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> there are some legitimate criticisms of the Register piece that I cited in the first tweet, but I merely cited it as an example of why I think the hype is cal

> there are some legitimate criticisms of the Register piece that I cited in the first tweet, but I merely cited it as an example of why I think the hype is calming down. On the one extreme, you've got the evangelicals who insist that everybody will benefit from cryptocurrency today and the only reason it hasn't replaced all of modern finance is because of a conspiracy. These people ignore anyone's attempt at a rational counterargument. On the other extreme you've got people who are very strongly against the idea of cryptocurrencies. They see that tremendous harm can come to individuals who jump into this system unprepared and who aren't aware of the security or privacy implications (for example), because the previous group doesn't admit that there are any. They are also able to see through the greed and the overhype and as a result dismiss Bitcoin for being nothing. The thing to recognize is that these are both extremes. They both contain some truth, but it feels that the public discourse is largely just a fight between the extremes rather than any meaningful discussion. If you want to contribute something meaningful to the discussion, be honest. You have some good points in this followup and in your twitter comments, but your opening line is just blatantly dishonest. > For example, a study of 43 use cases found a 0% success rate So, apparently nobody is buying drugs with cryptocurrency anymore. Seriously! This line is demonstrated to be blatantly misleading if you give it TEN SECONDS of thought. Did you? In truth, I think you did give it thought, and then you dismissed it because it's a good line that supports the way you want things to be and supports the message you want to push. > but I merely cited it as an example of why I think the hype is calming down. You said a misleading thing; own up. Don't downplay it. Nobody expects an apology or anything, but just admit to yourself that it was to some degree dishonest, and think about whether that's really an attribute you want to preserve in your writing and in the way you present yourself, and whether exaggeration which doesn't present itself as such really does anything to advance the discourse.

