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"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.y

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Perhaps it's not idle pedantry to observe that many of those who are angry about crypto energy usage couldn't care less about the energy wasted and pollution generated by other endeavors. It's like an uncle of mine who is outraged that mosques get tax exemptions, but he doesn't care that churches get tax exemptions. Clearly tax policy isn't a genuine concern for him. He's angry about something else that he won't say out loud.

helmholtz 5y ago
Fair enough. I love this orange website, but I also despise it. Flying off the handle is rarely a sensible solution. To your point, though, I'm willing to wager that most of the people whose biggest problem with crypto is energy consumption would happily also support other harsh measures against all manner of pollution generating entities. I know I would.
- admax88q 5y ago
  A pollution tax is really the only viable solution though. Playing whack a mole against individual entities and activities will never solve the problem, and creates a lot of legislation. So long as pollution and carbon are free or cheap, people will find wasteful ways to generate it. Incentives work, and taxing carbon and pollution will incentive green alternatives.
  - lancemurdock 5y ago
    a pollution tax will not work. That just becomes the price of doing business and that cost is factored into other areas of the business model. Even worse, it just gives more capital to inefficient governments
    - hllooo 5y ago
      > That just becomes the price of doing business and that cost is factored into other areas of the business model. Yah that's the point and business with less environmental impact will be more competitive. Industries/products with more of an impact will be more expensive, reflecting their true cost. > Even worse, it just gives more capital to inefficient governments Most pollution/carbon taxes are proposed to be revenue neutral, i.e. all the proceeds are returned to the tax base. This is also important because like other (non-luxury) consumption taxes, a carbon tax is regressive.
    - chalst 5y ago
      I have a few disagreements with the MMT crowd, but on this one point they are transparently correct: the exact level of taxation has little relationship to government ability to spend. Talk of "giving more capital" to governments shows a deep misunderstanding about the nature of fiscal constraints.
    - toomanybeersies 5y ago
      > other areas of the business model And what are those? District heating?
    - admax88q 5y ago
      It becomes the cost of doing dirty business. Solar is taking off not because we banned coal, but because it's cheaper than coal. If coal and natural gas were taxed according to their carbon output, solar would be even more ahead, nuclear may become more attractive as well. Aluminum is heavily recycled not because it's green, but because it's significantly cheaper than mining new. Incentives work. The free market responds to incentives, and works around regulations.
  - heisenzombie 5y ago
    In the specific case of proof-of-work cryptocurrency, I don’t think a carbon tax is directly useful: If it’s unilateral then mining trivially shifts across borders; if it’s global then it’s an inflationary pressure on the coin price which offsets the reduction in mining you might otherwise expect.
Nursie 5y ago
> Perhaps it's not idle pedantry to observe that many of those who are angry about crypto energy usage couldn't care less about the energy wasted and pollution generated by other endeavors. Have you observed this, or are you simply speculating?
- bigbob2 5y ago
  Was thinking the same thing... There's no evidence I can see to suggest the parent is not also against other forms of excessive energy consumption.
  - Karunamon 5y ago
    There's a hidden subjective value judgment built into the word "excessive" that's doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. These "regulation" comments tend to have a high likelihood of boiling down "I want the government to stop things I don't like", where environmental concerns (crypto) or data collection (adtech) is a mere pretense grounded in incomplete information at best, emotion at worst. Personally speaking I find it just as irritating of a pattern here that knee-jerk calls for "regulation" (i.e. bring in the coercive power of the state) or outright banning are so often floated as a/the solution to every problem. When legal coercion is suggested, it is entirely proper to bring up the existence of the dragons that lay down that road.
    - Nursie 5y ago
      I want the government to look seriously at things that are using the energy footprint of a mid-sized country simply to spin up a new financial instrument. Particularly when there appear to be equivalent things that don't. If cryptocurrencies didn't have the energy footprint, I would find them pretty uninteresting and/or ridiculous for various reasons, but ultimately it wouldn't bother me that people do what they do with them. When they start adding seriously to the global energy load in a time of climate crisis that makes them pretty offensive.
      - gverrilla 5y ago
SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
> Perhaps it's not idle pedantry to observe that many of those who are angry about crypto energy usage couldn't care less about the energy wasted and pollution generated by other endeavors. I don't think that's correct. I think that it's possible to care about both, but to be dismissive of misdirecting subject changes, i.e. "whataboutism".
cmrdporcupine 5y ago
So you answered his complaint about the use of "slippery slope fallacy" by deploying the "whatabout" fallacy and created a strawman. Nicely done, nicely done.
WorldMaker 5y ago
I wish there was a better name for an "order of magnitude fallacy" (but given Roman numerals I can understand why they probably didn't have a fun Latin name for an order of magnitude problem), because we seem to be seeing them all the time right now. Industrial production of greenhouse gases is nearly an order of magnitude larger than consumer production, but often inordinately the "guilt" burden is pushed to the consumers: Do you have an EV? Have you changed all your light bulbs to more efficient LEDs? Are you Vegan enough? Here too: Bitcoin alone has risen to an order (or three) of magnitude more energy consumption than Facebook could ever use/do ever use to track people. (Cumulative, the rest of cryptocurrencies only further dwarf Facebook's comparative energy costs.) We can be angry about two things, we can be angry at both, but why can't we discuss the bigger problem first without getting into the weeds of all the smaller problems? (And of course, the two order of magnitude problems above are inextricably linked: Bitcoin is on track to make many industrial users of electricity look like chumps and dwarf them by an order of magnitude. Nearly all of the consumer-side gains from veganism, LED lightbulbs, EVs has been offset again, if not entirely dwarfed, by cryptocurrency mining.) People are bad at reasoning things at large enough scales, have a hard time gut understanding order of magnitude problems, so the fallacies keep creeping up, and keep getting weaponized by bad agents (the consumer "green guilt", the consumer "recycling guilt", so many other "demand-side fallacies" that if consumers just bought "smarter", problems would just go away, when really it's the suppliers that are in control).
- josh2600 5y ago
  https://orionmagazine.org/article/forget-shorter-showers/ https://orionmagazine.org/article/forget-shorter-showers/ << This is the seminal essay on this subject, IMHO.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  What is a fair method for determining the amount of acceptable energy for a cryptocurrency or a social network to use? It seems like you implicitly draw the 'fair' line between FB and BTC. BTC's market cap is roughly equal to Facebooks. If a POW coin used facebook levels of energy at the same value, would you find that acceptable?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
KronisLV 5y ago
Are there any estimates of how much power crypto mining has consumed and how much running all of the Facebook/Instagram/whatever servers has consumed? Best i found for Bitcoin was 40-100 TWh per year: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption And for Facebook it appeared that they used 5140 GWh in 2019: https://www.statista.com/statistics/580087/energy-use-of-facebook/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/580087/energy-use-of-fac... So essentially: Entity Consumption (GWh) Facebook 5 140 Bitcoin 40 000 - 100 000 I wouldn't have expected Facebook to consume comparatively so little energy, if i'm doing conversions right.
8note 5y ago
The argument stands for itself. If your uncle gave a good argument against tax exemptions, it's a good argument for tax exemptions. Just pretend somebody else gave it that doesn't have the same alterior motive. Attacking the motive or whatever is not said out loud is responding to a weaker interpretation

