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Do you know how a fridge works? How about an airplane? How about how to make steel? How to sew a shirt? How to drill and process oil to make gasoline? Ever

by pfisch 9y ago

Do you know how a fridge works? How about an airplane? How about how to make steel? How to sew a shirt? How to drill and process oil to make gasoline? Every level of the internet stack? How to program hardware drivers? How to farm everything you eat? Do you see how stupid what you are saying is yet?

jamespitts 9y ago
I'd argue that we should read the White Paper for any of these technologies before investing in them in their infancy :)
- pfisch 9y ago
  Maybe. Or a summary from experts. That paper has high level math in it and just isn't going to be comprehended by most people.
  - jcoffland 9y ago
    Apparently, you have not read it.
    - pfisch 9y ago
      "To facilitate this without breaking the block's hash, transactions are hashed in a Merkle Tree [7][2][5], with only the root included in the block's hash." - totally approachable to the layman I could go on about the summations and other advanced math symbolics in this paper but you seem very out of touch with the knowledge base of most people so I'm not sure it matters.
- ryanobjc 9y ago
  Is bitcoin in it's infancy? You have CBOE offering futures on it. The prez of JPMC pro bitcoin. You have so many exchanges. This ain't the era of mtgox, $10m pizzas and running your own full bitcoin node and joining a mining pool. Bitcoin is out of it's infancy.
  - justrobert 9y ago
    Bitcoin is far from infancy. The futures are a nice touch, but they are cash settled so they will drift from spot. We still do not have a spot market with swaps from companies you can trust. Due to this, negative exposure is still difficult to replicate, hence why some brokers will not offer short side on the futures.
  - FabHK 9y ago
    > The prez of JPMC pro bitcoin. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, famously called Bitcoin "a fraud" that "won't end well" and is "worse than tulip bulbs." You must be thinking of something/someone else? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-12/jpmorgan-s-ceo-says-he-d-fire-traders-who-bet-on-fraud-bitcoin https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-12/jpmorgan-...
mquander 9y ago
Sorry, which of those things do you think is not worth learning?
- pfisch 9y ago
  They are all worth learning, but no one can know everything. Knowing how something works cannot be a prerequisite to using it. That is one of the purposes of division of labor in society.
- superquest 9y ago
  For the average person: none are worth learning
rublev 9y ago
There are contexts and limitations. I have no practical use to understand my fridge to such a degree because it will yield me nothing in the future. I just need to keep it plugged in, cool, and not broken. All easy to verify. I have control of my money and bitcoin is within the realm of learnability, so I'd say it should be required. It is intimate knowledge of a protocol with many working parts that will have a direct effect on your earnings.
derefr 9y ago
You don't have to invest in those to use them. You can, for example, use someone else's fridge, without first buying a fridge, and thus learn about the risks and benefits of fridges at no cost to you. A slightly more apples-to-apples comparison: would it make sense for you to become an early investor in a new futures exchange, claiming it'll do "a new kind of futures trading", without having read any papers or textbooks on futures trading?
leggomylibro 9y ago
No, I don't know how a fridge works. And if you asked me to blindly pick one absent any regulations, I might take the cheap one that spews CFCs. Actually though, the principles behind refrigeration are also refreshingly simple. 1. Compress gas (it heats up as a consequence.) 2. Expose the warm air to the atmosphere (it cools down.) 3. Decompress gas (it cools down even more.) 4. Expose cold gas to the area to cool. 5. Repeat.
zepolen 9y ago
I do. Seriously went over your list expecting to find something I didn't know - but I can explain them all, without needing to look up wikipedia. I may read too much.

by pfisch 9y ago

jamespitts 9y ago

I'd argue that we should read the White Paper for any of these technologies before investing in them in their infancy :)

pfisch 9y ago
Maybe. Or a summary from experts. That paper has high level math in it and just isn't going to be comprehended by most people.
- jcoffland 9y ago
  Apparently, you have not read it.
  - pfisch 9y ago
    "To facilitate this without breaking the block's hash, transactions are hashed in a Merkle Tree [7][2][5], with only the root included in the block's hash." - totally approachable to the layman I could go on about the summations and other advanced math symbolics in this paper but you seem very out of touch with the knowledge base of most people so I'm not sure it matters.
ryanobjc 9y ago
Is bitcoin in it's infancy? You have CBOE offering futures on it. The prez of JPMC pro bitcoin. You have so many exchanges. This ain't the era of mtgox, $10m pizzas and running your own full bitcoin node and joining a mining pool. Bitcoin is out of it's infancy.
- justrobert 9y ago
  Bitcoin is far from infancy. The futures are a nice touch, but they are cash settled so they will drift from spot. We still do not have a spot market with swaps from companies you can trust. Due to this, negative exposure is still difficult to replicate, hence why some brokers will not offer short side on the futures.
- FabHK 9y ago
  > The prez of JPMC pro bitcoin. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, famously called Bitcoin "a fraud" that "won't end well" and is "worse than tulip bulbs." You must be thinking of something/someone else? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-12/jpmorgan-s-ceo-says-he-d-fire-traders-who-bet-on-fraud-bitcoin https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-12/jpmorgan-...

mquander 9y ago

Sorry, which of those things do you think is not worth learning?

pfisch 9y ago
They are all worth learning, but no one can know everything. Knowing how something works cannot be a prerequisite to using it. That is one of the purposes of division of labor in society.
superquest 9y ago
For the average person: none are worth learning

rublev 9y ago

There are contexts and limitations. I have no practical use to understand my fridge to such a degree because it will yield me nothing in the future. I just need to keep it plugged in, cool, and not broken. All easy to verify. I have control of my money and bitcoin is within the realm of learnability, so I'd say it should be required. It is intimate knowledge of a protocol with many working parts that will have a direct effect on your earnings.

derefr 9y ago

You don't have to invest in those to use them. You can, for example, use someone else's fridge, without first buying a fridge, and thus learn about the risks and benefits of fridges at no cost to you. A slightly more apples-to-apples comparison: would it make sense for you to become an early investor in a new futures exchange, claiming it'll do "a new kind of futures trading", without having read any papers or textbooks on futures trading?

leggomylibro 9y ago

No, I don't know how a fridge works. And if you asked me to blindly pick one absent any regulations, I might take the cheap one that spews CFCs. Actually though, the principles behind refrigeration are also refreshingly simple. 1. Compress gas (it heats up as a consequence.) 2. Expose the warm air to the atmosphere (it cools down.) 3. Decompress gas (it cools down even more.) 4. Expose cold gas to the area to cool. 5. Repeat.

zepolen 9y ago

I do. Seriously went over your list expecting to find something I didn't know - but I can explain them all, without needing to look up wikipedia. I may read too much.