5 ms·

All energy generation is bad for the environment, just more or less bad. Solar cells and wind power might be "renewable", but it requires a lot of metals and ma

by plater 6y ago

All energy generation is bad for the environment, just more or less bad. Solar cells and wind power might be "renewable", but it requires a lot of metals and material to build (and also energy), they disturb natural habitat etc. They are much better than coal, oil and gas, but they are not harmless. It's better to avoid using energy if possible than using renewable energy.

bingbong70 6y ago
Cavemen used very little energy before the discovery of fire. Are you prescribing a return to that state? >>>Response to Dan added here due to rate limit. > waste power Infinite energy in the universe and everything mankind has achieved has been in large part due to energy consumption. The idea that we should now stop that trend is antihuman/antihuman-progress at its core. Let the individual/market decide the best uses for energy... not your money = not your choice. BTW off-planet mining using the sun/stars is a great idea for the future and doesn't require them to be blacked out.
- danShumway 6y ago
  No of course not, that reading isn't any more accurate than it would be to say that you're arguing that we should set up a Dyson sphere around our sun to black out the earth and mine Bitcoin in the vast dead emptiness of space for all eternity[0]. Be careful not to inflate arguments into completely separate positions. What GP is saying is that switching to renewables doesn't make all of the negative externalities of wasting power go away. You shouldn't extrapolate out on that to some grand view of the world that says we should never use technology. It just means we shouldn't waste power, and we shouldn't use "solar" as an excuse to waste power. [0]: After all, Dyson spheres are powered by renewable energy.
  - bingbong70 6y ago
    > waste power > not a battery What's a better way to losslessly and securely store human labor/time for future use? Almost everything else (fiat, gold, silver, real estate, etc...) that exists is debased/debasable, deteriorates, or loses value. The above arguments completely hinge on energy being "wasted". Lossless labor/time storage isn't "waste" to market participants seeing a need for it and putting their hard earned money behind it. Bitcoin basically turns one of the hardest to counterfeit things in the universe, energy, into money. How else can you achieve lossless storage without a trustless secured environment (the bitcoin network)? Any multi-decade/multi-century solution that market participants should focus on instead?
    - danShumway 6y ago
      > Almost everything else (fiat, gold, silver, real estate, etc...) that exists is debased/debasable, deteriorates, or loses value. Look, yes, Bitcoin is deflationary, but it's still subject to market pressures. It's not technologically guaranteed to be worth anything 200 years from now. Besides that... > securely store human labor/time for future use? It's not secure storage if you can't retrieve it[0]. What do you mean by "lossless"? You permanently lose all of the energy when you convert it into Bitcoin. You can not get that power/energy back, it is gone. What you hope is that the value of Bitcoin will allow you to trade your coins for somebody else's energy. But guaranteed scarcity is not the same thing as lossless storage, otherwise we would store all of our Youtube videos on collectable Beanie Babies. Bitcoin's value is based on social consensus, not because it can be converted back into electricity. You're not storing anything, you are using a scarce resource to guarantee that it will be difficult to create more Bitcoin in the future, thereby creating a deflationary currency. > Any multi-decade/multi-century solution that market participants should focus on instead? All of them? Most currencies have been around for multiple centuries. The US dollar has been around for multiple centuries, and the US dollar is young. Yes, the value of the US dollar can fluctuate, but, and I can not stress this enough, so can Bitcoin's value. There is no magical technology that makes Bitcoin worth anything, it's worth what people are willing to trade for it. ---- Maybe a thought experiment will help here. If you think that Bitcoin is genuinely storing energy in a lossless format independent of market pressure, then I should be able to create a new Bitcoin using the exact same technology because it's Open Source, and it should also be just as valuable, right? I just need enough people to join in on mining that it's difficult to commit fraud, and now my secondary coin should be just as good as Bitcoin at storing value, because it's using the same technology, the same distributed governance model, and the same electricity to power it. Heck, I don't even need to create a new coin, I can fork the current chain; that's what Bitcoin Cash did. So let's say I fork Bitcoin's chain, and all of the exchanges that currently take Bitcoin also start taking my new coin so it's similarly decentralized. Have I just doubled the amount of electricity in the world? No, of course not. Because the value of both coins will be based on social consensus, not because they are a perfect digitized storage medium for electricity. ---- Another thought experiment on retrieval. Let's say tomorrow, the apocalypse hits. The US government collapses, the dollar is worthless, all governments are overthrown. Government-issued currency is only fit to burn. Gold isn't even worth its weight in food. Only Bitcoin remains. Now, bear in mind that the Internet does not exist anymore, because the US government and a bunch of centralized, US-dollar funded corporations were maintaining it, and they're all gone. But you would like to convert your Bitcoin back into electricity, because it's a lossless store of electricity/effort. How do you do that? How do you even trade your bitcoin when there is no network for you to connect to? A truly lossless store of electricity should be able to handle that situation, right? [0]: https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3520#comic https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3520#comic

