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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

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?
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  I'm not setting any line here. I'm saying that we could worry about the big problem first without immediately deciding where any "line" needs to be drawn. I'm saying it doesn't matter which side of the "line" Facebook falls on because we could start with the biggest problems first, then circle back to Facebook when it's top of the list (not a whopping log_10 of at least 2 (!) difference from the current worst offenders, such as BTC).
  - gverrilla 5y ago
    I don't get why anglophones are so obsessed with these "drawing lines" and "moving posts", particularly on recent years. What lines are these exactly? What posts? This is very bad heuristics, actually.
beaner 5y ago
> why can't we discuss the bigger problem first without getting into the weeds of all the smaller problems? People seem to be intentionally conflating some things. A carbon tax is nice precisely because it avoids getting into weeds and is a general approach that applies equally to everything. Some people are proposing this and others are saying "don't get caught up in the weeds." What? Makes no sense. It just reinforces the poster's point: that some people's real motivation doesn't seem to be environmental, there's a strange focus on crypto specifically that makes it seem like they want it to be reigned in for other reasons.
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  General solutions are great, but when there's a noticeable log_10 distinction between two examples given, why can't we start at dealing with specific solutions to the biggest problem first and worry about the general approach later? It's a 99%/1% problem: we'd potentially get a huge savings if we dealt with the 99% of cases first and worried about the 1% later. The raw statistics already tell a story that the difference between "BTC" and "Facebook" is greatly exponential. Wanting to focus first on the (much) bigger exponent isn't necessarily a sign that people's real motivation is "conspiratorial" against crypto.
  - beaner 5y ago
    Because an outright ban is misguided anyway. PoW systems incentivize renewable R&D and investment. If you just straight-up make it illegal, you kill a major driving force of change for the better. If you restrict carbon output instead, you just further challenge the industry to find a way to work inside those bounds, allowing creativity and positive externalities to continue to develop.
    - WorldMaker 5y ago
      There was an article just the other day of a coal plant that was entirely restarted for PoW coin mining. PoW systems are not proven to incentivize renewable energy R&D and investment. There's no proven link there. There's no proof that a PoW coin ban would "kill a major driving force of change for the better". Sure, a restriction on carbon output would be such a driving force, but there is no such restriction today and it is wishful thinking to believe that PoW miners are following anything like one in a market where such externalities continue to be unregulated. It is orthogonal to the issue at hand that PoW is using far too much energy per transaction/per capita/per GDP/per most metrics you want to point to. Not using the energy in the first place is always going to be greener, no matter how much PoW systems invest in renewables and their R&D! I can't see that as "misguided". An outright ban would get immediate results versus a carbon output tax would incentivize eventual results, maybe. That's not misguided, that's just a different perspective, and a different preference on an ideal time window to address the situation versus wishful thinking and "golly gee, sure hope the market eventually figures it out someday".
panarky 5y ago
How is comparing Bitcoin's energy usage with other endeavors an "order of magnitude fallacy"? Gold mining uses something like 140 terawatt-hours of energy annually, and produces enormous pollution and environmental destruction in addition to that. That's greater than Bitcoin's energy usage. Since gold mining is so much more harmful to the environment, maybe we should outlaw that first before we work on smaller problems.
- StandardFuture 5y ago
  > Gold mining uses something like 140 terawatt-hours of energy annually, and produces enormous pollution and environmental destruction in addition to that. The most apropos commentary in this entire thread yet.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  > That's greater than Bitcoin's energy usage. For now. Gold's been around for centuries, Bitcoin not even for two decades. It's got a momentum that Bitcoin may or may not match in the future.
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  > How is comparing Bitcoin's energy usage with other endeavors an "order of magnitude fallacy"? The "other endeavors" category above was "digital endeavours" and specifically "Bitcoin versus Facebook", which is an order of magnitude difference. You've introduced an entirely different category from the above discussion. It's maybe an interesting category [1] to discuss elsewhere, but is off topic from the fallacy we were discussing. Thanks for the non-sequitur, though. [1] Personally, I'm not so sure it's a useful counter-comparison to Bitcoin: Gold is used in electronics and other industrial needs, beyond its service as a value store/commodity of interest to collectors. Gold is also increasingly rarely the "primary" focus of mines. Most of our Gold today comes from Copper mines and very few would argue we are mining Copper as a value store/solely for greed.
  - panarky 5y ago
    > Why do HN comment threads always end up as Pedantry Pageants where all ye who dare comment must address all the fucking edge cases Gold mining isn't a fucking edge case if it uses more energy and produces far more environmental damage. According to the principle you described, Bitcoin is the edge case we should ignore until we solve the gold mining problem.

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?

