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Sure, if you spent a million dollars buying CPUs and destroying them, that would create value. In practice, there are always ways to spend a million dollars to

Sure, if you spent a million dollars buying CPUs and destroying them, that would create value. In practice, there are always ways to spend a million dollars to create more value (e.g. buying CPUs and using them to do useful computation!), so nobody does that. If you have something more useful to do with the wind-generated electricity, the same thing would apply. But thanks to the limitations of the grid and the intermittency of renewable energy, that may not be the case. In that case, mining cryptocurrency may be the highest value thing you can do with it.

rspeer 9y ago
> In that case, mining cryptocurrency may be the highest value thing you can do with it. Wow, how convenient that the thing you like is the single "highest value thing" that anyone can do with energy. You are in a filter bubble of people patting each other on the back for wasting energy. You've been rewarded for cryptocurrency speculation for so long that you've forgotten what productive work is.
- rwallace 9y ago
  As it happens, this guess is incorrect. I've never been involved in cryptocurrency other than as a curious spectator. I have no strong feelings about it one way or the other. Do you agree with the general principle that when the heuristics you are using, generate erroneous conclusions, it's a good idea to re-evaluate those heuristics?
pjc50 9y ago
> Sure, if you spent a million dollars buying CPUs and destroying them, that would create value. Can you read what you've just written and see how mad it's become? The converse of what you've said is that making CPUs destroys value, and by implication Moore's law and the whole process of technological improvement is destroying value. This is even worse than the Bastiat "broken window fallacy": http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html
- rwallace 9y ago
  You're not reading what I've written. But I was waiting for someone to bring up the broken window fallacy. The answer is that the unspoken assumption on which it is a fallacy is that resources in the economy are otherwise optimally employed. Back when it was coined, that might have been close enough to the truth to be a useful approximation. Today, it's very much not. I don't think this argument has become particularly constructive, so I'll let you have the last word, but I suggest instead of just pattern-matching what you think I said to something you've heard somewhere else, try stepping back and just looking at the facts as they are.

rspeer 9y ago

> In that case, mining cryptocurrency may be the highest value thing you can do with it. Wow, how convenient that the thing you like is the single "highest value thing" that anyone can do with energy. You are in a filter bubble of people patting each other on the back for wasting energy. You've been rewarded for cryptocurrency speculation for so long that you've forgotten what productive work is.

rwallace 9y ago
As it happens, this guess is incorrect. I've never been involved in cryptocurrency other than as a curious spectator. I have no strong feelings about it one way or the other. Do you agree with the general principle that when the heuristics you are using, generate erroneous conclusions, it's a good idea to re-evaluate those heuristics?

pjc50 9y ago

> Sure, if you spent a million dollars buying CPUs and destroying them, that would create value. Can you read what you've just written and see how mad it's become? The converse of what you've said is that making CPUs destroys value, and by implication Moore's law and the whole process of technological improvement is destroying value. This is even worse than the Bastiat "broken window fallacy": http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html

rwallace 9y ago
You're not reading what I've written. But I was waiting for someone to bring up the broken window fallacy. The answer is that the unspoken assumption on which it is a fallacy is that resources in the economy are otherwise optimally employed. Back when it was coined, that might have been close enough to the truth to be a useful approximation. Today, it's very much not. I don't think this argument has become particularly constructive, so I'll let you have the last word, but I suggest instead of just pattern-matching what you think I said to something you've heard somewhere else, try stepping back and just looking at the facts as they are.