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A tenet of sociology is that reality is socially constructed. Since HN is populated with literalists, I will clarify here that this obviously does not mean tha

A tenet of sociology is that reality is socially constructed. Since HN is populated with literalists, I will clarify here that this obviously does not mean that all aspects of reality are created by consensus. The Earth will not unroll and flatten itself out given a sufficient number of Flat Earthers. By "reality", they mean that a suprisingly large subset of what we consider "the world" is actually human level authored truth. Some examples: * Janet is a police officer. * Dave is a criminal. * France owns the Mona Lisa. * France is a country. * Idaho is not a country. * Lance Armstrong is a cyclist. * Bats are not birds. * You can buy a car for $20,000. In all of these examples, the fundamental process that determines the truth or falsehood of those statements is consensus. I can hear you already. "If you don't get a paycheck from the city, you aren't a cop." "You aren't a criminal unless you are convicted by the legal system." "The Mona Lisa is literally in the Louvre." "Bats are mammals, in order chiroptera. All birds are in class aves." "If I give someone the money, I will literally have a car that I can drive around." For literal-minded folks like us, the idea that key properties of what we consider cold hard objective reality is in fact just squishy agreement can be unsettling. Hell, half of us got into computers specifically to avoid hand-wavey subjectivism. But it's true. If you root cause any of those statements, you will eventually bottom out on "some people agree on it". There is no ground truth below human consensus on any of these and many many many more critical, tangible facets of our lives. Tech folks will spend a truly Herculean effort to avoid this uncomfortable reality. They really really want things to feel solid. I look at the entire blockchain enterprise as essentially that. A boondoggle to try to subtract the humans out of human-constructed reality. But as this article shows, it is always doomed to failure. If you want your tech to actually do anything, then it has to interact with humans. And those humans will only choose to act in accordance with your tech if they believe the reality that it claims. Which means ultimately it is their belief that defines what the blockchain means, and not vice versa. Consent is always at the bottom.

13rac1 5y ago
> For literal-minded folks like us, the idea that key properties of what we consider cold hard objective reality is in fact just squishy agreement can be unsettling. Hell, half of us got into computers specifically to avoid hand-wavey subjectivism. Objective reality begins to falter even before leaving computing. For example: values for binary ones and zeros are hand-wavey down in the hardware voltage level. People believe it is as simple as: 5V is one and 0V is zero. In reality, (5V TTL logic levels) voltages above 2.7V are high/one and below 0.8V are low/zero. Details: https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/logic-levels/all https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/logic-levels/all
jerry1979 5y ago
Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin extend the power of a person's imagination out of their mind and into the minds of other people. They do this because the cryptocurrencies create rules that people have a very hard time breaking, and people can communicate ideas through those rules. In this way, bitcoin does not subtract humans, it extends the human mind outward.
- munificent 5y ago
  I agree! Cryptocurrencies can be a useful tool if you have the right mindset. The trick is to think of them not as a means of replacing consensus, but a tool for achieving it. Because once you have that mindset, then you can start thinking about how it compares with other consensus-making tools (like the state and banks), and you can think about hybrid models that combine those in interesting ways.
  - intotheabyss 5y ago
    There's a saying in the space that all cryptocurrencies are built on Layer 0 which is the social consensus layer. Bitcoin is only Bitcoin because everyone agrees on it.
arc-in-space 5y ago
That's funny. I consider the hacker mindset to include the exact opposite of this accusation - the ability to deconstruct reality, but also to perceive structure where there didn't appear to be any. And, really, of all things, blockchain is where you see excessive rigid thinking? I don't like it much myself, but it came about from a bunch of people going 'well, money is fake anyway'.
stuhood 5y ago
To be clear though, any such consensus _could_ theoretically be modeled using a smart contract between multiple parties, including how ownership was to be revoked (e.g. "party `X` owns thing `z` unless party `Y` says otherwise"). The challenges are in: 1. knowing ahead of time what the parameters and participants of the contract need to be ("I own the house I paid for... unless 'the government' invokes eminent domain") 2. finding the usecases where it's even beneficial to store proof of ownership in a distributed fashion (rather than at, for example, town hall).
- munificent 5y ago
  > To be clear though, any such consensus _could_ theoretically be modeled using a smart contract between multiple parties Sure, but it's only a model, in the same sense of "model" as a model train set. If you want that blockchain's consensus model to actually do real things involving real humans, then the humans have to agree to act on that model, which itself requires consensus. So now you have two consensus systems.

13rac1 5y ago

> For literal-minded folks like us, the idea that key properties of what we consider cold hard objective reality is in fact just squishy agreement can be unsettling. Hell, half of us got into computers specifically to avoid hand-wavey subjectivism. Objective reality begins to falter even before leaving computing. For example: values for binary ones and zeros are hand-wavey down in the hardware voltage level. People believe it is as simple as: 5V is one and 0V is zero. In reality, (5V TTL logic levels) voltages above 2.7V are high/one and below 0.8V are low/zero. Details: https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/logic-levels/all https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/logic-levels/all

jerry1979 5y ago

Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin extend the power of a person's imagination out of their mind and into the minds of other people. They do this because the cryptocurrencies create rules that people have a very hard time breaking, and people can communicate ideas through those rules. In this way, bitcoin does not subtract humans, it extends the human mind outward.

munificent 5y ago
I agree! Cryptocurrencies can be a useful tool if you have the right mindset. The trick is to think of them not as a means of replacing consensus, but a tool for achieving it. Because once you have that mindset, then you can start thinking about how it compares with other consensus-making tools (like the state and banks), and you can think about hybrid models that combine those in interesting ways.
- intotheabyss 5y ago
  There's a saying in the space that all cryptocurrencies are built on Layer 0 which is the social consensus layer. Bitcoin is only Bitcoin because everyone agrees on it.

arc-in-space 5y ago

That's funny. I consider the hacker mindset to include the exact opposite of this accusation - the ability to deconstruct reality, but also to perceive structure where there didn't appear to be any. And, really, of all things, blockchain is where you see excessive rigid thinking? I don't like it much myself, but it came about from a bunch of people going 'well, money is fake anyway'.

stuhood 5y ago

To be clear though, any such consensus _could_ theoretically be modeled using a smart contract between multiple parties, including how ownership was to be revoked (e.g. "party `X` owns thing `z` unless party `Y` says otherwise"). The challenges are in: 1. knowing ahead of time what the parameters and participants of the contract need to be ("I own the house I paid for... unless 'the government' invokes eminent domain") 2. finding the usecases where it's even beneficial to store proof of ownership in a distributed fashion (rather than at, for example, town hall).

munificent 5y ago
> To be clear though, any such consensus _could_ theoretically be modeled using a smart contract between multiple parties Sure, but it's only a model, in the same sense of "model" as a model train set. If you want that blockchain's consensus model to actually do real things involving real humans, then the humans have to agree to act on that model, which itself requires consensus. So now you have two consensus systems.