5 ms·

IMHO The best part about today's note is this quote about Marissa Mayer > Mayer grew up at Google, a lucrative and founder-controlled company that doesn't spe

IMHO The best part about today's note is this quote about Marissa Mayer > Mayer grew up at Google, a lucrative and founder-controlled company that doesn't spend a whole lot of time worrying about shareholder activism, or shareholders generally. It's possible that Yahoo -- a mess with no controlling shareholder and a new CEO hired from the outside -- called for a different managerial mentality. And yet she was hired to be a visionary, not a bureaucrat, and to turn the company around. It's a tough spot to be in. I think this goes a lot of the way in explaining why she has been so clueless about how to manage shareholders, which as a CEO of a public company, especially one that is attempting to execute a trun around, is really one of the most, if not the most, important job Also I fully support Levine's view on the DAO debacle: > find this all a bit depressing. This is not the future of finance; it is the past of finance. It is a harsh world of naked caveat emptor; it demands the enforcement of trickery just because it was tricky enough to trick people. Consumer protection is a relatively new idea in finance; it has caught on because it is a good idea. I really don't want the future of finance to be caveat emptor. Again IMHO, Reason should come in and trump coding mistakes in financial contracts, if any blockchain startups reason the other way, then I think they've got it wrong. I really hope this gets to the courts as I think this might be the best thing that could happen to Etherium. In the same way that corporations setup in Delaware because the case law is known and well tested, having the courts rule on Etherium contract bugs might actually help the digital currency by giving it a bit of legitimacy and certainty around what happens when things go bad.

zeveb 10y ago
> Again IMHO, Reason should come in and trump coding mistakes in financial contracts That's not reason; it's emotion. A smart contract is pure reason (i.e., logic); if one misunderstands a contract, then the error is one's own, not the contract's. And if others say, 'that's not fair: give him back his money!' then that's just emotion. I'm not downplaying emotion (indeed, I think that as a mover in human affairs it's far more powerful than reason); I'm just arguing for clarity in words.
- crispyambulance 10y ago
  These "smart contracts" are utterly new constructs and at this point I think it is fair that someone rudely exploited the system and is now playing "finders keepers". In some sense it is a much-needed learning exercise. Hopefully no single person lost anything more that whatever they're willing to part with in a very-high-risk thrill investment. As far as contracts and fairness goes, Judges DO TAKE fairness into consideration ALL THE TIME. If these smart contracts ever make it mainstream (and that's a big IF), gaming the system through loopholes won't be a sure-thing regardless of how much "pure logic" (smirk) is involved.
- woah 10y ago
  Your definition of reason is different than the law's definition of reason. Under your definition of reason, you'd lose your house because of a typo in your name on the deed.
  - vonklaus 10y ago
    I agree. Also, if the above definition was enforced and we assume everyone was rational, there would be no contracts or smart contracts. If I click "yes I accept the TOU" and $1B USD is debited from my account because I overlooked that clause, and I had to actually pay it it would be pure logic but very unreasonable. Logic meant something like spoken word in the original Greek language, it eventually evolved into something close to reason, which is: > the mental powers concerned with forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences. - Dictionary.com so I certainly agree they are != and actually find the parent's definition of reason quite unreasonable. edit: While the code itself will be difficult to write and have issues, much of what will really be the problem is how oracles use logic/reason to propogate settlement distinctions. The key problems are: * creating a bulletproof contract [touched on above] * tx/rx of the settlement information from the oracle's interpretation. * interpreting the oracle's interpretation * settling
    - Natanael_L 10y ago
      How about just letting people opt in / out of legal interpretation? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11940771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11940771

zeveb 10y ago

> Again IMHO, Reason should come in and trump coding mistakes in financial contracts That's not reason; it's emotion. A smart contract is pure reason (i.e., logic); if one misunderstands a contract, then the error is one's own, not the contract's. And if others say, 'that's not fair: give him back his money!' then that's just emotion. I'm not downplaying emotion (indeed, I think that as a mover in human affairs it's far more powerful than reason); I'm just arguing for clarity in words.

crispyambulance 10y ago
These "smart contracts" are utterly new constructs and at this point I think it is fair that someone rudely exploited the system and is now playing "finders keepers". In some sense it is a much-needed learning exercise. Hopefully no single person lost anything more that whatever they're willing to part with in a very-high-risk thrill investment. As far as contracts and fairness goes, Judges DO TAKE fairness into consideration ALL THE TIME. If these smart contracts ever make it mainstream (and that's a big IF), gaming the system through loopholes won't be a sure-thing regardless of how much "pure logic" (smirk) is involved.
woah 10y ago
Your definition of reason is different than the law's definition of reason. Under your definition of reason, you'd lose your house because of a typo in your name on the deed.
- vonklaus 10y ago
  I agree. Also, if the above definition was enforced and we assume everyone was rational, there would be no contracts or smart contracts. If I click "yes I accept the TOU" and $1B USD is debited from my account because I overlooked that clause, and I had to actually pay it it would be pure logic but very unreasonable. Logic meant something like spoken word in the original Greek language, it eventually evolved into something close to reason, which is: > the mental powers concerned with forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences. - Dictionary.com so I certainly agree they are != and actually find the parent's definition of reason quite unreasonable. edit: While the code itself will be difficult to write and have issues, much of what will really be the problem is how oracles use logic/reason to propogate settlement distinctions. The key problems are: * creating a bulletproof contract [touched on above] * tx/rx of the settlement information from the oracle's interpretation. * interpreting the oracle's interpretation * settling
  - Natanael_L 10y ago
    How about just letting people opt in / out of legal interpretation? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11940771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11940771