dhh2106 8y ago
I posted this as a response below but still I find it interesting that OP says public crypto failed because of both fundamental misunderstandings and immature tech (internet trying to compete with newspapers in the 80s). Eventually, the internet was able to compete with newspapers and I think eventually public blockchain will compete with centralized companies. Networks can benefit from economies of scale without the rent seeking bottlenecks of centralized agents. I agree with op that in some cases centralization naturally happens but it doesn't follow that this is true in all cases. On a diff note, has anyone read the Master Switch that OP recommended? Worth reading?
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
  I'm scratching my head trying to think of any significant distributed and decentralised economic entities. In fact I think this is the Big Lie of Disruption. The reality is that instead of breaking up existing monopolies, "disruption" simply creates new, bigger, even more centralised and powerful monopolies. Economic systems are rather like cellular automata. They either splutter around for a while and die out, or they take over the board and assimilate everything. Although it claims to solve this problem, blockchain doesn't - not even close. You can only solve it by consciously moving entropy around the system to keep it in a permanently metastable state - supporting smaller structures that generate new information, and splitting up large structures that threaten to engulf everything around them.
  - tim333 8y ago
    >scratching my head trying to think of any significant distributed and decentralised economic entities The banking system? Sure it ends up a bit centralised but still most countries have their own ones.
  - majewsky 8y ago
    > Economic systems are rather like cellular automata. They either splutter around for a while and die out, or they take over the board and assimilate everything. This metaphor is amazing. I wanted to reply that cellular automata can in fact produce highly-localized, stable systems (like glider cannons in Conway's GoL). Then I realized that while those systems are stable, they are also so brittle that a single flipped bit will destroy them incredibly fast. That sounds a lot like economics.
- bb88 8y ago
  > I find it interesting that OP says public crypto failed because of both fundamental misunderstandings and immature tech (internet trying to compete with newspapers in the 80s). Eventually, the internet was able to compete with newspapers and I think eventually public blockchain will compete with centralized companies. Keep in mind that both of those technologies took years. TCP started development in 1973. It didn't fully mature for another decade, and then it wasn't mainstream until 1994-1996. And even then it was the web that drove the adoption of the internet, not the other way around. Until the web, the internet was more of an academic curiosity. > Networks can benefit from economies of scale without the rent seeking bottlenecks of centralized agents. But there are side effects of non-centralized agents -- everyone needs to agree upon running the same algorithm (forking, security holes, etc). And immature networks can suffer a majority attack. Meanwhile from a security perspective, there's greater efficiency with a centralized system. One security hole can be fixed for everyone on the network in one spot.
wallacoloo 8y ago
So, it might seem that getting so much heat against this one component of your writing is just overreaction. Realize that I'm using the above comment also as a reply to the hundreds of people I see all over HN (and elsewhere) who align themself to one extreme or the other. Extremism is ruining the discourse in the public sphere. It happens in politics, but now more in tech too. Everybody seems to have an opinion and their goal is to push that opinion at all costs, including blatantly disregarding truths. How is this possibly a good thing for communication? Increasingly if I want to have any meaningful conversation -- one where I might get something from it (e.g. one where I will understand more sides to an argument, one where I might change my opinions, one where I might improve my philosophies), I have to go hunt down the people who I know are truthful. That almost always takes me offline, or at least out of the public sphere. And it seems like an oversight that all the real discussion of a thing has to happen in private. It feels like so many lost opportunities that could have benefited more people.
tim333 8y ago
The 43 cases, 0% success article was about "43 solutions advanced in the international development sector" and not buying drugs etc.
tialaramex 8y ago
The name for what you're doing here is "argument to moderation" and it's a fallacy. The fact you're able to imagine two different positions and label them both "extreme" does not in fact mean the truth lies as you'd prefer somewhere in the middle. "Four is an odd number" and "Four is an even number" ... can be portrayed as two extremes with the option to take some vague bullshit middle ground position like "Maybe four is sometimes an odd number" but actually the situation is just that one of them is right and the other is wrong.
- wallacoloo 8y ago
  > "Four is an odd number" and "Four is an even number" How on earth is this a good metaphor for the positions being discussed here? How about "all integers are odd" and "all integers are even"? That's much more similar to the views being discussed above, roughly "all blockchain applications are bullshit" v.s. "all blockchain applications are beneficial". Is the statement, "some blockchain applications are bullshit" or "some blockchain applications are beneficial [to some group]" really a "bullshit middle ground"? If your answer is "yes", then what you're doing is exercising willful ignorance -- there are examples of both bullshit and beneficial applications in this thread and that proves both extremes false. If the answer is "no", then take a break from the ill-fitting metaphors. A metaphor should preserve the novel properties of the thing it mirrors while illustrating things in a way the reader can more easily understand. If it doesn't preserve the properties being emphasized -- say, if it reduces a continuum of possibilities down to a binary option -- then it's not a good metaphor. It's misleading; its author is pursuing some goal other than the truth.

dhh2106 8y ago

I posted this as a response below but still I find it interesting that OP says public crypto failed because of both fundamental misunderstandings and immature tech (internet trying to compete with newspapers in the 80s). Eventually, the internet was able to compete with newspapers and I think eventually public blockchain will compete with centralized companies. Networks can benefit from economies of scale without the rent seeking bottlenecks of centralized agents. I agree with op that in some cases centralization naturally happens but it doesn't follow that this is true in all cases. On a diff note, has anyone read the Master Switch that OP recommended? Worth reading?

