5 ms·

"If we didn’t have such a dire X I would be upset on principle, but I see this as a move that’s supposed to help ..." What worth is a principle if you don't st

"If we didn’t have such a dire X I would be upset on principle, but I see this as a move that’s supposed to help ..." What worth is a principle if you don't still have it when it get challenged? Then it's just a opinion, which is fine by itself and it's ok to change opinion, smart people do it all the time. But don't call it a principle. Unlikely that mining will disappear because NVIDIA limits a specific algoritm/client software/however the limit is implemented. It will, like most "limit for your self-protection" systems, eventually be broken. Miners are already not afraid of picking apart the components they are using, so neither software nor hardware is safe.

void_mint 5y ago
> What worth is a principle if you don't still have it when it get challenged? The realities of life make most principles less finite than one would hope. If Nvidia doesn't want to rebrand as a crypto-hardware company, they're going to take action so their products and brand match _their principles_.
tshaddox 5y ago
> What worth is a principle if you don't still have it when it get challenged? Huh? To me, refusing to even acknowledge or entertain criticism for one’s principles is one of the worst things I can imagine. Principles ought to be routinely subjected to criticism, no different than scientific theories.
- capableweb 5y ago
  > refusing to even acknowledge or entertain criticism I'm not advocating for you not listen to criticism aimed towards your principle. But if your principle gets put to the test and you abandon it, it's no longer something you fundamentally agree on, it was some "light belief" that you had.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    Replace “principle” with “scientific theory.” Why shouldn’t principles be subject to tests and criticism?
    - just-ok 5y ago
      In the same way that a scientific theory was meaningless if it failed a test, a principle was meaningless if it needed to be adjusted when actually put to use.
      - tshaddox 5y ago
        Superseded scientific theories aren’t all “meaningless.” Newton’s laws of motion are superseded, but they aren’t meaningless, and you presumably wouldn’t say that scientists who updated their beliefs in the face of new evidence and explanations were doing anything wrong.
        just-ok 5y ago
        You’re right: “meaningless” was a heavy-handed attempt at continuing the parallel on my part. And sure, they weren’t doing anything wrong, but they fundamentally were wrong in the rules they followed previously. Similarly, if you adjust a principle, you admit that it didn’t hold for you in the first place. As a tangent: while the parallel to scientific theories is good on the surface, it does lump in this idea that there’s a universal set of correct principles. Isn’t that just philosophy, then? Logical arguments about which principles are sound & universal. Maybe the lesson is to pick principles from the battle-tested ones rather than trying to develop your own.
    - Natsu 5y ago
      If it were due to new facts and information, sure, but a lot of time the "new" principles appear to be self-interest biases manifesting. Also, if your principles are likely to change quickly, it's probable that they haven't been thought through very thoroughly to begin with. It's not like you have to wait for situations to actually arise to consider them.
  - mdoms 5y ago
    This is nonsense. Principles should adapt to the context they're applied in. In principle I'm against big government intervention into our personal lives, but you bet your ass I'm in favour of lockdowns when thousands of lives are at stake. I'm not going to let thousands of my compatriots die out of principle.
    - ALittleLight 5y ago
      This is just imprecise statement of principle. It's more like you're against the government intervening unless they're credibly doing it to save lives. If someone discovered how to turn a microwave into a nuclear bomb, presumably you'd support government intervention to collect all the microwaves, even if they had to intervene a lot in our lives. Likewise, you support government intervention to reduce covid deaths, etc.
      - tshaddox 5y ago
        Sure, you could just say that your “principles” are simply the entire exact sequence of actions you take in your life. That way you could by definition never change or violate your principles. But usually people use “principle” to refer to a relatively concise statement that can be applied to a large variety of situations.
        ALittleLight 5y ago
        I'm not familiar with any definition of the word principle that includes the idea of "concise". Principle as I'm using it here is a moral belief or guide. It's less a description of what you do and more an explanation for why you do what you do.
        tshaddox 5y ago
        I just mean that it must be more concise than a lookup table from every possible situational input to the recommended output. The same is implied by the term “explanation.”
emsy 5y ago
