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> NFTs are the digital equivalent of designer clothes, luxury watches, and fancy cars. I feel like a lot of people (particularly on this site) see these kinds

> NFTs are the digital equivalent of designer clothes, luxury watches, and fancy cars. I feel like a lot of people (particularly on this site) see these kinds of things as shallow, uninteresting, and contributory to a lot of the worst parts of society. It feels… odd… to hear them invoked as a positive/useful thing. Like, yes, I get it, a lot of people are shallow and want status symbols to fill the voids in their souls and give their lives meaning. But the idea of taking the clout-chasing mechanics that wreak so much havoc on society and going “what if we had more of that?”… well it feels a little like trying to invent digital junk food because real world junk food sells so well.

sanderjd 5y ago
I totally share your vibe on this, but I also think we do ourselves a disservice when we turn our noses up at stuff lots of people actually like. I try to separate two different questions: "Is this something that people will find valuable?" and "Is this something I want to dedicate my scarce time and energy toward working on?". I think in the case of all this shallow stuff, those answers are "yes" and "no". But I think we have a tendency to conflate the two questions and since the answer to the second one is "no", assume the answer to the first one is also "no". I personally did that with Facebook for many years and really talked down the business because I considered it superficial and actively bad and not something I wanted to have any involvement in, but the truth is that it is a very valuable business that I just don't want to work on, and that's fine. I increasingly see a lot of this cryptocurrency stuff as very much the same. I may not like it, but that doesn't at all imply that it won't be valued by a large number of people.
CryptoPunk 5y ago
Status symbols became the first forms of money and may have increased the productivity of Homo sapiens many fold: https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/rob/Courses/InformationInSpeech/CDROM/Literature/LOTwinterschool2006/szabo.best.vwh.net/shell.html https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/rob/Courses/InformationInSpeech/C... With NFTs, their functionality extends through programmability, where they can be used as collateral for self-executing financial contracts.

sanderjd 5y ago

I totally share your vibe on this, but I also think we do ourselves a disservice when we turn our noses up at stuff lots of people actually like. I try to separate two different questions: "Is this something that people will find valuable?" and "Is this something I want to dedicate my scarce time and energy toward working on?". I think in the case of all this shallow stuff, those answers are "yes" and "no". But I think we have a tendency to conflate the two questions and since the answer to the second one is "no", assume the answer to the first one is also "no". I personally did that with Facebook for many years and really talked down the business because I considered it superficial and actively bad and not something I wanted to have any involvement in, but the truth is that it is a very valuable business that I just don't want to work on, and that's fine. I increasingly see a lot of this cryptocurrency stuff as very much the same. I may not like it, but that doesn't at all imply that it won't be valued by a large number of people.

CryptoPunk 5y ago

Status symbols became the first forms of money and may have increased the productivity of Homo sapiens many fold: https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/rob/Courses/InformationInSpeech/CDROM/Literature/LOTwinterschool2006/szabo.best.vwh.net/shell.html https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/rob/Courses/InformationInSpeech/C... With NFTs, their functionality extends through programmability, where they can be used as collateral for self-executing financial contracts.