally any reason to believe that holding the flavor-of-the-month stablecoin is in any way, shape, or form better than using actual US dollars.

Re: Five Levels of Hype

#100

Post by boopboopbadoop »

hiptobecubic wrote: post #40
boopboopbadoop wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Narrow streets can be equipped with some kind of helping beacons one day That changes the goal posts in my opinion. The “self” part of “self-driving” no longer applies.

I mean, many people can't drive without safety features all over their cars, GPS to help them navigate, and road signs to tell them where to go. I don't see how "helping beacons" for robots are unfair but street lights are not.

Maybe I’m drawing conclusions about what these beacons would do, but if any of the things you mentioned stop working, I can still drive and won’t go full speed into a wall. I don’t have the same confidence in these beacons.
Post reply on HN