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Clearly the parent doesn't believe Bitcoin to be a useful service. I agree with you that precious metal mining and arms manufacturing are also not useful servi

by wffurr 9y ago

Clearly the parent doesn't believe Bitcoin to be a useful service. I agree with you that precious metal mining and arms manufacturing are also not useful services, except insofar as some precious metals are used to make useful things. I think it's fair to say "Bitcoin is wasting energy" does not necessarily imply other useless things don't also waste energy given that this whole conversation and article are about Bitcoin. The fact that huge sums of money, energy, and human time is also wasted on arms manufacturing doesn't make Bitcoin mining somehow a good thing. Your kind of argument is called "Whataboutism": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

breatheoften 9y ago
I generally find 'Whataboutism' to be an incredibly annoying form of argument. Sometimes though there are useful arguments about priorities of the form: 'x is a problem but y is such a larger problem that spending time and energy on x instead of y is actually an additional problem'. Is there a useful strategy to help distinguish such an argument from 'Whataboutism' when constructing such an argument? (Note: I don't think the grandparent's argument is of this form as there don't seem to be any obvious shared constrained resources which could be applied to reduce precious metal mining that are instead directed at reducing bitcoin mining ... I'm curious though if you have any suggestions for how to shift one's thinking when _trying_ to make an argument about priorities so as to help prevent oneself from making arguments that amount to whataboutism ...)
pharke 9y ago
And yet an argument such as this does serve a purpose. It draws attention to the larger follies we commit. It may even give a better perspective from which we might see a common cause for such behaviour. Rather than shutting a conversation down with cries of "off topic" or "fallacy" (I'm addressing the crowd moreso than you in particular) maybe we should all be looking towards the question of why all of us have a propensity for wastefulness? Surely, some waste is necessary when figuring out new processes or keeping old ones up to date but is there a way we can reduce waste without reducing or putting limits on innovation?
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  Except the purpose of a "Whataboutism" type argument is to shut down the conversation.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
andrewla 9y ago
The argument being challenged is a comparison -- "... is used for such purposes" that clearly make the point that this purpose is a bad one. That is, the argument is "this use of energy is worse than most others". It is not specious to confront the argument head-on. If someone says "I am the strongest person in the world" and you say "what about that guy over there", you are not engaging in a useless rhetorical device, you are making a valid counterpoint to the original point.
- wffurr 9y ago
  Except that it's not a comparison, it's a statement about Bitcoin, not those other things, which is the key element that makes it whataboutism instead of a valid counterpoint. Bitcoin mining is wasting energy. Other potential uses of such wasted energy include not generating it in the first place.
walrus01 9y ago
I can see how the OP visualizes mining as wasteful. But it's easy to forget how much energy is consumed by resistive electrical heating. Using British Columbia as an example, which until recently had very cheap electricity relative to North America as a whole, for many years a huge number of apartments, condos and houses were built with resistive electrical heating as the default option. Laws of thermodynamics say that if a hashing ASIC isn't doing physical work, it's producing a huge amount of waste heat. The problem is that waste heat is being vented into the atmosphere rather than being used to heat offices, homes and warehouses. I know there's a few startups that have tried to produce cryptocurrency-mining waste heat appliances that can be installed in decentralized locations. Not sure how successful they have been. If the waste heat can be used from October to April to heat offices, homes and other things that consume vast amounts of electricity via resistive heating (swimming pools, etc), it would accomplish both the function of hashing and heating.

by wffurr 9y ago

breatheoften 9y ago

I generally find 'Whataboutism' to be an incredibly annoying form of argument. Sometimes though there are useful arguments about priorities of the form: 'x is a problem but y is such a larger problem that spending time and energy on x instead of y is actually an additional problem'. Is there a useful strategy to help distinguish such an argument from 'Whataboutism' when constructing such an argument? (Note: I don't think the grandparent's argument is of this form as there don't seem to be any obvious shared constrained resources which could be applied to reduce precious metal mining that are instead directed at reducing bitcoin mining ... I'm curious though if you have any suggestions for how to shift one's thinking when _trying_ to make an argument about priorities so as to help prevent oneself from making arguments that amount to whataboutism ...)

pharke 9y ago

And yet an argument such as this does serve a purpose. It draws attention to the larger follies we commit. It may even give a better perspective from which we might see a common cause for such behaviour. Rather than shutting a conversation down with cries of "off topic" or "fallacy" (I'm addressing the crowd moreso than you in particular) maybe we should all be looking towards the question of why all of us have a propensity for wastefulness? Surely, some waste is necessary when figuring out new processes or keeping old ones up to date but is there a way we can reduce waste without reducing or putting limits on innovation?

s73v3r_ 9y ago
Except the purpose of a "Whataboutism" type argument is to shut down the conversation.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

andrewla 9y ago

The argument being challenged is a comparison -- "... is used for such purposes" that clearly make the point that this purpose is a bad one. That is, the argument is "this use of energy is worse than most others". It is not specious to confront the argument head-on. If someone says "I am the strongest person in the world" and you say "what about that guy over there", you are not engaging in a useless rhetorical device, you are making a valid counterpoint to the original point.

wffurr 9y ago
Except that it's not a comparison, it's a statement about Bitcoin, not those other things, which is the key element that makes it whataboutism instead of a valid counterpoint. Bitcoin mining is wasting energy. Other potential uses of such wasted energy include not generating it in the first place.

walrus01 9y ago

I can see how the OP visualizes mining as wasteful. But it's easy to forget how much energy is consumed by resistive electrical heating. Using British Columbia as an example, which until recently had very cheap electricity relative to North America as a whole, for many years a huge number of apartments, condos and houses were built with resistive electrical heating as the default option. Laws of thermodynamics say that if a hashing ASIC isn't doing physical work, it's producing a huge amount of waste heat. The problem is that waste heat is being vented into the atmosphere rather than being used to heat offices, homes and warehouses. I know there's a few startups that have tried to produce cryptocurrency-mining waste heat appliances that can be installed in decentralized locations. Not sure how successful they have been. If the waste heat can be used from October to April to heat offices, homes and other things that consume vast amounts of electricity via resistive heating (swimming pools, etc), it would accomplish both the function of hashing and heating.