I think your criticism is valid, but I don’t think it’s sensible to adhere to principles in a black and white way. For me, the minor restriction put in place by Nvidia is the lesser evil when you consider that they could just as well sell out to the miners and drastically increase their margins. In fact, I think it’s a very sympathetic move. I don’t think “it will be broken” is a good argument, because the intent displayed by Nvidia does matter.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  Their intent is to limit what people can do with their hardware. That strikes me as almost morally wrong. I tell the computer what to do. It doesn't tell me what to do. I think cryptocurrency is a scam and I'll be glad if/when it goes away and graphics cards become cheap again. However, I will never support hardware manufacturers infringing on the idea of general purpose computing for the sake of their business model. If they want gamers to get more graphics cards then make so many graphics cards that everyone will be able to afford them. Don't try to artificially limit what the hardware can do.
  - istorical 5y ago
    If it suddenly became wildly profitable to buy all of the bread and rice and any form of carbohydrate from food manufacturers and grocery stores and burn it in a field, would it still be morally wrong for food producers to figure out a way to cripple the utility of their food products by making them unburnable? Is there some capitalist principle or moral principle of the free market that overrides all other human needs and values? What is the principle you are defending and at what point does it become less important than other principles?
    - ALittleLight 5y ago
      If the choice was between restricting food - i.e making it less profitable to burn, to make it more available to the hungry and letting food be free and the hungry starve, then that's a pick between the best of two bad options. Clearly it's better to feed people than let food be unrestricted. In this case though the choice is between restricting hardware to give gamers more affordable GPUs. The benefit doesn't match the cost. The principle is something like freedom or ownership. Arbitrary restrictions are bad because freedom is good. By definition arbitrary restrictions aren't needed (arbitrary) and reduce freedom (restriction).
UnFleshedOne 5y ago
How big is each of your principles (in terms of information complexity) that they cover significant enough number of all possible conditions and circumstances?
- just-ok 5y ago
  I’m sure plenty of people would agree to an absolute “I don’t steal” principle—one that covers a pretty significant number of conditions & circumstances-and yet not go back to the register when they accidentally walked out of the grocery store with something, or compromise it more significantly under stress of hunger. In this case, one could argue “I don’t steal” was never a principle they actually held.
renewiltord 5y ago
A principle is a moral heuristic so you don't have to scan to root of your moral argument tree on every moral question. As a heuristic, it attempts to compress the moral space down and will naturally have exceptions. As a compressed form of your moral judgment, it is also useful for you to quickly communicate your position on the moral space, and it is up to participants in social interactions to decide whether or not someone is good at this moral judgment compression. For instance, I have a principle not to lie in general. Most social participants know that this does not constrain me from lying in specific situations. After repeated interactions they can tell whether this principle of mine is held in a manner that's useful to them. The same principle also allows me to quickly judge situations that require me to lie. Is it okay for me to tell this person that their house is painted poorly? Well, I have this anti-lie principle so that pulls me toward "yes". I might have other principles that pull me in other directions. Of course you can treat principles as immutable moral rods. This presumably has some value to you. In general, people do not act in this manner, however.
- just-ok 5y ago
  I think your loose definition of “principle” does not meet many others’: it’s definitely intended to be stricter than a heuristic. Of course even though you can have relaxed principles, e.g. “I usually don’t lie” vs. “I don’t lie,” I think the point here is that if you believe or preach a particular “principle,” but then adjust it for yourself when it’s convenient (for example a “just this once” scenario), it was never a principle to begin with.
  - renewiltord 5y ago
    Actually, observationally I believe my definition of principle to be far more accurate. People self-report principles as being far more immutable than they behave like. I have not yet met someone who rigidly adheres to theirs. Perhaps if I had met the Dalai Lama but nearly everyone else will find that the moral space is so fraught that they cannot adequately compress it into immutable laws. Usually, should one demand such adherence one would find one met with accusations of “looking at the world in black and white” and “lacking nuance”. Of course I don’t really intend to change your mind, but I do intend to transmit what I have observed.

