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It looks like you are debating whenever the hack was moral or not. From a moral standpoint, it's like, if you accidentally leave behind your wallet with cash o

It looks like you are debating whenever the hack was moral or not. From a moral standpoint, it's like, if you accidentally leave behind your wallet with cash on a park bench with a lot of passer-by, then it's your fault for leaving it there and whoever finds it deserves to keep it. I'm sure you're familiar with the "finders keepers, losers weepers" saying... After all, it's in public, similar to how public blockchains work, right? However, different people may come to different conclusions about this. In some countries in the world, the overwhelming consensus would be to return the wallet to the owner, even if it's found in public. I guess it's because it doesn't matter if you had to break through the window, or simply reach out and grab it from the bench; the property does not belong to you.

ramraj07 5y ago
Which country would it be? Questions of morality are slippery slopes since one could argue the entire crypto system is immoral and who cares about the moral rules in a pirate village? As Jack Sparrow says famously, there are only two types of things out there: the things you CAN do, and the things you CANT. Crypto is the libertarians wet dream and to come and argue you should be a Good Samaritan from the opposite end of the spectrum because someone proved libertarianism is bulls*t suggests these people are just immature at best.
spywaregorilla 5y ago
More like a big sign says "A man named Jack may take this wallet", and you're named Jack, so you take the wallet, even though it wasn't meant for you. The smart contract is explicitly defined and on a public ledger. A lost wallet is accidentally left there. The context of it being available to be taken by anyone is not intended. There is no declaration of rules by which you may take it by the owner.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  More like a big sign says “Jack may take this wallet, because it belongs to Jack”, and you happen to also be called Jack, even though you're not the Jack the sign was written about, but the sign enforcer only checks that your ID is valid and that you are named Jack.
  - t0mbstone 5y ago
    That sounds a lot like a problem with the sign enforcer, not the second guy named Jack... You can't just expect people not to take free money laying out on a park bench with their name on it...
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      But it doesn't belong to that Jack. You can interpret the “smart contract” one of two ways: • As a device to programmatically ensure the “owner” of some resource is the one who controls it; or • As a system that decides who controls a resource, whomsoever controls the resource has a right to it, there can only be one. The sensible interpretation (imo) is the first one, unless we're doing away with our conception of property rights. (Which would be an interesting experiment, but given the philosophical background of a lot of this cryptocurrency stuff I don't think that's what's intended.)
    - spywaregorilla 5y ago
      If we're really going to play this contrived example out. Let's say there's a camera watching the wallet, so Jack gets in trouble if he's caught doing this. The debate being had is whether the sign was sufficiently well written ("It's the code's fault") vs. whether the sign system is just a terrible idea regardless of sign quality and you should use normal societal systems to transfer the wallet.
- bouncycastle 5y ago
  Yeah, look all I said that you can interpret this both ways depending on your moral compass, and also based on the ethics of your group / society. You can argue all you like, but I think this dilemma never has a completely correct answer.
Jasper_ 5y ago
But I thought the goal of blockchain was to replace the messy, centralized, inefficient human concepts of "morality" and replace them with unambiguous code? Code is law and all that. If we still have both, why did we add all that weird code stuff anyway?
- bouncycastle 5y ago
  Consensus can change. Blockchain are just databases. But they still run due to consensus and the consensus is made up by humans and it is humans who uphold it. For example, humans came to a consensus that there will there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin. However, we cannot guarantee that one day there may be more than 21. They also came to a consensus that that this shall never change. However, all that is protecting this consensus is a meme. The source code can be changed should everyone agree, especially if the future humans find that such a cap does not work. The benefits of decentralization is that the consensus is hard to change by individuals or centralized organisations... Consensus must be reached by all of the participants of the network.

ramraj07 5y ago

Which country would it be? Questions of morality are slippery slopes since one could argue the entire crypto system is immoral and who cares about the moral rules in a pirate village? As Jack Sparrow says famously, there are only two types of things out there: the things you CAN do, and the things you CANT. Crypto is the libertarians wet dream and to come and argue you should be a Good Samaritan from the opposite end of the spectrum because someone proved libertarianism is bulls*t suggests these people are just immature at best.

spywaregorilla 5y ago

More like a big sign says "A man named Jack may take this wallet", and you're named Jack, so you take the wallet, even though it wasn't meant for you. The smart contract is explicitly defined and on a public ledger. A lost wallet is accidentally left there. The context of it being available to be taken by anyone is not intended. There is no declaration of rules by which you may take it by the owner.

wizzwizz4 5y ago
More like a big sign says “Jack may take this wallet, because it belongs to Jack”, and you happen to also be called Jack, even though you're not the Jack the sign was written about, but the sign enforcer only checks that your ID is valid and that you are named Jack.
- t0mbstone 5y ago
  That sounds a lot like a problem with the sign enforcer, not the second guy named Jack... You can't just expect people not to take free money laying out on a park bench with their name on it...
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    But it doesn't belong to that Jack. You can interpret the “smart contract” one of two ways: • As a device to programmatically ensure the “owner” of some resource is the one who controls it; or • As a system that decides who controls a resource, whomsoever controls the resource has a right to it, there can only be one. The sensible interpretation (imo) is the first one, unless we're doing away with our conception of property rights. (Which would be an interesting experiment, but given the philosophical background of a lot of this cryptocurrency stuff I don't think that's what's intended.)
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    If we're really going to play this contrived example out. Let's say there's a camera watching the wallet, so Jack gets in trouble if he's caught doing this. The debate being had is whether the sign was sufficiently well written ("It's the code's fault") vs. whether the sign system is just a terrible idea regardless of sign quality and you should use normal societal systems to transfer the wallet.
bouncycastle 5y ago
Yeah, look all I said that you can interpret this both ways depending on your moral compass, and also based on the ethics of your group / society. You can argue all you like, but I think this dilemma never has a completely correct answer.

Jasper_ 5y ago

But I thought the goal of blockchain was to replace the messy, centralized, inefficient human concepts of "morality" and replace them with unambiguous code? Code is law and all that. If we still have both, why did we add all that weird code stuff anyway?

bouncycastle 5y ago
Consensus can change. Blockchain are just databases. But they still run due to consensus and the consensus is made up by humans and it is humans who uphold it. For example, humans came to a consensus that there will there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin. However, we cannot guarantee that one day there may be more than 21. They also came to a consensus that that this shall never change. However, all that is protecting this consensus is a meme. The source code can be changed should everyone agree, especially if the future humans find that such a cap does not work. The benefits of decentralization is that the consensus is hard to change by individuals or centralized organisations... Consensus must be reached by all of the participants of the network.