helmholtz 5y ago

Fair enough. I love this orange website, but I also despise it. Flying off the handle is rarely a sensible solution. To your point, though, I'm willing to wager that most of the people whose biggest problem with crypto is energy consumption would happily also support other harsh measures against all manner of pollution generating entities. I know I would.

admax88q 5y ago
A pollution tax is really the only viable solution though. Playing whack a mole against individual entities and activities will never solve the problem, and creates a lot of legislation. So long as pollution and carbon are free or cheap, people will find wasteful ways to generate it. Incentives work, and taxing carbon and pollution will incentive green alternatives.
- lancemurdock 5y ago
  a pollution tax will not work. That just becomes the price of doing business and that cost is factored into other areas of the business model. Even worse, it just gives more capital to inefficient governments
  - hllooo 5y ago
    > That just becomes the price of doing business and that cost is factored into other areas of the business model. Yah that's the point and business with less environmental impact will be more competitive. Industries/products with more of an impact will be more expensive, reflecting their true cost. > Even worse, it just gives more capital to inefficient governments Most pollution/carbon taxes are proposed to be revenue neutral, i.e. all the proceeds are returned to the tax base. This is also important because like other (non-luxury) consumption taxes, a carbon tax is regressive.
  - chalst 5y ago
    I have a few disagreements with the MMT crowd, but on this one point they are transparently correct: the exact level of taxation has little relationship to government ability to spend. Talk of "giving more capital" to governments shows a deep misunderstanding about the nature of fiscal constraints.
  - toomanybeersies 5y ago
    > other areas of the business model And what are those? District heating?
  - admax88q 5y ago
    It becomes the cost of doing dirty business. Solar is taking off not because we banned coal, but because it's cheaper than coal. If coal and natural gas were taxed according to their carbon output, solar would be even more ahead, nuclear may become more attractive as well. Aluminum is heavily recycled not because it's green, but because it's significantly cheaper than mining new. Incentives work. The free market responds to incentives, and works around regulations.
- heisenzombie 5y ago
  In the specific case of proof-of-work cryptocurrency, I don’t think a carbon tax is directly useful: If it’s unilateral then mining trivially shifts across borders; if it’s global then it’s an inflationary pressure on the coin price which offsets the reduction in mining you might otherwise expect.

