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The use of the word "Blockchain" without the article is useful in identifying those who understand decentralized ledgers and those who are following the crowd.

The use of the word "Blockchain" without the article is useful in identifying those who understand decentralized ledgers and those who are following the crowd. Essentially it's the buzzword version of the real deal, which is kind of nice as it lets you concentrate on reading the writings of people who have some idea what they're talking about.

yodon 8y ago
Your comment is super interesting to me. I’ve historically been in the camp of “what’s important is the concept” (aka blockchain) rather than the instancing (aka a blockchain), but taste testing your comment with my roughly coincident comment on parallels with a word like “average” or “sum,” I see how if talking with someone I knew to be a mathematician or physicist I’d be very comfortable hearing them drop the article but with someone who didn’t seem to grok any real math if they dropped the article I’d likely conclude they had no idea what they were actually talking about. I think you’ve convinced me that going that tiny bit of extra distance and including the article before the word is in fact a potentially valuable in-group signaling mechanism for communicating that you are in fact a person who commonly talks with others knowledgeable about blockchains (genuine question: did I do the signalling right in your reading there by using a plural in that sentence? I’m realizing I’ve so favored dropping the article and treating blockchain as a collective noun that I’ve not trained my ear correctly on this and need to start trying to do so).
- rebuilder 8y ago
  You got it "right" in terms of what my snobbery likes! ;) Obviously the style of writin is not actually a direct proxy for skill and understanding, but I do believe it relates to experience. Dropping the article is so new that I think most people who've spent the better part of the last decade working on cryptocurrencies would have to make a conscious effort to adopt that style of writing. Could you, by the way, provide an example of how, in maths, you'd use e.g. "average" without an article in a sentence? I'm having difficulty coming up with an equivalence to this issue, but then I'm no mathematician at all. Edit: also, sorry about the snub. I got confused and thought we were talking about how the article used the word. I wouldn't have been quite so abrasive if I'd realized I was also commenting on you, personally. I do tend towards snarkiness but usually try to avoid making it personal.
  - yodon 8y ago
    The simplest usage of average without an article would be “let’s average FB’s data” (where average is a used as a verb). That’s completely acceptable to say in normal usage but maps to “let’s blockchain FB’s data” which you’d presumably hate. We could also say “I used an average”/“I used a blockchain” (average being a gerund/noun form of a verb as in “I went for a run”) or we could say “I computed the average”/“I forked the blockchain” (akin to “on my run”, where we are referring to a specific instance or result of the verb to average or to run).

yodon 8y ago

Your comment is super interesting to me. I’ve historically been in the camp of “what’s important is the concept” (aka blockchain) rather than the instancing (aka a blockchain), but taste testing your comment with my roughly coincident comment on parallels with a word like “average” or “sum,” I see how if talking with someone I knew to be a mathematician or physicist I’d be very comfortable hearing them drop the article but with someone who didn’t seem to grok any real math if they dropped the article I’d likely conclude they had no idea what they were actually talking about. I think you’ve convinced me that going that tiny bit of extra distance and including the article before the word is in fact a potentially valuable in-group signaling mechanism for communicating that you are in fact a person who commonly talks with others knowledgeable about blockchains (genuine question: did I do the signalling right in your reading there by using a plural in that sentence? I’m realizing I’ve so favored dropping the article and treating blockchain as a collective noun that I’ve not trained my ear correctly on this and need to start trying to do so).

rebuilder 8y ago
You got it "right" in terms of what my snobbery likes! ;) Obviously the style of writin is not actually a direct proxy for skill and understanding, but I do believe it relates to experience. Dropping the article is so new that I think most people who've spent the better part of the last decade working on cryptocurrencies would have to make a conscious effort to adopt that style of writing. Could you, by the way, provide an example of how, in maths, you'd use e.g. "average" without an article in a sentence? I'm having difficulty coming up with an equivalence to this issue, but then I'm no mathematician at all. Edit: also, sorry about the snub. I got confused and thought we were talking about how the article used the word. I wouldn't have been quite so abrasive if I'd realized I was also commenting on you, personally. I do tend towards snarkiness but usually try to avoid making it personal.
- yodon 8y ago
  The simplest usage of average without an article would be “let’s average FB’s data” (where average is a used as a verb). That’s completely acceptable to say in normal usage but maps to “let’s blockchain FB’s data” which you’d presumably hate. We could also say “I used an average”/“I used a blockchain” (average being a gerund/noun form of a verb as in “I went for a run”) or we could say “I computed the average”/“I forked the blockchain” (akin to “on my run”, where we are referring to a specific instance or result of the verb to average or to run).