void_mint 5y ago

> What worth is a principle if you don't still have it when it get challenged? The realities of life make most principles less finite than one would hope. If Nvidia doesn't want to rebrand as a crypto-hardware company, they're going to take action so their products and brand match _their principles_.

tshaddox 5y ago

> What worth is a principle if you don't still have it when it get challenged? Huh? To me, refusing to even acknowledge or entertain criticism for one’s principles is one of the worst things I can imagine. Principles ought to be routinely subjected to criticism, no different than scientific theories.

capableweb 5y ago
> refusing to even acknowledge or entertain criticism I'm not advocating for you not listen to criticism aimed towards your principle. But if your principle gets put to the test and you abandon it, it's no longer something you fundamentally agree on, it was some "light belief" that you had.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Replace “principle” with “scientific theory.” Why shouldn’t principles be subject to tests and criticism?
  - just-ok 5y ago
    In the same way that a scientific theory was meaningless if it failed a test, a principle was meaningless if it needed to be adjusted when actually put to use.
    - tshaddox 5y ago
      Superseded scientific theories aren’t all “meaningless.” Newton’s laws of motion are superseded, but they aren’t meaningless, and you presumably wouldn’t say that scientists who updated their beliefs in the face of new evidence and explanations were doing anything wrong.
      - just-ok 5y ago
        You’re right: “meaningless” was a heavy-handed attempt at continuing the parallel on my part. And sure, they weren’t doing anything wrong, but they fundamentally were wrong in the rules they followed previously. Similarly, if you adjust a principle, you admit that it didn’t hold for you in the first place. As a tangent: while the parallel to scientific theories is good on the surface, it does lump in this idea that there’s a universal set of correct principles. Isn’t that just philosophy, then? Logical arguments about which principles are sound & universal. Maybe the lesson is to pick principles from the battle-tested ones rather than trying to develop your own.
  - Natsu 5y ago
    If it were due to new facts and information, sure, but a lot of time the "new" principles appear to be self-interest biases manifesting. Also, if your principles are likely to change quickly, it's probable that they haven't been thought through very thoroughly to begin with. It's not like you have to wait for situations to actually arise to consider them.
- mdoms 5y ago
  This is nonsense. Principles should adapt to the context they're applied in. In principle I'm against big government intervention into our personal lives, but you bet your ass I'm in favour of lockdowns when thousands of lives are at stake. I'm not going to let thousands of my compatriots die out of principle.
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    This is just imprecise statement of principle. It's more like you're against the government intervening unless they're credibly doing it to save lives. If someone discovered how to turn a microwave into a nuclear bomb, presumably you'd support government intervention to collect all the microwaves, even if they had to intervene a lot in our lives. Likewise, you support government intervention to reduce covid deaths, etc.
    - tshaddox 5y ago
      Sure, you could just say that your “principles” are simply the entire exact sequence of actions you take in your life. That way you could by definition never change or violate your principles. But usually people use “principle” to refer to a relatively concise statement that can be applied to a large variety of situations.
      - ALittleLight 5y ago
        I'm not familiar with any definition of the word principle that includes the idea of "concise". Principle as I'm using it here is a moral belief or guide. It's less a description of what you do and more an explanation for why you do what you do.
        tshaddox 5y ago
        I just mean that it must be more concise than a lookup table from every possible situational input to the recommended output. The same is implied by the term “explanation.”

emsy 5y ago

I think your criticism is valid, but I don’t think it’s sensible to adhere to principles in a black and white way. For me, the minor restriction put in place by Nvidia is the lesser evil when you consider that they could just as well sell out to the miners and drastically increase their margins. In fact, I think it’s a very sympathetic move. I don’t think “it will be broken” is a good argument, because the intent displayed by Nvidia does matter.

