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This is an important aspect! Crypto is new in that way where everyone can have ownership. I believe everything in the future will be more like this than less. E

This is an important aspect! Crypto is new in that way where everyone can have ownership. I believe everything in the future will be more like this than less. Everything will have financial incentives tied more directly to it. So if anything, the lack of crypto curiosity is a challenge to solve -- how do we get curious in a world where every article, upvote, and comment has a financial stake?

malermeister 5y ago
So I think this is exactly why there's not much of a discussion. There's folks that are really excited about what you described, no doubt. But then there's folks like me that think that vision of commodification of everything is a dystopian nightmare that devalues humanity by forcing everything into an economic corset. I fundamentally don't want financial stakes tied to anything, in my world view we'd ideally move past money and scarcity. I don't see how you'd reconcile those two views and that's why there's two very polarized takes on crypto with little nuance in between.
- reginold 5y ago
  Oh appreciate your thoughts here! I can certainly agree that it can sound dystopian. Let's talk about how to make sure it's net positive! How do we built things better, where do we improve, what are the weaknesses? To me the rise of cryptocurrencies is a given -- so the role of being curious is about shaping what it becomes, rather than deny their impending dominance. (Not putting words in your mouth, if anything this framing comes from my own bias). Does that come through? To use a tired analogy, pretend it's 1950: I would love to talk about the possibilities of computers, good or bad. Though nascent, I believe computers are here to stay, and will be a bigger part of our lives, like it or not. I'm curious about our role in shaping those possibilities. When people say they don't want to talk about computers or think they're stupid does nothing to change that inevitability.
  - ryan_lane 5y ago
    > Let's talk about how to make sure it's net positive! How do we built things better, where do we improve, what are the weaknesses? I think what puts people at odds here is that the conversation on your side is "how can we improve the model we're creating" while the other side's conversation is "we don't want this model at all". Wrapping everything in a financial model is like giving us handcuffs to wear, then asking how you can make the handcuffs more comfortable.
    - reginold 5y ago
      Appreciate the reply here! Your analogies are effective and point out an important difference. It comes down to this question: "Is wrapping everything in a financial model inevitable?" 1. If yes, then let's seize the moment to figure out how to make it the best we can. 2. If no, let's create an alternative, or figure out something else that's inevitable, or perhaps at least resist #1. I've landed on the side of #1. Therefore it becomes a matter of shaping it to be the best it can be. Same with solar power and electric cars. They are inevitable, let's make them the best they can be. For those that land on #2, I can see the point of resisting. However, the best way to support #2 would be an alternative hypothesis "Inevitably some things will be financial and other things will not" and then building tools to support that. Thanks for talking this through and creating this clarity about where the difference is.
      - ryan_lane 5y ago
        Things are currently wrapped in a financial model of sorts. You pay for network resources, the provider does too. They pay for hosting costs and decide whether or not to pass those through. I, for instance, publish everything for free, with an open content license. Wikipedia does as well. We're happy to pay the hosting costs to make our content accessible. The web archive handles long-term archiving, in case we stop hosting. In this new "everything is wrapped in crypto" model, nothing is free. You still have to pay for the network and hosting costs, but now you also need to pay middlemen to access the content, even if the author wishes to provide their content for free. Also, everything becomes more brittle. Since content isn't centralized, it can (and will) disappear when folks stop hosting it. They can be incentivized to host content by being paid to do so, but that really means it makes the most sense to host the most popular content, and to ditch everything else. The whole concept, technically, is worse than the system we currently have. If you want to see numerous reasons why this is a bad idea, look through Wikimedia's various email lists to see this idea being shot down over and over again for nearly 20 years. It's simply an inferior approach to the problem.

malermeister 5y ago

So I think this is exactly why there's not much of a discussion. There's folks that are really excited about what you described, no doubt. But then there's folks like me that think that vision of commodification of everything is a dystopian nightmare that devalues humanity by forcing everything into an economic corset. I fundamentally don't want financial stakes tied to anything, in my world view we'd ideally move past money and scarcity. I don't see how you'd reconcile those two views and that's why there's two very polarized takes on crypto with little nuance in between.

reginold 5y ago
Oh appreciate your thoughts here! I can certainly agree that it can sound dystopian. Let's talk about how to make sure it's net positive! How do we built things better, where do we improve, what are the weaknesses? To me the rise of cryptocurrencies is a given -- so the role of being curious is about shaping what it becomes, rather than deny their impending dominance. (Not putting words in your mouth, if anything this framing comes from my own bias). Does that come through? To use a tired analogy, pretend it's 1950: I would love to talk about the possibilities of computers, good or bad. Though nascent, I believe computers are here to stay, and will be a bigger part of our lives, like it or not. I'm curious about our role in shaping those possibilities. When people say they don't want to talk about computers or think they're stupid does nothing to change that inevitability.
- ryan_lane 5y ago
  > Let's talk about how to make sure it's net positive! How do we built things better, where do we improve, what are the weaknesses? I think what puts people at odds here is that the conversation on your side is "how can we improve the model we're creating" while the other side's conversation is "we don't want this model at all". Wrapping everything in a financial model is like giving us handcuffs to wear, then asking how you can make the handcuffs more comfortable.
  - reginold 5y ago
    Appreciate the reply here! Your analogies are effective and point out an important difference. It comes down to this question: "Is wrapping everything in a financial model inevitable?" 1. If yes, then let's seize the moment to figure out how to make it the best we can. 2. If no, let's create an alternative, or figure out something else that's inevitable, or perhaps at least resist #1. I've landed on the side of #1. Therefore it becomes a matter of shaping it to be the best it can be. Same with solar power and electric cars. They are inevitable, let's make them the best they can be. For those that land on #2, I can see the point of resisting. However, the best way to support #2 would be an alternative hypothesis "Inevitably some things will be financial and other things will not" and then building tools to support that. Thanks for talking this through and creating this clarity about where the difference is.
    - ryan_lane 5y ago
      Things are currently wrapped in a financial model of sorts. You pay for network resources, the provider does too. They pay for hosting costs and decide whether or not to pass those through. I, for instance, publish everything for free, with an open content license. Wikipedia does as well. We're happy to pay the hosting costs to make our content accessible. The web archive handles long-term archiving, in case we stop hosting. In this new "everything is wrapped in crypto" model, nothing is free. You still have to pay for the network and hosting costs, but now you also need to pay middlemen to access the content, even if the author wishes to provide their content for free. Also, everything becomes more brittle. Since content isn't centralized, it can (and will) disappear when folks stop hosting it. They can be incentivized to host content by being paid to do so, but that really means it makes the most sense to host the most popular content, and to ditch everything else. The whole concept, technically, is worse than the system we currently have. If you want to see numerous reasons why this is a bad idea, look through Wikimedia's various email lists to see this idea being shot down over and over again for nearly 20 years. It's simply an inferior approach to the problem.