WorldMaker 5y ago
I'm not setting any line here. I'm saying that we could worry about the big problem first without immediately deciding where any "line" needs to be drawn. I'm saying it doesn't matter which side of the "line" Facebook falls on because we could start with the biggest problems first, then circle back to Facebook when it's top of the list (not a whopping log_10 of at least 2 (!) difference from the current worst offenders, such as BTC).
- gverrilla 5y ago
  I don't get why anglophones are so obsessed with these "drawing lines" and "moving posts", particularly on recent years. What lines are these exactly? What posts? This is very bad heuristics, actually.

beaner 5y ago

> why can't we discuss the bigger problem first without getting into the weeds of all the smaller problems? People seem to be intentionally conflating some things. A carbon tax is nice precisely because it avoids getting into weeds and is a general approach that applies equally to everything. Some people are proposing this and others are saying "don't get caught up in the weeds." What? Makes no sense. It just reinforces the poster's point: that some people's real motivation doesn't seem to be environmental, there's a strange focus on crypto specifically that makes it seem like they want it to be reigned in for other reasons.

WorldMaker 5y ago
General solutions are great, but when there's a noticeable log_10 distinction between two examples given, why can't we start at dealing with specific solutions to the biggest problem first and worry about the general approach later? It's a 99%/1% problem: we'd potentially get a huge savings if we dealt with the 99% of cases first and worried about the 1% later. The raw statistics already tell a story that the difference between "BTC" and "Facebook" is greatly exponential. Wanting to focus first on the (much) bigger exponent isn't necessarily a sign that people's real motivation is "conspiratorial" against crypto.
- beaner 5y ago
  Because an outright ban is misguided anyway. PoW systems incentivize renewable R&D and investment. If you just straight-up make it illegal, you kill a major driving force of change for the better. If you restrict carbon output instead, you just further challenge the industry to find a way to work inside those bounds, allowing creativity and positive externalities to continue to develop.
  - WorldMaker 5y ago
    There was an article just the other day of a coal plant that was entirely restarted for PoW coin mining. PoW systems are not proven to incentivize renewable energy R&D and investment. There's no proven link there. There's no proof that a PoW coin ban would "kill a major driving force of change for the better". Sure, a restriction on carbon output would be such a driving force, but there is no such restriction today and it is wishful thinking to believe that PoW miners are following anything like one in a market where such externalities continue to be unregulated. It is orthogonal to the issue at hand that PoW is using far too much energy per transaction/per capita/per GDP/per most metrics you want to point to. Not using the energy in the first place is always going to be greener, no matter how much PoW systems invest in renewables and their R&D! I can't see that as "misguided". An outright ban would get immediate results versus a carbon output tax would incentivize eventual results, maybe. That's not misguided, that's just a different perspective, and a different preference on an ideal time window to address the situation versus wishful thinking and "golly gee, sure hope the market eventually figures it out someday".

panarky 5y ago

How is comparing Bitcoin's energy usage with other endeavors an "order of magnitude fallacy"? Gold mining uses something like 140 terawatt-hours of energy annually, and produces enormous pollution and environmental destruction in addition to that. That's greater than Bitcoin's energy usage. Since gold mining is so much more harmful to the environment, maybe we should outlaw that first before we work on smaller problems.

StandardFuture 5y ago
> Gold mining uses something like 140 terawatt-hours of energy annually, and produces enormous pollution and environmental destruction in addition to that. The most apropos commentary in this entire thread yet.
selfhoster11 5y ago
> That's greater than Bitcoin's energy usage. For now. Gold's been around for centuries, Bitcoin not even for two decades. It's got a momentum that Bitcoin may or may not match in the future.
WorldMaker 5y ago
> How is comparing Bitcoin's energy usage with other endeavors an "order of magnitude fallacy"? The "other endeavors" category above was "digital endeavours" and specifically "Bitcoin versus Facebook", which is an order of magnitude difference. You've introduced an entirely different category from the above discussion. It's maybe an interesting category [1] to discuss elsewhere, but is off topic from the fallacy we were discussing. Thanks for the non-sequitur, though. [1] Personally, I'm not so sure it's a useful counter-comparison to Bitcoin: Gold is used in electronics and other industrial needs, beyond its service as a value store/commodity of interest to collectors. Gold is also increasingly rarely the "primary" focus of mines. Most of our Gold today comes from Copper mines and very few would argue we are mining Copper as a value store/solely for greed.
- panarky 5y ago
  > Why do HN comment threads always end up as Pedantry Pageants where all ye who dare comment must address all the fucking edge cases Gold mining isn't a fucking edge case if it uses more energy and produces far more environmental damage. According to the principle you described, Bitcoin is the edge case we should ignore until we solve the gold mining problem.