ALittleLight 5y ago
Their intent is to limit what people can do with their hardware. That strikes me as almost morally wrong. I tell the computer what to do. It doesn't tell me what to do. I think cryptocurrency is a scam and I'll be glad if/when it goes away and graphics cards become cheap again. However, I will never support hardware manufacturers infringing on the idea of general purpose computing for the sake of their business model. If they want gamers to get more graphics cards then make so many graphics cards that everyone will be able to afford them. Don't try to artificially limit what the hardware can do.
- istorical 5y ago
  If it suddenly became wildly profitable to buy all of the bread and rice and any form of carbohydrate from food manufacturers and grocery stores and burn it in a field, would it still be morally wrong for food producers to figure out a way to cripple the utility of their food products by making them unburnable? Is there some capitalist principle or moral principle of the free market that overrides all other human needs and values? What is the principle you are defending and at what point does it become less important than other principles?
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    If the choice was between restricting food - i.e making it less profitable to burn, to make it more available to the hungry and letting food be free and the hungry starve, then that's a pick between the best of two bad options. Clearly it's better to feed people than let food be unrestricted. In this case though the choice is between restricting hardware to give gamers more affordable GPUs. The benefit doesn't match the cost. The principle is something like freedom or ownership. Arbitrary restrictions are bad because freedom is good. By definition arbitrary restrictions aren't needed (arbitrary) and reduce freedom (restriction).

UnFleshedOne 5y ago

How big is each of your principles (in terms of information complexity) that they cover significant enough number of all possible conditions and circumstances?

just-ok 5y ago
I’m sure plenty of people would agree to an absolute “I don’t steal” principle—one that covers a pretty significant number of conditions & circumstances-and yet not go back to the register when they accidentally walked out of the grocery store with something, or compromise it more significantly under stress of hunger. In this case, one could argue “I don’t steal” was never a principle they actually held.

renewiltord 5y ago

A principle is a moral heuristic so you don't have to scan to root of your moral argument tree on every moral question. As a heuristic, it attempts to compress the moral space down and will naturally have exceptions. As a compressed form of your moral judgment, it is also useful for you to quickly communicate your position on the moral space, and it is up to participants in social interactions to decide whether or not someone is good at this moral judgment compression. For instance, I have a principle not to lie in general. Most social participants know that this does not constrain me from lying in specific situations. After repeated interactions they can tell whether this principle of mine is held in a manner that's useful to them. The same principle also allows me to quickly judge situations that require me to lie. Is it okay for me to tell this person that their house is painted poorly? Well, I have this anti-lie principle so that pulls me toward "yes". I might have other principles that pull me in other directions. Of course you can treat principles as immutable moral rods. This presumably has some value to you. In general, people do not act in this manner, however.

just-ok 5y ago
I think your loose definition of “principle” does not meet many others’: it’s definitely intended to be stricter than a heuristic. Of course even though you can have relaxed principles, e.g. “I usually don’t lie” vs. “I don’t lie,” I think the point here is that if you believe or preach a particular “principle,” but then adjust it for yourself when it’s convenient (for example a “just this once” scenario), it was never a principle to begin with.
- renewiltord 5y ago
  Actually, observationally I believe my definition of principle to be far more accurate. People self-report principles as being far more immutable than they behave like. I have not yet met someone who rigidly adheres to theirs. Perhaps if I had met the Dalai Lama but nearly everyone else will find that the moral space is so fraught that they cannot adequately compress it into immutable laws. Usually, should one demand such adherence one would find one met with accusations of “looking at the world in black and white” and “lacking nuance”. Of course I don’t really intend to change your mind, but I do intend to transmit what I have observed.