5 ms·
It used to be very strange to me, but honestly think the answer is that a large number of HN community members are - somewhat ironically - very closed minded. O
by Taek 5y ago
It used to be very strange to me, but honestly think the answer is that a large number of HN community members are - somewhat ironically - very closed minded. Once you start to think in that framework you see it everywhere, and it goes all the way back to the original DropBox thread where some guy said "this is stupid you could just combine FTP with SVN".
Of course that doesn't apply to everyone, and perhaps not even them majority, but certainly at least the majority that shows up in crypto threads. HN members tend to be very smart, very technical, and very confident, all of which combine into this ugly blind spot to creative/unusual forms of technical innovation. Crypto in particular is good at sitting right in the center of that blind spot.
This explanation has made more sense to me than anything else I've seen, you'll have to decide for yourself if you agree with it.
- gjulianm 5y ago> creative/unusual forms of technical innovation Crypto has been around for quite a few years already. How is everyone still close minded? Maybe the issue is that crypto has several problems that are consistently ignored by the community and crypto products keep on underdelivering on their promises. In the end, it all boils down to one fact: the differentiating feature of blockchain is decentralization. That's mainly it. However, the crypto community keeps on promising changes and improvements in areas that don't have anything to do with decentralization without any actual arguments, ignoring what is the reality of those issues.
- adwn 5y ago> a large number of HN community members are - somewhat ironically - very closed minded The other side of that coin – excessive open-mindedness – however, leads to being susceptible to cults, snake oil salesmen, and hyped up technologies. Crypto currencies, in particular, frequently tick all three boxes. Skepticism is generally a good thing, and so far crypto currency proponents have failed to refute the arguments of sceptics.
- Taek 5y agoThe Internet also failed to refute the arguments of skeptics until one day it didn't fail and now several of the largest companies in the world are entirely Internet based and providing indisputable value. Cryptocurrency offers new primitives that are unavailable in any other system known to man. It takes time to build up a backbone of technology that can take these new primitives and get them to the point where they can compete with established trillion dollar industries, but it is happening, and it's starting to happen very rapidly. It's certainly true that crypto is full of snake oil salesmen, overhyped technologies, and culty communities. But the presence of those things doesn't change the fact that the technology is real, and that it can do things at a fundamental level that no other technology can do.
- Jasper_ 5y agoThe most popular internet skeptic quoted was one who (correctly) pointed out that they are going to have trouble trusting Amazon not to send them junk, and that Amazon has to fight an uphill battle to earn it. Which they did, and then started squandering away.
- jshen 5y agoThis is a textbook example of survivorship bias