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
I'm scratching my head trying to think of any significant distributed and decentralised economic entities. In fact I think this is the Big Lie of Disruption. The reality is that instead of breaking up existing monopolies, "disruption" simply creates new, bigger, even more centralised and powerful monopolies. Economic systems are rather like cellular automata. They either splutter around for a while and die out, or they take over the board and assimilate everything. Although it claims to solve this problem, blockchain doesn't - not even close. You can only solve it by consciously moving entropy around the system to keep it in a permanently metastable state - supporting smaller structures that generate new information, and splitting up large structures that threaten to engulf everything around them.
- tim333 8y ago
  >scratching my head trying to think of any significant distributed and decentralised economic entities The banking system? Sure it ends up a bit centralised but still most countries have their own ones.
- majewsky 8y ago
  > Economic systems are rather like cellular automata. They either splutter around for a while and die out, or they take over the board and assimilate everything. This metaphor is amazing. I wanted to reply that cellular automata can in fact produce highly-localized, stable systems (like glider cannons in Conway's GoL). Then I realized that while those systems are stable, they are also so brittle that a single flipped bit will destroy them incredibly fast. That sounds a lot like economics.
bb88 8y ago
> I find it interesting that OP says public crypto failed because of both fundamental misunderstandings and immature tech (internet trying to compete with newspapers in the 80s). Eventually, the internet was able to compete with newspapers and I think eventually public blockchain will compete with centralized companies. Keep in mind that both of those technologies took years. TCP started development in 1973. It didn't fully mature for another decade, and then it wasn't mainstream until 1994-1996. And even then it was the web that drove the adoption of the internet, not the other way around. Until the web, the internet was more of an academic curiosity. > Networks can benefit from economies of scale without the rent seeking bottlenecks of centralized agents. But there are side effects of non-centralized agents -- everyone needs to agree upon running the same algorithm (forking, security holes, etc). And immature networks can suffer a majority attack. Meanwhile from a security perspective, there's greater efficiency with a centralized system. One security hole can be fixed for everyone on the network in one spot.

wallacoloo 8y ago

So, it might seem that getting so much heat against this one component of your writing is just overreaction. Realize that I'm using the above comment also as a reply to the hundreds of people I see all over HN (and elsewhere) who align themself to one extreme or the other. Extremism is ruining the discourse in the public sphere. It happens in politics, but now more in tech too. Everybody seems to have an opinion and their goal is to push that opinion at all costs, including blatantly disregarding truths. How is this possibly a good thing for communication? Increasingly if I want to have any meaningful conversation -- one where I might get something from it (e.g. one where I will understand more sides to an argument, one where I might change my opinions, one where I might improve my philosophies), I have to go hunt down the people who I know are truthful. That almost always takes me offline, or at least out of the public sphere. And it seems like an oversight that all the real discussion of a thing has to happen in private. It feels like so many lost opportunities that could have benefited more people.

tim333 8y ago

The 43 cases, 0% success article was about "43 solutions advanced in the international development sector" and not buying drugs etc.

tialaramex 8y ago

The name for what you're doing here is "argument to moderation" and it's a fallacy. The fact you're able to imagine two different positions and label them both "extreme" does not in fact mean the truth lies as you'd prefer somewhere in the middle. "Four is an odd number" and "Four is an even number" ... can be portrayed as two extremes with the option to take some vague bullshit middle ground position like "Maybe four is sometimes an odd number" but actually the situation is just that one of them is right and the other is wrong.

wallacoloo 8y ago
> "Four is an odd number" and "Four is an even number" How on earth is this a good metaphor for the positions being discussed here? How about "all integers are odd" and "all integers are even"? That's much more similar to the views being discussed above, roughly "all blockchain applications are bullshit" v.s. "all blockchain applications are beneficial". Is the statement, "some blockchain applications are bullshit" or "some blockchain applications are beneficial [to some group]" really a "bullshit middle ground"? If your answer is "yes", then what you're doing is exercising willful ignorance -- there are examples of both bullshit and beneficial applications in this thread and that proves both extremes false. If the answer is "no", then take a break from the ill-fitting metaphors. A metaphor should preserve the novel properties of the thing it mirrors while illustrating things in a way the reader can more easily understand. If it doesn't preserve the properties being emphasized -- say, if it reduces a continuum of possibilities down to a binary option -- then it's not a good metaphor. It's misleading; its author is pursuing some goal other than the truth.