by plater 6y ago

bingbong70 6y ago

Cavemen used very little energy before the discovery of fire. Are you prescribing a return to that state? >>>Response to Dan added here due to rate limit. > waste power Infinite energy in the universe and everything mankind has achieved has been in large part due to energy consumption. The idea that we should now stop that trend is antihuman/antihuman-progress at its core. Let the individual/market decide the best uses for energy... not your money = not your choice. BTW off-planet mining using the sun/stars is a great idea for the future and doesn't require them to be blacked out.

danShumway 6y ago
No of course not, that reading isn't any more accurate than it would be to say that you're arguing that we should set up a Dyson sphere around our sun to black out the earth and mine Bitcoin in the vast dead emptiness of space for all eternity[0]. Be careful not to inflate arguments into completely separate positions. What GP is saying is that switching to renewables doesn't make all of the negative externalities of wasting power go away. You shouldn't extrapolate out on that to some grand view of the world that says we should never use technology. It just means we shouldn't waste power, and we shouldn't use "solar" as an excuse to waste power. [0]: After all, Dyson spheres are powered by renewable energy.
- bingbong70 6y ago
  > waste power > not a battery What's a better way to losslessly and securely store human labor/time for future use? Almost everything else (fiat, gold, silver, real estate, etc...) that exists is debased/debasable, deteriorates, or loses value. The above arguments completely hinge on energy being "wasted". Lossless labor/time storage isn't "waste" to market participants seeing a need for it and putting their hard earned money behind it. Bitcoin basically turns one of the hardest to counterfeit things in the universe, energy, into money. How else can you achieve lossless storage without a trustless secured environment (the bitcoin network)? Any multi-decade/multi-century solution that market participants should focus on instead?
  - danShumway 6y ago
    > Almost everything else (fiat, gold, silver, real estate, etc...) that exists is debased/debasable, deteriorates, or loses value. Look, yes, Bitcoin is deflationary, but it's still subject to market pressures. It's not technologically guaranteed to be worth anything 200 years from now. Besides that... > securely store human labor/time for future use? It's not secure storage if you can't retrieve it[0]. What do you mean by "lossless"? You permanently lose all of the energy when you convert it into Bitcoin. You can not get that power/energy back, it is gone. What you hope is that the value of Bitcoin will allow you to trade your coins for somebody else's energy. But guaranteed scarcity is not the same thing as lossless storage, otherwise we would store all of our Youtube videos on collectable Beanie Babies. Bitcoin's value is based on social consensus, not because it can be converted back into electricity. You're not storing anything, you are using a scarce resource to guarantee that it will be difficult to create more Bitcoin in the future, thereby creating a deflationary currency. > Any multi-decade/multi-century solution that market participants should focus on instead? All of them? Most currencies have been around for multiple centuries. The US dollar has been around for multiple centuries, and the US dollar is young. Yes, the value of the US dollar can fluctuate, but, and I can not stress this enough, so can Bitcoin's value. There is no magical technology that makes Bitcoin worth anything, it's worth what people are willing to trade for it. ---- Maybe a thought experiment will help here. If you think that Bitcoin is genuinely storing energy in a lossless format independent of market pressure, then I should be able to create a new Bitcoin using the exact same technology because it's Open Source, and it should also be just as valuable, right? I just need enough people to join in on mining that it's difficult to commit fraud, and now my secondary coin should be just as good as Bitcoin at storing value, because it's using the same technology, the same distributed governance model, and the same electricity to power it. Heck, I don't even need to create a new coin, I can fork the current chain; that's what Bitcoin Cash did. So let's say I fork Bitcoin's chain, and all of the exchanges that currently take Bitcoin also start taking my new coin so it's similarly decentralized. Have I just doubled the amount of electricity in the world? No, of course not. Because the value of both coins will be based on social consensus, not because they are a perfect digitized storage medium for electricity. ---- Another thought experiment on retrieval. Let's say tomorrow, the apocalypse hits. The US government collapses, the dollar is worthless, all governments are overthrown. Government-issued currency is only fit to burn. Gold isn't even worth its weight in food. Only Bitcoin remains. Now, bear in mind that the Internet does not exist anymore, because the US government and a bunch of centralized, US-dollar funded corporations were maintaining it, and they're all gone. But you would like to convert your Bitcoin back into electricity, because it's a lossless store of electricity/effort. How do you do that? How do you even trade your bitcoin when there is no network for you to connect to? A truly lossless store of electricity should be able to handle that situation, right? [0]: https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3520#comic https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3520#comic