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The worst kind of criticism about scientific papers is when people say "but the paper that didn't study this topic, didn't study this topic!" Would you expect

by jf22 6y ago

The worst kind of criticism about scientific papers is when people say "but the paper that didn't study this topic, didn't study this topic!" Would you expect a paper on COVID mortality also discuss heart disease and ALS? Of course not.

throwaway20875 6y ago
>Would you expect a paper on COVID mortality also discuss heart disease and ALS? Of course not. Power consumption and power production are simply directly related. Your clumsy attempt at an analogy here really misses the mark. The root cause of this issue is our power production isn't clean enough, and therefore consumption drives pollution. What do you address first - the demand or the supply? It's quite simply amazing to see so little ability to grasp anything beyond immediate consequences of a problem, particularly on a site like this.
- jf22 6y ago
  Perhaps you are extending the discussion far past the point I was trying to make in a single sentence. Discussing things with people on hacker news is frustrating because people like you extend the argument to way way way past the point at hand. All of a sudden we are talking about clean energy deployment, not that BitCoin mining is using a lot of power and resources.
effie 6y ago
The paper has no perspective on electric energy consumption of other activities, there are many more with similar or bigger consumption (ad industry, MIC, etc.) and still advocates regulating specifically cryptocurrencies. The window of opportunity, attention span and resource for effective regulating economic activity is limited. We should focus on the (few!) important polluting classes such as transport and power production, not hundreds of minor consumer classes such as cryptocurrencies or aluminum producers. Focusing on minor issue, cherry-picking contorted arguments and advocating targeted policy is not how respectable scientific paper should look like.
- jf22 6y ago
  >We should focus on the important polluters, not minor consumers Do you feel the same way about causes of death? Imagine saying "who cares Cystic Fibrosis kills x people, heart disease is worse!" Also, other consumers like cement, fossil fuel production, and plastics HAVE been focused on. Bitcoin is new and only recently popular so we don't know much about it and it's true cost.
  - throwaway20875 6y ago
    >Imagine saying "who cares Cystic Fibrosis kills x people, heart disease is worse!" You're completely missing the point here: we have finite time and resources to deal with problems. We must dedicate these finite time and resources in the most efficient way to possible to achieve the most desired outcome. If by "worse" you mean "heart disease causes more deaths and drives higher social costs" then yes there is a strong argument to be made on addressing the root causes driving heart disease with more resources and time then cystic fibrosis. But, again, your analogy is contrived-and-forced-apples-to-oranges with the topic at hand.
    - GavinMcG 6y ago
      This paper is just saying there are reasonably estimable costs. That's all! It's not even trying to address the bigger argument you're talking about.
      - throwaway20875 6y ago
        >This paper is just saying there are reasonably estimable costs. That's all! Wrong. You make numerous comments in this thread asserting that the sole focus on this paper is quantifying externalities of crypto mining when that's plainly false. The paper is prescribing policy options for dealing with crypto externalities and birthing new loaded clinical terms to ascribe solely to those externalities: "cryptodamage". Read it. "As an alternative to intervening in emergent cryptocurrency markets through prices (e.g., taxation) or outright restricting their development, there may be a role for government investment into R&D that focuses on designing mining puzzles that greatly reduce energy consumption (and thus production costs) while still allowing for secure validation of anonymous transactions. Fully vetting and encouraging such currency alternatives might retain the libertarian social benefits of the blockchain [35] while making “the last Bitcoin” irrelevant. Although there will still be private benefits captured from mining under possible low-energy design alternatives, as illustrated here there would be significant public good benefits (reduced cryptodamages) to justify such government investments into R&D. Importantly, such investments in R&D are not mutually exclusive with taxing to internalize cryptodamages, and may also come with the potential to generate spin-off benefits from blockchain technology more generally."

by jf22 6y ago

throwaway20875 6y ago

>Would you expect a paper on COVID mortality also discuss heart disease and ALS? Of course not. Power consumption and power production are simply directly related. Your clumsy attempt at an analogy here really misses the mark. The root cause of this issue is our power production isn't clean enough, and therefore consumption drives pollution. What do you address first - the demand or the supply? It's quite simply amazing to see so little ability to grasp anything beyond immediate consequences of a problem, particularly on a site like this.

jf22 6y ago
Perhaps you are extending the discussion far past the point I was trying to make in a single sentence. Discussing things with people on hacker news is frustrating because people like you extend the argument to way way way past the point at hand. All of a sudden we are talking about clean energy deployment, not that BitCoin mining is using a lot of power and resources.

effie 6y ago

The paper has no perspective on electric energy consumption of other activities, there are many more with similar or bigger consumption (ad industry, MIC, etc.) and still advocates regulating specifically cryptocurrencies. The window of opportunity, attention span and resource for effective regulating economic activity is limited. We should focus on the (few!) important polluting classes such as transport and power production, not hundreds of minor consumer classes such as cryptocurrencies or aluminum producers. Focusing on minor issue, cherry-picking contorted arguments and advocating targeted policy is not how respectable scientific paper should look like.

jf22 6y ago
>We should focus on the important polluters, not minor consumers Do you feel the same way about causes of death? Imagine saying "who cares Cystic Fibrosis kills x people, heart disease is worse!" Also, other consumers like cement, fossil fuel production, and plastics HAVE been focused on. Bitcoin is new and only recently popular so we don't know much about it and it's true cost.
- throwaway20875 6y ago
  >Imagine saying "who cares Cystic Fibrosis kills x people, heart disease is worse!" You're completely missing the point here: we have finite time and resources to deal with problems. We must dedicate these finite time and resources in the most efficient way to possible to achieve the most desired outcome. If by "worse" you mean "heart disease causes more deaths and drives higher social costs" then yes there is a strong argument to be made on addressing the root causes driving heart disease with more resources and time then cystic fibrosis. But, again, your analogy is contrived-and-forced-apples-to-oranges with the topic at hand.
  - GavinMcG 6y ago
    This paper is just saying there are reasonably estimable costs. That's all! It's not even trying to address the bigger argument you're talking about.
    - throwaway20875 6y ago
      >This paper is just saying there are reasonably estimable costs. That's all! Wrong. You make numerous comments in this thread asserting that the sole focus on this paper is quantifying externalities of crypto mining when that's plainly false. The paper is prescribing policy options for dealing with crypto externalities and birthing new loaded clinical terms to ascribe solely to those externalities: "cryptodamage". Read it. "As an alternative to intervening in emergent cryptocurrency markets through prices (e.g., taxation) or outright restricting their development, there may be a role for government investment into R&D that focuses on designing mining puzzles that greatly reduce energy consumption (and thus production costs) while still allowing for secure validation of anonymous transactions. Fully vetting and encouraging such currency alternatives might retain the libertarian social benefits of the blockchain [35] while making “the last Bitcoin” irrelevant. Although there will still be private benefits captured from mining under possible low-energy design alternatives, as illustrated here there would be significant public good benefits (reduced cryptodamages) to justify such government investments into R&D. Importantly, such investments in R&D are not mutually exclusive with taxing to internalize cryptodamages, and may also come with the potential to generate spin-off benefits from blockchain technology more generally."