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I'm sorry man, I noticed that I've been downvoting your comments recently, and it's just because they don't seem very insightful to me. I don't think this comme

by tinco 9y ago

I'm sorry man, I noticed that I've been downvoting your comments recently, and it's just because they don't seem very insightful to me. I don't think this comment, that is basically "PoS is weaker than PoW" without any argument is a good contribution to this thread. It's nice that you took out some time to write up a bunch of lines detailing your opinion, but even in your own comment you acknowledge that you can't recall why exactly it is that PoS is significantly weaker than PoW. Now I've read the Casper papers (the ones that are on the Github repository and are not yet complete I think), and I know that there's significant challenge in making a PoS that is actually solid, but I don't think it's impossible to figure out how to do it, and there are very knowledgeable and skilled people researching this topic so it's likely a suitable PoS will arise at some point. If you'd actually been knowledgeable on this topic, you could have pointed out one of the weaknesses of Casper or any of the other PoS protocols, and I would've upvoted your comment, and then typed up a counter to it. Now, I just get the feeling you're defending Bitcoin, which is an outdated technology which's only use is to be a store of large amounts of value, much like gold, against the new innovative technologies that are challenging it. Without even bothering to make a coherent argument, apart from describing some property of Bitcoin that we all already know.

sillysaurus3 9y ago
To clarify, I don't mind the downvotes. What's going on here is that they tweaked the algorithm to specifically whisk my comments to the bottom, immediately, no matter what. Even if I had 12 upvotes, it would still appear at the bottom. The complaint is that this is undocumented, unfair, and I have no recourse. I've shown willingness to alter my behavior and conform to whatever they want out of me, and supposedly this is enough to reverse most decisions. They repeatedly say "We'll unban accounts if we think there's reason to believe they'll behave." I've gone through the email system and spent roughly three weeks complaining at them and asking whether this could be reversed, to no avail. They told me to stop spamming them, so I asked once more, shortly and politely. No response for a week. So this isn't a ban – it's a ban on my ideas. No one is aware that my comments appear at the bottom because the system is set up that way, rather than because it's been fairly decided by the community that it should be there. This, I feel, is a problem. It should at least be explicit, especially for longstanding members who are trying to participate in good faith. The reasons for doing this were less than clear, and it's hard to shake the feeling that they're simply picking on people. I believe them when they say all they care about is the quality of HN, so I don't want to feel that they're just being bullies. But the outcome is much the same. I'm being stuffed in a locker because people other than me have decided it's the best place for me. And yeah, that's pretty hilarious, so I don't really expect the situation to change. Especially not with hamfisted attempts at reversing it. But at least I can make some noise while I'm locked in there, partly for others' entertainment. By the way, if you feel as I do that downvotes are broken on HN (in the sense that they don't really have much signaling power), you can run my Tampermonkey extension to hide them and hide your karma: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14456200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14456200 Now, I completely agree that my comment was low quality. But that's exactly what you'd expect to happen if you remove someone's incentive to write well. Why would I possibly invest time in detailing any of those things you mention when it would just be pinned to the bottom anyway? May as well say something that's true but unsupported and not waste the time. Hopefully I can figure out a way to get this reversed, but shrug. Part of the irony is that after I was slowbanned back in early December (deservedly so, that time), I actually emailed them asking "Hey, while you're at it, will you tweak my comments so they show up at the bottom too?" I think I was just curious what it would be like, or if quality could stand on its own merits. They refused at the time, saying that it would be a bad idea because a good comment should be up at the top regardless of anything else. And Scott was right about that. This sucks, and when you remove the upvote incentives the whole system breaks. I have no reason to write anything here anymore. The unsettling thing is that this seems like their objective. It seems true to say that they pick out people that they don't want to be on HN, and then crank various knobs until HN is just unfriendly enough to get them to leave. Them, specifically. Yummyfajitas seems like an example of this. But I'd rather assume that this is just a silly corner case (ha). Regarding Bitcoin, I think Satoshi spent a lot of time figuring out a simple system that was impervious to shutdown. The tradeoff is energy. It's the first time in history that the byzantine generals problem (with sybil resistance) has been solved. And we should be careful not to stray too far from that fantastic success – not without carefully understanding and proving there are no unexpected tradeoffs. The key aspect of Bitcoin is that you don't have to be too smart to understand it. A reasonably intelligent person can sit down with bitcoin.pdf and come away understanding exactly why it works. It takes maybe an evening of thinking to fully grok why it can't break, and the implications. That doesn't seem true with PoS. And that seems at least worth being skeptical of.

