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> Wrong question. It implies energy can only be used exclusively for single purpose. No. Both computers did hard work, and earned credit toward proof of work i

> Wrong question. It implies energy can only be used exclusively for single purpose. No. Both computers did hard work, and earned credit toward proof of work in my example. I’m rather repeatedly saying energy can be used for two purposes (securing a ledger with a difficult computation that also means something), and I have no idea how else to explain this. I’m not sure why your incentive would drop to zero. Say I swap in a universal simulation from the Big Bang instead of SHA2. A miner simulates a portion it chooses, which involves quintillions upon quintillions of gravitational fields. Eventually it simulates a rare event, like two black holes colliding or something. It somehow notates this as proof that it worked on the problem for a while, hashes that proof combined with the transactions, and boop, mined a block. Meanwhile, all along, we have learned science. I could think of other problems that work: SETI@home and the other BOINC apps come to mind, as does LHC analysis. Large search space, demanding algorithm, rare thing to find (SETI/Higgs candidates), and valuable science along the way. Some issues I could see are unpredictable nature of block time, verifiability being expensive, and problem spaces that move forward in time, like my first example. But I don’t see those as insurmountable. Why would incentive drop to zero to search the space? I’m not following that claim, nor why you’re scare quoting important.

keymone 9y ago
> earned credit toward proof of work in my example they both did work, they didn't yield any proof of it. > Say I swap in a universal simulation from the Big Bang instead of SHA2 if you have an idea - express it in pseudocode. what is your `f(candidate)` here? what is the return value? how does return value ties in "is candidate valid" and "simulation data" in a way that prohibits modifying source code to only do "is candidate valid" part? you're trying to handwave your way through some of the most complex questions in computing. "what if we just swap sha2 for blah, where blah is something that solves humanity's problems" - well sure, let's do this, show me the code. > Why would incentive drop to zero to search the space? because the axiom we're operating with is: though shalt not run ledger security code without "useful" code. as soon as the problem is solved - nobody secures the ledger anymore. > why you’re scare quoting important because you're forcing upon me what i should consider important problems humanity has to solve. your opinion is that distributed ledger isn't one of them. your opinion is wrong.
- jsmthrowaway 9y ago
  > your opinion is that distributed ledger isn't one of them. your opinion is wrong. How many times do I have to say in a single thread that this is not, and will never be, my opinion?
  - keymone 9y ago
    3 options here, pick one: - acknowledge the fact that ledger has value and therefore corresponding amount of resources are OK to be assigned to that valuable problem - admit that no resources should be assigned to ledger problem because there are more important ones - present your formulation of compound "important" and ledger problem such that it satisfies the conditions i mentioned above am i missing anything?

keymone 9y ago

> earned credit toward proof of work in my example they both did work, they didn't yield any proof of it. > Say I swap in a universal simulation from the Big Bang instead of SHA2 if you have an idea - express it in pseudocode. what is your `f(candidate)` here? what is the return value? how does return value ties in "is candidate valid" and "simulation data" in a way that prohibits modifying source code to only do "is candidate valid" part? you're trying to handwave your way through some of the most complex questions in computing. "what if we just swap sha2 for blah, where blah is something that solves humanity's problems" - well sure, let's do this, show me the code. > Why would incentive drop to zero to search the space? because the axiom we're operating with is: though shalt not run ledger security code without "useful" code. as soon as the problem is solved - nobody secures the ledger anymore. > why you’re scare quoting important because you're forcing upon me what i should consider important problems humanity has to solve. your opinion is that distributed ledger isn't one of them. your opinion is wrong.

jsmthrowaway 9y ago
> your opinion is that distributed ledger isn't one of them. your opinion is wrong. How many times do I have to say in a single thread that this is not, and will never be, my opinion?
- keymone 9y ago
  3 options here, pick one: - acknowledge the fact that ledger has value and therefore corresponding amount of resources are OK to be assigned to that valuable problem - admit that no resources should be assigned to ledger problem because there are more important ones - present your formulation of compound "important" and ledger problem such that it satisfies the conditions i mentioned above am i missing anything?