Nursie 5y ago

> Perhaps it's not idle pedantry to observe that many of those who are angry about crypto energy usage couldn't care less about the energy wasted and pollution generated by other endeavors. Have you observed this, or are you simply speculating?

bigbob2 5y ago
Was thinking the same thing... There's no evidence I can see to suggest the parent is not also against other forms of excessive energy consumption.
- Karunamon 5y ago
  There's a hidden subjective value judgment built into the word "excessive" that's doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. These "regulation" comments tend to have a high likelihood of boiling down "I want the government to stop things I don't like", where environmental concerns (crypto) or data collection (adtech) is a mere pretense grounded in incomplete information at best, emotion at worst. Personally speaking I find it just as irritating of a pattern here that knee-jerk calls for "regulation" (i.e. bring in the coercive power of the state) or outright banning are so often floated as a/the solution to every problem. When legal coercion is suggested, it is entirely proper to bring up the existence of the dragons that lay down that road.
  - Nursie 5y ago
    I want the government to look seriously at things that are using the energy footprint of a mid-sized country simply to spin up a new financial instrument. Particularly when there appear to be equivalent things that don't. If cryptocurrencies didn't have the energy footprint, I would find them pretty uninteresting and/or ridiculous for various reasons, but ultimately it wouldn't bother me that people do what they do with them. When they start adding seriously to the global energy load in a time of climate crisis that makes them pretty offensive.
    - gverrilla 5y ago

SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago

> Perhaps it's not idle pedantry to observe that many of those who are angry about crypto energy usage couldn't care less about the energy wasted and pollution generated by other endeavors. I don't think that's correct. I think that it's possible to care about both, but to be dismissive of misdirecting subject changes, i.e. "whataboutism".

cmrdporcupine 5y ago

So you answered his complaint about the use of "slippery slope fallacy" by deploying the "whatabout" fallacy and created a strawman. Nicely done, nicely done.

WorldMaker 5y ago

I wish there was a better name for an "order of magnitude fallacy" (but given Roman numerals I can understand why they probably didn't have a fun Latin name for an order of magnitude problem), because we seem to be seeing them all the time right now. Industrial production of greenhouse gases is nearly an order of magnitude larger than consumer production, but often inordinately the "guilt" burden is pushed to the consumers: Do you have an EV? Have you changed all your light bulbs to more efficient LEDs? Are you Vegan enough? Here too: Bitcoin alone has risen to an order (or three) of magnitude more energy consumption than Facebook could ever use/do ever use to track people. (Cumulative, the rest of cryptocurrencies only further dwarf Facebook's comparative energy costs.) We can be angry about two things, we can be angry at both, but why can't we discuss the bigger problem first without getting into the weeds of all the smaller problems? (And of course, the two order of magnitude problems above are inextricably linked: Bitcoin is on track to make many industrial users of electricity look like chumps and dwarf them by an order of magnitude. Nearly all of the consumer-side gains from veganism, LED lightbulbs, EVs has been offset again, if not entirely dwarfed, by cryptocurrency mining.) People are bad at reasoning things at large enough scales, have a hard time gut understanding order of magnitude problems, so the fallacies keep creeping up, and keep getting weaponized by bad agents (the consumer "green guilt", the consumer "recycling guilt", so many other "demand-side fallacies" that if consumers just bought "smarter", problems would just go away, when really it's the suppliers that are in control).

josh2600 5y ago
https://orionmagazine.org/article/forget-shorter-showers/ https://orionmagazine.org/article/forget-shorter-showers/ << This is the seminal essay on this subject, IMHO.
cwkoss 5y ago
What is a fair method for determining the amount of acceptable energy for a cryptocurrency or a social network to use? It seems like you implicitly draw the 'fair' line between FB and BTC. BTC's market cap is roughly equal to Facebooks. If a POW coin used facebook levels of energy at the same value, would you find that acceptable?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

KronisLV 5y ago

Are there any estimates of how much power crypto mining has consumed and how much running all of the Facebook/Instagram/whatever servers has consumed? Best i found for Bitcoin was 40-100 TWh per year: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption And for Facebook it appeared that they used 5140 GWh in 2019: https://www.statista.com/statistics/580087/energy-use-of-facebook/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/580087/energy-use-of-fac... So essentially: Entity Consumption (GWh) Facebook 5 140 Bitcoin 40 000 - 100 000 I wouldn't have expected Facebook to consume comparatively so little energy, if i'm doing conversions right.

8note 5y ago

The argument stands for itself. If your uncle gave a good argument against tax exemptions, it's a good argument for tax exemptions. Just pretend somebody else gave it that doesn't have the same alterior motive. Attacking the motive or whatever is not said out loud is responding to a weaker interpretation