by tinco 9y ago

sillysaurus3 9y ago

To clarify, I don't mind the downvotes. What's going on here is that they tweaked the algorithm to specifically whisk my comments to the bottom, immediately, no matter what. Even if I had 12 upvotes, it would still appear at the bottom. The complaint is that this is undocumented, unfair, and I have no recourse. I've shown willingness to alter my behavior and conform to whatever they want out of me, and supposedly this is enough to reverse most decisions. They repeatedly say "We'll unban accounts if we think there's reason to believe they'll behave." I've gone through the email system and spent roughly three weeks complaining at them and asking whether this could be reversed, to no avail. They told me to stop spamming them, so I asked once more, shortly and politely. No response for a week. So this isn't a ban – it's a ban on my ideas. No one is aware that my comments appear at the bottom because the system is set up that way, rather than because it's been fairly decided by the community that it should be there. This, I feel, is a problem. It should at least be explicit, especially for longstanding members who are trying to participate in good faith. The reasons for doing this were less than clear, and it's hard to shake the feeling that they're simply picking on people. I believe them when they say all they care about is the quality of HN, so I don't want to feel that they're just being bullies. But the outcome is much the same. I'm being stuffed in a locker because people other than me have decided it's the best place for me. And yeah, that's pretty hilarious, so I don't really expect the situation to change. Especially not with hamfisted attempts at reversing it. But at least I can make some noise while I'm locked in there, partly for others' entertainment. By the way, if you feel as I do that downvotes are broken on HN (in the sense that they don't really have much signaling power), you can run my Tampermonkey extension to hide them and hide your karma: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14456200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14456200 Now, I completely agree that my comment was low quality. But that's exactly what you'd expect to happen if you remove someone's incentive to write well. Why would I possibly invest time in detailing any of those things you mention when it would just be pinned to the bottom anyway? May as well say something that's true but unsupported and not waste the time. Hopefully I can figure out a way to get this reversed, but shrug. Part of the irony is that after I was slowbanned back in early December (deservedly so, that time), I actually emailed them asking "Hey, while you're at it, will you tweak my comments so they show up at the bottom too?" I think I was just curious what it would be like, or if quality could stand on its own merits. They refused at the time, saying that it would be a bad idea because a good comment should be up at the top regardless of anything else. And Scott was right about that. This sucks, and when you remove the upvote incentives the whole system breaks. I have no reason to write anything here anymore. The unsettling thing is that this seems like their objective. It seems true to say that they pick out people that they don't want to be on HN, and then crank various knobs until HN is just unfriendly enough to get them to leave. Them, specifically. Yummyfajitas seems like an example of this. But I'd rather assume that this is just a silly corner case (ha). Regarding Bitcoin, I think Satoshi spent a lot of time figuring out a simple system that was impervious to shutdown. The tradeoff is energy. It's the first time in history that the byzantine generals problem (with sybil resistance) has been solved. And we should be careful not to stray too far from that fantastic success – not without carefully understanding and proving there are no unexpected tradeoffs. The key aspect of Bitcoin is that you don't have to be too smart to understand it. A reasonably intelligent person can sit down with bitcoin.pdf and come away understanding exactly why it works. It takes maybe an evening of thinking to fully grok why it can't break, and the implications. That doesn't seem true with PoS. And that seems at least worth being skeptical of.