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Star Trek frequently discussed things being slightly off when replicated. Troy wanted "real" chocolate when in a seriously bad mood. Picard kept cases of real c

Star Trek frequently discussed things being slightly off when replicated. Troy wanted "real" chocolate when in a seriously bad mood. Picard kept cases of real caviar for special occasions. I mean, it's a writing trope designed to point out that they are far away from home and play with the concept that scarcity creates value and thus is interesting to human(oid)s. The ideals of a moneyless society by virtue of just being in the freaking future in TOS and then later because of replicators in TNG and beyond had to be adapted for the multicultural bazaar on Deep Space Nine by introducing Gold Pressed Latinum. Something that replicators couldn't reproduce. I think that is an interesting thought experiment. The only currencies on a federation ship are friendship and duty, but once you add in a mix of cultures and the complexities that develop because of their clashing goals and desires, you need a scarce item to keep accounts. We've done it over and over throughout our human society. My favorite is the Rai Stones[1] from the island of Yap, where they can't even be moved for the most part. The transfer of ownership is purely a social construct. Diamonds are interesting and I think unparalleled in their arc as a store of value because of how technology is eroding and changing that. Not just the ability to produce them, but information technology swaying trends relating to their status and ethical usage. You can't tell a blood diamond from anything else once it's mixed with others. Some people see diamond jewelry to be akin to wearing fur. Some other people still find the suffering that came from their extraction to be part of the value. Not going to debate the morality of that issue, but I've heard it expressed more than once. Suffering will always be more bespoke even if the item can be identically reproduced. Some might prefer to soften "suffering" to "effort", but I'm unaware of an ethical diamond mining operation. Like lab grown meat, a strong case can me made that once we can make the thing in the lab at scale it is absolutely unethical to extract it from the earth at scale for vanity. No excuses. In some ways suffering as a store of value is sort of like the social construct of a rai that floats with the idea of the item. Maybe we can build a crypto supply chain technology to verify chain of custody on natural diamonds so you can correctly track the bodies on it and their value in relation to your net worth. I'm only sort of being glib here, making it an accurate record would undoubtedly make them less romantic prizes. Surely the tools and equipment to create synthetic diamonds will continue to drop in it's price to own and operate. It will be interesting to see how De Beers handles the first online custom gem shop where you can set your specs via your browser and have your gem grown to order, cut, and drop shipped for the price of a latte. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones

19235982958329 8y ago
Since you bring up crypto as a source of scarcity in storing transactional value, I guess my crankiness compels me to note that there isn't a final say on computational resource asymmetry yet either, and is just as valid of a hope as the Star Trek replicator eliminating physical scarcity or more mundanely as the lessening grip of a diamond cartel. Right now there's currently a (publicly) huge 'security' margin on the time complexity of hash preimage attacks that allows the mining lottery of generating zero-prefixed hash collisions to proceed orderly for Bitcoin as an example. And while you might be tempted to say that because of the relative stability of BTC as a store of value for the past ~8 years is indicative of just how bulletproof that security really is, you might also realize that a market capitalization of only several billion USD is a drop in the ocean of _positive_ human monetary incentives to exploit, nevermind the alignment of negative incentives that work against anyone actually trying to make use of cryptographic breakthroughs in today's society whether as direct profit within the system as it exists today, revolution, or some other grand long-game. In the P versus NP debate, our universe _could_ potentially be 'Algorithmica' although I know the majority of research mindshare is heavily assumptive of that being a trivially small possibility. But there's also research lines on other forms of computational resource asymmmetry that we still assume exists but haven't really come up with proof for yet. For example, besides just deterministic versus nondeterministic polytime and the unproven assumption of one-way functions existing, there's also the open question of NC versus P, which roughly translates to the supposed asymmetry of parallel speedups versus sequential processing -- yet another potential source of scarcity if the current incarnation of crypto puzzles doesn't pan out. Computational space is another potentially unproven source of scarcity: PSPACE versus P. Even really mundanely there potentially exists inversion 'crypto' puzzles of linear versus quadratic time, while not giving the exponentially wide safety margin every everyone expects for practically, could afford enough clearance to transfer and establish value at least between some highly centralized/colluding resource base against some very poor fraudster if that's the only threat model. Humanities fascination with ascribing, denominating, and transferring 'value' between each other will be the most enduring and profound research avenues while our species last. And while to me that seems vapid to think that figuring out 'what exactly is money?' is the greatest question in the universe, maybe it really is.
- 8y ago

19235982958329 8y ago

Since you bring up crypto as a source of scarcity in storing transactional value, I guess my crankiness compels me to note that there isn't a final say on computational resource asymmetry yet either, and is just as valid of a hope as the Star Trek replicator eliminating physical scarcity or more mundanely as the lessening grip of a diamond cartel. Right now there's currently a (publicly) huge 'security' margin on the time complexity of hash preimage attacks that allows the mining lottery of generating zero-prefixed hash collisions to proceed orderly for Bitcoin as an example. And while you might be tempted to say that because of the relative stability of BTC as a store of value for the past ~8 years is indicative of just how bulletproof that security really is, you might also realize that a market capitalization of only several billion USD is a drop in the ocean of _positive_ human monetary incentives to exploit, nevermind the alignment of negative incentives that work against anyone actually trying to make use of cryptographic breakthroughs in today's society whether as direct profit within the system as it exists today, revolution, or some other grand long-game. In the P versus NP debate, our universe _could_ potentially be 'Algorithmica' although I know the majority of research mindshare is heavily assumptive of that being a trivially small possibility. But there's also research lines on other forms of computational resource asymmmetry that we still assume exists but haven't really come up with proof for yet. For example, besides just deterministic versus nondeterministic polytime and the unproven assumption of one-way functions existing, there's also the open question of NC versus P, which roughly translates to the supposed asymmetry of parallel speedups versus sequential processing -- yet another potential source of scarcity if the current incarnation of crypto puzzles doesn't pan out. Computational space is another potentially unproven source of scarcity: PSPACE versus P. Even really mundanely there potentially exists inversion 'crypto' puzzles of linear versus quadratic time, while not giving the exponentially wide safety margin every everyone expects for practically, could afford enough clearance to transfer and establish value at least between some highly centralized/colluding resource base against some very poor fraudster if that's the only threat model. Humanities fascination with ascribing, denominating, and transferring 'value' between each other will be the most enduring and profound research avenues while our species last. And while to me that seems vapid to think that figuring out 'what exactly is money?' is the greatest question in the universe, maybe it really is.

8y ago